1rsync(1) rsync(1)
2
6 rsync - a fast, versatile, remote (and local) file-copying tool
7
9 Local: rsync [OPTION...] SRC... [DEST]
10 Access via remote shell:
12 Pull: rsync [OPTION...] [USER@]HOST:SRC... [DEST]
13 Push: rsync [OPTION...] SRC... [USER@]HOST:DEST
14 Access via rsync daemon:
16 Pull: rsync [OPTION...] [USER@]HOST::SRC... [DEST]
17 rsync [OPTION...] rsync://[USER@]HOST[:PORT]/SRC... [DEST]
18 Push: rsync [OPTION...] SRC... [USER@]HOST::DEST
19 rsync [OPTION...] SRC... rsync://[USER@]HOST[:PORT]/DEST
20 Usages with just one SRC arg and no DEST arg will list the source files
23 instead of copying.
24
26 Rsync is a fast and extraordinarily versatile file copying tool. It
27 can copy locally, to/from another host over any remote shell, or
28 to/from a remote rsync daemon. It offers a large number of options
29 that control every aspect of its behavior and permit very flexible
30 specification of the set of files to be copied. It is famous for its
31 delta-transfer algorithm, which reduces the amount of data sent over
32 the network by sending only the differences between the source files
33 and the existing files in the destination. Rsync is widely used for
34 backups and mirroring and as an improved copy command for everyday use.
35 Rsync finds files that need to be transferred using a "quick check"
37 algorithm (by default) that looks for files that have changed in size
38 or in last-modified time. Any changes in the other preserved
39 attributes (as requested by options) are made on the destination file
40 directly when the quick check indicates that the file’s data does not
41 need to be updated.
42 Some of the additional features of rsync are:
44 o support for copying links, devices, owners, groups, and permis‐
46 sions
47 o exclude and exclude-from options similar to GNU tar
49 o a CVS exclude mode for ignoring the same files that CVS would
51 ignore
52 o can use any transparent remote shell, including ssh or rsh
54 o does not require super-user privileges
56 o pipelining of file transfers to minimize latency costs
58 o support for anonymous or authenticated rsync daemons (ideal for
60 mirroring)
61
64 Rsync copies files either to or from a remote host, or locally on the
65 current host (it does not support copying files between two remote
66 hosts).
67 There are two different ways for rsync to contact a remote system:
69 using a remote-shell program as the transport (such as ssh or rsh) or
70 contacting an rsync daemon directly via TCP. The remote-shell trans‐
71 port is used whenever the source or destination path contains a single
72 colon (:) separator after a host specification. Contacting an rsync
73 daemon directly happens when the source or destination path contains a
74 double colon (::) separator after a host specification, OR when an
75 rsync:// URL is specified (see also the "USING RSYNC-DAEMON FEATURES
76 VIA A REMOTE-SHELL CONNECTION" section for an exception to this latter
77 rule).
78 As a special case, if a single source arg is specified without a desti‐
80 nation, the files are listed in an output format similar to "ls -l".
81 As expected, if neither the source or destination path specify a remote
83 host, the copy occurs locally (see also the --list-only option).
84 Rsync refers to the local side as the "client" and the remote side as
86 the "server". Don’t confuse "server" with an rsync daemon -- a daemon
87 is always a server, but a server can be either a daemon or a
88 remote-shell spawned process.
89
91 See the file README for installation instructions.
92 Once installed, you can use rsync to any machine that you can access
94 via a remote shell (as well as some that you can access using the rsync
95 daemon-mode protocol). For remote transfers, a modern rsync uses ssh
96 for its communications, but it may have been configured to use a dif‐
97 ferent remote shell by default, such as rsh or remsh.
98 You can also specify any remote shell you like, either by using the -e
100 command line option, or by setting the RSYNC_RSH environment variable.
101 Note that rsync must be installed on both the source and destination
103 machines.
104
106 You use rsync in the same way you use rcp. You must specify a source
107 and a destination, one of which may be remote.
108 Perhaps the best way to explain the syntax is with some examples:
110 rsync -t *.c foo:src/
112 This would transfer all files matching the pattern *.c from the current
115 directory to the directory src on the machine foo. If any of the files
116 already exist on the remote system then the rsync remote-update proto‐
117 col is used to update the file by sending only the differences in the
118 data. Note that the expansion of wildcards on the commandline (*.c)
119 into a list of files is handled by the shell before it runs rsync and
120 not by rsync itself (exactly the same as all other posix-style pro‐
121 grams).
122 rsync -avz foo:src/bar /data/tmp
124 This would recursively transfer all files from the directory src/bar on
127 the machine foo into the /data/tmp/bar directory on the local machine.
128 The files are transferred in "archive" mode, which ensures that sym‐
129 bolic links, devices, attributes, permissions, ownerships, etc. are
130 preserved in the transfer. Additionally, compression will be used to
131 reduce the size of data portions of the transfer.
132 rsync -avz foo:src/bar/ /data/tmp
134 A trailing slash on the source changes this behavior to avoid creating
137 an additional directory level at the destination. You can think of a
138 trailing / on a source as meaning "copy the contents of this directory"
139 as opposed to "copy the directory by name", but in both cases the
140 attributes of the containing directory are transferred to the contain‐
141 ing directory on the destination. In other words, each of the follow‐
142 ing commands copies the files in the same way, including their setting
143 of the attributes of /dest/foo:
144 rsync -av /src/foo /dest
146 rsync -av /src/foo/ /dest/foo
147 Note also that host and module references don’t require a trailing
150 slash to copy the contents of the default directory. For example, both
151 of these copy the remote directory’s contents into "/dest":
152 rsync -av host: /dest
154 rsync -av host::module /dest
155 You can also use rsync in local-only mode, where both the source and
158 destination don’t have a ’:’ in the name. In this case it behaves like
159 an improved copy command.
160 Finally, you can list all the (listable) modules available from a par‐
162 ticular rsync daemon by leaving off the module name:
163 rsync somehost.mydomain.com::
165 See the following section for more details.
168
170 The syntax for requesting multiple files from a remote host is done by
171 specifying additional remote-host args in the same style as the first,
172 or with the hostname omitted. For instance, all these work:
173 rsync -av host:file1 :file2 host:file{3,4} /dest/
175 rsync -av host::modname/file{1,2} host::modname/file3 /dest/
176 rsync -av host::modname/file1 ::modname/file{3,4}
177 Older versions of rsync required using quoted spaces in the SRC, like
180 these examples:
181 rsync -av host:'dir1/file1 dir2/file2' /dest
183 rsync host::'modname/dir1/file1 modname/dir2/file2' /dest
184 This word-splitting still works (by default) in the latest rsync, but
187 is not as easy to use as the first method.
188 If you need to transfer a filename that contains whitespace, you can
190 either specify the --protect-args (-s) option, or you’ll need to escape
191 the whitespace in a way that the remote shell will understand. For
192 instance:
193 rsync -av host:'file\ name\ with\ spaces' /dest
195
198 It is also possible to use rsync without a remote shell as the trans‐
199 port. In this case you will directly connect to a remote rsync daemon,
200 typically using TCP port 873. (This obviously requires the daemon to
201 be running on the remote system, so refer to the STARTING AN RSYNC DAE‐
202 MON TO ACCEPT CONNECTIONS section below for information on that.)
203 Using rsync in this way is the same as using it with a remote shell
205 except that:
206 o you either use a double colon :: instead of a single colon to
208 separate the hostname from the path, or you use an rsync:// URL.
209 o the first word of the "path" is actually a module name.
211 o the remote daemon may print a message of the day when you con‐
213 nect.
214 o if you specify no path name on the remote daemon then the list
216 of accessible paths on the daemon will be shown.
217 o if you specify no local destination then a listing of the speci‐
219 fied files on the remote daemon is provided.
220 o you must not specify the --rsh (-e) option.
222 An example that copies all the files in a remote module named "src":
225 rsync -av host::src /dest
227 Some modules on the remote daemon may require authentication. If so,
230 you will receive a password prompt when you connect. You can avoid the
231 password prompt by setting the environment variable RSYNC_PASSWORD to
232 the password you want to use or using the --password-file option. This
233 may be useful when scripting rsync.
234 WARNING: On some systems environment variables are visible to all
236 users. On those systems using --password-file is recommended.
237 You may establish the connection via a web proxy by setting the envi‐
239 ronment variable RSYNC_PROXY to a hostname:port pair pointing to your
240 web proxy. Note that your web proxy’s configuration must support proxy
241 connections to port 873.
242 You may also establish a daemon connection using a program as a proxy
244 by setting the environment variable RSYNC_CONNECT_PROG to the commands
245 you wish to run in place of making a direct socket connection. The
246 string may contain the escape "%H" to represent the hostname specified
247 in the rsync command (so use "%%" if you need a single "%" in your
248 string). For example:
249 export RSYNC_CONNECT_PROG='ssh proxyhost nc %H 873'
251 rsync -av targethost1::module/src/ /dest/
252 rsync -av rsync:://targethost2/module/src/ /dest/
253 The command specified above uses ssh to run nc (netcat) on a proxyhost,
256 which forwards all data to port 873 (the rsync daemon) on the targeth‐
257 ost (%H).
258
260 It is sometimes useful to use various features of an rsync daemon (such
261 as named modules) without actually allowing any new socket connections
262 into a system (other than what is already required to allow
263 remote-shell access). Rsync supports connecting to a host using a
264 remote shell and then spawning a single-use "daemon" server that
265 expects to read its config file in the home dir of the remote user.
266 This can be useful if you want to encrypt a daemon-style transfer’s
267 data, but since the daemon is started up fresh by the remote user, you
268 may not be able to use features such as chroot or change the uid used
269 by the daemon. (For another way to encrypt a daemon transfer, consider
270 using ssh to tunnel a local port to a remote machine and configure a
271 normal rsync daemon on that remote host to only allow connections from
272 "localhost".)
273 From the user’s perspective, a daemon transfer via a remote-shell con‐
275 nection uses nearly the same command-line syntax as a normal rsync-dae‐
276 mon transfer, with the only exception being that you must explicitly
277 set the remote shell program on the command-line with the --rsh=COMMAND
278 option. (Setting the RSYNC_RSH in the environment will not turn on
279 this functionality.) For example:
280 rsync -av --rsh=ssh host::module /dest
282 If you need to specify a different remote-shell user, keep in mind that
285 the user@ prefix in front of the host is specifying the rsync-user
286 value (for a module that requires user-based authentication). This
287 means that you must give the ’-l user’ option to ssh when specifying
288 the remote-shell, as in this example that uses the short version of the
289 --rsh option:
290 rsync -av -e "ssh -l ssh-user" rsync-user@host::module /dest
292 The "ssh-user" will be used at the ssh level; the "rsync-user" will be
295 used to log-in to the "module".
296
298 In order to connect to an rsync daemon, the remote system needs to have
299 a daemon already running (or it needs to have configured something like
300 inetd to spawn an rsync daemon for incoming connections on a particular
301 port). For full information on how to start a daemon that will han‐
302 dling incoming socket connections, see the rsyncd.conf(5) man page --
303 that is the config file for the daemon, and it contains the full
304 details for how to run the daemon (including stand-alone and inetd con‐
305 figurations).
306 If you’re using one of the remote-shell transports for the transfer,
308 there is no need to manually start an rsync daemon.
309
311 Rsync always sorts the specified filenames into its internal transfer
312 list. This handles the merging together of the contents of identically
313 named directories, makes it easy to remove duplicate filenames, and may
314 confuse someone when the files are transferred in a different order
315 than what was given on the command-line.
316 If you need a particular file to be transferred prior to another,
318 either separate the files into different rsync calls, or consider using
319 --delay-updates (which doesn’t affect the sorted transfer order, but
320 does make the final file-updating phase happen much more rapidly).
321
323 Here are some examples of how I use rsync.
324 To backup my wife’s home directory, which consists of large MS Word
326 files and mail folders, I use a cron job that runs
327 rsync -Cavz . arvidsjaur:backup
329 each night over a PPP connection to a duplicate directory on my machine
332 "arvidsjaur".
333 To synchronize my samba source trees I use the following Makefile tar‐
335 gets:
336 get:
338 rsync -avuzb --exclude '*~' samba:samba/ .
339 put:
340 rsync -Cavuzb . samba:samba/
341 sync: get put
342 this allows me to sync with a CVS directory at the other end of the
345 connection. I then do CVS operations on the remote machine, which saves
346 a lot of time as the remote CVS protocol isn’t very efficient.
347 I mirror a directory between my "old" and "new" ftp sites with the com‐
349 mand:
350 rsync -az -e ssh --delete ~ftp/pub/samba nimbus:"~ftp/pub/tridge"
352 This is launched from cron every few hours.
354
356 Here is a short summary of the options available in rsync. Please refer
357 to the detailed description below for a complete description.
358 -v, --verbose increase verbosity
360 --info=FLAGS fine-grained informational verbosity
361 --debug=FLAGS fine-grained debug verbosity
362 --msgs2stderr special output handling for debugging
363 -q, --quiet suppress non-error messages
364 --no-motd suppress daemon-mode MOTD (see caveat)
365 -c, --checksum skip based on checksum, not mod-time & size
366 -a, --archive archive mode; equals -rlptgoD (no -H,-A,-X)
367 --no-OPTION turn off an implied OPTION (e.g. --no-D)
368 -r, --recursive recurse into directories
369 -R, --relative use relative path names
370 --no-implied-dirs don't send implied dirs with --relative
371 -b, --backup make backups (see --suffix & --backup-dir)
372 --backup-dir=DIR make backups into hierarchy based in DIR
373 --suffix=SUFFIX backup suffix (default ~ w/o --backup-dir)
374 -u, --update skip files that are newer on the receiver
375 --inplace update destination files in-place
376 --append append data onto shorter files
377 --append-verify --append w/old data in file checksum
378 -d, --dirs transfer directories without recursing
379 -l, --links copy symlinks as symlinks
380 -L, --copy-links transform symlink into referent file/dir
381 --copy-unsafe-links only "unsafe" symlinks are transformed
382 --safe-links ignore symlinks that point outside the tree
383 --munge-links munge symlinks to make them safer
384 -k, --copy-dirlinks transform symlink to dir into referent dir
385 -K, --keep-dirlinks treat symlinked dir on receiver as dir
386 -H, --hard-links preserve hard links
387 -p, --perms preserve permissions
388 -E, --executability preserve executability
389 --chmod=CHMOD affect file and/or directory permissions
390 -A, --acls preserve ACLs (implies -p)
391 -X, --xattrs preserve extended attributes
392 -o, --owner preserve owner (super-user only)
393 -g, --group preserve group
394 --devices preserve device files (super-user only)
395 --copy-devices copy device contents as regular file
396 --specials preserve special files
397 -D same as --devices --specials
398 -t, --times preserve modification times
399 -O, --omit-dir-times omit directories from --times
400 -J, --omit-link-times omit symlinks from --times
401 --super receiver attempts super-user activities
402 --fake-super store/recover privileged attrs using xattrs
403 -S, --sparse turn sequences of nulls into sparse blocks
404 --preallocate allocate dest files before writing
405 -n, --dry-run perform a trial run with no changes made
406 -W, --whole-file copy files whole (w/o delta-xfer algorithm)
407 --checksum-choice=STR choose the checksum algorithms
408 -x, --one-file-system don't cross filesystem boundaries
409 -B, --block-size=SIZE force a fixed checksum block-size
410 -e, --rsh=COMMAND specify the remote shell to use
411 --rsync-path=PROGRAM specify the rsync to run on remote machine
412 --existing skip creating new files on receiver
413 --ignore-existing skip updating files that exist on receiver
414 --remove-source-files sender removes synchronized files (non-dir)
415 --del an alias for --delete-during
416 --delete delete extraneous files from dest dirs
417 --delete-before receiver deletes before xfer, not during
418 --delete-during receiver deletes during the transfer
419 --delete-delay find deletions during, delete after
420 --delete-after receiver deletes after transfer, not during
421 --delete-excluded also delete excluded files from dest dirs
422 --ignore-missing-args ignore missing source args without error
423 --delete-missing-args delete missing source args from destination
424 --ignore-errors delete even if there are I/O errors
425 --force force deletion of dirs even if not empty
426 --max-delete=NUM don't delete more than NUM files
427 --max-size=SIZE don't transfer any file larger than SIZE
428 --min-size=SIZE don't transfer any file smaller than SIZE
429 --partial keep partially transferred files
430 --partial-dir=DIR put a partially transferred file into DIR
431 --delay-updates put all updated files into place at end
432 -m, --prune-empty-dirs prune empty directory chains from file-list
433 --numeric-ids don't map uid/gid values by user/group name
434 --usermap=STRING custom username mapping
435 --groupmap=STRING custom groupname mapping
436 --chown=USER:GROUP simple username/groupname mapping
437 --timeout=SECONDS set I/O timeout in seconds
438 --contimeout=SECONDS set daemon connection timeout in seconds
439 -I, --ignore-times don't skip files that match size and time
440 --size-only skip files that match in size
441 -@, --modify-window=NUM set the accuracy for mod-time comparisons
442 -T, --temp-dir=DIR create temporary files in directory DIR
443 -y, --fuzzy find similar file for basis if no dest file
444 --compare-dest=DIR also compare received files relative to DIR
445 --copy-dest=DIR ... and include copies of unchanged files
446 --link-dest=DIR hardlink to files in DIR when unchanged
447 -z, --compress compress file data during the transfer
448 --compress-level=NUM explicitly set compression level
449 --skip-compress=LIST skip compressing files with suffix in LIST
450 -C, --cvs-exclude auto-ignore files in the same way CVS does
451 -f, --filter=RULE add a file-filtering RULE
452 -F same as --filter='dir-merge /.rsync-filter'
453 repeated: --filter='- .rsync-filter'
454 --exclude=PATTERN exclude files matching PATTERN
455 --exclude-from=FILE read exclude patterns from FILE
456 --include=PATTERN don't exclude files matching PATTERN
457 --include-from=FILE read include patterns from FILE
458 --files-from=FILE read list of source-file names from FILE
459 -0, --from0 all *from/filter files are delimited by 0s
460 -s, --protect-args no space-splitting; wildcard chars only
461 --address=ADDRESS bind address for outgoing socket to daemon
462 --port=PORT specify double-colon alternate port number
463 --sockopts=OPTIONS specify custom TCP options
464 --blocking-io use blocking I/O for the remote shell
465 --outbuf=N|L|B set out buffering to None, Line, or Block
466 --stats give some file-transfer stats
467 -8, --8-bit-output leave high-bit chars unescaped in output
468 -h, --human-readable output numbers in a human-readable format
469 --progress show progress during transfer
470 -P same as --partial --progress
471 -i, --itemize-changes output a change-summary for all updates
472 -M, --remote-option=OPTION send OPTION to the remote side only
473 --out-format=FORMAT output updates using the specified FORMAT
474 --log-file=FILE log what we're doing to the specified FILE
475 --log-file-format=FMT log updates using the specified FMT
476 --password-file=FILE read daemon-access password from FILE
477 --list-only list the files instead of copying them
478 --bwlimit=RATE limit socket I/O bandwidth
479 --write-batch=FILE write a batched update to FILE
480 --only-write-batch=FILE like --write-batch but w/o updating dest
481 --read-batch=FILE read a batched update from FILE
482 --protocol=NUM force an older protocol version to be used
483 --iconv=CONVERT_SPEC request charset conversion of filenames
484 --checksum-seed=NUM set block/file checksum seed (advanced)
485 -4, --ipv4 prefer IPv4
486 -6, --ipv6 prefer IPv6
487 --version print version number
488 (-h) --help show this help (see below for -h comment)
489 Rsync can also be run as a daemon, in which case the following options
492 are accepted:
493 --daemon run as an rsync daemon
495 --address=ADDRESS bind to the specified address
496 --bwlimit=RATE limit socket I/O bandwidth
497 --config=FILE specify alternate rsyncd.conf file
498 -M, --dparam=OVERRIDE override global daemon config parameter
499 --no-detach do not detach from the parent
500 --port=PORT listen on alternate port number
501 --log-file=FILE override the "log file" setting
502 --log-file-format=FMT override the "log format" setting
503 --sockopts=OPTIONS specify custom TCP options
504 -v, --verbose increase verbosity
505 -4, --ipv4 prefer IPv4
506 -6, --ipv6 prefer IPv6
507 -h, --help show this help (if used after --daemon)
508
511 Rsync accepts both long (double-dash + word) and short (single-dash +
512 letter) options. The full list of the available options are described
513 below. If an option can be specified in more than one way, the choices
514 are comma-separated. Some options only have a long variant, not a
515 short. If the option takes a parameter, the parameter is only listed
516 after the long variant, even though it must also be specified for the
517 short. When specifying a parameter, you can either use the form
518 --option=param or replace the ’=’ with whitespace. The parameter may
519 need to be quoted in some manner for it to survive the shell’s com‐
520 mand-line parsing. Keep in mind that a leading tilde (~) in a filename
521 is substituted by your shell, so --option=~/foo will not change the
522 tilde into your home directory (remove the ’=’ for that).
523 --help Print a short help page describing the options available in
525 rsync and exit. For backward-compatibility with older versions
526 of rsync, the help will also be output if you use the -h option
527 without any other args.
528 --version
530 print the rsync version number and exit.
531 -v, --verbose
533 This option increases the amount of information you are given
534 during the transfer. By default, rsync works silently. A single
535 -v will give you information about what files are being trans‐
536 ferred and a brief summary at the end. Two -v options will give
537 you information on what files are being skipped and slightly
538 more information at the end. More than two -v options should
539 only be used if you are debugging rsync.
540 In a modern rsync, the -v option is equivalent to the setting of
542 groups of --info and --debug options. You can choose to use
543 these newer options in addition to, or in place of using --ver‐
544 bose, as any fine-grained settings override the implied settings
545 of -v. Both --info and --debug have a way to ask for help that
546 tells you exactly what flags are set for each increase in ver‐
547 bosity.
548 However, do keep in mind that a daemon’s "max verbosity" setting
550 will limit how high of a level the various individual flags can
551 be set on the daemon side. For instance, if the max is 2, then
552 any info and/or debug flag that is set to a higher value than
553 what would be set by -vv will be downgraded to the -vv level in
554 the daemon’s logging.
555 --info=FLAGS
557 This option lets you have fine-grained control over the informa‐
558 tion output you want to see. An individual flag name may be
559 followed by a level number, with 0 meaning to silence that out‐
560 put, 1 being the default output level, and higher numbers
561 increasing the output of that flag (for those that support
562 higher levels). Use --info=help to see all the available flag
563 names, what they output, and what flag names are added for each
564 increase in the verbose level. Some examples:
565 rsync -a --info=progress2 src/ dest/
567 rsync -avv --info=stats2,misc1,flist0 src/ dest/
568 Note that --info=name’s output is affected by the --out-format
571 and --itemize-changes (-i) options. See those options for more
572 information on what is output and when.
573 This option was added to 3.1.0, so an older rsync on the server
575 side might reject your attempts at fine-grained control (if one
576 or more flags needed to be send to the server and the server was
577 too old to understand them). See also the "max verbosity"
578 caveat above when dealing with a daemon.
579 --debug=FLAGS
581 This option lets you have fine-grained control over the debug
582 output you want to see. An individual flag name may be followed
583 by a level number, with 0 meaning to silence that output, 1
584 being the default output level, and higher numbers increasing
585 the output of that flag (for those that support higher levels).
586 Use --debug=help to see all the available flag names, what they
587 output, and what flag names are added for each increase in the
588 verbose level. Some examples:
589 rsync -avvv --debug=none src/ dest/
591 rsync -avA --del --debug=del2,acl src/ dest/
592 Note that some debug messages will only be output when
595 --msgs2stderr is specified, especially those pertaining to I/O
596 and buffer debugging.
597 This option was added to 3.1.0, so an older rsync on the server
599 side might reject your attempts at fine-grained control (if one
600 or more flags needed to be send to the server and the server was
601 too old to understand them). See also the "max verbosity"
602 caveat above when dealing with a daemon.
603 --msgs2stderr
605 This option changes rsync to send all its output directly to
606 stderr rather than to send messages to the client side via the
607 protocol (which normally outputs info messages via stdout).
608 This is mainly intended for debugging in order to avoid changing
609 the data sent via the protocol, since the extra protocol data
610 can change what is being tested. The option does not affect the
611 remote side of a transfer without using --remote-option -- e.g.
612 -M--msgs2stderr. Also keep in mind that a daemon connection
613 does not have a stderr channel to send messages back to the
614 client side, so if you are doing any daemon-transfer debugging
615 using this option, you should start up a daemon using
616 --no-detach so that you can see the stderr output on the daemon
617 side.
618 This option has the side-effect of making stderr output get
620 line-buffered so that the merging of the output of 3 programs
621 happens in a more readable manner.
622 -q, --quiet
624 This option decreases the amount of information you are given
625 during the transfer, notably suppressing information messages
626 from the remote server. This option is useful when invoking
627 rsync from cron.
628 --no-motd
630 This option affects the information that is output by the client
631 at the start of a daemon transfer. This suppresses the mes‐
632 sage-of-the-day (MOTD) text, but it also affects the list of
633 modules that the daemon sends in response to the "rsync host::"
634 request (due to a limitation in the rsync protocol), so omit
635 this option if you want to request the list of modules from the
636 daemon.
637 -I, --ignore-times
639 Normally rsync will skip any files that are already the same
640 size and have the same modification timestamp. This option
641 turns off this "quick check" behavior, causing all files to be
642 updated.
643 --size-only
645 This modifies rsync’s "quick check" algorithm for finding files
646 that need to be transferred, changing it from the default of
647 transferring files with either a changed size or a changed
648 last-modified time to just looking for files that have changed
649 in size. This is useful when starting to use rsync after using
650 another mirroring system which may not preserve timestamps
651 exactly.
652 -@, --modify-window
654 When comparing two timestamps, rsync treats the timestamps as
655 being equal if they differ by no more than the modify-window
656 value. The default is 0, which matches just integer seconds.
657 If you specify a negative value (and the receiver is at least
658 version 3.1.3) then nanoseconds will also be taken into account.
659 Specifying 1 is useful for copies to/from MS Windows FAT
660 filesystems, because FAT represents times with a 2-second reso‐
661 lution (allowing times to differ from the original by up to 1
662 second).
663 If you want all your transfers to default to comparing nanosec‐
665 onds, you can create a ~/.popt file and put these lines in it:
666 rsync alias -a -a@-1
668 rsync alias -t -t@-1
669 With that as the default, you’d need to specify --modify-win‐
672 dow=0 (aka -@0) to override it and ignore nanoseconds, e.g. if
673 you’re copying between ext3 and ext4, or if the receiving rsync
674 is older than 3.1.3.
675 -c, --checksum
677 This changes the way rsync checks if the files have been changed
678 and are in need of a transfer. Without this option, rsync uses
679 a "quick check" that (by default) checks if each file’s size and
680 time of last modification match between the sender and receiver.
681 This option changes this to compare a 128-bit checksum for each
682 file that has a matching size. Generating the checksums means
683 that both sides will expend a lot of disk I/O reading all the
684 data in the files in the transfer (and this is prior to any
685 reading that will be done to transfer changed files), so this
686 can slow things down significantly.
687 The sending side generates its checksums while it is doing the
689 file-system scan that builds the list of the available files.
690 The receiver generates its checksums when it is scanning for
691 changed files, and will checksum any file that has the same size
692 as the corresponding sender’s file: files with either a changed
693 size or a changed checksum are selected for transfer.
694 Note that rsync always verifies that each transferred file was
696 correctly reconstructed on the receiving side by checking a
697 whole-file checksum that is generated as the file is trans‐
698 ferred, but that automatic after-the-transfer verification has
699 nothing to do with this option’s before-the-transfer "Does this
700 file need to be updated?" check.
701 For protocol 30 and beyond (first supported in 3.0.0), the
703 checksum used is MD5. For older protocols, the checksum used is
704 MD4.
705 -a, --archive
707 This is equivalent to -rlptgoD. It is a quick way of saying you
708 want recursion and want to preserve almost everything (with -H
709 being a notable omission). The only exception to the above
710 equivalence is when --files-from is specified, in which case -r
711 is not implied.
712 Note that -a does not preserve hardlinks, because finding multi‐
714 ply-linked files is expensive. You must separately specify -H.
715 --no-OPTION
717 You may turn off one or more implied options by prefixing the
718 option name with "no-". Not all options may be prefixed with a
719 "no-": only options that are implied by other options (e.g.
720 --no-D, --no-perms) or have different defaults in various cir‐
721 cumstances (e.g. --no-whole-file, --no-blocking-io, --no-dirs).
722 You may specify either the short or the long option name after
723 the "no-" prefix (e.g. --no-R is the same as --no-relative).
724 For example: if you want to use -a (--archive) but don’t want -o
726 (--owner), instead of converting -a into -rlptgD, you could
727 specify -a --no-o (or -a --no-owner).
728 The order of the options is important: if you specify --no-r
730 -a, the -r option would end up being turned on, the opposite of
731 -a --no-r. Note also that the side-effects of the --files-from
732 option are NOT positional, as it affects the default state of
733 several options and slightly changes the meaning of -a (see the
734 --files-from option for more details).
735 -r, --recursive
737 This tells rsync to copy directories recursively. See also
738 --dirs (-d).
739 Beginning with rsync 3.0.0, the recursive algorithm used is now
741 an incremental scan that uses much less memory than before and
742 begins the transfer after the scanning of the first few directo‐
743 ries have been completed. This incremental scan only affects
744 our recursion algorithm, and does not change a non-recursive
745 transfer. It is also only possible when both ends of the trans‐
746 fer are at least version 3.0.0.
747 Some options require rsync to know the full file list, so these
749 options disable the incremental recursion mode. These include:
750 --delete-before, --delete-after, --prune-empty-dirs, and
751 --delay-updates. Because of this, the default delete mode when
752 you specify --delete is now --delete-during when both ends of
753 the connection are at least 3.0.0 (use --del or --delete-during
754 to request this improved deletion mode explicitly). See also
755 the --delete-delay option that is a better choice than using
756 --delete-after.
757 Incremental recursion can be disabled using the --no-inc-recur‐
759 sive option or its shorter --no-i-r alias.
760 -R, --relative
762 Use relative paths. This means that the full path names speci‐
763 fied on the command line are sent to the server rather than just
764 the last parts of the filenames. This is particularly useful
765 when you want to send several different directories at the same
766 time. For example, if you used this command:
767 rsync -av /foo/bar/baz.c remote:/tmp/
769 ... this would create a file named baz.c in /tmp/ on the remote
772 machine. If instead you used
773 rsync -avR /foo/bar/baz.c remote:/tmp/
775 then a file named /tmp/foo/bar/baz.c would be created on the
778 remote machine, preserving its full path. These extra path ele‐
779 ments are called "implied directories" (i.e. the "foo" and the
780 "foo/bar" directories in the above example).
781 Beginning with rsync 3.0.0, rsync always sends these implied
783 directories as real directories in the file list, even if a path
784 element is really a symlink on the sending side. This prevents
785 some really unexpected behaviors when copying the full path of a
786 file that you didn’t realize had a symlink in its path. If you
787 want to duplicate a server-side symlink, include both the sym‐
788 link via its path, and referent directory via its real path. If
789 you’re dealing with an older rsync on the sending side, you may
790 need to use the --no-implied-dirs option.
791 It is also possible to limit the amount of path information that
793 is sent as implied directories for each path you specify. With
794 a modern rsync on the sending side (beginning with 2.6.7), you
795 can insert a dot and a slash into the source path, like this:
796 rsync -avR /foo/./bar/baz.c remote:/tmp/
798 That would create /tmp/bar/baz.c on the remote machine. (Note
801 that the dot must be followed by a slash, so "/foo/." would not
802 be abbreviated.) For older rsync versions, you would need to
803 use a chdir to limit the source path. For example, when pushing
804 files:
805 (cd /foo; rsync -avR bar/baz.c remote:/tmp/)
807 (Note that the parens put the two commands into a sub-shell, so
810 that the "cd" command doesn’t remain in effect for future com‐
811 mands.) If you’re pulling files from an older rsync, use this
812 idiom (but only for a non-daemon transfer):
813 rsync -avR --rsync-path="cd /foo; rsync" \
815 remote:bar/baz.c /tmp/
816 --no-implied-dirs
819 This option affects the default behavior of the --relative
820 option. When it is specified, the attributes of the implied
821 directories from the source names are not included in the trans‐
822 fer. This means that the corresponding path elements on the
823 destination system are left unchanged if they exist, and any
824 missing implied directories are created with default attributes.
825 This even allows these implied path elements to have big differ‐
826 ences, such as being a symlink to a directory on the receiving
827 side.
828 For instance, if a command-line arg or a files-from entry told
830 rsync to transfer the file "path/foo/file", the directories
831 "path" and "path/foo" are implied when --relative is used. If
832 "path/foo" is a symlink to "bar" on the destination system, the
833 receiving rsync would ordinarily delete "path/foo", recreate it
834 as a directory, and receive the file into the new directory.
835 With --no-implied-dirs, the receiving rsync updates
836 "path/foo/file" using the existing path elements, which means
837 that the file ends up being created in "path/bar". Another way
838 to accomplish this link preservation is to use the
839 --keep-dirlinks option (which will also affect symlinks to
840 directories in the rest of the transfer).
841 When pulling files from an rsync older than 3.0.0, you may need
843 to use this option if the sending side has a symlink in the path
844 you request and you wish the implied directories to be trans‐
845 ferred as normal directories.
846 -b, --backup
848 With this option, preexisting destination files are renamed as
849 each file is transferred or deleted. You can control where the
850 backup file goes and what (if any) suffix gets appended using
851 the --backup-dir and --suffix options.
852 Note that if you don’t specify --backup-dir, (1) the
854 --omit-dir-times option will be forced on, and (2) if --delete
855 is also in effect (without --delete-excluded), rsync will add a
856 "protect" filter-rule for the backup suffix to the end of all
857 your existing excludes (e.g. -f "P *~"). This will prevent pre‐
858 viously backed-up files from being deleted. Note that if you
859 are supplying your own filter rules, you may need to manually
860 insert your own exclude/protect rule somewhere higher up in the
861 list so that it has a high enough priority to be effective
862 (e.g., if your rules specify a trailing inclusion/exclusion of
863 ’*’, the auto-added rule would never be reached).
864 --backup-dir=DIR
866 In combination with the --backup option, this tells rsync to
867 store all backups in the specified directory on the receiving
868 side. This can be used for incremental backups. You can addi‐
869 tionally specify a backup suffix using the --suffix option (oth‐
870 erwise the files backed up in the specified directory will keep
871 their original filenames).
872 Note that if you specify a relative path, the backup directory
874 will be relative to the destination directory, so you probably
875 want to specify either an absolute path or a path that starts
876 with "../". If an rsync daemon is the receiver, the backup dir
877 cannot go outside the module’s path hierarchy, so take extra
878 care not to delete it or copy into it.
879 --suffix=SUFFIX
881 This option allows you to override the default backup suffix
882 used with the --backup (-b) option. The default suffix is a ~ if
883 no --backup-dir was specified, otherwise it is an empty string.
884 -u, --update
886 This forces rsync to skip any files which exist on the destina‐
887 tion and have a modified time that is newer than the source
888 file. (If an existing destination file has a modification time
889 equal to the source file’s, it will be updated if the sizes are
890 different.)
891 Note that this does not affect the copying of dirs, symlinks, or
893 other special files. Also, a difference of file format between
894 the sender and receiver is always considered to be important
895 enough for an update, no matter what date is on the objects. In
896 other words, if the source has a directory where the destination
897 has a file, the transfer would occur regardless of the time‐
898 stamps.
899 This option is a transfer rule, not an exclude, so it doesn’t
901 affect the data that goes into the file-lists, and thus it
902 doesn’t affect deletions. It just limits the files that the
903 receiver requests to be transferred.
904 --inplace
906 This option changes how rsync transfers a file when its data
907 needs to be updated: instead of the default method of creating a
908 new copy of the file and moving it into place when it is com‐
909 plete, rsync instead writes the updated data directly to the
910 destination file.
911 This has several effects:
913 o Hard links are not broken. This means the new data will
915 be visible through other hard links to the destination
916 file. Moreover, attempts to copy differing source files
917 onto a multiply-linked destination file will result in a
918 "tug of war" with the destination data changing back and
919 forth.
920 o In-use binaries cannot be updated (either the OS will
922 prevent this from happening, or binaries that attempt to
923 swap-in their data will misbehave or crash).
924 o The file’s data will be in an inconsistent state during
926 the transfer and will be left that way if the transfer is
927 interrupted or if an update fails.
928 o A file that rsync cannot write to cannot be updated.
930 While a super user can update any file, a normal user
931 needs to be granted write permission for the open of the
932 file for writing to be successful.
933 o The efficiency of rsync’s delta-transfer algorithm may be
935 reduced if some data in the destination file is overwrit‐
936 ten before it can be copied to a position later in the
937 file. This does not apply if you use --backup, since
938 rsync is smart enough to use the backup file as the basis
939 file for the transfer.
940 WARNING: you should not use this option to update files that are
943 being accessed by others, so be careful when choosing to use
944 this for a copy.
945 This option is useful for transferring large files with
947 block-based changes or appended data, and also on systems that
948 are disk bound, not network bound. It can also help keep a
949 copy-on-write filesystem snapshot from diverging the entire con‐
950 tents of a file that only has minor changes.
951 The option implies --partial (since an interrupted transfer does
953 not delete the file), but conflicts with --partial-dir and
954 --delay-updates. Prior to rsync 2.6.4 --inplace was also incom‐
955 patible with --compare-dest and --link-dest.
956 --append
958 This causes rsync to update a file by appending data onto the
959 end of the file, which presumes that the data that already
960 exists on the receiving side is identical with the start of the
961 file on the sending side. If a file needs to be transferred and
962 its size on the receiver is the same or longer than the size on
963 the sender, the file is skipped. This does not interfere with
964 the updating of a file’s non-content attributes (e.g. permis‐
965 sions, ownership, etc.) when the file does not need to be trans‐
966 ferred, nor does it affect the updating of any non-regular
967 files. Implies --inplace.
968 The use of --append can be dangerous if you aren’t 100% sure
970 that the files that are longer have only grown by the appending
971 of data onto the end. You should thus use include/exclude/fil‐
972 ter rules to ensure that such a transfer is only affecting files
973 that you know to be growing via appended data.
974 --append-verify
976 This works just like the --append option, but the existing data
977 on the receiving side is included in the full-file checksum ver‐
978 ification step, which will cause a file to be resent if the
979 final verification step fails (rsync uses a normal, non-append‐
980 ing --inplace transfer for the resend).
981 Note: prior to rsync 3.0.0, the --append option worked like
983 --append-verify, so if you are interacting with an older rsync
984 (or the transfer is using a protocol prior to 30), specifying
985 either append option will initiate an --append-verify transfer.
986 -d, --dirs
988 Tell the sending side to include any directories that are
989 encountered. Unlike --recursive, a directory’s contents are not
990 copied unless the directory name specified is "." or ends with a
991 trailing slash (e.g. ".", "dir/.", "dir/", etc.). Without this
992 option or the --recursive option, rsync will skip all directo‐
993 ries it encounters (and output a message to that effect for each
994 one). If you specify both --dirs and --recursive, --recursive
995 takes precedence.
996 The --dirs option is implied by the --files-from option or the
998 --list-only option (including an implied --list-only usage) if
999 --recursive wasn’t specified (so that directories are seen in
1000 the listing). Specify --no-dirs (or --no-d) if you want to turn
1001 this off.
1002 There is also a backward-compatibility helper option, --old-dirs
1004 (or --old-d) that tells rsync to use a hack of "-r
1005 --exclude=’/*/*’" to get an older rsync to list a single direc‐
1006 tory without recursing.
1007 -l, --links
1009 When symlinks are encountered, recreate the symlink on the des‐
1010 tination.
1011 -L, --copy-links
1013 When symlinks are encountered, the item that they point to (the
1014 referent) is copied, rather than the symlink. In older versions
1015 of rsync, this option also had the side-effect of telling the
1016 receiving side to follow symlinks, such as symlinks to directo‐
1017 ries. In a modern rsync such as this one, you’ll need to spec‐
1018 ify --keep-dirlinks (-K) to get this extra behavior. The only
1019 exception is when sending files to an rsync that is too old to
1020 understand -K -- in that case, the -L option will still have the
1021 side-effect of -K on that older receiving rsync.
1022 --copy-unsafe-links
1024 This tells rsync to copy the referent of symbolic links that
1025 point outside the copied tree. Absolute symlinks are also
1026 treated like ordinary files, and so are any symlinks in the
1027 source path itself when --relative is used. This option has no
1028 additional effect if --copy-links was also specified.
1029 --safe-links
1031 This tells rsync to ignore any symbolic links which point out‐
1032 side the copied tree. All absolute symlinks are also ignored.
1033 Using this option in conjunction with --relative may give unex‐
1034 pected results.
1035 --munge-links
1037 This option tells rsync to (1) modify all symlinks on the
1038 receiving side in a way that makes them unusable but recoverable
1039 (see below), or (2) to unmunge symlinks on the sending side that
1040 had been stored in a munged state. This is useful if you don’t
1041 quite trust the source of the data to not try to slip in a sym‐
1042 link to a unexpected place.
1043 The way rsync disables the use of symlinks is to prefix each one
1045 with the string "/rsyncd-munged/". This prevents the links from
1046 being used as long as that directory does not exist. When this
1047 option is enabled, rsync will refuse to run if that path is a
1048 directory or a symlink to a directory.
1049 The option only affects the client side of the transfer, so if
1051 you need it to affect the server, specify it via
1052 --remote-option. (Note that in a local transfer, the client
1053 side is the sender.)
1054 This option has no affect on a daemon, since the daemon config‐
1056 ures whether it wants munged symlinks via its "munge symlinks"
1057 parameter. See also the "munge-symlinks" perl script in the
1058 support directory of the source code.
1059 -k, --copy-dirlinks
1061 This option causes the sending side to treat a symlink to a
1062 directory as though it were a real directory. This is useful if
1063 you don’t want symlinks to non-directories to be affected, as
1064 they would be using --copy-links.
1065 Without this option, if the sending side has replaced a direc‐
1067 tory with a symlink to a directory, the receiving side will
1068 delete anything that is in the way of the new symlink, including
1069 a directory hierarchy (as long as --force or --delete is in
1070 effect).
1071 See also --keep-dirlinks for an analogous option for the receiv‐
1073 ing side.
1074 --copy-dirlinks applies to all symlinks to directories in the
1076 source. If you want to follow only a few specified symlinks, a
1077 trick you can use is to pass them as additional source args with
1078 a trailing slash, using --relative to make the paths match up
1079 right. For example:
1080 rsync -r --relative src/./ src/./follow-me/ dest/
1082 This works because rsync calls lstat(2) on the source arg as
1085 given, and the trailing slash makes lstat(2) follow the symlink,
1086 giving rise to a directory in the file-list which overrides the
1087 symlink found during the scan of "src/./".
1088 -K, --keep-dirlinks
1090 This option causes the receiving side to treat a symlink to a
1091 directory as though it were a real directory, but only if it
1092 matches a real directory from the sender. Without this option,
1093 the receiver’s symlink would be deleted and replaced with a real
1094 directory.
1095 For example, suppose you transfer a directory "foo" that con‐
1097 tains a file "file", but "foo" is a symlink to directory "bar"
1098 on the receiver. Without --keep-dirlinks, the receiver deletes
1099 symlink "foo", recreates it as a directory, and receives the
1100 file into the new directory. With --keep-dirlinks, the receiver
1101 keeps the symlink and "file" ends up in "bar".
1102 One note of caution: if you use --keep-dirlinks, you must trust
1104 all the symlinks in the copy! If it is possible for an
1105 untrusted user to create their own symlink to any directory, the
1106 user could then (on a subsequent copy) replace the symlink with
1107 a real directory and affect the content of whatever directory
1108 the symlink references. For backup copies, you are better off
1109 using something like a bind mount instead of a symlink to modify
1110 your receiving hierarchy.
1111 See also --copy-dirlinks for an analogous option for the sending
1113 side.
1114 -H, --hard-links
1116 This tells rsync to look for hard-linked files in the source and
1117 link together the corresponding files on the destination. With‐
1118 out this option, hard-linked files in the source are treated as
1119 though they were separate files.
1120 This option does NOT necessarily ensure that the pattern of hard
1122 links on the destination exactly matches that on the source.
1123 Cases in which the destination may end up with extra hard links
1124 include the following:
1125 o If the destination contains extraneous hard-links (more
1127 linking than what is present in the source file list),
1128 the copying algorithm will not break them explicitly.
1129 However, if one or more of the paths have content differ‐
1130 ences, the normal file-update process will break those
1131 extra links (unless you are using the --inplace option).
1132 o If you specify a --link-dest directory that contains hard
1134 links, the linking of the destination files against the
1135 --link-dest files can cause some paths in the destination
1136 to become linked together due to the --link-dest associa‐
1137 tions.
1138 Note that rsync can only detect hard links between files that
1141 are inside the transfer set. If rsync updates a file that has
1142 extra hard-link connections to files outside the transfer, that
1143 linkage will be broken. If you are tempted to use the --inplace
1144 option to avoid this breakage, be very careful that you know how
1145 your files are being updated so that you are certain that no
1146 unintended changes happen due to lingering hard links (and see
1147 the --inplace option for more caveats).
1148 If incremental recursion is active (see --recursive), rsync may
1150 transfer a missing hard-linked file before it finds that another
1151 link for that contents exists elsewhere in the hierarchy. This
1152 does not affect the accuracy of the transfer (i.e. which files
1153 are hard-linked together), just its efficiency (i.e. copying the
1154 data for a new, early copy of a hard-linked file that could have
1155 been found later in the transfer in another member of the
1156 hard-linked set of files). One way to avoid this inefficiency
1157 is to disable incremental recursion using the --no-inc-recursive
1158 option.
1159 -p, --perms
1161 This option causes the receiving rsync to set the destination
1162 permissions to be the same as the source permissions. (See also
1163 the --chmod option for a way to modify what rsync considers to
1164 be the source permissions.)
1165 When this option is off, permissions are set as follows:
1167 o Existing files (including updated files) retain their
1169 existing permissions, though the --executability option
1170 might change just the execute permission for the file.
1171 o New files get their "normal" permission bits set to the
1173 source file’s permissions masked with the receiving
1174 directory’s default permissions (either the receiving
1175 process’s umask, or the permissions specified via the
1176 destination directory’s default ACL), and their special
1177 permission bits disabled except in the case where a new
1178 directory inherits a setgid bit from its parent direc‐
1179 tory.
1180 Thus, when --perms and --executability are both disabled,
1183 rsync’s behavior is the same as that of other file-copy utili‐
1184 ties, such as cp(1) and tar(1).
1185 In summary: to give destination files (both old and new) the
1187 source permissions, use --perms. To give new files the destina‐
1188 tion-default permissions (while leaving existing files
1189 unchanged), make sure that the --perms option is off and use
1190 --chmod=ugo=rwX (which ensures that all non-masked bits get
1191 enabled). If you’d care to make this latter behavior easier to
1192 type, you could define a popt alias for it, such as putting this
1193 line in the file ~/.popt (the following defines the -Z option,
1194 and includes --no-g to use the default group of the destination
1195 dir):
1196 rsync alias -Z --no-p --no-g --chmod=ugo=rwX
1198 You could then use this new option in a command such as this
1201 one:
1202 rsync -avZ src/ dest/
1204 (Caveat: make sure that -a does not follow -Z, or it will
1207 re-enable the two "--no-*" options mentioned above.)
1208 The preservation of the destination’s setgid bit on newly-cre‐
1210 ated directories when --perms is off was added in rsync 2.6.7.
1211 Older rsync versions erroneously preserved the three special
1212 permission bits for newly-created files when --perms was off,
1213 while overriding the destination’s setgid bit setting on a
1214 newly-created directory. Default ACL observance was added to
1215 the ACL patch for rsync 2.6.7, so older (or non-ACL-enabled)
1216 rsyncs use the umask even if default ACLs are present. (Keep in
1217 mind that it is the version of the receiving rsync that affects
1218 these behaviors.)
1219 -E, --executability
1221 This option causes rsync to preserve the executability (or
1222 non-executability) of regular files when --perms is not enabled.
1223 A regular file is considered to be executable if at least one
1224 ’x’ is turned on in its permissions. When an existing destina‐
1225 tion file’s executability differs from that of the corresponding
1226 source file, rsync modifies the destination file’s permissions
1227 as follows:
1228 o To make a file non-executable, rsync turns off all its
1230 ’x’ permissions.
1231 o To make a file executable, rsync turns on each ’x’ per‐
1233 mission that has a corresponding ’r’ permission enabled.
1234 If --perms is enabled, this option is ignored.
1237 -A, --acls
1239 This option causes rsync to update the destination ACLs to be
1240 the same as the source ACLs. The option also implies --perms.
1241 The source and destination systems must have compatible ACL
1243 entries for this option to work properly. See the --fake-super
1244 option for a way to backup and restore ACLs that are not compat‐
1245 ible.
1246 -X, --xattrs
1248 This option causes rsync to update the destination extended
1249 attributes to be the same as the source ones.
1250 For systems that support extended-attribute namespaces, a copy
1252 being done by a super-user copies all namespaces except sys‐
1253 tem.*. A normal user only copies the user.* namespace. To be
1254 able to backup and restore non-user namespaces as a normal user,
1255 see the --fake-super option.
1256 The above name filtering can be overridden by using one or more
1258 filter options with the x modifier. When you specify an
1259 xattr-affecting filter rule, rsync requires that you do your own
1260 system/user filtering, as well as any additional filtering for
1261 what xattr names are copied and what names are allowed to be
1262 deleted. For example, to skip the system namespace, you could
1263 specify:
1264 --filter=’-x system.*’
1266 To skip all namespaces except the user namespace, you could
1269 specify a negated-user match:
1270 --filter=’-x! user.*’
1272 To prevent any attributes from being deleted, you could specify
1275 a receiver-only rule that excludes all names:
1276 --filter=’-xr *’
1278 Note that the -X option does not copy rsync’s special xattr val‐
1281 ues (e.g. those used by --fake-super) unless you repeat the
1282 option (e.g. -XX). This "copy all xattrs" mode cannot be used
1283 with --fake-super.
1284 --chmod
1286 This option tells rsync to apply one or more comma-separated
1287 "chmod" modes to the permission of the files in the transfer.
1288 The resulting value is treated as though it were the permissions
1289 that the sending side supplied for the file, which means that
1290 this option can seem to have no effect on existing files if
1291 --perms is not enabled.
1292 In addition to the normal parsing rules specified in the
1294 chmod(1) manpage, you can specify an item that should only apply
1295 to a directory by prefixing it with a ’D’, or specify an item
1296 that should only apply to a file by prefixing it with a ’F’.
1297 For example, the following will ensure that all directories get
1298 marked set-gid, that no files are other-writable, that both are
1299 user-writable and group-writable, and that both have consistent
1300 executability across all bits:
1301 --chmod=Dg+s,ug+w,Fo-w,+X
1303 Using octal mode numbers is also allowed:
1306 --chmod=D2775,F664
1308 It is also legal to specify multiple --chmod options, as each
1311 additional option is just appended to the list of changes to
1312 make.
1313 See the --perms and --executability options for how the result‐
1315 ing permission value can be applied to the files in the trans‐
1316 fer.
1317 -o, --owner
1319 This option causes rsync to set the owner of the destination
1320 file to be the same as the source file, but only if the receiv‐
1321 ing rsync is being run as the super-user (see also the --super
1322 and --fake-super options). Without this option, the owner of
1323 new and/or transferred files are set to the invoking user on the
1324 receiving side.
1325 The preservation of ownership will associate matching names by
1327 default, but may fall back to using the ID number in some cir‐
1328 cumstances (see also the --numeric-ids option for a full discus‐
1329 sion).
1330 -g, --group
1332 This option causes rsync to set the group of the destination
1333 file to be the same as the source file. If the receiving pro‐
1334 gram is not running as the super-user (or if --no-super was
1335 specified), only groups that the invoking user on the receiving
1336 side is a member of will be preserved. Without this option, the
1337 group is set to the default group of the invoking user on the
1338 receiving side.
1339 The preservation of group information will associate matching
1341 names by default, but may fall back to using the ID number in
1342 some circumstances (see also the --numeric-ids option for a full
1343 discussion).
1344 --devices
1346 This option causes rsync to transfer character and block device
1347 files to the remote system to recreate these devices. This
1348 option has no effect if the receiving rsync is not run as the
1349 super-user (see also the --super and --fake-super options).
1350 --specials
1352 This option causes rsync to transfer special files such as named
1353 sockets and fifos.
1354 -D The -D option is equivalent to --devices --specials.
1356 -t, --times
1358 This tells rsync to transfer modification times along with the
1359 files and update them on the remote system. Note that if this
1360 option is not used, the optimization that excludes files that
1361 have not been modified cannot be effective; in other words, a
1362 missing -t or -a will cause the next transfer to behave as if it
1363 used -I, causing all files to be updated (though rsync’s
1364 delta-transfer algorithm will make the update fairly efficient
1365 if the files haven’t actually changed, you’re much better off
1366 using -t).
1367 -O, --omit-dir-times
1369 This tells rsync to omit directories when it is preserving modi‐
1370 fication times (see --times). If NFS is sharing the directories
1371 on the receiving side, it is a good idea to use -O. This option
1372 is inferred if you use --backup without --backup-dir.
1373 This option also has the side-effect of avoiding early creation
1375 of directories in incremental recursion copies. The default
1376 --inc-recursive copying normally does an early-create pass of
1377 all the sub-directories in a parent directory in order for it to
1378 be able to then set the modify time of the parent directory
1379 right away (without having to delay that until a bunch of recur‐
1380 sive copying has finished). This early-create idiom is not nec‐
1381 essary if directory modify times are not being preserved, so it
1382 is skipped. Since early-create directories don’t have accurate
1383 mode, mtime, or ownership, the use of this option can help when
1384 someone wants to avoid these partially-finished directories.
1385 -J, --omit-link-times
1387 This tells rsync to omit symlinks when it is preserving modifi‐
1388 cation times (see --times).
1389 --super
1391 This tells the receiving side to attempt super-user activities
1392 even if the receiving rsync wasn’t run by the super-user. These
1393 activities include: preserving users via the --owner option,
1394 preserving all groups (not just the current user’s groups) via
1395 the --groups option, and copying devices via the --devices
1396 option. This is useful for systems that allow such activities
1397 without being the super-user, and also for ensuring that you
1398 will get errors if the receiving side isn’t being run as the
1399 super-user. To turn off super-user activities, the super-user
1400 can use --no-super.
1401 --fake-super
1403 When this option is enabled, rsync simulates super-user activi‐
1404 ties by saving/restoring the privileged attributes via special
1405 extended attributes that are attached to each file (as needed).
1406 This includes the file’s owner and group (if it is not the
1407 default), the file’s device info (device & special files are
1408 created as empty text files), and any permission bits that we
1409 won’t allow to be set on the real file (e.g. the real file gets
1410 u-s,g-s,o-t for safety) or that would limit the owner’s access
1411 (since the real super-user can always access/change a file, the
1412 files we create can always be accessed/changed by the creating
1413 user). This option also handles ACLs (if --acls was specified)
1414 and non-user extended attributes (if --xattrs was specified).
1415 This is a good way to backup data without using a super-user,
1417 and to store ACLs from incompatible systems.
1418 The --fake-super option only affects the side where the option
1420 is used. To affect the remote side of a remote-shell connec‐
1421 tion, use the --remote-option (-M) option:
1422 rsync -av -M--fake-super /src/ host:/dest/
1424 For a local copy, this option affects both the source and the
1427 destination. If you wish a local copy to enable this option
1428 just for the destination files, specify -M--fake-super. If you
1429 wish a local copy to enable this option just for the source
1430 files, combine --fake-super with -M--super.
1431 This option is overridden by both --super and --no-super.
1433 See also the "fake super" setting in the daemon’s rsyncd.conf
1435 file.
1436 -S, --sparse
1438 Try to handle sparse files efficiently so they take up less
1439 space on the destination. If combined with --inplace the file
1440 created might not end up with sparse blocks with some combina‐
1441 tions of kernel version and/or filesystem type. If --whole-file
1442 is in effect (e.g. for a local copy) then it will always work
1443 because rsync truncates the file prior to writing out the
1444 updated version.
1445 Note that versions of rsync older than 3.1.3 will reject the
1447 combination of --sparse and --inplace.
1448 --preallocate
1450 This tells the receiver to allocate each destination file to its
1451 eventual size before writing data to the file. Rsync will only
1452 use the real filesystem-level preallocation support provided by
1453 Linux’s fallocate(2) system call or Cygwin’s posix_fallocate(3),
1454 not the slow glibc implementation that writes a null byte into
1455 each block.
1456 Without this option, larger files may not be entirely contiguous
1458 on the filesystem, but with this option rsync will probably copy
1459 more slowly. If the destination is not an extent-supporting
1460 filesystem (such as ext4, xfs, NTFS, etc.), this option may have
1461 no positive effect at all.
1462 If combined with --sparse, the file will only have sparse blocks
1464 (as opposed to allocated sequences of null bytes) if the kernel
1465 version and filesystem type support creating holes in the allo‐
1466 cated data.
1467 -n, --dry-run
1469 This makes rsync perform a trial run that doesn’t make any
1470 changes (and produces mostly the same output as a real run). It
1471 is most commonly used in combination with the -v, --verbose
1472 and/or -i, --itemize-changes options to see what an rsync com‐
1473 mand is going to do before one actually runs it.
1474 The output of --itemize-changes is supposed to be exactly the
1476 same on a dry run and a subsequent real run (barring intentional
1477 trickery and system call failures); if it isn’t, that’s a bug.
1478 Other output should be mostly unchanged, but may differ in some
1479 areas. Notably, a dry run does not send the actual data for
1480 file transfers, so --progress has no effect, the "bytes sent",
1481 "bytes received", "literal data", and "matched data" statistics
1482 are too small, and the "speedup" value is equivalent to a run
1483 where no file transfers were needed.
1484 -W, --whole-file
1486 This option disables rsync’s delta-transfer algorithm, which
1487 causes all transferred files to be sent whole. The transfer may
1488 be faster if this option is used when the bandwidth between the
1489 source and destination machines is higher than the bandwidth to
1490 disk (especially when the "disk" is actually a networked
1491 filesystem). This is the default when both the source and des‐
1492 tination are specified as local paths, but only if no
1493 batch-writing option is in effect.
1494 --checksum-choice=STR
1496 This option overrides the checksum algoriths. If one algorithm
1497 name is specified, it is used for both the transfer checksums
1498 and (assuming --checksum is specifed) the pre-transfer checksum‐
1499 ming. If two comma-separated names are supplied, the first name
1500 affects the transfer checksums, and the second name affects the
1501 pre-transfer checksumming.
1502 The algorithm choices are "auto", "md4", "md5", and "none". If
1504 "none" is specified for the first name, the --whole-file option
1505 is forced on and no checksum verification is performed on the
1506 transferred data. If "none" is specified for the second name,
1507 the --checksum option cannot be used. The "auto" option is the
1508 default, where rsync bases its algorithm choice on the protocol
1509 version (for backward compatibility with older rsync versions).
1510 -x, --one-file-system
1512 This tells rsync to avoid crossing a filesystem boundary when
1513 recursing. This does not limit the user’s ability to specify
1514 items to copy from multiple filesystems, just rsync’s recursion
1515 through the hierarchy of each directory that the user specified,
1516 and also the analogous recursion on the receiving side during
1517 deletion. Also keep in mind that rsync treats a "bind" mount to
1518 the same device as being on the same filesystem.
1519 If this option is repeated, rsync omits all mount-point directo‐
1521 ries from the copy. Otherwise, it includes an empty directory
1522 at each mount-point it encounters (using the attributes of the
1523 mounted directory because those of the underlying mount-point
1524 directory are inaccessible).
1525 If rsync has been told to collapse symlinks (via --copy-links or
1527 --copy-unsafe-links), a symlink to a directory on another device
1528 is treated like a mount-point. Symlinks to non-directories are
1529 unaffected by this option.
1530 --existing, --ignore-non-existing
1532 This tells rsync to skip creating files (including directories)
1533 that do not exist yet on the destination. If this option is
1534 combined with the --ignore-existing option, no files will be
1535 updated (which can be useful if all you want to do is delete
1536 extraneous files).
1537 This option is a transfer rule, not an exclude, so it doesn’t
1539 affect the data that goes into the file-lists, and thus it
1540 doesn’t affect deletions. It just limits the files that the
1541 receiver requests to be transferred.
1542 --ignore-existing
1544 This tells rsync to skip updating files that already exist on
1545 the destination (this does not ignore existing directories, or
1546 nothing would get done). See also --existing.
1547 This option is a transfer rule, not an exclude, so it doesn’t
1549 affect the data that goes into the file-lists, and thus it
1550 doesn’t affect deletions. It just limits the files that the
1551 receiver requests to be transferred.
1552 This option can be useful for those doing backups using the
1554 --link-dest option when they need to continue a backup run that
1555 got interrupted. Since a --link-dest run is copied into a new
1556 directory hierarchy (when it is used properly), using --ignore
1557 existing will ensure that the already-handled files don’t get
1558 tweaked (which avoids a change in permissions on the hard-linked
1559 files). This does mean that this option is only looking at the
1560 existing files in the destination hierarchy itself.
1561 --remove-source-files
1563 This tells rsync to remove from the sending side the files
1564 (meaning non-directories) that are a part of the transfer and
1565 have been successfully duplicated on the receiving side.
1566 Note that you should only use this option on source files that
1568 are quiescent. If you are using this to move files that show up
1569 in a particular directory over to another host, make sure that
1570 the finished files get renamed into the source directory, not
1571 directly written into it, so that rsync can’t possibly transfer
1572 a file that is not yet fully written. If you can’t first write
1573 the files into a different directory, you should use a naming
1574 idiom that lets rsync avoid transferring files that are not yet
1575 finished (e.g. name the file "foo.new" when it is written,
1576 rename it to "foo" when it is done, and then use the option
1577 --exclude='*.new' for the rsync transfer).
1578 Starting with 3.1.0, rsync will skip the sender-side removal
1580 (and output an error) if the file’s size or modify time has not
1581 stayed unchanged.
1582 --delete
1584 This tells rsync to delete extraneous files from the receiving
1585 side (ones that aren’t on the sending side), but only for the
1586 directories that are being synchronized. You must have asked
1587 rsync to send the whole directory (e.g. "dir" or "dir/") without
1588 using a wildcard for the directory’s contents (e.g. "dir/*")
1589 since the wildcard is expanded by the shell and rsync thus gets
1590 a request to transfer individual files, not the files’ parent
1591 directory. Files that are excluded from the transfer are also
1592 excluded from being deleted unless you use the --delete-excluded
1593 option or mark the rules as only matching on the sending side
1594 (see the include/exclude modifiers in the FILTER RULES section).
1595 Prior to rsync 2.6.7, this option would have no effect unless
1597 --recursive was enabled. Beginning with 2.6.7, deletions will
1598 also occur when --dirs (-d) is enabled, but only for directories
1599 whose contents are being copied.
1600 This option can be dangerous if used incorrectly! It is a very
1602 good idea to first try a run using the --dry-run option (-n) to
1603 see what files are going to be deleted.
1604 If the sending side detects any I/O errors, then the deletion of
1606 any files at the destination will be automatically disabled.
1607 This is to prevent temporary filesystem failures (such as NFS
1608 errors) on the sending side from causing a massive deletion of
1609 files on the destination. You can override this with the
1610 --ignore-errors option.
1611 The --delete option may be combined with one of the
1613 --delete-WHEN options without conflict, as well as
1614 --delete-excluded. However, if none of the --delete-WHEN
1615 options are specified, rsync will choose the --delete-during
1616 algorithm when talking to rsync 3.0.0 or newer, and the
1617 --delete-before algorithm when talking to an older rsync. See
1618 also --delete-delay and --delete-after.
1619 --delete-before
1621 Request that the file-deletions on the receiving side be done
1622 before the transfer starts. See --delete (which is implied) for
1623 more details on file-deletion.
1624 Deleting before the transfer is helpful if the filesystem is
1626 tight for space and removing extraneous files would help to make
1627 the transfer possible. However, it does introduce a delay
1628 before the start of the transfer, and this delay might cause the
1629 transfer to timeout (if --timeout was specified). It also
1630 forces rsync to use the old, non-incremental recursion algorithm
1631 that requires rsync to scan all the files in the transfer into
1632 memory at once (see --recursive).
1633 --delete-during, --del
1635 Request that the file-deletions on the receiving side be done
1636 incrementally as the transfer happens. The per-directory delete
1637 scan is done right before each directory is checked for updates,
1638 so it behaves like a more efficient --delete-before, including
1639 doing the deletions prior to any per-directory filter files
1640 being updated. This option was first added in rsync version
1641 2.6.4. See --delete (which is implied) for more details on
1642 file-deletion.
1643 --delete-delay
1645 Request that the file-deletions on the receiving side be com‐
1646 puted during the transfer (like --delete-during), and then
1647 removed after the transfer completes. This is useful when com‐
1648 bined with --delay-updates and/or --fuzzy, and is more efficient
1649 than using --delete-after (but can behave differently, since
1650 --delete-after computes the deletions in a separate pass after
1651 all updates are done). If the number of removed files overflows
1652 an internal buffer, a temporary file will be created on the
1653 receiving side to hold the names (it is removed while open, so
1654 you shouldn’t see it during the transfer). If the creation of
1655 the temporary file fails, rsync will try to fall back to using
1656 --delete-after (which it cannot do if --recursive is doing an
1657 incremental scan). See --delete (which is implied) for more
1658 details on file-deletion.
1659 --delete-after
1661 Request that the file-deletions on the receiving side be done
1662 after the transfer has completed. This is useful if you are
1663 sending new per-directory merge files as a part of the transfer
1664 and you want their exclusions to take effect for the delete
1665 phase of the current transfer. It also forces rsync to use the
1666 old, non-incremental recursion algorithm that requires rsync to
1667 scan all the files in the transfer into memory at once (see
1668 --recursive). See --delete (which is implied) for more details
1669 on file-deletion.
1670 --delete-excluded
1672 In addition to deleting the files on the receiving side that are
1673 not on the sending side, this tells rsync to also delete any
1674 files on the receiving side that are excluded (see --exclude).
1675 See the FILTER RULES section for a way to make individual exclu‐
1676 sions behave this way on the receiver, and for a way to protect
1677 files from --delete-excluded. See --delete (which is implied)
1678 for more details on file-deletion.
1679 --ignore-missing-args
1681 When rsync is first processing the explicitly requested source
1682 files (e.g. command-line arguments or --files-from entries), it
1683 is normally an error if the file cannot be found. This option
1684 suppresses that error, and does not try to transfer the file.
1685 This does not affect subsequent vanished-file errors if a file
1686 was initially found to be present and later is no longer there.
1687 --delete-missing-args
1689 This option takes the behavior of (the implied) --ignore-miss‐
1690 ing-args option a step farther: each missing arg will become a
1691 deletion request of the corresponding destination file on the
1692 receiving side (should it exist). If the destination file is a
1693 non-empty directory, it will only be successfully deleted if
1694 --force or --delete are in effect. Other than that, this option
1695 is independent of any other type of delete processing.
1696 The missing source files are represented by special file-list
1698 entries which display as a "*missing" entry in the --list-only
1699 output.
1700 --ignore-errors
1702 Tells --delete to go ahead and delete files even when there are
1703 I/O errors.
1704 --force
1706 This option tells rsync to delete a non-empty directory when it
1707 is to be replaced by a non-directory. This is only relevant if
1708 deletions are not active (see --delete for details).
1709 Note for older rsync versions: --force used to still be required
1711 when using --delete-after, and it used to be non-functional
1712 unless the --recursive option was also enabled.
1713 --max-delete=NUM
1715 This tells rsync not to delete more than NUM files or directo‐
1716 ries. If that limit is exceeded, all further deletions are
1717 skipped through the end of the transfer. At the end, rsync out‐
1718 puts a warning (including a count of the skipped deletions) and
1719 exits with an error code of 25 (unless some more important error
1720 condition also occurred).
1721 Beginning with version 3.0.0, you may specify --max-delete=0 to
1723 be warned about any extraneous files in the destination without
1724 removing any of them. Older clients interpreted this as "unlim‐
1725 ited", so if you don’t know what version the client is, you can
1726 use the less obvious --max-delete=-1 as a backward-compatible
1727 way to specify that no deletions be allowed (though really old
1728 versions didn’t warn when the limit was exceeded).
1729 --max-size=SIZE
1731 This tells rsync to avoid transferring any file that is larger
1732 than the specified SIZE. The SIZE value can be suffixed with a
1733 string to indicate a size multiplier, and may be a fractional
1734 value (e.g. "--max-size=1.5m").
1735 This option is a transfer rule, not an exclude, so it doesn’t
1737 affect the data that goes into the file-lists, and thus it
1738 doesn’t affect deletions. It just limits the files that the
1739 receiver requests to be transferred.
1740 The suffixes are as follows: "K" (or "KiB") is a kibibyte
1742 (1024), "M" (or "MiB") is a mebibyte (1024*1024), and "G" (or
1743 "GiB") is a gibibyte (1024*1024*1024). If you want the multi‐
1744 plier to be 1000 instead of 1024, use "KB", "MB", or "GB".
1745 (Note: lower-case is also accepted for all values.) Finally, if
1746 the suffix ends in either "+1" or "-1", the value will be offset
1747 by one byte in the indicated direction.
1748 Examples: --max-size=1.5mb-1 is 1499999 bytes, and
1750 --max-size=2g+1 is 2147483649 bytes.
1751 Note that rsync versions prior to 3.1.0 did not allow
1753 --max-size=0.
1754 --min-size=SIZE
1756 This tells rsync to avoid transferring any file that is smaller
1757 than the specified SIZE, which can help in not transferring
1758 small, junk files. See the --max-size option for a description
1759 of SIZE and other information.
1760 Note that rsync versions prior to 3.1.0 did not allow
1762 --min-size=0.
1763 -B, --block-size=BLOCKSIZE
1765 This forces the block size used in rsync’s delta-transfer algo‐
1766 rithm to a fixed value. It is normally selected based on the
1767 size of each file being updated. See the technical report for
1768 details.
1769 -e, --rsh=COMMAND
1771 This option allows you to choose an alternative remote shell
1772 program to use for communication between the local and remote
1773 copies of rsync. Typically, rsync is configured to use ssh by
1774 default, but you may prefer to use rsh on a local network.
1775 If this option is used with [user@]host::module/path, then the
1777 remote shell COMMAND will be used to run an rsync daemon on the
1778 remote host, and all data will be transmitted through that
1779 remote shell connection, rather than through a direct socket
1780 connection to a running rsync daemon on the remote host. See
1781 the section "USING RSYNC-DAEMON FEATURES VIA A REMOTE-SHELL CON‐
1782 NECTION" above.
1783 Command-line arguments are permitted in COMMAND provided that
1785 COMMAND is presented to rsync as a single argument. You must
1786 use spaces (not tabs or other whitespace) to separate the com‐
1787 mand and args from each other, and you can use single- and/or
1788 double-quotes to preserve spaces in an argument (but not back‐
1789 slashes). Note that doubling a single-quote inside a sin‐
1790 gle-quoted string gives you a single-quote; likewise for dou‐
1791 ble-quotes (though you need to pay attention to which quotes
1792 your shell is parsing and which quotes rsync is parsing). Some
1793 examples:
1794 -e 'ssh -p 2234'
1796 -e 'ssh -o "ProxyCommand nohup ssh firewall nc -w1 %h %p"'
1797 (Note that ssh users can alternately customize site-specific
1800 connect options in their .ssh/config file.)
1801 You can also choose the remote shell program using the RSYNC_RSH
1803 environment variable, which accepts the same range of values as
1804 -e.
1805 See also the --blocking-io option which is affected by this
1807 option.
1808 --rsync-path=PROGRAM
1810 Use this to specify what program is to be run on the remote
1811 machine to start-up rsync. Often used when rsync is not in the
1812 default remote-shell’s path (e.g.
1813 --rsync-path=/usr/local/bin/rsync). Note that PROGRAM is run
1814 with the help of a shell, so it can be any program, script, or
1815 command sequence you’d care to run, so long as it does not cor‐
1816 rupt the standard-in & standard-out that rsync is using to com‐
1817 municate.
1818 One tricky example is to set a different default directory on
1820 the remote machine for use with the --relative option. For
1821 instance:
1822 rsync -avR --rsync-path="cd /a/b && rsync" host:c/d /e/
1824 -M, --remote-option=OPTION
1827 This option is used for more advanced situations where you want
1828 certain effects to be limited to one side of the transfer only.
1829 For instance, if you want to pass --log-file=FILE and
1830 --fake-super to the remote system, specify it like this:
1831 rsync -av -M --log-file=foo -M--fake-super src/ dest/
1833 If you want to have an option affect only the local side of a
1836 transfer when it normally affects both sides, send its negation
1837 to the remote side. Like this:
1838 rsync -av -x -M--no-x src/ dest/
1840 Be cautious using this, as it is possible to toggle an option
1843 that will cause rsync to have a different idea about what data
1844 to expect next over the socket, and that will make it fail in a
1845 cryptic fashion.
1846 Note that it is best to use a separate --remote-option for each
1848 option you want to pass. This makes your useage compatible with
1849 the --protect-args option. If that option is off, any spaces in
1850 your remote options will be split by the remote shell unless you
1851 take steps to protect them.
1852 When performing a local transfer, the "local" side is the sender
1854 and the "remote" side is the receiver.
1855 Note some versions of the popt option-parsing library have a bug
1857 in them that prevents you from using an adjacent arg with an
1858 equal in it next to a short option letter (e.g.
1859 -M--log-file=/tmp/foo). If this bug affects your version of
1860 popt, you can use the version of popt that is included with
1861 rsync.
1862 -C, --cvs-exclude
1864 This is a useful shorthand for excluding a broad range of files
1865 that you often don’t want to transfer between systems. It uses a
1866 similar algorithm to CVS to determine if a file should be
1867 ignored.
1868 The exclude list is initialized to exclude the following items
1870 (these initial items are marked as perishable -- see the FILTER
1871 RULES section):
1872 RCS SCCS CVS CVS.adm RCSLOG cvslog.* tags TAGS
1874 .make.state .nse_depinfo *~ #* .#* ,* _$* *$ *.old *.bak
1875 *.BAK *.orig *.rej .del-* *.a *.olb *.o *.obj *.so *.exe
1876 *.Z *.elc *.ln core .svn/ .git/ .hg/ .bzr/
1877 then, files listed in a $HOME/.cvsignore are added to the list
1880 and any files listed in the CVSIGNORE environment variable (all
1881 cvsignore names are delimited by whitespace).
1882 Finally, any file is ignored if it is in the same directory as a
1884 .cvsignore file and matches one of the patterns listed therein.
1885 Unlike rsync’s filter/exclude files, these patterns are split on
1886 whitespace. See the cvs(1) manual for more information.
1887 If you’re combining -C with your own --filter rules, you should
1889 note that these CVS excludes are appended at the end of your own
1890 rules, regardless of where the -C was placed on the com‐
1891 mand-line. This makes them a lower priority than any rules you
1892 specified explicitly. If you want to control where these CVS
1893 excludes get inserted into your filter rules, you should omit
1894 the -C as a command-line option and use a combination of --fil‐
1895 ter=:C and --filter=-C (either on your command-line or by
1896 putting the ":C" and "-C" rules into a filter file with your
1897 other rules). The first option turns on the per-directory scan‐
1898 ning for the .cvsignore file. The second option does a one-time
1899 import of the CVS excludes mentioned above.
1900 -f, --filter=RULE
1902 This option allows you to add rules to selectively exclude cer‐
1903 tain files from the list of files to be transferred. This is
1904 most useful in combination with a recursive transfer.
1905 You may use as many --filter options on the command line as you
1907 like to build up the list of files to exclude. If the filter
1908 contains whitespace, be sure to quote it so that the shell gives
1909 the rule to rsync as a single argument. The text below also
1910 mentions that you can use an underscore to replace the space
1911 that separates a rule from its arg.
1912 See the FILTER RULES section for detailed information on this
1914 option.
1915 -F The -F option is a shorthand for adding two --filter rules to
1917 your command. The first time it is used is a shorthand for this
1918 rule:
1919 --filter='dir-merge /.rsync-filter'
1921 This tells rsync to look for per-directory .rsync-filter files
1924 that have been sprinkled through the hierarchy and use their
1925 rules to filter the files in the transfer. If -F is repeated,
1926 it is a shorthand for this rule:
1927 --filter='exclude .rsync-filter'
1929 This filters out the .rsync-filter files themselves from the
1932 transfer.
1933 See the FILTER RULES section for detailed information on how
1935 these options work.
1936 --exclude=PATTERN
1938 This option is a simplified form of the --filter option that
1939 defaults to an exclude rule and does not allow the full
1940 rule-parsing syntax of normal filter rules.
1941 See the FILTER RULES section for detailed information on this
1943 option.
1944 --exclude-from=FILE
1946 This option is related to the --exclude option, but it specifies
1947 a FILE that contains exclude patterns (one per line). Blank
1948 lines in the file and lines starting with ’;’ or ’#’ are
1949 ignored. If FILE is -, the list will be read from standard
1950 input.
1951 --include=PATTERN
1953 This option is a simplified form of the --filter option that
1954 defaults to an include rule and does not allow the full
1955 rule-parsing syntax of normal filter rules.
1956 See the FILTER RULES section for detailed information on this
1958 option.
1959 --include-from=FILE
1961 This option is related to the --include option, but it specifies
1962 a FILE that contains include patterns (one per line). Blank
1963 lines in the file and lines starting with ’;’ or ’#’ are
1964 ignored. If FILE is -, the list will be read from standard
1965 input.
1966 --files-from=FILE
1968 Using this option allows you to specify the exact list of files
1969 to transfer (as read from the specified FILE or - for standard
1970 input). It also tweaks the default behavior of rsync to make
1971 transferring just the specified files and directories easier:
1972 o The --relative (-R) option is implied, which preserves
1974 the path information that is specified for each item in
1975 the file (use --no-relative or --no-R if you want to turn
1976 that off).
1977 o The --dirs (-d) option is implied, which will create
1979 directories specified in the list on the destination
1980 rather than noisily skipping them (use --no-dirs or
1981 --no-d if you want to turn that off).
1982 o The --archive (-a) option’s behavior does not imply
1984 --recursive (-r), so specify it explicitly, if you want
1985 it.
1986 o These side-effects change the default state of rsync, so
1988 the position of the --files-from option on the com‐
1989 mand-line has no bearing on how other options are parsed
1990 (e.g. -a works the same before or after --files-from, as
1991 does --no-R and all other options).
1992 The filenames that are read from the FILE are all relative to
1995 the source dir -- any leading slashes are removed and no ".."
1996 references are allowed to go higher than the source dir. For
1997 example, take this command:
1998 rsync -a --files-from=/tmp/foo /usr remote:/backup
2000 If /tmp/foo contains the string "bin" (or even "/bin"), the
2003 /usr/bin directory will be created as /backup/bin on the remote
2004 host. If it contains "bin/" (note the trailing slash), the
2005 immediate contents of the directory would also be sent (without
2006 needing to be explicitly mentioned in the file -- this began in
2007 version 2.6.4). In both cases, if the -r option was enabled,
2008 that dir’s entire hierarchy would also be transferred (keep in
2009 mind that -r needs to be specified explicitly with --files-from,
2010 since it is not implied by -a). Also note that the effect of
2011 the (enabled by default) --relative option is to duplicate only
2012 the path info that is read from the file -- it does not force
2013 the duplication of the source-spec path (/usr in this case).
2014 In addition, the --files-from file can be read from the remote
2016 host instead of the local host if you specify a "host:" in front
2017 of the file (the host must match one end of the transfer). As a
2018 short-cut, you can specify just a prefix of ":" to mean "use the
2019 remote end of the transfer". For example:
2020 rsync -a --files-from=:/path/file-list src:/ /tmp/copy
2022 This would copy all the files specified in the /path/file-list
2025 file that was located on the remote "src" host.
2026 If the --iconv and --protect-args options are specified and the
2028 --files-from filenames are being sent from one host to another,
2029 the filenames will be translated from the sending host’s charset
2030 to the receiving host’s charset.
2031 NOTE: sorting the list of files in the --files-from input helps
2033 rsync to be more efficient, as it will avoid re-visiting the
2034 path elements that are shared between adjacent entries. If the
2035 input is not sorted, some path elements (implied directories)
2036 may end up being scanned multiple times, and rsync will eventu‐
2037 ally unduplicate them after they get turned into file-list ele‐
2038 ments.
2039 -0, --from0
2041 This tells rsync that the rules/filenames it reads from a file
2042 are terminated by a null (’\0’) character, not a NL, CR, or
2043 CR+LF. This affects --exclude-from, --include-from,
2044 --files-from, and any merged files specified in a --filter rule.
2045 It does not affect --cvs-exclude (since all names read from a
2046 .cvsignore file are split on whitespace).
2047 -s, --protect-args
2049 This option sends all filenames and most options to the remote
2050 rsync without allowing the remote shell to interpret them. This
2051 means that spaces are not split in names, and any non-wildcard
2052 special characters are not translated (such as ~, $, ;, &,
2053 etc.). Wildcards are expanded on the remote host by rsync
2054 (instead of the shell doing it).
2055 If you use this option with --iconv, the args related to the
2057 remote side will also be translated from the local to the remote
2058 character-set. The translation happens before wild-cards are
2059 expanded. See also the --files-from option.
2060 You may also control this option via the RSYNC_PROTECT_ARGS
2062 environment variable. If this variable has a non-zero value,
2063 this option will be enabled by default, otherwise it will be
2064 disabled by default. Either state is overridden by a manually
2065 specified positive or negative version of this option (note that
2066 --no-s and --no-protect-args are the negative versions). Since
2067 this option was first introduced in 3.0.0, you’ll need to make
2068 sure it’s disabled if you ever need to interact with a remote
2069 rsync that is older than that.
2070 Rsync can also be configured (at build time) to have this option
2072 enabled by default (with is overridden by both the environment
2073 and the command-line). This option will eventually become a new
2074 default setting at some as-yet-undetermined point in the future.
2075 -T, --temp-dir=DIR
2077 This option instructs rsync to use DIR as a scratch directory
2078 when creating temporary copies of the files transferred on the
2079 receiving side. The default behavior is to create each tempo‐
2080 rary file in the same directory as the associated destination
2081 file. Beginning with rsync 3.1.1, the temp-file names inside
2082 the specified DIR will not be prefixed with an extra dot (though
2083 they will still have a random suffix added).
2084 This option is most often used when the receiving disk partition
2086 does not have enough free space to hold a copy of the largest
2087 file in the transfer. In this case (i.e. when the scratch
2088 directory is on a different disk partition), rsync will not be
2089 able to rename each received temporary file over the top of the
2090 associated destination file, but instead must copy it into
2091 place. Rsync does this by copying the file over the top of the
2092 destination file, which means that the destination file will
2093 contain truncated data during this copy. If this were not done
2094 this way (even if the destination file were first removed, the
2095 data locally copied to a temporary file in the destination
2096 directory, and then renamed into place) it would be possible for
2097 the old file to continue taking up disk space (if someone had it
2098 open), and thus there might not be enough room to fit the new
2099 version on the disk at the same time.
2100 If you are using this option for reasons other than a shortage
2102 of disk space, you may wish to combine it with the
2103 --delay-updates option, which will ensure that all copied files
2104 get put into subdirectories in the destination hierarchy, await‐
2105 ing the end of the transfer. If you don’t have enough room to
2106 duplicate all the arriving files on the destination partition,
2107 another way to tell rsync that you aren’t overly concerned about
2108 disk space is to use the --partial-dir option with a relative
2109 path; because this tells rsync that it is OK to stash off a copy
2110 of a single file in a subdir in the destination hierarchy, rsync
2111 will use the partial-dir as a staging area to bring over the
2112 copied file, and then rename it into place from there. (Specify‐
2113 ing a --partial-dir with an absolute path does not have this
2114 side-effect.)
2115 -y, --fuzzy
2117 This option tells rsync that it should look for a basis file for
2118 any destination file that is missing. The current algorithm
2119 looks in the same directory as the destination file for either a
2120 file that has an identical size and modified-time, or a simi‐
2121 larly-named file. If found, rsync uses the fuzzy basis file to
2122 try to speed up the transfer.
2123 If the option is repeated, the fuzzy scan will also be done in
2125 any matching alternate destination directories that are speci‐
2126 fied via --compare-dest, --copy-dest, or --link-dest.
2127 Note that the use of the --delete option might get rid of any
2129 potential fuzzy-match files, so either use --delete-after or
2130 specify some filename exclusions if you need to prevent this.
2131 --compare-dest=DIR
2133 This option instructs rsync to use DIR on the destination
2134 machine as an additional hierarchy to compare destination files
2135 against doing transfers (if the files are missing in the desti‐
2136 nation directory). If a file is found in DIR that is identical
2137 to the sender’s file, the file will NOT be transferred to the
2138 destination directory. This is useful for creating a sparse
2139 backup of just files that have changed from an earlier backup.
2140 This option is typically used to copy into an empty (or newly
2141 created) directory.
2142 Beginning in version 2.6.4, multiple --compare-dest directories
2144 may be provided, which will cause rsync to search the list in
2145 the order specified for an exact match. If a match is found
2146 that differs only in attributes, a local copy is made and the
2147 attributes updated. If a match is not found, a basis file from
2148 one of the DIRs will be selected to try to speed up the trans‐
2149 fer.
2150 If DIR is a relative path, it is relative to the destination
2152 directory. See also --copy-dest and --link-dest.
2153 NOTE: beginning with version 3.1.0, rsync will remove a file
2155 from a non-empty destination hierarchy if an exact match is
2156 found in one of the compare-dest hierarchies (making the end
2157 result more closely match a fresh copy).
2158 --copy-dest=DIR
2160 This option behaves like --compare-dest, but rsync will also
2161 copy unchanged files found in DIR to the destination directory
2162 using a local copy. This is useful for doing transfers to a new
2163 destination while leaving existing files intact, and then doing
2164 a flash-cutover when all files have been successfully trans‐
2165 ferred.
2166 Multiple --copy-dest directories may be provided, which will
2168 cause rsync to search the list in the order specified for an
2169 unchanged file. If a match is not found, a basis file from one
2170 of the DIRs will be selected to try to speed up the transfer.
2171 If DIR is a relative path, it is relative to the destination
2173 directory. See also --compare-dest and --link-dest.
2174 --link-dest=DIR
2176 This option behaves like --copy-dest, but unchanged files are
2177 hard linked from DIR to the destination directory. The files
2178 must be identical in all preserved attributes (e.g. permissions,
2179 possibly ownership) in order for the files to be linked
2180 together. An example:
2181 rsync -av --link-dest=$PWD/prior_dir host:src_dir/ new_dir/
2183 If file’s aren’t linking, double-check their attributes. Also
2186 check if some attributes are getting forced outside of rsync’s
2187 control, such a mount option that squishes root to a single
2188 user, or mounts a removable drive with generic ownership (such
2189 as OS X’s "Ignore ownership on this volume" option).
2190 Beginning in version 2.6.4, multiple --link-dest directories may
2192 be provided, which will cause rsync to search the list in the
2193 order specified for an exact match (there is a limit of 20 such
2194 directories). If a match is found that differs only in
2195 attributes, a local copy is made and the attributes updated. If
2196 a match is not found, a basis file from one of the DIRs will be
2197 selected to try to speed up the transfer.
2198 This option works best when copying into an empty destination
2200 hierarchy, as existing files may get their attributes tweaked,
2201 and that can affect alternate destination files via hard-links.
2202 Also, itemizing of changes can get a bit muddled. Note that
2203 prior to version 3.1.0, an alternate-directory exact match would
2204 never be found (nor linked into the destination) when a destina‐
2205 tion file already exists.
2206 Note that if you combine this option with --ignore-times, rsync
2208 will not link any files together because it only links identical
2209 files together as a substitute for transferring the file, never
2210 as an additional check after the file is updated.
2211 If DIR is a relative path, it is relative to the destination
2213 directory. See also --compare-dest and --copy-dest.
2214 Note that rsync versions prior to 2.6.1 had a bug that could
2216 prevent --link-dest from working properly for a non-super-user
2217 when -o was specified (or implied by -a). You can work-around
2218 this bug by avoiding the -o option when sending to an old rsync.
2219 -z, --compress
2221 With this option, rsync compresses the file data as it is sent
2222 to the destination machine, which reduces the amount of data
2223 being transmitted -- something that is useful over a slow con‐
2224 nection.
2225 Note that this option typically achieves better compression
2227 ratios than can be achieved by using a compressing remote shell
2228 or a compressing transport because it takes advantage of the
2229 implicit information in the matching data blocks that are not
2230 explicitly sent over the connection. This matching-data com‐
2231 pression comes at a cost of CPU, though, and can be disabled by
2232 repeating the -z option, but only if both sides are at least
2233 version 3.1.1.
2234 Note that if your version of rsync was compiled with an external
2236 zlib (instead of the zlib that comes packaged with rsync) then
2237 it will not support the old-style compression, only the
2238 new-style (repeated-option) compression. In the future this
2239 new-style compression will likely become the default.
2240 The client rsync requests new-style compression on the server
2242 via the --new-compress option, so if you see that option
2243 rejected it means that the server is not new enough to support
2244 -zz. Rsync also accepts the --old-compress option for a future
2245 time when new-style compression becomes the default.
2246 See the --skip-compress option for the default list of file suf‐
2248 fixes that will not be compressed.
2249 --compress-level=NUM
2251 Explicitly set the compression level to use (see --compress)
2252 instead of letting it default. If NUM is non-zero, the --com‐
2253 press option is implied.
2254 --skip-compress=LIST
2256 Override the list of file suffixes that will not be compressed.
2257 The LIST should be one or more file suffixes (without the dot)
2258 separated by slashes (/).
2259 You may specify an empty string to indicate that no file should
2261 be skipped.
2262 Simple character-class matching is supported: each must consist
2264 of a list of letters inside the square brackets (e.g. no special
2265 classes, such as "[:alpha:]", are supported, and ’-’ has no spe‐
2266 cial meaning).
2267 The characters asterisk (*) and question-mark (?) have no spe‐
2269 cial meaning.
2270 Here’s an example that specifies 6 suffixes to skip (since 1 of
2272 the 5 rules matches 2 suffixes):
2273 --skip-compress=gz/jpg/mp[34]/7z/bz2
2275 The default list of suffixes that will not be compressed is this
2278 (in this version of rsync):
2279 7z ace avi bz2 deb gpg gz iso jpeg jpg lz lzma lzo mov mp3 mp4
2281 ogg png rar rpm rzip tbz tgz tlz txz xz z zip
2282 This list will be replaced by your --skip-compress list in all
2284 but one situation: a copy from a daemon rsync will add your
2285 skipped suffixes to its list of non-compressing files (and its
2286 list may be configured to a different default).
2287 --numeric-ids
2289 With this option rsync will transfer numeric group and user IDs
2290 rather than using user and group names and mapping them at both
2291 ends.
2292 By default rsync will use the username and groupname to deter‐
2294 mine what ownership to give files. The special uid 0 and the
2295 special group 0 are never mapped via user/group names even if
2296 the --numeric-ids option is not specified.
2297 If a user or group has no name on the source system or it has no
2299 match on the destination system, then the numeric ID from the
2300 source system is used instead. See also the comments on the
2301 "use chroot" setting in the rsyncd.conf manpage for information
2302 on how the chroot setting affects rsync’s ability to look up the
2303 names of the users and groups and what you can do about it.
2304 --usermap=STRING, --groupmap=STRING
2306 These options allow you to specify users and groups that should
2307 be mapped to other values by the receiving side. The STRING is
2308 one or more FROM:TO pairs of values separated by commas. Any
2309 matching FROM value from the sender is replaced with a TO value
2310 from the receiver. You may specify usernames or user IDs for
2311 the FROM and TO values, and the FROM value may also be a
2312 wild-card string, which will be matched against the sender’s
2313 names (wild-cards do NOT match against ID numbers, though see
2314 below for why a ’*’ matches everything). You may instead spec‐
2315 ify a range of ID numbers via an inclusive range: LOW-HIGH. For
2316 example:
2317 --usermap=0-99:nobody,wayne:admin,*:normal --groupmap=usr:1,1:usr
2319 The first match in the list is the one that is used. You should
2322 specify all your user mappings using a single --usermap option,
2323 and/or all your group mappings using a single --groupmap option.
2324 Note that the sender’s name for the 0 user and group are not
2326 transmitted to the receiver, so you should either match these
2327 values using a 0, or use the names in effect on the receiving
2328 side (typically "root"). All other FROM names match those in
2329 use on the sending side. All TO names match those in use on the
2330 receiving side.
2331 Any IDs that do not have a name on the sending side are treated
2333 as having an empty name for the purpose of matching. This
2334 allows them to be matched via a "*" or using an empty name. For
2335 instance:
2336 --usermap=:nobody --groupmap=*:nobody
2338 When the --numeric-ids option is used, the sender does not send
2341 any names, so all the IDs are treated as having an empty name.
2342 This means that you will need to specify numeric FROM values if
2343 you want to map these nameless IDs to different values.
2344 For the --usermap option to have any effect, the -o (--owner)
2346 option must be used (or implied), and the receiver will need to
2347 be running as a super-user (see also the --fake-super option).
2348 For the --groupmap option to have any effect, the -g (--groups)
2349 option must be used (or implied), and the receiver will need to
2350 have permissions to set that group.
2351 --chown=USER:GROUP
2353 This option forces all files to be owned by USER with group
2354 GROUP. This is a simpler interface than using --usermap and
2355 --groupmap directly, but it is implemented using those options
2356 internally, so you cannot mix them. If either the USER or GROUP
2357 is empty, no mapping for the omitted user/group will occur. If
2358 GROUP is empty, the trailing colon may be omitted, but if USER
2359 is empty, a leading colon must be supplied.
2360 If you specify "--chown=foo:bar, this is exactly the same as
2362 specifying "--usermap=*:foo --groupmap=*:bar", only easier.
2363 --timeout=TIMEOUT
2365 This option allows you to set a maximum I/O timeout in seconds.
2366 If no data is transferred for the specified time then rsync will
2367 exit. The default is 0, which means no timeout.
2368 --contimeout
2370 This option allows you to set the amount of time that rsync will
2371 wait for its connection to an rsync daemon to succeed. If the
2372 timeout is reached, rsync exits with an error.
2373 --address
2375 By default rsync will bind to the wildcard address when connect‐
2376 ing to an rsync daemon. The --address option allows you to
2377 specify a specific IP address (or hostname) to bind to. See
2378 also this option in the --daemon mode section.
2379 --port=PORT
2381 This specifies an alternate TCP port number to use rather than
2382 the default of 873. This is only needed if you are using the
2383 double-colon (::) syntax to connect with an rsync daemon (since
2384 the URL syntax has a way to specify the port as a part of the
2385 URL). See also this option in the --daemon mode section.
2386 --sockopts
2388 This option can provide endless fun for people who like to tune
2389 their systems to the utmost degree. You can set all sorts of
2390 socket options which may make transfers faster (or slower!).
2391 Read the man page for the setsockopt() system call for details
2392 on some of the options you may be able to set. By default no
2393 special socket options are set. This only affects direct socket
2394 connections to a remote rsync daemon. This option also exists
2395 in the --daemon mode section.
2396 --blocking-io
2398 This tells rsync to use blocking I/O when launching a remote
2399 shell transport. If the remote shell is either rsh or remsh,
2400 rsync defaults to using blocking I/O, otherwise it defaults to
2401 using non-blocking I/O. (Note that ssh prefers non-blocking
2402 I/O.)
2403 --outbuf=MODE
2405 This sets the output buffering mode. The mode can be None (aka
2406 Unbuffered), Line, or Block (aka Full). You may specify as lit‐
2407 tle as a single letter for the mode, and use upper or lower
2408 case.
2409 The main use of this option is to change Full buffering to Line
2411 buffering when rsync’s output is going to a file or pipe.
2412 -i, --itemize-changes
2414 Requests a simple itemized list of the changes that are being
2415 made to each file, including attribute changes. This is exactly
2416 the same as specifying --out-format='%i %n%L'. If you repeat
2417 the option, unchanged files will also be output, but only if the
2418 receiving rsync is at least version 2.6.7 (you can use -vv with
2419 older versions of rsync, but that also turns on the output of
2420 other verbose messages).
2421 The "%i" escape has a cryptic output that is 11 letters long.
2423 The general format is like the string YXcstpoguax, where Y is
2424 replaced by the type of update being done, X is replaced by the
2425 file-type, and the other letters represent attributes that may
2426 be output if they are being modified.
2427 The update types that replace the Y are as follows:
2429 o A < means that a file is being transferred to the remote
2431 host (sent).
2432 o A > means that a file is being transferred to the local
2434 host (received).
2435 o A c means that a local change/creation is occurring for
2437 the item (such as the creation of a directory or the
2438 changing of a symlink, etc.).
2439 o A h means that the item is a hard link to another item
2441 (requires --hard-links).
2442 o A . means that the item is not being updated (though it
2444 might have attributes that are being modified).
2445 o A * means that the rest of the itemized-output area con‐
2447 tains a message (e.g. "deleting").
2448 The file-types that replace the X are: f for a file, a d for a
2451 directory, an L for a symlink, a D for a device, and a S for a
2452 special file (e.g. named sockets and fifos).
2453 The other letters in the string above are the actual letters
2455 that will be output if the associated attribute for the item is
2456 being updated or a "." for no change. Three exceptions to this
2457 are: (1) a newly created item replaces each letter with a "+",
2458 (2) an identical item replaces the dots with spaces, and (3) an
2459 unknown attribute replaces each letter with a "?" (this can hap‐
2460 pen when talking to an older rsync).
2461 The attribute that is associated with each letter is as follows:
2463 o A c means either that a regular file has a different
2465 checksum (requires --checksum) or that a symlink, device,
2466 or special file has a changed value. Note that if you
2467 are sending files to an rsync prior to 3.0.1, this change
2468 flag will be present only for checksum-differing regular
2469 files.
2470 o A s means the size of a regular file is different and
2472 will be updated by the file transfer.
2473 o A t means the modification time is different and is being
2475 updated to the sender’s value (requires --times). An
2476 alternate value of T means that the modification time
2477 will be set to the transfer time, which happens when a
2478 file/symlink/device is updated without --times and when a
2479 symlink is changed and the receiver can’t set its time.
2480 (Note: when using an rsync 3.0.0 client, you might see
2481 the s flag combined with t instead of the proper T flag
2482 for this time-setting failure.)
2483 o A p means the permissions are different and are being
2485 updated to the sender’s value (requires --perms).
2486 o An o means the owner is different and is being updated to
2488 the sender’s value (requires --owner and super-user priv‐
2489 ileges).
2490 o A g means the group is different and is being updated to
2492 the sender’s value (requires --group and the authority to
2493 set the group).
2494 o The u slot is reserved for future use.
2496 o The a means that the ACL information changed.
2498 o The x means that the extended attribute information
2500 changed.
2501 One other output is possible: when deleting files, the "%i"
2504 will output the string "*deleting" for each item that is being
2505 removed (assuming that you are talking to a recent enough rsync
2506 that it logs deletions instead of outputting them as a verbose
2507 message).
2508 --out-format=FORMAT
2510 This allows you to specify exactly what the rsync client outputs
2511 to the user on a per-update basis. The format is a text string
2512 containing embedded single-character escape sequences prefixed
2513 with a percent (%) character. A default format of "%n%L" is
2514 assumed if either --info=name or -v is specified (this tells you
2515 just the name of the file and, if the item is a link, where it
2516 points). For a full list of the possible escape characters, see
2517 the "log format" setting in the rsyncd.conf manpage.
2518 Specifying the --out-format option implies the --info=name
2520 option, which will mention each file, dir, etc. that gets
2521 updated in a significant way (a transferred file, a recreated
2522 symlink/device, or a touched directory). In addition, if the
2523 itemize-changes escape (%i) is included in the string (e.g. if
2524 the --itemize-changes option was used), the logging of names
2525 increases to mention any item that is changed in any way (as
2526 long as the receiving side is at least 2.6.4). See the --item‐
2527 ize-changes option for a description of the output of "%i".
2528 Rsync will output the out-format string prior to a file’s trans‐
2530 fer unless one of the transfer-statistic escapes is requested,
2531 in which case the logging is done at the end of the file’s
2532 transfer. When this late logging is in effect and --progress is
2533 also specified, rsync will also output the name of the file
2534 being transferred prior to its progress information (followed,
2535 of course, by the out-format output).
2536 --log-file=FILE
2538 This option causes rsync to log what it is doing to a file.
2539 This is similar to the logging that a daemon does, but can be
2540 requested for the client side and/or the server side of a
2541 non-daemon transfer. If specified as a client option, transfer
2542 logging will be enabled with a default format of "%i %n%L". See
2543 the --log-file-format option if you wish to override this.
2544 Here’s a example command that requests the remote side to log
2546 what is happening:
2547 rsync -av --remote-option=--log-file=/tmp/rlog src/ dest/
2549 This is very useful if you need to debug why a connection is
2552 closing unexpectedly.
2553 --log-file-format=FORMAT
2555 This allows you to specify exactly what per-update logging is
2556 put into the file specified by the --log-file option (which must
2557 also be specified for this option to have any effect). If you
2558 specify an empty string, updated files will not be mentioned in
2559 the log file. For a list of the possible escape characters, see
2560 the "log format" setting in the rsyncd.conf manpage.
2561 The default FORMAT used if --log-file is specified and this
2563 option is not is ’%i %n%L’.
2564 --stats
2566 This tells rsync to print a verbose set of statistics on the
2567 file transfer, allowing you to tell how effective rsync’s
2568 delta-transfer algorithm is for your data. This option is
2569 equivalent to --info=stats2 if combined with 0 or 1 -v options,
2570 or --info=stats3 if combined with 2 or more -v options.
2571 The current statistics are as follows:
2573 o Number of files is the count of all "files" (in the
2575 generic sense), which includes directories, symlinks,
2576 etc. The total count will be followed by a list of
2577 counts by filetype (if the total is non-zero). For exam‐
2578 ple: "(reg: 5, dir: 3, link: 2, dev: 1, special: 1)"
2579 lists the totals for regular files, directories, sym‐
2580 links, devices, and special files. If any of value is 0,
2581 it is completely omitted from the list.
2582 o Number of created files is the count of how many "files"
2584 (generic sense) were created (as opposed to updated).
2585 The total count will be followed by a list of counts by
2586 filetype (if the total is non-zero).
2587 o Number of deleted files is the count of how many "files"
2589 (generic sense) were created (as opposed to updated).
2590 The total count will be followed by a list of counts by
2591 filetype (if the total is non-zero). Note that this line
2592 is only output if deletions are in effect, and only if
2593 protocol 31 is being used (the default for rsync 3.1.x).
2594 o Number of regular files transferred is the count of nor‐
2596 mal files that were updated via rsync’s delta-transfer
2597 algorithm, which does not include dirs, symlinks, etc.
2598 Note that rsync 3.1.0 added the word "regular" into this
2599 heading.
2600 o Total file size is the total sum of all file sizes in the
2602 transfer. This does not count any size for directories
2603 or special files, but does include the size of symlinks.
2604 o Total transferred file size is the total sum of all files
2606 sizes for just the transferred files.
2607 o Literal data is how much unmatched file-update data we
2609 had to send to the receiver for it to recreate the
2610 updated files.
2611 o Matched data is how much data the receiver got locally
2613 when recreating the updated files.
2614 o File list size is how big the file-list data was when the
2616 sender sent it to the receiver. This is smaller than the
2617 in-memory size for the file list due to some compressing
2618 of duplicated data when rsync sends the list.
2619 o File list generation time is the number of seconds that
2621 the sender spent creating the file list. This requires a
2622 modern rsync on the sending side for this to be present.
2623 o File list transfer time is the number of seconds that the
2625 sender spent sending the file list to the receiver.
2626 o Total bytes sent is the count of all the bytes that rsync
2628 sent from the client side to the server side.
2629 o Total bytes received is the count of all non-message
2631 bytes that rsync received by the client side from the
2632 server side. "Non-message" bytes means that we don’t
2633 count the bytes for a verbose message that the server
2634 sent to us, which makes the stats more consistent.
2635 -8, --8-bit-output
2638 This tells rsync to leave all high-bit characters unescaped in
2639 the output instead of trying to test them to see if they’re
2640 valid in the current locale and escaping the invalid ones. All
2641 control characters (but never tabs) are always escaped, regard‐
2642 less of this option’s setting.
2643 The escape idiom that started in 2.6.7 is to output a literal
2645 backslash (\) and a hash (#), followed by exactly 3 octal dig‐
2646 its. For example, a newline would output as "\#012". A literal
2647 backslash that is in a filename is not escaped unless it is fol‐
2648 lowed by a hash and 3 digits (0-9).
2649 -h, --human-readable
2651 Output numbers in a more human-readable format. There are 3
2652 possible levels: (1) output numbers with a separator between
2653 each set of 3 digits (either a comma or a period, depending on
2654 if the decimal point is represented by a period or a comma); (2)
2655 output numbers in units of 1000 (with a character suffix for
2656 larger units -- see below); (3) output numbers in units of 1024.
2657 The default is human-readable level 1. Each -h option increases
2659 the level by one. You can take the level down to 0 (to output
2660 numbers as pure digits) by specifing the --no-human-readable
2661 (--no-h) option.
2662 The unit letters that are appended in levels 2 and 3 are: K
2664 (kilo), M (mega), G (giga), or T (tera). For example, a
2665 1234567-byte file would output as 1.23M in level-2 (assuming
2666 that a period is your local decimal point).
2667 Backward compatibility note: versions of rsync prior to 3.1.0
2669 do not support human-readable level 1, and they default to level
2670 0. Thus, specifying one or two -h options will behave in a com‐
2671 parable manner in old and new versions as long as you didn’t
2672 specify a --no-h option prior to one or more -h options. See
2673 the --list-only option for one difference.
2674 --partial
2676 By default, rsync will delete any partially transferred file if
2677 the transfer is interrupted. In some circumstances it is more
2678 desirable to keep partially transferred files. Using the --par‐
2679 tial option tells rsync to keep the partial file which should
2680 make a subsequent transfer of the rest of the file much faster.
2681 --partial-dir=DIR
2683 A better way to keep partial files than the --partial option is
2684 to specify a DIR that will be used to hold the partial data
2685 (instead of writing it out to the destination file). On the
2686 next transfer, rsync will use a file found in this dir as data
2687 to speed up the resumption of the transfer and then delete it
2688 after it has served its purpose.
2689 Note that if --whole-file is specified (or implied), any par‐
2691 tial-dir file that is found for a file that is being updated
2692 will simply be removed (since rsync is sending files without
2693 using rsync’s delta-transfer algorithm).
2694 Rsync will create the DIR if it is missing (just the last dir --
2696 not the whole path). This makes it easy to use a relative path
2697 (such as "--partial-dir=.rsync-partial") to have rsync create
2698 the partial-directory in the destination file’s directory when
2699 needed, and then remove it again when the partial file is
2700 deleted.
2701 If the partial-dir value is not an absolute path, rsync will add
2703 an exclude rule at the end of all your existing excludes. This
2704 will prevent the sending of any partial-dir files that may exist
2705 on the sending side, and will also prevent the untimely deletion
2706 of partial-dir items on the receiving side. An example: the
2707 above --partial-dir option would add the equivalent of "-f '-p
2708 .rsync-partial/'" at the end of any other filter rules.
2709 If you are supplying your own exclude rules, you may need to add
2711 your own exclude/hide/protect rule for the partial-dir because
2712 (1) the auto-added rule may be ineffective at the end of your
2713 other rules, or (2) you may wish to override rsync’s exclude
2714 choice. For instance, if you want to make rsync clean-up any
2715 left-over partial-dirs that may be lying around, you should
2716 specify --delete-after and add a "risk" filter rule, e.g. -f 'R
2717 .rsync-partial/'. (Avoid using --delete-before or --delete-dur‐
2718 ing unless you don’t need rsync to use any of the left-over par‐
2719 tial-dir data during the current run.)
2720 IMPORTANT: the --partial-dir should not be writable by other
2722 users or it is a security risk. E.g. AVOID "/tmp".
2723 You can also set the partial-dir value the RSYNC_PARTIAL_DIR
2725 environment variable. Setting this in the environment does not
2726 force --partial to be enabled, but rather it affects where par‐
2727 tial files go when --partial is specified. For instance,
2728 instead of using --partial-dir=.rsync-tmp along with --progress,
2729 you could set RSYNC_PARTIAL_DIR=.rsync-tmp in your environment
2730 and then just use the -P option to turn on the use of the
2731 .rsync-tmp dir for partial transfers. The only times that the
2732 --partial option does not look for this environment value are
2733 (1) when --inplace was specified (since --inplace conflicts with
2734 --partial-dir), and (2) when --delay-updates was specified (see
2735 below).
2736 For the purposes of the daemon-config’s "refuse options" set‐
2738 ting, --partial-dir does not imply --partial. This is so that a
2739 refusal of the --partial option can be used to disallow the
2740 overwriting of destination files with a partial transfer, while
2741 still allowing the safer idiom provided by --partial-dir.
2742 --delay-updates
2744 This option puts the temporary file from each updated file into
2745 a holding directory until the end of the transfer, at which time
2746 all the files are renamed into place in rapid succession. This
2747 attempts to make the updating of the files a little more atomic.
2748 By default the files are placed into a directory named ".~tmp~"
2749 in each file’s destination directory, but if you’ve specified
2750 the --partial-dir option, that directory will be used instead.
2751 See the comments in the --partial-dir section for a discussion
2752 of how this ".~tmp~" dir will be excluded from the transfer, and
2753 what you can do if you want rsync to cleanup old ".~tmp~" dirs
2754 that might be lying around. Conflicts with --inplace and
2755 --append.
2756 This option uses more memory on the receiving side (one bit per
2758 file transferred) and also requires enough free disk space on
2759 the receiving side to hold an additional copy of all the updated
2760 files. Note also that you should not use an absolute path to
2761 --partial-dir [22munless (1) there is no chance of any of the files
2762 in the transfer having the same name (since all the updated
2763 files will be put into a single directory if the path is abso‐
2764 lute) and (2) there are no mount points in the hierarchy (since
2765 the delayed updates will fail if they can’t be renamed into
2766 place).
2767 See also the "atomic-rsync" perl script in the "support" subdir
2769 for an update algorithm that is even more atomic (it uses
2770 --link-dest and a parallel hierarchy of files).
2771 -m, --prune-empty-dirs
2773 This option tells the receiving rsync to get rid of empty direc‐
2774 tories from the file-list, including nested directories that
2775 have no non-directory children. This is useful for avoiding the
2776 creation of a bunch of useless directories when the sending
2777 rsync is recursively scanning a hierarchy of files using
2778 include/exclude/filter rules.
2779 Note that the use of transfer rules, such as the --min-size
2781 option, does not affect what goes into the file list, and thus
2782 does not leave directories empty, even if none of the files in a
2783 directory match the transfer rule.
2784 Because the file-list is actually being pruned, this option also
2786 affects what directories get deleted when a delete is active.
2787 However, keep in mind that excluded files and directories can
2788 prevent existing items from being deleted due to an exclude both
2789 hiding source files and protecting destination files. See the
2790 perishable filter-rule option for how to avoid this.
2791 You can prevent the pruning of certain empty directories from
2793 the file-list by using a global "protect" filter. For instance,
2794 this option would ensure that the directory "emptydir" was kept
2795 in the file-list:
2796 --filter ’protect emptydir/’
2798 Here’s an example that copies all .pdf files in a hierarchy,
2801 only creating the necessary destination directories to hold the
2802 .pdf files, and ensures that any superfluous files and directo‐
2803 ries in the destination are removed (note the hide filter of
2804 non-directories being used instead of an exclude):
2805 rsync -avm --del --include=’*.pdf’ -f ’hide,! */’ src/ dest
2807 If you didn’t want to remove superfluous destination files, the
2810 more time-honored options of "--include='*/' --exclude='*'"
2811 would work fine in place of the hide-filter (if that is more
2812 natural to you).
2813 --progress
2815 This option tells rsync to print information showing the
2816 progress of the transfer. This gives a bored user something to
2817 watch. With a modern rsync this is the same as specifying
2818 --info=flist2,name,progress, but any user-supplied settings for
2819 those info flags takes precedence (e.g. "--info=flist0
2820 --progress").
2821 While rsync is transferring a regular file, it updates a
2823 progress line that looks like this:
2824 782448 63% 110.64kB/s 0:00:04
2826 In this example, the receiver has reconstructed 782448 bytes or
2829 63% of the sender’s file, which is being reconstructed at a rate
2830 of 110.64 kilobytes per second, and the transfer will finish in
2831 4 seconds if the current rate is maintained until the end.
2832 These statistics can be misleading if rsync’s delta-transfer
2834 algorithm is in use. For example, if the sender’s file consists
2835 of the basis file followed by additional data, the reported rate
2836 will probably drop dramatically when the receiver gets to the
2837 literal data, and the transfer will probably take much longer to
2838 finish than the receiver estimated as it was finishing the
2839 matched part of the file.
2840 When the file transfer finishes, rsync replaces the progress
2842 line with a summary line that looks like this:
2843 1,238,099 100% 146.38kB/s 0:00:08 (xfr#5, to-chk=169/396)
2845 In this example, the file was 1,238,099 bytes long in total, the
2848 average rate of transfer for the whole file was 146.38 kilobytes
2849 per second over the 8 seconds that it took to complete, it was
2850 the 5th transfer of a regular file during the current rsync ses‐
2851 sion, and there are 169 more files for the receiver to check (to
2852 see if they are up-to-date or not) remaining out of the 396
2853 total files in the file-list.
2854 In an incremental recursion scan, rsync won’t know the total
2856 number of files in the file-list until it reaches the ends of
2857 the scan, but since it starts to transfer files during the scan,
2858 it will display a line with the text "ir-chk" (for incremental
2859 recursion check) instead of "to-chk" until the point that it
2860 knows the full size of the list, at which point it will switch
2861 to using "to-chk". Thus, seeing "ir-chk" lets you know that the
2862 total count of files in the file list is still going to increase
2863 (and each time it does, the count of files left to check will
2864 increase by the number of the files added to the list).
2865 -P The -P option is equivalent to --partial --progress. Its pur‐
2867 pose is to make it much easier to specify these two options for
2868 a long transfer that may be interrupted.
2869 There is also a --info=progress2 option that outputs statistics
2871 based on the whole transfer, rather than individual files. Use
2872 this flag without outputting a filename (e.g. avoid -v or spec‐
2873 ify --info=name0) if you want to see how the transfer is doing
2874 without scrolling the screen with a lot of names. (You don’t
2875 need to specify the --progress option in order to use
2876 --info=progress2.)
2877 --password-file=FILE
2879 This option allows you to provide a password for accessing an
2880 rsync daemon via a file or via standard input if FILE is -. The
2881 file should contain just the password on the first line (all
2882 other lines are ignored). Rsync will exit with an error if FILE
2883 is world readable or if a root-run rsync command finds a
2884 non-root-owned file.
2885 This option does not supply a password to a remote shell trans‐
2887 port such as ssh; to learn how to do that, consult the remote
2888 shell’s documentation. When accessing an rsync daemon using a
2889 remote shell as the transport, this option only comes into
2890 effect after the remote shell finishes its authentication (i.e.
2891 if you have also specified a password in the daemon’s config
2892 file).
2893 --list-only
2895 This option will cause the source files to be listed instead of
2896 transferred. This option is inferred if there is a single
2897 source arg and no destination specified, so its main uses are:
2898 (1) to turn a copy command that includes a destination arg into
2899 a file-listing command, or (2) to be able to specify more than
2900 one source arg (note: be sure to include the destination). Cau‐
2901 tion: keep in mind that a source arg with a wild-card is
2902 expanded by the shell into multiple args, so it is never safe to
2903 try to list such an arg without using this option. For example:
2904 rsync -av --list-only foo* dest/
2906 Starting with rsync 3.1.0, the sizes output by --list-only are
2909 affected by the --human-readable option. By default they will
2910 contain digit separators, but higher levels of readability will
2911 output the sizes with unit suffixes. Note also that the column
2912 width for the size output has increased from 11 to 14 characters
2913 for all human-readable levels. Use --no-h if you want just dig‐
2914 its in the sizes, and the old column width of 11 characters.
2915 Compatibility note: when requesting a remote listing of files
2917 from an rsync that is version 2.6.3 or older, you may encounter
2918 an error if you ask for a non-recursive listing. This is
2919 because a file listing implies the --dirs option w/o --recur‐
2920 sive, and older rsyncs don’t have that option. To avoid this
2921 problem, either specify the --no-dirs option (if you don’t need
2922 to expand a directory’s content), or turn on recursion and
2923 exclude the content of subdirectories: -r --exclude='/*/*'.
2924 --bwlimit=RATE
2926 This option allows you to specify the maximum transfer rate for
2927 the data sent over the socket, specified in units per second.
2928 The RATE value can be suffixed with a string to indicate a size
2929 multiplier, and may be a fractional value (e.g.
2930 "--bwlimit=1.5m"). If no suffix is specified, the value will be
2931 assumed to be in units of 1024 bytes (as if "K" or "KiB" had
2932 been appended). See the --max-size option for a description of
2933 all the available suffixes. A value of zero specifies no limit.
2934 For backward-compatibility reasons, the rate limit will be
2936 rounded to the nearest KiB unit, so no rate smaller than 1024
2937 bytes per second is possible.
2938 Rsync writes data over the socket in blocks, and this option
2940 both limits the size of the blocks that rsync writes, and tries
2941 to keep the average transfer rate at the requested limit. Some
2942 "burstiness" may be seen where rsync writes out a block of data
2943 and then sleeps to bring the average rate into compliance.
2944 Due to the internal buffering of data, the --progress option may
2946 not be an accurate reflection on how fast the data is being
2947 sent. This is because some files can show up as being rapidly
2948 sent when the data is quickly buffered, while other can show up
2949 as very slow when the flushing of the output buffer occurs.
2950 This may be fixed in a future version.
2951 --write-batch=FILE
2953 Record a file that can later be applied to another identical
2954 destination with --read-batch. See the "BATCH MODE" section for
2955 details, and also the --only-write-batch option.
2956 --only-write-batch=FILE
2958 Works like --write-batch, except that no updates are made on the
2959 destination system when creating the batch. This lets you
2960 transport the changes to the destination system via some other
2961 means and then apply the changes via --read-batch.
2962 Note that you can feel free to write the batch directly to some
2964 portable media: if this media fills to capacity before the end
2965 of the transfer, you can just apply that partial transfer to the
2966 destination and repeat the whole process to get the rest of the
2967 changes (as long as you don’t mind a partially updated destina‐
2968 tion system while the multi-update cycle is happening).
2969 Also note that you only save bandwidth when pushing changes to a
2971 remote system because this allows the batched data to be
2972 diverted from the sender into the batch file without having to
2973 flow over the wire to the receiver (when pulling, the sender is
2974 remote, and thus can’t write the batch).
2975 --read-batch=FILE
2977 Apply all of the changes stored in FILE, a file previously gen‐
2978 erated by --write-batch. If FILE is -, the batch data will be
2979 read from standard input. See the "BATCH MODE" section for
2980 details.
2981 --protocol=NUM
2983 Force an older protocol version to be used. This is useful for
2984 creating a batch file that is compatible with an older version
2985 of rsync. For instance, if rsync 2.6.4 is being used with the
2986 --write-batch option, but rsync 2.6.3 is what will be used to
2987 run the --read-batch option, you should use "--protocol=28" when
2988 creating the batch file to force the older protocol version to
2989 be used in the batch file (assuming you can’t upgrade the rsync
2990 on the reading system).
2991 --iconv=CONVERT_SPEC
2993 Rsync can convert filenames between character sets using this
2994 option. Using a CONVERT_SPEC of "." tells rsync to look up the
2995 default character-set via the locale setting. Alternately, you
2996 can fully specify what conversion to do by giving a local and a
2997 remote charset separated by a comma in the order
2998 --iconv=LOCAL,REMOTE, e.g. --iconv=utf8,iso88591. This order
2999 ensures that the option will stay the same whether you’re push‐
3000 ing or pulling files. Finally, you can specify either
3001 --no-iconv or a CONVERT_SPEC of "-" to turn off any conversion.
3002 The default setting of this option is site-specific, and can
3003 also be affected via the RSYNC_ICONV environment variable.
3004 For a list of what charset names your local iconv library sup‐
3006 ports, you can run "iconv --list".
3007 If you specify the --protect-args option (-s), rsync will trans‐
3009 late the filenames you specify on the command-line that are
3010 being sent to the remote host. See also the --files-from
3011 option.
3012 Note that rsync does not do any conversion of names in filter
3014 files (including include/exclude files). It is up to you to
3015 ensure that you’re specifying matching rules that can match on
3016 both sides of the transfer. For instance, you can specify extra
3017 include/exclude rules if there are filename differences on the
3018 two sides that need to be accounted for.
3019 When you pass an --iconv option to an rsync daemon that allows
3021 it, the daemon uses the charset specified in its "charset" con‐
3022 figuration parameter regardless of the remote charset you actu‐
3023 ally pass. Thus, you may feel free to specify just the local
3024 charset for a daemon transfer (e.g. --iconv=utf8).
3025 -4, --ipv4 or -6, --ipv6
3027 Tells rsync to prefer IPv4/IPv6 when creating sockets. This
3028 only affects sockets that rsync has direct control over, such as
3029 the outgoing socket when directly contacting an rsync daemon.
3030 See also these options in the --daemon mode section.
3031 If rsync was complied without support for IPv6, the --ipv6
3033 option will have no effect. The --version output will tell you
3034 if this is the case.
3035 --checksum-seed=NUM
3037 Set the checksum seed to the integer NUM. This 4 byte checksum
3038 seed is included in each block and MD4 file checksum calculation
3039 (the more modern MD5 file checksums don’t use a seed). By
3040 default the checksum seed is generated by the server and
3041 defaults to the current time() . This option is used to set a
3042 specific checksum seed, which is useful for applications that
3043 want repeatable block checksums, or in the case where the user
3044 wants a more random checksum seed. Setting NUM to 0 causes
3045 rsync to use the default of time() for checksum seed.
3046
3048 The options allowed when starting an rsync daemon are as follows:
3049 --daemon
3051 This tells rsync that it is to run as a daemon. The daemon you
3052 start running may be accessed using an rsync client using the
3053 host::module or rsync://host/module/ syntax.
3054 If standard input is a socket then rsync will assume that it is
3056 being run via inetd, otherwise it will detach from the current
3057 terminal and become a background daemon. The daemon will read
3058 the config file (rsyncd.conf) on each connect made by a client
3059 and respond to requests accordingly. See the rsyncd.conf(5) man
3060 page for more details.
3061 --address
3063 By default rsync will bind to the wildcard address when run as a
3064 daemon with the --daemon option. The --address option allows
3065 you to specify a specific IP address (or hostname) to bind to.
3066 This makes virtual hosting possible in conjunction with the
3067 --config option. See also the "address" global option in the
3068 rsyncd.conf manpage.
3069 --bwlimit=RATE
3071 This option allows you to specify the maximum transfer rate for
3072 the data the daemon sends over the socket. The client can still
3073 specify a smaller --bwlimit value, but no larger value will be
3074 allowed. See the client version of this option (above) for some
3075 extra details.
3076 --config=FILE
3078 This specifies an alternate config file than the default. This
3079 is only relevant when --daemon is specified. The default is
3080 /etc/rsyncd.conf unless the daemon is running over a remote
3081 shell program and the remote user is not the super-user; in that
3082 case the default is rsyncd.conf in the current directory (typi‐
3083 cally $HOME).
3084 -M, --dparam=OVERRIDE
3086 This option can be used to set a daemon-config parameter when
3087 starting up rsync in daemon mode. It is equivalent to adding
3088 the parameter at the end of the global settings prior to the
3089 first module’s definition. The parameter names can be specified
3090 without spaces, if you so desire. For instance:
3091 rsync --daemon -M pidfile=/path/rsync.pid
3093 --no-detach
3096 When running as a daemon, this option instructs rsync to not
3097 detach itself and become a background process. This option is
3098 required when running as a service on Cygwin, and may also be
3099 useful when rsync is supervised by a program such as daemontools
3100 or AIX’s System Resource Controller. --no-detach is also recom‐
3101 mended when rsync is run under a debugger. This option has no
3102 effect if rsync is run from inetd or sshd.
3103 --port=PORT
3105 This specifies an alternate TCP port number for the daemon to
3106 listen on rather than the default of 873. See also the "port"
3107 global option in the rsyncd.conf manpage.
3108 --log-file=FILE
3110 This option tells the rsync daemon to use the given log-file
3111 name instead of using the "log file" setting in the config file.
3112 --log-file-format=FORMAT
3114 This option tells the rsync daemon to use the given FORMAT
3115 string instead of using the "log format" setting in the config
3116 file. It also enables "transfer logging" unless the string is
3117 empty, in which case transfer logging is turned off.
3118 --sockopts
3120 This overrides the socket options setting in the rsyncd.conf
3121 file and has the same syntax.
3122 -v, --verbose
3124 This option increases the amount of information the daemon logs
3125 during its startup phase. After the client connects, the dae‐
3126 mon’s verbosity level will be controlled by the options that the
3127 client used and the "max verbosity" setting in the module’s con‐
3128 fig section.
3129 -4, --ipv4 or -6, --ipv6
3131 Tells rsync to prefer IPv4/IPv6 when creating the incoming sock‐
3132 ets that the rsync daemon will use to listen for connections.
3133 One of these options may be required in older versions of Linux
3134 to work around an IPv6 bug in the kernel (if you see an "address
3135 already in use" error when nothing else is using the port, try
3136 specifying --ipv6 or --ipv4 when starting the daemon).
3137 If rsync was complied without support for IPv6, the --ipv6
3139 option will have no effect. The --version output will tell you
3140 if this is the case.
3141 -h, --help
3143 When specified after --daemon, print a short help page describ‐
3144 ing the options available for starting an rsync daemon.
3145
3147 The filter rules allow for flexible selection of which files to trans‐
3148 fer (include) and which files to skip (exclude). The rules either
3149 directly specify include/exclude patterns or they specify a way to
3150 acquire more include/exclude patterns (e.g. to read them from a file).
3151 As the list of files/directories to transfer is built, rsync checks
3153 each name to be transferred against the list of include/exclude pat‐
3154 terns in turn, and the first matching pattern is acted on: if it is an
3155 exclude pattern, then that file is skipped; if it is an include pattern
3156 then that filename is not skipped; if no matching pattern is found,
3157 then the filename is not skipped.
3158 Rsync builds an ordered list of filter rules as specified on the com‐
3160 mand-line. Filter rules have the following syntax:
3161 RULE [PATTERN_OR_FILENAME]
3163 RULE,MODIFIERS [PATTERN_OR_FILENAME]
3164 You have your choice of using either short or long RULE names, as
3167 described below. If you use a short-named rule, the ’,’ separating the
3168 RULE from the MODIFIERS is optional. The PATTERN or FILENAME that fol‐
3169 lows (when present) must come after either a single space or an under‐
3170 score (_). Here are the available rule prefixes:
3171 exclude, - specifies an exclude pattern.
3173 include, + specifies an include pattern.
3174 merge, . specifies a merge-file to read for more rules.
3175 dir-merge, : specifies a per-directory merge-file.
3176 hide, H specifies a pattern for hiding files from the transfer.
3177 show, S files that match the pattern are not hidden.
3178 protect, P specifies a pattern for protecting files from dele‐
3179 tion.
3180 risk, R files that match the pattern are not protected.
3181 clear, ! clears the current include/exclude list (takes no arg)
3182 When rules are being read from a file, empty lines are ignored, as are
3185 comment lines that start with a "#".
3186 Note that the --include/--exclude command-line options do not allow the
3188 full range of rule parsing as described above -- they only allow the
3189 specification of include/exclude patterns plus a "!" token to clear the
3190 list (and the normal comment parsing when rules are read from a file).
3191 If a pattern does not begin with "- " (dash, space) or "+ " (plus,
3192 space), then the rule will be interpreted as if "+ " (for an include
3193 option) or "- " (for an exclude option) were prefixed to the string. A
3194 --filter option, on the other hand, must always contain either a short
3195 or long rule name at the start of the rule.
3196 Note also that the --filter, --include, and --exclude options take one
3198 rule/pattern each. To add multiple ones, you can repeat the options on
3199 the command-line, use the merge-file syntax of the --filter option, or
3200 the --include-from/--exclude-from options.
3201
3203 You can include and exclude files by specifying patterns using the "+",
3204 "-", etc. filter rules (as introduced in the FILTER RULES section
3205 above). The include/exclude rules each specify a pattern that is
3206 matched against the names of the files that are going to be trans‐
3207 ferred. These patterns can take several forms:
3208 o if the pattern starts with a / then it is anchored to a particu‐
3210 lar spot in the hierarchy of files, otherwise it is matched
3211 against the end of the pathname. This is similar to a leading ^
3212 in regular expressions. Thus "/foo" would match a name of "foo"
3213 at either the "root of the transfer" (for a global rule) or in
3214 the merge-file’s directory (for a per-directory rule). An
3215 unqualified "foo" would match a name of "foo" anywhere in the
3216 tree because the algorithm is applied recursively from the top
3217 down; it behaves as if each path component gets a turn at being
3218 the end of the filename. Even the unanchored "sub/foo" would
3219 match at any point in the hierarchy where a "foo" was found
3220 within a directory named "sub". See the section on ANCHORING
3221 INCLUDE/EXCLUDE PATTERNS for a full discussion of how to specify
3222 a pattern that matches at the root of the transfer.
3223 o if the pattern ends with a / then it will only match a direc‐
3225 tory, not a regular file, symlink, or device.
3226 o rsync chooses between doing a simple string match and wildcard
3228 matching by checking if the pattern contains one of these three
3229 wildcard characters: ’*’, ’?’, and ’[’ .
3230 o a ’*’ matches any path component, but it stops at slashes.
3232 o use ’**’ to match anything, including slashes.
3234 o a ’?’ matches any character except a slash (/).
3236 o a ’[’ introduces a character class, such as [a-z] or
3238 [[:alpha:]].
3239 o in a wildcard pattern, a backslash can be used to escape a wild‐
3241 card character, but it is matched literally when no wildcards
3242 are present. This means that there is an extra level of back‐
3243 slash removal when a pattern contains wildcard characters com‐
3244 pared to a pattern that has none. e.g. if you add a wildcard to
3245 "foo\bar" (which matches the backslash) you would need to use
3246 "foo\\bar*" to avoid the "\b" becoming just "b".
3247 o if the pattern contains a / (not counting a trailing /) or a
3249 "**", then it is matched against the full pathname, including
3250 any leading directories. If the pattern doesn’t contain a / or a
3251 "**", then it is matched only against the final component of the
3252 filename. (Remember that the algorithm is applied recursively
3253 so "full filename" can actually be any portion of a path from
3254 the starting directory on down.)
3255 o a trailing "dir_name/***" will match both the directory (as if
3257 "dir_name/" had been specified) and everything in the directory
3258 (as if "dir_name/**" had been specified). This behavior was
3259 added in version 2.6.7.
3260 Note that, when using the --recursive (-r) option (which is implied by
3263 -a), every subdir component of every path is visited left to right,
3264 with each directory having a chance for exclusion before its content.
3265 In this way include/exclude patterns are applied recursively to the
3266 pathname of each node in the filesystem’s tree (those inside the trans‐
3267 fer). The exclude patterns short-circuit the directory traversal stage
3268 as rsync finds the files to send.
3269 For instance, to include "/foo/bar/baz", the directories "/foo" and
3271 "/foo/bar" must not be excluded. Excluding one of those parent direc‐
3272 tories prevents the examination of its content, cutting off rsync’s
3273 recursion into those paths and rendering the include for "/foo/bar/baz"
3274 ineffectual (since rsync can’t match something it never sees in the
3275 cut-off section of the directory hierarchy).
3276 The concept path exclusion is particularly important when using a
3278 trailing ’*’ rule. For instance, this won’t work:
3279 + /some/path/this-file-will-not-be-found
3281 + /file-is-included
3282 - *
3283 This fails because the parent directory "some" is excluded by the ’*’
3286 rule, so rsync never visits any of the files in the "some" or
3287 "some/path" directories. One solution is to ask for all directories in
3288 the hierarchy to be included by using a single rule: "+ */" (put it
3289 somewhere before the "- *" rule), and perhaps use the
3290 --prune-empty-dirs option. Another solution is to add specific include
3291 rules for all the parent dirs that need to be visited. For instance,
3292 this set of rules works fine:
3293 + /some/
3295 + /some/path/
3296 + /some/path/this-file-is-found
3297 + /file-also-included
3298 - *
3299 Here are some examples of exclude/include matching:
3302 o "- *.o" would exclude all names matching *.o
3304 o "- /foo" would exclude a file (or directory) named foo in the
3306 transfer-root directory
3307 o "- foo/" would exclude any directory named foo
3309 o "- /foo/*/bar" would exclude any file named bar which is at two
3311 levels below a directory named foo in the transfer-root direc‐
3312 tory
3313 o "- /foo/**/bar" would exclude any file named bar two or more
3315 levels below a directory named foo in the transfer-root direc‐
3316 tory
3317 o The combination of "+ */", "+ *.c", and "- *" would include all
3319 directories and C source files but nothing else (see also the
3320 --prune-empty-dirs option)
3321 o The combination of "+ foo/", "+ foo/bar.c", and "- *" would
3323 include only the foo directory and foo/bar.c (the foo directory
3324 must be explicitly included or it would be excluded by the "*")
3325 The following modifiers are accepted after a "+" or "-":
3328 o A / specifies that the include/exclude rule should be matched
3330 against the absolute pathname of the current item. For example,
3331 "-/ /etc/passwd" would exclude the passwd file any time the
3332 transfer was sending files from the "/etc" directory, and "-/
3333 subdir/foo" would always exclude "foo" when it is in a dir named
3334 "subdir", even if "foo" is at the root of the current transfer.
3335 o A ! specifies that the include/exclude should take effect if the
3337 pattern fails to match. For instance, "-! */" would exclude all
3338 non-directories.
3339 o A C is used to indicate that all the global CVS-exclude rules
3341 should be inserted as excludes in place of the "-C". No arg
3342 should follow.
3343 o An s is used to indicate that the rule applies to the sending
3345 side. When a rule affects the sending side, it prevents files
3346 from being transferred. The default is for a rule to affect
3347 both sides unless --delete-excluded was specified, in which case
3348 default rules become sender-side only. See also the hide (H)
3349 and show (S) rules, which are an alternate way to specify send‐
3350 ing-side includes/excludes.
3351 o An r is used to indicate that the rule applies to the receiving
3353 side. When a rule affects the receiving side, it prevents files
3354 from being deleted. See the s modifier for more info. See also
3355 the protect (P) and risk (R) rules, which are an alternate way
3356 to specify receiver-side includes/excludes.
3357 o A p indicates that a rule is perishable, meaning that it is
3359 ignored in directories that are being deleted. For instance,
3360 the -C option’s default rules that exclude things like "CVS" and
3361 "*.o" are marked as perishable, and will not prevent a directory
3362 that was removed on the source from being deleted on the desti‐
3363 nation.
3364 o An x indicates that a rule affects xattr names in xattr
3366 copy/delete operations (and is thus ignored when matching
3367 file/dir names). If no xattr-matching rules are specified, a
3368 default xattr filtering rule is used (see the --xattrs option).
3369
3372 You can merge whole files into your filter rules by specifying either a
3373 merge (.) or a dir-merge (:) filter rule (as introduced in the FILTER
3374 RULES section above).
3375 There are two kinds of merged files -- single-instance (’.’) and
3377 per-directory (’:’). A single-instance merge file is read one time,
3378 and its rules are incorporated into the filter list in the place of the
3379 "." rule. For per-directory merge files, rsync will scan every direc‐
3380 tory that it traverses for the named file, merging its contents when
3381 the file exists into the current list of inherited rules. These
3382 per-directory rule files must be created on the sending side because it
3383 is the sending side that is being scanned for the available files to
3384 transfer. These rule files may also need to be transferred to the
3385 receiving side if you want them to affect what files don’t get deleted
3386 (see PER-DIRECTORY RULES AND DELETE below).
3387 Some examples:
3389 merge /etc/rsync/default.rules
3391 . /etc/rsync/default.rules
3392 dir-merge .per-dir-filter
3393 dir-merge,n- .non-inherited-per-dir-excludes
3394 :n- .non-inherited-per-dir-excludes
3395 The following modifiers are accepted after a merge or dir-merge rule:
3398 o A - specifies that the file should consist of only exclude pat‐
3400 terns, with no other rule-parsing except for in-file comments.
3401 o A + specifies that the file should consist of only include pat‐
3403 terns, with no other rule-parsing except for in-file comments.
3404 o A C is a way to specify that the file should be read in a
3406 CVS-compatible manner. This turns on ’n’, ’w’, and ’-’, but
3407 also allows the list-clearing token (!) to be specified. If no
3408 filename is provided, ".cvsignore" is assumed.
3409 o A e will exclude the merge-file name from the transfer; e.g.
3411 "dir-merge,e .rules" is like "dir-merge .rules" and "- .rules".
3412 o An n specifies that the rules are not inherited by subdirecto‐
3414 ries.
3415 o A w specifies that the rules are word-split on whitespace
3417 instead of the normal line-splitting. This also turns off com‐
3418 ments. Note: the space that separates the prefix from the rule
3419 is treated specially, so "- foo + bar" is parsed as two rules
3420 (assuming that prefix-parsing wasn’t also disabled).
3421 o You may also specify any of the modifiers for the "+" or "-"
3423 rules (above) in order to have the rules that are read in from
3424 the file default to having that modifier set (except for the !
3425 modifier, which would not be useful). For instance, "merge,-/
3426 .excl" would treat the contents of .excl as absolute-path
3427 excludes, while "dir-merge,s .filt" and ":sC" would each make
3428 all their per-directory rules apply only on the sending side.
3429 If the merge rule specifies sides to affect (via the s or r mod‐
3430 ifier or both), then the rules in the file must not specify
3431 sides (via a modifier or a rule prefix such as hide).
3432 Per-directory rules are inherited in all subdirectories of the direc‐
3435 tory where the merge-file was found unless the ’n’ modifier was used.
3436 Each subdirectory’s rules are prefixed to the inherited per-directory
3437 rules from its parents, which gives the newest rules a higher priority
3438 than the inherited rules. The entire set of dir-merge rules are
3439 grouped together in the spot where the merge-file was specified, so it
3440 is possible to override dir-merge rules via a rule that got specified
3441 earlier in the list of global rules. When the list-clearing rule ("!")
3442 is read from a per-directory file, it only clears the inherited rules
3443 for the current merge file.
3444 Another way to prevent a single rule from a dir-merge file from being
3446 inherited is to anchor it with a leading slash. Anchored rules in a
3447 per-directory merge-file are relative to the merge-file’s directory, so
3448 a pattern "/foo" would only match the file "foo" in the directory where
3449 the dir-merge filter file was found.
3450 Here’s an example filter file which you’d specify via --filter=".
3452 file":
3453 merge /home/user/.global-filter
3455 - *.gz
3456 dir-merge .rules
3457 + *.[ch]
3458 - *.o
3459 This will merge the contents of the /home/user/.global-filter file at
3462 the start of the list and also turns the ".rules" filename into a
3463 per-directory filter file. All rules read in prior to the start of the
3464 directory scan follow the global anchoring rules (i.e. a leading slash
3465 matches at the root of the transfer).
3466 If a per-directory merge-file is specified with a path that is a parent
3468 directory of the first transfer directory, rsync will scan all the par‐
3469 ent dirs from that starting point to the transfer directory for the
3470 indicated per-directory file. For instance, here is a common filter
3471 (see -F):
3472 --filter=': /.rsync-filter'
3474 That rule tells rsync to scan for the file .rsync-filter in all direc‐
3477 tories from the root down through the parent directory of the transfer
3478 prior to the start of the normal directory scan of the file in the
3479 directories that are sent as a part of the transfer. (Note: for an
3480 rsync daemon, the root is always the same as the module’s "path".)
3481 Some examples of this pre-scanning for per-directory files:
3483 rsync -avF /src/path/ /dest/dir
3485 rsync -av --filter=': ../../.rsync-filter' /src/path/ /dest/dir
3486 rsync -av --filter=': .rsync-filter' /src/path/ /dest/dir
3487 The first two commands above will look for ".rsync-filter" in "/" and
3490 "/src" before the normal scan begins looking for the file in
3491 "/src/path" and its subdirectories. The last command avoids the par‐
3492 ent-dir scan and only looks for the ".rsync-filter" files in each
3493 directory that is a part of the transfer.
3494 If you want to include the contents of a ".cvsignore" in your patterns,
3496 you should use the rule ":C", which creates a dir-merge of the .cvsig‐
3497 nore file, but parsed in a CVS-compatible manner. You can use this to
3498 affect where the --cvs-exclude (-C) option’s inclusion of the
3499 per-directory .cvsignore file gets placed into your rules by putting
3500 the ":C" wherever you like in your filter rules. Without this, rsync
3501 would add the dir-merge rule for the .cvsignore file at the end of all
3502 your other rules (giving it a lower priority than your command-line
3503 rules). For example:
3504 cat <<EOT | rsync -avC --filter='. -' a/ b
3506 + foo.o
3507 :C
3508 - *.old
3509 EOT
3510 rsync -avC --include=foo.o -f :C --exclude='*.old' a/ b
3511 Both of the above rsync commands are identical. Each one will merge
3514 all the per-directory .cvsignore rules in the middle of the list rather
3515 than at the end. This allows their dir-specific rules to supersede the
3516 rules that follow the :C instead of being subservient to all your
3517 rules. To affect the other CVS exclude rules (i.e. the default list of
3518 exclusions, the contents of $HOME/.cvsignore, and the value of $CVSIG‐
3519 NORE) you should omit the -C command-line option and instead insert a
3520 "-C" rule into your filter rules; e.g. "--filter=-C".
3521
3523 You can clear the current include/exclude list by using the "!" filter
3524 rule (as introduced in the FILTER RULES section above). The "current"
3525 list is either the global list of rules (if the rule is encountered
3526 while parsing the filter options) or a set of per-directory rules
3527 (which are inherited in their own sub-list, so a subdirectory can use
3528 this to clear out the parent’s rules).
3529
3531 As mentioned earlier, global include/exclude patterns are anchored at
3532 the "root of the transfer" (as opposed to per-directory patterns, which
3533 are anchored at the merge-file’s directory). If you think of the
3534 transfer as a subtree of names that are being sent from sender to
3535 receiver, the transfer-root is where the tree starts to be duplicated
3536 in the destination directory. This root governs where patterns that
3537 start with a / match.
3538 Because the matching is relative to the transfer-root, changing the
3540 trailing slash on a source path or changing your use of the --relative
3541 option affects the path you need to use in your matching (in addition
3542 to changing how much of the file tree is duplicated on the destination
3543 host). The following examples demonstrate this.
3544 Let’s say that we want to match two source files, one with an absolute
3546 path of "/home/me/foo/bar", and one with a path of "/home/you/bar/baz".
3547 Here is how the various command choices differ for a 2-source transfer:
3548 Example cmd: rsync -a /home/me /home/you /dest
3550 +/- pattern: /me/foo/bar
3551 +/- pattern: /you/bar/baz
3552 Target file: /dest/me/foo/bar
3553 Target file: /dest/you/bar/baz
3554 Example cmd: rsync -a /home/me/ /home/you/ /dest
3557 +/- pattern: /foo/bar (note missing "me")
3558 +/- pattern: /bar/baz (note missing "you")
3559 Target file: /dest/foo/bar
3560 Target file: /dest/bar/baz
3561 Example cmd: rsync -a --relative /home/me/ /home/you /dest
3564 +/- pattern: /home/me/foo/bar (note full path)
3565 +/- pattern: /home/you/bar/baz (ditto)
3566 Target file: /dest/home/me/foo/bar
3567 Target file: /dest/home/you/bar/baz
3568 Example cmd: cd /home; rsync -a --relative me/foo you/ /dest
3571 +/- pattern: /me/foo/bar (starts at specified path)
3572 +/- pattern: /you/bar/baz (ditto)
3573 Target file: /dest/me/foo/bar
3574 Target file: /dest/you/bar/baz
3575 The easiest way to see what name you should filter is to just look at
3578 the output when using --verbose and put a / in front of the name (use
3579 the --dry-run option if you’re not yet ready to copy any files).
3580
3582 Without a delete option, per-directory rules are only relevant on the
3583 sending side, so you can feel free to exclude the merge files them‐
3584 selves without affecting the transfer. To make this easy, the ’e’ mod‐
3585 ifier adds this exclude for you, as seen in these two equivalent com‐
3586 mands:
3587 rsync -av --filter=': .excl' --exclude=.excl host:src/dir /dest
3589 rsync -av --filter=':e .excl' host:src/dir /dest
3590 However, if you want to do a delete on the receiving side AND you want
3593 some files to be excluded from being deleted, you’ll need to be sure
3594 that the receiving side knows what files to exclude. The easiest way
3595 is to include the per-directory merge files in the transfer and use
3596 --delete-after, because this ensures that the receiving side gets all
3597 the same exclude rules as the sending side before it tries to delete
3598 anything:
3599 rsync -avF --delete-after host:src/dir /dest
3601 However, if the merge files are not a part of the transfer, you’ll need
3604 to either specify some global exclude rules (i.e. specified on the com‐
3605 mand line), or you’ll need to maintain your own per-directory merge
3606 files on the receiving side. An example of the first is this (assume
3607 that the remote .rules files exclude themselves):
3608 rsync -av --filter=’: .rules’ --filter=’. /my/extra.rules’
3610 --delete host:src/dir /dest
3611 In the above example the extra.rules file can affect both sides of the
3614 transfer, but (on the sending side) the rules are subservient to the
3615 rules merged from the .rules files because they were specified after
3616 the per-directory merge rule.
3617 In one final example, the remote side is excluding the .rsync-filter
3619 files from the transfer, but we want to use our own .rsync-filter files
3620 to control what gets deleted on the receiving side. To do this we must
3621 specifically exclude the per-directory merge files (so that they don’t
3622 get deleted) and then put rules into the local files to control what
3623 else should not get deleted. Like one of these commands:
3624 rsync -av --filter=':e /.rsync-filter' --delete \
3626 host:src/dir /dest
3627 rsync -avFF --delete host:src/dir /dest
3628
3631 Batch mode can be used to apply the same set of updates to many identi‐
3632 cal systems. Suppose one has a tree which is replicated on a number of
3633 hosts. Now suppose some changes have been made to this source tree and
3634 those changes need to be propagated to the other hosts. In order to do
3635 this using batch mode, rsync is run with the write-batch option to
3636 apply the changes made to the source tree to one of the destination
3637 trees. The write-batch option causes the rsync client to store in a
3638 "batch file" all the information needed to repeat this operation
3639 against other, identical destination trees.
3640 Generating the batch file once saves having to perform the file status,
3642 checksum, and data block generation more than once when updating multi‐
3643 ple destination trees. Multicast transport protocols can be used to
3644 transfer the batch update files in parallel to many hosts at once,
3645 instead of sending the same data to every host individually.
3646 To apply the recorded changes to another destination tree, run rsync
3648 with the read-batch option, specifying the name of the same batch file,
3649 and the destination tree. Rsync updates the destination tree using the
3650 information stored in the batch file.
3651 For your convenience, a script file is also created when the
3653 write-batch option is used: it will be named the same as the batch
3654 file with ".sh" appended. This script file contains a command-line
3655 suitable for updating a destination tree using the associated batch
3656 file. It can be executed using a Bourne (or Bourne-like) shell, option‐
3657 ally passing in an alternate destination tree pathname which is then
3658 used instead of the original destination path. This is useful when the
3659 destination tree path on the current host differs from the one used to
3660 create the batch file.
3661 Examples:
3663 $ rsync --write-batch=foo -a host:/source/dir/ /adest/dir/
3665 $ scp foo* remote:
3666 $ ssh remote ./foo.sh /bdest/dir/
3667 $ rsync --write-batch=foo -a /source/dir/ /adest/dir/
3670 $ ssh remote rsync --read-batch=- -a /bdest/dir/ <foo
3671 In these examples, rsync is used to update /adest/dir/ from
3674 /source/dir/ and the information to repeat this operation is stored in
3675 "foo" and "foo.sh". The host "remote" is then updated with the batched
3676 data going into the directory /bdest/dir. The differences between the
3677 two examples reveals some of the flexibility you have in how you deal
3678 with batches:
3679 o The first example shows that the initial copy doesn’t have to be
3681 local -- you can push or pull data to/from a remote host using
3682 either the remote-shell syntax or rsync daemon syntax, as
3683 desired.
3684 o The first example uses the created "foo.sh" file to get the
3686 right rsync options when running the read-batch command on the
3687 remote host.
3688 o The second example reads the batch data via standard input so
3690 that the batch file doesn’t need to be copied to the remote
3691 machine first. This example avoids the foo.sh script because it
3692 needed to use a modified --read-batch option, but you could edit
3693 the script file if you wished to make use of it (just be sure
3694 that no other option is trying to use standard input, such as
3695 the "--exclude-from=-" option).
3696 Caveats:
3699 The read-batch option expects the destination tree that it is updating
3701 to be identical to the destination tree that was used to create the
3702 batch update fileset. When a difference between the destination trees
3703 is encountered the update might be discarded with a warning (if the
3704 file appears to be up-to-date already) or the file-update may be
3705 attempted and then, if the file fails to verify, the update discarded
3706 with an error. This means that it should be safe to re-run a
3707 read-batch operation if the command got interrupted. If you wish to
3708 force the batched-update to always be attempted regardless of the
3709 file’s size and date, use the -I option (when reading the batch). If
3710 an error occurs, the destination tree will probably be in a partially
3711 updated state. In that case, rsync can be used in its regular
3712 (non-batch) mode of operation to fix up the destination tree.
3713 The rsync version used on all destinations must be at least as new as
3715 the one used to generate the batch file. Rsync will die with an error
3716 if the protocol version in the batch file is too new for the
3717 batch-reading rsync to handle. See also the --protocol option for a
3718 way to have the creating rsync generate a batch file that an older
3719 rsync can understand. (Note that batch files changed format in version
3720 2.6.3, so mixing versions older than that with newer versions will not
3721 work.)
3722 When reading a batch file, rsync will force the value of certain
3724 options to match the data in the batch file if you didn’t set them to
3725 the same as the batch-writing command. Other options can (and should)
3726 be changed. For instance --write-batch changes to --read-batch,
3727 --files-from is dropped, and the --filter/--include/--exclude options
3728 are not needed unless one of the --delete options is specified.
3729 The code that creates the BATCH.sh file transforms any fil‐
3731 ter/include/exclude options into a single list that is appended as a
3732 "here" document to the shell script file. An advanced user can use
3733 this to modify the exclude list if a change in what gets deleted by
3734 --delete is desired. A normal user can ignore this detail and just use
3735 the shell script as an easy way to run the appropriate --read-batch
3736 command for the batched data.
3737 The original batch mode in rsync was based on "rsync+", but the latest
3739 version uses a new implementation.
3740
3742 Three basic behaviors are possible when rsync encounters a symbolic
3743 link in the source directory.
3744 By default, symbolic links are not transferred at all. A message
3746 "skipping non-regular" file is emitted for any symlinks that exist.
3747 If --links is specified, then symlinks are recreated with the same tar‐
3749 get on the destination. Note that --archive implies --links.
3750 If --copy-links is specified, then symlinks are "collapsed" by copying
3752 their referent, rather than the symlink.
3753 Rsync can also distinguish "safe" and "unsafe" symbolic links. An
3755 example where this might be used is a web site mirror that wishes to
3756 ensure that the rsync module that is copied does not include symbolic
3757 links to /etc/passwd in the public section of the site. Using
3758 --copy-unsafe-links will cause any links to be copied as the file they
3759 point to on the destination. Using --safe-links will cause unsafe
3760 links to be omitted altogether. (Note that you must specify --links
3761 for --safe-links to have any effect.)
3762 Symbolic links are considered unsafe if they are absolute symlinks
3764 (start with /), empty, or if they contain enough ".." components to
3765 ascend from the directory being copied.
3766 Here’s a summary of how the symlink options are interpreted. The list
3768 is in order of precedence, so if your combination of options isn’t men‐
3769 tioned, use the first line that is a complete subset of your options:
3770 --copy-links
3772 Turn all symlinks into normal files (leaving no symlinks for any
3773 other options to affect).
3774 --links --copy-unsafe-links
3776 Turn all unsafe symlinks into files and duplicate all safe sym‐
3777 links.
3778 --copy-unsafe-links
3780 Turn all unsafe symlinks into files, noisily skip all safe sym‐
3781 links.
3782 --links --safe-links
3784 Duplicate safe symlinks and skip unsafe ones.
3785 --links
3787 Duplicate all symlinks.
3788
3790 rsync occasionally produces error messages that may seem a little cryp‐
3791 tic. The one that seems to cause the most confusion is "protocol ver‐
3792 sion mismatch -- is your shell clean?".
3793 This message is usually caused by your startup scripts or remote shell
3795 facility producing unwanted garbage on the stream that rsync is using
3796 for its transport. The way to diagnose this problem is to run your
3797 remote shell like this:
3798 ssh remotehost /bin/true > out.dat
3800 then look at out.dat. If everything is working correctly then out.dat
3803 should be a zero length file. If you are getting the above error from
3804 rsync then you will probably find that out.dat contains some text or
3805 data. Look at the contents and try to work out what is producing it.
3806 The most common cause is incorrectly configured shell startup scripts
3807 (such as .cshrc or .profile) that contain output statements for
3808 non-interactive logins.
3809 If you are having trouble debugging filter patterns, then try specify‐
3811 ing the -vv option. At this level of verbosity rsync will show why
3812 each individual file is included or excluded.
3813
3815 0 Success
3816 1 Syntax or usage error
3818 2 Protocol incompatibility
3820 3 Errors selecting input/output files, dirs
3822 4 Requested action not supported: an attempt was made to manipu‐
3824 late 64-bit files on a platform that cannot support them; or an
3825 option was specified that is supported by the client and not by
3826 the server.
3827 5 Error starting client-server protocol
3829 6 Daemon unable to append to log-file
3831 10 Error in socket I/O
3833 11 Error in file I/O
3835 12 Error in rsync protocol data stream
3837 13 Errors with program diagnostics
3839 14 Error in IPC code
3841 20 Received SIGUSR1 or SIGINT
3843 21 Some error returned by waitpid()
3845 22 Error allocating core memory buffers
3847 23 Partial transfer due to error
3849 24 Partial transfer due to vanished source files
3851 25 The --max-delete limit stopped deletions
3853 30 Timeout in data send/receive
3855 35 Timeout waiting for daemon connection
3857
3860 CVSIGNORE
3861 The CVSIGNORE environment variable supplements any ignore pat‐
3862 terns in .cvsignore files. See the --cvs-exclude option for more
3863 details.
3864 RSYNC_ICONV
3866 Specify a default --iconv setting using this environment vari‐
3867 able. (First supported in 3.0.0.)
3868 RSYNC_PROTECT_ARGS
3870 Specify a non-zero numeric value if you want the --protect-args
3871 option to be enabled by default, or a zero value to make sure
3872 that it is disabled by default. (First supported in 3.1.0.)
3873 RSYNC_RSH
3875 The RSYNC_RSH environment variable allows you to override the
3876 default shell used as the transport for rsync. Command line
3877 options are permitted after the command name, just as in the -e
3878 option.
3879 RSYNC_PROXY
3881 The RSYNC_PROXY environment variable allows you to redirect your
3882 rsync client to use a web proxy when connecting to a rsync dae‐
3883 mon. You should set RSYNC_PROXY to a hostname:port pair.
3884 RSYNC_PASSWORD
3886 Setting RSYNC_PASSWORD to the required password allows you to
3887 run authenticated rsync connections to an rsync daemon without
3888 user intervention. Note that this does not supply a password to
3889 a remote shell transport such as ssh; to learn how to do that,
3890 consult the remote shell’s documentation.
3891 USER or LOGNAME
3893 The USER or LOGNAME environment variables are used to determine
3894 the default username sent to an rsync daemon. If neither is
3895 set, the username defaults to "nobody".
3896 HOME The HOME environment variable is used to find the user’s default
3898 .cvsignore file.
3899
3902 /etc/rsyncd.conf or rsyncd.conf
3903
3905 rsyncd.conf(5)
3906
3908 times are transferred as *nix time_t values
3909 When transferring to FAT filesystems rsync may re-sync unmodified
3911 files. See the comments on the --modify-window option.
3912 file permissions, devices, etc. are transferred as native numerical
3914 values
3915 see also the comments on the --delete option
3917 Please report bugs! See the web site at http://rsync.samba.org/
3919
3921 This man page is current for version 3.1.3 of rsync.
3922
3924 The options --server and --sender are used internally by rsync, and
3925 should never be typed by a user under normal circumstances. Some
3926 awareness of these options may be needed in certain scenarios, such as
3927 when setting up a login that can only run an rsync command. For
3928 instance, the support directory of the rsync distribution has an exam‐
3929 ple script named rrsync (for restricted rsync) that can be used with a
3930 restricted ssh login.
3931
3933 rsync is distributed under the GNU General Public License. See the
3934 file COPYING for details.
3935 A WEB site is available at http://rsync.samba.org/. The site includes
3937 an FAQ-O-Matic which may cover questions unanswered by this manual
3938 page.
3939 The primary ftp site for rsync is ftp://rsync.samba.org/pub/rsync.
3941 We would be delighted to hear from you if you like this program.
3943 Please contact the mailing-list at rsync@lists.samba.org.
3944 This program uses the excellent zlib compression library written by
3946 Jean-loup Gailly and Mark Adler.
3947
3949 Special thanks go out to: John Van Essen, Matt McCutchen, Wesley W.
3950 Terpstra, David Dykstra, Jos Backus, Sebastian Krahmer, Martin Pool,
3951 and our gone-but-not-forgotten compadre, J.W. Schultz.
3952 Thanks also to Richard Brent, Brendan Mackay, Bill Waite, Stephen Roth‐
3954 well and David Bell. I’ve probably missed some people, my apologies if
3955 I have.
3956
3958 rsync was originally written by Andrew Tridgell and Paul Mackerras.
3959 Many people have later contributed to it. It is currently maintained
3960 by Wayne Davison.
3961 Mailing lists for support and development are available at
3963 http://lists.samba.org
3964 28 Jan 2018 rsync(1)