rsync(1) - phpMan

rsync(1) 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 copy-
ing.

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 algo-
rithm, which reduces the amount of data sent over the network by sending only the differ-
ences between the source files and the existing files in the destination. Rsync is widely
used for backups and mirroring and as an improved copy command for everyday use.

Rsync finds files that need to be transferred using a "quick check" algorithm (by default)
that looks for files that have changed in size or in last-modified time. Any changes in
the other preserved attributes (as requested by options) are made on the destination file
directly when the quick check indicates that the file's data does not need to be updated.

Some of the additional features of rsync are:

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

o exclude and exclude-from options similar to GNU tar

o a CVS exclude mode for ignoring the same files that CVS would ignore

o can use any transparent remote shell, including ssh or rsh

o does not require super-user privileges

o pipelining of file transfers to minimize latency costs

o support for anonymous or authenticated rsync daemons (ideal for mirroring)

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

There are two different ways for rsync to contact a remote system: using a remote-shell
program as the transport (such as ssh or rsh) or contacting an rsync daemon directly via
TCP. The remote-shell transport is used whenever the source or destination path contains
a single colon (:) separator after a host specification. Contacting an rsync daemon
directly happens when the source or destination path contains a double colon (::) separa-
tor 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 lat-
ter rule).

As a special case, if a single source arg is specified without a destination, the files
are listed in an output format similar to "ls -l".

As expected, if neither the source or destination path specify a remote host, the copy
occurs locally (see also the --list-only option).

SETUP
See the file README for installation instructions.

Once installed, you can use rsync to any machine that you can access via a remote shell
(as well as some that you can access using the rsync daemon-mode protocol). For remote
transfers, a modern rsync uses ssh for its communications, but it may have been configured
to use a different remote shell by default, such as rsh or remsh.

You can also specify any remote shell you like, either by using the -e command line
option, or by setting the RSYNC_RSH environment variable.

Note that rsync must be installed on both the source and destination machines.

USAGE
You use rsync in the same way you use rcp. You must specify a source and a destination,
one of which may be remote.

Perhaps the best way to explain the syntax is with some examples:

rsync -t *.c foo:src/

This would transfer all files matching the pattern *.c from the current directory to the
directory src on the machine foo. If any of the files already exist on the remote system
then the rsync remote-update protocol is used to update the file by sending only the dif-
ferences. See the tech report for details.

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

This would recursively transfer all files from the directory src/bar on the machine foo
into the /data/tmp/bar directory on the local machine. The files are transferred in
"archive" mode, which ensures that symbolic links, devices, attributes, permissions, own-
erships, 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 attributes of the containing directory are transferred to the containing
directory on the destination. In other words, each of the following commands copies the
files in the same way, 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 con-
tents 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 particular rsync daemon
by leaving off the module name:

rsync somehost.mydomain.com::

See the following section for more details.

ADVANCED USAGE
The syntax for requesting multiple files from a remote host is done by specifying addi-
tional remote-host args in the same style as the first, or with the hostname omitted. For
instance, all these work:

rsync -av host:file1 :file2 host:file{3,4} /dest/
rsync -av host::modname/file{1,2} host::modname/file3 /dest/
rsync -av host::modname/file1 ::modname/file{3,4}

Older versions of rsync required using quoted spaces in the SRC, like these examples:

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

This word-splitting still works (by default) in the latest rsync, but is not as easy to
use as the first method.

If you need to transfer a filename that contains whitespace, you can either specify the
--protect-args (-s) option, or you'll need to escape the whitespace in a way that the
remote shell will understand. For instance:

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

CONNECTING TO AN RSYNC DAEMON
It is also possible to use rsync without a remote shell as the transport. In this case
you will directly connect to a remote rsync daemon, typically using TCP port 873. (This
obviously requires the daemon to be running on the remote system, so refer to the STARTING
AN RSYNC DAEMON TO ACCEPT CONNECTIONS section below for information on that.)

Using rsync in this way is the same as using it with a remote shell except that:

o you either use a double colon :: instead of a single colon to separate the hostname
from the path, or you use an rsync:// URL.

o the first word of the "path" is actually a module name.

o the remote daemon may print a message of the day when you connect.

o if you specify no path name on the remote daemon then the list of accessible paths
on the daemon will be shown.

o if you specify no local destination then a listing of the specified files on the
remote daemon is provided.

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

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

rsync -av host::src /dest

Some modules on the remote daemon may require authentication. If so, you will receive a
password prompt when you connect. You can avoid the password prompt by setting the envi-
ronment variable RSYNC_PASSWORD to the password you want to use or using the --pass-
word-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 environment 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 envi-
ronment 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 host-
name specified in the rsync command (so use "%%" if you need a single "%" in your string).
For example:

export RSYNC_CONNECT_PROG='ssh proxyhost nc %H 873'
rsync -av targethost1::module/src/ /dest/
rsync -av rsync:://targethost2/module/src/ /dest/

The command specified above uses ssh to run nc (netcat) on a proxyhost, which forwards all
data to port 873 (the rsync daemon) on the targethost (%H).

USING RSYNC-DAEMON FEATURES VIA A REMOTE-SHELL CONNECTION
It is sometimes useful to use various features of an rsync daemon (such as named modules)
without actually allowing any new socket connections into a system (other than what is
already required to allow remote-shell access). Rsync 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 connection uses nearly
the same command-line syntax as a normal rsync-daemon transfer, with the only exception
being that you must explicitly set the remote shell program on the command-line with the
--rsh=COMMAND option. (Setting the RSYNC_RSH in the environment will not turn on this
functionality.) For example:

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

If you need to specify a different remote-shell user, keep in mind that the user@ prefix
in front of the host is 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 handling incoming socket connections, see the rsyncd.conf(5) man page -- that is
the config file for the daemon, and it contains the full details for how to run the daemon
(including stand-alone and inetd configurations).

If you're using one of the remote-shell transports for the transfer, there is no need to
manually start an rsync daemon.

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 fold-
ers, I use a cron job that runs

rsync -Cavz . arvidsjaur:backup

each night over a PPP connection to a duplicate directory on my machine "arvidsjaur".

To synchronize my samba source trees I use the following Makefile targets:

get:
rsync -avuzb --exclude '*~' samba:samba/ .
put:
rsync -Cavuzb . samba:samba/
sync: get put

this allows me to sync with a CVS directory at the other end of the connection. I then do
CVS operations on the remote machine, which saves a lot of time as the remote CVS protocol
isn't very efficient.

I mirror a directory between my "old" and "new" ftp sites with the command:

rsync -az -e ssh --delete ~ftp/pub/samba nimbus:"~ftp/pub/tridge"

This is launched from cron every few hours.

OPTIONS SUMMARY
Here is a short summary of the options available in rsync. Please refer to the detailed
description below for a complete description.

-v, --verbose increase verbosity
-q, --quiet suppress non-error messages
--no-motd suppress daemon-mode MOTD (see caveat)
-c, --checksum skip based on checksum, not mod-time & size
-a, --archive archive mode; equals -rlptgoD (no -H,-A,-X)
--no-OPTION turn off an implied OPTION (e.g. --no-D)
-r, --recursive recurse into directories
-R, --relative use relative path names
--no-implied-dirs don't send implied dirs with --relative
-b, --backup make backups (see --suffix & --backup-dir)
--backup-dir=DIR make backups into hierarchy based in DIR
--suffix=SUFFIX backup suffix (default ~ w/o --backup-dir)
-u, --update skip files that are newer on the receiver
--inplace update destination files in-place
--append append data onto shorter files
--append-verify --append w/old data in file checksum
-d, --dirs transfer directories without recursing
-l, --links copy symlinks as symlinks
-L, --copy-links transform symlink into referent file/dir
--copy-unsafe-links only "unsafe" symlinks are transformed
--safe-links ignore symlinks that point outside the tree
-k, --copy-dirlinks transform symlink to dir into referent dir
-K, --keep-dirlinks treat symlinked dir on receiver as dir
-H, --hard-links preserve hard links
-p, --perms preserve permissions
-E, --executability preserve executability
--chmod=CHMOD affect file and/or directory permissions
-A, --acls preserve ACLs (implies -p)
-X, --xattrs preserve extended attributes
-o, --owner preserve owner (super-user only)
-g, --group preserve group
--devices preserve device files (super-user only)
--specials preserve special files
-D same as --devices --specials
-t, --times preserve modification times
-O, --omit-dir-times omit directories from --times
--super receiver attempts super-user activities
--fake-super store/recover privileged attrs using xattrs
-S, --sparse handle sparse files efficiently
-n, --dry-run perform a trial run with no changes made
-W, --whole-file copy files whole (w/o delta-xfer algorithm)
-x, --one-file-system don't cross filesystem boundaries
-B, --block-size=SIZE force a fixed checksum block-size
-e, --rsh=COMMAND specify the remote shell to use
--rsync-path=PROGRAM specify the rsync to run on remote machine
--existing skip creating new files on receiver
--ignore-existing skip updating files that exist on receiver
--remove-source-files sender removes synchronized files (non-dir)
--del an alias for --delete-during
--delete delete extraneous files from dest dirs
--delete-before receiver deletes before transfer (default)
--delete-during receiver deletes during xfer, not before
--delete-delay find deletions during, delete after
--delete-after receiver deletes after transfer, not before
--delete-excluded also delete excluded files from dest dirs
--ignore-errors delete even if there are I/O errors
--force force deletion of dirs even if not empty
--max-delete=NUM don't delete more than NUM files
--max-size=SIZE don't transfer any file larger than SIZE
--min-size=SIZE don't transfer any file smaller than SIZE
--partial keep partially transferred files
--partial-dir=DIR put a partially transferred file into DIR
--delay-updates put all updated files into place at end
-m, --prune-empty-dirs prune empty directory chains from file-list
--numeric-ids don't map uid/gid values by user/group name
--timeout=SECONDS set I/O timeout in seconds
--contimeout=SECONDS set daemon connection timeout in seconds
-I, --ignore-times don't skip files that match size and time
--size-only skip files that match in size
--modify-window=NUM compare mod-times with reduced accuracy
-T, --temp-dir=DIR create temporary files in directory DIR
-y, --fuzzy find similar file for basis if no dest file
--compare-dest=DIR also compare received files relative to DIR
--copy-dest=DIR ... and include copies of unchanged files
--link-dest=DIR hardlink to files in DIR when unchanged
-z, --compress compress file data during the transfer
--compress-level=NUM explicitly set compression level
--skip-compress=LIST skip compressing files with suffix in LIST
-C, --cvs-exclude auto-ignore files in the same way CVS does
-f, --filter=RULE add a file-filtering RULE
-F same as --filter='dir-merge /.rsync-filter'
repeated: --filter='- .rsync-filter'
--exclude=PATTERN exclude files matching PATTERN
--exclude-from=FILE read exclude patterns from FILE
--include=PATTERN don't exclude files matching PATTERN
--include-from=FILE read include patterns from FILE
--files-from=FILE read list of source-file names from FILE
-0, --from0 all *from/filter files are delimited by 0s
-s, --protect-args no space-splitting; wildcard chars only
--address=ADDRESS bind address for outgoing socket to daemon
--port=PORT specify double-colon alternate port number
--sockopts=OPTIONS specify custom TCP options
--blocking-io use blocking I/O for the remote shell
--stats give some file-transfer stats
-8, --8-bit-output leave high-bit chars unescaped in output
-h, --human-readable output numbers in a human-readable format
--progress show progress during transfer
-P same as --partial --progress
-i, --itemize-changes output a change-summary for all updates
--out-format=FORMAT output updates using the specified FORMAT
--log-file=FILE log what we're doing to the specified FILE
--log-file-format=FMT log updates using the specified FMT
--password-file=FILE read daemon-access password from FILE
--list-only list the files instead of copying them
--bwlimit=KBPS limit I/O bandwidth; KBytes per second
--write-batch=FILE write a batched update to FILE
--only-write-batch=FILE like --write-batch but w/o updating dest
--read-batch=FILE read a batched update from FILE
--protocol=NUM force an older protocol version to be used
--iconv=CONVERT_SPEC request charset conversion of filenames
--checksum-seed=NUM set block/file checksum seed (advanced)
-4, --ipv4 prefer IPv4
-6, --ipv6 prefer IPv6
--version print version number
(-h) --help show this help (see below for -h comment)

Rsync can also be run as a daemon, in which case the following options are accepted:

--daemon run as an rsync daemon
--address=ADDRESS bind to the specified address
--bwlimit=KBPS limit I/O bandwidth; KBytes per second
--config=FILE specify alternate rsyncd.conf file
--no-detach do not detach from the parent
--port=PORT listen on alternate port number
--log-file=FILE override the "log file" setting
--log-file-format=FMT override the "log format" setting
--sockopts=OPTIONS specify custom TCP options
-v, --verbose increase verbosity
-4, --ipv4 prefer IPv4
-6, --ipv6 prefer IPv6
-h, --help show this help (if used after --daemon)

OPTIONS
rsync uses the GNU long options package. Many of the command line options have two vari-
ants, one short and one long. These are shown below, separated by commas. Some options
only have a long variant. The '=' for options that take a parameter is optional; whites-
pace can be used instead.

--help Print a short help page describing the options available in rsync and exit. For
backward-compatibility with older versions of rsync, the help will also be output
if you use the -h option without any other args.

--version
print the rsync version number and exit.

-v, --verbose
This option increases the amount of information you are given during the transfer.
By default, rsync works silently. A single -v will give you information about what
files are being transferred and a brief summary at the end. Two -v flags will give
you information on what files are being skipped and slightly more information at
the end. More than two -v flags should only be used if you are debugging rsync.

Note that the names of the transferred files that are output are done using a
default --out-format of "%n%L", which tells you just the name of the file and, if
the item is a link, where it points. At the single -v level of verbosity, this
does not mention when a file gets its attributes changed. If you ask for an item-
ized list of changed attributes (either --itemize-changes or adding "%i" to the
--out-format setting), the output (on the client) increases to mention all items
that are changed in any way. See the --out-format option for more details.

-q, --quiet
This option decreases the amount of information you are given during the transfer,
notably suppressing information messages from the remote server. This flag is use-
ful 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.

-I, --ignore-times
Normally rsync will skip any files that are already the same size and have the same
modification timestamp. This option turns off this "quick check" behavior, 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 another
mirroring system which may not preserve timestamps exactly.

--modify-window
When comparing two timestamps, rsync treats the timestamps as being equal if they
differ by no more than the modify-window value. This is normally 0 (for an exact
match), but you may find it useful to set this to a larger value in some situa-
tions. In particular, when transferring to or from an MS Windows FAT filesystem
(which represents times with a 2-second resolution), --modify-window=1 is useful
(allowing times to differ by up to 1 second).

-c, --checksum
This changes the way rsync checks if the files have been changed and are in need of
a transfer. Without this option, rsync uses a "quick check" that (by default)
checks if each file's size and time of last modification match between the sender
and receiver. This option changes this to compare a 128-bit MD4 checksum for each
file that has a matching size. Generating the checksums means that both sides will
expend a lot of disk I/O reading all the data in the files in the transfer (and
this is prior to any reading that will be done to transfer changed files), so this
can slow things down significantly.

The sending side generates its checksums while it is doing the file-system scan
that builds the list of the available files. The receiver generates its checksums
when it is scanning for changed files, and will 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 recon-
structed on the receiving side by checking a whole-file checksum that is generated
as the file is transferred, but that automatic after-the-transfer verification has
nothing to do with this option's before-the-transfer "Does this file need to be
updated?" check.

-a, --archive
This is equivalent to -rlptgoD. It is a quick way of saying you want recursion and
want to preserve almost everything (with -H being a notable omission). The only
exception to the above equivalence is when --files-from is specified, in which case
-r is not implied.

Note that -a does not preserve hardlinks, because finding multiply-linked files is
expensive. You must separately specify -H.

--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
circumstances (e.g. --no-whole-file, --no-blocking-io, --no-dirs). You may specify
either the short or the long option name after the "no-" prefix (e.g. --no-R is the
same as --no-relative).

For example: if you want to use -a (--archive) but don't want -o (--owner), instead
of converting -a into -rlptgD, you could specify -a --no-o (or -a --no-owner).

The order of the options is important: if you specify --no-r -a, the -r option
would end up being turned on, the opposite of -a --no-r. Note also that the side-
effects of the --files-from option are NOT positional, as it affects the default
state of several options and slightly changes the meaning of -a (see the
--files-from option for more details).

-r, --recursive
This tells rsync to copy directories recursively. See also --dirs (-d).

Beginning with rsync 3.0.0, the recursive algorithm used is now an incremental scan
that uses much less memory than before and begins the transfer after the scanning
of the first few directories have been 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 transfer are at least version 3.0.0.

Some options require rsync to know the full file list, so these options disable the
incremental recursion mode. These include: --delete-before, --delete-after,
--prune-empty-dirs, and --delay-updates. Because of this, the default delete mode
when you specify --delete is now --delete-during when both ends of the connection
are at least 3.0.0 (use --del or --delete-during to request this improved deletion
mode explicitly). See also the --delete-delay option that is a better choice than
using --delete-after.

Incremental recursion can be disabled using the --no-inc-recursive option or its
shorter --no-i-r alias.

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

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

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

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

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

Beginning with rsync 3.0.0, rsync always sends these implied directories as real
directories in the file list, even if a path element is really a symlink on the
sending side. This prevents some really unexpected behaviors when copying the full
path of a file that you didn't realize had a symlink in its path. If you want to
duplicate a server-side symlink, include both the symlink via its path, and refer-
ent 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.) (2) For older rsync
versions, you would need to use a chdir to limit the source path. For example,
when pushing files:

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

(Note that the parens put the two commands into a sub-shell, so that the "cd" com-
mand doesn't remain in effect for future commands.) If you're pulling files from
an older rsync, use this idiom (but only for a non-daemon transfer):

rsync -avR --rsync-path="cd /foo; rsync" \
remote:bar/baz.c /tmp/

--no-implied-dirs
This option affects the default behavior of the --relative option. When it is
specified, the attributes of the implied directories from the source names are not
included in the transfer. This means that the corresponding path elements on the
destination system are left unchanged if they exist, and any missing implied direc-
tories are created with default attributes. This even allows these implied path
elements to have big differences, such as being a symlink to a directory on the
receiving side.

For instance, if a command-line arg or a files-from entry told rsync to transfer
the file "path/foo/file", the directories "path" and "path/foo" are implied when
--relative is used. If "path/foo" is a symlink to "bar" on the destination system,
the receiving rsync would 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 transferred as normal directories.

-b, --backup
With this option, preexisting destination files are renamed as each file is trans-
ferred or deleted. You can control where the backup file goes and what (if any)
suffix gets appended using the --backup-dir and --suffix options.

Note that if you don't specify --backup-dir, (1) the --omit-dir-times option will
be implied, and (2) if --delete is also in effect (without --delete-excluded),
rsync will add a "protect" filter-rule for the backup suffix to the end of all your
existing excludes (e.g. -f "Pp *~"). This will prevent previously backed-up files
from being deleted. Note that if you are supplying 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
In combination with the --backup option, this tells rsync to store all backups in
the specified directory on the receiving side. This can be used for incremental
backups. You can additionally specify a backup suffix using the --suffix option
(otherwise the files backed up in the specified directory will keep their original
filenames).

--suffix=SUFFIX
This option allows you to override the default backup suffix used with the --backup
(-b) option. The default suffix is a ~ if no --backup-dir was specified, otherwise
it is an empty string.

-u, --update
This forces rsync to skip any files which exist on the destination and have a modi-
fied time that is newer than the source file. (If an existing destination file has
a modification time equal to the source file's, it will be updated if the sizes are
different.)

Note that this does not affect the copying of symlinks or other special files.
Also, a difference of file format between the sender and receiver is always consid-
ered 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 timestamps.

--inplace
This option changes how rsync transfers a file when the file's data needs to be
updated: instead of the default method of creating a new copy of the file and mov-
ing it into place when it is complete, rsync instead writes the updated data
directly to the destination file.

This has several effects: (1) 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), (2) the file's data will be in an inconsistent state during
the transfer, (3) a file's data may be left in an inconsistent state after the
transfer if the transfer is interrupted or if an update fails, (4) a file that does
not have write permissions can not be updated, and (5) the efficiency of rsync's
delta-transfer algorithm may be reduced if some data in the destination file is
overwritten before it can be copied to a position later in the file (one exception
to this is if you combine this option with --backup, since rsync is smart enough to
use the backup file as the basis file for the transfer).

WARNING: you should not use this option to update files that are being accessed by
others, so be careful when choosing to use this for a copy.

This option is useful for transfer of large files with block-based changes or
appended data, and also on systems that are disk bound, not network bound.

The option implies --partial (since an interrupted transfer does not delete the
file), but conflicts with --partial-dir and --delay-updates. Prior to rsync 2.6.4
--inplace was also incompatible with --compare-dest and --link-dest.

--append
This causes rsync to update a file by appending data onto the end of the file,
which presumes that the data that already exists on the receiving side is identical
with the start of the file on the sending side. If a file needs to be transferred
and its size on the receiver is the same or longer than the size on the sender, the
file is skipped. This does not interfere with the updating of a file's non-content
attributes (e.g. permissions, ownership, etc.) when the file does not need to be
transferred, nor does it affect the updating of any non-regular files. Implies
--inplace, but does not conflict with --sparse (since it is always extending a
file's length).

--append-verify
This works just like the --append option, but the existing data on the receiving
side is included in the full-file checksum verification step, which will cause a
file to be resent if the final verification step fails (rsync uses a normal, non-
appending --inplace transfer for the resend).

Note: prior to rsync 3.0.0, the --append option worked like --append-verify, so if
you are interacting with an older rsync (or the transfer is using a protocol prior
to 30), specifying either append option will initiate an --append-verify transfer.

-d, --dirs
Tell the sending side to include any directories that are encountered. Unlike
--recursive, a directory's contents are not copied unless the directory name speci-
fied is "." or ends with a trailing slash (e.g. ".", "dir/.", "dir/", etc.). With-
out this option or the --recursive option, rsync will skip all directories it
encounters (and output a message to that effect for each one). If you specify both
--dirs and --recursive, --recursive takes precedence.

The --dirs option is implied by the --files-from option or the --list-only option
(including an implied --list-only usage) if --recursive wasn't specified (so that
directories are seen in the listing). Specify --no-dirs (or --no-d) if you want to
turn this off.

There is also a backward-compatibility helper option, --old-dirs (or --old-d) that
tells rsync to use a hack of "-r --exclude='/*/*'" to get an older rsync to list a
single directory without recursing.

-l, --links
When symlinks are encountered, recreate the symlink on the destination.

-L, --copy-links
When symlinks are encountered, the item that they point to (the referent) is
copied, rather than the symlink. In older versions of rsync, this option also had
the side-effect of telling the receiving side to follow symlinks, such as symlinks
to directories. In a modern rsync such as this one, you'll need to specify
--keep-dirlinks (-K) to get this extra behavior. The only exception is when send-
ing 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.

--safe-links
This tells rsync to ignore any symbolic links which point outside the copied tree.
All absolute symlinks are also ignored. Using this option in conjunction with
--relative may give unexpected results.

-k, --copy-dirlinks
This option causes the sending side to treat a symlink to a directory as though it
were a real directory. This is useful if you don't want symlinks to non-directo-
ries to be affected, as they would be using --copy-links.

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

See also --keep-dirlinks for an analogous option for the receiving side.

-K, --keep-dirlinks
This option causes the receiving side to treat a 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 contains 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 ref-
erences. For backup copies, you are better off using something like a bind mount
instead of a symlink to modify your receiving hierarchy.

See also --copy-dirlinks for an analogous option for the sending side.

-H, --hard-links
This tells rsync to look for hard-linked files in the transfer and link together
the corresponding files on the receiving side. Without this option, hard-linked
files in the transfer are treated as though they were separate files.

When you are updating a non-empty destination, this option only ensures that files
that are hard-linked together on the source are hard-linked together on the desti-
nation. It does NOT currently endeavor to break already existing hard links on the
destination that do not exist between the source files. Note, however, that if one
or more extra-linked files have content changes, they will become unlinked when
updated (assuming you are not using the --inplace option).

Note that rsync can only detect hard links between files that are inside the trans-
fer 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 unintended changes happen
due to lingering hard links (and see the --inplace option for more caveats).

If incremental recursion is active (see --recursive), rsync may transfer a missing
hard-linked file before it finds that another link for that contents exists else-
where in the hierarchy. This does not affect the accuracy of the transfer, just
its efficiency. One way to avoid this is to disable incremental recursion using
the --no-inc-recursive option.

-p, --perms
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 existing 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 per-
missions masked with the receiving directory's default permissions (either
the receiving process's umask, or the permissions specified via the destina-
tion directory's default ACL), and their special permission bits disabled
except in the case where a new directory inherits a setgid bit from its par-
ent directory.

Thus, when --perms and --executability are both disabled, rsync's behavior is the
same as that of other file-copy utilities, such as cp(1) and tar(1).

In summary: to give destination files (both old and new) the source permissions,
use --perms. To give new files the destination-default permissions (while leaving
existing files unchanged), make sure that the --perms option is off and use
--chmod=ugo=rwX (which ensures that all non-masked bits get enabled). If you'd
care to make this latter behavior easier to type, you could define a popt alias for
it, such as putting this line in the file ~/.popt (the following defines the -Z
option, and includes --no-g to use the default group of the destination dir):

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

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

rsync -avZ src/ dest/

(Caveat: make sure that -a does not follow -Z, or it will re-enable the two
"--no-*" options mentioned above.)

The preservation of the destination's setgid bit on newly-created directories when
--perms is off was added in rsync 2.6.7. Older rsync versions erroneously pre-
served the three special permission bits for newly-created files when --perms was
off, while overriding the destination's setgid bit setting on a newly-created
directory. Default ACL observance was added to the ACL patch for rsync 2.6.7, so
older (or non-ACL-enabled) rsyncs use the umask even if default ACLs are present.
(Keep in mind that it is the version of the receiving rsync that affects these
behaviors.)

-E, --executability
This option causes rsync to preserve the executability (or non-executability) of
regular files when --perms is not enabled. A regular file is considered to be exe-
cutable if at least one 'x' is turned on in its permissions. When an existing des-
tination 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' permission that has a
corresponding 'r' permission enabled.

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

-A, --acls
This option causes rsync to update the destination ACLs to be the same as the
source ACLs. The option also implies --perms.

The source and destination systems must have compatible ACL entries for this option
to work properly. See the --fake-super option for a way to backup and restore ACLs
that are not compatible.

-X, --xattrs
This option causes rsync to update the remote extended attributes to be the same as
the local ones.

For systems that support extended-attribute namespaces, a copy being done by a
super-user copies all namespaces except system.*. A normal user only copies the
user.* namespace. To be able to backup and restore non-user namespaces as a normal
user, see the --fake-super option.

--chmod
This option tells rsync to apply one or more comma-separated "chmod" strings to the
permission of the files in the transfer. The resulting value is treated as though
it was the permissions that the sending side supplied for the file, which means
that this option can seem to have no effect on existing files if --perms is not
enabled.

In addition to the normal parsing rules specified in the chmod(1) manpage, you can
specify an item that should only apply to a directory by prefixing it with a 'D',
or specify an item that should only apply to a file by prefixing it with a 'F'.
For example:

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

It is also legal to specify multiple --chmod options, as each additional option is
just appended to the list of changes to make.

See the --perms and --executability options for how the resulting permission value
can be applied to the files in the transfer.

-o, --owner
This option causes rsync to set the owner of the destination file to be the same as
the source file, but only if the receiving rsync is being run as the super-user
(see also the --super and --fake-super options). Without this option, the owner of
new and/or transferred files are set to the invoking user on the receiving side.

The preservation of ownership will associate matching names by default, but may
fall back to using the ID number in some circumstances (see also the --numeric-ids
option for a full discussion).

-g, --group
This option causes rsync to set the group of the destination file to be the same as
the source file. If the receiving program is not running as the super-user (or if
--no-super was specified), only groups that the invoking user on the receiving side
is a member of will be preserved. Without this option, the group is set to the
default group of the invoking user on the receiving side.

The preservation of group information will associate matching names by default, but
may fall back to using the ID number in some circumstances (see also the
--numeric-ids option for a full discussion).

--devices
This option causes rsync to transfer character and block device files to the remote
system to recreate these devices. This option has no effect if the receiving rsync
is not run as the super-user (see also the --super and --fake-super options).

--specials
This option causes rsync to transfer special files such as named sockets and fifos.

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

-t, --times
This tells rsync to transfer modification times along with the files and update
them on the remote system. 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 bet-
ter off using -t).

-O, --omit-dir-times
This tells rsync to omit directories when it is preserving modification times (see
--times). If NFS is sharing the directories on the receiving side, it is a good
idea to use -O. This option is inferred if you use --backup without --backup-dir.

--super
This tells the receiving side to attempt super-user activities even if the receiv-
ing rsync wasn't run by the super-user. These activities include: preserving users
via the --owner option, preserving all groups (not just the current user's groups)
via the --groups option, and copying devices via the --devices option. This is
useful for systems that allow such activities without being the super-user, and
also for ensuring that you will get errors if the receiving side isn't being run-
ning as the super-user. To turn off super-user activities, the super-user can use
--no-super.

--fake-super
When this option is enabled, rsync simulates super-user activities by sav-
ing/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 default), the file's device info (device & special files are created as
empty text files), and any permission bits that we won't allow to be set on the
real file (e.g. the real file gets u-s,g-s,o-t for safety) or that would limit the
owner's access (since the real super-user can always access/change a file, the
files we create can always be accessed/changed by the creating user). This option
also handles ACLs (if --acls was specified) and non-user extended attributes (if
--xattrs was 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 connection, specify an rsync path:

rsync -av --rsync-path="rsync --fake-super" /src/ host:/dest/

Since there is only one "side" in a local copy, this option affects both the send-
ing and receiving of files. You'll need to specify a copy using "localhost" if you
need to avoid this, possibly using the "lsh" shell script (from the support direc-
tory) as a substitute for an actual remote shell (see --rsh).

This option is overridden by both --super and --no-super.

See also the "fake super" setting in the daemon's rsyncd.conf file.

-S, --sparse
Try to handle sparse files efficiently so they take up less space on the destina-
tion. Conflicts with --inplace because it's not possible to overwrite data in a
sparse fashion.

NOTE: Don't use this option when the destination is a Solaris "tmpfs" filesystem.
It doesn't seem to handle seeks over null regions correctly and ends up corrupting
the files.

-n, --dry-run
This makes rsync perform a trial run that doesn't make any changes (and produces
mostly the same output as a real run). It is most commonly used in combination
with the -v, --verbose and/or -i, --itemize-changes options to see what an rsync
command is going to do before one actually runs it.

The output of --itemize-changes is supposed to be exactly the same on a dry run and
a subsequent real run (barring intentional trickery and system call failures); if
it isn't, that's a bug. Other output is the same to the extent practical, but may
differ in 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", "lit-
eral data", and "matched data" statistics are too small, and the "speedup" value is
equivalent to a run where no file transfers are needed.

-W, --whole-file
With this option rsync's delta-transfer algorithm is not used and the whole file is
sent as-is instead. The transfer may be faster if this option is used when the
bandwidth between the source and destination machines is higher than the bandwidth
to disk (especially when the "disk" is actually a networked filesystem). This is
the default when both the source and destination are specified as local paths.

-x, --one-file-system
This tells rsync to avoid crossing a filesystem 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 speci-
fied, 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 directories from the copy.
Otherwise, it includes an empty directory at each mount-point it encounters (using
the attributes of the mounted directory because those of the underlying mount-point
directory are 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 updated (which can be useful if all you want to do is
delete extraneous files).

--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 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-directo-
ries) that are a part of the transfer and have been successfully duplicated on the
receiving side.

--delete
This tells rsync to delete extraneous files from the receiving side (ones that
aren't on the sending side), but only for the directories that are being synchro-
nized. 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
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 causing a massive deletion of
files on the destination. You can override this with the --ignore-errors option.

The --delete option may be combined with one of the --delete-WHEN options without
conflict, as well as --delete-excluded. However, if none of the --delete-WHEN
options are specified, rsync will choose the --delete-during algorithm when talking
to an 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 before the start of the transfer, and this delay might cause
the transfer to timeout (if --timeout was specified). It also forces rsync to use
the old, non-incremental recursion 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. This is a faster method than choosing the before- or after-
transfer algorithm, but it is only supported beginning with rsync version 2.6.4.
See --delete (which is implied) for more details on file-deletion.

--delete-delay
Request that the file-deletions on the receiving side be computed during the trans-
fer, and then removed after the transfer completes. If the number of removed files
overflows an internal buffer, a temporary file will be created on the receiving
side to hold the names (it is removed while open, so you shouldn't see it during
the transfer). If the creation of the temporary file fails, rsync will try to fall
back to using --delete-after (which it cannot do if --recursive is doing an incre-
mental scan).

--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-incremen-
tal 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 individ-
ual exclusions 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-dele-
tion.

--ignore-errors
Tells --delete to go ahead and delete files even when there are I/O errors.

--force
This option tells rsync to delete a non-empty directory when it is to be replaced
by a non-directory. This is only relevant if deletions are not active (see
--delete for details).

Note for older rsync versions: --force used to still be required when using
--delete-after, and it used to be non-functional unless the --recursive option was
also enabled.

--max-delete=NUM
This tells rsync not to delete more than NUM files or directories. If that limit
is exceeded, a warning is output and rsync exits with an error code of 25 (new for
3.0.0).

Also new for version 3.0.0, you may specify --max-delete=0 to be warned about any
extraneous files in the destination without removing any of them. Older clients
interpreted this as "unlimited", so if you don't know what version the client is,
you can use the less obvious --max-delete=-1 as a backward-compatible way to spec-
ify that no deletions be allowed (though older 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. The SIZE value can be suffixed with a string to indicate a size multiplier,
and may be a fractional value (e.g. "--max-size=1.5m").

The suffixes are as follows: "K" (or "KiB") is a kibibyte (1024), "M" (or "MiB") is
a mebibyte (1024*1024), and "G" (or "GiB") is a gibibyte (1024*1024*1024). If you
want the multiplier to be 1000 instead of 1024, use "KB", "MB", or "GB". (Note:
lower-case is also accepted for all values.) Finally, if the suffix ends in either
"+1" or "-1", the value will be offset by one byte in the indicated direction.

Examples: --max-size=1.5mb-1 is 1499999 bytes, and --max-size=2g+1 is 2147483649
bytes.

--min-size=SIZE
This tells rsync to avoid transferring any file that is smaller than the specified
SIZE, which can help in not transferring small, junk files. See the --max-size
option for a description of SIZE.

-B, --block-size=BLOCKSIZE
This forces the block size used in rsync's delta-transfer algorithm to a fixed
value. It is normally selected based on the size of each file being updated. See
the technical report for details.

-e, --rsh=COMMAND
This option allows you to choose an alternative remote shell program to use for
communication between the local and remote copies of rsync. Typically, rsync is
configured to use ssh by default, but you may prefer to use rsh on a local network.

If this option is used with [user@]host::module/path, then the remote shell COMMAND
will be used to run an rsync daemon on the remote host, and all data will be trans-
mitted through that remote shell connection, rather than through a direct socket
connection to a running rsync daemon on the remote host. See the section "USING
RSYNC-DAEMON FEATURES VIA A REMOTE-SHELL CONNECTION" above.

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 command and args from each other, and you can use single- and/or
double-quotes to preserve spaces in an argument (but not backslashes). Note that
doubling a single-quote inside a single-quoted string gives you a single-quote;
likewise for double-quotes (though you need to pay attention to which quotes your
shell is parsing and which quotes rsync is parsing). Some examples:

-e 'ssh -p 2234'
-e 'ssh -o "ProxyCommand nohup ssh firewall nc -w1 %h %p"'

(Note that ssh users can alternately customize site-specific connect options in
their .ssh/config file.)

You can also choose the remote shell program using the RSYNC_RSH environment vari-
able, which accepts the same range of values as -e.

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

--rsync-path=PROGRAM
Use this to specify what program is to be run on the remote machine to start-up
rsync. Often used when rsync is not in the default remote-shell's path (e.g.
--rsync-path=/usr/local/bin/rsync). Note that PROGRAM is run with the help of a
shell, so it can be any program, script, or command sequence you'd care to run, so
long as it does not corrupt the standard-in & standard-out that rsync is using to
communicate.

One tricky example is to set a different default directory on the remote machine
for use with the --relative option. For instance:

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

-C, --cvs-exclude
This is a useful shorthand for excluding a broad range of files that you often
don't want to transfer between systems. It uses a similar algorithm to CVS to
determine if a file should be ignored.

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/ .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 whites-
pace).

Finally, any file is ignored if it is in the same directory as a .cvsignore file
and matches one of the patterns listed therein. Unlike rsync's filter/exclude
files, these patterns are split on whitespace. See the cvs(1) manual for more
information.

If you're combining -C with your own --filter rules, you should note that these CVS
excludes are appended at the end of your own rules, regardless of where the -C was
placed on the command-line. This makes them a lower priority than any rules you
specified explicitly. If you want to control where these CVS excludes get inserted
into your filter rules, you should omit the -C as a command-line option and use a
combination of --filter=:C and --filter=-C (either on your command-line or by
putting the ":C" and "-C" rules into a filter file with your other rules). The
first option turns on the per-directory scanning for the .cvsignore file. The sec-
ond option does a one-time import of the CVS excludes mentioned above.

-f, --filter=RULE
This option allows you to add rules to selectively exclude certain files from the
list of files to be transferred. This is most useful in combination with a recur-
sive 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 defaults to an exclude
rule and does not allow the full rule-parsing syntax of normal filter rules.

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

--exclude-from=FILE
This option is related to the --exclude option, but it specifies a FILE that con-
tains exclude patterns (one per line). Blank lines in the file and lines starting
with ';' or '#' are ignored. If FILE is -, the list will be read from standard
input.

--include=PATTERN
This option is a simplified form of the --filter option that defaults to an include
rule and does not allow the full rule-parsing syntax of normal filter rules.

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

--include-from=FILE
This option is related to the --include option, but it specifies a FILE that con-
tains include patterns (one per line). Blank lines in the file and lines starting
with ';' or '#' are ignored. If FILE is -, the list will be read from standard
input.

--files-from=FILE
Using this option allows you to specify the exact list of files to transfer (as
read from the specified FILE or - for standard input). It also tweaks the default
behavior of rsync to make transferring just the 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 directories specified
in the list on the destination rather than noisily skipping them (use
--no-dirs or --no-d if you want to turn that off).

o The --archive (-a) option's behavior does not imply --recursive (-r), so
specify it explicitly, if you want it.

o These side-effects change the default state of rsync, so the position of the
--files-from option on the command-line has no bearing on how other options
are parsed (e.g. -a works the same before or after --files-from, as does
--no-R and all other options).

The filenames that are read from the FILE are all 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 immediate contents of the directory would also be sent (with-
out needing to be explicitly mentioned in the file -- this began in version 2.6.4).
In both cases, if the -r option was enabled, that dir's entire hierarchy would also
be transferred (keep in mind that -r needs to be specified explicitly with
--files-from, since it is not implied by -a). Also note that the effect of the
(enabled by default) --relative option is to duplicate only the path info that is
read from the file -- it does not force the duplication of the source-spec path
(/usr in this case).

In addition, the --files-from file can be read from the remote host instead of the
local host if you specify a "host:" in front of the file (the host must match one
end of the transfer). As a short-cut, you can specify just a prefix of ":" to mean
"use the remote end of the transfer". For example:

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

This would copy all the files specified in the /path/file-list file that was
located on the remote "src" host.

-0, --from0
This tells rsync that the rules/filenames it reads from a file are terminated by a
null ('\0') character, not a NL, CR, or CR+LF. This affects --exclude-from,
--include-from, --files-from, and any merged files specified in a --filter rule.
It does not affect --cvs-exclude (since all names read from a .cvsignore file are
split on whitespace).

If the --iconv and --protect-args options are specified and the --files-from file-
names 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.

-s, --protect-args
This option sends all filenames and some options to the remote rsync without allow-
ing the remote shell to interpret them. This means that spaces are not split in
names, and any non-wildcard special characters are not translated (such as ~, $, ;,
&, etc.). Wildcards are expanded on the remote host by rsync (instead of the shell
doing it).

If you use this option with --iconv, the args will also be translated from the
local to the remote character-set. The translation happens before wild-cards are
expanded. See also the --files-from option.

-T, --temp-dir=DIR
This option instructs rsync to use DIR as a scratch directory when creating tempo-
rary copies of the files transferred on the receiving side. The default behavior
is to create each temporary file in the same directory as the associated destina-
tion file.

This option is most often used when the receiving disk partition does not have
enough free space to hold a copy of the largest file in the transfer. In this case
(i.e. when the scratch directory is on a different disk partition), rsync will not
be able to rename each received temporary file over the top of the associated des-
tination 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 directory, and then renamed into place) it would be possi-
ble for the old file to continue taking up disk space (if someone had it open), and
thus there might not be enough room to fit the new version on the disk at the same
time.

If you are using this option for reasons other than a shortage of disk space, you
may wish to combine it with the --delay-updates option, which will ensure that all
copied files get put into subdirectories in the 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 rela-
tive path; because this tells rsync that it is OK to stash off a copy of a single
file in a subdir in the destination hierarchy, rsync will use the partial-dir as a
staging area to bring over the copied file, and then rename it into place from
there. (Specifying a --partial-dir with an absolute path does not have this side-
effect.)

-y, --fuzzy
This option tells rsync that it should look for a basis file for any destination
file that is missing. The current algorithm looks in the same directory as the
destination file for either a file that has an identical size and modified-time, or
a similarly-named file. If found, rsync uses the fuzzy basis file to try to speed
up the transfer.

Note that the use of the --delete option might get rid of any potential fuzzy-match
files, so either use --delete-after or specify some filename exclusions if you need
to prevent this.

--compare-dest=DIR
This option instructs rsync to use DIR on the destination machine as an additional
hierarchy to compare destination files against doing transfers (if the files are
missing in the destination directory). If a file is found in DIR that is identical
to the sender's file, the file will NOT be transferred to the destination direc-
tory. This is useful for creating a sparse backup of just files that have changed
from an earlier backup.

Beginning in version 2.6.4, multiple --compare-dest directories may be provided,
which will cause rsync to search the list in the order specified for an exact
match. If a match is found that differs only in 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 transfer.

If DIR is a relative path, it is relative to the destination directory. See also
--copy-dest and --link-dest.

--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 transferred.

Multiple --copy-dest directories may be provided, which will cause rsync to search
the list in the order specified for an unchanged file. If a match is not found, a
basis file from one of the DIRs will be selected to try to speed up the transfer.

If DIR is a relative path, it is relative to the destination directory. See also
--compare-dest and --link-dest.

--link-dest=DIR
This option behaves like --copy-dest, but unchanged files are hard linked from DIR
to the destination directory. The files must be identical in all preserved
attributes (e.g. permissions, possibly ownership) in order for the files to be
linked together. An example:

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

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. 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 transfer.

This option works best when copying into an empty destination hierarchy, as rsync
treats existing files as definitive (so it never looks in the link-dest dirs when a
destination file already exists), and as malleable (so it might change the
attributes of a destination file, which affects all the hard-linked versions).

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 directory. See also
--compare-dest and --copy-dest.

Note that rsync versions prior to 2.6.1 had a bug that could prevent --link-dest
from working properly for a non-super-user when -o was specified (or implied by
-a). You can work-around this bug by avoiding the -o option when sending to an old
rsync.

-z, --compress
With this option, rsync compresses the file data as it is sent to the destination
machine, which reduces the amount of data being transmitted -- something that is
useful over a slow connection.

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

See the --skip-compress option for the default list of file suffixes that will not
be compressed.

--compress-level=NUM
Explicitly set the compression level to use (see --compress) instead of letting it
default. If NUM is non-zero, the --compress option is implied.

--skip-compress=LIST
Override the list of file suffixes that will not be compressed. The LIST should be
one or more file suffixes (without the dot) separated by slashes (/).

You may specify an empty string to indicate that no file should be skipped.

Simple character-class matching is supported: each must consist of a list of let-
ters inside the square brackets (e.g. no special classes, such as "[:alpha:]", are
supported).

The characters asterisk (*) and question-mark (?) have no special meaning.

Here's an example that specifies 6 suffixes to skip (since 1 of the 5 rules matches
2 suffixes):

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

The default list of suffixes that will not be compressed is this (several of these
are newly added for 3.0.0):

gz/zip/z/rpm/deb/iso/bz2/t[gb]z/7z/mp[34]/mov/avi/ogg/jpg/jpeg

This list will be replaced by your --skip-compress list in all but one situation: a
copy from a daemon rsync will add your skipped suffixes to its list of non-com-
pressing files (and its list may be configured to a different default).

--numeric-ids
With this option rsync will transfer numeric group and user IDs rather than using
user and group names and mapping them at both ends.

By default rsync will use the username and groupname to determine what ownership to
give files. The special uid 0 and the special group 0 are never mapped via
user/group names even if the --numeric-ids option is not specified.

If a user or group has no name on the source system or it has no match on the des-
tination 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 infor-
mation on how the chroot setting affects rsync's ability to look up the names of
the users and groups and what you can do about it.

--timeout=TIMEOUT
This option allows you to set a maximum I/O timeout in seconds. If no data is
transferred for the specified time then rsync will exit. The default is 0, which
means no timeout.

--contimeout
This option allows you to set the amount of time that rsync will wait for its con-
nection to an rsync daemon to succeed. If the timeout is reached, rsync exits with
an error.

--address
By default rsync will bind to the wildcard address when connecting to an rsync dae-
mon. The --address option allows you to specify a specific IP address (or host-
name) to bind to. See also this option in the --daemon mode section.

--port=PORT
This specifies an alternate TCP port number to use rather than the default of 873.
This is only needed if you are using the double-colon (::) syntax to connect with
an rsync daemon (since the URL syntax has a way to specify the port as a part of
the URL). See also this option in the --daemon mode section.

--sockopts
This option can provide endless fun for people who like to tune their systems to
the utmost degree. You can set all sorts of socket options which may make transfers
faster (or slower!). Read the man page for the 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, oth-
erwise it defaults to using non-blocking I/O. (Note that ssh prefers non-blocking
I/O.)

-i, --itemize-changes
Requests a simple itemized list of the changes that are being made to each file,
including attribute changes. This is exactly the same as specifying --out-for-
mat='%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 contains a message (e.g.
"deleting").

The file-types that replace the X are: f for a file, a d for a directory, an L for
a symlink, a D for a device, and a S for a special file (e.g. named sockets and
fifos).

The other letters in the string above are the actual letters that will be output if
the associated attribute for the item is being updated or a "." for no change.
Three exceptions to this are: (1) a newly created item replaces each letter with a
"+", (2) an identical item replaces the dots with spaces, and (3) an unknown
attribute replaces each letter with a "?" (this can happen when talking to an older
rsync).

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

o A c means either that a regular file has a 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 alternate value of T means that the
modification time will be set to the transfer time, which happens when a
file/symlink/device is updated without --times and when a symlink is changed
and the receiver can't set its time. (Note: when using an rsync 3.0.0
client, you might see the s flag combined with t instead of the proper T
flag for this time-setting failure.)

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

o An o means the owner is different and is being updated to the sender's value
(requires --owner and super-user privileges).

o A g means the group is different and is being updated to the sender's value
(requires --group and the authority to set the group).

o The u slot is reserved for future use.

o The a means that the ACL information changed.

o The x means that the extended attribute information changed.

One other output is possible: when deleting files, the "%i" will output the string
"*deleting" for each item that is being removed (assuming that you are talking to a
recent enough rsync that it logs deletions instead of outputting them as a verbose
message).

--out-format=FORMAT
This allows you to specify exactly what the rsync client outputs to the user on a
per-update basis. The format is a text string containing embedded single-character
escape sequences prefixed with a percent (%) character. For a list of the possible
escape characters, see the "log format" setting in the rsyncd.conf manpage.

Specifying this option will mention each file, dir, etc. that gets updated in a
significant way (a transferred file, a recreated symlink/device, or a touched
directory). In addition, if the itemize-changes escape (%i) is included in the
string, the logging of names increases to mention any item that is changed in any
way (as long as the receiving side is at least 2.6.4). See the --itemize-changes
option for a description of the output of "%i".

The --verbose option implies a format of "%n%L", but you can use --out-format with-
out --verbose if you like, or you can override the format of its per-file output
using this option.

Rsync will output the out-format string prior to a file's transfer unless one of
the transfer-statistic escapes is requested, in which case the logging is done at
the end of the file's transfer. When this late logging is in effect and --progress
is also specified, rsync will also output the name of the file being 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
logging will be enabled with a default format of "%i %n%L". See the
--log-file-format option if you wish to override this.

Here's a example command that requests the remote side to log what is happening:

rsync -av --rsync-path="rsync --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 men-
tioned in the log file. For a list of the possible escape characters, see the "log
format" setting in the rsyncd.conf manpage.

--stats
This tells rsync to print a verbose set of statistics on the file transfer, allow-
ing you to tell how effective rsync's delta-transfer algorithm is for your data.

The current statistics are as follows:

o Number of files is the count of all "files" (in the generic sense), which
includes directories, symlinks, etc.

o Number of files transferred is the count of normal files that were updated
via rsync's delta-transfer algorithm, which does not include created dirs,
symlinks, etc.

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

o Total transferred file size is the total sum of all files sizes for just the
transferred files.

o Literal data is how much unmatched file-update data we had to send to the
receiver for it to recreate the updated files.

o Matched data is how much data the receiver got 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 send-
ing the file list to the receiver.

o Total bytes sent is the count of all the bytes that rsync sent from the
client side to the server side.

o Total bytes received is the count of all non-message bytes that rsync
received by the client side from the server side. "Non-message" bytes means
that we don't count the bytes for a verbose message that the server sent to
us, which makes the stats more consistent.

-8, --8-bit-output
This tells rsync to leave all high-bit characters 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,
regardless of this option's setting.

The escape idiom that started in 2.6.7 is to output a literal backslash (\) and a
hash (#), followed by exactly 3 octal digits. For example, a newline would output
as "\#012". A literal backslash that is in a filename is not escaped unless it is
followed by a hash and 3 digits (0-9).

-h, --human-readable
Output numbers in a more human-readable format. This makes big numbers output
using larger units, with a K, M, or G suffix. If this option was specified once,
these units are K (1000), M (1000*1000), and G (1000*1000*1000); if the option is
repeated, the units are powers of 1024 instead of 1000.

--partial
By default, rsync will delete any partially transferred file if the transfer is
interrupted. In some circumstances it is more desirable to keep partially trans-
ferred files. Using the --partial 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 (instead of writing it out to the desti-
nation 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 partial-dir file that is
found for a file that is being updated will simply be removed (since rsync is send-
ing files without using rsync's delta-transfer algorithm).

Rsync will create the DIR if it is missing (just the last dir -- not the whole
path). This makes it easy to use a relative path (such as "--par-
tial-dir=.rsync-partial") to have rsync create the partial-directory in the desti-
nation file's directory when needed, and then remove it again when the partial file
is deleted.

If the partial-dir value is not an absolute path, rsync will add an exclude rule at
the end of all your existing excludes. This will prevent the sending of any par-
tial-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 secu-
rity risk. E.g. AVOID "/tmp".

You can also set the partial-dir value the RSYNC_PARTIAL_DIR environment variable.
Setting this in the environment does not force --partial to be enabled, but rather
it affects where partial files go when --partial is specified. For instance,
instead of using --partial-dir=.rsync-tmp along with --progress, you could set
RSYNC_PARTIAL_DIR=.rsync-tmp in your environment and then just use the -P option to
turn on the use of the .rsync-tmp dir for partial transfers. The only times that
the --partial option does not look for this environment value are (1) when
--inplace was specified (since --inplace conflicts with --partial-dir), and (2)
when --delay-updates was specified (see below).

For the purposes of the daemon-config's "refuse options" setting, --partial-dir
does not imply --partial. This is so that a refusal of the --partial option can be
used to disallow the overwriting of destination files with a partial transfer,
while still allowing the safer idiom provided by --partial-dir.

--delay-updates
This option puts the temporary file from each updated file into a holding directory
until the end of the transfer, at which time all the files are renamed into place
in rapid succession. This attempts to make the updating of the files a little more
atomic. By default the files are placed into a directory named ".~tmp~" in each
file's destination directory, but if you've 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 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 addi-
tional copy of all the updated files. Note also that you should not use an abso-
lute 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 sin-
gle directory if the path is absolute) and (2) there are no mount points in the
hierarchy (since the delayed updates will fail if they can't be renamed into
place).

See also the "atomic-rsync" perl script in the "support" subdir for an update algo-
rithm that is even more atomic (it uses --link-dest and a parallel hierarchy of
files).

-m, --prune-empty-dirs
This option tells the receiving rsync to get rid of empty directories from the
file-list, including nested directories that have no non-directory children. This
is useful for avoiding the creation of a bunch of useless directories when the
sending rsync is recursively scanning a hierarchy of files using
include/exclude/filter rules.

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
(because an exclude hides source files and protects destination files).

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 nec-
essary destination directories to hold the .pdf files, and ensures that any super-
fluous files and directories 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-fil-
ter (if that is more natural to you).

--progress
This option tells rsync to print information showing the progress of the transfer.
This gives a bored user something to watch. Implies --verbose if it wasn't already
specified.

While rsync is transferring a regular file, it updates a progress line that looks
like this:

782448 63% 110.64kB/s 0:00:04

In this example, the receiver has reconstructed 782448 bytes or 63% of the sender's
file, which is being reconstructed at a rate of 110.64 kilobytes per second, and
the transfer will finish in 4 seconds if the current rate is maintained until the
end.

These statistics can be misleading if rsync's delta-transfer algorithm is in use.
For example, if the sender's file consists of the basis file followed by additional
data, the reported rate will probably drop dramatically when the receiver gets to
the literal data, and the transfer will probably take much longer to finish than
the receiver estimated as it was finishing the matched part of the file.

When the file transfer finishes, rsync replaces the progress line with a summary
line that looks like this:

1238099 100% 146.38kB/s 0:00:08 (xfer#5, to-check=169/396)

In this example, the file was 1238099 bytes long in total, the average rate of
transfer for the whole file was 146.38 kilobytes per second over the 8 seconds that
it took to complete, it was the 5th transfer of a regular file during the current
rsync session, and there are 169 more files for the receiver to check (to see if
they are up-to-date or not) remaining out of the 396 total files in the file-list.

-P The -P option is equivalent to --partial --progress. Its purpose is to make it
much easier to specify these two options for a long transfer that may be inter-
rupted.

--password-file
This option allows you to provide a password in a file for accessing an rsync dae-
mon. The file must not be world readable. It should contain just the password as
a single line.

This option does not supply a password to a remote shell transport such as ssh; to
learn how to do that, consult the remote shell's documentation. When accessing an
rsync daemon using a remote shell as the transport, this option only comes into
effect after the remote shell finishes its authentication (i.e. if you have also
specified a password in the daemon's config file).

--list-only
This option will cause the source files to be listed instead of transferred. This
option is inferred if there is a single source arg and no destination 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). Caution: keep in mind that a source
arg with a wild-card is expanded by the shell into multiple args, so it is never
safe to try to list such an arg without using this option. For example:

rsync -av --list-only foo* dest/

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-recur-
sive listing. This is because a file listing implies the --dirs option w/o
--recursive, and older rsyncs don't have that option. To avoid this problem,
either specify the --no-dirs option (if you don't need to expand a directory's con-
tent), or turn on recursion and exclude the content of subdirectories: -r
--exclude='/*/*'.

--bwlimit=KBPS
This option allows you to specify a maximum transfer rate in kilobytes per second.
This option is most effective when using rsync with large files (several megabytes
and up). Due to the nature of rsync transfers, blocks of data are sent, then if
rsync determines the transfer was too fast, it will wait before sending the next
data block. The result is an average transfer rate equaling the specified limit. A
value of zero specifies no limit.

--write-batch=FILE
Record a file that can later be applied to another identical destination with
--read-batch. See the "BATCH MODE" section for details, and also the
--only-write-batch option.

--only-write-batch=FILE
Works like --write-batch, except that no updates are made on the destination system
when creating the batch. This lets you transport the changes to the destination
system via some other means and then apply the changes via --read-batch.

Note that you can feel free to write the batch directly to some portable media: if
this media fills to capacity before the end of the transfer, you can just apply
that partial transfer to the destination and repeat the whole process to get the
rest of the changes (as long as you don't mind a partially updated destination sys-
tem while the multi-update cycle is happening).

Also note that you only save bandwidth when pushing changes to a remote system
because this allows the batched data to be diverted from the sender into the 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 generated by
--write-batch. If FILE is -, the batch data will be read from standard input. See
the "BATCH MODE" section for details.

--protocol=NUM
Force an older protocol version to be used. This is useful for creating a batch
file that is compatible with an older version of rsync. For instance, if rsync
2.6.4 is being used with the --write-batch option, but rsync 2.6.3 is what will be
used to run the --read-batch option, you should use "--protocol=28" when creating
the batch file to force the older protocol version to be used in the batch file
(assuming you can't upgrade the rsync on the reading system).

--iconv=CONVERT_SPEC
Rsync can convert filenames between character sets using this option. Using a CON-
VERT_SPEC of "." tells rsync to look up the default character-set via the locale
setting. Alternately, you can fully specify what conversion to do by giving a
local and a remote charset separated by a comma in the order --iconv=LOCAL,REMOTE,
e.g. --iconv=utf8,iso88591. This order ensures that the option will stay the same
whether you're pushing or pulling files. Finally, you can specify either
--no-iconv or a CONVERT_SPEC of "-" to turn off any conversion. The default 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 supports, you can run
"iconv --list".

If you specify the --protect-args option (-s), rsync will translate the filenames
you specify on the command-line that are being sent to the remote host. 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 ensure that you're specifying matching
rules that can match on both sides of the transfer. For instance, you can specify
extra include/exclude rules if there are filename differences on the two sides that
need to be accounted for.

When you pass an --iconv option to an rsync daemon that allows it, the daemon uses
the charset specified in its "charset" configuration parameter regardless of the
remote charset you actually pass. Thus, you may feel free to specify just the
local charset for a daemon transfer (e.g. --iconv=utf8).

-4, --ipv4 or -6, --ipv6
Tells rsync to prefer IPv4/IPv6 when creating sockets. This only affects sockets
that rsync has direct control over, such as the outgoing socket when directly con-
tacting an rsync daemon. See also these options in the --daemon mode section.

If rsync was complied without support for IPv6, the --ipv6 option will have no
effect. The --version output will tell you if this is the case.

--checksum-seed=NUM
Set the MD4 checksum seed to the integer NUM. This 4 byte checksum seed is
included in each block and file MD4 checksum calculation. By default 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
repeatable block and file checksums, or in the case where the user wants a more
random checksum seed. Note that 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
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 man-
page.

--bwlimit=KBPS
This option allows you to specify a maximum transfer rate in kilobytes per second
for the data the daemon sends. The client can still specify a smaller --bwlimit
value, but their requested value will be rounded down if they try to exceed it.
See the client version of this option (above) for some extra details.

--config=FILE
This specifies an alternate config file than the default. This is only relevant
when --daemon is 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 (typically $HOME).

--no-detach
When running as a daemon, this option instructs rsync to not detach itself and
become a background process. This option is required when running as a service on
Cygwin, and may also be useful when rsync is supervised by a program such as dae-
montools or AIX's System Resource Controller. --no-detach is also recommended when
rsync is run under a debugger. This option has no effect if rsync is run from
inetd or sshd.

--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.

-v, --verbose
This option increases the amount of information the daemon logs during its startup
phase. After the client connects, the daemon's verbosity level will be controlled
by the options that the client used and the "max verbosity" setting in the module's
config section.

-4, --ipv4 or -6, --ipv6
Tells rsync to prefer IPv4/IPv6 when creating the incoming sockets that the rsync
daemon will use to listen for connections. One of these options may be required in
older versions of Linux to work around an IPv6 bug in the kernel (if you see an
"address already in use" error when nothing else is using the port, try specifying
--ipv6 or --ipv4 when starting the daemon).

If rsync was complied without support for IPv6, the --ipv6 option will have no
effect. The --version output will tell you if this is the case.

-h, --help
When specified after --daemon, print a short help page describing the options
available for starting an rsync daemon.

FILTER RULES
The filter rules allow for flexible selection of which files to transfer (include) and
which files to skip (exclude). The rules either directly specify include/exclude patterns
or they specify a way to acquire more include/exclude 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 trans-
ferred against the list of include/exclude patterns in turn, and the first matching pat-
tern is acted on: if it is an exclude pattern, then that file is skipped; if it is an
include pattern then that filename is not skipped; if no matching pattern is found, then
the filename is not skipped.

Rsync builds an ordered list of filter rules as specified on the command-line. Filter
rules have the following syntax:

RULE [PATTERN_OR_FILENAME]
RULE,MODIFIERS [PATTERN_OR_FILENAME]

You have your choice of using either short or long RULE names, as described below. If you
use a short-named rule, the ',' separating the RULE from the MODIFIERS is optional. The
PATTERN or FILENAME that follows (when present) must come after either a single space or
an underscore (_). Here are the available rule prefixes:

exclude, - specifies an exclude pattern.
include, + specifies an include pattern.
merge, . specifies a merge-file to read for more rules.
dir-merge, : specifies a per-directory merge-file.
hide, H specifies a pattern for hiding files from the transfer.
show, S files that match the pattern are not hidden.
protect, P specifies a pattern for protecting files from deletion.
risk, R files that match the pattern are not protected.
clear, ! clears the current include/exclude list (takes no arg)

When rules are being read from a file, empty lines are ignored, as are comment lines that
start with a "#".

Note that the --include/--exclude command-line options do not allow the full range of rule
parsing as described above -- they only allow the specification of include/exclude pat-
terns plus a "!" token to clear the list (and the normal 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 include option) or "- " (for
an exclude option) were prefixed to the string. A --filter option, on the other hand,
must always contain either a short or long rule name at the start of the rule.

Note also that the --filter, --include, and --exclude options take one rule/pattern each.
To add multiple ones, you can repeat the options on the command-line, use the merge-file
syntax of the --filter option, or the --include-from/--exclude-from options.

INCLUDE/EXCLUDE PATTERN RULES
You can include and exclude files by specifying patterns using the "+", "-", etc. filter
rules (as introduced in the FILTER RULES section above). The include/exclude rules each
specify a pattern that is matched against the names of the files that are going to be
transferred. These patterns can take several forms:

o if the pattern starts with a / then it is anchored to a particular spot in the
hierarchy of files, otherwise it is matched against the end of the pathname. This
is similar to a leading ^ in regular expressions. Thus "/foo" would match a name
of "foo" at either the "root of the transfer" (for a global rule) or in the merge-
file's directory (for a per-directory rule). An unqualified "foo" would match a
name of "foo" anywhere in the tree because the algorithm is applied recursively
from the top down; it behaves as if each path component gets a turn at being the
end of the filename. Even the 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/EXCLUDE PATTERNS for a full discussion of how to specify a
pattern that matches at the root of the transfer.

o if the pattern ends with a / then it will only match a directory, not a regular
file, symlink, or device.

o rsync chooses between doing a simple string match and wildcard matching by checking
if the pattern contains one of these three wildcard characters: '*', '?', and '[' .

o a '*' matches any non-empty path component (it stops at slashes).

o use '**' to match anything, including slashes.

o a '?' matches any character except a slash (/).

o a '[' introduces a character class, such as [a-z] or [[:alpha:]].

o in a wildcard pattern, a backslash can be used to escape a wildcard character, but
it is matched literally when no wildcards are present.

o if the pattern contains a / (not counting a trailing /) or a "**", then it is
matched against the full pathname, including any leading directories. If the pat-
tern doesn't contain a / or a "**", then it is matched only against the final com-
ponent of the filename. (Remember that the algorithm is applied recursively so
"full filename" can actually be any portion of a path from the starting directory
on down.)

o a trailing "dir_name/***" will match both the directory (as if "dir_name/" had been
specified) and everything in the directory (as if "dir_name/**" had been speci-
fied). This behavior was added in version 2.6.7.

Note that, when using the --recursive (-r) option (which is implied by -a), every subcom-
ponent of every path is visited from the top down, so include/exclude patterns get applied
recursively to each subcomponent's full name (e.g. to include "/foo/bar/baz" the subcompo-
nents "/foo" and "/foo/bar" must not be excluded). The exclude patterns actually short-
circuit the directory traversal stage when rsync finds the files to send. If a pattern
excludes a particular parent directory, it can render a deeper include pattern ineffectual
because rsync did not descend through that excluded section of the hierarchy. This is
particularly important when using a trailing '*' rule. For instance, this won't work:

+ /some/path/this-file-will-not-be-found
+ /file-is-included
- *

This fails because the parent directory "some" is excluded by the '*' rule, so rsync never
visits any of the files in the "some" or "some/path" directories. One solution is to ask
for all directories in the hierarchy to be included by using a 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 direc-
tory

o "- foo/" would exclude any directory named foo

o "- /foo/*/bar" would exclude any file named bar which is at two levels below a
directory named foo in the transfer-root directory

o "- /foo/**/bar" would exclude any file named bar two or more levels below a direc-
tory named foo in the transfer-root directory

o The combination of "+ */", "+ *.c", and "- *" would include all directories and C
source files but nothing else (see also the --prune-empty-dirs option)

o The combination of "+ foo/", "+ foo/bar.c", and "- *" would include only the foo
directory and foo/bar.c (the foo directory must be explicitly included or it would
be excluded by the "*")

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 fil-
ter list in the place of the "." rule. For per-directory merge files, rsync will scan
every directory that it traverses for the named file, merging its contents when the file
exists into the current list of inherited rules. These per-directory rule files must be
created on the sending side because it is the sending side that is being scanned for the
available files to transfer. These rule files may also need to be transferred to the
receiving side if you want them to affect what files don't get deleted (see PER-DIRECTORY
RULES AND DELETE below).

Some examples:

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 patterns, with no other
rule-parsing except for in-file comments.

o A + specifies that the file should consist of only include patterns, with no other
rule-parsing except for in-file comments.

o A C is a way to specify that the file should be read in a CVS-compatible manner.
This turns on 'n', 'w', and '-', but also allows the list-clearing token (!) to be
specified. If no filename is provided, ".cvsignore" is assumed.

o A e will exclude the merge-file name from the transfer; e.g. "dir-merge,e .rules"
is like "dir-merge .rules" and "- .rules".

o An n specifies that the rules are not inherited by subdirectories.

o A w specifies that the rules are word-split on whitespace instead of the normal
line-splitting. This also turns off comments. 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 (below) in order
to have the rules that are read in from the file default to having that modifier
set. For instance, "merge,-/ .excl" would treat the contents of .excl as absolute-
path excludes, while "dir-merge,s .filt" and ":sC" would each make all their per-
directory rules apply only on the sending side.

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 sending-side includes/excludes.

o An r is used to indicate that the rule applies to the receiving side. When a rule
affects the receiving side, it prevents files from being deleted. See the s modi-
fier for more info. See also the protect (P) and risk (R) rules, which are an
alternate way to specify receiver-side includes/excludes.

o A p indicates that a rule is perishable, meaning that it is ignored in directories
that are being deleted. For instance, the -C option's default rules that exclude
things like "CVS" and "*.o" are marked as perishable, and will not prevent a direc-
tory that was removed on the source from being deleted on the destination.

Per-directory rules are inherited in all subdirectories of the directory where the merge-
file was found unless the 'n' modifier was used. Each subdirectory's rules are prefixed
to the inherited per-directory rules from its parents, which gives the newest rules a
higher priority than the inherited rules. The entire set of dir-merge rules are grouped
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 inher-
ited rules for the current merge file.

Another way to prevent a single rule from a dir-merge file from being inherited is to
anchor it with a leading slash. Anchored rules in a per-directory merge-file are relative
to the merge-file's directory, so a pattern "/foo" would only match the file "foo" in the
directory where the dir-merge filter file was found.

Here's an example filter file which you'd specify via --filter=". file":

merge /home/user/.global-filter
- *.gz
dir-merge .rules
+ *.[ch]
- *.o

This will merge the contents of the /home/user/.global-filter file at the start of the
list and also turns the ".rules" filename into a per-directory filter file. All rules
read in prior to the start of the directory scan follow the global anchoring rules (i.e. a
leading slash matches at the root of the transfer).

If a per-directory merge-file is specified with a path that is a parent directory of the
first transfer directory, rsync will scan all the parent dirs from that starting point to
the transfer directory for the indicated per-directory file. For instance, here is a com-
mon filter (see -F):

--filter=': /.rsync-filter'

That rule tells rsync to scan for the file .rsync-filter in all directories from the root
down through the parent directory of the transfer prior to the start of the normal direc-
tory scan of the file in the directories that are sent as a part of the transfer. (Note:
for an rsync daemon, the root is always the same as the module's "path".)

Some examples of this pre-scanning for per-directory files:

rsync -avF /src/path/ /dest/dir
rsync -av --filter=': ../../.rsync-filter' /src/path/ /dest/dir
rsync -av --filter=': .rsync-filter' /src/path/ /dest/dir

The first two commands above will look for ".rsync-filter" in "/" and "/src" before the
normal scan begins looking for the file in "/src/path" and its subdirectories. The last
command avoids the parent-dir scan and only looks for the ".rsync-filter" files in each
directory that is a part of the transfer.

If you want to include the contents of a ".cvsignore" in your patterns, you should use the
rule ":C", which creates a dir-merge of the .cvsignore file, but parsed in a CVS-compati-
ble manner. You can use this to affect where the --cvs-exclude (-C) option's inclusion of
the per-directory .cvsignore file gets placed into your rules by putting the ":C" wherever
you like in your filter rules. Without this, rsync would add the dir-merge rule for the
.cvsignore file at the end of all your other rules (giving it a lower priority than your
command-line rules). For example:

cat <<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 exclu-
sions, the contents of $HOME/.cvsignore, and the value of $CVSIGNORE) you should omit the
-C command-line option and instead insert a "-C" rule into your filter rules; e.g. "--fil-
ter=-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 receiver, the transfer-root is where the tree starts to be duplicated in the
destination directory. This root governs where patterns that start with a / match.

Because the matching is relative to the transfer-root, changing the trailing slash on a
source path or changing your use of the --relative option affects the path you need to use
in your matching (in addition to changing how much of the file tree is duplicated on the
destination host). The following examples demonstrate this.

Let's say that we want to match two source files, one with an absolute path of
"/home/me/foo/bar", and one with a path of "/home/you/bar/baz". Here is how the various
command choices differ for a 2-source transfer:

Example cmd: rsync -a /home/me /home/you /dest
+/- pattern: /me/foo/bar
+/- pattern: /you/bar/baz
Target file: /dest/me/foo/bar
Target file: /dest/you/bar/baz

Example cmd: rsync -a /home/me/ /home/you/ /dest
+/- pattern: /foo/bar (note missing "me")
+/- pattern: /bar/baz (note missing "you")
Target file: /dest/foo/bar
Target file: /dest/bar/baz

Example cmd: rsync -a --relative /home/me/ /home/you /dest
+/- pattern: /home/me/foo/bar (note full path)
+/- pattern: /home/you/bar/baz (ditto)
Target file: /dest/home/me/foo/bar
Target file: /dest/home/you/bar/baz

Example cmd: cd /home; rsync -a --relative me/foo you/ /dest
+/- pattern: /me/foo/bar (starts at specified path)
+/- pattern: /you/bar/baz (ditto)
Target file: /dest/me/foo/bar
Target file: /dest/you/bar/baz

The easiest way to see what name you should filter is to just look at the output when
using --verbose and put a / in front of the name (use the --dry-run option if you're not
yet ready to copy any files).

PER-DIRECTORY RULES AND DELETE
Without a delete option, per-directory rules are only relevant on the sending side, so you
can feel free to exclude the merge files themselves without affecting the transfer. To
make this easy, the 'e' modifier adds this exclude for you, as seen in these two equiva-
lent commands:

rsync -av --filter=': .excl' --exclude=.excl host:src/dir /dest
rsync -av --filter=':e .excl' host:src/dir /dest

However, if you want to do a delete on the receiving side AND you want some files to be
excluded from being deleted, you'll need to be sure that the receiving side knows what
files to exclude. The easiest way is to include the per-directory merge files in the
transfer and use --delete-after, because this ensures that the receiving side gets all the
same exclude rules as the sending side before it tries to delete anything:

rsync -avF --delete-after host:src/dir /dest

However, if the merge files are not a part of the transfer, you'll need to either specify
some global exclude rules (i.e. specified on the command line), or you'll need to maintain
your own per-directory merge files on the receiving side. An example of the first is this
(assume that the remote .rules files exclude themselves):

rsync -av --filter=': .rules' --filter='. /my/extra.rules'
--delete host:src/dir /dest

In the above example the extra.rules file can affect both sides of the transfer, but (on
the sending side) the rules are subservient to the rules merged from the .rules files
because they were specified after the per-directory merge rule.

In one final example, the remote side is excluding the .rsync-filter files from the trans-
fer, 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 identical systems. Suppose
one has a tree which is replicated on a number of hosts. Now suppose some changes have
been made to this source tree and those changes need to be propagated to the other hosts.
In order to do this using batch mode, rsync is run with the write-batch option to apply
the changes made to the source tree to one of the 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.

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 convenience, one additional file is creating when the write-batch option is used.
This file's name is created by appending ".sh" to the batch filename. The .sh file con-
tains a command-line suitable for updating a destination tree using that 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 path. This is useful
when the destination tree path differs from the original destination tree path.

Generating the batch file once saves having to perform the file status, checksum, and data
block generation more than once when updating multiple destination trees. Multicast trans-
port protocols can be used to transfer the batch update files in parallel to many hosts at
once, instead of sending the same data to every host individually.

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 informa-
tion to repeat this operation is stored in "foo" and "foo.sh". The host "remote" is then
updated with the batched data going into the directory /bdest/dir. The differences
between the two examples reveals some of the flexibility you have in how you deal with
batches:

o The first example shows that the initial copy doesn't have to be local -- you can
push or pull data to/from a remote host using either the remote-shell syntax or
rsync daemon syntax, as desired.

o The first example uses the created "foo.sh" file to get the right rsync options
when running the read-batch command on the remote host.

o The second example reads the batch data via standard input so that the batch file
doesn't need to be copied to the remote machine first. This example avoids the
foo.sh script because it needed to use a modified --read-batch option, but you
could edit the script file if you wished to make use of it (just be sure that no
other option is trying to use standard input, such as the "--exclude-from=-"
option).

Caveats:

The read-batch option expects the destination tree that it is updating to be identical to
the destination tree that was used to create the batch update fileset. When a difference
between the destination trees is encountered the update might be discarded with a warning
(if the file appears to be up-to-date already) or the file-update may be attempted and
then, if the file fails to verify, the update discarded with an error. This means that it
should be safe to re-run a read-batch operation if the command got interrupted. If you
wish to force the batched-update to always be attempted regardless of the file's size and
date, use the -I option (when reading the batch). If an error occurs, the 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 gen-
erate 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 options to match the data
in the batch file if you didn't set them to the same as the batch-writing command. Other
options can (and should) be changed. For instance --write-batch changes to --read-batch,
--files-from is dropped, and the --filter/--include/--exclude options are not needed
unless one of the --delete options is specified.

The code that creates the BATCH.sh file transforms any filter/include/exclude options into
a single list that is appended as a "here" document to the shell script file. An advanced
user can use this to modify the exclude list if a change in what gets deleted by --delete
is desired. A 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 target on the destina-
tion. Note that --archive implies --links.

If --copy-links is specified, then symlinks are "collapsed" by copying their referent,
rather than the symlink.

rsync also distinguishes "safe" and "unsafe" symbolic links. An example where this might
be used is a web site mirror that wishes ensure the rsync module they copy does not
include symbolic links to /etc/passwd in the public section of the site. Using
--copy-unsafe-links will cause any links to be copied as the file they point to on the
destination. Using --safe-links will cause unsafe links to be omitted 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 mentioned, 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 symlinks.

--copy-unsafe-links
Turn all unsafe symlinks into files, noisily skip all safe symlinks.

--links --safe-links
Duplicate safe symlinks and skip unsafe ones.

--links
Duplicate all symlinks.

DIAGNOSTICS
rsync occasionally produces error messages that may seem a little cryptic. The one that
seems to cause the most confusion is "protocol version mismatch -- is your shell clean?".

This message is usually caused by your startup scripts or remote shell facility producing
unwanted garbage on the stream that rsync is using for its transport. The way to diagnose
this problem is to run your remote shell like this:

ssh remotehost /bin/true > out.dat

then look at out.dat. If everything is working correctly then out.dat should be a zero
length file. If you are 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-interactive logins.

If you are having trouble debugging filter patterns, then try specifying the -vv option.
At this level of verbosity rsync will show why each individual file is included or
excluded.

EXIT VALUES
0 Success

1 Syntax or usage error

2 Protocol incompatibility

3 Errors selecting input/output files, dirs

4 Requested action not supported: an attempt was made to manipulate 64-bit files on a
platform that cannot 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 patterns in .cvsignore
files. See the --cvs-exclude option for more details.

RSYNC_ICONV
Specify a default --iconv setting using this environment variable.

RSYNC_RSH
The RSYNC_RSH environment variable allows you to override the default shell used as
the transport for rsync. Command line options are permitted after the command
name, just as in the -e option.

RSYNC_PROXY
The RSYNC_PROXY environment variable allows you to redirect your rsync client to
use a web proxy when connecting to a rsync daemon. You should set RSYNC_PROXY to a
hostname:port pair.

RSYNC_PASSWORD
Setting RSYNC_PASSWORD to the required password allows you to run authenticated
rsync connections to an rsync daemon without user intervention. Note that this does
not supply a password to a remote shell transport such as ssh; to learn how to do
that, consult the remote shell's documentation.

USER or LOGNAME
The USER or LOGNAME environment variables are used to determine the default user-
name 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