rsync(1) 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" al-
gorithm (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 permis-
sions
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 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: us-
ing a remote-shell program as the transport (such as ssh or rsh) or
contacting an rsync daemon directly via TCP. The remote-shell trans-
port 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 contains a
double colon (::) separator after a host specification, 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 desti-
nation, 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 daemon. 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.md 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 dif-
ferent 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 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 proto-
col is used to update the file by sending only the differences in the
data. Note that the expansion of wildcards on the command-line (*.c)
into a list of files is handled by the shell before it runs rsync and
not by rsync itself (exactly the same as all other Posix-style pro-
grams).
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, attributes, 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 destination. 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 at-
tributes 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, including 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 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 par-
ticular 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 in-
stance:
rsync -av host:'file\ name\ with\ spaces' /dest
CONNECTING TO AN RSYNC DAEMON
It is also possible to use rsync without a remote shell as the trans-
port. 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 ex-
cept 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 con-
nect.
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 speci-
fied files on the remote daemon is provided.
o you must not specify the --rsh (-e) option (since that overrides
the daemon connection to use ssh -- see USING RSYNC-DAEMON FEA-
TURES VIA A REMOTE-SHELL CONNECTION below).
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 authentication. 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 useful 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 envi-
ronment variable RSYNC_PROXY to a hostname:port pair pointing to your
web proxy. Note that your web proxy's configuration must support proxy
connections to port 873.
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 contain 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 targeth-
ost (%H).
Note also that if the RSYNC_SHELL environment variable is set, that
program will be used to run the RSYNC_CONNECT_PROG command instead of
using the default shell of the system() call.
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 supports 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 con-
nection uses nearly the same command-line syntax as a normal rsync-dae-
mon 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 specifying 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:
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 information on how to start a daemon that will han-
dling incoming socket connections, see the rsyncd.conf(5) man page --
that is the config file for the daemon, and it contains the full de-
tails for how to run the daemon (including stand-alone and inetd con-
figurations).
If you're using one of the remote-shell transports for the transfer,
there is no need to manually start an rsync daemon.
SORTED TRANSFER ORDER
Rsync always sorts the specified filenames into its internal transfer
list. This handles the merging together of the contents of identically
named directories, makes it easy to remove duplicate filenames, and may
confuse someone when the files are transferred in a different order
than what was given on the command-line.
If you need a particular file to be transferred prior to another, ei-
ther separate the files into different rsync calls, or consider using
--delay-updates (which doesn't affect the sorted transfer order, but
does make the final file-updating phase happen much more rapidly).
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 tar-
gets:
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 protocol isn't very efficient.
I mirror a directory between my "old" and "new" ftp sites with the com-
mand:
rsync -az -e ssh --delete ~ftp/pub/samba nimbus:"~ftp/pub/tridge"
This is launched from cron every few hours.
OPTION SUMMARY
Here is a short summary of the options available in rsync. Please re-
fer to the detailed description below for a complete description.
--verbose, -v increase verbosity
--info=FLAGS fine-grained informational verbosity
--debug=FLAGS fine-grained debug verbosity
--stderr=e|a|c change stderr output mode (default: errors)
--quiet, -q suppress non-error messages
--no-motd suppress daemon-mode MOTD
--checksum, -c skip based on checksum, not mod-time & size
--archive, -a archive mode is -rlptgoD (no -A,-X,-U,-N,-H)
--no-OPTION turn off an implied OPTION (e.g. --no-D)
--recursive, -r recurse into directories
--relative, -R use relative path names
--no-implied-dirs don't send implied dirs with --relative
--backup, -b 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)
--update, -u 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
--dirs, -d transfer directories without recursing
--mkpath create the destination's path component
--links, -l copy symlinks as symlinks
--copy-links, -L transform symlink into referent file/dir
--copy-unsafe-links only "unsafe" symlinks are transformed
--safe-links ignore symlinks that point outside the tree
--munge-links munge symlinks to make them safe & unusable
--copy-dirlinks, -k transform symlink to dir into referent dir
--keep-dirlinks, -K treat symlinked dir on receiver as dir
--hard-links, -H preserve hard links
--perms, -p preserve permissions
--executability, -E preserve executability
--chmod=CHMOD affect file and/or directory permissions
--acls, -A preserve ACLs (implies --perms)
--xattrs, -X preserve extended attributes
--owner, -o preserve owner (super-user only)
--group, -g preserve group
--devices preserve device files (super-user only)
--copy-devices copy device contents as regular file
--specials preserve special files
-D same as --devices --specials
--times, -t preserve modification times
--atimes, -U preserve access (use) times
--open-noatime avoid changing the atime on opened files
--crtimes, -N preserve create times (newness)
--omit-dir-times, -O omit directories from --times
--omit-link-times, -J omit symlinks from --times
--super receiver attempts super-user activities
--fake-super store/recover privileged attrs using xattrs
--sparse, -S turn sequences of nulls into sparse blocks
--preallocate allocate dest files before writing them
--write-devices write to devices as files (implies --inplace)
--dry-run, -n perform a trial run with no changes made
--whole-file, -W copy files whole (w/o delta-xfer algorithm)
--checksum-choice=STR choose the checksum algorithm (aka --cc)
--one-file-system, -x don't cross filesystem boundaries
--block-size=SIZE, -B force a fixed checksum block-size
--rsh=COMMAND, -e 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 xfer, not during
--delete-during receiver deletes during the transfer
--delete-delay find deletions during, delete after
--delete-after receiver deletes after transfer, not during
--delete-excluded also delete excluded files from dest dirs
--ignore-missing-args ignore missing source args without error
--delete-missing-args delete missing source args from destination
--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
--max-alloc=SIZE change a limit relating to memory alloc
--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
--prune-empty-dirs, -m prune empty directory chains from file-list
--numeric-ids don't map uid/gid values by user/group name
--usermap=STRING custom username mapping
--groupmap=STRING custom groupname mapping
--chown=USER:GROUP simple username/groupname mapping
--timeout=SECONDS set I/O timeout in seconds
--contimeout=SECONDS set daemon connection timeout in seconds
--ignore-times, -I don't skip files that match size and time
--size-only skip files that match in size
--modify-window=NUM, -@ set the accuracy for mod-time comparisons
--temp-dir=DIR, -T create temporary files in directory DIR
--fuzzy, -y find similar file for basis if no dest file
--compare-dest=DIR also compare destination files relative to DIR
--copy-dest=DIR ... and include copies of unchanged files
--link-dest=DIR hardlink to files in DIR when unchanged
--compress, -z compress file data during the transfer
--compress-choice=STR choose the compression algorithm (aka --zc)
--compress-level=NUM explicitly set compression level (aka --zl)
--skip-compress=LIST skip compressing files with suffix in LIST
--cvs-exclude, -C auto-ignore files in the same way CVS does
--filter=RULE, -f 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
--from0, -0 all *-from/filter files are delimited by 0s
--protect-args, -s no space-splitting; wildcard chars only
--copy-as=USER[:GROUP] specify user & optional group for the copy
--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
--outbuf=N|L|B set out buffering to None, Line, or Block
--stats give some file-transfer stats
--8-bit-output, -8 leave high-bit chars unescaped in output
--human-readable, -h output numbers in a human-readable format
--progress show progress during transfer
-P same as --partial --progress
--itemize-changes, -i output a change-summary for all updates
--remote-option=OPT, -M send OPTION to the remote side only
--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
--early-input=FILE use FILE for daemon's early exec input
--list-only list the files instead of copying them
--bwlimit=RATE limit socket I/O bandwidth
--stop-after=MINS Stop rsync after MINS minutes have elapsed
--stop-at=y-m-dTh:m Stop rsync at the specified point in time
--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)
--ipv4, -4 prefer IPv4
--ipv6, -6 prefer IPv6
--version, -V print the version + other info and exit
--help, -h (*) show this help (* -h is help only on its own)
Rsync can also be run as a daemon, in which case the following options
are accepted:
--daemon run as an rsync daemon
--address=ADDRESS bind to the specified address
--bwlimit=RATE limit socket I/O bandwidth
--config=FILE specify alternate rsyncd.conf file
--dparam=OVERRIDE, -M override global daemon config parameter
--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
--verbose, -v increase verbosity
--ipv4, -4 prefer IPv4
--ipv6, -6 prefer IPv6
--help, -h show this help (when used with --daemon)
OPTIONS
Rsync accepts both long (double-dash + word) and short (single-dash +
letter) options. The full list of the available options are described
below. If an option can be specified in more than one way, the choices
are comma-separated. Some options only have a long variant, not a
short. If the option takes a parameter, the parameter is only listed
after the long variant, even though it must also be specified for the
short. When specifying a parameter, you can either use the form --op-
tion=param or replace the '=' with whitespace. The parameter may need
to be quoted in some manner for it to survive the shell's command-line
parsing. Keep in mind that a leading tilde (~) in a filename is sub-
stituted by your shell, so --option=~/foo will not change the tilde
into your home directory (remove the '=' for that).
--help, -h (*)
Print a short help page describing the options available in
rsync and exit. (*) The -h short option will only invoke --help
when used without other options since it normally means --human-
readable.
--version, -V
Print the rsync version plus other info and exit.
The output includes the default list of checksum algorithms, the
default list of compression algorithms, a list of compiled-in
capabilities, a link to the rsync web site, and some li-
cense/copyright info.
--verbose, -v
This option increases the amount of information you are given
during the transfer. By default, rsync works silently. A sin-
gle -v will give you information about what files are being
transferred and a brief summary at the end. Two -v options will
give you information on what files are being skipped and
slightly more information at the end. More than two -v options
should only be used if you are debugging rsync.
In a modern rsync, the -v option is equivalent to the setting of
groups of --info and --debug options. You can choose to use
these newer options in addition to, or in place of using --ver-
bose, as any fine-grained settings override the implied settings
of -v. Both --info and --debug have a way to ask for help that
tells you exactly what flags are set for each increase in ver-
bosity.
However, do keep in mind that a daemon's "max verbosity" setting
will limit how high of a level the various individual flags can
be set on the daemon side. For instance, if the max is 2, then
any info and/or debug flag that is set to a higher value than
what would be set by -vv will be downgraded to the -vv level in
the daemon's logging.
--info=FLAGS
This option lets you have fine-grained control over the informa-
tion output you want to see. An individual flag name may be
followed by a level number, with 0 meaning to silence that out-
put, 1 being the default output level, and higher numbers in-
creasing the output of that flag (for those that support higher
levels). Use --info=help to see all the available flag names,
what they output, and what flag names are added for each in-
crease in the verbose level. Some examples:
rsync -a --info=progress2 src/ dest/
rsync -avv --info=stats2,misc1,flist0 src/ dest/
Note that --info=name's output is affected by the --out-format
and --itemize-changes (-i) options. See those options for more
information on what is output and when.
This option was added to 3.1.0, so an older rsync on the server
side might reject your attempts at fine-grained control (if one
or more flags needed to be send to the server and the server was
too old to understand them). See also the "max verbosity"
caveat above when dealing with a daemon.
--debug=FLAGS
This option lets you have fine-grained control over the debug
output you want to see. An individual flag name may be followed
by a level number, with 0 meaning to silence that output, 1 be-
ing the default output level, and higher numbers increasing the
output of that flag (for those that support higher levels). Use
--debug=help to see all the available flag names, what they out-
put, and what flag names are added for each increase in the ver-
bose level. Some examples:
rsync -avvv --debug=none src/ dest/
rsync -avA --del --debug=del2,acl src/ dest/
Note that some debug messages will only be output when
--stderr=all is specified, especially those pertaining to I/O
and buffer debugging.
Beginning in 3.2.0, this option is no longer auto-forwarded to
the server side in order to allow you to specify different debug
values for each side of the transfer, as well as to specify a
new debug option that is only present in one of the rsync ver-
sions. If you want to duplicate the same option on both sides,
using brace expansion is an easy way to save you some typing.
This works in zsh and bash:
rsync -aiv {-M,}--debug=del2 src/ dest/
--stderr=errors|all|client
This option controls which processes output to stderr and if
info messages are also changed to stderr. The mode strings can
be abbreviated, so feel free to use a single letter value. The
3 possible choices are:
o errors - (the default) causes all the rsync processes to
send an error directly to stderr, even if the process is
on the remote side of the transfer. Info messages are
sent to the client side via the protocol stream. If
stderr is not available (i.e. when directly connecting
with a daemon via a socket) errors fall back to being
sent via the protocol stream.
o all - causes all rsync messages (info and error) to get
written directly to stderr from all (possible) processes.
This causes stderr to become line-buffered (instead of
raw) and eliminates the ability to divide up the info and
error messages by file handle. For those doing debugging
or using several levels of verbosity, this option can
help to avoid clogging up the transfer stream (which
should prevent any chance of a deadlock bug hanging
things up). It also allows --debug to enable some extra
I/O related messages.
o client - causes all rsync messages to be sent to the
client side via the protocol stream. One client process
outputs all messages, with errors on stderr and info mes-
sages on stdout. This was the default in older rsync
versions, but can cause error delays when a lot of trans-
fer data is ahead of the messages. If you're pushing
files to an older rsync, you may want to use --stderr=all
since that idiom has been around for several releases.
This option was added in rsync 3.2.3. This version also began
the forwarding of a non-default setting to the remote side,
though rsync uses the backward-compatible options --msgs2stderr
and --no-msgs2stderr to represent the all and client settings,
respectively. A newer rsync will continue to accept these older
option names to maintain compatibility.
--quiet, -q
This option decreases the amount of information you are given
during the transfer, notably suppressing information 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 limitation in the rsync protocol), so omit this option
if you want to request the list of modules from the daemon.
--ignore-times, -I
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, causing 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 an-
other mirroring system which may not preserve timestamps ex-
actly.
--modify-window=NUM, -@
When comparing two timestamps, rsync treats the timestamps as
being equal if they differ by no more than the modify-window
value. The default is 0, which matches just integer seconds.
If you specify a negative value (and the receiver is at least
version 3.1.3) then nanoseconds will also be taken into account.
Specifying 1 is useful for copies to/from MS Windows FAT
filesystems, because FAT represents times with a 2-second reso-
lution (allowing times to differ from the original by up to 1
second).
If you want all your transfers to default to comparing nanosec-
onds, you can create a ~/.popt file and put these lines in it:
rsync alias -a -a@-1
rsync alias -t -t@-1
With that as the default, you'd need to specify --modify-win-
dow=0 (aka -@0) to override it and ignore nanoseconds, e.g. if
you're copying between ext3 and ext4, or if the receiving rsync
is older than 3.1.3.
--checksum, -c
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 modification 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, so this can slow things down
significantly (and this is prior to any reading that will be
done to transfer changed files)
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 checksum any file that has the same size
as the corresponding sender's file: files with either a changed
size or 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 trans-
ferred, 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.
The checksum used is auto-negotiated between the client and the
server, but can be overridden using either the --checksum-choice
(--cc) option or an environment variable that is discussed in
that option's section.
--archive, -a
This is equivalent to -rlptgoD. It is a quick way of saying you
want recursion and want to preserve almost everything. Be aware
that it does not include preserving ACLs (-A), xattrs (-X),
atimes (-U), crtimes (-N), nor the finding and preserving of
hardlinks (-H).
The only exception to the above equivalence is when --files-from
is specified, in which case -r is not implied.
--no-OPTION
You may turn off one or more implied options by prefixing 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 different defaults in various cir-
cumstances (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
--files-from option for more details).
--recursive, -r
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 directo-
ries have been completed. This incremental scan only affects
our recursion algorithm, and does not change a non-recursive
transfer. It is also only possible when both ends of the trans-
fer 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 --de-
lay-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-recur-
sive option or its shorter --no-i-r alias.
--relative, -R
Use relative paths. This means that the full path names speci-
fied 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/
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/
then a file named /tmp/foo/bar/baz.c would be created on the re-
mote machine, preserving its full path. These extra path ele-
ments 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 di-
rectories 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 sym-
link 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 information 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.) 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 com-
mands.) 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
This option affects the default behavior of the --relative op-
tion. When it is specified, the attributes of the implied di-
rectories from the source names are not included in the trans-
fer. 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 attributes.
This even allows these implied path elements to have big differ-
ences, 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 ordinarily 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 trans-
ferred as normal directories.
--backup, -b
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 forced on, 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 exist-
ing excludes (e.g. -f "P *~"). This will prevent previously
backed-up files from being deleted. Note that if you are sup-
plying 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 never be reached).
--backup-dir=DIR
This implies the --backup option, and tells rsync to store all
backups in the specified directory on the receiving side. This
can be used for incremental backups. You can additionally spec-
ify a backup suffix using the --suffix option (otherwise the
files backed up in the specified directory will keep their orig-
inal filenames).
Note that if you specify a relative path, the backup directory
will be relative to the destination directory, so you probably
want to specify either an absolute path or a path that starts
with "../". If an rsync daemon is the receiver, the backup dir
cannot go outside the module's path hierarchy, so take extra
care not to delete it or copy into it.
--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, otherwise it is an empty
string.
--update, -u
This forces rsync to skip any files which exist on the destina-
tion 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 dirs, symlinks, or
other special files. Also, a difference of file format between
the sender and receiver is always considered 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 time-
stamps.
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 re-
ceiver requests to be transferred.
--inplace
This option changes how rsync transfers a file when its 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 com-
plete, rsync instead writes the updated data directly to the
destination file.
This has several effects:
o Hard links are not broken. This means the new data will
be visible through other hard links to the destination
file. Moreover, attempts to copy differing source files
onto a multiply-linked destination file will result in a
"tug of war" with the destination data changing back and
forth.
o In-use binaries cannot be updated (either the OS will
prevent this from happening, or binaries that attempt to
swap-in their data will misbehave or crash).
o The file's data will be in an inconsistent state during
the transfer and will be left that way if the transfer is
interrupted or if an update fails.
o A file that rsync cannot write to cannot be updated.
While a super user can update any file, a normal user
needs to be granted write permission for the open of the
file for writing to be successful.
o The efficiency of rsync's delta-transfer algorithm may be
reduced if some data in the destination file is overwrit-
ten before it can be copied to a position later in the
file. This does not apply if you use --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 transferring large files with block-
based changes or appended data, and also on systems that are
disk bound, not network bound. It can also help keep a copy-on-
write filesystem snapshot from diverging the entire contents of
a file that only has minor changes.
The option implies --partial (since an interrupted transfer does
not delete the file), but conflicts with --partial-dir and --de-
lay-updates. Prior to rsync 2.6.4 --inplace was also incompati-
ble with --compare-dest and --link-dest.
--append
This special copy mode only works to efficiently update files
that are known to be growing larger where any existing content
on the receiving side is also known to be the same as the con-
tent on the sender. The use of --append can be dangerous if you
aren't 100% sure that all the files in the transfer are shared,
growing files. You should thus use filter rules to ensure that
you weed out any files that do not fit this criteria.
Rsync updates these growing file in-place without verifying any
of the existing content in the file (it only verifies the con-
tent that it is appending). Rsync skips any files that exist on
the receiving side that are not shorter than the associated file
on the sending side (which means that new files are trans-
ferred).
This does not interfere with the updating of a file's non-con-
tent attributes (e.g. permissions, ownership, etc.) when the
file does not need to be transferred, nor does it affect the up-
dating of any directories or non-regular files.
--append-verify
This special copy mode works like --append except that all the
data in the file is included in the checksum verification (mak-
ing it much less efficient but also potentially safer). This
option can be dangerous if you aren't 100% sure that all the
files in the transfer are shared, growing files. See the --ap-
pend option for more details.
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.
--dirs, -d
Tell the sending side to include any directories that are en-
countered. 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 directo-
ries 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 --ex-
clude='/*/*' to get an older rsync to list a single directory
without recursing.
--mkpath
Create a missing path component of the destination arg. This
allows rsync to create multiple levels of missing destination
dirs and to create a path in which to put a single renamed file.
Keep in mind that you'll need to supply a trailing slash if you
want the entire destination path to be treated as a directory
when copying a single arg (making rsync behave the same way that
it would if the path component of the destination had already
existed).
For example, the following creates a copy of file foo as bar in
the sub/dir directory, creating dirs "sub" and "sub/dir" if ei-
ther do not yet exist:
rsync -ai --mkpath foo sub/dir/bar
If you instead ran the following, it would have created file foo
in the sub/dir/bar directory:
rsync -ai --mkpath foo sub/dir/bar/
--links, -l
When symlinks are encountered, recreate the symlink on the des-
tination.
--copy-links, -L
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 directo-
ries. In a modern rsync such as this one, you'll need to spec-
ify --keep-dirlinks (-K) to get this extra behavior. The only
exception is when sending files to an rsync that 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.
Note that the cut-off point is the top of the transfer, which is
the part of the path that rsync isn't mentioning in the verbose
output. If you copy "/src/subdir" to "/dest/" then the "subdir"
directory is a name inside the transfer tree, not the top of the
transfer (which is /src) so it is legal for created relative
symlinks to refer to other names inside the /src and /dest di-
rectories. If you instead copy "/src/subdir/" (with a trailing
slash) to "/dest/subdir" that would not allow symlinks to any
files outside of "subdir".
--safe-links
This tells rsync to ignore any symbolic links which point out-
side the copied tree. All absolute symlinks are also ignored.
Using this option in conjunction with --relative may give unex-
pected results.
--munge-links
This option tells rsync to (1) modify all symlinks on the re-
ceiving side in a way that makes them unusable but recoverable
(see below), or (2) to unmunge symlinks on the sending side that
had been stored in a munged state. This is useful if you don't
quite trust the source of the data to not try to slip in a sym-
link to a unexpected place.
The way rsync disables the use of symlinks is to prefix each one
with the string "/rsyncd-munged/". This prevents the links from
being used as long as that directory does not exist. When this
option is enabled, rsync will refuse to run if that path is a
directory or a symlink to a directory.
The option only affects the client side of the transfer, so if
you need it to affect the server, specify it via --remote-op-
tion. (Note that in a local transfer, the client side is the
sender.)
This option has no affect on a daemon, since the daemon config-
ures whether it wants munged symlinks via its "munge symlinks"
parameter. See also the "munge-symlinks" perl script in the
support directory of the source code.
--copy-dirlinks, -k
This option causes the sending side to treat a symlink to a di-
rectory 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 direc-
tory 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 ef-
fect).
See also --keep-dirlinks for an analogous option for the receiv-
ing side.
--copy-dirlinks applies to all symlinks to directories in the
source. If you want to follow only a few specified symlinks, a
trick you can use is to pass them as additional source args with
a trailing slash, using --relative to make the paths match up
right. For example:
rsync -r --relative src/./ src/./follow-me/ dest/
This works because rsync calls lstat(2) on the source arg as
given, and the trailing slash makes lstat(2) follow the symlink,
giving rise to a directory in the file-list which overrides the
symlink found during the scan of "src/./".
--keep-dirlinks, -K
This option causes the receiving side to treat a symlink 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 con-
tains a file "file", but "foo" is a symlink to directory "bar"
on the receiver. Without --keep-dirlinks, the receiver deletes
symlink "foo", recreates it as a directory, 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 possible 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.
--hard-links, -H
This tells rsync to look for hard-linked files in the source and
link together the corresponding files on the destination. With-
out this option, hard-linked files in the source are treated as
though they were separate files.
This option does NOT necessarily ensure that the pattern of hard
links on the destination exactly matches that on the source.
Cases in which the destination may end up with extra hard links
include the following:
o If the destination contains extraneous hard-links (more
linking than what is present in the source file list),
the copying algorithm will not break them explicitly.
However, if one or more of the paths have content differ-
ences, the normal file-update process will break those
extra links (unless you are using the --inplace option).
o If you specify a --link-dest directory that contains hard
links, the linking of the destination files against the
--link-dest files can cause some paths in the destination
to become linked together due to the --link-dest associa-
tions.
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 broken. 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 un-
intended 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 elsewhere in the hierarchy. This
does not affect the accuracy of the transfer (i.e. which files
are hard-linked together), just its efficiency (i.e. copying the
data for a new, early copy of a hard-linked file that could have
been found later in the transfer in another member of the hard-
linked set of files). One way to avoid this inefficiency is to
disable incremental recursion using the --no-inc-recursive op-
tion.
--perms, -p
This option causes the receiving rsync to set the destination
permissions to be the same as the source permissions. (See also
the --chmod option for a way to modify what rsync considers to
be the source permissions.)
When this option is off, permissions are set as follows:
o Existing files (including updated files) retain their ex-
isting permissions, though the --executability option
might change just the execute permission for the file.
o New files get their "normal" permission bits set to the
source file's permissions masked with the receiving di-
rectory'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 direc-
tory.
Thus, when --perms and --executability are both disabled,
rsync's behavior is the same as that of other file-copy utili-
ties, 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 destina-
tion-default permissions (while leaving existing files un-
changed), make sure that the --perms option is off and use
--chmod=ugo=rwX (which ensures that all non-masked bits get en-
abled). 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
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-en-
able the two --no-* options mentioned above.)
The preservation of the destination's setgid bit on newly-cre-
ated 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.)
--executability, -E
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 executable if at least one 'x'
is turned on in its permissions. When an existing destination
file's executability 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' per-
mission that has a corresponding 'r' permission enabled.
If --perms is enabled, this option is ignored.
--acls, -A
This option causes rsync to update the destination ACLs to be
the same as the source ACLs. The option also implies --perms.
The source and destination systems must have compatible ACL en-
tries for this option to work properly. See the --fake-super
option for a way to backup and restore ACLs that are not compat-
ible.
--xattrs, -X
This option causes rsync to update the destination extended at-
tributes to be the same as the source ones.
For systems that support extended-attribute namespaces, a copy
being done by a super-user copies all namespaces except sys-
tem.*. 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.
The above name filtering can be overridden by using one or more
filter options with the x modifier. When you specify an xattr-
affecting filter rule, rsync requires that you do your own sys-
tem/user filtering, as well as any additional filtering for what
xattr names are copied and what names are allowed to be deleted.
For example, to skip the system namespace, you could specify:
--filter='-x system.*'
To skip all namespaces except the user namespace, you could
specify a negated-user match:
--filter='-x! user.*'
To prevent any attributes from being deleted, you could specify
a receiver-only rule that excludes all names:
--filter='-xr *'
Note that the -X option does not copy rsync's special xattr val-
ues (e.g. those used by --fake-super) unless you repeat the op-
tion (e.g. -XX). This "copy all xattrs" mode cannot be used
with --fake-super.
--chmod=CHMOD
This option tells rsync to apply one or more comma-separated
"chmod" modes to the permission of the files in the transfer.
The resulting value is treated as though it were 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, the following will ensure that all directories get
marked set-gid, that no files are other-writable, that both are
user-writable and group-writable, and that both have consistent
executability across all bits:
--chmod=Dg+s,ug+w,Fo-w,+X
Using octal mode numbers is also allowed:
--chmod=D2775,F664
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 result-
ing permission value can be applied to the files in the trans-
fer.
--owner, -o
This option causes rsync to set the owner of the destination
file to be the same as the source file, but only if the receiv-
ing 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 cir-
cumstances (see also the --numeric-ids option for a full discus-
sion).
--group, -g
This option causes rsync to set the group of the destination
file to be the same as the source file. If the receiving pro-
gram 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 op-
tion has no effect if the receiving rsync is not run as the su-
per-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.
--write-devices
This tells rsync to treat a device on the receiving side as a
regular file, allowing the writing of file data into a device.
This option implies the --inplace option.
Be careful using this, as you should know what devices are
present on the receiving side of the transfer, especially if
running rsync as root.
This option is refused by an rsync daemon.
--times, -t
This tells rsync to transfer modification times along with the
files and update them on the remote system. 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 efficient if the
files haven't actually changed, you're much better off using
-t).
--atimes, -U
This tells rsync to set the access (use) times of the destina-
tion files to the same value as the source files.
If repeated, it also sets the --open-noatime option, which can
help you to make the sending and receiving systems have the same
access times on the transferred files without needing to run
rsync an extra time after a file is transferred.
Note that some older rsync versions (prior to 3.2.0) may have
been built with a pre-release --atimes patch that does not imply
--open-noatime when this option is repeated.
--open-noatime
This tells rsync to open files with the O_NOATIME flag (on sys-
tems that support it) to avoid changing the access time of the
files that are being transferred. If your OS does not support
the O_NOATIME flag then rsync will silently ignore this option.
Note also that some filesystems are mounted to avoid updating
the atime on read access even without the O_NOATIME flag being
set.
--crtimes, -N,
This tells rsync to set the create times (newness) of the desti-
nation files to the same value as the source files.
--omit-dir-times, -O
This tells rsync to omit directories when it is preserving modi-
fication 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.
This option also has the side-effect of avoiding early creation
of directories in incremental recursion copies. The default
--inc-recursive copying normally does an early-create pass of
all the sub-directories in a parent directory in order for it to
be able to then set the modify time of the parent directory
right away (without having to delay that until a bunch of recur-
sive copying has finished). This early-create idiom is not nec-
essary if directory modify times are not being preserved, so it
is skipped. Since early-create directories don't have accurate
mode, mtime, or ownership, the use of this option can help when
someone wants to avoid these partially-finished directories.
--omit-link-times, -J
This tells rsync to omit symlinks when it is preserving modifi-
cation times (see --times).
--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 --group option, and copying devices via the --devices op-
tion. 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 su-
per-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 activi-
ties by saving/restoring the privileged attributes 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 de-
fault), the file's device info (device & special files are cre-
ated 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 specified).
This is a good way to backup data without using a super-user,
and to store ACLs from incompatible systems.
The --fake-super option only affects the side where the option
is used. To affect the remote side of a remote-shell connec-
tion, use the --remote-option (-M) option:
rsync -av -M--fake-super /src/ host:/dest/
For a local copy, this option affects both the source and the
destination. If you wish a local copy to enable this option
just for the destination files, specify -M--fake-super. If you
wish a local copy to enable this option just for the source
files, combine --fake-super with -M--super.
This option is overridden by both --super and --no-super.
See also the "fake super" setting in the daemon's rsyncd.conf
file.
--sparse, -S
Try to handle sparse files efficiently so they take up less
space on the destination. If combined with --inplace the file
created might not end up with sparse blocks with some combina-
tions of kernel version and/or filesystem type. If --whole-file
is in effect (e.g. for a local copy) then it will always work
because rsync truncates the file prior to writing out the up-
dated version.
Note that versions of rsync older than 3.1.3 will reject the
combination of --sparse and --inplace.
--preallocate
This tells the receiver to allocate each destination file to its
eventual size before writing data to the file. Rsync will only
use the real filesystem-level preallocation support provided by
Linux's fallocate(2) system call or Cygwin's posix_fallocate(3),
not the slow glibc implementation that writes a null byte into
each block.
Without this option, larger files may not be entirely contiguous
on the filesystem, but with this option rsync will probably copy
more slowly. If the destination is not an extent-supporting
filesystem (such as ext4, xfs, NTFS, etc.), this option may have
no positive effect at all.
If combined with --sparse, the file will only have sparse blocks
(as opposed to allocated sequences of null bytes) if the kernel
version and filesystem type support creating holes in the allo-
cated data.
--dry-run, -n
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 --verbose, -v
and/or --itemize-changes, -i options to see what an rsync com-
mand 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 should be mostly unchanged, but may differ in 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 were needed.
--whole-file, -W
This option disables rsync's delta-transfer algorithm, which
causes all transferred files to be sent whole. 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 des-
tination are specified as local paths, but only if no batch-
writing option is in effect.
--checksum-choice=STR, --cc=STR
This option overrides the checksum algorithms. If one algorithm
name is specified, it is used for both the transfer checksums
and (assuming --checksum is specified) the pre-transfer check-
sums. If two comma-separated names are supplied, the first name
affects the transfer checksums, and the second name affects the
pre-transfer checksums (-c).
The checksum options that you may be able to use are:
o auto (the default automatic choice)
o xxh128
o xxh3
o xxh64 (aka xxhash)
o md5
o md4
o none
Run rsync --version to see the default checksum list compiled
into your version (which may differ from the list above).
If "none" is specified for the first (or only) name, the
--whole-file option is forced on and no checksum verification is
performed on the transferred data. If "none" is specified for
the second (or only) name, the --checksum option cannot be used.
The "auto" option is the default, where rsync bases its algo-
rithm choice on a negotiation between the client and the server
as follows:
When both sides of the transfer are at least 3.2.0, rsync
chooses the first algorithm in the client's list of choices that
is also in the server's list of choices. If no common checksum
choice is found, rsync exits with an error. If the remote rsync
is too old to support checksum negotiation, a value is chosen
based on the protocol version (which chooses between MD5 and
various flavors of MD4 based on protocol age).
The default order can be customized by setting the environment
variable RSYNC_CHECKSUM_LIST to a space-separated list of ac-
ceptable checksum names. If the string contains a "&" charac-
ter, it is separated into the "client string & server string",
otherwise the same string applies to both. If the string (or
string portion) contains no non-whitespace characters, the de-
fault checksum list is used. This method does not allow you to
specify the transfer checksum separately from the pre-transfer
checksum, and it discards "auto" and all unknown checksum names.
A list with only invalid names results in a failed negotiation.
The use of the --checksum-choice option overrides this environ-
ment list.
--one-file-system, -x
This tells rsync to avoid crossing a filesystem boundary when
recursing. This does not limit the user's ability to specify
items to copy from multiple filesystems, just rsync's recursion
through the hierarchy of each directory that the user specified,
and also the analogous recursion on the receiving side during
deletion. 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 directo-
ries 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 inaccessible).
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 up-
dated (which can be useful if all you want to do is delete ex-
traneous files).
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 re-
ceiver 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 re-
ceiver 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 looking 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.
Note that you should only use this option on source files that
are quiescent. If you are using this to move files that show up
in a particular directory over to another host, make sure that
the finished files get renamed into the source directory, not
directly written into it, so that rsync can't possibly transfer
a file that is not yet fully written. If you can't first write
the files into a different directory, you should use a naming
idiom that lets rsync avoid transferring files that are not yet
finished (e.g. name the file "foo.new" when it is written, re-
name it to "foo" when it is done, and then use the option --ex-
clude='*.new' for the rsync transfer).
Starting with 3.1.0, rsync will skip the sender-side removal
(and output an error) if the file's size or modify time has not
stayed unchanged.
--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 synchronized. 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 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 from causing a massive deletion of
files on the destination. You can override this with the --ig-
nore-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 filesystem is
tight for space and removing extraneous files would help to make
the transfer possible. However, it does introduce a delay be-
fore 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 algorithm
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 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 be-
ing 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 com-
puted during the transfer (like --delete-during), and then re-
moved after the transfer completes. This is useful when com-
bined 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 re-
ceiving side to hold the names (it is removed while open, so you
shouldn't see it during the transfer). If the creation of the
temporary 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 de-
tails on file-deletion.
--delete-after
Request that the file-deletions on the receiving side be done
after the transfer has completed. This is useful 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 exclu-
sions behave this way on the receiver, and for a way to protect
files from --delete-excluded. See --delete (which is implied)
for more details on file-deletion.
--ignore-missing-args
When rsync is first processing the explicitly requested source
files (e.g. command-line arguments or --files-from entries), it
is normally an error if the file cannot be found. This option
suppresses that error, and does not try to transfer the file.
This does not affect subsequent vanished-file errors if a file
was initially found to be present and later is no longer there.
--delete-missing-args
This option takes the behavior of (the implied) --ignore-miss-
ing-args option a step farther: each missing arg will become a
deletion request of the corresponding destination file on the
receiving side (should it exist). If the destination file is a
non-empty directory, it will only be successfully deleted if
--force or --delete are in effect. Other than that, this option
is independent of any other type of delete processing.
The missing source files are represented by special file-list
entries which display as a "*missing" entry in the --list-only
output.
--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 un-
less the --recursive option was also enabled.
--max-delete=NUM
This tells rsync not to delete more than NUM files or directo-
ries. If that limit is exceeded, all further deletions are
skipped through the end of the transfer. At the end, rsync out-
puts a warning (including a count of the skipped deletions) and
exits with an error code of 25 (unless some more important error
condition also occurred).
Beginning with 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 "unlim-
ited", 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 really old
versions 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. A numeric value can be suffixed with a
string to indicate the numeric units or left unqualified to
specify bytes. Feel free to use a fractional value along with
the units, such as --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 re-
ceiver requests to be transferred.
The first letter of a units string can be B (bytes), K (kilo), M
(mega), G (giga), T (tera), or P (peta). If the string is a
single char or has "ib" added to it (e.g. "G" or "GiB") then the
units are multiples of 1024. If you use a two-letter suffix
that ends with a "B" (e.g. "kb") then you get units that are
multiples of 1000. The string's letters can be any mix of upper
and lower-case that you want to use.
Finally, if the string ends with either "+1" or "-1", it is off-
set by one byte in the indicated direction. The largest possi-
ble value is usually 8192P-1.
Examples: --max-size=1.5mb-1 is 1499999 bytes, and --max-
size=2g+1 is 2147483649 bytes.
Note that rsync versions prior to 3.1.0 did not allow --max-
size=0.
--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.
Note that rsync versions prior to 3.1.0 did not allow --min-
size=0.
--max-alloc=SIZE
By default rsync limits an individual malloc/realloc to about
1GB in size. For most people this limit works just fine and
prevents a protocol error causing rsync to request massive
amounts of memory. However, if you have many millions of files
in a transfer, a large amount of server memory, and you don't
want to split up your transfer into multiple parts, you can in-
crease the per-allocation limit to something larger and rsync
will consume more memory.
Keep in mind that this is not a limit on the total size of allo-
cated memory. It is a sanity-check value for each individual
allocation.
See the --max-size option for a description of how SIZE can be
specified. The default suffix if none is given is bytes.
Beginning in 3.2.3, a value of 0 specifies no limit.
You can set a default value using the environment variable
RSYNC_MAX_ALLOC using the same SIZE values as supported by this
option. If the remote rsync doesn't understand the --max-alloc
option, you can override an environmental value by specifying
--max-alloc=1g, which will make rsync avoid sending the option
to the remote side (because "1G" is the default).
--block-size=SIZE, -B
This forces the block size used in rsync's delta-transfer algo-
rithm to a fixed value. It is normally selected based on the
size of each file being updated. See the technical report for
details.
Beginning in 3.2.3 the SIZE can be specified with a suffix as
detailed in the --max-size option. Older versions only accepted
a byte count.
--rsh=COMMAND, -e
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 re-
mote shell connection, rather than through a direct socket con-
nection to a running rsync daemon on the remote host. See the
section "USING RSYNC-DAEMON FEATURES VIA A REMOTE-SHELL CONNEC-
TION" above.
Beginning with rsync 3.2.0, the RSYNC_PORT environment variable
will be set when a daemon connection is being made via a remote-
shell connection. It is set to 0 if the default daemon port is
being assumed, or it is set to the value of the rsync port that
was specified via either the --port option or a non-empty port
value in an rsync:// URL. This allows the script to discern if
a non-default port is being requested, allowing for things such
as an SSL or stunnel helper script to connect to a default or
alternate port.
Command-line arguments are permitted in COMMAND provided that
COMMAND is presented to rsync as a single argument. You must
use spaces (not tabs or other whitespace) to separate the com-
mand and args from each other, and you can use single- and/or
double-quotes to preserve spaces in an argument (but not back-
slashes). Note that doubling a single-quote inside a single-
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 exam-
ples:
-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 op-
tion.
--rsync-path=PROGRAM
Use this to specify what program is to be run on the remote ma-
chine to start-up rsync. Often used when rsync is not in the
default remote-shell's path (e.g. --rsync-path=/usr/lo-
cal/bin/rsync). Note that PROGRAM is run with the help of a
shell, so it can be any program, script, or command sequence
you'd care to run, so long as it does not corrupt the standard-
in & standard-out that rsync is using to communicate.
One tricky example is to set a different default directory on
the remote machine for use with the --relative option. For in-
stance:
rsync -avR --rsync-path="cd /a/b && rsync" host:c/d /e/
--remote-option=OPTION, -M
This option is used for more advanced situations where you want
certain effects to be limited to one side of the transfer only.
For instance, if you want to pass --log-file=FILE and --fake-su-
per to the remote system, specify it like this:
rsync -av -M --log-file=foo -M--fake-super src/ dest/
If you want to have an option affect only the local side of a
transfer when it normally affects both sides, send its negation
to the remote side. Like this:
rsync -av -x -M--no-x src/ dest/
Be cautious using this, as it is possible to toggle an option
that will cause rsync to have a different idea about what data
to expect next over the socket, and that will make it fail in a
cryptic fashion.
Note that it is best to use a separate --remote-option for each
option you want to pass. This makes your usage compatible with
the --protect-args option. If that option is off, any spaces in
your remote options will be split by the remote shell unless you
take steps to protect them.
When performing a local transfer, the "local" side is the sender
and the "remote" side is the receiver.
Note some versions of the popt option-parsing library have a bug
in them that prevents you from using an adjacent arg with an
equal in it next to a short option letter (e.g. -M--log-
file=/tmp/foo). If this bug affects your version of popt, you
can use the version of popt that is included with rsync.
--cvs-exclude, -C
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 determine if a file should be ig-
nored.
The exclude list is initialized to exclude the following items
(these initial items are marked as perishable -- 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/ .hg/ .bzr/
then, files listed in a $HOME/.cvsignore are added to the list
and any files listed in the CVSIGNORE environment 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 spec-
ified explicitly. If you want to control where these CVS ex-
cludes 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.
--filter=RULE, -f
This option allows you to add rules to selectively exclude cer-
tain 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.
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 de-
faults to an exclude rule and does not allow the full rule-pars-
ing 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 are ignored, as are whole-line comments that
start with ';' or '#' (filename rules that contain those charac-
ters are unaffected).
If FILE is '-', the list will be read from standard input.
--include=PATTERN
This option is a simplified form of the --filter option that de-
faults to an include rule and does not allow the full rule-pars-
ing 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 are ignored, as are whole-line comments that
start with ';' or '#' (filename rules that contain those charac-
ters are unaffected).
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 specified 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 di-
rectories 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 --re-
cursive (-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 relative 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:
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 trailing slash), the im-
mediate 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.
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.
NOTE: sorting the list of files in the --files-from input helps
rsync to be more efficient, as it will avoid re-visiting the
path elements that are shared between adjacent entries. If the
input is not sorted, some path elements (implied directories)
may end up being scanned multiple times, and rsync will eventu-
ally unduplicate them after they get turned into file-list ele-
ments.
--from0, -0
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).
--protect-args, -s
This option sends all filenames and most 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 (in-
stead of the shell doing it).
If you use this option with --iconv, the args related to the re-
mote side 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.
You may also control this option via the RSYNC_PROTECT_ARGS en-
vironment variable. If this variable has a non-zero value, this
option will be enabled by default, otherwise it will be disabled
by default. Either state is overridden by a manually specified
positive or negative version of this option (note that --no-s
and --no-protect-args are the negative versions). Since this
option was first introduced in 3.0.0, you'll need to make sure
it's disabled if you ever need to interact with a remote rsync
that is older than that.
Rsync can also be configured (at build time) to have this option
enabled by default (with is overridden by both the environment
and the command-line). Run rsync --version to check if this is
the case, as it will display "default protect-args" or "optional
protect-args" depending on how it was compiled.
This option will eventually become a new default setting at some
as-yet-undetermined point in the future.
--copy-as=USER[:GROUP]
This option instructs rsync to use the USER and (if specified
after a colon) the GROUP for the copy operations. This only
works if the user that is running rsync has the ability to
change users. If the group is not specified then the user's de-
fault groups are used.
This option can help to reduce the risk of an rsync being run as
root into or out of a directory that might have live changes
happening to it and you want to make sure that root-level read
or write actions of system files are not possible. While you
could alternatively run all of rsync as the specified user,
sometimes you need the root-level host-access credentials to be
used, so this allows rsync to drop root for the copying part of
the operation after the remote-shell or daemon connection is es-
tablished.
The option only affects one side of the transfer unless the
transfer is local, in which case it affects both sides. Use the
--remote-option to affect the remote side, such as -M--copy-
as=joe. For a local transfer, the lsh (or lsh.sh) support file
provides a local-shell helper script that can be used to allow a
"localhost:" or "lh:" host-spec to be specified without needing
to setup any remote shells, allowing you to specify remote op-
tions that affect the side of the transfer that is using the
host-spec (and using hostname "lh" avoids the overriding of the
remote directory to the user's home dir).
For example, the following rsync writes the local files as user
"joe":
sudo rsync -aiv --copy-as=joe host1:backups/joe/ /home/joe/
This makes all files owned by user "joe", limits the groups to
those that are available to that user, and makes it impossible
for the joe user to do a timed exploit of the path to induce a
change to a file that the joe user has no permissions to change.
The following command does a local copy into the "dest/" dir as
user "joe" (assuming you've installed support/lsh into a dir on
your $PATH):
sudo rsync -aive lsh -M--copy-as=joe src/ lh:dest/
--temp-dir=DIR, -T
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 tempo-
rary file in the same directory as the associated destination
file. Beginning with rsync 3.1.1, the temp-file names inside
the specified DIR will not be prefixed with an extra dot (though
they will still have a random suffix added).
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 di-
rectory 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 temporary file in the destination di-
rectory, 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-up-
dates option, which will ensure that all copied files get put
into subdirectories in the destination hierarchy, awaiting the
end of the transfer. If you don't have enough room to duplicate
all the arriving 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 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 --par-
tial-dir with an absolute path does not have this side-effect.)
--fuzzy, -y
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 identical size and modified-time, or a simi-
larly-named file. If found, rsync uses the fuzzy basis file to
try to speed up the transfer.
If the option is repeated, the fuzzy scan will also be done in
any matching alternate destination directories that are speci-
fied via --compare-dest, --copy-dest, or --link-dest.
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 destination ma-
chine as an additional hierarchy to compare destination files
against doing transfers (if the files are missing in the desti-
nation 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.
This option is typically used to copy into an empty (or newly
created) directory.
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 attributes, 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 trans-
fer.
If DIR is a relative path, it is relative to the destination di-
rectory. See also --copy-dest and --link-dest.
NOTE: beginning with version 3.1.0, rsync will remove a file
from a non-empty destination hierarchy if an exact match is
found in one of the compare-dest hierarchies (making the end re-
sult more closely match a fresh copy).
--copy-dest=DIR
This option behaves like --compare-dest, but rsync will also
copy unchanged files found in DIR to the destination 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 trans-
ferred.
Multiple --copy-dest directories may be provided, which will
cause rsync to search the list in the order specified for an un-
changed 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 destination di-
rectory. 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 ownership) in order for the files to be linked to-
gether. An example:
rsync -av --link-dest=$PWD/prior_dir host:src_dir/ new_dir/
If file's aren't linking, double-check their attributes. 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 removable drive with generic ownership (such
as OS X's "Ignore ownership on this volume" option).
Beginning in version 2.6.4, multiple --link-dest directories may
be provided, which will cause rsync to search the list in the
order specified for an exact match (there is a limit of 20 such
directories). If a match is found that differs only in at-
tributes, 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 destination
hierarchy, as existing files may get their attributes tweaked,
and that can affect alternate destination files via hard-links.
Also, itemizing of changes can get a bit muddled. Note that
prior to version 3.1.0, an alternate-directory exact match would
never be found (nor linked into the destination) when a destina-
tion file already exists.
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 additional check after the file is updated.
If DIR is a relative path, it is relative to the destination di-
rectory. 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.
--compress, -z
With this option, rsync compresses the file data as it is sent
to the destination machine, which reduces the amount of data be-
ing transmitted -- something that is useful over a slow connec-
tion.
Rsync supports multiple compression methods and will choose one
for you unless you force the choice using the --compress-choice
(--zc) option.
Run rsync --version to see the default compress list compiled
into your version.
When both sides of the transfer are at least 3.2.0, rsync
chooses the first algorithm in the client's list of choices that
is also in the server's list of choices. If no common compress
choice is found, rsync exits with an error. If the remote rsync
is too old to support checksum negotiation, its list is assumed
to be "zlib".
The default order can be customized by setting the environment
variable RSYNC_COMPRESS_LIST to a space-separated list of ac-
ceptable compression names. If the string contains a "&" char-
acter, it is separated into the "client string & server string",
otherwise the same string applies to both. If the string (or
string portion) contains no non-whitespace characters, the de-
fault compress list is used. Any unknown compression names are
discarded from the list, but a list with only invalid names re-
sults in a failed negotiation.
There are some older rsync versions that were configured to re-
ject a -z option and require the use of -zz because their com-
pression library was not compatible with the default zlib com-
pression method. You can usually ignore this weirdness unless
the rsync server complains and tells you to specify -zz.
See also the --skip-compress option for the default list of file
suffixes that will be transferred with no (or minimal) compres-
sion.
--compress-choice=STR, --zc=STR
This option can be used to override the automatic negotiation of
the compression algorithm that occurs when --compress is used.
The option implies --compress unless "none" was specified, which
instead implies --no-compress.
The compression options that you may be able to use are:
o zstd
o lz4
o zlibx
o zlib
o none
Run rsync --version to see the default compress list compiled
into your version (which may differ from the list above).
Note that if you see an error about an option named --old-com-
press or --new-compress, this is rsync trying to send the --com-
press-choice=zlib or --compress-choice=zlibx option in a back-
ward-compatible manner that more rsync versions understand.
This error indicates that the older rsync version on the server
will not allow you to force the compression type.
Note that the "zlibx" compression algorithm is just the "zlib"
algorithm with matched data excluded from the compression stream
(to try to make it more compatible with an external zlib imple-
mentation).
--compress-level=NUM, --zl=NUM
Explicitly set the compression level to use (see --compress, -z)
instead of letting it default. The --compress option is implied
as long as the level chosen is not a "don't compress" level for
the compression algorithm that is in effect (e.g. zlib compres-
sion treats level 0 as "off").
The level values vary depending on the checksum in effect. Be-
cause rsync will negotiate a checksum choice by default (when
the remote rsync is new enough), it can be good to combine this
option with a --compress-choice (--zc) option unless you're sure
of the choice in effect. For example:
rsync -aiv --zc=zstd --zl=22 host:src/ dest/
For zlib & zlibx compression the valid values are from 1 to 9
with 6 being the default. Specifying 0 turns compression off,
and specifying -1 chooses the default of 6.
For zstd compression the valid values are from -131072 to 22
with 3 being the default. Specifying 0 chooses the default of 3.
For lz4 compression there are no levels, so the value is always
0.
If you specify a too-large or too-small value, the number is
silently limited to a valid value. This allows you to specify
something like --zl=999999999 and be assured that you'll end up
with the maximum compression level no matter what algorithm was
chosen.
If you want to know the compression level that is in effect,
specify --debug=nstr to see the "negotiated string" results.
This will report something like "Client com-
press: zstd (level 3)" (along with the checksum choice in ef-
fect).
--skip-compress=LIST
Override the list of file suffixes that will be compressed as
little as possible. Rsync sets the compression level on a per-
file basis based on the file's suffix. If the compression algo-
rithm has an "off" level (such as zlib/zlibx) then no compres-
sion occurs for those files. Other algorithms that support
changing the streaming level on-the-fly will have the level min-
imized to reduces the CPU usage as much as possible for a match-
ing file. At this time, only zlib & zlibx compression support
this changing of levels on a per-file basis.
The LIST should be one or more file suffixes (without the dot)
separated by slashes (/). You may specify an empty string to
indicate that no files should be skipped.
Simple character-class matching is supported: each must consist
of a list of letters inside the square brackets (e.g. no special
classes, such as "[:alpha:]", are supported, and '-' has no spe-
cial meaning).
The characters asterisk (*) and question-mark (?) have no spe-
cial 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 file suffixes in the skip-compress list in this ver-
sion of rsync are:
3g2 3gp 7z aac ace apk avi bz2 deb dmg ear f4v flac flv gpg
gz iso jar jpeg jpg lrz lz lz4 lzma lzo m1a m1v m2a m2ts m2v
m4a m4b m4p m4r m4v mka mkv mov mp1 mp2 mp3 mp4 mpa mpeg mpg
mpv mts odb odf odg odi odm odp ods odt oga ogg ogm ogv ogx
opus otg oth otp ots ott oxt png qt rar rpm rz rzip spx
squashfs sxc sxd sxg sxm sxw sz tbz tbz2 tgz tlz ts txz tzo
vob war webm webp xz z zip zst
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 deter-
mine 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.
--usermap=STRING, --groupmap=STRING
These options allow you to specify users and groups that should
be mapped to other values by the receiving side. The STRING is
one or more FROM:TO pairs of values separated by commas. Any
matching FROM value from the sender is replaced with a TO value
from the receiver. You may specify usernames or user IDs for
the FROM and TO values, and the FROM value may also be a wild-
card string, which will be matched against the sender's names
(wild-cards do NOT match against ID numbers, though see below
for why a '*' matches everything). You may instead specify a
range of ID numbers via an inclusive range: LOW-HIGH. For exam-
ple:
--usermap=0-99:nobody,wayne:admin,*:normal --groupmap=usr:1,1:usr
The first match in the list is the one that is used. You should
specify all your user mappings using a single --usermap option,
and/or all your group mappings using a single --groupmap option.
Note that the sender's name for the 0 user and group are not
transmitted to the receiver, so you should either match these
values using a 0, or use the names in effect on the receiving
side (typically "root"). All other FROM names match those in
use on the sending side. All TO names match those in use on the
receiving side.
Any IDs that do not have a name on the sending side are treated
as having an empty name for the purpose of matching. This al-
lows them to be matched via a "*" or using an empty name. For
instance:
--usermap=:nobody --groupmap=*:nobody
When the --numeric-ids option is used, the sender does not send
any names, so all the IDs are treated as having an empty name.
This means that you will need to specify numeric FROM values if
you want to map these nameless IDs to different values.
For the --usermap option to have any effect, the -o (--owner)
option must be used (or implied), and the receiver will need to
be running as a super-user (see also the --fake-super option).
For the --groupmap option to have any effect, the -g (--group)
option must be used (or implied), and the receiver will need to
have permissions to set that group.
If your shell complains about the wildcards, use --protect-args
(-s).
--chown=USER:GROUP
This option forces all files to be owned by USER with group
GROUP. This is a simpler interface than using --usermap and
--groupmap directly, but it is implemented using those options
internally, so you cannot mix them. If either the USER or GROUP
is empty, no mapping for the omitted user/group will occur. If
GROUP is empty, the trailing colon may be omitted, but if USER
is empty, a leading colon must be supplied.
If you specify "--chown=foo:bar", this is exactly the same as
specifying "--usermap=*:foo --groupmap=*:bar", only easier. If
your shell complains about the wildcards, use --protect-args
(-s).
--timeout=SECONDS
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=SECONDS
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=ADDRESS
By default rsync will bind to the wildcard address when connect-
ing to an rsync daemon. The --address option allows you to
specify a specific IP address (or hostname) 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=OPTIONS
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 setsockopt() 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 that ssh prefers non-blocking
I/O.)
--outbuf=MODE
This sets the output buffering mode. The mode can be None (aka
Unbuffered), Line, or Block (aka Full). You may specify as lit-
tle as a single letter for the mode, and use upper or lower
case.
The main use of this option is to change Full buffering to Line
buffering when rsync's output is going to a file or pipe.
--itemize-changes, -i
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 versions 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 YXcstpoguax, 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 occurring 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 con-
tains 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 device, and a S for a
special file (e.g. named sockets and fifos).
The other letters in the string indicate if some attributes of
the file have changed, as follows:
o "." - the attribute is unchanged.
o "+" - the file is newly created.
o " " - all the attributes are unchanged (all dots turn to
spaces).
o "?" - the change is unknown (when the remote rsync is
old).
o A letter indicates an attribute is being updated.
The attribute that is associated with each letter is as follows:
o A c means either that a regular file has a different
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 al-
ternate 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 up-
dated 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 priv-
ileges).
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 A u|n|b indicates the following information: u means the
access (use) time is different and is being updated to
the sender's value (requires --atimes); n means the cre-
ate time (newness) is different and is being updated to
the sender's value (requires --crtimes); b means that
both the access and create times are being updated.
o The a means that the ACL information is being changed.
o The x means that the extended attribute information is
being changed.
One other output is possible: when deleting files, the "%i" will
output the string "*deleting" for each item that is being re-
moved (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 as-
sumed if either --info=name or -v is specified (this tells you
just 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 implies the --info=name op-
tion, which will mention each file, dir, etc. that gets updated
in a significant way (a transferred file, a recreated sym-
link/device, or a touched directory). In addition, if the item-
ize-changes escape (%i) is included in the string (e.g. if the
--itemize-changes option was used), the logging of names in-
creases 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 trans-
fer 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 logging is in effect and --progress is
also specified, rsync will also output the name of the file be-
ing transferred prior to its progress information (followed, 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 log-
ging 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:
rsync -av --remote-option=--log-file=/tmp/rlog src/ dest/
This is very useful if you need to debug why a connection is
closing unexpectedly.
--log-file-format=FORMAT
This allows you to specify exactly what per-update logging 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 op-
tion 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 effective rsync's delta-
transfer algorithm is for your data. This option is equivalent
to --info=stats2 if combined with 0 or 1 -v options, or
--info=stats3 if combined with 2 or more -v options.
The current statistics are as follows:
o Number of files is the count of all "files" (in the
generic sense), which includes directories, symlinks,
etc. The total count will be followed by a list of
counts by filetype (if the total is non-zero). For exam-
ple: "(reg: 5, dir: 3, link: 2, dev: 1, special: 1)"
lists the totals for regular files, directories, sym-
links, devices, and special files. If any of value is 0,
it is completely omitted from the list.
o Number of created files is the count of how many "files"
(generic sense) were created (as opposed to updated).
The total count will be followed by a list of counts by
filetype (if the total is non-zero).
o Number of deleted files is the count of how many "files"
(generic sense) were deleted. The total count will be
followed by a list of counts by filetype (if the total is
non-zero). Note that this line is only output if dele-
tions are in effect, and only if protocol 31 is being
used (the default for rsync 3.1.x).
o Number of regular files transferred is the count of nor-
mal files that were updated via rsync's delta-transfer
algorithm, which does not include dirs, symlinks, etc.
Note that rsync 3.1.0 added the word "regular" into this
heading.
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 up-
dated files.
o Matched data is how much data the receiver got 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-bit-output, -8
This tells rsync to leave all high-bit characters unescaped 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, regard-
less 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 dig-
its. For example, a newline would output as "\#012". A literal
backslash that is in a filename is not escaped unless it is fol-
lowed by a hash and 3 digits (0-9).
--human-readable, -h
Output numbers in a more human-readable format. There are 3
possible levels: (1) output numbers with a separator between
each set of 3 digits (either a comma or a period, depending on
if the decimal point is represented by a period or a comma); (2)
output numbers in units of 1000 (with a character suffix for
larger units -- see below); (3) output numbers in units of 1024.
The default is human-readable level 1. Each -h option increases
the level by one. You can take the level down to 0 (to output
numbers as pure digits) by specifying the --no-human-readable
(--no-h) option.
The unit letters that are appended in levels 2 and 3 are: K
(kilo), M (mega), G (giga), T (tera), or P (peta). For example,
a 1234567-byte file would output as 1.23M in level-2 (assuming
that a period is your local decimal point).
Backward compatibility note: versions of rsync prior to 3.1.0 do
not support human-readable level 1, and they default to level 0.
Thus, specifying one or two -h options will behave in a compara-
ble manner in old and new versions as long as you didn't specify
a --no-h option prior to one or more -h options. See the
--list-only option for one difference.
--partial
By default, rsync will delete any partially transferred file if
the transfer is interrupted. In some circumstances it is more
desirable to keep partially transferred files. Using the --par-
tial option tells rsync to keep the partial file which should
make a subsequent 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 (in-
stead of writing it out to the destination file). On the next
transfer, rsync will use a file found in this dir as data to
speed up the resumption of the transfer and then delete it after
it has served its purpose.
Note that if --whole-file is specified (or implied), any par-
tial-dir file that is found for a file that is being updated
will simply be removed (since rsync is sending files without us-
ing 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. Note that the directory is only removed if it is a
relative pathname, as it is expected that an absolute path is to
a directory that is reserved for partial-dir work.
If the partial-dir value is not an absolute path, rsync will add
an exclude rule at the end of all your existing 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 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 en-
vironment variable. Setting this in the environment does not
force --partial to be enabled, but rather it affects where par-
tial files go when --partial is specified. For instance, in-
stead 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 specified (see
below).
When a modern rsync resumes the transfer of a file in the par-
tial-dir, that partial file is now updated in-place instead of
creating yet another tmp-file copy (so it maxes out at dest +
tmp instead of dest + partial + tmp). This requires both ends
of the transfer to be at least version 3.2.0.
For the purposes of the daemon-config's "refuse options" set-
ting, --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 specified the
--partial-dir option, that directory will be used instead. See
the comments in the --partial-dir section for a discussion of
how this .~tmp~ dir will be excluded from the transfer, and what
you can do if you want rsync to cleanup old .~tmp~ dirs that
might be lying around. Conflicts with --inplace and --append.
This option implies --no-inc-recursive since it needs the full
file list in memory in order to be able to iterate over it at
the end.
This option uses more memory on the receiving side (one 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 abso-
lute) and (2) there are no mount points in the hierarchy (since
the delayed updates will fail if they can't be renamed into
place).
See also the "atomic-rsync" perl script in the "support" subdir
for an update algorithm that is even more atomic (it uses
--link-dest and a parallel hierarchy of files).
--prune-empty-dirs, -m
This option tells the receiving rsync to get rid of empty direc-
tories from the file-list, including nested directories that
have no non-directory children. This is useful for avoiding the
creation of a bunch of useless directories when the sending
rsync is recursively scanning a hierarchy of files using in-
clude/exclude/filter rules.
Note that the use of transfer rules, such as the --min-size op-
tion, 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
perishable filter-rule option for how to avoid this.
You can prevent the pruning of certain empty directories 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 directories to hold the
.pdf files, and ensures that any superfluous files and directo-
ries in the destination 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. With a modern rsync this is the same as specifying
--info=flist2,name,progress, but any user-supplied settings for
those info flags takes precedence (e.g.
"--info=flist0 --progress").
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 al-
gorithm is in use. For example, if the sender's file consists
of the basis file followed by additional data, the reported rate
will probably drop dramatically when the receiver gets to the
literal data, and the transfer will probably take much longer to
finish than the receiver estimated as it was finishing the
matched part of the file.
When the file transfer finishes, rsync replaces the progress
line with a summary line that looks like this:
1,238,099 100% 146.38kB/s 0:00:08 (xfr#5, to-chk=169/396)
In this example, the file was 1,238,099 bytes long in total, the
average rate of transfer for the whole file was 146.38 kilobytes
per second over the 8 seconds that it took to complete, it was
the 5th transfer of a regular file during the current rsync ses-
sion, 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 to-
tal files in the file-list.
In an incremental recursion scan, rsync won't know the total
number of files in the file-list until it reaches the ends of
the scan, but since it starts to transfer files during the scan,
it will display a line with the text "ir-chk" (for incremental
recursion check) instead of "to-chk" until the point that it
knows the full size of the list, at which point it will switch
to using "to-chk". Thus, seeing "ir-chk" lets you know that the
total count of files in the file list is still going to increase
(and each time it does, the count of files left to check will
increase by the number of the files added to the list).
-P The -P option is equivalent to --partial --progress. Its pur-
pose is to make it much easier to specify these two options for
a long transfer that may be interrupted.
There is also a --info=progress2 option that outputs statistics
based on the whole transfer, rather than individual files. Use
this flag without outputting a filename (e.g. avoid -v or spec-
ify --info=name0) if you want to see how the transfer is doing
without scrolling the screen with a lot of names. (You don't
need to specify the --progress option in order to use
--info=progress2.)
Finally, you can get an instant progress report by sending rsync
a signal of either SIGINFO or SIGVTALRM. On BSD systems, a SIG-
INFO is generated by typing a Ctrl+T (Linux doesn't currently
support a SIGINFO signal). When the client-side process re-
ceives one of those signals, it sets a flag to output a single
progress report which is output when the current file transfer
finishes (so it may take a little time if a big file is being
handled when the signal arrives). A filename is output (if
needed) followed by the --info=progress2 format of progress
info. If you don't know which of the 3 rsync processes is the
client process, it's OK to signal all of them (since the non-
client processes ignore the signal).
CAUTION: sending SIGVTALRM to an older rsync (pre-3.2.0) will
kill it.
--password-file=FILE
This option allows you to provide a password for accessing an
rsync daemon via a file or via standard input if FILE is -. The
file should contain just the password on the first line (all
other lines are ignored). Rsync will exit with an error if FILE
is world readable or if a root-run rsync command finds a non-
root-owned file.
This option does not supply a password to a remote shell trans-
port such as ssh; to learn how to do that, consult the remote
shell's documentation. When accessing an rsync daemon using a
remote shell as the transport, this option only comes into ef-
fect after the remote shell finishes its authentication (i.e. if
you have also specified a password in the daemon's config file).
--early-input=FILE
This option allows rsync to send up to 5K of data to the "early
exec" script on its stdin. One possible use of this data is to
give the script a secret that can be used to mount an encrypted
filesystem (which you should unmount in the the "post-xfer exec"
script).
The daemon must be at least version 3.2.1.
--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 specified, 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). Cau-
tion: keep in mind that a source arg with a wild-card is ex-
panded 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/
Starting with rsync 3.1.0, the sizes output by --list-only are
affected by the --human-readable option. By default they will
contain digit separators, but higher levels of readability will
output the sizes with unit suffixes. Note also that the column
width for the size output has increased from 11 to 14 characters
for all human-readable levels. Use --no-h if you want just dig-
its in the sizes, and the old column width of 11 characters.
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 be-
cause 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=RATE
This option allows you to specify the maximum transfer rate for
the data sent over the socket, specified in units per second.
The RATE value can be suffixed with a string to indicate a size
multiplier, and may be a fractional value (e.g.
"--bwlimit=1.5m"). If no suffix is specified, the value will be
assumed to be in units of 1024 bytes (as if "K" or "KiB" had
been appended). See the --max-size option for a description of
all the available suffixes. A value of 0 specifies no limit.
For backward-compatibility reasons, the rate limit will be
rounded to the nearest KiB unit, so no rate smaller than 1024
bytes per second is possible.
Rsync writes data over the socket in blocks, and this option
both limits the size of the blocks that rsync writes, and tries
to keep the average transfer rate at the requested limit. Some
burstiness may be seen where rsync writes out a block of data
and then sleeps to bring the average rate into compliance.
Due to the internal buffering of data, the --progress option may
not be an accurate reflection on how fast the data is being
sent. This is because some files can show up as being rapidly
sent when the data is quickly buffered, while other can show up
as very slow when the flushing of the output buffer occurs.
This may be fixed in a future version.
`--stop-after=MINS
This option tells rsync to stop copying when the specified num-
ber of minutes has elapsed.
Rsync also accepts an earlier version of this option: --time-
limit=MINS.
For maximal flexibility, rsync does not communicate this option
to the remote rsync since it is usually enough that one side of
the connection quits as specified. This allows the option's use
even when only one side of the connection supports it. You can
tell the remote side about the time limit using --remote-option
(-M), should the need arise.
`--stop-at=y-m-dTh:m
This option tells rsync to stop copying when the specified point
in time has been reached. The date & time can be fully specified
in a numeric format of year-month-dayThour:minute (e.g.
2000-12-31T23:59) in the local timezone. You may choose to sep-
arate the date numbers using slashes instead of dashes.
The value can also be abbreviated in a variety of ways, such as
specifying a 2-digit year and/or leaving off various values. In
all cases, the value will be taken to be the next possible point
in time where the supplied information matches. If the value
specifies the current time or a past time, rsync exits with an
error.
For example, "1-30" specifies the next January 30th (at midnight
local time), "14:00" specifies the next 2 P.M., "1" specifies
the next 1st of the month at midnight, "31" specifies the next
month where we can stop on its 31st day, and ":59" specifies the
next 59th minute after the hour.
For maximal flexibility, rsync does not communicate this option
to the remote rsync since it is usually enough that one side of
the connection quits as specified. This allows the option's use
even when only one side of the connection supports it. You can
tell the remote side about the time limit using --remote-option
(-M), should the need arise. Do keep in mind that the remote
host may have a different default timezone than your local host.
--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.
This option overrides the negotiated checksum & compress lists
and always negotiates a choice based on old-school md5/md4/zlib
choices. If you want a more modern choice, use the --checksum-
choice (--cc) and/or --compress-choice (--zc) options.
--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 destina-
tion system 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 di-
verted from the sender into the 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 previously gen-
erated by --write-batch. If FILE is -, the batch data will be
read from standard input. See the "BATCH MODE" section for de-
tails.
--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=LO-
CAL,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 CON-
VERT_SPEC of "-" to turn off any conversion. The default set-
ting 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 sup-
ports, you can run "iconv --list".
If you specify the --protect-args option (-s), rsync will trans-
late the filenames you specify on the command-line that are be-
ing sent to the remote host. See also the --files-from option.
Note that rsync does not do any conversion of names in filter
files (including include/exclude files). It is up to you to en-
sure 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" con-
figuration parameter regardless of the remote charset you actu-
ally pass. Thus, you may feel free to specify just the local
charset for a daemon transfer (e.g. --iconv=utf8).
--ipv4, -4 or --ipv6, -6
Tells rsync to prefer IPv4/IPv6 when creating sockets or running
ssh. This affects sockets that rsync has direct control over,
such as the outgoing socket when directly contacting an rsync
daemon, as well as the forwarding of the -4 or -6 option to ssh
when rsync can deduce that ssh is being used as the remote
shell. For other remote shells you'll need to specify the
"--rsh SHELL -4" option directly (or whatever ipv4/ipv6 hint op-
tions it uses).
These options also exist in the --daemon mode section.
If rsync was complied without support for IPv6, the --ipv6 op-
tion will have no effect. The rsync --version output will con-
tain "no IPv6" if 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 MD4 file checksum calculation
(the more modern MD5 file checksums don't use a seed). By de-
fault the checksum seed is generated 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 re-
peatable block 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 that it is
being run via inetd, otherwise it will detach from the current
terminal and become a background 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=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=RATE
This option allows you to specify the maximum transfer rate for
the data the daemon sends over the socket. The client can still
specify a smaller --bwlimit value, but no larger value will be
allowed. 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 specified. The default is
/etc/rsyncd.conf unless the daemon 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).
--dparam=OVERRIDE, -M
This option can be used to set a daemon-config parameter when
starting up rsync in daemon mode. It is equivalent to adding
the parameter at the end of the global settings prior to the
first module's definition. The parameter names can be specified
without spaces, if you so desire. For instance:
rsync --daemon -M pidfile=/path/rsync.pid
--no-detach
When running as a daemon, this option instructs rsync to not de-
tach itself and become a background process. This option is re-
quired when running as a service on Cygwin, and may also be use-
ful when rsync is supervised by a program such as daemontools or
AIX's System Resource Controller. --no-detach is also recom-
mended when rsync is run under a debugger. This option has no
effect if rsync is run from inetd or sshd.
--port=PORT
This specifies an alternate TCP port number for the daemon to
listen on rather than the default of 873. See also the "port"
global option in the rsyncd.conf manpage.
--log-file=FILE
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 logging is turned off.
--sockopts
This overrides the socket options setting in the rsyncd.conf
file and has the same syntax.
--verbose, -v
This option increases the amount of information the daemon logs
during its startup phase. After the client connects, the dae-
mon's verbosity level will be controlled by the options that the
client used and the "max verbosity" setting in the module's con-
fig section.
--ipv4, -4 or --ipv6, -6
Tells rsync to prefer IPv4/IPv6 when creating the incoming sock-
ets 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).
These options also exist in the regular rsync options section.
If rsync was complied without support for IPv6, the --ipv6 op-
tion will have no effect. The rsync --version output will con-
tain "no IPv6" if is the case.
--help, -h
When specified after --daemon, print a short help page describ-
ing the options available for starting an rsync daemon.
FILTER RULES
The filter rules allow for flexible selection of which files to trans-
fer (include) and which files to skip (exclude). The rules either di-
rectly specify include/exclude patterns or they specify a way to ac-
quire more include/exclude patterns (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 pat-
terns 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 com-
mand-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 de-
scribed below. If you use a short-named rule, the ',' separating the
RULE from the MODIFIERS is optional. The PATTERN or FILENAME that fol-
lows (when present) must come after either a single space or an under-
score (_). 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)
When rules are being read from a file, empty lines are ignored, as are
whole-line comments that start with a '#' (filename rules that contain
a hash are unaffected).
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 patterns plus a "!" token to
clear the list (and the normal comment 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 in-
clude option) or "- " (for an exclude option) were prefixed to the
string. A --filter option, on the other hand, must always contain ei-
ther 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 trans-
ferred. These patterns can take several forms:
o if the pattern starts with a / then it is anchored to a particu-
lar 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 un-
qualified 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 unanchored "sub/foo" would match
at any point in the hierarchy where a "foo" was found within a
directory named "sub". See the section on ANCHORING INCLUDE/EX-
CLUDE 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 direc-
tory, 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 '[' .
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 [[:al-
pha:]].
o in a wildcard pattern, a backslash can be used to escape a wild-
card character, but it is matched literally when no wildcards
are present. This means that there is an extra level of back-
slash removal when a pattern contains wildcard characters com-
pared to a pattern that has none. e.g. if you add a wildcard to
"foo\bar" (which matches the backslash) you would need to use
"foo\\bar*" to avoid the "\b" becoming just "b".
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 recur-
sively 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 subdir component of every path is visited left to right,
with each directory having a chance for exclusion before its content.
In this way include/exclude patterns are applied recursively to the
pathname of each node in the filesystem's tree (those inside the trans-
fer). The exclude patterns short-circuit the directory traversal stage
as rsync finds the files to send.
For instance, to include "/foo/bar/baz", the directories "/foo" and
"/foo/bar" must not be excluded. Excluding one of those parent direc-
tories prevents the examination of its content, cutting off rsync's re-
cursion into those paths and rendering the include for "/foo/bar/baz"
ineffectual (since rsync can't match something it never sees in the
cut-off section of the directory hierarchy).
The concept path exclusion 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 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 direc-
tory
o "- /foo/**/bar" would exclude any file named bar two or more
levels below a directory named foo in the transfer-root direc-
tory
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 in-
clude 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, "-! */" 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 send-
ing-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 ig-
nored in directories that are being deleted. For instance, the
-C option's default rules that exclude things like "CVS" and
"*.o" are marked as perishable, and will not prevent a directory
that was removed on the source from being deleted on the desti-
nation.
o An x indicates that a rule affects xattr names in xattr
copy/delete operations (and is thus ignored when matching
file/dir names). If no xattr-matching rules are specified, a
default xattr filtering rule is used (see the --xattrs option).
MERGE-FILE FILTER RULES
You can merge whole files into your filter rules by specifying 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-direc-
tory 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-DIREC-
TORY RULES AND DELETE below).
Some examples:
merge /etc/rsync/default.rules
. /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 pat-
terns, with no other rule-parsing except for in-file comments.
o A + specifies that the file should consist of only include pat-
terns, 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 file-
name 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 subdirecto-
ries.
o A w specifies that the rules are word-split on whitespace in-
stead of the normal line-splitting. This also turns off com-
ments. Note: the space that separates the prefix from the rule
is treated specially, 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 (except for the !
modifier, which would not be useful). For instance, "merge,-/
.excl" would treat the contents of .excl as absolute-path ex-
cludes, while "dir-merge,s .filt" and ":sC" would each make all
their per-directory rules apply only on the sending side. If
the merge rule specifies sides to affect (via the s or r modi-
fier or both), then the rules in the file must not specify sides
(via a modifier or a rule prefix such as hide).
Per-directory rules are inherited in all subdirectories of the direc-
tory 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 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 --fil-
ter=". file":
merge /home/user/.global-filter
- *.gz
dir-merge .rules
+ *.[ch]
- *.o
- foo*
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 di-
rectory 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 par-
ent dirs from that starting point to the transfer directory for the in-
dicated 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 direc-
tories from the root down through the parent directory of the transfer
prior to the start of the normal directory scan of the file in the di-
rectories 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/ /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 par-
ent-dir scan and only looks for the ".rsync-filter" files in each di-
rectory 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 .cvsig-
nore 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-di-
rectory .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 <<EOT | rsync -avC --filter='. -' a/ b
+ 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 $CVSIG-
NORE) 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 inherited 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-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 re-
ceiver, 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 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 them-
selves without affecting the transfer. To make this easy, the 'e' mod-
ifier adds this exclude for you, as seen in these two equivalent com-
mands:
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 com-
mand 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 commands:
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 identi-
cal 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 ap-
ply the changes made to the source tree to one of the destination
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 destination trees.
Generating the batch file once saves having to perform the file status,
checksum, and data block generation more than once when updating multi-
ple destination trees. Multicast transport protocols can be used to
transfer the batch update files in parallel to many hosts at once, in-
stead 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/ <foo
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 de-
sired.
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 ma-
chine 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 at-
tempted 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 oc-
curs, the destination 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
understand. (Note that batch files changed format in version 2.6.3, so
mixing versions older than that with newer versions will not work.)
When reading a batch file, rsync will force the value of certain op-
tions 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/in-
clude/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 normal 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 symlinks that exist.
If --links is specified, then symlinks are recreated with the same tar-
get 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 can also distinguish "safe" and "unsafe" symbolic links. An ex-
ample where this might be used is a web site mirror that wishes to en-
sure that the rsync module that is copied 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 altogether. (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.
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 men-
tioned, use the first line that is a complete subset of your options:
--copy-links
Turn all symlinks into normal files (leaving no symlinks for any
other options to affect).
--links --copy-unsafe-links
Turn all unsafe symlinks into files and duplicate all safe sym-
links.
--copy-unsafe-links
Turn all unsafe symlinks into files, noisily skip all safe sym-
links.
--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 cryp-
tic. The one that seems to cause the most confusion is "protocol ver-
sion 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 re-
mote 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 getting the above error from
rsync then you will probably find that out.dat contains some text or
data. Look at the contents 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-in-
teractive logins.
If you are having trouble debugging filter patterns, then try specify-
ing the -vv option. At this level of verbosity rsync will show why
each individual file is included or excluded.
EXIT VALUES
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 manipu-
late 64-bit files on a platform that cannot support 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 pat-
terns in .cvsignore files. See the --cvs-exclude option for
more details.
RSYNC_ICONV
Specify a default --iconv setting using this environment vari-
able. (First supported in 3.0.0.)
RSYNC_PROTECT_ARGS
Specify a non-zero numeric value if you want the --protect-args
option to be enabled by default, or a zero value to make sure
that it is disabled by default. (First supported in 3.1.0.)
RSYNC_RSH
The RSYNC_RSH environment variable allows you to override the
default shell used as the transport for rsync. Command line op-
tions 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 connecting to a rsync dae-
mon. 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
rsync-ssl(1), rsyncd.conf(5)
BUGS
times are transferred as *nix time_t values
When transferring to FAT filesystems rsync may re-sync unmodified
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 https://rsync.samba.org/.
VERSION
This man page is current for version 3.2.3 of rsync.
INTERNAL OPTIONS
The options --server and --sender are used internally by rsync, and
should never be typed by a user under normal circumstances. 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 in-
stance, the support directory of the rsync distribution has an example
script named rrsync (for restricted rsync) that can be used with a re-
stricted ssh login.
CREDITS
rsync is distributed under the GNU General Public License. See the
file COPYING for details.
A web site is available at https://rsync.samba.org/. The site includes
an FAQ-O-Matic which may cover questions unanswered by this manual
page.
We would be delighted to hear from you if you like this program.
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
Special 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 compadre, J.W. Schultz.
Thanks also to Richard Brent, Brendan Mackay, Bill Waite, Stephen Roth-
well 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
https://lists.samba.org/.
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