a fast, versatile, remote (and local) file-copying tool
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-a, --archive
This is equivalent to -rlptgoD. It is a quick way of saying you want recursion and want to
preserve almost everything (with -H being a notable omission). The only exception to the above
equivalence is when --files-from is specified, in which case -r is not implied.
Note that -a does not preserve hardlinks, because finding multiply-linked files is expensive. You
must separately specify -H.
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-v, --verbose
This option increases the amount of information you are given during the transfer. By default,
rsync works silently. A single -v will give you information about what files are being transferred
and a brief summary at the end. Two -v options will give you information on what files are being
skipped and slightly more information at the end. More than two -v options should only be used if
you are debugging rsync.
Note that the names of the transferred files that are output are done using a default --out-format
of "%n%L", which tells you just the name of the file and, if the item is a link, where it points.
At the single -v level of verbosity, this does not mention when a file gets its attributes
changed. If you ask for an itemized list of changed attributes (either --itemize-changes or
adding "%i" to the --out-format setting), the output (on the client) increases to mention all
items that are changed in any way. See the --out-format option for more details.
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--progress
This option tells rsync to print information showing the progress of the transfer. This gives a
bored user something to watch. Implies --verbose if it wasn’t already specified.
While rsync is transferring a regular file, it updates a progress line that looks like this:
782448 63% 110.64kB/s 0:00:04
In this example, the receiver has reconstructed 782448 bytes or 63% of the sender’s file, which is
being reconstructed at a rate of 110.64 kilobytes per second, and the transfer will finish in 4
seconds if the current rate is maintained until the end.
These statistics can be misleading if rsync’s delta-transfer algorithm is in use. For example, if
the sender’s file consists of the basis file followed by additional data, the reported rate will
probably drop dramatically when the receiver gets to the literal data, and the transfer will
probably take much longer to finish than the receiver estimated as it was finishing the matched
part of the file.
When the file transfer finishes, rsync replaces the progress line with a summary line that looks
like this:
1238099 100% 146.38kB/s 0:00:08 (xfer#5, to-check=169/396)
In this example, the file was 1238099 bytes long in total, the average rate of transfer for the
whole file was 146.38 kilobytes per second over the 8 seconds that it took to complete, it was the
5th transfer of a regular file during the current rsync session, and there are 169 more files for
the receiver to check (to see if they are up-to-date or not) remaining out of the 396 total files
in the file-list.
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--rsync-path=PROGRAM
Use this to specify what program is to be run on the remote machine to start-up rsync. Often used
when rsync is not in the default remote-shell’s path (e.g. --rsync-path=/usr/local/bin/rsync).
Note that PROGRAM is run with the help of a shell, so it can be any program, script, or command
sequence you’d care to run, so long as it does not corrupt the standard-in & standard-out that
rsync is using to communicate.
One tricky example is to set a different default directory on the remote machine for use with the
--relative option. For instance:
rsync -avR --rsync-path="cd /a/b && rsync" host:c/d /e/
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Local: rsync [OPTION...] SRC... [DEST]
Access via remote shell:
Pull: rsync [OPTION...] [USER@]HOST:SRC... [DEST]
Push: rsync [OPTION...] SRC... [USER@]HOST:DEST
Access via rsync daemon:
Pull: rsync [OPTION...] [USER@]HOST::SRC... [DEST]
rsync [OPTION...] rsync://[USER@]HOST[:PORT]/SRC... [DEST]
Push: rsync [OPTION...] SRC... [USER@]HOST::DEST
rsync [OPTION...] SRC... rsync://[USER@]HOST[:PORT]/DEST
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