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User Commands rsync(1)

NAME

rsync - a fast, versatile, remote (and local) file-copying

tool

SYNOPSIS

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

Usages with just one SRC arg and no DEST arg will list the source files instead of copying.

DESCRIPTION

Rsync is a fast and extraordinarily versatile file copying tool. It can copy locally, to/from another host over any

remote shell, or to/from a remote rsync daemon. It offers a

large number of options that control every aspect of its behavior and permit very flexible specification of the set

of files to be copied. It is famous for its delta-transfer

algorithm, which reduces the amount of data sent over the network by sending only the differences between the source files and the existing files in the destination. Rsync is widely used for backups and mirroring and as an improved copy command for everyday use. Rsync finds files that need to be transferred using a quick check algorithm (by default) that looks for files that have

changed in size or in last-modified time. Any changes in

the other preserved attributes (as requested by options) are made on the destination file directly when the quick check indicates that the file's data does not need to be updated.

Some of the additional features of rsync are:

o support for copying links, devices, owners, groups, and permissions

o exclude and exclude-from options similar to GNU tar

o a CVS exclude mode for ignoring the same files that CVS would ignore o can use any transparent remote shell, including ssh or SunOS 5.10 Last change: 8 May 2009 1

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rsh

o does not require super-user privileges

o pipelining of file transfers to minimize latency costs

o support for anonymous or authenticated rsync daemons

(ideal for mirroring) GENERAL Rsync copies files either to or from a remote host, or locally on the current host (it does not support copying files between two remote hosts).

There are two different ways for rsync to contact a remote

system: using a remote-shell program as the transport (such

as ssh or rsh) or contacting an rsync daemon directly via

TCP. The remote-shell transport is used whenever the source

or destination path contains a single colon (:) separator

after a host specification. Contacting an rsync daemon

directly happens when the source or destination path con-

tains a double colon (::) separator after a host specifica-

tion, OR when an rsync:// URL is specified (see also the

USING RSYNC-DAEMON FEATURES VIA A REMOTE-SHELL CONNECTION

section for an exception to this latter rule). As a special case, if a single source arg is specified without a destination, the files are listed in an output

format similar to ls -l.

As expected, if neither the source or destination path specify a remote host, the copy occurs locally (see also the

--list-only option).

Rsync refers to the local side as the client and the remote

side as the server. Don't confuse server with an rsync dae-

mon - a daemon is always a server, but a server can be

either a daemon or a remote-shell spawned process.

SETUP See the file README for installation instructions.

Once installed, you can use rsync to any machine that you

can access via a remote shell (as well as some that you can

access using the rsync daemon-mode protocol). For remote

transfers, a modern rsync uses ssh for its communications,

but it may have been configured to use a different remote shell by default, such as rsh or remsh. You can also specify any remote shell you like, either by

using the -e command line option, or by setting the

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RSYNC_RSH environment variable.

Note that rsync must be installed on both the source and

destination machines.

USAGE

You use rsync in the same way you use rcp. You must specify

a source and a destination, one of which may be remote. Perhaps the best way to explain the syntax is with some examples:

rsync -t *.c foo:src/

This would transfer all files matching the pattern *.c from the current directory to the directory src on the machine foo. If any of the files already exist on the remote system

then the rsync remote-update protocol is used to update the

file by sending only the differences. See the tech report for details.

rsync -avz foo:src/bar /data/tmp

This would recursively transfer all files from the directory src/bar on the machine foo into the /data/tmp/bar directory on the local machine. The files are transferred in archive

mode, which ensures that symbolic links, devices, attri-

butes, permissions, ownerships, etc. are preserved in the transfer. Additionally, compression will be used to reduce the size of data portions of the transfer.

rsync -avz foo:src/bar/ /data/tmp

A trailing slash on the source changes this behavior to

avoid creating an additional directory level at the destina-

tion. You can think of a trailing / on a source as meaning copy the contents of this directory as opposed to copy the directory by name, but in both cases the attributes of the containing directory are transferred to the containing directory on the destination. In other words, each of the

following commands copies the files in the same way, includ-

ing their setting of the attributes of /dest/foo:

rsync -av /src/foo /dest

rsync -av /src/foo/ /dest/foo

Note also that host and module references don't require a trailing slash to copy the contents of the default SunOS 5.10 Last change: 8 May 2009 3

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directory. For example, both of these copy the remote directory's contents into /dest:

rsync -av host: /dest

rsync -av host::module /dest

You can also use rsync in local-only mode, where both the

source and destination don't have a : in the name. In this case it behaves like an improved copy command. Finally, you can list all the (listable) modules available

from a particular rsync daemon by leaving off the module

name:

rsync somehost.mydomain.com::

See the following section for more details.

ADVANCED USAGE

The syntax for requesting multiple files from a remote host

is done by specifying additional remote-host args in the

same style as the first, or with the hostname omitted. For instance, all these work:

rsync -av host:file1 :file2 host:file{3,4} /dest/

rsync -av host::modname/file{1,2} host::modname/file3

/dest/

rsync -av host::modname/file1 ::modname/file{3,4}

Older versions of rsync required using quoted spaces in the

SRC, like these examples:

rsync -av host:'dir1/file1 dir2/file2' /dest

rsync host::'modname/dir1/file1 modname/dir2/file2'

/dest

This word-splitting still works (by default) in the latest

rsync, but is not as easy to use as the first method.

If you need to transfer a filename that contains whitespace,

you can either specify the --protect-args (-s) option, or

you'll need to escape the whitespace in a way that the remote shell will understand. For instance:

rsync -av host:'file\ name\ with\ spaces' /dest

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CONNECTING TO AN RSYNC DAEMON

It is also possible to use rsync without a remote shell as

the transport. In this case you will directly connect to a

remote rsync daemon, typically using TCP port 873. (This

obviously requires the daemon to be running on the remote system, so refer to the STARTING AN RSYNC DAEMON TO ACCEPT CONNECTIONS section below for information on that.)

Using rsync in this way is the same as using it with a

remote shell except that: o you either use a double colon :: instead of a single colon to separate the hostname from the path, or you

use an rsync:// URL.

o the first word of the path is actually a module name. o the remote daemon may print a message of the day when you connect. o if you specify no path name on the remote daemon then the list of accessible paths on the daemon will be shown. o if you specify no local destination then a listing of the specified files on the remote daemon is provided.

o you must not specify the --rsh (-e) option.

An example that copies all the files in a remote module named src:

rsync -av host::src /dest

Some modules on the remote daemon may require authentica-

tion. If so, you will receive a password prompt when you connect. You can avoid the password prompt by setting the

environment variable RSYNC_PASSWORD to the password you want

to use or using the --password-file option. This may be use-

ful when scripting rsync.

WARNING: On some systems environment variables are visible

to all users. On those systems using --password-file is

recommended. You may establish the connection via a web proxy by setting

the environment variable RSYNC_PROXY to a hostname:port pair

pointing to your web proxy. Note that your web proxy's con-

figuration must support proxy connections to port 873. SunOS 5.10 Last change: 8 May 2009 5

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You may also establish a daemon connection using a program as a proxy by setting the environment variable

RSYNC_CONNECT_PROG to the commands you wish to run in place

of making a direct socket connection. The string may con-

tain the escape %H to represent the hostname specified in

the rsync command (so use %% if you need a single % in your

string). For example:

export RSYNC_CONNECT_PROG='ssh proxyhost nc %H 873'

rsync -av targethost1::module/src/ /dest/

rsync -av rsync:://targethost2/module/src/ /dest/

The command specified above uses ssh to run nc (netcat) on a

proxyhost, which forwards all data to port 873 (the rsync

daemon) on the targethost (%H).

USING RSYNC-DAEMON FEATURES VIA A REMOTE-SHELL CONNECTION

It is sometimes useful to use various features of an rsync

daemon (such as named modules) without actually allowing any new socket connections into a system (other than what is

already required to allow remote-shell access). Rsync sup-

ports connecting to a host using a remote shell and then

spawning a single-use daemon server that expects to read its

config file in the home dir of the remote user. This can be

useful if you want to encrypt a daemon-style transfer's

data, but since the daemon is started up fresh by the remote user, you may not be able to use features such as chroot or change the uid used by the daemon. (For another way to encrypt a daemon transfer, consider using ssh to tunnel a

local port to a remote machine and configure a normal rsync

daemon on that remote host to only allow connections from localhost.) From the user's perspective, a daemon transfer via a

remote-shell connection uses nearly the same command-line

syntax as a normal rsync-daemon transfer, with the only

exception being that you must explicitly set the remote

shell program on the command-line with the --rsh=COMMAND

option. (Setting the RSYNC_RSH in the environment will not

turn on this functionality.) For example:

rsync -av --rsh=ssh host::module /dest

If you need to specify a different remote-shell user, keep

in mind that the user@ prefix in front of the host is speci-

fying the rsync-user value (for a module that requires

user-based authentication). This means that you must give

the '-l user' option to ssh when specifying the remote-

shell, as in this example that uses the short version of the

--rsh option:

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rsync -av -e "ssh -l ssh-user" rsync-user@host::module /dest

The ssh-user will be used at the ssh level; the rsync-user

will be used to log-in to the module.

STARTING AN RSYNC DAEMON TO ACCEPT CONNECTIONS

In order to connect to an rsync daemon, the remote system

needs to have a daemon already running (or it needs to have

configured something like inetd to spawn an rsync daemon for

incoming connections on a particular port). For full infor-

mation on how to start a daemon that will handling incoming

socket connections, see the rsyncd.conf(5) man page - that

is the config file for the daemon, and it contains the full

details for how to run the daemon (including stand-alone and

inetd configurations).

If you're using one of the remote-shell transports for the

transfer, there is no need to manually start an rsync dae-

mon.

EXAMPLES

Here are some examples of how I use rsync.

To backup my wife's home directory, which consists of large MS Word files and mail folders, I use a cron job that runs

rsync -Cavz . arvidsjaur:backup

each night over a PPP connection to a duplicate directory on my machine arvidsjaur. To synchronize my samba source trees I use the following Makefile targets: get:

rsync -avuzb --exclude '*~' samba:samba/ .

put:

rsync -Cavuzb . samba:samba/

sync: get put this allows me to sync with a CVS directory at the other end of the connection. I then do CVS operations on the remote

machine, which saves a lot of time as the remote CVS proto-

col isn't very efficient. I mirror a directory between my old and new ftp sites with the command: SunOS 5.10 Last change: 8 May 2009 7

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rsync -az -e ssh --delete ~ftp/pub/samba

nimbus:"~ftp/pub/tridge" This is launched from cron every few hours. OPTIONS SUMMARY

Here is a short summary of the options available in rsync.

Please refer to the detailed description below for a com-

plete description.

-v, --verbose increase verbosity

-q, --quiet suppress non-error messages

--no-motd suppress daemon-mode MOTD (see caveat)

-c, --checksum skip based on checksum, not mod-time & size

-a, --archive archive mode; equals -rlptgoD (no -H,-A,-X)

--no-OPTION turn off an implied OPTION (e.g. --no-D)

-r, --recursive recurse into directories

-R, --relative use relative path names

--no-implied-dirs don't send implied dirs with --relative

-b, --backup make backups (see --suffix & --backup-dir)

--backup-dir=DIR make backups into hierarchy based in DIR

--suffix=SUFFIX backup suffix (default ~ w/o --backup-dir)

-u, --update skip files that are newer on the receiver

--inplace update destination files in-place

--append append data onto shorter files

--append-verify --append w/old data in file checksum

-d, --dirs transfer directories without recursing

-l, --links copy symlinks as symlinks

-L, --copy-links transform symlink into referent file/dir

--copy-unsafe-links only "unsafe" symlinks are transformed

--safe-links ignore symlinks that point outside the tree

-k, --copy-dirlinks transform symlink to dir into referent dir

-K, --keep-dirlinks treat symlinked dir on receiver as dir

-H, --hard-links preserve hard links

-p, --perms preserve permissions

-E, --executability preserve executability

--chmod=CHMOD affect file and/or directory permissions

-A, --acls preserve ACLs (implies -p)

-X, --xattrs preserve extended attributes

-o, --owner preserve owner (super-user only)

-g, --group preserve group

--devices preserve device files (super-user only)

--specials preserve special files

-D same as --devices --specials

-t, --times preserve modification times

-O, --omit-dir-times omit directories from --times

--super receiver attempts super-user activities

--fake-super store/recover privileged attrs using xattrs

-S, --sparse handle sparse files efficiently

-n, --dry-run perform a trial run with no changes made

-W, --whole-file copy files whole (w/o delta-xfer algorithm)

-x, --one-file-system don't cross filesystem boundaries

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-B, --block-size=SIZE force a fixed checksum block-size

-e, --rsh=COMMAND specify the remote shell to use

--rsync-path=PROGRAM specify the rsync to run on remote machine

--existing skip creating new files on receiver

--ignore-existing skip updating files that exist on receiver

--remove-source-files sender removes synchronized files (non-dir)

--del an alias for --delete-during

--delete delete extraneous files from dest dirs

--delete-before receiver deletes before transfer (default)

--delete-during receiver deletes during xfer, not before

--delete-delay find deletions during, delete after

--delete-after receiver deletes after transfer, not before

--delete-excluded also delete excluded files from dest dirs

--ignore-errors delete even if there are I/O errors

--force force deletion of dirs even if not empty

--max-delete=NUM don't delete more than NUM files

--max-size=SIZE don't transfer any file larger than SIZE

--min-size=SIZE don't transfer any file smaller than SIZE

--partial keep partially transferred files

--partial-dir=DIR put a partially transferred file into DIR

--delay-updates put all updated files into place at end

-m, --prune-empty-dirs prune empty directory chains from file-list

--numeric-ids don't map uid/gid values by user/group name

--timeout=SECONDS set I/O timeout in seconds

--contimeout=SECONDS set daemon connection timeout in seconds

-I, --ignore-times don't skip files that match size and time

--size-only skip files that match in size

--modify-window=NUM compare mod-times with reduced accuracy

-T, --temp-dir=DIR create temporary files in directory DIR

-y, --fuzzy find similar file for basis if no dest file

--compare-dest=DIR also compare received files relative to DIR

--copy-dest=DIR ... and include copies of unchanged files

--link-dest=DIR hardlink to files in DIR when unchanged

-z, --compress compress file data during the transfer

--compress-level=NUM explicitly set compression level

--skip-compress=LIST skip compressing files with suffix in LIST

-C, --cvs-exclude auto-ignore files in the same way CVS does

-f, --filter=RULE add a file-filtering RULE

-F same as --filter='dir-merge /.rsync-filter'

repeated: --filter='- .rsync-filter'

--exclude=PATTERN exclude files matching PATTERN

--exclude-from=FILE read exclude patterns from FILE

--include=PATTERN don't exclude files matching PATTERN

--include-from=FILE read include patterns from FILE

--files-from=FILE read list of source-file names from FILE

-0, --from0 all *from/filter files are delimited by 0s

-s, --protect-args no space-splitting; wildcard chars only

--address=ADDRESS bind address for outgoing socket to daemon

--port=PORT specify double-colon alternate port number

--sockopts=OPTIONS specify custom TCP options

--blocking-io use blocking I/O for the remote shell

--stats give some file-transfer stats

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-8, --8-bit-output leave high-bit chars unescaped in output

-h, --human-readable output numbers in a human-readable format

--progress show progress during transfer

-P same as --partial --progress

-i, --itemize-changes output a change-summary for all updates

--out-format=FORMAT output updates using the specified FORMAT

--log-file=FILE log what we're doing to the specified FILE

--log-file-format=FMT log updates using the specified FMT

--password-file=FILE read daemon-access password from FILE

--list-only list the files instead of copying them

--bwlimit=KBPS limit I/O bandwidth; KBytes per second

--write-batch=FILE write a batched update to FILE

--only-write-batch=FILE like --write-batch but w/o updating dest

--read-batch=FILE read a batched update from FILE

--protocol=NUM force an older protocol version to be used

--iconv=CONVERT_SPEC request charset conversion of filenames

--checksum-seed=NUM set block/file checksum seed (advanced)

-4, --ipv4 prefer IPv4

-6, --ipv6 prefer IPv6

--version print version number

(-h) --help show this help (see below for -h comment)

Rsync can also be run as a daemon, in which case the follow-

ing options are accepted:

--daemon run as an rsync daemon

--address=ADDRESS bind to the specified address

--bwlimit=KBPS limit I/O bandwidth; KBytes per second

--config=FILE specify alternate rsyncd.conf file

--no-detach do not detach from the parent

--port=PORT listen on alternate port number

--log-file=FILE override the "log file" setting

--log-file-format=FMT override the "log format" setting

--sockopts=OPTIONS specify custom TCP options

-v, --verbose increase verbosity

-4, --ipv4 prefer IPv4

-6, --ipv6 prefer IPv6

-h, --help show this help (if used after --daemon)

OPTIONS

rsync uses the GNU long options package. Many of the command

line options have two variants, one short and one long. These are shown below, separated by commas. Some options only have a long variant. The = for options that take a parameter is optional; whitespace can be used instead.

--help

Print a short help page describing the options avail-

able in rsync and exit. For backward-compatibility

with older versions of rsync, the help will also be

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output if you use the -h option without any other args.

--version

print the rsync version number and exit.

-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 informa-

tion 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 item-

ized list of changed attributes (either

--itemize-changes or adding %i to the --out-format set-

ting), the output (on the client) increases to mention all items that are changed in any way. See the

--out-format option for more details.

-q, --quiet

This option decreases the amount of information you are

given during the transfer, notably suppressing informa-

tion messages from the remote server. This option is

useful when invoking rsync from cron.

--no-motd

This option affects the information that is output by the client at the start of a daemon transfer. This

suppresses the message-of-the-day (MOTD) text, but it

also affects the list of modules that the daemon sends

in response to the rsync host:: request (due to a limi-

tation in the rsync protocol), so omit this option if

you want to request the list of modules from the dae-

mon. SunOS 5.10 Last change: 8 May 2009 11

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-I, --ignore-times

Normally rsync will skip any files that are already the

same size and have the same modification timestamp.

This option turns off this quick check behavior, caus-

ing all files to be updated.

--size-only

This modifies rsync's quick check algorithm for finding

files that need to be transferred, changing it from the default of transferring files with either a changed

size or a changed last-modified time to just looking

for files that have changed in size. This is useful

when starting to use rsync after using another mirror-

ing system which may not preserve timestamps exactly.

--modify-window

When comparing two timestamps, rsync treats the times-

tamps as being equal if they differ by no more than the

modify-window value. This is normally 0 (for an exact

match), but you may find it useful to set this to a larger value in some situations. In particular, when transferring to or from an MS Windows FAT filesystem

(which represents times with a 2-second resolution),

--modify-window=1 is useful (allowing times to differ

by up to 1 second).

-c, --checksum

This changes the way rsync checks if the files have

been changed and are in need of a transfer. Without

this option, rsync uses a quick check that (by default)

checks if each file's size and time of last modifica-

tion match between the sender and receiver. This

option changes this to compare a 128-bit checksum for

each file that has a matching size. Generating the checksums means that both sides will expend a lot of

disk I/O reading all the data in the files in the transfer (and this is prior to any reading that will be done to transfer changed files), so this can slow things down significantly. The sending side generates its checksums while it is

doing the file-system scan that builds the list of the

available files. The receiver generates its checksums

when it is scanning for changed files, and will check-

sum any file that has the same size as the correspond-

ing sender's file: files with either a changed size or SunOS 5.10 Last change: 8 May 2009 12

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a changed checksum are selected for transfer.

Note that rsync always verifies that each transferred

file was correctly reconstructed on the receiving side

by checking a whole-file checksum that is generated as

the file is transferred, but that automatic after-the-

transfer verification has nothing to do with this

option's before-the-transfer Does this file need to be

updated? check. For protocol 30 and beyond (first supported in 3.0.0), the checksum used is MD5. For older protocols, the checksum used is MD4.

-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 find-

ing multiply-linked files is expensive. You must

separately specify -H.

--no-OPTION

You may turn off one or more implied options by prefix-

ing the option name with no-. Not all options may be

prefixed with a no-: only options that are implied by

other options (e.g. --no-D, --no-perms) or have dif-

ferent defaults in various circumstances (e.g.

--no-whole-file, --no-blocking-io, --no-dirs). You may

specify either the short or the long option name after

the no- prefix (e.g. --no-R is the same as

--no-relative).

For example: if you want to use -a (--archive) but

don't want -o (--owner), instead of converting -a into

-rlptgD, you could specify -a --no-o (or -a

--no-owner).

The order of the options is important: if you specify

--no-r -a, the -r option would end up being turned on,

the opposite of -a --no-r. Note also that the side-

effects of the --files-from option are NOT positional,

as it affects the default state of several options and

slightly changes the meaning of -a (see the

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--files-from option for more details).

-r, --recursive

This tells rsync to copy directories recursively. See

also --dirs (-d).

Beginning with rsync 3.0.0, the recursive algorithm

used is now an incremental scan that uses much less memory than before and begins the transfer after the

scanning of the first few directories have been com-

pleted. This incremental scan only affects our recur-

sion algorithm, and does not change a non-recursive

transfer. It is also only possible when both ends of the transfer are at least version 3.0.0.

Some options require rsync to know the full file list,

so these options disable the incremental recursion

mode. These include: --delete-before, --delete-after,

--prune-empty-dirs, and --delay-updates. Because of

this, the default delete mode when you specify --delete

is now --delete-during when both ends of the connection

are at least 3.0.0 (use --del or --delete-during to

request this improved deletion mode explicitly). See

also the --delete-delay option that is a better choice

than using --delete-after.

Incremental recursion can be disabled using the

--no-inc-recursive option or its shorter --no-i-r

alias.

-R, --relative

Use relative paths. This means that the full path names specified on the command line are sent to the server rather than just the last parts of the filenames. This is particularly useful when you want to send several different directories at the same time. For example, if you used this command:

rsync -av /foo/bar/baz.c remote:/tmp/

... this would create a file named baz.c in /tmp/ on the remote machine. If instead you used

rsync -avR /foo/bar/baz.c remote:/tmp/

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then a file named /tmp/foo/bar/baz.c would be created on the remote machine, preserving its full path. These extra path elements are called implied directories (i.e. the foo and the foo/bar directories in the above example).

Beginning with rsync 3.0.0, rsync always sends these

implied directories as real directories in the file list, even if a path element is really a symlink on the sending side. This prevents some really unexpected behaviors when copying the full path of a file that you didn't realize had a symlink in its path. If you want

to duplicate a server-side symlink, include both the

symlink via its path, and referent directory via its

real path. If you're dealing with an older rsync on

the sending side, you may need to use the

--no-implied-dirs option.

It is also possible to limit the amount of path infor-

mation that is sent as implied directories for each

path you specify. With a modern rsync on the sending

side (beginning with 2.6.7), you can insert a dot and a slash into the source path, like this:

rsync -avR /foo/./bar/baz.c remote:/tmp/

That would create /tmp/bar/baz.c on the remote machine. (Note that the dot must be followed by a slash, so

/foo/. would not be abbreviated.) (2) For older rsync

versions, you would need to use a chdir to limit the source path. For example, when pushing files:

(cd /foo; rsync -avR bar/baz.c remote:/tmp/)

(Note that the parens put the two commands into a sub-

shell, so that the cd command doesn't remain in effect for future commands.) If you're pulling files from an

older rsync, use this idiom (but only for a non-daemon

transfer):

rsync -avR --rsync-path="cd /foo; rsync" \

remote:bar/baz.c /tmp/

--no-implied-dirs

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This option affects the default behavior of the --rela-

tive option. When it is specified, the attributes of the implied directories from the source names are not included in the transfer. This means that the corresponding path elements on the destination system are left unchanged if they exist, and any missing

implied directories are created with default attri-

butes. This even allows these implied path elements to have big differences, such as being a symlink to a directory on the receiving side.

For instance, if a command-line arg or a files-from

entry told rsync to transfer the file path/foo/file,

the directories path and path/foo are implied when

--relative is used. If path/foo is a symlink to bar on

the destination system, the receiving rsync would ordi-

narily delete path/foo, recreate it as a directory, and receive the file into the new directory. With

--no-implied-dirs, the receiving rsync updates

path/foo/file using the existing path elements, which means that the file ends up being created in path/bar. Another way to accomplish this link preservation is to

use the --keep-dirlinks option (which will also affect

symlinks to directories in the rest of the transfer).

When pulling files from an rsync older than 3.0.0, you

may need to use this option if the sending side has a symlink in the path you request and you wish the

implied directories to be transferred as normal direc-

tories.

-b, --backup

With this option, preexisting destination files are renamed as each file is transferred or deleted. You can control where the backup file goes and what (if

any) suffix gets appended using the --backup-dir and

--suffix options.

Note that if you don't specify --backup-dir, (1) the

--omit-dir-times option will be implied, and (2) if

--delete is also in effect (without --delete-excluded),

rsync will add a protect filter-rule for the backup

suffix to the end of all your existing excludes (e.g.

-f "P *~"). This will prevent previously backed-up

files from being deleted. Note that if you are supply-

ing your own filter rules, you may need to manually insert your own exclude/protect rule somewhere higher up in the list so that it has a high enough priority to be effective (e.g., if your rules specify a trailing

inclusion/exclusion of *, the auto-added rule would

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never be reached).

--backup-dir=DIR

In combination with the --backup option, this tells

rsync to store all backups in the specified directory

on the receiving side. This can be used for incremen-

tal backups. You can additionally specify a backup

suffix using the --suffix option (otherwise the files

backed up in the specified directory will keep their original filenames).

--suffix=SUFFIX

This option allows you to override the default backup

suffix used with the --backup (-b) option. The default

suffix is a ~ if no --backup-dir was specified, other-

wise it is an empty string.

-u, --update

This forces rsync to skip any files which exist on the

destination and have a modified time that is newer than the source file. (If an existing destination file has a modification time equal to the source file's, it will be updated if the sizes are different.) Note that this does not affect the copying of symlinks or other special files. Also, a difference of file

format between the sender and receiver is always con-

sidered to be important enough for an update, no matter what date is on the objects. In other words, if the source has a directory where the destination has a

file, the transfer would occur regardless of the times-

tamps. This option is a transfer rule, not an exclude, so it

doesn't affect the data that goes into the file-lists,

and thus it doesn't affect deletions. It just limits the files that the receiver requests to be transferred.

--inplace

This option changes how rsync transfers a file when the

file's data needs to be updated: instead of the default method of creating a new copy of the file and moving it

into place when it is complete, rsync instead writes

the updated data directly to the destination file. SunOS 5.10 Last change: 8 May 2009 17

User Commands rsync(1)

This has several effects: (1) in-use binaries cannot be

updated (either the OS will prevent this from happen-

ing, or binaries that attempt to swap-in their data

will misbehave or crash), (2) the file's data will be in an inconsistent state during the transfer, (3) a file's data may be left in an inconsistent state after the transfer if the transfer is interrupted or if an

update fails, (4) a file that does not have write per-

missions can not be updated, and (5) the efficiency of

rsync's delta-transfer algorithm may be reduced if some

data in the destination file is overwritten before it can be copied to a position later in the file (one exception to this is if you combine this option with

--backup, since rsync is smart enough to use the backup

file as the basis file for the transfer). WARNING: you should not use this option to update files that are being accessed by others, so be careful when choosing to use this for a copy. This option is useful for transfer of large files with

block-based changes or appended data, and also on sys-

tems that are disk bound, not network bound.

The option implies --partial (since an interrupted

transfer does not delete the file), but conflicts with

--partial-dir and --delay-updates. Prior to rsync

2.6.4 --inplace was also incompatible with

--compare-dest and --link-dest.

--append

This causes rsync to update a file by appending data

onto the end of the file, which presumes that the data that already exists on the receiving side is identical with the start of the file on the sending side. If a file needs to be transferred and its size on the receiver is the same or longer than the size on the sender, the file is skipped. This does not interfere

with the updating of a file's non-content attributes

(e.g. permissions, ownership, etc.) when the file does not need to be transferred, nor does it affect the

updating of any non-regular files. Implies --inplace,

but does not conflict with --sparse (since it is always

extending a file's length).

--append-verify

This works just like the --append option, but the

existing data on the receiving side is included in the SunOS 5.10 Last change: 8 May 2009 18

User Commands rsync(1)

full-file checksum verification step, which will cause

a file to be resent if the final verification step

fails (rsync uses a normal, non-appending --inplace

transfer for the resend).

Note: prior to rsync 3.0.0, the --append option worked

like --append-verify, so if you are interacting with an

older rsync (or the transfer is using a protocol prior

to 30), specifying either append option will initiate

an --append-verify transfer.

-d, --dirs

Tell the sending side to include any directories that

are encountered. Unlike --recursive, a directory's

contents are not copied unless the directory name specified is . or ends with a trailing slash (e.g. ., dir/., dir/, etc.). Without this option or the

--recursive option, rsync will skip all directories it

encounters (and output a message to that effect for

each one). If you specify both --dirs and --recursive,

--recursive takes precedence.

The --dirs option is implied by the --files-from option

or the --list-only option (including an implied

--list-only usage) if --recursive wasn't specified (so

that directories are seen in the listing). Specify

--no-dirs (or --no-d) if you want to turn this off.

There is also a backward-compatibility helper option,

--old-dirs (or --old-d) that tells rsync to use a hack

of -r --exclude='//' to get an older rsync to list a

single directory without recursing.

-l, --links

When symlinks are encountered, recreate the symlink on the destination.

-L, --copy-links

When symlinks are encountered, the item that they point to (the referent) is copied, rather than the symlink.

In older versions of rsync, this option also had the

side-effect of telling the receiving side to follow

symlinks, such as symlinks to directories. In a modern

rsync such as this one, you'll need to specify

--keep-dirlinks (-K) to get this extra behavior. The

only exception is when sending files to an rsync that

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User Commands rsync(1)

is too old to understand -K - in that case, the -L

option will still have the side-effect of -K on that

older receiving rsync.

--copy-unsafe-links

This tells rsync to copy the referent of symbolic links

that point outside the copied tree. Absolute symlinks are also treated like ordinary files, and so are any

symlinks in the source path itself when --relative is

used. This option has no additional effect if

--copy-links was also specified.

--safe-links

This tells rsync to ignore any symbolic links which

point outside the copied tree. All absolute symlinks are also ignored. Using this option in conjunction with

--relative may give unexpected results.

-k, --copy-dirlinks

This option causes the sending side to treat a symlink to a directory as though it were a real directory.

This is useful if you don't want symlinks to non-

directories to be affected, as they would be using

--copy-links.

Without this option, if the sending side has replaced a directory with a symlink to a directory, the receiving side will delete anything that is in the way of the new symlink, including a directory hierarchy (as long as

--force or --delete is in effect).

See also --keep-dirlinks for an analogous option for

the receiving side.

-K, --keep-dirlinks

This option causes the receiving side to treat a sym-

link to a directory as though it were a real directory, but only if it matches a real directory from the sender. Without this option, the receiver's symlink would be deleted and replaced with a real directory. For example, suppose you transfer a directory foo that contains a file file, but foo is a symlink to directory

bar on the receiver. Without --keep-dirlinks, the

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receiver deletes symlink foo, recreates it as a direc-

tory, and receives the file into the new directory.

With --keep-dirlinks, the receiver keeps the symlink

and file ends up in bar.

One note of caution: if you use --keep-dirlinks, you

must trust all the symlinks in the copy! If it is pos-

sible for an untrusted user to create their own symlink to any directory, the user could then (on a subsequent copy) replace the symlink with a real directory and affect the content of whatever directory the symlink references. For backup copies, you are better off using something like a bind mount instead of a symlink to modify your receiving hierarchy.

See also --copy-dirlinks for an analogous option for

the sending side.

-H, --hard-links

This tells rsync to look for hard-linked files in the

transfer and link together the corresponding files on

the receiving side. Without this option, hard-linked

files in the transfer are treated as though they were separate files.

When you are updating a non-empty destination, this

option only ensures that files that are hard-linked

together on the source are hard-linked together on the

destination. It does NOT currently endeavor to break already existing hard links on the destination that do not exist between the source files. Note, however,

that if one or more extra-linked files have content

changes, they will become unlinked when updated (assum-

ing you are not using the --inplace option).

Note that rsync can only detect hard links between

files that are inside the transfer set. If rsync

updates a file that has extra hard-link connections to

files outside the transfer, that linkage will be bro-

ken. If you are tempted to use the --inplace option to

avoid this breakage, be very careful that you know how your files are being updated so that you are certain that no unintended changes happen due to lingering hard

links (and see the --inplace option for more caveats).

If incremental recursion is active (see --recursive),

rsync may transfer a missing hard-linked file before it

finds that another link for that contents exists else-

where in the hierarchy. This does not affect the accu-

racy of the transfer, just its efficiency. One way to SunOS 5.10 Last change: 8 May 2009 21

User Commands rsync(1)

avoid this is to disable incremental recursion using

the --no-inc-recursive option.

-p, --perms

This option causes the receiving rsync to set the des-

tination permissions to be the same as the source per-

missions. (See also the --chmod option for a way to

modify what rsync considers to be the source permis-

sions.)

When this option is off, permissions are set as fol-

lows: o Existing files (including updated files) retain

their existing permissions, though the --executa-

bility option might change just the execute per-

mission for the file. o New files get their normal permission bits set to the source file's permissions masked with the receiving directory's default permissions (either the receiving process's umask, or the permissions specified via the destination directory's default ACL), and their special permission bits disabled except in the case where a new directory inherits a setgid bit from its parent directory.

Thus, when --perms and --executability are both dis-

abled, rsync's behavior is the same as that of other

file-copy utilities, such as cp(1) and tar(1).

In summary: to give destination files (both old and

new) the source permissions, use --perms. To give new

files the destination-default permissions (while leav-

ing existing files unchanged), make sure that the

--perms option is off and use --chmod=ugo=rwX (which

ensures that all non-masked bits get enabled). If

you'd care to make this latter behavior easier to type, you could define a popt alias for it, such as putting this line in the file ~/.popt (the following defines

the -Z option, and includes --no-g to use the default

group of the destination dir):

rsync alias -Z --no-p --no-g --chmod=ugo=rwX

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You could then use this new option in a command such as this one:

rsync -avZ src/ dest/

(Caveat: make sure that -a does not follow -Z, or it

will re-enable the two --no-* options mentioned above.)

The preservation of the destination's setgid bit on

newly-created directories when --perms is off was added

in rsync 2.6.7. Older rsync versions erroneously

preserved the three special permission bits for newly-

created files when --perms was off, while overriding

the destination's setgid bit setting on a newly-created

directory. Default ACL observance was added to the ACL

patch for rsync 2.6.7, so older (or non-ACL-enabled)

rsyncs use the umask even if default ACLs are present.

(Keep in mind that it is the version of the receiving

rsync that affects these behaviors.)

-E, --executability

This option causes rsync to preserve the executability

(or non-executability) of regular files when --perms is

not enabled. A regular file is considered to be exe-

cutable if at least one x is turned on in its permis-

sions. When an existing destination file's executabil-

ity differs from that of the corresponding source file,

rsync modifies the destination file's permissions as

follows:

o To make a file non-executable, rsync turns off all

its x permissions.

o To make a file executable, rsync turns on each x

permission that has a corresponding r permission enabled.

If --perms is enabled, this option is ignored.

-A, --acls

This option causes rsync to update the destination ACLs

to be the same as the source ACLs. The option also

implies --perms.

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User Commands rsync(1)

The source and destination systems must have compatible ACL entries for this option to work properly. See the

--fake-super option for a way to backup and restore

ACLs that are not compatible.

-X, --xattrs

This option causes rsync to update the remote extended

attributes to be the same as the local ones.

For systems that support extended-attribute namespaces,

a copy being done by a super-user copies all namespaces

except system.*. A normal user only copies the user.*

namespace. To be able to backup and restore non-user

namespaces as a normal user, see the --fake-super

option.

--chmod

This option tells rsync to apply one or more comma-

separated chmod strings to the permission of the files in the transfer. The resulting value is treated as though it was the permissions that the sending side supplied for the file, which means that this option can

seem to have no effect on existing files if --perms is

not enabled. In addition to the normal parsing rules specified in the chmod(1) manpage, you can specify an item that should only apply to a directory by prefixing it with a D, or specify an item that should only apply to a file by prefixing it with a F. For example:

--chmod=Dg+s,ug+w,Fo-w,+X

It is also legal to specify multiple --chmod options,

as each additional option is just appended to the list of changes to make.

See the --perms and --executability options for how the

resulting permission value can be applied to the files in the transfer.

-o, --owner

This option causes rsync to set the owner of the desti-

nation file to be the same as the source file, but only SunOS 5.10 Last change: 8 May 2009 24

User Commands rsync(1)

if the receiving rsync is being run as the super-user

(see also the --super and --fake-super options).

Without this option, the owner of new and/or transferred files are set to the invoking user on the receiving side. The preservation of ownership will associate matching names by default, but may fall back to using the ID number in some circumstances (see also the

--numeric-ids option for a full discussion).

-g, --group

This option causes rsync to set the group of the desti-

nation file to be the same as the source file. If the

receiving program is not running as the super-user (or

if --no-super was specified), only groups that the

invoking user on the receiving side is a member of will be preserved. Without this option, the group is set to the default group of the invoking user on the receiving side. The preservation of group information will associate matching names by default, but may fall back to using the ID number in some circumstances (see also the

--numeric-ids option for a full discussion).

--devices

This option causes rsync to transfer character and

block device files to the remote system to recreate these devices. This option has no effect if the

receiving rsync is not run as the super-user (see also

the --super and --fake-super options).

--specials

This option causes rsync to transfer special files such

as named sockets and fifos.

-D The -D option is equivalent to --devices --specials.

-t, --times

This tells rsync to transfer modification times along

with the files and update them on the remote system. SunOS 5.10 Last change: 8 May 2009 25

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Note that if this option is not used, the optimization that excludes files that have not been modified cannot

be effective; in other words, a missing -t or -a will

cause the next transfer to behave as if it used -I,

causing all files to be updated (though rsync's delta-

transfer algorithm will make the update fairly effi-

cient if the files haven't actually changed, you're

much better off using -t).

-O, --omit-dir-times

This tells rsync to omit directories when it is

preserving modification times (see --times). If NFS is

sharing the directories on the receiving side, it is a

good idea to use -O. This option is inferred if you

use --backup without --backup-dir.

--super

This tells the receiving side to attempt super-user

activities even if the receiving rsync wasn't run by

the super-user. These activities include: preserving

users via the --owner option, preserving all groups

(not just the current user's groups) via the --groups

option, and copying devices via the --devices option.

This is useful for systems that allow such activities

without being the super-user, and also for ensuring

that you will get errors if the receiving side isn't

being run as the super-user. To turn off super-user

activities, the super-user can use --no-super.

--fake-super

When this option is enabled, rsync simulates super-user

activities by saving/restoring the privileged attri-

butes via special extended attributes that are attached to each file (as needed). This includes the file's owner and group (if it is not the default), the file's device info (device & special files are created as empty text files), and any permission bits that we won't allow to be set on the real file (e.g. the real

file gets u-s,g-s,o-t for safety) or that would limit

the owner's access (since the real super-user can

always access/change a file, the files we create can always be accessed/changed by the creating user). This

option also handles ACLs (if --acls was specified) and

non-user extended attributes (if --xattrs was speci-

fied). SunOS 5.10 Last change: 8 May 2009 26

User Commands rsync(1)

This is a good way to backup data without using a

super-user, and to store ACLs from incompatible sys-

tems.

The --fake-super option only affects the side where the

option is used. To affect the remote side of a

remote-shell connection, specify an rsync path:

rsync -av --rsync-path="rsync --fake-super" /src/

host:/dest/ Since there is only one side in a local copy, this option affects both the sending and receiving of files. You'll need to specify a copy using localhost if you need to avoid this, possibly using the lsh shell script (from the support directory) as a substitute for an

actual remote shell (see --rsh).

This option is overridden by both --super and

--no-super.

See also the fake super setting in the daemon's

rsyncd.conf file.

-S, --sparse

Try to handle sparse files efficiently so they take up less space on the destination. Conflicts with

--inplace because it's not possible to overwrite data

in a sparse fashion. NOTE: This option has no effect if the destination is a Solaris "tmpfs" filesystem. The files won't be sparse.

-n, --dry-run

This makes rsync perform a trial run that doesn't make

any changes (and produces mostly the same output as a real run). It is most commonly used in combination

with the -v, --verbose and/or -i, --itemize-changes

options to see what an rsync command is going to do

before one actually runs it.

The output of --itemize-changes is supposed to be

exactly the same on a dry run and a subsequent real run (barring intentional trickery and system call failures); if it isn't, that's a bug. Other output is the same to the extent practical, but may differ in SunOS 5.10 Last change: 8 May 2009 27

User Commands rsync(1)

some areas. Notably, a dry run does not send the

actual data for file transfers, so --progress has no

effect, the bytes sent, bytes received, literal data, and matched data statistics are too small, and the speedup value is equivalent to a run where no file transfers are needed.

-W, --whole-file

With this option rsync's delta-transfer algorithm is

not used and the whole file is sent as-is instead. The

transfer may be faster if this option is used when the bandwidth between the source and destination machines is higher than the bandwidth to disk (especially when the disk is actually a networked filesystem). This is the default when both the source and destination are specified as local paths.

-x, --one-file-system

This tells rsync to avoid crossing a filesystem boun-

dary when recursing. This does not limit the user's

ability to specify items to copy from multiple filesys-

tems, just rsync's recursion through the hierarchy of

each directory that the user specified, and also the

analogous recursion on the receiving side during dele-

tion. Also keep in mind that rsync treats a bind mount

to the same device as being on the same filesystem.

If this option is repeated, rsync omits all mount-point

directories from the copy. Otherwise, it includes an

empty directory at each mount-point it encounters

(using the attributes of the mounted directory because

those of the underlying mount-point directory are inac-

cessible).

If rsync has been told to collapse symlinks (via

--copy-links or --copy-unsafe-links), a symlink to a

directory on another device is treated like a mount-

point. Symlinks to non-directories are unaffected by

this option.

--existing, --ignore-non-existing

This tells rsync to skip creating files (including

directories) that do not exist yet on the destination.

If this option is combined with the --ignore-existing

option, no files will be updated (which can be useful if all you want to do is delete extraneous files). SunOS 5.10 Last change: 8 May 2009 28

User Commands rsync(1)

This option is a transfer rule, not an exclude, so it

doesn't affect the data that goes into the file-lists,

and thus it doesn't affect deletions. It just limits the files that the receiver requests to be transferred.

--ignore-existing

This tells rsync to skip updating files that already

exist on the destination (this does not ignore existing directories, or nothing would get done). See also

--existing.

This option is a transfer rule, not an exclude, so it

doesn't affect the data that goes into the file-lists,

and thus it doesn't affect deletions. It just limits the files that the receiver requests to be transferred. This option can be useful for those doing backups using

the --link-dest option when they need to continue a

backup run that got interrupted. Since a --link-dest

run is copied into a new directory hierarchy (when it

is used properly), using --ignore existing will ensure

that the already-handled files don't get tweaked (which

avoids a change in permissions on the hard-linked

files). This does mean that this option is only look-

ing at the existing files in the destination hierarchy itself.

--remove-source-files

This tells rsync to remove from the sending side the

files (meaning non-directories) that are a part of the

transfer and have been successfully duplicated on the receiving side.

--delete

This tells rsync to delete extraneous files from the

receiving side (ones that aren't on the sending side),

but only for the directories that are being synchron-

ized. You must have asked rsync to send the whole

directory (e.g. dir or dir/) without using a wildcard for the directory's contents (e.g. dir/*) since the

wildcard is expanded by the shell and rsync thus gets a

request to transfer individual files, not the files' parent directory. Files that are excluded from the transfer are also excluded from being deleted unless

you use the --delete-excluded option or mark the rules

as only matching on the sending side (see the SunOS 5.10 Last change: 8 May 2009 29

User Commands rsync(1)

include/exclude modifiers in the FILTER RULES section).

Prior to rsync 2.6.7, this option would have no effect

unless --recursive was enabled. Beginning with 2.6.7,

deletions will also occur when --dirs (-d) is enabled,

but only for directories whose contents are being copied. This option can be dangerous if used incorrectly! It is a very good idea to first try a run using the

--dry-run option (-n) to see what files are going to be

deleted.

If the sending side detects any I/O errors, then the deletion of any files at the destination will be automatically disabled. This is to prevent temporary filesystem failures (such as NFS errors) on the sending

side causing a massive deletion of files on the desti-

nation. You can override this with the --ignore-errors

option.

The --delete option may be combined with one of the

--delete-WHEN options without conflict, as well as

--delete-excluded. However, if none of the

--delete-WHEN options are specified, rsync will choose

the --delete-during algorithm when talking to rsync

3.0.0 or newer, and the --delete-before algorithm when

talking to an older rsync. See also --delete-delay and

--delete-after.

--delete-before

Request that the file-deletions on the receiving side

be done before the transfer starts. See --delete

(which is implied) for more details on file-deletion.

Deleting before the transfer is helpful if the filesys-

tem is tight for space and removing extraneous files would help to make the transfer possible. However, it does introduce a delay before the start of the transfer, and this delay might cause the transfer to

timeout (if --timeout was specified). It also forces

rsync to use the old, non-incremental recursion algo-

rithm that requires rsync to scan all the files in the

transfer into memory at once (see --recursive).

--delete-during, --del

Request that the file-deletions on the receiving side

be done incrementally as the transfer happens. The SunOS 5.10 Last change: 8 May 2009 30

User Commands rsync(1)

per-directory delete scan is done right before each

directory is checked for updates, so it behaves like a

more efficient --delete-before, including doing the

deletions prior to any per-directory filter files being

updated. This option was first added in rsync version

2.6.4. See --delete (which is implied) for more

details on file-deletion.

--delete-delay

Request that the file-deletions on the receiving side

be computed during the transfer (like --delete-during),

and then removed after the transfer completes. This is

useful when combined with --delay-updates and/or

--fuzzy, and is more efficient than using

--delete-after (but can behave differently, since

--delete-after computes the deletions in a separate

pass after all updates are done). If the number of removed files overflows an internal buffer, a temporary file will be created on the receiving side to hold the names (it is removed while open, so you shouldn't see

it during the transfer). If the creation of the tem-

porary file fails, rsync will try to fall back to using

--delete-after (which it cannot do if --recursive is

doing an incremental scan). See --delete (which is

implied) for more details on file-deletion.

--delete-after

Request that the file-deletions on the receiving side

be done after the transfer has completed. This is use-

ful if you are sending new per-directory merge files as

a part of the transfer and you want their exclusions to take effect for the delete phase of the current

transfer. It also forces rsync to use the old, non-

incremental recursion algorithm that requires rsync to

scan all the files in the transfer into memory at once

(see --recursive). See --delete (which is implied) for

more details on file-deletion.

--delete-excluded

In addition to deleting the files on the receiving side

that are not on the sending side, this tells rsync to

also delete any files on the receiving side that are

excluded (see --exclude). See the FILTER RULES section

for a way to make individual exclusions behave this way on the receiver, and for a way to protect files from

--delete-excluded. See --delete (which is implied) for

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more details on file-deletion.

--ignore-errors

Tells --delete to go ahead and delete files even when

there are I/O errors.

--force

This option tells rsync to delete a non-empty directory

when it is to be replaced by a non-directory. This is

only relevant if deletions are not active (see --delete

for details).

Note for older rsync versions: --force used to still be

required when using --delete-after, and it used to be

non-functional unless the --recursive option was also

enabled.

--max-delete=NUM

This tells rsync not to delete more than NUM files or

directories. If that limit is exceeded, a warning is

output and rsync exits with an error code of 25 (new

for 3.0.0). Also new for version 3.0.0, you may specify

--max-delete=0 to be warned about any extraneous files

in the destination without removing any of them. Older clients interpreted this as unlimited, so if you don't know what version the client is, you can use the less

obvious --max-delete=-1 as a backward-compatible way to

specify that no deletions be allowed (though older ver-

sions didn't warn when the limit was exceeded).

--max-size=SIZE

This tells rsync to avoid transferring any file that is

larger than the specified SIZE. The SIZE value can be suffixed with a string to indicate a size multiplier,

and may be a fractional value (e.g. --max-size=1.5m).

This option is a transfer rule, not an exclude, so it

doesn't affect the data that goes into the file-lists,

and thus it doesn't affect deletions. It just limits the files that the receiver requests to be transferred. The suffixes are as follows: K (or KiB) is a kibibyte SunOS 5.10 Last change: 8 May 2009 32

User Commands rsync(1)

(1024), M (or MiB) is a mebibyte (1024*1024), and G (or GiB) is a gibibyte (1024*1024*1024). If you want the multiplier to be 1000 instead of 1024, use KB, MB, or

GB. (Note: lower-case is also accepted for all

values.) Finally, if the suffix ends in either +1 or

-1, the value will be offset by one byte in the indi-

cated direction.

Examples: --max-size=1.5mb-1 is 1499999 bytes, and

--max-size=2g+1 is 2147483649 bytes.

--min-size=SIZE

This tells rsync to avoid transferring any file that is

smaller than the specified SIZE, which can help in not

transferring small, junk files. See the --max-size

option for a description of SIZE and other information.

-B, --block-size=BLOCKSIZE

This forces the block size used in rsync's delta-

transfer algorithm to a fixed value. It is normally selected based on the size of each file being updated. See the technical report for details.

-e, --rsh=COMMAND

This option allows you to choose an alternative remote shell program to use for communication between the

local and remote copies of rsync. Typically, rsync is

configured to use ssh by default, but you may prefer to use rsh on a local network. If this option is used with [user@]host::module/path, then the remote shell COMMAND will be used to run an

rsync daemon on the remote host, and all data will be

transmitted through that remote shell connection, rather than through a direct socket connection to a

running rsync daemon on the remote host. See the sec-

tion USING RSYNC-DAEMON FEATURES VIA A REMOTE-SHELL

CONNECTION above.

Command-line arguments are permitted in COMMAND pro-

vided that COMMAND is presented to rsync as a single

argument. You must use spaces (not tabs or other whi-

tespace) to separate the command and args from each

other, and you can use single- and/or double-quotes to

preserve spaces in an argument (but not backslashes).

Note that doubling a single-quote inside a single-

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quoted string gives you a single-quote; likewise for

double-quotes (though you need to pay attention to

which quotes your shell is parsing and which quotes

rsync is parsing). Some examples:

-e 'ssh -p 2234'

-e 'ssh -o "ProxyCommand nohup ssh firewall nc -w1

%h %p"'

(Note that ssh users can alternately customize site-

specific connect options in their .ssh/config file.) You can also choose the remote shell program using the

RSYNC_RSH environment variable, which accepts the same

range of values as -e.

See also the --blocking-io option which is affected by

this option.

--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 pro-

gram, 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 direc-

tory on the remote machine for use with the --relative

option. For instance:

rsync -avR --rsync-path="cd /a/b && rsync" host:c/d

/e/

-C, --cvs-exclude

This is a useful shorthand for excluding a broad range of files that you often don't want to transfer between

systems. It uses a similar algorithm to CVS to deter-

mine if a file should be ignored.

The exclude list is initialized to exclude the follow-

ing items (these initial items are marked as perishable SunOS 5.10 Last change: 8 May 2009 34

User Commands rsync(1)

- see the FILTER RULES section):

RCS SCCS CVS CVS.adm RCSLOG cvslog.* tags TAGS

.make.state .nse_depinfo *~ #* .#* ,* _$* *$ *.old

*.bak *.BAK *.orig *.rej .del-* *.a *.olb *.o

*.obj *.so *.exe *.Z *.elc *.ln core .svn/ .git/ .bzr/

then, files listed in a $HOME/.cvsignore are added to

the list and any files listed in the CVSIGNORE environ-

ment variable (all cvsignore names are delimited by whitespace). Finally, any file is ignored if it is in the same directory as a .cvsignore file and matches one of the

patterns listed therein. Unlike rsync's filter/exclude

files, these patterns are split on whitespace. See the cvs(1) manual for more information.

If you're combining -C with your own --filter rules,

you should note that these CVS excludes are appended at

the end of your own rules, regardless of where the -C

was placed on the command-line. This makes them a

lower priority than any rules you specified explicitly. If you want to control where these CVS excludes get

inserted into your filter rules, you should omit the -C

as a command-line option and use a combination of

--filter=:C and --filter=-C (either on your command-

line or by putting the :C and -C rules into a filter

file with your other rules). The first option turns on

the per-directory scanning for the .cvsignore file.

The second option does a one-time import of the CVS

excludes mentioned above.

-f, --filter=RULE

This option allows you to add rules to selectively exclude certain files from the list of files to be transferred. This is most useful in combination with a recursive transfer.

You may use as many --filter options on the command

line as you like to build up the list of files to exclude. If the filter contains whitespace, be sure to

quote it so that the shell gives the rule to rsync as a

single argument. The text below also mentions that you can use an underscore to replace the space that separates a rule from its arg. SunOS 5.10 Last change: 8 May 2009 35

User Commands rsync(1)

See the FILTER RULES section for detailed information on this option.

-F The -F option is a shorthand for adding two --filter

rules to your command. The first time it is used is a shorthand for this rule:

--filter='dir-merge /.rsync-filter'

This tells rsync to look for per-directory

.rsync-filter files that have been sprinkled through

the hierarchy and use their rules to filter the files

in the transfer. If -F is repeated, it is a shorthand

for this rule:

--filter='exclude .rsync-filter'

This filters out the .rsync-filter files themselves

from the transfer. See the FILTER RULES section for detailed information on how these options work.

--exclude=PATTERN

This option is a simplified form of the --filter option

that defaults to an exclude rule and does not allow the

full rule-parsing syntax of normal filter rules.

See the FILTER RULES section for detailed information on this option.

--exclude-from=FILE

This option is related to the --exclude option, but it

specifies a FILE that contains exclude patterns (one per line). Blank lines in the file and lines starting

with ; or # are ignored. If FILE is -, the list will

be read from standard input.

--include=PATTERN

This option is a simplified form of the --filter option

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that defaults to an include rule and does not allow the

full rule-parsing syntax of normal filter rules.

See the FILTER RULES section for detailed information on this option.

--include-from=FILE

This option is related to the --include option, but it

specifies a FILE that contains include patterns (one per line). Blank lines in the file and lines starting

with ; or # are ignored. If FILE is -, the list will

be read from standard input.

--files-from=FILE

Using this option allows you to specify the exact list of files to transfer (as read from the specified FILE

or - for standard input). It also tweaks the default

behavior of rsync to make transferring just the speci-

fied files and directories easier:

o The --relative (-R) option is implied, which

preserves the path information that is specified

for each item in the file (use --no-relative or

--no-R if you want to turn that off).

o The --dirs (-d) option is implied, which will

create directories specified in the list on the destination rather than noisily skipping them (use

--no-dirs or --no-d if you want to turn that off).

o The --archive (-a) option's behavior does not

imply --recursive (-r), so specify it explicitly,

if you want it.

o These side-effects change the default state of

rsync, so the position of the --files-from option

on the command-line has no bearing on how other

options are parsed (e.g. -a works the same before

or after --files-from, as does --no-R and all

other options).

The filenames that are read from the FILE are all rela-

tive to the source dir - any leading slashes are

removed and no .. references are allowed to go higher than the source dir. For example, take this command: SunOS 5.10 Last change: 8 May 2009 37

User Commands rsync(1)

rsync -a --files-from=/tmp/foo /usr remote:/backup

If /tmp/foo contains the string bin (or even /bin), the /usr/bin directory will be created as /backup/bin on

the remote host. If it contains bin/ (note the trail-

ing slash), the immediate contents of the directory would also be sent (without needing to be explicitly

mentioned in the file - this began in version 2.6.4).

In both cases, if the -r option was enabled, that dir's

entire hierarchy would also be transferred (keep in

mind that -r needs to be specified explicitly with

--files-from, since it is not implied by -a). Also

note that the effect of the (enabled by default)

--relative option is to duplicate only the path info

that is read from the file - it does not force the

duplication of the source-spec path (/usr in this

case).

In addition, the --files-from file can be read from the

remote host instead of the local host if you specify a host: in front of the file (the host must match one end

of the transfer). As a short-cut, you can specify just

a prefix of : to mean use the remote end of the transfer. For example:

rsync -a --files-from=:/path/file-list src:/

/tmp/copy This would copy all the files specified in the

/path/file-list file that was located on the remote src

host.

-0, --from0

This tells rsync that the rules/filenames it reads from

a file are terminated by a null ('\0') character, not a

NL, CR, or CR+LF. This affects --exclude-from,

--include-from, --files-from, and any merged files

specified in a --filter rule. It does not affect

--cvs-exclude (since all names read from a .cvsignore

file are split on whitespace).

If the --iconv and --protect-args options are specified

and the --files-from filenames are being sent from one

host to another, the filenames will be translated from the sending host's charset to the receiving host's charset. SunOS 5.10 Last change: 8 May 2009 38

User Commands rsync(1)

-s, --protect-args

This option sends all filenames and some options to the

remote rsync without allowing the remote shell to

interpret them. This means that spaces are not split

in names, and any non-wildcard special characters are

not translated (such as ~, $, ;, &, etc.). Wildcards

are expanded on the remote host by rsync (instead of

the shell doing it).

If you use this option with --iconv, the args will also

be translated from the local to the remote character-

set. The translation happens before wild-cards are

expanded. See also the --files-from option.

-T, --temp-dir=DIR

This option instructs rsync to use DIR as a scratch

directory when creating temporary copies of the files transferred on the receiving side. The default behavior is to create each temporary file in the same directory as the associated destination file. This option is most often used when the receiving disk partition does not have enough free space to hold a copy of the largest file in the transfer. In this case (i.e. when the scratch directory is on a different disk

partition), rsync will not be able to rename each

received temporary file over the top of the associated destination file, but instead must copy it into place. Rsync does this by copying the file over the top of the destination file, which means that the destination file will contain truncated data during this copy. If this were not done this way (even if the destination file

were first removed, the data locally copied to a tem-

porary file in the destination directory, and then renamed into place) it would be possible for the old file to continue taking up disk space (if someone had it open), and thus there might not be enough room to fit the new version on the disk at the same time. If you are using this option for reasons other than a shortage of disk space, you may wish to combine it with

the --delay-updates option, which will ensure that all

copied files get put into subdirectories in the desti-

nation hierarchy, awaiting the end of the transfer. If

you don't have enough room to duplicate all the arriv-

ing files on the destination partition, another way to

tell rsync that you aren't overly concerned about disk

space is to use the --partial-dir option with a

SunOS 5.10 Last change: 8 May 2009 39

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relative path; because this tells rsync that it is OK

to stash off a copy of a single file in a subdir in the

destination hierarchy, rsync will use the partial-dir

as a staging area to bring over the copied file, and then rename it into place from there. (Specifying a

--partial-dir with an absolute path does not have this

side-effect.)

-y, --fuzzy

This option tells rsync that it should look for a basis

file for any destination file that is missing. The current algorithm looks in the same directory as the

destination file for either a file that has an identi-

cal size and modified-time, or a similarly-named file.

If found, rsync uses the fuzzy basis file to try to

speed up the transfer.

Note that the use of the --delete option might get rid

of any potential fuzzy-match files, so either use

--delete-after or specify some filename exclusions if

you need to prevent this.

--compare-dest=DIR

This option instructs rsync to use DIR on the destina-

tion machine as an additional hierarchy to compare des-

tination files against doing transfers (if the files are missing in the destination directory). If a file is found in DIR that is identical to the sender's file, the file will NOT be transferred to the destination directory. This is useful for creating a sparse backup of just files that have changed from an earlier backup.

Beginning in version 2.6.4, multiple --compare-dest

directories may be provided, which will cause rsync to

search the list in the order specified for an exact

match. If a match is found that differs only in attri-

butes, a local copy is made and the attributes updated. If a match is not found, a basis file from one of the DIRs will be selected to try to speed up the transfer.

If DIR is a relative path, it is relative to the desti-

nation directory. See also --copy-dest and

--link-dest.

--copy-dest=DIR

This option behaves like --compare-dest, but rsync will

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User Commands rsync(1)

also copy unchanged files found in DIR to the destina-

tion directory using a local copy. This is useful for doing transfers to a new destination while leaving

existing files intact, and then doing a flash-cutover

when all files have been successfully transferred.

Multiple --copy-dest directories may be provided, which

will cause rsync to search the list in the order speci-

fied for an unchanged file. If a match is not found, a basis file from one of the DIRs will be selected to try to speed up the transfer.

If DIR is a relative path, it is relative to the desti-

nation directory. See also --compare-dest and

--link-dest.

--link-dest=DIR

This option behaves like --copy-dest, but unchanged

files are hard linked from DIR to the destination directory. The files must be identical in all

preserved attributes (e.g. permissions, possibly owner-

ship) in order for the files to be linked together. An example:

rsync -av --link-dest=$PWD/prior_dir host:src_dir/

new_dir/

If file's aren't linking, double-check their attri-

butes. Also check if some attributes are getting

forced outside of rsync's control, such a mount option

that squishes root to a single user, or mounts a remov-

able drive with generic ownership (such as OS X's Ignore ownership on this volume option).

Beginning in version 2.6.4, multiple --link-dest direc-

tories may be provided, which will cause rsync to

search the list in the order specified for an exact

match. If a match is found that differs only in attri-

butes, a local copy is made and the attributes updated. If a match is not found, a basis file from one of the DIRs will be selected to try to speed up the transfer.

This option works best when copying into an empty des-

tination hierarchy, as rsync treats existing files as

definitive (so it never looks in the link-dest dirs

when a destination file already exists), and as malle-

able (so it might change the attributes of a destina-

tion file, which affects all the hard-linked versions).

SunOS 5.10 Last change: 8 May 2009 41

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Note that if you combine this option with

--ignore-times, rsync will not link any files together

because it only links identical files together as a

substitute for transferring the file, never as an addi-

tional check after the file is updated.

If DIR is a relative path, it is relative to the desti-

nation directory. See also --compare-dest and

--copy-dest.

Note that rsync versions prior to 2.6.1 had a bug that

could prevent --link-dest from working properly for a

non-super-user when -o was specified (or implied by

-a). You can work-around this bug by avoiding the -o

option when sending to an old rsync.

-z, --compress

With this option, rsync compresses the file data as it

is sent to the destination machine, which reduces the

amount of data being transmitted - something that is

useful over a slow connection. Note that this option typically achieves better compression ratios than can be achieved by using a compressing remote shell or a compressing transport because it takes advantage of the implicit information in the matching data blocks that are not explicitly sent over the connection.

See the --skip-compress option for the default list of

file suffixes that will not be compressed.

--compress-level=NUM

Explicitly set the compression level to use (see

--compress) instead of letting it default. If NUM is

non-zero, the --compress option is implied.

--skip-compress=LIST

Override the list of file suffixes that will not be

compressed. The LIST should be one or more file suf-

fixes (without the dot) separated by slashes (/). You may specify an empty string to indicate that no file should be skipped.

Simple character-class matching is supported: each must

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consist of a list of letters inside the square brackets

(e.g. no special classes, such as [:alpha:], are sup-

ported).

The characters asterisk (*) and question-mark (?) have

no special meaning. Here's an example that specifies 6 suffixes to skip (since 1 of the 5 rules matches 2 suffixes):

--skip-compress=gz/jpg/mp[34]/7z/bz2

The default list of suffixes that will not be compressed is this (several of these are newly added for 3.0.0): gz/zip/z/rpm/deb/iso/bz2/t[gb]z/7z/mp[34]/mov/avi/ogg/jpg/jpeg

This list will be replaced by your --skip-compress list

in all but one situation: a copy from a daemon rsync

will add your skipped suffixes to its list of non-

compressing files (and its list may be configured to a different default).

--numeric-ids

With this option rsync will transfer numeric group and

user IDs rather than using user and group names and mapping them at both ends.

By default rsync will use the username and groupname to

determine what ownership to give files. The special uid 0 and the special group 0 are never mapped via

user/group names even if the --numeric-ids option is

not specified. If a user or group has no name on the source system or it has no match on the destination system, then the numeric ID from the source system is used instead. See also the comments on the use chroot setting in the

rsyncd.conf manpage for information on how the chroot

setting affects rsync's ability to look up the names of

the users and groups and what you can do about it.

--timeout=TIMEOUT

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This option allows you to set a maximum I/O timeout in seconds. If no data is transferred for the specified

time then rsync will exit. The default is 0, which

means no timeout.

--contimeout

This option allows you to set the amount of time that

rsync will wait for its connection to an rsync daemon

to succeed. If the timeout is reached, rsync exits

with an error.

--address

By default rsync will bind to the wildcard address when

connecting to an rsync daemon. The --address option

allows you to specify a specific IP address (or host-

name) to bind to. See also this option in the --daemon

mode section.

--port=PORT

This specifies an alternate TCP port number to use rather than the default of 873. This is only needed if

you are using the double-colon (::) syntax to connect

with an rsync daemon (since the URL syntax has a way to

specify the port as a part of the URL). See also this

option in the --daemon mode section.

--sockopts

This option can provide endless fun for people who like to tune their systems to the utmost degree. You can set all sorts of socket options which may make transfers

faster (or slower!). Read the man page for the set-

sockopt() system call for details on some of the options you may be able to set. By default no special socket options are set. This only affects direct socket

connections to a remote rsync daemon. This option also

exists in the --daemon mode section.

--blocking-io

This tells rsync to use blocking I/O when launching a

remote shell transport. If the remote shell is either

rsh or remsh, rsync defaults to using blocking I/O,

otherwise it defaults to using non-blocking I/O. (Note

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User Commands rsync(1)

that ssh prefers non-blocking I/O.)

-i, --itemize-changes

Requests a simple itemized list of the changes that are being made to each file, including attribute changes.

This is exactly the same as specifying --out-format='%i

%n%L'. If you repeat the option, unchanged files will

also be output, but only if the receiving rsync is at

least version 2.6.7 (you can use -vv with older ver-

sions of rsync, but that also turns on the output of

other verbose messages).

The %i escape has a cryptic output that is 11 letters

long. The general format is like the string YXcstpo-

guax, where Y is replaced by the type of update being

done, X is replaced by the file-type, and the other

letters represent attributes that may be output if they are being modified. The update types that replace the Y are as follows: o A < means that a file is being transferred to the remote host (sent). o A > means that a file is being transferred to the local host (received).

o A c means that a local change/creation is occur-

ring for the item (such as the creation of a directory or the changing of a symlink, etc.). o A h means that the item is a hard link to another

item (requires --hard-links).

o A . means that the item is not being updated (though it might have attributes that are being modified).

o A * means that the rest of the itemized-output

area contains a message (e.g. deleting).

The file-types that replace the X are: f for a file, a

d for a directory, an L for a symlink, a D for a dev-

ice, and a S for a special file (e.g. named sockets and fifos). The other letters in the string above are the actual SunOS 5.10 Last change: 8 May 2009 45

User Commands rsync(1)

letters that will be output if the associated attribute for the item is being updated or a . for no change. Three exceptions to this are: (1) a newly created item replaces each letter with a +, (2) an identical item replaces the dots with spaces, and (3) an unknown

attribute replaces each letter with a ? (this can hap-

pen when talking to an older rsync).

The attribute that is associated with each letter is as follows:

o A c means either that a regular file has a dif-

ferent checksum (requires --checksum) or that a

symlink, device, or special file has a changed value. Note that if you are sending files to an

rsync prior to 3.0.1, this change flag will be

present only for checksum-differing regular files.

o A s means the size of a regular file is different and will be updated by the file transfer. o A t means the modification time is different and is being updated to the sender's value (requires

--times). An alternate value of T means that the

modification time will be set to the transfer time, which happens when a file/symlink/device is

updated without --times and when a symlink is

changed and the receiver can't set its time.

(Note: when using an rsync 3.0.0 client, you might

see the s flag combined with t instead of the

proper T flag for this time-setting failure.)

o A p means the permissions are different and are being updated to the sender's value (requires

--perms).

o An o means the owner is different and is being

updated to the sender's value (requires --owner

and super-user privileges).

o A g means the group is different and is being

updated to the sender's value (requires --group

and the authority to set the group). o The u slot is reserved for future use. o The a means that the ACL information changed.

o The x means that the extended attribute informa-

tion changed. SunOS 5.10 Last change: 8 May 2009 46

User Commands rsync(1)

One other output is possible: when deleting files, the

%i will output the string *deleting for each item that

is being removed (assuming that you are talking to a

recent enough rsync that it logs deletions instead of

outputting them as a verbose message).

--out-format=FORMAT

This allows you to specify exactly what the rsync

client outputs to the user on a per-update basis. The

format is a text string containing embedded single-

character escape sequences prefixed with a percent (%)

character. A default format of %n%L is assumed if -v

is specified (which reports the name of the file and, if the item is a link, where it points). For a full list of the possible escape characters, see the log

format setting in the rsyncd.conf manpage.

Specifying the --out-format option will mention each

file, dir, etc. that gets updated in a significant way (a transferred file, a recreated symlink/device, or a

touched directory). In addition, if the itemize-

changes escape (%i) is included in the string (e.g. if

the --itemize-changes option was used), the logging of

names increases to mention any item that is changed in any way (as long as the receiving side is at least

2.6.4). See the --itemize-changes option for a

description of the output of %i.

Rsync will output the out-format string prior to a

file's transfer unless one of the transfer-statistic

escapes is requested, in which case the logging is done

at the end of the file's transfer. When this late log-

ging is in effect and --progress is also specified,

rsync will also output the name of the file being

transferred prior to its progress information (fol-

lowed, of course, by the out-format output).

--log-file=FILE

This option causes rsync to log what it is doing to a

file. This is similar to the logging that a daemon does, but can be requested for the client side and/or

the server side of a non-daemon transfer. If specified

as a client option, transfer logging will be enabled

with a default format of %i %n%L. See the

--log-file-format option if you wish to override this.

Here's a example command that requests the remote side to log what is happening: SunOS 5.10 Last change: 8 May 2009 47

User Commands rsync(1)

rsync -av --rsync-path="rsync --log-file=/tmp/rlog" src/ dest/

This is very useful if you need to debug why a connec-

tion is closing unexpectedly.

--log-file-format=FORMAT

This allows you to specify exactly what per-update log-

ging is put into the file specified by the --log-file

option (which must also be specified for this option to have any effect). If you specify an empty string, updated files will not be mentioned in the log file. For a list of the possible escape characters, see the

log format setting in the rsyncd.conf manpage.

The default FORMAT used if --log-file is specified and

this option is not is '%i %n%L'.

--stats

This tells rsync to print a verbose set of statistics

on the file transfer, allowing you to tell how effec-

tive rsync's delta-transfer algorithm is for your data.

The current statistics are as follows: o Number of files is the count of all files (in the

generic sense), which includes directories, sym-

links, etc. o Number of files transferred is the count of normal

files that were updated via rsync's delta-transfer

algorithm, which does not include created dirs, symlinks, etc. o Total file size is the total sum of all file sizes in the transfer. This does not count any size for directories or special files, but does include the size of symlinks. o Total transferred file size is the total sum of all files sizes for just the transferred files.

o Literal data is how much unmatched file-update

data we had to send to the receiver for it to recreate the updated files. o Matched data is how much data the receiver got SunOS 5.10 Last change: 8 May 2009 48

User Commands rsync(1)

locally when recreating the updated files.

o File list size is how big the file-list data was

when the sender sent it to the receiver. This is

smaller than the in-memory size for the file list

due to some compressing of duplicated data when

rsync sends the list.

o File list generation time is the number of seconds that the sender spent creating the file list.

This requires a modern rsync on the sending side

for this to be present. o File list transfer time is the number of seconds that the sender spent sending the file list to the receiver. o Total bytes sent is the count of all the bytes

that rsync sent from the client side to the server

side.

o Total bytes received is the count of all non-

message bytes that rsync received by the client

side from the server side. Non-message bytes

means that we don't count the bytes for a verbose message that the server sent to us, which makes the stats more consistent.

-8, --8-bit-output

This tells rsync to leave all high-bit characters unes-

caped in the output instead of trying to test them to see if they're valid in the current locale and escaping the invalid ones. All control characters (but never tabs) are always escaped, regardless of this option's setting. The escape idiom that started in 2.6.7 is to output a

literal backslash (\) and a hash (#), followed by

exactly 3 octal digits. For example, a newline would

output as \#012. A literal backslash that is in a

filename is not escaped unless it is followed by a hash

and 3 digits (0-9).

-h, --human-readable

Output numbers in a more human-readable format. This

makes big numbers output using larger units, with a K, M, or G suffix. If this option was specified once, SunOS 5.10 Last change: 8 May 2009 49

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these units are K (1000), M (1000*1000), and G (1000*1000*1000); if the option is repeated, the units are powers of 1024 instead of 1000.

--partial

By default, rsync will delete any partially transferred

file if the transfer is interrupted. In some cir-

cumstances it is more desirable to keep partially

transferred files. Using the --partial option tells

rsync to keep the partial file which should make a sub-

sequent transfer of the rest of the file much faster.

--partial-dir=DIR

A better way to keep partial files than the --partial

option is to specify a DIR that will be used to hold

the partial data (instead of writing it out to the des-

tination file). On the next transfer, rsync will use a

file found in this dir as data to speed up the resump-

tion of the transfer and then delete it after it has served its purpose.

Note that if --whole-file is specified (or implied),

any partial-dir file that is found for a file that is

being updated will simply be removed (since rsync is

sending files without using rsync's delta-transfer

algorithm). Rsync will create the DIR if it is missing (just the

last dir - not the whole path). This makes it easy to

use a relative path (such as

--partial-dir=.rsync-partial) to have rsync create the

partial-directory in the destination file's directory

when needed, and then remove it again when the partial file is deleted.

If the partial-dir value is not an absolute path, rsync

will add an exclude rule at the end of all your exist-

ing excludes. This will prevent the sending of any

partial-dir files that may exist on the sending side,

and will also prevent the untimely deletion of

partial-dir items on the receiving side. An example:

the above --partial-dir option would add the equivalent

of -f '-p .rsync-partial/' at the end of any other

filter rules. If you are supplying your own exclude rules, you may need to add your own exclude/hide/protect rule for the

partial-dir because (1) the auto-added rule may be

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ineffective at the end of your other rules, or (2) you

may wish to override rsync's exclude choice. For

instance, if you want to make rsync clean-up any left-

over partial-dirs that may be lying around, you should

specify --delete-after and add a risk filter rule, e.g.

-f 'R .rsync-partial/'. (Avoid using --delete-before

or --delete-during unless you don't need rsync to use

any of the left-over partial-dir data during the

current run.)

IMPORTANT: the --partial-dir should not be writable by

other users or it is a security risk. E.g. AVOID /tmp.

You can also set the partial-dir value the

RSYNC_PARTIAL_DIR environment variable. Setting this

in the environment does not force --partial to be

enabled, but rather it affects where partial files go

when --partial is specified. For instance, instead of

using --partial-dir=.rsync-tmp along with --progress,

you could set RSYNC_PARTIAL_DIR=.rsync-tmp in your

environment and then just use the -P option to turn on

the use of the .rsync-tmp dir for partial transfers.

The only times that the --partial option does not look

for this environment value are (1) when --inplace was

specified (since --inplace conflicts with

--partial-dir), and (2) when --delay-updates was speci-

fied (see below).

For the purposes of the daemon-config's refuse options

setting, --partial-dir does not imply --partial. This

is so that a refusal of the --partial option can be

used to disallow the overwriting of destination files with a partial transfer, while still allowing the safer

idiom provided by --partial-dir.

--delay-updates

This option puts the temporary file from each updated file into a holding directory until the end of the transfer, at which time all the files are renamed into place in rapid succession. This attempts to make the updating of the files a little more atomic. By default the files are placed into a directory named .~tmp~ in

each file's destination directory, but if you've speci-

fied the --partial-dir option, that directory will be

used instead. See the comments in the --partial-dir

section for a discussion of how this you want rsync to

cleanup old .~tmp~ dirs that might be lying around.

Conflicts with --inplace and --append.

This option uses more memory on the receiving side (one SunOS 5.10 Last change: 8 May 2009 51

User Commands rsync(1)

bit per file transferred) and also requires enough free disk space on the receiving side to hold an additional copy of all the updated files. Note also that you

should not use an absolute path to --partial-dir unless

(1) there is no chance of any of the files in the transfer having the same name (since all the updated files will be put into a single directory if the path is absolute) and (2) there are no mount points in the hierarchy (since the delayed updates will fail if they can't be renamed into place).

This option tells the receiving rsync to get rid of

empty directories from the file-list, including nested

directories that have no non-directory children. This

is useful for avoiding the creation of a bunch of use-

less directories when the sending rsync is recursively

scanning a hierarchy of files using include/exclude/filter rules. Note that the use of transfer rules, such as the

--min-size option, does not affect what goes into the

file list, and thus does not leave directories empty, even if none of the files in a directory match the transfer rule.

Because the file-list is actually being pruned, this

option also affects what directories get deleted when a delete is active. However, keep in mind that excluded files and directories can prevent existing items from being deleted due to an exclude both hiding source

files and protecting destination files. See the per-

ishable filter-rule option for how to avoid this.

You can prevent the pruning of certain empty direc-

tories from the file-list by using a global protect

filter. For instance, this option would ensure that

the directory emptydir was kept in the file-list:

--filter 'protect emptydir/'

Here's an example that copies all .pdf files in a hierarchy, only creating the necessary destination SunOS 5.10 Last change: 8 May 2009 52

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directories to hold the .pdf files, and ensures that

any superfluous files and directories in the destina-

tion are removed (note the hide filter of non-

directories being used instead of an exclude):

rsync -avm --del --include='.pdf' -f 'hide,! /' src/

dest If you didn't want to remove superfluous destination

files, the more time-honored options of --include='*/'

--exclude='*' would work fine in place of the hide-

filter (if that is more natural to you).

--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 finish-

ing 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)

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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 regu-

lar 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.

-P The -P option is equivalent to --partial --progress.

Its purpose is to make it much easier to specify these

two options for a long transfer that may be inter-

rupted.

--password-file

This option allows you to provide a password in a file

for accessing an rsync daemon. The file must not be

world readable. It should contain just the password as a single line. This option does not supply a password to a remote shell transport such as ssh; to learn how to do that,

consult the remote shell's documentation. When access-

ing an rsync daemon using a remote shell as the tran-

sport, this option only comes into effect after the remote shell finishes its authentication (i.e. if you have also specified a password in the daemon's config file).

--list-only

This option will cause the source files to be listed instead of transferred. This option is inferred if

there is a single source arg and no destination speci-

fied, so its main uses are: (1) to turn a copy command

that includes a destination arg into a file-listing

command, or (2) to be able to specify more than one source arg (note: be sure to include the destination).

Caution: keep in mind that a source arg with a wild-

card is expanded by the shell into multiple args, so it is never safe to try to list such an arg without using this option. For example:

rsync -av --list-only foo* dest/

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Compatibility note: when requesting a remote listing

of files from an rsync that is version 2.6.3 or older,

you may encounter an error if you ask for a non-

recursive listing. This is because a file listing

implies the --dirs option w/o --recursive, and older

rsyncs don't have that option. To avoid this problem,

either specify the --no-dirs option (if you don't need

to expand a directory's content), or turn on recursion

and exclude the content of subdirectories: -r

--exclude='/*/*'.

--bwlimit=KBPS

This option allows you to specify a maximum transfer rate in kilobytes per second. This option is most

effective when using rsync with large files (several

megabytes and up). Due to the nature of rsync

transfers, blocks of data are sent, then if rsync

determines the transfer was too fast, it will wait before sending the next data block. The result is an average transfer rate equaling the specified limit. A value of zero specifies no limit.

--write-batch=FILE

Record a file that can later be applied to another

identical destination with --read-batch. See the BATCH

MODE section for details, and also the

--only-write-batch option.

--only-write-batch=FILE

Works like --write-batch, except that no updates are

made on the destination system when creating the batch. This lets you transport the changes to the destination system via some other means and then apply the changes

via --read-batch.

Note that you can feel free to write the batch directly to some portable media: if this media fills to capacity before the end of the transfer, you can just apply that partial transfer to the destination and repeat the whole process to get the rest of the changes (as long

as you don't mind a partially updated destination sys-

tem while the multi-update cycle is happening).

Also note that you only save bandwidth when pushing changes to a remote system because this allows the batched data to be diverted from the sender into the SunOS 5.10 Last change: 8 May 2009 55

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batch file without having to flow over the wire to the receiver (when pulling, the sender is remote, and thus can't write the batch).

--read-batch=FILE

Apply all of the changes stored in FILE, a file previ-

ously generated by --write-batch. If FILE is -, the

batch data will be read from standard input. See the BATCH MODE section for details.

--protocol=NUM

Force an older protocol version to be used. This is useful for creating a batch file that is compatible

with an older version of rsync. For instance, if rsync

2.6.4 is being used with the --write-batch option, but

rsync 2.6.3 is what will be used to run the

--read-batch option, you should use --protocol=28 when

creating the batch file to force the older protocol version to be used in the batch file (assuming you

can't upgrade the rsync on the reading system).

--iconv=CONVERT_SPEC

Rsync can convert filenames between character sets

using this option. Using a CONVERT_SPEC of . tells

rsync to look up the default character-set via the

locale setting. Alternately, you can fully specify what conversion to do by giving a local and a remote charset separated by a comma in the order

--iconv=LOCAL,REMOTE, e.g. --iconv=utf8,iso88591.

This order ensures that the option will stay the same whether you're pushing or pulling files. Finally, you

can specify either --no-iconv or a CONVERT_SPEC of - to

turn off any conversion. The default setting of this

option is site-specific, and can also be affected via

the RSYNC_ICONV environment variable.

For a list of what charset names your local iconv

library supports, you can run iconv --list.

If you specify the --protect-args option (-s), rsync

will translate the filenames you specify on the

command-line that are being sent to the remote host.

Note that rsync does not do any conversion of names in

filter files (including include/exclude files). It is SunOS 5.10 Last change: 8 May 2009 56

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up to you to ensure that you're specifying matching rules that can match on both sides of the transfer. For instance, you can specify extra include/exclude rules if there are filename differences on the two sides that need to be accounted for.

When you pass an --iconv option to an rsync daemon that

allows it, the daemon uses the charset specified in its charset configuration parameter regardless of the remote charset you actually pass. Thus, you may feel free to specify just the local charset for a daemon

transfer (e.g. --iconv=utf8).

-4, --ipv4 or -6, --ipv6

Tells rsync to prefer IPv4/IPv6 when creating sockets.

This only affects sockets that rsync has direct control

over, such as the outgoing socket when directly con-

tacting an rsync daemon. See also these options in the

--daemon mode section.

If rsync was complied without support for IPv6, the

--ipv6 option will have no effect. The --version out-

put will tell you if this is the case.

--checksum-seed=NUM

Set the checksum seed to the integer NUM. This 4 byte

checksum seed is included in each block and file check-

sum calculation. By default the checksum seed is gen-

erated by the server and defaults to the current time() . This option is used to set a specific checksum seed, which is useful for applications that want repeatable block and file checksums, or in the case where the user wants a more random checksum seed. Setting NUM to 0

causes rsync to use the default of time() for checksum

seed. DAEMON OPTIONS

The options allowed when starting an rsync daemon are as

follows:

--daemon

This tells rsync that it is to run as a daemon. The

daemon you start running may be accessed using an rsync

client using the host::module or rsync://host/module/

syntax.

If standard input is a socket then rsync will assume

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that it is being run via inetd, otherwise it will

detach from the current terminal and become a back-

ground daemon. The daemon will read the config file

(rsyncd.conf) on each connect made by a client and

respond to requests accordingly. See the

rsyncd.conf(5) man page for more details.

--address

By default rsync will bind to the wildcard address when

run as a daemon with the --daemon option. The

--address option allows you to specify a specific IP

address (or hostname) to bind to. This makes virtual

hosting possible in conjunction with the --config

option. See also the address global option in the

rsyncd.conf manpage.

--bwlimit=KBPS

This option allows you to specify a maximum transfer rate in kilobytes per second for the data the daemon sends. The client can still specify a smaller

--bwlimit value, but their requested value will be

rounded down if they try to exceed it. See the client version of this option (above) for some extra details.

--config=FILE

This specifies an alternate config file than the

default. This is only relevant when --daemon is speci-

fied. The default is /etc/rsyncd.conf unless the dae-

mon is running over a remote shell program and the

remote user is not the super-user; in that case the

default is rsyncd.conf in the current directory (typi-

cally $HOME).

--no-detach

When running as a daemon, this option instructs rsync

to not detach itself and become a background process. This option is required when running as a service on

Cygwin, and may also be useful when rsync is supervised

by a program such as daemontools or AIX's System

Resource Controller. --no-detach is also recommended

when rsync is run under a debugger. This option has no

effect if rsync is run from inetd or sshd.

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--port=PORT

This specifies an alternate TCP port number for the daemon to listen on rather than the default of 873.

This option tells the rsync daemon to use the given

log-file name instead of using the log file setting in

the config file.

--log-file-format=FORMAT

This option tells the rsync daemon to use the given

FORMAT string instead of using the log format setting in the config file. It also enables transfer logging

unless the string is empty, in which case transfer log-

ging is turned off.

--sockopts

This overrides the socket options setting in the

rsyncd.conf file and has the same syntax.

-v, --verbose

This option increases the amount of information the daemon logs during its startup phase. After the client

connects, the daemon's verbosity level will be con-

trolled by the options that the client used and the max verbosity setting in the module's config section.

-4, --ipv4 or -6, --ipv6

Tells rsync to prefer IPv4/IPv6 when creating the

incoming sockets that the rsync daemon will use to

listen for connections. One of these options may be required in older versions of Linux to work around an IPv6 bug in the kernel (if you see an address already in use error when nothing else is using the port, try

specifying --ipv6 or --ipv4 when starting the daemon).

If rsync was complied without support for IPv6, the

--ipv6 option will have no effect. The --version out-

put will tell you if this is the case. SunOS 5.10 Last change: 8 May 2009 59

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-h, --help

When specified after --daemon, print a short help page

describing the options available for starting an rsync

daemon. FILTER RULES The filter rules allow for flexible selection of which files to transfer (include) and which files to skip (exclude). The rules either directly specify include/exclude patterns

or they specify a way to acquire more include/exclude pat-

terns (e.g. to read them from a file).

As the list of files/directories to transfer is built, rsync

checks each name to be transferred against the list of include/exclude patterns in turn, and the first matching pattern is acted on: if it is an exclude pattern, then that file is skipped; if it is an include pattern then that filename is not skipped; if no matching pattern is found, then the filename is not skipped. Rsync builds an ordered list of filter rules as specified on

the command-line. Filter rules have the following syntax:

RULE [PATTERN_OR_FILENAME]

RULE,MODIFIERS [PATTERN_OR_FILENAME]

You have your choice of using either short or long RULE

names, as described below. If you use a short-named rule,

the , separating the RULE from the MODIFIERS is optional.

The PATTERN or FILENAME that follows (when present) must

come after either a single space or an underscore (_). Here

are the available rule prefixes:

exclude, - specifies an exclude pattern.

include, + specifies an include pattern.

merge, . specifies a merge-file to read for more rules.

dir-merge, : specifies a per-directory merge-file.

hide, H specifies a pattern for hiding files from the transfer. show, S files that match the pattern are not hidden. protect, P specifies a pattern for protecting files from deletion. risk, R files that match the pattern are not protected. clear, ! clears the current include/exclude list (takes no arg) SunOS 5.10 Last change: 8 May 2009 60

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When rules are being read from a file, empty lines are

ignored, as are comment lines that start with a #.

Note that the --include/--exclude command-line options do

not allow the full range of rule parsing as described above

- they only allow the specification of include/exclude pat-

terns plus a ! token to clear the list (and the normal com-

ment parsing when rules are read from a file). If a pattern

does not begin with - (dash, space) or + (plus, space),

then the rule will be interpreted as if + (for an include

option) or - (for an exclude option) were prefixed to the

string. A --filter option, on the other hand, must always

contain either a short or long rule name at the start of the rule.

Note also that the --filter, --include, and --exclude

options take one rule/pattern each. To add multiple ones,

you can repeat the options on the command-line, use the

merge-file syntax of the --filter option, or the

--include-from/--exclude-from options.

INCLUDE/EXCLUDE PATTERN RULES You can include and exclude files by specifying patterns

using the +, -, etc. filter rules (as introduced in the

FILTER RULES section above). The include/exclude rules each specify a pattern that is matched against the names of the files that are going to be transferred. These patterns can take several forms: o if the pattern starts with a / then it is anchored to a particular spot in the hierarchy of files, otherwise it is matched against the end of the pathname. This is similar to a leading ^ in regular expressions. Thus /foo would match a name of foo at either the root of

the transfer (for a global rule) or in the merge-file's

directory (for a per-directory rule). An unqualified

foo would match a name of foo anywhere in the tree because the algorithm is applied recursively from the top down; it behaves as if each path component gets a

turn at being the end of the filename. Even the unan-

chored sub/foo would match at any point in the hierar-

chy where a foo was found within a directory named sub.

See the section on ANCHORING INCLUDE/EXCLUDE PATTERNS for a full discussion of how to specify a pattern that matches at the root of the transfer. o if the pattern ends with a / then it will only match a directory, not a regular file, symlink, or device.

o rsync chooses between doing a simple string match and

wildcard matching by checking if the pattern contains one of these three wildcard characters: *, ?, and [ . SunOS 5.10 Last change: 8 May 2009 61

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o a * matches any path component, but it stops at slashes. o use '**' to match anything, including slashes. o a ? matches any character except a slash (/).

o a [ introduces a character class, such as [a-z] or

[[:alpha:]]. o in a wildcard pattern, a backslash can be used to escape a wildcard character, but it is matched literally when no wildcards are present. o if the pattern contains a / (not counting a trailing /) or a **, then it is matched against the full pathname, including any leading directories. If the pattern doesn't contain a / or a **, then it is matched only against the final component of the filename. (Remember that the algorithm is applied recursively so full filename can actually be any portion of a path from the starting directory on down.)

o a trailing dir_name/*** will match both the directory

(as if dir_name/ had been specified) and everything in

the directory (as if dir_name/** had been specified).

This behavior was added in version 2.6.7.

Note that, when using the --recursive (-r) option (which is

implied by -a), every subcomponent of every path is visited

from the top down, so include/exclude patterns get applied recursively to each subcomponent's full name (e.g. to include /foo/bar/baz the subcomponents /foo and /foo/bar must not be excluded). The exclude patterns actually

short-circuit the directory traversal stage when rsync finds

the files to send. If a pattern excludes a particular parent directory, it can render a deeper include pattern

ineffectual because rsync did not descend through that

excluded section of the hierarchy. This is particularly important when using a trailing * rule. For instance, this won't work:

+ /some/path/this-file-will-not-be-found

+ /file-is-included

- *

This fails because the parent directory some is excluded by

the * rule, so rsync never visits any of the files in the

some or some/path directories. One solution is to ask for all directories in the hierarchy to be included by using a SunOS 5.10 Last change: 8 May 2009 62

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single rule: + */ (put it somewhere before the - * rule),

and perhaps use the --prune-empty-dirs option. Another

solution is to add specific include rules for all the parent dirs that need to be visited. For instance, this set of rules works fine: + /some/ + /some/path/

+ /some/path/this-file-is-found

+ /file-also-included

- *

Here are some examples of exclude/include matching:

o - *.o would exclude all names matching *.o

o - /foo would exclude a file (or directory) named foo in

the transfer-root directory

o - foo/ would exclude any directory named foo

o - /foo/*/bar would exclude any file named bar which is

at two levels below a directory named foo in the

transfer-root directory

o - /foo/**/bar would exclude any file named bar two or

more levels below a directory named foo in the

transfer-root directory

o The combination of + */, + *.c, and - * would include

all directories and C source files but nothing else

(see also the --prune-empty-dirs option)

o The combination of + foo/, + foo/bar.c, and - * would

include only the foo directory and foo/bar.c (the foo directory must be explicitly included or it would be excluded by the *)

The following modifiers are accepted after a + or -:

o A / specifies that the include/exclude rule should be matched against the absolute pathname of the current

item. For example, -/ /etc/passwd would exclude the

passwd file any time the transfer was sending files

from the /etc directory, and -/ subdir/foo would always

exclude foo when it is in a dir named subdir, even if foo is at the root of the current transfer. o A ! specifies that the include/exclude should take

effect if the pattern fails to match. For instance, -!

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*/ would exclude all non-directories.

o A C is used to indicate that all the global CVS-exclude

rules should be inserted as excludes in place of the

-C. No arg should follow.

o An s is used to indicate that the rule applies to the sending side. When a rule affects the sending side, it prevents files from being transferred. The default is for a rule to affect both sides unless

--delete-excluded was specified, in which case default

rules become sender-side only. See also the hide (H)

and show (S) rules, which are an alternate way to

specify sending-side includes/excludes.

o An r is used to indicate that the rule applies to the receiving side. When a rule affects the receiving side, it prevents files from being deleted. See the s modifier for more info. See also the protect (P) and risk (R) rules, which are an alternate way to specify

receiver-side includes/excludes.

o A p indicates that a rule is perishable, meaning that it is ignored in directories that are being deleted.

For instance, the -C option's default rules that

exclude things like CVS and *.o are marked as perish-

able, and will not prevent a directory that was removed on the source from being deleted on the destination.

MERGE-FILE FILTER RULES

You can merge whole files into your filter rules by specify-

ing either a merge (.) or a dir-merge (:) filter rule (as

introduced in the FILTER RULES section above).

There are two kinds of merged files - single-instance (.)

and per-directory (:). A single-instance merge file is read

one time, and its rules are incorporated into the filter

list in the place of the . rule. For per-directory merge

files, rsync will scan every directory that it traverses for

the named file, merging its contents when the file exists

into the current list of inherited rules. These per-

directory rule files must be created on the sending side because it is the sending side that is being scanned for the available files to transfer. These rule files may also need to be transferred to the receiving side if you want them to

affect what files don't get deleted (see PER-DIRECTORY RULES

AND DELETE below). Some examples: SunOS 5.10 Last change: 8 May 2009 64

User Commands rsync(1)

merge /etc/rsync/default.rules

dir-merge .per-dir-filter

dir-merge,n- .non-inherited-per-dir-excludes

:n- .non-inherited-per-dir-excludes

The following modifiers are accepted after a merge or dir-

merge rule:

o A - specifies that the file should consist of only

exclude patterns, with no other rule-parsing except for

in-file comments.

o A + specifies that the file should consist of only

include patterns, with no other rule-parsing except for

in-file comments.

o A C is a way to specify that the file should be read in

a CVS-compatible manner. This turns on n, w, and '-',

but also allows the list-clearing token (!) to be

specified. If no filename is provided, .cvsignore is assumed.

o A e will exclude the merge-file name from the transfer;

e.g. dir-merge,e .rules is like dir-merge .rules and -

.rules.

o An n specifies that the rules are not inherited by sub-

directories.

o A w specifies that the rules are word-split on whi-

tespace instead of the normal line-splitting. This

also turns off comments. Note: the space that

separates the prefix from the rule is treated spe-

cially, so - foo + bar is parsed as two rules (assuming

that prefix-parsing wasn't also disabled).

o You may also specify any of the modifiers for the + or

- rules (above) in order to have the rules that are

read in from the file default to having that modifier

set. For instance, merge,-/ .excl would treat the con-

tents of .excl as absolute-path excludes, while dir-

merge,s .filt and :sC would each make all their per-

directory rules apply only on the sending side.

Per-directory rules are inherited in all subdirectories of

the directory where the merge-file was found unless the n

modifier was used. Each subdirectory's rules are prefixed

to the inherited per-directory rules from its parents, which

gives the newest rules a higher priority than the inherited

rules. The entire set of dir-merge rules are grouped

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together in the spot where the merge-file was specified, so

it is possible to override dir-merge rules via a rule that

got specified earlier in the list of global rules. When the

list-clearing rule (!) is read from a per-directory file, it

only clears the inherited rules for the current merge file.

Another way to prevent a single rule from a dir-merge file

from being inherited is to anchor it with a leading slash.

Anchored rules in a per-directory merge-file are relative to

the merge-file's directory, so a pattern /foo would only

match the file foo in the directory where the dir-merge

filter file was found. Here's an example filter file which you'd specify via

--filter=". file":

merge /home/user/.global-filter

- *.gz

dir-merge .rules

+ *.[ch]

- *.o

This will merge the contents of the

/home/user/.global-filter file at the start of the list and

also turns the .rules filename into a per-directory filter

file. All rules read in prior to the start of the directory scan follow the global anchoring rules (i.e. a leading slash matches at the root of the transfer).

If a per-directory merge-file is specified with a path that

is a parent directory of the first transfer directory, rsync

will scan all the parent dirs from that starting point to

the transfer directory for the indicated per-directory file.

For instance, here is a common filter (see -F):

--filter=': /.rsync-filter'

That rule tells rsync to scan for the file .rsync-filter in

all directories from the root down through the parent direc-

tory of the transfer prior to the start of the normal direc-

tory scan of the file in the directories that are sent as a

part of the transfer. (Note: for an rsync daemon, the root

is always the same as the module's path.)

Some examples of this pre-scanning for per-directory files:

rsync -avF /src/path/ /dest/dir

rsync -av --filter=': ../../.rsync-filter' /src/path/

/dest/dir

rsync -av --filter=': .rsync-filter' /src/path/

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/dest/dir

The first two commands above will look for .rsync-filter in

/ and /src before the normal scan begins looking for the file in /src/path and its subdirectories. The last command

avoids the parent-dir scan and only looks for the

.rsync-filter files in each directory that is a part of the

transfer. If you want to include the contents of a .cvsignore in your

patterns, you should use the rule :C, which creates a dir-

merge of the .cvsignore file, but parsed in a CVS-compatible

manner. You can use this to affect where the --cvs-exclude

(-C) option's inclusion of the per-directory .cvsignore file

gets placed into your rules by putting the :C wherever you

like in your filter rules. Without this, rsync would add

the dir-merge rule for the .cvsignore file at the end of all

your other rules (giving it a lower priority than your

command-line rules). For example:

cat < + foo.o :C
- .old
EOT
rsync -avC --include=foo.o -f :C --exclude='.old' a/ b

Both of the above rsync commands are identical. Each one
will merge all the per-directory .cvsignore rules in the
middle of the list rather than at the end. This allows
their dir-specific rules to supersede the rules that follow
the :C instead of being subservient to all your rules. To affect the other CVS exclude rules (i.e. the default list of
exclusions, the contents of $HOME/.cvsignore, and the value
of $CVSIGNORE) you should omit the -C command-line option
and instead insert a -C rule into your filter rules; e.g.
--filter=-C.

LIST-CLEARING FILTER RULE
You can clear the current include/exclude list by using the ! filter rule (as introduced in the FILTER RULES section above). The current list is either the global list of rules (if the rule is encountered while parsing the filter
options) or a set of per-directory rules (which are inher-
ited in their own sub-list, so a subdirectory can use this
to clear out the parent's rules).
ANCHORING INCLUDE/EXCLUDE PATTERNS As mentioned earlier, global include/exclude patterns are
anchored at the root of the transfer (as opposed to per-
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directory patterns, which are anchored at the merge-file's
directory). If you think of the transfer as a subtree of names that are being sent from sender to receiver, the
transfer-root is where the tree starts to be duplicated in
the destination directory. This root governs where patterns that start with a / match.
Because the matching is relative to the transfer-root,
changing the trailing slash on a source path or changing
your use of the --relative option affects the path you need
to use in your matching (in addition to changing how much of the file tree is duplicated on the destination host). The following examples demonstrate this. Let's say that we want to match two source files, one with an absolute path of /home/me/foo/bar, and one with a path of /home/you/bar/baz. Here is how the various command choices
differ for a 2-source transfer:

Example cmd: rsync -a /home/me /home/you /dest
+/- pattern: /me/foo/bar
+/- pattern: /you/bar/baz
Target file: /dest/me/foo/bar Target file: /dest/you/bar/baz
Example cmd: rsync -a /home/me/ /home/you/ /dest
+/- pattern: /foo/bar (note missing me)
+/- pattern: /bar/baz (note missing you)
Target file: /dest/foo/bar Target file: /dest/bar/baz
Example cmd: rsync -a --relative /home/me/ /home/you
/dest
+/- pattern: /home/me/foo/bar (note full path)
+/- pattern: /home/you/bar/baz (ditto)
Target file: /dest/home/me/foo/bar Target file: /dest/home/you/bar/baz
Example cmd: cd /home; rsync -a --relative me/foo you/
/dest
+/- pattern: /me/foo/bar (starts at specified
path)
+/- pattern: /you/bar/baz (ditto)
Target file: /dest/me/foo/bar Target file: /dest/you/bar/baz The easiest way to see what name you should filter is to
just look at the output when using --verbose and put a / in
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front of the name (use the --dry-run option if you're not
yet ready to copy any files).
PER-DIRECTORY RULES AND DELETE
Without a delete option, per-directory rules are only
relevant on the sending side, so you can feel free to exclude the merge files themselves without affecting the transfer. To make this easy, the e modifier adds this exclude for you, as seen in these two equivalent commands:
rsync -av --filter=': .excl' --exclude=.excl
host:src/dir /dest
rsync -av --filter=':e .excl' host:src/dir /dest
However, if you want to do a delete on the receiving side AND you want some files to be excluded from being deleted, you'll need to be sure that the receiving side knows what
files to exclude. The easiest way is to include the per-
directory merge files in the transfer and use
--delete-after, because this ensures that the receiving side
gets all the same exclude rules as the sending side before it tries to delete anything:
rsync -avF --delete-after host:src/dir /dest
However, if the merge files are not a part of the transfer, you'll need to either specify some global exclude rules (i.e. specified on the command line), or you'll need to
maintain your own per-directory merge files on the receiving
side. An example of the first is this (assume that the remote .rules files exclude themselves):
rsync -av --filter=': .rules' --filter='. /my/extra.rules'
--delete host:src/dir /dest
In the above example the extra.rules file can affect both sides of the transfer, but (on the sending side) the rules are subservient to the rules merged from the .rules files
because they were specified after the per-directory merge
rule. In one final example, the remote side is excluding the
.rsync-filter files from the transfer, but we want to use
our own .rsync-filter files to control what gets deleted on
the receiving side. To do this we must specifically exclude
the per-directory merge files (so that they don't get
deleted) and then put rules into the local files to control
what else should not get deleted. Like one of these com-
mands: SunOS 5.10 Last change: 8 May 2009 69
User Commands rsync(1)

rsync -av --filter=':e /.rsync-filter' --delete \
host:src/dir /dest
rsync -avFF --delete host:src/dir /dest
BATCH MODE Batch mode can be used to apply the same set of updates to many identical systems. Suppose one has a tree which is replicated on a number of hosts. Now suppose some changes have been made to this source tree and those changes need to be propagated to the other hosts. In order to do this using
batch mode, rsync is run with the write-batch option to
apply the changes made to the source tree to one of the des-
tination trees. The write-batch option causes the rsync
client to store in a batch file all the information needed
to repeat this operation against other, identical destina-
tion trees. Generating the batch file once saves having to perform the file status, checksum, and data block generation more than once when updating multiple destination trees. Multicast transport protocols can be used to transfer the batch update files in parallel to many hosts at once, instead of sending the same data to every host individually. To apply the recorded changes to another destination tree,
run rsync with the read-batch option, specifying the name of
the same batch file, and the destination tree. Rsync updates the destination tree using the information stored in the batch file. For your convenience, a script file is also created when the
write-batch option is used: it will be named the same as
the batch file with .sh appended. This script file contains
a command-line suitable for updating a destination tree
using the associated batch file. It can be executed using a
Bourne (or Bourne-like) shell, optionally passing in an
alternate destination tree pathname which is then used instead of the original destination path. This is useful when the destination tree path on the current host differs from the one used to create the batch file. Examples:
$ rsync --write-batch=foo -a host:/source/dir/
/adest/dir/
$ scp foo* remote:
$ ssh remote ./foo.sh /bdest/dir/

$ rsync --write-batch=foo -a /source/dir/ /adest/dir/
$ ssh remote rsync --read-batch=- -a /bdest/dir/ SunOS 5.10 Last change: 8 May 2009 70
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In these examples, rsync is used to update /adest/dir/ from
/source/dir/ and the information to repeat this operation is stored in foo and foo.sh. The host remote is then updated with the batched data going into the directory /bdest/dir. The differences between the two examples reveals some of the flexibility you have in how you deal with batches: o The first example shows that the initial copy doesn't
have to be local - you can push or pull data to/from a
remote host using either the remote-shell syntax or
rsync daemon syntax, as desired.
o The first example uses the created foo.sh file to get
the right rsync options when running the read-batch
command on the remote host. o The second example reads the batch data via standard input so that the batch file doesn't need to be copied to the remote machine first. This example avoids the foo.sh script because it needed to use a modified
--read-batch option, but you could edit the script file
if you wished to make use of it (just be sure that no other option is trying to use standard input, such as
the --exclude-from=- option).
Caveats:
The read-batch option expects the destination tree that it
is updating to be identical to the destination tree that was used to create the batch update fileset. When a difference between the destination trees is encountered the update might be discarded with a warning (if the file appears to be
up-to-date already) or the file-update may be attempted and
then, if the file fails to verify, the update discarded with
an error. This means that it should be safe to re-run a
read-batch operation if the command got interrupted. If you
wish to force the batched-update to always be attempted
regardless of the file's size and date, use the -I option
(when reading the batch). If an error occurs, the destina-
tion tree will probably be in a partially updated state. In
that case, rsync can be used in its regular (non-batch) mode
of operation to fix up the destination tree.
The rsync version used on all destinations must be at least
as new as the one used to generate the batch file. Rsync will die with an error if the protocol version in the batch
file is too new for the batch-reading rsync to handle. See
also the --protocol option for a way to have the creating
rsync generate a batch file that an older rsync can under-
stand. (Note that batch files changed format in version 2.6.3, so mixing versions older than that with newer SunOS 5.10 Last change: 8 May 2009 71
User Commands rsync(1)
versions will not work.)
When reading a batch file, rsync will force the value of
certain options to match the data in the batch file if you
didn't set them to the same as the batch-writing command.
Other options can (and should) be changed. For instance
--write-batch changes to --read-batch, --files-from is
dropped, and the --filter/--include/--exclude options are
not needed unless one of the --delete options is specified.
The code that creates the BATCH.sh file transforms any filter/include/exclude options into a single list that is appended as a here document to the shell script file. An advanced user can use this to modify the exclude list if a
change in what gets deleted by --delete is desired. A nor-
mal user can ignore this detail and just use the shell
script as an easy way to run the appropriate --read-batch
command for the batched data.
The original batch mode in rsync was based on rsync+, but
the latest version uses a new implementation. SYMBOLIC LINKS
Three basic behaviors are possible when rsync encounters a
symbolic link in the source directory. By default, symbolic links are not transferred at all. A
message skipping non-regular file is emitted for any sym-
links that exist.
If --links is specified, then symlinks are recreated with
the same target on the destination. Note that --archive
implies --links.

If --copy-links is specified, then symlinks are collapsed by
copying their referent, rather than the symlink.
rsync also distinguishes safe and unsafe symbolic links. An
example where this might be used is a web site mirror that
wishes ensure the rsync module they copy does not include
symbolic links to /etc/passwd in the public section of the
site. Using --copy-unsafe-links will cause any links to be
copied as the file they point to on the destination. Using
--safe-links will cause unsafe links to be omitted alto-
gether. (Note that you must specify --links for
--safe-links to have any effect.)
Symbolic links are considered unsafe if they are absolute symlinks (start with /), empty, or if they contain enough .. components to ascend from the directory being copied. SunOS 5.10 Last change: 8 May 2009 72
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Here's a summary of how the symlink options are interpreted. The list is in order of precedence, so if your combination of options isn't mentioned, use the first line that is a complete subset of your options:
--copy-links
Turn all symlinks into normal files (leaving no sym-
links for any other options to affect).
--links --copy-unsafe-links
Turn all unsafe symlinks into files and duplicate all safe symlinks.
--copy-unsafe-links
Turn all unsafe symlinks into files, noisily skip all safe symlinks.
--links --safe-links
Duplicate safe symlinks and skip unsafe ones.
--links
Duplicate all symlinks. DIAGNOSTICS
rsync occasionally produces error messages that may seem a
little cryptic. The one that seems to cause the most confu-
sion is protocol version mismatch - is your shell clean?.
This message is usually caused by your startup scripts or remote shell facility producing unwanted garbage on the
stream that rsync is using for its transport. The way to
diagnose this problem is to run your remote shell like this: ssh remotehost /bin/true > out.dat then look at out.dat. If everything is working correctly
then out.dat should be a zero length file. If you are get-
ting the above error from rsync then you will probably find
that out.dat contains some text or data. Look at the con-
tents and try to work out what is producing it. The most common cause is incorrectly configured shell startup scripts (such as .cshrc or .profile) that contain output statements
for non-interactive logins.
If you are having trouble debugging filter patterns, then
try specifying the -vv option. At this level of verbosity
rsync will show why each individual file is included or
excluded. EXIT VALUES SunOS 5.10 Last change: 8 May 2009 73
User Commands rsync(1)
0 Success 1 Syntax or usage error 2 Protocol incompatibility 3 Errors selecting input/output files, dirs 4 Requested action not supported: an attempt was made to
manipulate 64-bit files on a platform that cannot sup-
port them; or an option was specified that is supported by the client and not by the server.
5 Error starting client-server protocol

6 Daemon unable to append to log-file

10 Error in socket I/O
11 Error in file I/O
12 Error in rsync protocol data stream
13 Errors with program diagnostics 14 Error in IPC code 20 Received SIGUSR1 or SIGINT 21 Some error returned by waitpid() 22 Error allocating core memory buffers 23 Partial transfer due to error 24 Partial transfer due to vanished source files
25 The --max-delete limit stopped deletions
30 Timeout in data send/receive 35 Timeout waiting for daemon connection ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES CVSIGNORE The CVSIGNORE environment variable supplements any ignore patterns in .cvsignore files. See the
--cvs-exclude option for more details.

RSYNC_ICONV
Specify a default --iconv setting using this
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environment variable.
RSYNC_RSH
The RSYNC_RSH environment variable allows you to over-
ride the default shell used as the transport for rsync.
Command line options are permitted after the command
name, just as in the -e option.

RSYNC_PROXY
The RSYNC_PROXY environment variable allows you to
redirect your rsync client to use a web proxy when con-
necting to a rsync daemon. You should set RSYNC_PROXY
to a hostname:port pair.
RSYNC_PASSWORD
Setting RSYNC_PASSWORD to the required password allows
you to run authenticated rsync connections to an rsync
daemon without user intervention. Note that this does not supply a password to a remote shell transport such as ssh; to learn how to do that, consult the remote shell's documentation.
USER or LOGNAME
The USER or LOGNAME environment variables are used to
determine the default username sent to an rsync daemon.
If neither is set, the username defaults to nobody. HOME The HOME environment variable is used to find the user's default .cvsignore file. FILES
/etc/rsyncd.conf or rsyncd.conf

SEE ALSO
rsyncd.conf(5)

BUGS
times are transferred as *nix time_t values

When transferring to FAT filesystems rsync may re-sync unmo-
dified files. See the comments on the --modify-window
option. file permissions, devices, etc. are transferred as native numerical values
see also the comments on the --delete option
Please report bugs! See the web site at
http://rsync.samba.org/
SunOS 5.10 Last change: 8 May 2009 75
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VERSION
This man page is current for version 3.0.6 of rsync.
INTERNAL OPTIONS
The options --server and --sender are used internally by
rsync, and should never be typed by a user under normal cir-
cumstances. Some awareness of these options may be needed in certain scenarios, such as when setting up a login that
can only run an rsync command. For instance, the support
directory of the rsync distribution has an example script
named rrsync (for restricted rsync) that can be used with a
restricted ssh login. CREDITS
rsync is distributed under the GNU public license. See the
file COPYING for details.
A WEB site is available at http://rsync.samba.org/. The
site includes an FAQ-O-Matic which may cover questions
unanswered by this manual page.
The primary ftp site for rsync is
ftp://rsync.samba.org/pub/rsync.

We would be delighted to hear from you if you like this pro-
gram. Please contact the mailing-list at
rsync@lists.samba.org.
This program uses the excellent zlib compression library
written by Jean-loup Gailly and Mark Adler.
THANKS Especial thanks go out to: John Van Essen, Matt McCutchen, Wesley W. Terpstra, David Dykstra, Jos Backus, Sebastian
Krahmer, Martin Pool, and our gone-but-not-forgotten compa-
dre, J.W. Schultz. Thanks also to Richard Brent, Brendan Mackay, Bill Waite, Stephen Rothwell and David Bell. I've probably missed some people, my apologies if I have. AUTHOR
rsync was originally written by Andrew Tridgell and Paul
Mackerras. Many people have later contributed to it. It is currently maintained by Wayne Davison. Mailing lists for support and development are available at http://lists.samba.org
ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attri-
butes: SunOS 5.10 Last change: 8 May 2009 76
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_____________________
| ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE|
|||_
| Availability | network/rsync |
|__||_
| Interface Stability| Volatile |
|____|_|
NOTES
Source for rsync is available on http://opensolaris.org.
WARNING: Daemon mode does not participate in the core Solaris security policies, including Authentication, limit of privileges, Audit and Audit of any subprocessing. SunOS 5.10 Last change: 8 May 2009 77