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1mailto(rsync-bugs@samba.org)
2manpage(rsync)(1)(1 Mar 2008)()()
3manpagename(rsync)(a fast, versatile, remote (and local) file-copying tool)
4manpagesynopsis()
5
6verb(Local: rsync [OPTION...] SRC... [DEST]
7
8Access via remote shell:
9 Pull: rsync [OPTION...] [USER@]HOST:SRC... [DEST]
10 Push: rsync [OPTION...] SRC... [USER@]HOST:DEST
11
12Access via rsync daemon:
13 Pull: rsync [OPTION...] [USER@]HOST::SRC... [DEST]
14 rsync [OPTION...] rsync://[USER@]HOST[:PORT]/SRC... [DEST]
15 Push: rsync [OPTION...] SRC... [USER@]HOST::DEST
16 rsync [OPTION...] SRC... rsync://[USER@]HOST[:PORT]/DEST)
17
18Usages with just one SRC arg and no DEST arg will list the source files
19instead of copying.
20
21manpagedescription()
22
23Rsync is a fast and extraordinarily versatile file copying tool. It can
24copy locally, to/from another host over any remote shell, or to/from a
25remote rsync daemon. It offers a large number of options that control
26every aspect of its behavior and permit very flexible specification of the
27set of files to be copied. It is famous for its delta-transfer algorithm,
28which reduces the amount of data sent over the network by sending only the
29differences between the source files and the existing files in the
30destination. Rsync is widely used for backups and mirroring and as an
31improved copy command for everyday use.
32
33Rsync finds files that need to be transferred using a "quick check"
34algorithm (by default) that looks for files that have changed in size or
35in last-modified time. Any changes in the other preserved attributes (as
36requested by options) are made on the destination file directly when the
37quick check indicates that the file's data does not need to be updated.
38
39Some of the additional features of rsync are:
40
41itemization(
42 it() support for copying links, devices, owners, groups, and permissions
43 it() exclude and exclude-from options similar to GNU tar
44 it() a CVS exclude mode for ignoring the same files that CVS would ignore
45 it() can use any transparent remote shell, including ssh or rsh
46 it() does not require super-user privileges
47 it() pipelining of file transfers to minimize latency costs
48 it() support for anonymous or authenticated rsync daemons (ideal for
49 mirroring)
50)
51
52manpagesection(GENERAL)
53
54Rsync copies files either to or from a remote host, or locally on the
55current host (it does not support copying files between two remote hosts).
56
57There are two different ways for rsync to contact a remote system: using a
58remote-shell program as the transport (such as ssh or rsh) or contacting an
59rsync daemon directly via TCP. The remote-shell transport is used whenever
60the source or destination path contains a single colon (:) separator after
61a host specification. Contacting an rsync daemon directly happens when the
62source or destination path contains a double colon (::) separator after a
63host specification, OR when an rsync:// URL is specified (see also the
64"USING RSYNC-DAEMON FEATURES VIA A REMOTE-SHELL CONNECTION" section for
65an exception to this latter rule).
66
67As a special case, if a single source arg is specified without a
68destination, the files are listed in an output format similar to "ls -l".
69
70As expected, if neither the source or destination path specify a remote
71host, the copy occurs locally (see also the bf(--list-only) option).
72
73manpagesection(SETUP)
74
75See the file README for installation instructions.
76
77Once installed, you can use rsync to any machine that you can access via
78a remote shell (as well as some that you can access using the rsync
79daemon-mode protocol). For remote transfers, a modern rsync uses ssh
80for its communications, but it may have been configured to use a
81different remote shell by default, such as rsh or remsh.
82
83You can also specify any remote shell you like, either by using the bf(-e)
84command line option, or by setting the RSYNC_RSH environment variable.
85
86Note that rsync must be installed on both the source and destination
87machines.
88
89manpagesection(USAGE)
90
91You use rsync in the same way you use rcp. You must specify a source
92and a destination, one of which may be remote.
93
94Perhaps the best way to explain the syntax is with some examples:
95
96quote(tt(rsync -t *.c foo:src/))
97
98This would transfer all files matching the pattern *.c from the
99current directory to the directory src on the machine foo. If any of
100the files already exist on the remote system then the rsync
101remote-update protocol is used to update the file by sending only the
102differences. See the tech report for details.
103
104quote(tt(rsync -avz foo:src/bar /data/tmp))
105
106This would recursively transfer all files from the directory src/bar on the
107machine foo into the /data/tmp/bar directory on the local machine. The
108files are transferred in "archive" mode, which ensures that symbolic
109links, devices, attributes, permissions, ownerships, etc. are preserved
110in the transfer. Additionally, compression will be used to reduce the
111size of data portions of the transfer.
112
113quote(tt(rsync -avz foo:src/bar/ /data/tmp))
114
115A trailing slash on the source changes this behavior to avoid creating an
116additional directory level at the destination. You can think of a trailing
117/ on a source as meaning "copy the contents of this directory" as opposed
118to "copy the directory by name", but in both cases the attributes of the
119containing directory are transferred to the containing directory on the
120destination. In other words, each of the following commands copies the
121files in the same way, including their setting of the attributes of
122/dest/foo:
123
124quote(
125tt(rsync -av /src/foo /dest)nl()
126tt(rsync -av /src/foo/ /dest/foo)nl()
127)
128
129Note also that host and module references don't require a trailing slash to
130copy the contents of the default directory. For example, both of these
131copy the remote directory's contents into "/dest":
132
133quote(
134tt(rsync -av host: /dest)nl()
135tt(rsync -av host::module /dest)nl()
136)
137
138You can also use rsync in local-only mode, where both the source and
139destination don't have a ':' in the name. In this case it behaves like
140an improved copy command.
141
142Finally, you can list all the (listable) modules available from a
143particular rsync daemon by leaving off the module name:
144
145quote(tt(rsync somehost.mydomain.com::))
146
147See the following section for more details.
148
149manpagesection(ADVANCED USAGE)
150
151The syntax for requesting multiple files from a remote host is done by
152specifying additional remote-host args in the same style as the first,
153or with the hostname omitted. For instance, all these work:
154
155quote(tt(rsync -av host:file1 :file2 host:file{3,4} /dest/)nl()
156tt(rsync -av host::modname/file{1,2} host::modname/file3 /dest/)nl()
157tt(rsync -av host::modname/file1 ::modname/file{3,4}))
158
159Older versions of rsync required using quoted spaces in the SRC, like these
160examples:
161
162quote(tt(rsync -av host:'dir1/file1 dir2/file2' /dest)nl()
163tt(rsync host::'modname/dir1/file1 modname/dir2/file2' /dest))
164
165This word-splitting still works (by default) in the latest rsync, but is
166not as easy to use as the first method.
167
168If you need to transfer a filename that contains whitespace, you can either
169specify the bf(--protect-args) (bf(-s)) option, or you'll need to escape
170the whitespace in a way that the remote shell will understand. For
171instance:
172
173quote(tt(rsync -av host:'file\ name\ with\ spaces' /dest))
174
175manpagesection(CONNECTING TO AN RSYNC DAEMON)
176
177It is also possible to use rsync without a remote shell as the transport.
178In this case you will directly connect to a remote rsync daemon, typically
179using TCP port 873. (This obviously requires the daemon to be running on
180the remote system, so refer to the STARTING AN RSYNC DAEMON TO ACCEPT
181CONNECTIONS section below for information on that.)
182
183Using rsync in this way is the same as using it with a remote shell except
184that:
185
186itemization(
187 it() you either use a double colon :: instead of a single colon to
188 separate the hostname from the path, or you use an rsync:// URL.
189 it() the first word of the "path" is actually a module name.
190 it() the remote daemon may print a message of the day when you
191 connect.
192 it() if you specify no path name on the remote daemon then the
193 list of accessible paths on the daemon will be shown.
194 it() if you specify no local destination then a listing of the
195 specified files on the remote daemon is provided.
196 it() you must not specify the bf(--rsh) (bf(-e)) option.
197)
198
199An example that copies all the files in a remote module named "src":
200
201verb( rsync -av host::src /dest)
202
203Some modules on the remote daemon may require authentication. If so,
204you will receive a password prompt when you connect. You can avoid the
205password prompt by setting the environment variable RSYNC_PASSWORD to
206the password you want to use or using the bf(--password-file) option. This
207may be useful when scripting rsync.
208
209WARNING: On some systems environment variables are visible to all
210users. On those systems using bf(--password-file) is recommended.
211
212You may establish the connection via a web proxy by setting the
213environment variable RSYNC_PROXY to a hostname:port pair pointing to
214your web proxy. Note that your web proxy's configuration must support
215proxy connections to port 873.
216
217You may also establish a daemon connection using a program as a proxy by
218setting the environment variable RSYNC_CONNECT_PROG to the commands you
219wish to run in place of making a direct socket connection. The string may
220contain the escape "%H" to represent the hostname specified in the rsync
221command (so use "%%" if you need a single "%" in your string). For
222example:
223
224verb( export RSYNC_CONNECT_PROG='ssh proxyhost nc %H 873'
225 rsync -av targethost1::module/src/ /dest/
226 rsync -av rsync:://targethost2/module/src/ /dest/ )
227
228The command specified above uses ssh to run nc (netcat) on a proxyhost,
229which forwards all data to port 873 (the rsync daemon) on the targethost
230(%H).
231
232manpagesection(USING RSYNC-DAEMON FEATURES VIA A REMOTE-SHELL CONNECTION)
233
234It is sometimes useful to use various features of an rsync daemon (such as
235named modules) without actually allowing any new socket connections into a
236system (other than what is already required to allow remote-shell access).
237Rsync supports connecting to a host using a remote shell and then spawning
238a single-use "daemon" server that expects to read its config file in the
239home dir of the remote user. This can be useful if you want to encrypt a
240daemon-style transfer's data, but since the daemon is started up fresh by
241the remote user, you may not be able to use features such as chroot or
242change the uid used by the daemon. (For another way to encrypt a daemon
243transfer, consider using ssh to tunnel a local port to a remote machine and
244configure a normal rsync daemon on that remote host to only allow
245connections from "localhost".)
246
247From the user's perspective, a daemon transfer via a remote-shell
248connection uses nearly the same command-line syntax as a normal
249rsync-daemon transfer, with the only exception being that you must
250explicitly set the remote shell program on the command-line with the
251bf(--rsh=COMMAND) option. (Setting the RSYNC_RSH in the environment
252will not turn on this functionality.) For example:
253
254verb( rsync -av --rsh=ssh host::module /dest)
255
256If you need to specify a different remote-shell user, keep in mind that the
257user@ prefix in front of the host is specifying the rsync-user value (for a
258module that requires user-based authentication). This means that you must
259give the '-l user' option to ssh when specifying the remote-shell, as in
260this example that uses the short version of the bf(--rsh) option:
261
262verb( rsync -av -e "ssh -l ssh-user" rsync-user@host::module /dest)
263
264The "ssh-user" will be used at the ssh level; the "rsync-user" will be
265used to log-in to the "module".
266
267manpagesection(STARTING AN RSYNC DAEMON TO ACCEPT CONNECTIONS)
268
269In order to connect to an rsync daemon, the remote system needs to have a
270daemon already running (or it needs to have configured something like inetd
271to spawn an rsync daemon for incoming connections on a particular port).
272For full information on how to start a daemon that will handling incoming
273socket connections, see the bf(rsyncd.conf)(5) man page -- that is the config
274file for the daemon, and it contains the full details for how to run the
275daemon (including stand-alone and inetd configurations).
276
277If you're using one of the remote-shell transports for the transfer, there is
278no need to manually start an rsync daemon.
279
280manpagesection(EXAMPLES)
281
282Here are some examples of how I use rsync.
283
284To backup my wife's home directory, which consists of large MS Word
285files and mail folders, I use a cron job that runs
286
287quote(tt(rsync -Cavz . arvidsjaur:backup))
288
289each night over a PPP connection to a duplicate directory on my machine
290"arvidsjaur".
291
292To synchronize my samba source trees I use the following Makefile
293targets:
294
295verb( get:
296 rsync -avuzb --exclude '*~' samba:samba/ .
297 put:
298 rsync -Cavuzb . samba:samba/
299 sync: get put)
300
301this allows me to sync with a CVS directory at the other end of the
302connection. I then do CVS operations on the remote machine, which saves a
303lot of time as the remote CVS protocol isn't very efficient.
304
305I mirror a directory between my "old" and "new" ftp sites with the
306command:
307
308tt(rsync -az -e ssh --delete ~ftp/pub/samba nimbus:"~ftp/pub/tridge")
309
310This is launched from cron every few hours.
311
312manpagesection(OPTIONS SUMMARY)
313
314Here is a short summary of the options available in rsync. Please refer
315to the detailed description below for a complete description. verb(
316 -v, --verbose increase verbosity
317 -q, --quiet suppress non-error messages
318 --no-motd suppress daemon-mode MOTD (see caveat)
319 -c, --checksum skip based on checksum, not mod-time & size
320 -a, --archive archive mode; equals -rlptgoD (no -H,-A,-X)
321 --no-OPTION turn off an implied OPTION (e.g. --no-D)
322 -r, --recursive recurse into directories
323 -R, --relative use relative path names
324 --no-implied-dirs don't send implied dirs with --relative
325 -b, --backup make backups (see --suffix & --backup-dir)
326 --backup-dir=DIR make backups into hierarchy based in DIR
327 --suffix=SUFFIX backup suffix (default ~ w/o --backup-dir)
328 -u, --update skip files that are newer on the receiver
329 --inplace update destination files in-place
330 --append append data onto shorter files
331 --append-verify --append w/old data in file checksum
332 -d, --dirs transfer directories without recursing
333 -l, --links copy symlinks as symlinks
334 -L, --copy-links transform symlink into referent file/dir
335 --copy-unsafe-links only "unsafe" symlinks are transformed
336 --safe-links ignore symlinks that point outside the tree
337 -k, --copy-dirlinks transform symlink to dir into referent dir
338 -K, --keep-dirlinks treat symlinked dir on receiver as dir
339 -H, --hard-links preserve hard links
340 -p, --perms preserve permissions
341 -E, --executability preserve executability
342 --chmod=CHMOD affect file and/or directory permissions
343 -A, --acls preserve ACLs (implies -p)
344 -X, --xattrs preserve extended attributes
345 -o, --owner preserve owner (super-user only)
346 -g, --group preserve group
347 --devices preserve device files (super-user only)
348 --specials preserve special files
349 -D same as --devices --specials
350 -t, --times preserve modification times
351 -O, --omit-dir-times omit directories from --times
352 --super receiver attempts super-user activities
353 --fake-super store/recover privileged attrs using xattrs
354 -S, --sparse handle sparse files efficiently
355 -n, --dry-run perform a trial run with no changes made
356 -W, --whole-file copy files whole (w/o delta-xfer algorithm)
357 -x, --one-file-system don't cross filesystem boundaries
358 -B, --block-size=SIZE force a fixed checksum block-size
359 -e, --rsh=COMMAND specify the remote shell to use
360 --rsync-path=PROGRAM specify the rsync to run on remote machine
361 --existing skip creating new files on receiver
362 --ignore-existing skip updating files that exist on receiver
363 --remove-source-files sender removes synchronized files (non-dir)
364 --del an alias for --delete-during
365 --delete delete extraneous files from dest dirs
366 --delete-before receiver deletes before transfer (default)
367 --delete-during receiver deletes during xfer, not before
368 --delete-delay find deletions during, delete after
369 --delete-after receiver deletes after transfer, not before
370 --delete-excluded also delete excluded files from dest dirs
371 --ignore-errors delete even if there are I/O errors
372 --force force deletion of dirs even if not empty
373 --max-delete=NUM don't delete more than NUM files
374 --max-size=SIZE don't transfer any file larger than SIZE
375 --min-size=SIZE don't transfer any file smaller than SIZE
376 --partial keep partially transferred files
377 --partial-dir=DIR put a partially transferred file into DIR
378 --delay-updates put all updated files into place at end
379 -m, --prune-empty-dirs prune empty directory chains from file-list
380 --numeric-ids don't map uid/gid values by user/group name
381 --timeout=SECONDS set I/O timeout in seconds
382 --contimeout=SECONDS set daemon connection timeout in seconds
383 -I, --ignore-times don't skip files that match size and time
384 --size-only skip files that match in size
385 --modify-window=NUM compare mod-times with reduced accuracy
386 -T, --temp-dir=DIR create temporary files in directory DIR
387 -y, --fuzzy find similar file for basis if no dest file
388 --compare-dest=DIR also compare received files relative to DIR
389 --copy-dest=DIR ... and include copies of unchanged files
390 --link-dest=DIR hardlink to files in DIR when unchanged
391 -z, --compress compress file data during the transfer
392 --compress-level=NUM explicitly set compression level
393 --skip-compress=LIST skip compressing files with suffix in LIST
394 -C, --cvs-exclude auto-ignore files in the same way CVS does
395 -f, --filter=RULE add a file-filtering RULE
396 -F same as --filter='dir-merge /.rsync-filter'
397 repeated: --filter='- .rsync-filter'
398 --exclude=PATTERN exclude files matching PATTERN
399 --exclude-from=FILE read exclude patterns from FILE
400 --include=PATTERN don't exclude files matching PATTERN
401 --include-from=FILE read include patterns from FILE
402 --files-from=FILE read list of source-file names from FILE
403 -0, --from0 all *from/filter files are delimited by 0s
404 -s, --protect-args no space-splitting; wildcard chars only
405 --address=ADDRESS bind address for outgoing socket to daemon
406 --port=PORT specify double-colon alternate port number
407 --sockopts=OPTIONS specify custom TCP options
408 --blocking-io use blocking I/O for the remote shell
409 --stats give some file-transfer stats
410 -8, --8-bit-output leave high-bit chars unescaped in output
411 -h, --human-readable output numbers in a human-readable format
412 --progress show progress during transfer
413 -P same as --partial --progress
414 -i, --itemize-changes output a change-summary for all updates
415 --out-format=FORMAT output updates using the specified FORMAT
416 --log-file=FILE log what we're doing to the specified FILE
417 --log-file-format=FMT log updates using the specified FMT
418 --password-file=FILE read daemon-access password from FILE
419 --list-only list the files instead of copying them
420 --bwlimit=KBPS limit I/O bandwidth; KBytes per second
421 --write-batch=FILE write a batched update to FILE
422 --only-write-batch=FILE like --write-batch but w/o updating dest
423 --read-batch=FILE read a batched update from FILE
424 --protocol=NUM force an older protocol version to be used
425 --iconv=CONVERT_SPEC request charset conversion of filenames
426 --checksum-seed=NUM set block/file checksum seed (advanced)
427 -4, --ipv4 prefer IPv4
428 -6, --ipv6 prefer IPv6
429 --version print version number
430(-h) --help show this help (see below for -h comment))
431
432Rsync can also be run as a daemon, in which case the following options are
433accepted: verb(
434 --daemon run as an rsync daemon
435 --address=ADDRESS bind to the specified address
436 --bwlimit=KBPS limit I/O bandwidth; KBytes per second
437 --config=FILE specify alternate rsyncd.conf file
438 --no-detach do not detach from the parent
439 --port=PORT listen on alternate port number
440 --log-file=FILE override the "log file" setting
441 --log-file-format=FMT override the "log format" setting
442 --sockopts=OPTIONS specify custom TCP options
443 -v, --verbose increase verbosity
444 -4, --ipv4 prefer IPv4
445 -6, --ipv6 prefer IPv6
446 -h, --help show this help (if used after --daemon))
447
448manpageoptions()
449
450rsync uses the GNU long options package. Many of the command line
451options have two variants, one short and one long. These are shown
452below, separated by commas. Some options only have a long variant.
453The '=' for options that take a parameter is optional; whitespace
454can be used instead.
455
456startdit()
457dit(bf(--help)) Print a short help page describing the options
458available in rsync and exit. For backward-compatibility with older
459versions of rsync, the help will also be output if you use the bf(-h)
460option without any other args.
461
462dit(bf(--version)) print the rsync version number and exit.
463
464dit(bf(-v, --verbose)) This option increases the amount of information you
465are given during the transfer. By default, rsync works silently. A
466single bf(-v) will give you information about what files are being
467transferred and a brief summary at the end. Two bf(-v) flags will give you
468information on what files are being skipped and slightly more
469information at the end. More than two bf(-v) flags should only be used if
470you are debugging rsync.
471
472Note that the names of the transferred files that are output are done using
473a default bf(--out-format) of "%n%L", which tells you just the name of the
474file and, if the item is a link, where it points. At the single bf(-v)
475level of verbosity, this does not mention when a file gets its attributes
476changed. If you ask for an itemized list of changed attributes (either
477bf(--itemize-changes) or adding "%i" to the bf(--out-format) setting), the
478output (on the client) increases to mention all items that are changed in
479any way. See the bf(--out-format) option for more details.
480
481dit(bf(-q, --quiet)) This option decreases the amount of information you
482are given during the transfer, notably suppressing information messages
483from the remote server. This flag is useful when invoking rsync from
484cron.
485
486dit(bf(--no-motd)) This option affects the information that is output
487by the client at the start of a daemon transfer. This suppresses the
488message-of-the-day (MOTD) text, but it also affects the list of modules
489that the daemon sends in response to the "rsync host::" request (due to
490a limitation in the rsync protocol), so omit this option if you want to
491request the list of modules from the daemon.
492
493dit(bf(-I, --ignore-times)) Normally rsync will skip any files that are
494already the same size and have the same modification timestamp.
495This option turns off this "quick check" behavior, causing all files to
496be updated.
497
498dit(bf(--size-only)) This modifies rsync's "quick check" algorithm for
499finding files that need to be transferred, changing it from the default of
500transferring files with either a changed size or a changed last-modified
501time to just looking for files that have changed in size. This is useful
502when starting to use rsync after using another mirroring system which may
503not preserve timestamps exactly.
504
505dit(bf(--modify-window)) When comparing two timestamps, rsync treats the
506timestamps as being equal if they differ by no more than the modify-window
507value. This is normally 0 (for an exact match), but you may find it useful
508to set this to a larger value in some situations. In particular, when
509transferring to or from an MS Windows FAT filesystem (which represents
510times with a 2-second resolution), bf(--modify-window=1) is useful
511(allowing times to differ by up to 1 second).
512
513dit(bf(-c, --checksum)) This changes the way rsync checks if the files have
514been changed and are in need of a transfer. Without this option, rsync
515uses a "quick check" that (by default) checks if each file's size and time
516of last modification match between the sender and receiver. This option
517changes this to compare a 128-bit MD4 checksum for each file that has a
518matching size. Generating the checksums means that both sides will expend
519a lot of disk I/O reading all the data in the files in the transfer (and
520this is prior to any reading that will be done to transfer changed files),
521so this can slow things down significantly.
522
523The sending side generates its checksums while it is doing the file-system
524scan that builds the list of the available files. The receiver generates
525its checksums when it is scanning for changed files, and will checksum any
526file that has the same size as the corresponding sender's file: files with
527either a changed size or a changed checksum are selected for transfer.
528
529Note that rsync always verifies that each em(transferred) file was
530correctly reconstructed on the receiving side by checking a whole-file
531checksum that is generated as the file is transferred, but that
532automatic after-the-transfer verification has nothing to do with this
533option's before-the-transfer "Does this file need to be updated?" check.
534
535dit(bf(-a, --archive)) This is equivalent to bf(-rlptgoD). It is a quick
536way of saying you want recursion and want to preserve almost
537everything (with -H being a notable omission).
538The only exception to the above equivalence is when bf(--files-from) is
539specified, in which case bf(-r) is not implied.
540
541Note that bf(-a) bf(does not preserve hardlinks), because
542finding multiply-linked files is expensive. You must separately
543specify bf(-H).
544
545dit(--no-OPTION) You may turn off one or more implied options by prefixing
546the option name with "no-". Not all options may be prefixed with a "no-":
547only options that are implied by other options (e.g. bf(--no-D),
548bf(--no-perms)) or have different defaults in various circumstances
549(e.g. bf(--no-whole-file), bf(--no-blocking-io), bf(--no-dirs)). You may
550specify either the short or the long option name after the "no-" prefix
551(e.g. bf(--no-R) is the same as bf(--no-relative)).
552
553For example: if you want to use bf(-a) (bf(--archive)) but don't want
554bf(-o) (bf(--owner)), instead of converting bf(-a) into bf(-rlptgD), you
555could specify bf(-a --no-o) (or bf(-a --no-owner)).
556
557The order of the options is important: if you specify bf(--no-r -a), the
558bf(-r) option would end up being turned on, the opposite of bf(-a --no-r).
559Note also that the side-effects of the bf(--files-from) option are NOT
560positional, as it affects the default state of several options and slightly
561changes the meaning of bf(-a) (see the bf(--files-from) option for more
562details).
563
564dit(bf(-r, --recursive)) This tells rsync to copy directories
565recursively. See also bf(--dirs) (bf(-d)).
566
567Beginning with rsync 3.0.0, the recursive algorithm used is now an
568incremental scan that uses much less memory than before and begins the
569transfer after the scanning of the first few directories have been
570completed. This incremental scan only affects our recursion algorithm, and
571does not change a non-recursive transfer. It is also only possible when
572both ends of the transfer are at least version 3.0.0.
573
574Some options require rsync to know the full file list, so these options
575disable the incremental recursion mode. These include: bf(--delete-before),
576bf(--delete-after), bf(--prune-empty-dirs), and bf(--delay-updates).
577Because of this, the default delete mode when you specify bf(--delete) is now
578bf(--delete-during) when both ends of the connection are at least 3.0.0
579(use bf(--del) or bf(--delete-during) to request this improved deletion mode
580explicitly). See also the bf(--delete-delay) option that is a better choice
581than using bf(--delete-after).
582
583Incremental recursion can be disabled using the bf(--no-inc-recursive)
584option or its shorter bf(--no-i-r) alias.
585
586dit(bf(-R, --relative)) Use relative paths. This means that the full path
587names specified on the command line are sent to the server rather than
588just the last parts of the filenames. This is particularly useful when
589you want to send several different directories at the same time. For
590example, if you used this command:
591
592quote(tt( rsync -av /foo/bar/baz.c remote:/tmp/))
593
594... this would create a file named baz.c in /tmp/ on the remote
595machine. If instead you used
596
597quote(tt( rsync -avR /foo/bar/baz.c remote:/tmp/))
598
599then a file named /tmp/foo/bar/baz.c would be created on the remote
600machine, preserving its full path. These extra path elements are called
601"implied directories" (i.e. the "foo" and the "foo/bar" directories in the
602above example).
603
604Beginning with rsync 3.0.0, rsync always sends these implied directories as
605real directories in the file list, even if a path element is really a
606symlink on the sending side. This prevents some really unexpected
607behaviors when copying the full path of a file that you didn't realize had
608a symlink in its path. If you want to duplicate a server-side symlink,
609include both the symlink via its path, and referent directory via its real
610path. If you're dealing with an older rsync on the sending side, you may
611need to use the bf(--no-implied-dirs) option.
612
613It is also possible to limit the amount of path information that is sent as
614implied directories for each path you specify. With a modern rsync on the
615sending side (beginning with 2.6.7), you can insert a dot and a slash into
616the source path, like this:
617
618quote(tt( rsync -avR /foo/./bar/baz.c remote:/tmp/))
619
620That would create /tmp/bar/baz.c on the remote machine. (Note that the
621dot must be followed by a slash, so "/foo/." would not be abbreviated.)
622(2) For older rsync versions, you would need to use a chdir to limit the
623source path. For example, when pushing files:
624
625quote(tt( (cd /foo; rsync -avR bar/baz.c remote:/tmp/) ))
626
627(Note that the parens put the two commands into a sub-shell, so that the
628"cd" command doesn't remain in effect for future commands.)
629If you're pulling files from an older rsync, use this idiom (but only
630for a non-daemon transfer):
631
632quote(
633tt( rsync -avR --rsync-path="cd /foo; rsync" \ )nl()
634tt( remote:bar/baz.c /tmp/)
635)
636
637dit(bf(--no-implied-dirs)) This option affects the default behavior of the
638bf(--relative) option. When it is specified, the attributes of the implied
639directories from the source names are not included in the transfer. This
640means that the corresponding path elements on the destination system are
641left unchanged if they exist, and any missing implied directories are
642created with default attributes. This even allows these implied path
643elements to have big differences, such as being a symlink to a directory on
644the receiving side.
645
646For instance, if a command-line arg or a files-from entry told rsync to
647transfer the file "path/foo/file", the directories "path" and "path/foo"
648are implied when bf(--relative) is used. If "path/foo" is a symlink to
649"bar" on the destination system, the receiving rsync would ordinarily
650delete "path/foo", recreate it as a directory, and receive the file into
651the new directory. With bf(--no-implied-dirs), the receiving rsync updates
652"path/foo/file" using the existing path elements, which means that the file
653ends up being created in "path/bar". Another way to accomplish this link
654preservation is to use the bf(--keep-dirlinks) option (which will also
655affect symlinks to directories in the rest of the transfer).
656
657When pulling files from an rsync older than 3.0.0, you may need to use this
658option if the sending side has a symlink in the path you request and you
659wish the implied directories to be transferred as normal directories.
660
661dit(bf(-b, --backup)) With this option, preexisting destination files are
662renamed as each file is transferred or deleted. You can control where the
663backup file goes and what (if any) suffix gets appended using the
664bf(--backup-dir) and bf(--suffix) options.
665
666Note that if you don't specify bf(--backup-dir), (1) the
667bf(--omit-dir-times) option will be implied, and (2) if bf(--delete) is
668also in effect (without bf(--delete-excluded)), rsync will add a "protect"
669filter-rule for the backup suffix to the end of all your existing excludes
670(e.g. bf(-f "Pp *~")). This will prevent previously backed-up files from being
671deleted. Note that if you are supplying your own filter rules, you may
672need to manually insert your own exclude/protect rule somewhere higher up
673in the list so that it has a high enough priority to be effective (e.g., if
674your rules specify a trailing inclusion/exclusion of '*', the auto-added
675rule would never be reached).
676
677dit(bf(--backup-dir=DIR)) In combination with the bf(--backup) option, this
678tells rsync to store all backups in the specified directory on the receiving
679side. This can be used for incremental backups. You can additionally
680specify a backup suffix using the bf(--suffix) option
681(otherwise the files backed up in the specified directory
682will keep their original filenames).
683
684dit(bf(--suffix=SUFFIX)) This option allows you to override the default
685backup suffix used with the bf(--backup) (bf(-b)) option. The default suffix is a ~
686if no -bf(-backup-dir) was specified, otherwise it is an empty string.
687
688dit(bf(-u, --update)) This forces rsync to skip any files which exist on
689the destination and have a modified time that is newer than the source
690file. (If an existing destination file has a modification time equal to the
691source file's, it will be updated if the sizes are different.)
692
693Note that this does not affect the copying of symlinks or other special
694files. Also, a difference of file format between the sender and receiver
695is always considered to be important enough for an update, no matter what
696date is on the objects. In other words, if the source has a directory
697where the destination has a file, the transfer would occur regardless of
698the timestamps.
699
700dit(bf(--inplace)) This causes rsync not to create a new copy of the file
701and then move it into place. Instead rsync will overwrite the existing
702file, meaning that the rsync algorithm can't accomplish the full amount of
703network reduction it might be able to otherwise (since it does not yet try
704to sort data matches). One exception to this is if you combine the option
705with bf(--backup), since rsync is smart enough to use the backup file as the
706basis file for the transfer.
707
708This option is useful for transfer of large files with block-based changes
709or appended data, and also on systems that are disk bound, not network
710bound.
711
712The option implies bf(--partial) (since an interrupted transfer does not delete
713the file), but conflicts with bf(--partial-dir) and bf(--delay-updates).
714Prior to rsync 2.6.4 bf(--inplace) was also incompatible with bf(--compare-dest)
715and bf(--link-dest).
716
717WARNING: The file's data will be in an inconsistent state during the
718transfer (and possibly afterward if the transfer gets interrupted), so you
719should not use this option to update files that are in use. Also note that
720rsync will be unable to update a file in-place that is not writable by the
721receiving user.
722
723dit(bf(--append)) This causes rsync to update a file by appending data onto
724the end of the file, which presumes that the data that already exists on
725the receiving side is identical with the start of the file on the sending
726side. Any files that are the same size or shorter on the receiving size
727are skipped. Files that do not yet exist on the receiving side are also
728sent, since they are considered to have 0 length. Implies bf(--inplace),
729but does not conflict with bf(--sparse) (since it is always extending a
730file's length).
731
732dit(bf(--append-verify)) This works just like the bf(--append) option, but
733the existing data on the receiving side is included in the full-file
734checksum verification step, which will cause a file to be resent if the
735final verification step fails (rsync uses a normal, non-appending
736bf(--inplace) transfer for the resend).
737
738Note: prior to rsync 3.0.0, the bf(--append) option worked like
739bf(--append-verify), so if you are interacting with an older rsync (or the
740transfer is using a protocol prior to 30), specifying either append option
741will initiate an bf(--append-verify) transfer.
742
743dit(bf(-d, --dirs)) Tell the sending side to include any directories that
744are encountered. Unlike bf(--recursive), a directory's contents are not copied
745unless the directory name specified is "." or ends with a trailing slash
746(e.g. ".", "dir/.", "dir/", etc.). Without this option or the
747bf(--recursive) option, rsync will skip all directories it encounters (and
748output a message to that effect for each one). If you specify both
749bf(--dirs) and bf(--recursive), bf(--recursive) takes precedence.
750
751This option is implied by the bf(--list-only) option (including an implied
752bf(--list-only) usage) if bf(--recursive) wasn't specified (so that
753directories are seen in the listing). Specify bf(--no-dirs) (or bf(--no-d))
754if you want to override this. This option is also implied by
755bf(--files-from).
756
757dit(bf(-l, --links)) When symlinks are encountered, recreate the
758symlink on the destination.
759
760dit(bf(-L, --copy-links)) When symlinks are encountered, the item that
761they point to (the referent) is copied, rather than the symlink. In older
762versions of rsync, this option also had the side-effect of telling the
763receiving side to follow symlinks, such as symlinks to directories. In a
764modern rsync such as this one, you'll need to specify bf(--keep-dirlinks) (bf(-K))
765to get this extra behavior. The only exception is when sending files to
766an rsync that is too old to understand bf(-K) -- in that case, the bf(-L) option
767will still have the side-effect of bf(-K) on that older receiving rsync.
768
769dit(bf(--copy-unsafe-links)) This tells rsync to copy the referent of
770symbolic links that point outside the copied tree. Absolute symlinks
771are also treated like ordinary files, and so are any symlinks in the
772source path itself when bf(--relative) is used. This option has no
773additional effect if bf(--copy-links) was also specified.
774
775dit(bf(--safe-links)) This tells rsync to ignore any symbolic links
776which point outside the copied tree. All absolute symlinks are
777also ignored. Using this option in conjunction with bf(--relative) may
778give unexpected results.
779
780dit(bf(-k, --copy-dirlinks)) This option causes the sending side to treat
781a symlink to a directory as though it were a real directory. This is
782useful if you don't want symlinks to non-directories to be affected, as
783they would be using bf(--copy-links).
784
785Without this option, if the sending side has replaced a directory with a
786symlink to a directory, the receiving side will delete anything that is in
787the way of the new symlink, including a directory hierarchy (as long as
788bf(--force) or bf(--delete) is in effect).
789
790See also bf(--keep-dirlinks) for an analogous option for the receiving
791side.
792
793dit(bf(-K, --keep-dirlinks)) This option causes the receiving side to treat
794a symlink to a directory as though it were a real directory, but only if it
795matches a real directory from the sender. Without this option, the
796receiver's symlink would be deleted and replaced with a real directory.
797
798For example, suppose you transfer a directory "foo" that contains a file
799"file", but "foo" is a symlink to directory "bar" on the receiver. Without
800bf(--keep-dirlinks), the receiver deletes symlink "foo", recreates it as a
801directory, and receives the file into the new directory. With
802bf(--keep-dirlinks), the receiver keeps the symlink and "file" ends up in
803"bar".
804
805One note of caution: if you use bf(--keep-dirlinks), you must trust all
806the symlinks in the copy! If it is possible for an untrusted user to
807create their own symlink to any directory, the user could then (on a
808subsequent copy) replace the symlink with a real directory and affect the
809content of whatever directory the symlink references. For backup copies,
810you are better off using something like a bind mount instead of a symlink
811to modify your receiving hierarchy.
812
813See also bf(--copy-dirlinks) for an analogous option for the sending side.
814
815dit(bf(-H, --hard-links)) This tells rsync to look for hard-linked files in
816the transfer and link together the corresponding files on the receiving
817side. Without this option, hard-linked files in the transfer are treated
818as though they were separate files.
819
820When you are updating a non-empty destination, this option only ensures
821that files that are hard-linked together on the source are hard-linked
822together on the destination. It does NOT currently endeavor to break
823already existing hard links on the destination that do not exist between
824the source files. Note, however, that if one or more extra-linked files
825have content changes, they will become unlinked when updated (assuming you
826are not using the bf(--inplace) option).
827
828Note that rsync can only detect hard links between files that are inside
829the transfer set. If rsync updates a file that has extra hard-link
830connections to files outside the transfer, that linkage will be broken. If
831you are tempted to use the bf(--inplace) option to avoid this breakage, be
832very careful that you know how your files are being updated so that you are
833certain that no unintended changes happen due to lingering hard links (and
834see the bf(--inplace) option for more caveats).
835
836If incremental recursion is active (see bf(--recursive)), rsync may transfer
837a missing hard-linked file before it finds that another link for that contents
838exists elsewhere in the hierarchy. This does not affect the accuracy of
839the transfer, just its efficiency. One way to avoid this is to disable
840incremental recursion using the bf(--no-inc-recursive) option.
841
842dit(bf(-p, --perms)) This option causes the receiving rsync to set the
843destination permissions to be the same as the source permissions. (See
844also the bf(--chmod) option for a way to modify what rsync considers to
845be the source permissions.)
846
847When this option is em(off), permissions are set as follows:
848
849quote(itemization(
850 it() Existing files (including updated files) retain their existing
851 permissions, though the bf(--executability) option might change just
852 the execute permission for the file.
853 it() New files get their "normal" permission bits set to the source
854 file's permissions masked with the receiving directory's default
855 permissions (either the receiving process's umask, or the permissions
856 specified via the destination directory's default ACL), and
857 their special permission bits disabled except in the case where a new
858 directory inherits a setgid bit from its parent directory.
859))
860
861Thus, when bf(--perms) and bf(--executability) are both disabled,
862rsync's behavior is the same as that of other file-copy utilities,
863such as bf(cp)(1) and bf(tar)(1).
864
865In summary: to give destination files (both old and new) the source
866permissions, use bf(--perms). To give new files the destination-default
867permissions (while leaving existing files unchanged), make sure that the
868bf(--perms) option is off and use bf(--chmod=ugo=rwX) (which ensures that
869all non-masked bits get enabled). If you'd care to make this latter
870behavior easier to type, you could define a popt alias for it, such as
871putting this line in the file ~/.popt (the following defines the bf(-Z) option,
872and includes --no-g to use the default group of the destination dir):
873
874quote(tt( rsync alias -Z --no-p --no-g --chmod=ugo=rwX))
875
876You could then use this new option in a command such as this one:
877
878quote(tt( rsync -avZ src/ dest/))
879
880(Caveat: make sure that bf(-a) does not follow bf(-Z), or it will re-enable
881the two "--no-*" options mentioned above.)
882
883The preservation of the destination's setgid bit on newly-created
884directories when bf(--perms) is off was added in rsync 2.6.7. Older rsync
885versions erroneously preserved the three special permission bits for
886newly-created files when bf(--perms) was off, while overriding the
887destination's setgid bit setting on a newly-created directory. Default ACL
888observance was added to the ACL patch for rsync 2.6.7, so older (or
889non-ACL-enabled) rsyncs use the umask even if default ACLs are present.
890(Keep in mind that it is the version of the receiving rsync that affects
891these behaviors.)
892
893dit(bf(-E, --executability)) This option causes rsync to preserve the
894executability (or non-executability) of regular files when bf(--perms) is
895not enabled. A regular file is considered to be executable if at least one
896'x' is turned on in its permissions. When an existing destination file's
897executability differs from that of the corresponding source file, rsync
898modifies the destination file's permissions as follows:
899
900quote(itemization(
901 it() To make a file non-executable, rsync turns off all its 'x'
902 permissions.
903 it() To make a file executable, rsync turns on each 'x' permission that
904 has a corresponding 'r' permission enabled.
905))
906
907If bf(--perms) is enabled, this option is ignored.
908
909dit(bf(-A, --acls)) This option causes rsync to update the destination
910ACLs to be the same as the source ACLs.
911The option also implies bf(--perms).
912
913The source and destination systems must have compatible ACL entries for this
914option to work properly. See the bf(--fake-super) option for a way to backup
915and restore ACLs that are not compatible.
916
917dit(bf(-X, --xattrs)) This option causes rsync to update the remote
918extended attributes to be the same as the local ones.
919
920For systems that support extended-attribute namespaces, a copy being done by a
921super-user copies all namespaces except system.*. A normal user only copies
922the user.* namespace. To be able to backup and restore non-user namespaces as
923a normal user, see the bf(--fake-super) option.
924
925dit(bf(--chmod)) This option tells rsync to apply one or more
926comma-separated "chmod" strings to the permission of the files in the
927transfer. The resulting value is treated as though it was the permissions
928that the sending side supplied for the file, which means that this option
929can seem to have no effect on existing files if bf(--perms) is not enabled.
930
931In addition to the normal parsing rules specified in the bf(chmod)(1)
932manpage, you can specify an item that should only apply to a directory by
933prefixing it with a 'D', or specify an item that should only apply to a
934file by prefixing it with a 'F'. For example:
935
936quote(--chmod=Dg+s,ug+w,Fo-w,+X)
937
938It is also legal to specify multiple bf(--chmod) options, as each
939additional option is just appended to the list of changes to make.
940
941See the bf(--perms) and bf(--executability) options for how the resulting
942permission value can be applied to the files in the transfer.
943
944dit(bf(-o, --owner)) This option causes rsync to set the owner of the
945destination file to be the same as the source file, but only if the
946receiving rsync is being run as the super-user (see also the bf(--super)
947and bf(--fake-super) options).
948Without this option, the owner of new and/or transferred files are set to
949the invoking user on the receiving side.
950
951The preservation of ownership will associate matching names by default, but
952may fall back to using the ID number in some circumstances (see also the
953bf(--numeric-ids) option for a full discussion).
954
955dit(bf(-g, --group)) This option causes rsync to set the group of the
956destination file to be the same as the source file. If the receiving
957program is not running as the super-user (or if bf(--no-super) was
958specified), only groups that the invoking user on the receiving side
959is a member of will be preserved.
960Without this option, the group is set to the default group of the invoking
961user on the receiving side.
962
963The preservation of group information will associate matching names by
964default, but may fall back to using the ID number in some circumstances
965(see also the bf(--numeric-ids) option for a full discussion).
966
967dit(bf(--devices)) This option causes rsync to transfer character and
968block device files to the remote system to recreate these devices.
969This option has no effect if the receiving rsync is not run as the
970super-user (see also the bf(--super) and bf(--fake-super) options).
971
972dit(bf(--specials)) This option causes rsync to transfer special files
973such as named sockets and fifos.
974
975dit(bf(-D)) The bf(-D) option is equivalent to bf(--devices) bf(--specials).
976
977dit(bf(-t, --times)) This tells rsync to transfer modification times along
978with the files and update them on the remote system. Note that if this
979option is not used, the optimization that excludes files that have not been
980modified cannot be effective; in other words, a missing bf(-t) or bf(-a) will
981cause the next transfer to behave as if it used bf(-I), causing all files to be
982updated (though the rsync algorithm will make the update fairly efficient
983if the files haven't actually changed, you're much better off using bf(-t)).
984
985dit(bf(-O, --omit-dir-times)) This tells rsync to omit directories when
986it is preserving modification times (see bf(--times)). If NFS is sharing
987the directories on the receiving side, it is a good idea to use bf(-O).
988This option is inferred if you use bf(--backup) without bf(--backup-dir).
989
990dit(bf(--super)) This tells the receiving side to attempt super-user
991activities even if the receiving rsync wasn't run by the super-user. These
992activities include: preserving users via the bf(--owner) option, preserving
993all groups (not just the current user's groups) via the bf(--groups)
994option, and copying devices via the bf(--devices) option. This is useful
995for systems that allow such activities without being the super-user, and
996also for ensuring that you will get errors if the receiving side isn't
997being running as the super-user. To turn off super-user activities, the
998super-user can use bf(--no-super).
999
1000dit(bf(--fake-super)) When this option is enabled, rsync simulates
1001super-user activities by saving/restoring the privileged attributes via
1002special extended attributes that are attached to each file (as needed). This
1003includes the file's owner and group (if it is not the default), the file's
1004device info (device & special files are created as empty text files), and
1005any permission bits that we won't allow to be set on the real file (e.g.
1006the real file gets u-s,g-s,o-t for safety) or that would limit the owner's
1007access (since the real super-user can always access/change a file, the
1008files we create can always be accessed/changed by the creating user).
1009This option also handles ACLs (if bf(--acls) was specified) and non-user
1010extended attributes (if bf(--xattrs) was specified).
1011
1012This is a good way to backup data without using a super-user, and to store
1013ACLs from incompatible systems.
1014
1015The bf(--fake-super) option only affects the side where the option is used.
1016To affect the remote side of a remote-shell connection, specify an rsync
1017path:
1018
1019quote(tt( rsync -av --rsync-path="rsync --fake-super" /src/ host:/dest/))
1020
1021Since there is only one "side" in a local copy, this option affects both
1022the sending and receiving of files. You'll need to specify a copy using
1023"localhost" if you need to avoid this, possibly using the "lsh" shell
1024script (from the support directory) as a substitute for an actual remote
1025shell (see bf(--rsh)).
1026
1027This option is overridden by both bf(--super) and bf(--no-super).
1028
1029See also the "fake super" setting in the daemon's rsyncd.conf file.
1030
1031dit(bf(-S, --sparse)) Try to handle sparse files efficiently so they take
1032up less space on the destination. Conflicts with bf(--inplace) because it's
1033not possible to overwrite data in a sparse fashion.
1034
1035NOTE: Don't use this option when the destination is a Solaris "tmpfs"
1036filesystem. It doesn't seem to handle seeks over null regions
1037correctly and ends up corrupting the files.
1038
1039dit(bf(-n, --dry-run)) This makes rsync perform a trial run that doesn't
1040make any changes (and produces mostly the same output as a real run). It
1041is most commonly used in combination with the bf(-v, --verbose) and/or
1042bf(-i, --itemize-changes) options to see what an rsync command is going
1043to do before one actually runs it.
1044
1045The output of bf(--itemize-changes) is supposed to be exactly the same on a
1046dry run and a subsequent real run (barring intentional trickery and system
1047call failures); if it isn't, that's a bug. Other output is the same to the
1048extent practical, but may differ in some areas. Notably, a dry run does not
1049send the actual data for file transfers, so bf(--progress) has no effect,
1050the "bytes sent", "bytes received", "literal data", and "matched data"
1051statistics are too small, and the "speedup" value is equivalent to a run
1052where no file transfers are needed.
1053
1054dit(bf(-W, --whole-file)) With this option the delta-transfer algorithm
1055is not used and the whole file is sent as-is instead. The transfer may be
1056faster if this option is used when the bandwidth between the source and
1057destination machines is higher than the bandwidth to disk (especially when the
1058"disk" is actually a networked filesystem). This is the default when both
1059the source and destination are specified as local paths.
1060
1061dit(bf(-x, --one-file-system)) This tells rsync to avoid crossing a
1062filesystem boundary when recursing. This does not limit the user's ability
1063to specify items to copy from multiple filesystems, just rsync's recursion
1064through the hierarchy of each directory that the user specified, and also
1065the analogous recursion on the receiving side during deletion. Also keep
1066in mind that rsync treats a "bind" mount to the same device as being on the
1067same filesystem.
1068
1069If this option is repeated, rsync omits all mount-point directories from
1070the copy. Otherwise, it includes an empty directory at each mount-point it
1071encounters (using the attributes of the mounted directory because those of
1072the underlying mount-point directory are inaccessible).
1073
1074If rsync has been told to collapse symlinks (via bf(--copy-links) or
1075bf(--copy-unsafe-links)), a symlink to a directory on another device is
1076treated like a mount-point. Symlinks to non-directories are unaffected
1077by this option.
1078
1079dit(bf(--existing, --ignore-non-existing)) This tells rsync to skip
1080creating files (including directories) that do not exist
1081yet on the destination. If this option is
1082combined with the bf(--ignore-existing) option, no files will be updated
1083(which can be useful if all you want to do is delete extraneous files).
1084
1085dit(bf(--ignore-existing)) This tells rsync to skip updating files that
1086already exist on the destination (this does em(not) ignore existing
1087directories, or nothing would get done). See also bf(--existing).
1088
1089This option can be useful for those doing backups using the bf(--link-dest)
1090option when they need to continue a backup run that got interrupted. Since
1091a bf(--link-dest) run is copied into a new directory hierarchy (when it is
1092used properly), using bf(--ignore existing) will ensure that the
1093already-handled files don't get tweaked (which avoids a change in
1094permissions on the hard-linked files). This does mean that this option
1095is only looking at the existing files in the destination hierarchy itself.
1096
1097dit(bf(--remove-source-files)) This tells rsync to remove from the sending
1098side the files (meaning non-directories) that are a part of the transfer
1099and have been successfully duplicated on the receiving side.
1100
1101dit(bf(--delete)) This tells rsync to delete extraneous files from the
1102receiving side (ones that aren't on the sending side), but only for the
1103directories that are being synchronized. You must have asked rsync to
1104send the whole directory (e.g. "dir" or "dir/") without using a wildcard
1105for the directory's contents (e.g. "dir/*") since the wildcard is expanded
1106by the shell and rsync thus gets a request to transfer individual files, not
1107the files' parent directory. Files that are excluded from transfer are
1108also excluded from being deleted unless you use the bf(--delete-excluded)
1109option or mark the rules as only matching on the sending side (see the
1110include/exclude modifiers in the FILTER RULES section).
1111
1112Prior to rsync 2.6.7, this option would have no effect unless bf(--recursive)
1113was enabled. Beginning with 2.6.7, deletions will also occur when bf(--dirs)
1114(bf(-d)) is enabled, but only for directories whose contents are being copied.
1115
1116This option can be dangerous if used incorrectly! It is a very good idea to
1117first try a run using the bf(--dry-run) option (bf(-n)) to see what files are
1118going to be deleted.
1119
1120If the sending side detects any I/O errors, then the deletion of any
1121files at the destination will be automatically disabled. This is to
1122prevent temporary filesystem failures (such as NFS errors) on the
1123sending side causing a massive deletion of files on the
1124destination. You can override this with the bf(--ignore-errors) option.
1125
1126The bf(--delete) option may be combined with one of the --delete-WHEN options
1127without conflict, as well as bf(--delete-excluded). However, if none of the
1128--delete-WHEN options are specified, rsync will choose the
1129bf(--delete-during) algorithm when talking to an rsync 3.0.0 or newer, and
1130the bf(--delete-before) algorithm when talking to an older rsync. See also
1131bf(--delete-delay) and bf(--delete-after).
1132
1133dit(bf(--delete-before)) Request that the file-deletions on the receiving
1134side be done before the transfer starts.
1135See bf(--delete) (which is implied) for more details on file-deletion.
1136
1137Deleting before the transfer is helpful if the filesystem is tight for space
1138and removing extraneous files would help to make the transfer possible.
1139However, it does introduce a delay before the start of the transfer,
1140and this delay might cause the transfer to timeout (if bf(--timeout) was
1141specified). It also forces rsync to use the old, non-incremental recursion
1142algorithm that requires rsync to scan all the files in the transfer into
1143memory at once (see bf(--recursive)).
1144
1145dit(bf(--delete-during, --del)) Request that the file-deletions on the
1146receiving side be done incrementally as the transfer happens. This is
1147a faster method than choosing the before- or after-transfer algorithm,
1148but it is only supported beginning with rsync version 2.6.4.
1149See bf(--delete) (which is implied) for more details on file-deletion.
1150
1151dit(bf(--delete-delay)) Request that the file-deletions on the receiving
1152side be computed during the transfer, and then removed after the transfer
1153completes. If the number of removed files overflows an internal buffer, a
1154temporary file will be created on the receiving side to hold the names (it
1155is removed while open, so you shouldn't see it during the transfer). If
1156the creation of the temporary file fails, rsync will try to fall back to
1157using bf(--delete-after) (which it cannot do if bf(--recursive) is doing an
1158incremental scan).
1159
1160dit(bf(--delete-after)) Request that the file-deletions on the receiving
1161side be done after the transfer has completed. This is useful if you
1162are sending new per-directory merge files as a part of the transfer and
1163you want their exclusions to take effect for the delete phase of the
1164current transfer. It also forces rsync to use the old, non-incremental
1165recursion algorithm that requires rsync to scan all the files in the
1166transfer into memory at once (see bf(--recursive)).
1167See bf(--delete) (which is implied) for more details on file-deletion.
1168
1169dit(bf(--delete-excluded)) In addition to deleting the files on the
1170receiving side that are not on the sending side, this tells rsync to also
1171delete any files on the receiving side that are excluded (see bf(--exclude)).
1172See the FILTER RULES section for a way to make individual exclusions behave
1173this way on the receiver, and for a way to protect files from
1174bf(--delete-excluded).
1175See bf(--delete) (which is implied) for more details on file-deletion.
1176
1177dit(bf(--ignore-errors)) Tells bf(--delete) to go ahead and delete files
1178even when there are I/O errors.
1179
1180dit(bf(--force)) This option tells rsync to delete a non-empty directory
1181when it is to be replaced by a non-directory. This is only relevant if
1182deletions are not active (see bf(--delete) for details).
1183
1184Note for older rsync versions: bf(--force) used to still be required when
1185using bf(--delete-after), and it used to be non-functional unless the
1186bf(--recursive) option was also enabled.
1187
1188dit(bf(--max-delete=NUM)) This tells rsync not to delete more than NUM
1189files or directories. If that limit is exceeded, a warning is output
1190and rsync exits with an error code of 25 (new for 3.0.0).
1191
1192Also new for version 3.0.0, you may specify bf(--max-delete=0) to be warned
1193about any extraneous files in the destination without removing any of them.
1194Older clients interpreted this as "unlimited", so if you don't know what
1195version the client is, you can use the less obvious bf(--max-delete=-1) as
1196a backward-compatible way to specify that no deletions be allowed (though
1197older versions didn't warn when the limit was exceeded).
1198
1199dit(bf(--max-size=SIZE)) This tells rsync to avoid transferring any
1200file that is larger than the specified SIZE. The SIZE value can be
1201suffixed with a string to indicate a size multiplier, and
1202may be a fractional value (e.g. "bf(--max-size=1.5m)").
1203
1204The suffixes are as follows: "K" (or "KiB") is a kibibyte (1024),
1205"M" (or "MiB") is a mebibyte (1024*1024), and "G" (or "GiB") is a
1206gibibyte (1024*1024*1024).
1207If you want the multiplier to be 1000 instead of 1024, use "KB",
1208"MB", or "GB". (Note: lower-case is also accepted for all values.)
1209Finally, if the suffix ends in either "+1" or "-1", the value will
1210be offset by one byte in the indicated direction.
1211
1212Examples: --max-size=1.5mb-1 is 1499999 bytes, and --max-size=2g+1 is
12132147483649 bytes.
1214
1215dit(bf(--min-size=SIZE)) This tells rsync to avoid transferring any
1216file that is smaller than the specified SIZE, which can help in not
1217transferring small, junk files.
1218See the bf(--max-size) option for a description of SIZE.
1219
1220dit(bf(-B, --block-size=BLOCKSIZE)) This forces the block size used in
1221the rsync algorithm to a fixed value. It is normally selected based on
1222the size of each file being updated. See the technical report for details.
1223
1224dit(bf(-e, --rsh=COMMAND)) This option allows you to choose an alternative
1225remote shell program to use for communication between the local and
1226remote copies of rsync. Typically, rsync is configured to use ssh by
1227default, but you may prefer to use rsh on a local network.
1228
1229If this option is used with bf([user@]host::module/path), then the
1230remote shell em(COMMAND) will be used to run an rsync daemon on the
1231remote host, and all data will be transmitted through that remote
1232shell connection, rather than through a direct socket connection to a
1233running rsync daemon on the remote host. See the section "USING
1234RSYNC-DAEMON FEATURES VIA A REMOTE-SHELL CONNECTION" above.
1235
1236Command-line arguments are permitted in COMMAND provided that COMMAND is
1237presented to rsync as a single argument. You must use spaces (not tabs
1238or other whitespace) to separate the command and args from each other,
1239and you can use single- and/or double-quotes to preserve spaces in an
1240argument (but not backslashes). Note that doubling a single-quote
1241inside a single-quoted string gives you a single-quote; likewise for
1242double-quotes (though you need to pay attention to which quotes your
1243shell is parsing and which quotes rsync is parsing). Some examples:
1244
1245quote(
1246tt( -e 'ssh -p 2234')nl()
1247tt( -e 'ssh -o "ProxyCommand nohup ssh firewall nc -w1 %h %p"')nl()
1248)
1249
1250(Note that ssh users can alternately customize site-specific connect
1251options in their .ssh/config file.)
1252
1253You can also choose the remote shell program using the RSYNC_RSH
1254environment variable, which accepts the same range of values as bf(-e).
1255
1256See also the bf(--blocking-io) option which is affected by this option.
1257
1258dit(bf(--rsync-path=PROGRAM)) Use this to specify what program is to be run
1259on the remote machine to start-up rsync. Often used when rsync is not in
1260the default remote-shell's path (e.g. --rsync-path=/usr/local/bin/rsync).
1261Note that PROGRAM is run with the help of a shell, so it can be any
1262program, script, or command sequence you'd care to run, so long as it does
1263not corrupt the standard-in & standard-out that rsync is using to
1264communicate.
1265
1266One tricky example is to set a different default directory on the remote
1267machine for use with the bf(--relative) option. For instance:
1268
1269quote(tt( rsync -avR --rsync-path="cd /a/b && rsync" host:c/d /e/))
1270
1271dit(bf(-C, --cvs-exclude)) This is a useful shorthand for excluding a
1272broad range of files that you often don't want to transfer between
1273systems. It uses a similar algorithm to CVS to determine if
1274a file should be ignored.
1275
1276The exclude list is initialized to exclude the following items (these
1277initial items are marked as perishable -- see the FILTER RULES section):
1278
1279quote(quote(tt(RCS SCCS CVS CVS.adm RCSLOG cvslog.* tags TAGS .make.state
1280.nse_depinfo *~ #* .#* ,* _$* *$ *.old *.bak *.BAK *.orig *.rej .del-*
1281*.a *.olb *.o *.obj *.so *.exe *.Z *.elc *.ln core .svn/ .git/ .bzr/)))
1282
1283then, files listed in a $HOME/.cvsignore are added to the list and any
1284files listed in the CVSIGNORE environment variable (all cvsignore names
1285are delimited by whitespace).
1286
1287Finally, any file is ignored if it is in the same directory as a
1288.cvsignore file and matches one of the patterns listed therein. Unlike
1289rsync's filter/exclude files, these patterns are split on whitespace.
1290See the bf(cvs)(1) manual for more information.
1291
1292If you're combining bf(-C) with your own bf(--filter) rules, you should
1293note that these CVS excludes are appended at the end of your own rules,
1294regardless of where the bf(-C) was placed on the command-line. This makes them
1295a lower priority than any rules you specified explicitly. If you want to
1296control where these CVS excludes get inserted into your filter rules, you
1297should omit the bf(-C) as a command-line option and use a combination of
1298bf(--filter=:C) and bf(--filter=-C) (either on your command-line or by
1299putting the ":C" and "-C" rules into a filter file with your other rules).
1300The first option turns on the per-directory scanning for the .cvsignore
1301file. The second option does a one-time import of the CVS excludes
1302mentioned above.
1303
1304dit(bf(-f, --filter=RULE)) This option allows you to add rules to selectively
1305exclude certain files from the list of files to be transferred. This is
1306most useful in combination with a recursive transfer.
1307
1308You may use as many bf(--filter) options on the command line as you like
1309to build up the list of files to exclude. If the filter contains whitespace,
1310be sure to quote it so that the shell gives the rule to rsync as a single
1311argument. The text below also mentions that you can use an underscore to
1312replace the space that separates a rule from its arg.
1313
1314See the FILTER RULES section for detailed information on this option.
1315
1316dit(bf(-F)) The bf(-F) option is a shorthand for adding two bf(--filter) rules to
1317your command. The first time it is used is a shorthand for this rule:
1318
1319quote(tt( --filter='dir-merge /.rsync-filter'))
1320
1321This tells rsync to look for per-directory .rsync-filter files that have
1322been sprinkled through the hierarchy and use their rules to filter the
1323files in the transfer. If bf(-F) is repeated, it is a shorthand for this
1324rule:
1325
1326quote(tt( --filter='exclude .rsync-filter'))
1327
1328This filters out the .rsync-filter files themselves from the transfer.
1329
1330See the FILTER RULES section for detailed information on how these options
1331work.
1332
1333dit(bf(--exclude=PATTERN)) This option is a simplified form of the
1334bf(--filter) option that defaults to an exclude rule and does not allow
1335the full rule-parsing syntax of normal filter rules.
1336
1337See the FILTER RULES section for detailed information on this option.
1338
1339dit(bf(--exclude-from=FILE)) This option is related to the bf(--exclude)
1340option, but it specifies a FILE that contains exclude patterns (one per line).
1341Blank lines in the file and lines starting with ';' or '#' are ignored.
1342If em(FILE) is bf(-), the list will be read from standard input.
1343
1344dit(bf(--include=PATTERN)) This option is a simplified form of the
1345bf(--filter) option that defaults to an include rule and does not allow
1346the full rule-parsing syntax of normal filter rules.
1347
1348See the FILTER RULES section for detailed information on this option.
1349
1350dit(bf(--include-from=FILE)) This option is related to the bf(--include)
1351option, but it specifies a FILE that contains include patterns (one per line).
1352Blank lines in the file and lines starting with ';' or '#' are ignored.
1353If em(FILE) is bf(-), the list will be read from standard input.
1354
1355dit(bf(--files-from=FILE)) Using this option allows you to specify the
1356exact list of files to transfer (as read from the specified FILE or bf(-)
1357for standard input). It also tweaks the default behavior of rsync to make
1358transferring just the specified files and directories easier:
1359
1360quote(itemization(
1361 it() The bf(--relative) (bf(-R)) option is implied, which preserves the path
1362 information that is specified for each item in the file (use
1363 bf(--no-relative) or bf(--no-R) if you want to turn that off).
1364 it() The bf(--dirs) (bf(-d)) option is implied, which will create directories
1365 specified in the list on the destination rather than noisily skipping
1366 them (use bf(--no-dirs) or bf(--no-d) if you want to turn that off).
1367 it() The bf(--archive) (bf(-a)) option's behavior does not imply bf(--recursive)
1368 (bf(-r)), so specify it explicitly, if you want it.
1369 it() These side-effects change the default state of rsync, so the position
1370 of the bf(--files-from) option on the command-line has no bearing on how
1371 other options are parsed (e.g. bf(-a) works the same before or after
1372 bf(--files-from), as does bf(--no-R) and all other options).
1373))
1374
1375The filenames that are read from the FILE are all relative to the
1376source dir -- any leading slashes are removed and no ".." references are
1377allowed to go higher than the source dir. For example, take this
1378command:
1379
1380quote(tt( rsync -a --files-from=/tmp/foo /usr remote:/backup))
1381
1382If /tmp/foo contains the string "bin" (or even "/bin"), the /usr/bin
1383directory will be created as /backup/bin on the remote host. If it
1384contains "bin/" (note the trailing slash), the immediate contents of
1385the directory would also be sent (without needing to be explicitly
1386mentioned in the file -- this began in version 2.6.4). In both cases,
1387if the bf(-r) option was enabled, that dir's entire hierarchy would
1388also be transferred (keep in mind that bf(-r) needs to be specified
1389explicitly with bf(--files-from), since it is not implied by bf(-a)).
1390Also note
1391that the effect of the (enabled by default) bf(--relative) option is to
1392duplicate only the path info that is read from the file -- it does not
1393force the duplication of the source-spec path (/usr in this case).
1394
1395In addition, the bf(--files-from) file can be read from the remote host
1396instead of the local host if you specify a "host:" in front of the file
1397(the host must match one end of the transfer). As a short-cut, you can
1398specify just a prefix of ":" to mean "use the remote end of the
1399transfer". For example:
1400
1401quote(tt( rsync -a --files-from=:/path/file-list src:/ /tmp/copy))
1402
1403This would copy all the files specified in the /path/file-list file that
1404was located on the remote "src" host.
1405
1406dit(bf(-0, --from0)) This tells rsync that the rules/filenames it reads from a
1407file are terminated by a null ('\0') character, not a NL, CR, or CR+LF.
1408This affects bf(--exclude-from), bf(--include-from), bf(--files-from), and any
1409merged files specified in a bf(--filter) rule.
1410It does not affect bf(--cvs-exclude) (since all names read from a .cvsignore
1411file are split on whitespace).
1412
1413If the bf(--iconv) and bf(--protect-args) options are specified and the
1414bf(--files-from) filenames are being sent from one host to another, the
1415filenames will be translated from the sending host's charset to the
1416receiving host's charset.
1417
1418dit(bf(-s, --protect-args)) This option sends all filenames and some options to
1419the remote rsync without allowing the remote shell to interpret them. This
1420means that spaces are not split in names, and any non-wildcard special
1421characters are not translated (such as ~, $, ;, &, etc.). Wildcards are
1422expanded on the remote host by rsync (instead of the shell doing it).
1423
1424If you use this option with bf(--iconv), the args will also be translated
1425from the local to the remote character-set. The translation happens before
1426wild-cards are expanded. See also the bf(--files-from) option.
1427
1428dit(bf(-T, --temp-dir=DIR)) This option instructs rsync to use DIR as a
1429scratch directory when creating temporary copies of the files transferred
1430on the receiving side. The default behavior is to create each temporary
1431file in the same directory as the associated destination file.
1432
1433This option is most often used when the receiving disk partition does not
1434have enough free space to hold a copy of the largest file in the transfer.
1435In this case (i.e. when the scratch directory is on a different disk
1436partition), rsync will not be able to rename each received temporary file
1437over the top of the associated destination file, but instead must copy it
1438into place. Rsync does this by copying the file over the top of the
1439destination file, which means that the destination file will contain
1440truncated data during this copy. If this were not done this way (even if
1441the destination file were first removed, the data locally copied to a
1442temporary file in the destination directory, and then renamed into place)
1443it would be possible for the old file to continue taking up disk space (if
1444someone had it open), and thus there might not be enough room to fit the
1445new version on the disk at the same time.
1446
1447If you are using this option for reasons other than a shortage of disk
1448space, you may wish to combine it with the bf(--delay-updates) option,
1449which will ensure that all copied files get put into subdirectories in the
1450destination hierarchy, awaiting the end of the transfer. If you don't
1451have enough room to duplicate all the arriving files on the destination
1452partition, another way to tell rsync that you aren't overly concerned
1453about disk space is to use the bf(--partial-dir) option with a relative
1454path; because this tells rsync that it is OK to stash off a copy of a
1455single file in a subdir in the destination hierarchy, rsync will use the
1456partial-dir as a staging area to bring over the copied file, and then
1457rename it into place from there. (Specifying a bf(--partial-dir) with
1458an absolute path does not have this side-effect.)
1459
1460dit(bf(-y, --fuzzy)) This option tells rsync that it should look for a
1461basis file for any destination file that is missing. The current algorithm
1462looks in the same directory as the destination file for either a file that
1463has an identical size and modified-time, or a similarly-named file. If
1464found, rsync uses the fuzzy basis file to try to speed up the transfer.
1465
1466Note that the use of the bf(--delete) option might get rid of any potential
1467fuzzy-match files, so either use bf(--delete-after) or specify some
1468filename exclusions if you need to prevent this.
1469
1470dit(bf(--compare-dest=DIR)) This option instructs rsync to use em(DIR) on
1471the destination machine as an additional hierarchy to compare destination
1472files against doing transfers (if the files are missing in the destination
1473directory). If a file is found in em(DIR) that is identical to the
1474sender's file, the file will NOT be transferred to the destination
1475directory. This is useful for creating a sparse backup of just files that
1476have changed from an earlier backup.
1477
1478Beginning in version 2.6.4, multiple bf(--compare-dest) directories may be
1479provided, which will cause rsync to search the list in the order specified
1480for an exact match.
1481If a match is found that differs only in attributes, a local copy is made
1482and the attributes updated.
1483If a match is not found, a basis file from one of the em(DIR)s will be
1484selected to try to speed up the transfer.
1485
1486If em(DIR) is a relative path, it is relative to the destination directory.
1487See also bf(--copy-dest) and bf(--link-dest).
1488
1489dit(bf(--copy-dest=DIR)) This option behaves like bf(--compare-dest), but
1490rsync will also copy unchanged files found in em(DIR) to the destination
1491directory using a local copy.
1492This is useful for doing transfers to a new destination while leaving
1493existing files intact, and then doing a flash-cutover when all files have
1494been successfully transferred.
1495
1496Multiple bf(--copy-dest) directories may be provided, which will cause
1497rsync to search the list in the order specified for an unchanged file.
1498If a match is not found, a basis file from one of the em(DIR)s will be
1499selected to try to speed up the transfer.
1500
1501If em(DIR) is a relative path, it is relative to the destination directory.
1502See also bf(--compare-dest) and bf(--link-dest).
1503
1504dit(bf(--link-dest=DIR)) This option behaves like bf(--copy-dest), but
1505unchanged files are hard linked from em(DIR) to the destination directory.
1506The files must be identical in all preserved attributes (e.g. permissions,
1507possibly ownership) in order for the files to be linked together.
1508An example:
1509
1510quote(tt( rsync -av --link-dest=$PWD/prior_dir host:src_dir/ new_dir/))
1511
1512Beginning in version 2.6.4, multiple bf(--link-dest) directories may be
1513provided, which will cause rsync to search the list in the order specified
1514for an exact match.
1515If a match is found that differs only in attributes, a local copy is made
1516and the attributes updated.
1517If a match is not found, a basis file from one of the em(DIR)s will be
1518selected to try to speed up the transfer.
1519
1520This option works best when copying into an empty destination hierarchy, as
1521rsync treats existing files as definitive (so it never looks in the link-dest
1522dirs when a destination file already exists), and as malleable (so it might
1523change the attributes of a destination file, which affects all the hard-linked
1524versions).
1525
1526Note that if you combine this option with bf(--ignore-times), rsync will not
1527link any files together because it only links identical files together as a
1528substitute for transferring the file, never as an additional check after the
1529file is updated.
1530
1531If em(DIR) is a relative path, it is relative to the destination directory.
1532See also bf(--compare-dest) and bf(--copy-dest).
1533
1534Note that rsync versions prior to 2.6.1 had a bug that could prevent
1535bf(--link-dest) from working properly for a non-super-user when bf(-o) was
1536specified (or implied by bf(-a)). You can work-around this bug by avoiding
1537the bf(-o) option when sending to an old rsync.
1538
1539dit(bf(-z, --compress)) With this option, rsync compresses the file data
1540as it is sent to the destination machine, which reduces the amount of data
1541being transmitted -- something that is useful over a slow connection.
1542
1543Note that this option typically achieves better compression ratios than can
1544be achieved by using a compressing remote shell or a compressing transport
1545because it takes advantage of the implicit information in the matching data
1546blocks that are not explicitly sent over the connection.
1547
1548See the bf(--skip-compress) option for the default list of file suffixes
1549that will not be compressed.
1550
1551dit(bf(--compress-level=NUM)) Explicitly set the compression level to use
1552(see bf(--compress)) instead of letting it default. If NUM is non-zero,
1553the bf(--compress) option is implied.
1554
1555dit(bf(--skip-compress=LIST)) Override the list of file suffixes that will
1556not be compressed. The bf(LIST) should be one or more file suffixes
1557(without the dot) separated by slashes (/).
1558
1559You may specify an empty string to indicate that no file should be skipped.
1560
1561Simple character-class matching is supported: each must consist of a list
1562of letters inside the square brackets (e.g. no special classes, such as
1563"[:alpha:]", are supported).
1564
1565The characters asterisk (*) and question-mark (?) have no special meaning.
1566
1567Here's an example that specifies 6 suffixes to skip (since 1 of the 5 rules
1568matches 2 suffixes):
1569
1570verb( --skip-compress=gz/jpg/mp[34]/7z/bz2)
1571
1572The default list of suffixes that will not be compressed is this (several
1573of these are newly added for 3.0.0):
1574
1575verb( gz/zip/z/rpm/deb/iso/bz2/t[gb]z/7z/mp[34]/mov/avi/ogg/jpg/jpeg)
1576
1577This list will be replaced by your bf(--skip-compress) list in all but one
1578situation: a copy from a daemon rsync will add your skipped suffixes to
1579its list of non-compressing files (and its list may be configured to a
1580different default).
1581
1582dit(bf(--numeric-ids)) With this option rsync will transfer numeric group
1583and user IDs rather than using user and group names and mapping them
1584at both ends.
1585
1586By default rsync will use the username and groupname to determine
1587what ownership to give files. The special uid 0 and the special group
15880 are never mapped via user/group names even if the bf(--numeric-ids)
1589option is not specified.
1590
1591If a user or group has no name on the source system or it has no match
1592on the destination system, then the numeric ID
1593from the source system is used instead. See also the comments on the
1594"use chroot" setting in the rsyncd.conf manpage for information on how
1595the chroot setting affects rsync's ability to look up the names of the
1596users and groups and what you can do about it.
1597
1598dit(bf(--timeout=TIMEOUT)) This option allows you to set a maximum I/O
1599timeout in seconds. If no data is transferred for the specified time
1600then rsync will exit. The default is 0, which means no timeout.
1601
1602dit(bf(--contimeout)) This option allows you to set the amount of time
1603that rsync will wait for its connection to an rsync daemon to succeed.
1604If the timeout is reached, rsync exits with an error.
1605
1606dit(bf(--address)) By default rsync will bind to the wildcard address when
1607connecting to an rsync daemon. The bf(--address) option allows you to
1608specify a specific IP address (or hostname) to bind to. See also this
1609option in the bf(--daemon) mode section.
1610
1611dit(bf(--port=PORT)) This specifies an alternate TCP port number to use
1612rather than the default of 873. This is only needed if you are using the
1613double-colon (::) syntax to connect with an rsync daemon (since the URL
1614syntax has a way to specify the port as a part of the URL). See also this
1615option in the bf(--daemon) mode section.
1616
1617dit(bf(--sockopts)) This option can provide endless fun for people
1618who like to tune their systems to the utmost degree. You can set all
1619sorts of socket options which may make transfers faster (or
1620slower!). Read the man page for the code(setsockopt()) system call for
1621details on some of the options you may be able to set. By default no
1622special socket options are set. This only affects direct socket
1623connections to a remote rsync daemon. This option also exists in the
1624bf(--daemon) mode section.
1625
1626dit(bf(--blocking-io)) This tells rsync to use blocking I/O when launching
1627a remote shell transport. If the remote shell is either rsh or remsh,
1628rsync defaults to using
1629blocking I/O, otherwise it defaults to using non-blocking I/O. (Note that
1630ssh prefers non-blocking I/O.)
1631
1632dit(bf(-i, --itemize-changes)) Requests a simple itemized list of the
1633changes that are being made to each file, including attribute changes.
1634This is exactly the same as specifying bf(--out-format='%i %n%L').
1635If you repeat the option, unchanged files will also be output, but only
1636if the receiving rsync is at least version 2.6.7 (you can use bf(-vv)
1637with older versions of rsync, but that also turns on the output of other
1638verbose messages).
1639
1640The "%i" escape has a cryptic output that is 11 letters long. The general
1641format is like the string bf(YXcstpoguax), where bf(Y) is replaced by the
1642type of update being done, bf(X) is replaced by the file-type, and the
1643other letters represent attributes that may be output if they are being
1644modified.
1645
1646The update types that replace the bf(Y) are as follows:
1647
1648quote(itemization(
1649 it() A bf(<) means that a file is being transferred to the remote host
1650 (sent).
1651 it() A bf(>) means that a file is being transferred to the local host
1652 (received).
1653 it() A bf(c) means that a local change/creation is occurring for the item
1654 (such as the creation of a directory or the changing of a symlink, etc.).
1655 it() A bf(h) means that the item is a hard link to another item (requires
1656 bf(--hard-links)).
1657 it() A bf(.) means that the item is not being updated (though it might
1658 have attributes that are being modified).
1659 it() A bf(*) means that the rest of the itemized-output area contains
1660 a message (e.g. "deleting").
1661))
1662
1663The file-types that replace the bf(X) are: bf(f) for a file, a bf(d) for a
1664directory, an bf(L) for a symlink, a bf(D) for a device, and a bf(S) for a
1665special file (e.g. named sockets and fifos).
1666
1667The other letters in the string above are the actual letters that
1668will be output if the associated attribute for the item is being updated or
1669a "." for no change. Three exceptions to this are: (1) a newly created
1670item replaces each letter with a "+", (2) an identical item replaces the
1671dots with spaces, and (3) an unknown attribute replaces each letter with
1672a "?" (this can happen when talking to an older rsync).
1673
1674The attribute that is associated with each letter is as follows:
1675
1676quote(itemization(
1677 it() A bf(c) means the checksum of the file is different and will be
1678 updated by the file transfer (requires bf(--checksum)).
1679 it() A bf(s) means the size of the file is different and will be updated
1680 by the file transfer.
1681 it() A bf(t) means the modification time is different and is being updated
1682 to the sender's value (requires bf(--times)). An alternate value of bf(T)
1683 means that the modification time will be set to the transfer time, which happens
1684 when a file/symlink/device is updated without bf(--times) and when a
1685 symlink is changed and the receiver can't set its time.
1686 it() A bf(p) means the permissions are different and are being updated to
1687 the sender's value (requires bf(--perms)).
1688 it() An bf(o) means the owner is different and is being updated to the
1689 sender's value (requires bf(--owner) and super-user privileges).
1690 it() A bf(g) means the group is different and is being updated to the
1691 sender's value (requires bf(--group) and the authority to set the group).
1692 it() The bf(u) slot is reserved for future use.
1693 it() The bf(a) means that the ACL information changed.
1694 it() The bf(x) means that the extended attribute information changed.
1695))
1696
1697One other output is possible: when deleting files, the "%i" will output
1698the string "*deleting" for each item that is being removed (assuming that
1699you are talking to a recent enough rsync that it logs deletions instead of
1700outputting them as a verbose message).
1701
1702dit(bf(--out-format=FORMAT)) This allows you to specify exactly what the
1703rsync client outputs to the user on a per-update basis. The format is a text
1704string containing embedded single-character escape sequences prefixed with
1705a percent (%) character. For a list of the possible escape characters, see
1706the "log format" setting in the rsyncd.conf manpage.
1707
1708Specifying this option will mention each file, dir, etc. that gets updated
1709in a significant way (a transferred file, a recreated symlink/device, or a
1710touched directory). In addition, if the itemize-changes escape (%i) is
1711included in the string, the logging of names increases to mention any
1712item that is changed in any way (as long as the receiving side is at least
17132.6.4). See the bf(--itemize-changes) option for a description of the
1714output of "%i".
1715
1716The bf(--verbose) option implies a format of "%n%L", but you can use
1717bf(--out-format) without bf(--verbose) if you like, or you can override
1718the format of its per-file output using this option.
1719
1720Rsync will output the out-format string prior to a file's transfer unless
1721one of the transfer-statistic escapes is requested, in which case the
1722logging is done at the end of the file's transfer. When this late logging
1723is in effect and bf(--progress) is also specified, rsync will also output
1724the name of the file being transferred prior to its progress information
1725(followed, of course, by the out-format output).
1726
1727dit(bf(--log-file=FILE)) This option causes rsync to log what it is doing
1728to a file. This is similar to the logging that a daemon does, but can be
1729requested for the client side and/or the server side of a non-daemon
1730transfer. If specified as a client option, transfer logging will be
1731enabled with a default format of "%i %n%L". See the bf(--log-file-format)
1732option if you wish to override this.
1733
1734Here's a example command that requests the remote side to log what is
1735happening:
1736
1737verb( rsync -av --rsync-path="rsync --log-file=/tmp/rlog" src/ dest/)
1738
1739This is very useful if you need to debug why a connection is closing
1740unexpectedly.
1741
1742dit(bf(--log-file-format=FORMAT)) This allows you to specify exactly what
1743per-update logging is put into the file specified by the bf(--log-file) option
1744(which must also be specified for this option to have any effect). If you
1745specify an empty string, updated files will not be mentioned in the log file.
1746For a list of the possible escape characters, see the "log format" setting
1747in the rsyncd.conf manpage.
1748
1749dit(bf(--stats)) This tells rsync to print a verbose set of statistics
1750on the file transfer, allowing you to tell how effective the rsync
1751algorithm is for your data.
1752
1753The current statistics are as follows: quote(itemization(
1754 it() bf(Number of files) is the count of all "files" (in the generic
1755 sense), which includes directories, symlinks, etc.
1756 it() bf(Number of files transferred) is the count of normal files that
1757 were updated via the rsync algorithm, which does not include created
1758 dirs, symlinks, etc.
1759 it() bf(Total file size) is the total sum of all file sizes in the transfer.
1760 This does not count any size for directories or special files, but does
1761 include the size of symlinks.
1762 it() bf(Total transferred file size) is the total sum of all files sizes
1763 for just the transferred files.
1764 it() bf(Literal data) is how much unmatched file-update data we had to
1765 send to the receiver for it to recreate the updated files.
1766 it() bf(Matched data) is how much data the receiver got locally when
1767 recreating the updated files.
1768 it() bf(File list size) is how big the file-list data was when the sender
1769 sent it to the receiver. This is smaller than the in-memory size for the
1770 file list due to some compressing of duplicated data when rsync sends the
1771 list.
1772 it() bf(File list generation time) is the number of seconds that the
1773 sender spent creating the file list. This requires a modern rsync on the
1774 sending side for this to be present.
1775 it() bf(File list transfer time) is the number of seconds that the sender
1776 spent sending the file list to the receiver.
1777 it() bf(Total bytes sent) is the count of all the bytes that rsync sent
1778 from the client side to the server side.
1779 it() bf(Total bytes received) is the count of all non-message bytes that
1780 rsync received by the client side from the server side. "Non-message"
1781 bytes means that we don't count the bytes for a verbose message that the
1782 server sent to us, which makes the stats more consistent.
1783))
1784
1785dit(bf(-8, --8-bit-output)) This tells rsync to leave all high-bit characters
1786unescaped in the output instead of trying to test them to see if they're
1787valid in the current locale and escaping the invalid ones. All control
1788characters (but never tabs) are always escaped, regardless of this option's
1789setting.
1790
1791The escape idiom that started in 2.6.7 is to output a literal backslash (\)
1792and a hash (#), followed by exactly 3 octal digits. For example, a newline
1793would output as "\#012". A literal backslash that is in a filename is not
1794escaped unless it is followed by a hash and 3 digits (0-9).
1795
1796dit(bf(-h, --human-readable)) Output numbers in a more human-readable format.
1797This makes big numbers output using larger units, with a K, M, or G suffix. If
1798this option was specified once, these units are K (1000), M (1000*1000), and
1799G (1000*1000*1000); if the option is repeated, the units are powers of 1024
1800instead of 1000.
1801
1802dit(bf(--partial)) By default, rsync will delete any partially
1803transferred file if the transfer is interrupted. In some circumstances
1804it is more desirable to keep partially transferred files. Using the
1805bf(--partial) option tells rsync to keep the partial file which should
1806make a subsequent transfer of the rest of the file much faster.
1807
1808dit(bf(--partial-dir=DIR)) A better way to keep partial files than the
1809bf(--partial) option is to specify a em(DIR) that will be used to hold the
1810partial data (instead of writing it out to the destination file).
1811On the next transfer, rsync will use a file found in this
1812dir as data to speed up the resumption of the transfer and then delete it
1813after it has served its purpose.
1814
1815Note that if bf(--whole-file) is specified (or implied), any partial-dir
1816file that is found for a file that is being updated will simply be removed
1817(since
1818rsync is sending files without using the delta transfer algorithm).
1819
1820Rsync will create the em(DIR) if it is missing (just the last dir -- not
1821the whole path). This makes it easy to use a relative path (such as
1822"bf(--partial-dir=.rsync-partial)") to have rsync create the
1823partial-directory in the destination file's directory when needed, and then
1824remove it again when the partial file is deleted.
1825
1826If the partial-dir value is not an absolute path, rsync will add an exclude
1827rule at the end of all your existing excludes. This will prevent the
1828sending of any partial-dir files that may exist on the sending side, and
1829will also prevent the untimely deletion of partial-dir items on the
1830receiving side. An example: the above bf(--partial-dir) option would add
1831the equivalent of "bf(-f '-p .rsync-partial/')" at the end of any other
1832filter rules.
1833
1834If you are supplying your own exclude rules, you may need to add your own
1835exclude/hide/protect rule for the partial-dir because (1) the auto-added
1836rule may be ineffective at the end of your other rules, or (2) you may wish
1837to override rsync's exclude choice. For instance, if you want to make
1838rsync clean-up any left-over partial-dirs that may be lying around, you
1839should specify bf(--delete-after) and add a "risk" filter rule, e.g.
1840bf(-f 'R .rsync-partial/'). (Avoid using bf(--delete-before) or
1841bf(--delete-during) unless you don't need rsync to use any of the
1842left-over partial-dir data during the current run.)
1843
1844IMPORTANT: the bf(--partial-dir) should not be writable by other users or it
1845is a security risk. E.g. AVOID "/tmp".
1846
1847You can also set the partial-dir value the RSYNC_PARTIAL_DIR environment
1848variable. Setting this in the environment does not force bf(--partial) to be
1849enabled, but rather it affects where partial files go when bf(--partial) is
1850specified. For instance, instead of using bf(--partial-dir=.rsync-tmp)
1851along with bf(--progress), you could set RSYNC_PARTIAL_DIR=.rsync-tmp in your
1852environment and then just use the bf(-P) option to turn on the use of the
1853.rsync-tmp dir for partial transfers. The only times that the bf(--partial)
1854option does not look for this environment value are (1) when bf(--inplace) was
1855specified (since bf(--inplace) conflicts with bf(--partial-dir)), and (2) when
1856bf(--delay-updates) was specified (see below).
1857
1858For the purposes of the daemon-config's "refuse options" setting,
1859bf(--partial-dir) does em(not) imply bf(--partial). This is so that a
1860refusal of the bf(--partial) option can be used to disallow the overwriting
1861of destination files with a partial transfer, while still allowing the
1862safer idiom provided by bf(--partial-dir).
1863
1864dit(bf(--delay-updates)) This option puts the temporary file from each
1865updated file into a holding directory until the end of the
1866transfer, at which time all the files are renamed into place in rapid
1867succession. This attempts to make the updating of the files a little more
1868atomic. By default the files are placed into a directory named ".~tmp~" in
1869each file's destination directory, but if you've specified the
1870bf(--partial-dir) option, that directory will be used instead. See the
1871comments in the bf(--partial-dir) section for a discussion of how this
1872".~tmp~" dir will be excluded from the transfer, and what you can do if
1873you want rsync to cleanup old ".~tmp~" dirs that might be lying around.
1874Conflicts with bf(--inplace) and bf(--append).
1875
1876This option uses more memory on the receiving side (one bit per file
1877transferred) and also requires enough free disk space on the receiving
1878side to hold an additional copy of all the updated files. Note also that
1879you should not use an absolute path to bf(--partial-dir) unless (1)
1880there is no
1881chance of any of the files in the transfer having the same name (since all
1882the updated files will be put into a single directory if the path is
1883absolute)
1884and (2) there are no mount points in the hierarchy (since the
1885delayed updates will fail if they can't be renamed into place).
1886
1887See also the "atomic-rsync" perl script in the "support" subdir for an
1888update algorithm that is even more atomic (it uses bf(--link-dest) and a
1889parallel hierarchy of files).
1890
1891dit(bf(-m, --prune-empty-dirs)) This option tells the receiving rsync to get
1892rid of empty directories from the file-list, including nested directories
1893that have no non-directory children. This is useful for avoiding the
1894creation of a bunch of useless directories when the sending rsync is
1895recursively scanning a hierarchy of files using include/exclude/filter
1896rules.
1897
1898Because the file-list is actually being pruned, this option also affects
1899what directories get deleted when a delete is active. However, keep in
1900mind that excluded files and directories can prevent existing items from
1901being deleted (because an exclude hides source files and protects
1902destination files).
1903
1904You can prevent the pruning of certain empty directories from the file-list
1905by using a global "protect" filter. For instance, this option would ensure
1906that the directory "emptydir" was kept in the file-list:
1907
1908quote( --filter 'protect emptydir/')
1909
1910Here's an example that copies all .pdf files in a hierarchy, only creating
1911the necessary destination directories to hold the .pdf files, and ensures
1912that any superfluous files and directories in the destination are removed
1913(note the hide filter of non-directories being used instead of an exclude):
1914
1915quote( rsync -avm --del --include='*.pdf' -f 'hide,! */' src/ dest)
1916
1917If you didn't want to remove superfluous destination files, the more
1918time-honored options of "bf(--include='*/' --exclude='*')" would work fine
1919in place of the hide-filter (if that is more natural to you).
1920
1921dit(bf(--progress)) This option tells rsync to print information
1922showing the progress of the transfer. This gives a bored user
1923something to watch.
1924Implies bf(--verbose) if it wasn't already specified.
1925
1926While rsync is transferring a regular file, it updates a progress line that
1927looks like this:
1928
1929verb( 782448 63% 110.64kB/s 0:00:04)
1930
1931In this example, the receiver has reconstructed 782448 bytes or 63% of the
1932sender's file, which is being reconstructed at a rate of 110.64 kilobytes
1933per second, and the transfer will finish in 4 seconds if the current rate
1934is maintained until the end.
1935
1936These statistics can be misleading if the delta transfer algorithm is
1937in use. For example, if the sender's file consists of the basis file
1938followed by additional data, the reported rate will probably drop
1939dramatically when the receiver gets to the literal data, and the transfer
1940will probably take much longer to finish than the receiver estimated as it
1941was finishing the matched part of the file.
1942
1943When the file transfer finishes, rsync replaces the progress line with a
1944summary line that looks like this:
1945
1946verb( 1238099 100% 146.38kB/s 0:00:08 (xfer#5, to-check=169/396))
1947
1948In this example, the file was 1238099 bytes long in total, the average rate
1949of transfer for the whole file was 146.38 kilobytes per second over the 8
1950seconds that it took to complete, it was the 5th transfer of a regular file
1951during the current rsync session, and there are 169 more files for the
1952receiver to check (to see if they are up-to-date or not) remaining out of
1953the 396 total files in the file-list.
1954
1955dit(bf(-P)) The bf(-P) option is equivalent to bf(--partial) bf(--progress). Its
1956purpose is to make it much easier to specify these two options for a long
1957transfer that may be interrupted.
1958
1959dit(bf(--password-file)) This option allows you to provide a password in a
1960file for accessing an rsync daemon. The file must not be world readable.
1961It should contain just the password as a single line.
1962
1963This option does not supply a password to a remote shell transport such as
1964ssh; to learn how to do that, consult the remote shell's documentation.
1965When accessing an rsync daemon using a remote shell as the transport, this
1966option only comes into effect after the remote shell finishes its
1967authentication (i.e. if you have also specified a password in the daemon's
1968config file).
1969
1970dit(bf(--list-only)) This option will cause the source files to be listed
1971instead of transferred. This option is inferred if there is a single source
1972arg and no destination specified, so its main uses are: (1) to turn a copy
1973command that includes a
1974destination arg into a file-listing command, or (2) to be able to specify
1975more than one source arg (note: be sure to include the destination).
1976Caution: keep in mind that a source arg with a wild-card is expanded by the
1977shell into multiple args, so it is never safe to try to list such an arg
1978without using this option. For example:
1979
1980verb( rsync -av --list-only foo* dest/)
1981
1982Compatibility note: when requesting a remote listing of files from an rsync
1983that is version 2.6.3 or older, you may encounter an error if you ask for a
1984non-recursive listing. This is because a file listing implies the bf(--dirs)
1985option w/o bf(--recursive), and older rsyncs don't have that option. To
1986avoid this problem, either specify the bf(--no-dirs) option (if you don't
1987need to expand a directory's content), or turn on recursion and exclude
1988the content of subdirectories: bf(-r --exclude='/*/*').
1989
1990dit(bf(--bwlimit=KBPS)) This option allows you to specify a maximum
1991transfer rate in kilobytes per second. This option is most effective when
1992using rsync with large files (several megabytes and up). Due to the nature
1993of rsync transfers, blocks of data are sent, then if rsync determines the
1994transfer was too fast, it will wait before sending the next data block. The
1995result is an average transfer rate equaling the specified limit. A value
1996of zero specifies no limit.
1997
1998dit(bf(--write-batch=FILE)) Record a file that can later be applied to
1999another identical destination with bf(--read-batch). See the "BATCH MODE"
2000section for details, and also the bf(--only-write-batch) option.
2001
2002dit(bf(--only-write-batch=FILE)) Works like bf(--write-batch), except that
2003no updates are made on the destination system when creating the batch.
2004This lets you transport the changes to the destination system via some
2005other means and then apply the changes via bf(--read-batch).
2006
2007Note that you can feel free to write the batch directly to some portable
2008media: if this media fills to capacity before the end of the transfer, you
2009can just apply that partial transfer to the destination and repeat the
2010whole process to get the rest of the changes (as long as you don't mind a
2011partially updated destination system while the multi-update cycle is
2012happening).
2013
2014Also note that you only save bandwidth when pushing changes to a remote
2015system because this allows the batched data to be diverted from the sender
2016into the batch file without having to flow over the wire to the receiver
2017(when pulling, the sender is remote, and thus can't write the batch).
2018
2019dit(bf(--read-batch=FILE)) Apply all of the changes stored in FILE, a
2020file previously generated by bf(--write-batch).
2021If em(FILE) is bf(-), the batch data will be read from standard input.
2022See the "BATCH MODE" section for details.
2023
2024dit(bf(--protocol=NUM)) Force an older protocol version to be used. This
2025is useful for creating a batch file that is compatible with an older
2026version of rsync. For instance, if rsync 2.6.4 is being used with the
2027bf(--write-batch) option, but rsync 2.6.3 is what will be used to run the
2028bf(--read-batch) option, you should use "--protocol=28" when creating the
2029batch file to force the older protocol version to be used in the batch
2030file (assuming you can't upgrade the rsync on the reading system).
2031
2032dit(bf(--iconv=CONVERT_SPEC)) Rsync can convert filenames between character
2033sets using this option. Using a CONVERT_SPEC of "." tells rsync to look up
2034the default character-set via the locale setting. Alternately, you can
2035fully specify what conversion to do by giving a local and a remote charset
2036separated by a comma in the order bf(--iconv=LOCAL,REMOTE), e.g.
2037bf(--iconv=utf8,iso88591). This order ensures that the option
2038will stay the same whether you're pushing or pulling files.
2039Finally, you can specify either bf(--no-iconv) or a CONVERT_SPEC of "-"
2040to turn off any conversion.
2041The default setting of this option is site-specific, and can also be
2042affected via the RSYNC_ICONV environment variable.
2043
2044For a list of what charset names your local iconv library supports, you can
2045run "iconv --list".
2046
2047If you specify the bf(--protect-args) option (bf(-s)), rsync will translate
2048the filenames you specify on the command-line that are being sent to the
2049remote host. See also the bf(--files-from) option.
2050
2051Note that rsync does not do any conversion of names in filter files
2052(including include/exclude files). It is up to you to ensure that you're
2053specifying matching rules that can match on both sides of the transfer.
2054For instance, you can specify extra include/exclude rules if there are
2055filename differences on the two sides that need to be accounted for.
2056
2057When you pass an bf(--iconv) option to an rsync daemon that allows it, the
2058daemon uses the charset specified in its "charset" configuration parameter
2059regardless of the remote charset you actually pass. Thus, you may feel free to
2060specify just the local charset for a daemon transfer (e.g. bf(--iconv=utf8)).
2061
2062dit(bf(-4, --ipv4) or bf(-6, --ipv6)) Tells rsync to prefer IPv4/IPv6
2063when creating sockets. This only affects sockets that rsync has direct
2064control over, such as the outgoing socket when directly contacting an
2065rsync daemon. See also these options in the bf(--daemon) mode section.
2066
2067If rsync was complied without support for IPv6, the bf(--ipv6) option
2068will have no effect. The bf(--version) output will tell you if this
2069is the case.
2070
2071dit(bf(--checksum-seed=NUM)) Set the MD4 checksum seed to the integer
2072NUM. This 4 byte checksum seed is included in each block and file
2073MD4 checksum calculation. By default the checksum seed is generated
2074by the server and defaults to the current code(time()). This option
2075is used to set a specific checksum seed, which is useful for
2076applications that want repeatable block and file checksums, or
2077in the case where the user wants a more random checksum seed.
2078Note that setting NUM to 0 causes rsync to use the default of code(time())
2079for checksum seed.
2080enddit()
2081
2082manpagesection(DAEMON OPTIONS)
2083
2084The options allowed when starting an rsync daemon are as follows:
2085
2086startdit()
2087dit(bf(--daemon)) This tells rsync that it is to run as a daemon. The
2088daemon you start running may be accessed using an rsync client using
2089the bf(host::module) or bf(rsync://host/module/) syntax.
2090
2091If standard input is a socket then rsync will assume that it is being
2092run via inetd, otherwise it will detach from the current terminal and
2093become a background daemon. The daemon will read the config file
2094(rsyncd.conf) on each connect made by a client and respond to
2095requests accordingly. See the bf(rsyncd.conf)(5) man page for more
2096details.
2097
2098dit(bf(--address)) By default rsync will bind to the wildcard address when
2099run as a daemon with the bf(--daemon) option. The bf(--address) option
2100allows you to specify a specific IP address (or hostname) to bind to. This
2101makes virtual hosting possible in conjunction with the bf(--config) option.
2102See also the "address" global option in the rsyncd.conf manpage.
2103
2104dit(bf(--bwlimit=KBPS)) This option allows you to specify a maximum
2105transfer rate in kilobytes per second for the data the daemon sends.
2106The client can still specify a smaller bf(--bwlimit) value, but their
2107requested value will be rounded down if they try to exceed it. See the
2108client version of this option (above) for some extra details.
2109
2110dit(bf(--config=FILE)) This specifies an alternate config file than
2111the default. This is only relevant when bf(--daemon) is specified.
2112The default is /etc/rsyncd.conf unless the daemon is running over
2113a remote shell program and the remote user is not the super-user; in that case
2114the default is rsyncd.conf in the current directory (typically $HOME).
2115
2116dit(bf(--no-detach)) When running as a daemon, this option instructs
2117rsync to not detach itself and become a background process. This
2118option is required when running as a service on Cygwin, and may also
2119be useful when rsync is supervised by a program such as
2120bf(daemontools) or AIX's bf(System Resource Controller).
2121bf(--no-detach) is also recommended when rsync is run under a
2122debugger. This option has no effect if rsync is run from inetd or
2123sshd.
2124
2125dit(bf(--port=PORT)) This specifies an alternate TCP port number for the
2126daemon to listen on rather than the default of 873. See also the "port"
2127global option in the rsyncd.conf manpage.
2128
2129dit(bf(--log-file=FILE)) This option tells the rsync daemon to use the
2130given log-file name instead of using the "log file" setting in the config
2131file.
2132
2133dit(bf(--log-file-format=FORMAT)) This option tells the rsync daemon to use the
2134given FORMAT string instead of using the "log format" setting in the config
2135file. It also enables "transfer logging" unless the string is empty, in which
2136case transfer logging is turned off.
2137
2138dit(bf(--sockopts)) This overrides the bf(socket options) setting in the
2139rsyncd.conf file and has the same syntax.
2140
2141dit(bf(-v, --verbose)) This option increases the amount of information the
2142daemon logs during its startup phase. After the client connects, the
2143daemon's verbosity level will be controlled by the options that the client
2144used and the "max verbosity" setting in the module's config section.
2145
2146dit(bf(-4, --ipv4) or bf(-6, --ipv6)) Tells rsync to prefer IPv4/IPv6
2147when creating the incoming sockets that the rsync daemon will use to
2148listen for connections. One of these options may be required in older
2149versions of Linux to work around an IPv6 bug in the kernel (if you see
2150an "address already in use" error when nothing else is using the port,
2151try specifying bf(--ipv6) or bf(--ipv4) when starting the daemon).
2152
2153If rsync was complied without support for IPv6, the bf(--ipv6) option
2154will have no effect. The bf(--version) output will tell you if this
2155is the case.
2156
2157dit(bf(-h, --help)) When specified after bf(--daemon), print a short help
2158page describing the options available for starting an rsync daemon.
2159enddit()
2160
2161manpagesection(FILTER RULES)
2162
2163The filter rules allow for flexible selection of which files to transfer
2164(include) and which files to skip (exclude). The rules either directly
2165specify include/exclude patterns or they specify a way to acquire more
2166include/exclude patterns (e.g. to read them from a file).
2167
2168As the list of files/directories to transfer is built, rsync checks each
2169name to be transferred against the list of include/exclude patterns in
2170turn, and the first matching pattern is acted on: if it is an exclude
2171pattern, then that file is skipped; if it is an include pattern then that
2172filename is not skipped; if no matching pattern is found, then the
2173filename is not skipped.
2174
2175Rsync builds an ordered list of filter rules as specified on the
2176command-line. Filter rules have the following syntax:
2177
2178quote(
2179tt(RULE [PATTERN_OR_FILENAME])nl()
2180tt(RULE,MODIFIERS [PATTERN_OR_FILENAME])nl()
2181)
2182
2183You have your choice of using either short or long RULE names, as described
2184below. If you use a short-named rule, the ',' separating the RULE from the
2185MODIFIERS is optional. The PATTERN or FILENAME that follows (when present)
2186must come after either a single space or an underscore (_).
2187Here are the available rule prefixes:
2188
2189quote(
2190bf(exclude, -) specifies an exclude pattern. nl()
2191bf(include, +) specifies an include pattern. nl()
2192bf(merge, .) specifies a merge-file to read for more rules. nl()
2193bf(dir-merge, :) specifies a per-directory merge-file. nl()
2194bf(hide, H) specifies a pattern for hiding files from the transfer. nl()
2195bf(show, S) files that match the pattern are not hidden. nl()
2196bf(protect, P) specifies a pattern for protecting files from deletion. nl()
2197bf(risk, R) files that match the pattern are not protected. nl()
2198bf(clear, !) clears the current include/exclude list (takes no arg) nl()
2199)
2200
2201When rules are being read from a file, empty lines are ignored, as are
2202comment lines that start with a "#".
2203
2204Note that the bf(--include)/bf(--exclude) command-line options do not allow the
2205full range of rule parsing as described above -- they only allow the
2206specification of include/exclude patterns plus a "!" token to clear the
2207list (and the normal comment parsing when rules are read from a file).
2208If a pattern
2209does not begin with "- " (dash, space) or "+ " (plus, space), then the
2210rule will be interpreted as if "+ " (for an include option) or "- " (for
2211an exclude option) were prefixed to the string. A bf(--filter) option, on
2212the other hand, must always contain either a short or long rule name at the
2213start of the rule.
2214
2215Note also that the bf(--filter), bf(--include), and bf(--exclude) options take one
2216rule/pattern each. To add multiple ones, you can repeat the options on
2217the command-line, use the merge-file syntax of the bf(--filter) option, or
2218the bf(--include-from)/bf(--exclude-from) options.
2219
2220manpagesection(INCLUDE/EXCLUDE PATTERN RULES)
2221
2222You can include and exclude files by specifying patterns using the "+",
2223"-", etc. filter rules (as introduced in the FILTER RULES section above).
2224The include/exclude rules each specify a pattern that is matched against
2225the names of the files that are going to be transferred. These patterns
2226can take several forms:
2227
2228itemization(
2229 it() if the pattern starts with a / then it is anchored to a
2230 particular spot in the hierarchy of files, otherwise it is matched
2231 against the end of the pathname. This is similar to a leading ^ in
2232 regular expressions.
2233 Thus "/foo" would match a name of "foo" at either the "root of the
2234 transfer" (for a global rule) or in the merge-file's directory (for a
2235 per-directory rule).
2236 An unqualified "foo" would match a name of "foo" anywhere in the
2237 tree because the algorithm is applied recursively from the
2238 top down; it behaves as if each path component gets a turn at being the
2239 end of the filename. Even the unanchored "sub/foo" would match at
2240 any point in the hierarchy where a "foo" was found within a directory
2241 named "sub". See the section on ANCHORING INCLUDE/EXCLUDE PATTERNS for
2242 a full discussion of how to specify a pattern that matches at the root
2243 of the transfer.
2244 it() if the pattern ends with a / then it will only match a
2245 directory, not a regular file, symlink, or device.
2246 it() rsync chooses between doing a simple string match and wildcard
2247 matching by checking if the pattern contains one of these three wildcard
2248 characters: '*', '?', and '[' .
2249 it() a '*' matches any non-empty path component (it stops at slashes).
2250 it() use '**' to match anything, including slashes.
2251 it() a '?' matches any character except a slash (/).
2252 it() a '[' introduces a character class, such as [a-z] or [[:alpha:]].
2253 it() in a wildcard pattern, a backslash can be used to escape a wildcard
2254 character, but it is matched literally when no wildcards are present.
2255 it() if the pattern contains a / (not counting a trailing /) or a "**",
2256 then it is matched against the full pathname, including any leading
2257 directories. If the pattern doesn't contain a / or a "**", then it is
2258 matched only against the final component of the filename.
2259 (Remember that the algorithm is applied recursively so "full filename"
2260 can actually be any portion of a path from the starting directory on
2261 down.)
2262 it() a trailing "dir_name/***" will match both the directory (as if
2263 "dir_name/" had been specified) and everything in the directory
2264 (as if "dir_name/**" had been specified). This behavior was added in
2265 version 2.6.7.
2266)
2267
2268Note that, when using the bf(--recursive) (bf(-r)) option (which is implied by
2269bf(-a)), every subcomponent of every path is visited from the top down, so
2270include/exclude patterns get applied recursively to each subcomponent's
2271full name (e.g. to include "/foo/bar/baz" the subcomponents "/foo" and
2272"/foo/bar" must not be excluded).
2273The exclude patterns actually short-circuit the directory traversal stage
2274when rsync finds the files to send. If a pattern excludes a particular
2275parent directory, it can render a deeper include pattern ineffectual
2276because rsync did not descend through that excluded section of the
2277hierarchy. This is particularly important when using a trailing '*' rule.
2278For instance, this won't work:
2279
2280quote(
2281tt(+ /some/path/this-file-will-not-be-found)nl()
2282tt(+ /file-is-included)nl()
2283tt(- *)nl()
2284)
2285
2286This fails because the parent directory "some" is excluded by the '*'
2287rule, so rsync never visits any of the files in the "some" or "some/path"
2288directories. One solution is to ask for all directories in the hierarchy
2289to be included by using a single rule: "+ */" (put it somewhere before the
2290"- *" rule), and perhaps use the bf(--prune-empty-dirs) option. Another
2291solution is to add specific include rules for all
2292the parent dirs that need to be visited. For instance, this set of rules
2293works fine:
2294
2295quote(
2296tt(+ /some/)nl()
2297tt(+ /some/path/)nl()
2298tt(+ /some/path/this-file-is-found)nl()
2299tt(+ /file-also-included)nl()
2300tt(- *)nl()
2301)
2302
2303Here are some examples of exclude/include matching:
2304
2305itemization(
2306 it() "- *.o" would exclude all names matching *.o
2307 it() "- /foo" would exclude a file (or directory) named foo in the
2308 transfer-root directory
2309 it() "- foo/" would exclude any directory named foo
2310 it() "- /foo/*/bar" would exclude any file named bar which is at two
2311 levels below a directory named foo in the transfer-root directory
2312 it() "- /foo/**/bar" would exclude any file named bar two
2313 or more levels below a directory named foo in the transfer-root directory
2314 it() The combination of "+ */", "+ *.c", and "- *" would include all
2315 directories and C source files but nothing else (see also the
2316 bf(--prune-empty-dirs) option)
2317 it() The combination of "+ foo/", "+ foo/bar.c", and "- *" would include
2318 only the foo directory and foo/bar.c (the foo directory must be
2319 explicitly included or it would be excluded by the "*")
2320)
2321
2322manpagesection(MERGE-FILE FILTER RULES)
2323
2324You can merge whole files into your filter rules by specifying either a
2325merge (.) or a dir-merge (:) filter rule (as introduced in the FILTER RULES
2326section above).
2327
2328There are two kinds of merged files -- single-instance ('.') and
2329per-directory (':'). A single-instance merge file is read one time, and
2330its rules are incorporated into the filter list in the place of the "."
2331rule. For per-directory merge files, rsync will scan every directory that
2332it traverses for the named file, merging its contents when the file exists
2333into the current list of inherited rules. These per-directory rule files
2334must be created on the sending side because it is the sending side that is
2335being scanned for the available files to transfer. These rule files may
2336also need to be transferred to the receiving side if you want them to
2337affect what files don't get deleted (see PER-DIRECTORY RULES AND DELETE
2338below).
2339
2340Some examples:
2341
2342quote(
2343tt(merge /etc/rsync/default.rules)nl()
2344tt(. /etc/rsync/default.rules)nl()
2345tt(dir-merge .per-dir-filter)nl()
2346tt(dir-merge,n- .non-inherited-per-dir-excludes)nl()
2347tt(:n- .non-inherited-per-dir-excludes)nl()
2348)
2349
2350The following modifiers are accepted after a merge or dir-merge rule:
2351
2352itemization(
2353 it() A bf(-) specifies that the file should consist of only exclude
2354 patterns, with no other rule-parsing except for in-file comments.
2355 it() A bf(+) specifies that the file should consist of only include
2356 patterns, with no other rule-parsing except for in-file comments.
2357 it() A bf(C) is a way to specify that the file should be read in a
2358 CVS-compatible manner. This turns on 'n', 'w', and '-', but also
2359 allows the list-clearing token (!) to be specified. If no filename is
2360 provided, ".cvsignore" is assumed.
2361 it() A bf(e) will exclude the merge-file name from the transfer; e.g.
2362 "dir-merge,e .rules" is like "dir-merge .rules" and "- .rules".
2363 it() An bf(n) specifies that the rules are not inherited by subdirectories.
2364 it() A bf(w) specifies that the rules are word-split on whitespace instead
2365 of the normal line-splitting. This also turns off comments. Note: the
2366 space that separates the prefix from the rule is treated specially, so
2367 "- foo + bar" is parsed as two rules (assuming that prefix-parsing wasn't
2368 also disabled).
2369 it() You may also specify any of the modifiers for the "+" or "-" rules
2370 (below) in order to have the rules that are read in from the file
2371 default to having that modifier set. For instance, "merge,-/ .excl" would
2372 treat the contents of .excl as absolute-path excludes,
2373 while "dir-merge,s .filt" and ":sC" would each make all their
2374 per-directory rules apply only on the sending side.
2375)
2376
2377The following modifiers are accepted after a "+" or "-":
2378
2379itemization(
2380 it() A bf(/) specifies that the include/exclude rule should be matched
2381 against the absolute pathname of the current item. For example,
2382 "-/ /etc/passwd" would exclude the passwd file any time the transfer
2383 was sending files from the "/etc" directory, and "-/ subdir/foo"
2384 would always exclude "foo" when it is in a dir named "subdir", even
2385 if "foo" is at the root of the current transfer.
2386 it() A bf(!) specifies that the include/exclude should take effect if
2387 the pattern fails to match. For instance, "-! */" would exclude all
2388 non-directories.
2389 it() A bf(C) is used to indicate that all the global CVS-exclude rules
2390 should be inserted as excludes in place of the "-C". No arg should
2391 follow.
2392 it() An bf(s) is used to indicate that the rule applies to the sending
2393 side. When a rule affects the sending side, it prevents files from
2394 being transferred. The default is for a rule to affect both sides
2395 unless bf(--delete-excluded) was specified, in which case default rules
2396 become sender-side only. See also the hide (H) and show (S) rules,
2397 which are an alternate way to specify sending-side includes/excludes.
2398 it() An bf(r) is used to indicate that the rule applies to the receiving
2399 side. When a rule affects the receiving side, it prevents files from
2400 being deleted. See the bf(s) modifier for more info. See also the
2401 protect (P) and risk (R) rules, which are an alternate way to
2402 specify receiver-side includes/excludes.
2403 it() A bf(p) indicates that a rule is perishable, meaning that it is
2404 ignored in directories that are being deleted. For instance, the bf(-C)
2405 option's default rules that exclude things like "CVS" and "*.o" are
2406 marked as perishable, and will not prevent a directory that was removed
2407 on the source from being deleted on the destination.
2408)
2409
2410Per-directory rules are inherited in all subdirectories of the directory
2411where the merge-file was found unless the 'n' modifier was used. Each
2412subdirectory's rules are prefixed to the inherited per-directory rules
2413from its parents, which gives the newest rules a higher priority than the
2414inherited rules. The entire set of dir-merge rules are grouped together in
2415the spot where the merge-file was specified, so it is possible to override
2416dir-merge rules via a rule that got specified earlier in the list of global
2417rules. When the list-clearing rule ("!") is read from a per-directory
2418file, it only clears the inherited rules for the current merge file.
2419
2420Another way to prevent a single rule from a dir-merge file from being inherited is to
2421anchor it with a leading slash. Anchored rules in a per-directory
2422merge-file are relative to the merge-file's directory, so a pattern "/foo"
2423would only match the file "foo" in the directory where the dir-merge filter
2424file was found.
2425
2426Here's an example filter file which you'd specify via bf(--filter=". file":)
2427
2428quote(
2429tt(merge /home/user/.global-filter)nl()
2430tt(- *.gz)nl()
2431tt(dir-merge .rules)nl()
2432tt(+ *.[ch])nl()
2433tt(- *.o)nl()
2434)
2435
2436This will merge the contents of the /home/user/.global-filter file at the
2437start of the list and also turns the ".rules" filename into a per-directory
2438filter file. All rules read in prior to the start of the directory scan
2439follow the global anchoring rules (i.e. a leading slash matches at the root
2440of the transfer).
2441
2442If a per-directory merge-file is specified with a path that is a parent
2443directory of the first transfer directory, rsync will scan all the parent
2444dirs from that starting point to the transfer directory for the indicated
2445per-directory file. For instance, here is a common filter (see bf(-F)):
2446
2447quote(tt(--filter=': /.rsync-filter'))
2448
2449That rule tells rsync to scan for the file .rsync-filter in all
2450directories from the root down through the parent directory of the
2451transfer prior to the start of the normal directory scan of the file in
2452the directories that are sent as a part of the transfer. (Note: for an
2453rsync daemon, the root is always the same as the module's "path".)
2454
2455Some examples of this pre-scanning for per-directory files:
2456
2457quote(
2458tt(rsync -avF /src/path/ /dest/dir)nl()
2459tt(rsync -av --filter=': ../../.rsync-filter' /src/path/ /dest/dir)nl()
2460tt(rsync -av --filter=': .rsync-filter' /src/path/ /dest/dir)nl()
2461)
2462
2463The first two commands above will look for ".rsync-filter" in "/" and
2464"/src" before the normal scan begins looking for the file in "/src/path"
2465and its subdirectories. The last command avoids the parent-dir scan
2466and only looks for the ".rsync-filter" files in each directory that is
2467a part of the transfer.
2468
2469If you want to include the contents of a ".cvsignore" in your patterns,
2470you should use the rule ":C", which creates a dir-merge of the .cvsignore
2471file, but parsed in a CVS-compatible manner. You can
2472use this to affect where the bf(--cvs-exclude) (bf(-C)) option's inclusion of the
2473per-directory .cvsignore file gets placed into your rules by putting the
2474":C" wherever you like in your filter rules. Without this, rsync would
2475add the dir-merge rule for the .cvsignore file at the end of all your other
2476rules (giving it a lower priority than your command-line rules). For
2477example:
2478
2479quote(
2480tt(cat <<EOT | rsync -avC --filter='. -' a/ b)nl()
2481tt(+ foo.o)nl()
2482tt(:C)nl()
2483tt(- *.old)nl()
2484tt(EOT)nl()
2485tt(rsync -avC --include=foo.o -f :C --exclude='*.old' a/ b)nl()
2486)
2487
2488Both of the above rsync commands are identical. Each one will merge all
2489the per-directory .cvsignore rules in the middle of the list rather than
2490at the end. This allows their dir-specific rules to supersede the rules
2491that follow the :C instead of being subservient to all your rules. To
2492affect the other CVS exclude rules (i.e. the default list of exclusions,
2493the contents of $HOME/.cvsignore, and the value of $CVSIGNORE) you should
2494omit the bf(-C) command-line option and instead insert a "-C" rule into
2495your filter rules; e.g. "bf(--filter=-C)".
2496
2497manpagesection(LIST-CLEARING FILTER RULE)
2498
2499You can clear the current include/exclude list by using the "!" filter
2500rule (as introduced in the FILTER RULES section above). The "current"
2501list is either the global list of rules (if the rule is encountered while
2502parsing the filter options) or a set of per-directory rules (which are
2503inherited in their own sub-list, so a subdirectory can use this to clear
2504out the parent's rules).
2505
2506manpagesection(ANCHORING INCLUDE/EXCLUDE PATTERNS)
2507
2508As mentioned earlier, global include/exclude patterns are anchored at the
2509"root of the transfer" (as opposed to per-directory patterns, which are
2510anchored at the merge-file's directory). If you think of the transfer as
2511a subtree of names that are being sent from sender to receiver, the
2512transfer-root is where the tree starts to be duplicated in the destination
2513directory. This root governs where patterns that start with a / match.
2514
2515Because the matching is relative to the transfer-root, changing the
2516trailing slash on a source path or changing your use of the bf(--relative)
2517option affects the path you need to use in your matching (in addition to
2518changing how much of the file tree is duplicated on the destination
2519host). The following examples demonstrate this.
2520
2521Let's say that we want to match two source files, one with an absolute
2522path of "/home/me/foo/bar", and one with a path of "/home/you/bar/baz".
2523Here is how the various command choices differ for a 2-source transfer:
2524
2525quote(
2526 Example cmd: rsync -a /home/me /home/you /dest nl()
2527 +/- pattern: /me/foo/bar nl()
2528 +/- pattern: /you/bar/baz nl()
2529 Target file: /dest/me/foo/bar nl()
2530 Target file: /dest/you/bar/baz nl()
2531)
2532
2533quote(
2534 Example cmd: rsync -a /home/me/ /home/you/ /dest nl()
2535 +/- pattern: /foo/bar (note missing "me") nl()
2536 +/- pattern: /bar/baz (note missing "you") nl()
2537 Target file: /dest/foo/bar nl()
2538 Target file: /dest/bar/baz nl()
2539)
2540
2541quote(
2542 Example cmd: rsync -a --relative /home/me/ /home/you /dest nl()
2543 +/- pattern: /home/me/foo/bar (note full path) nl()
2544 +/- pattern: /home/you/bar/baz (ditto) nl()
2545 Target file: /dest/home/me/foo/bar nl()
2546 Target file: /dest/home/you/bar/baz nl()
2547)
2548
2549quote(
2550 Example cmd: cd /home; rsync -a --relative me/foo you/ /dest nl()
2551 +/- pattern: /me/foo/bar (starts at specified path) nl()
2552 +/- pattern: /you/bar/baz (ditto) nl()
2553 Target file: /dest/me/foo/bar nl()
2554 Target file: /dest/you/bar/baz nl()
2555)
2556
2557The easiest way to see what name you should filter is to just
2558look at the output when using bf(--verbose) and put a / in front of the name
2559(use the bf(--dry-run) option if you're not yet ready to copy any files).
2560
2561manpagesection(PER-DIRECTORY RULES AND DELETE)
2562
2563Without a delete option, per-directory rules are only relevant on the
2564sending side, so you can feel free to exclude the merge files themselves
2565without affecting the transfer. To make this easy, the 'e' modifier adds
2566this exclude for you, as seen in these two equivalent commands:
2567
2568quote(
2569tt(rsync -av --filter=': .excl' --exclude=.excl host:src/dir /dest)nl()
2570tt(rsync -av --filter=':e .excl' host:src/dir /dest)nl()
2571)
2572
2573However, if you want to do a delete on the receiving side AND you want some
2574files to be excluded from being deleted, you'll need to be sure that the
2575receiving side knows what files to exclude. The easiest way is to include
2576the per-directory merge files in the transfer and use bf(--delete-after),
2577because this ensures that the receiving side gets all the same exclude
2578rules as the sending side before it tries to delete anything:
2579
2580quote(tt(rsync -avF --delete-after host:src/dir /dest))
2581
2582However, if the merge files are not a part of the transfer, you'll need to
2583either specify some global exclude rules (i.e. specified on the command
2584line), or you'll need to maintain your own per-directory merge files on
2585the receiving side. An example of the first is this (assume that the
2586remote .rules files exclude themselves):
2587
2588verb(rsync -av --filter=': .rules' --filter='. /my/extra.rules'
2589 --delete host:src/dir /dest)
2590
2591In the above example the extra.rules file can affect both sides of the
2592transfer, but (on the sending side) the rules are subservient to the rules
2593merged from the .rules files because they were specified after the
2594per-directory merge rule.
2595
2596In one final example, the remote side is excluding the .rsync-filter
2597files from the transfer, but we want to use our own .rsync-filter files
2598to control what gets deleted on the receiving side. To do this we must
2599specifically exclude the per-directory merge files (so that they don't get
2600deleted) and then put rules into the local files to control what else
2601should not get deleted. Like one of these commands:
2602
2603verb( rsync -av --filter=':e /.rsync-filter' --delete \
2604 host:src/dir /dest
2605 rsync -avFF --delete host:src/dir /dest)
2606
2607manpagesection(BATCH MODE)
2608
2609Batch mode can be used to apply the same set of updates to many
2610identical systems. Suppose one has a tree which is replicated on a
2611number of hosts. Now suppose some changes have been made to this
2612source tree and those changes need to be propagated to the other
2613hosts. In order to do this using batch mode, rsync is run with the
2614write-batch option to apply the changes made to the source tree to one
2615of the destination trees. The write-batch option causes the rsync
2616client to store in a "batch file" all the information needed to repeat
2617this operation against other, identical destination trees.
2618
2619To apply the recorded changes to another destination tree, run rsync
2620with the read-batch option, specifying the name of the same batch
2621file, and the destination tree. Rsync updates the destination tree
2622using the information stored in the batch file.
2623
2624For convenience, one additional file is creating when the write-batch
2625option is used. This file's name is created by appending
2626".sh" to the batch filename. The .sh file contains
2627a command-line suitable for updating a destination tree using that
2628batch file. It can be executed using a Bourne (or Bourne-like) shell,
2629optionally
2630passing in an alternate destination tree pathname which is then used
2631instead of the original path. This is useful when the destination tree
2632path differs from the original destination tree path.
2633
2634Generating the batch file once saves having to perform the file
2635status, checksum, and data block generation more than once when
2636updating multiple destination trees. Multicast transport protocols can
2637be used to transfer the batch update files in parallel to many hosts
2638at once, instead of sending the same data to every host individually.
2639
2640Examples:
2641
2642quote(
2643tt($ rsync --write-batch=foo -a host:/source/dir/ /adest/dir/)nl()
2644tt($ scp foo* remote:)nl()
2645tt($ ssh remote ./foo.sh /bdest/dir/)nl()
2646)
2647
2648quote(
2649tt($ rsync --write-batch=foo -a /source/dir/ /adest/dir/)nl()
2650tt($ ssh remote rsync --read-batch=- -a /bdest/dir/ <foo)nl()
2651)
2652
2653In these examples, rsync is used to update /adest/dir/ from /source/dir/
2654and the information to repeat this operation is stored in "foo" and
2655"foo.sh". The host "remote" is then updated with the batched data going
2656into the directory /bdest/dir. The differences between the two examples
2657reveals some of the flexibility you have in how you deal with batches:
2658
2659itemization(
2660 it() The first example shows that the initial copy doesn't have to be
2661 local -- you can push or pull data to/from a remote host using either the
2662 remote-shell syntax or rsync daemon syntax, as desired.
2663 it() The first example uses the created "foo.sh" file to get the right
2664 rsync options when running the read-batch command on the remote host.
2665 it() The second example reads the batch data via standard input so that
2666 the batch file doesn't need to be copied to the remote machine first.
2667 This example avoids the foo.sh script because it needed to use a modified
2668 bf(--read-batch) option, but you could edit the script file if you wished to
2669 make use of it (just be sure that no other option is trying to use
2670 standard input, such as the "bf(--exclude-from=-)" option).
2671)
2672
2673Caveats:
2674
2675The read-batch option expects the destination tree that it is updating
2676to be identical to the destination tree that was used to create the
2677batch update fileset. When a difference between the destination trees
2678is encountered the update might be discarded with a warning (if the file
2679appears to be up-to-date already) or the file-update may be attempted
2680and then, if the file fails to verify, the update discarded with an
2681error. This means that it should be safe to re-run a read-batch operation
2682if the command got interrupted. If you wish to force the batched-update to
2683always be attempted regardless of the file's size and date, use the bf(-I)
2684option (when reading the batch).
2685If an error occurs, the destination tree will probably be in a
2686partially updated state. In that case, rsync can
2687be used in its regular (non-batch) mode of operation to fix up the
2688destination tree.
2689
2690The rsync version used on all destinations must be at least as new as the
2691one used to generate the batch file. Rsync will die with an error if the
2692protocol version in the batch file is too new for the batch-reading rsync
2693to handle. See also the bf(--protocol) option for a way to have the
2694creating rsync generate a batch file that an older rsync can understand.
2695(Note that batch files changed format in version 2.6.3, so mixing versions
2696older than that with newer versions will not work.)
2697
2698When reading a batch file, rsync will force the value of certain options
2699to match the data in the batch file if you didn't set them to the same
2700as the batch-writing command. Other options can (and should) be changed.
2701For instance bf(--write-batch) changes to bf(--read-batch),
2702bf(--files-from) is dropped, and the
2703bf(--filter)/bf(--include)/bf(--exclude) options are not needed unless
2704one of the bf(--delete) options is specified.
2705
2706The code that creates the BATCH.sh file transforms any filter/include/exclude
2707options into a single list that is appended as a "here" document to the
2708shell script file. An advanced user can use this to modify the exclude
2709list if a change in what gets deleted by bf(--delete) is desired. A normal
2710user can ignore this detail and just use the shell script as an easy way
2711to run the appropriate bf(--read-batch) command for the batched data.
2712
2713The original batch mode in rsync was based on "rsync+", but the latest
2714version uses a new implementation.
2715
2716manpagesection(SYMBOLIC LINKS)
2717
2718Three basic behaviors are possible when rsync encounters a symbolic
2719link in the source directory.
2720
2721By default, symbolic links are not transferred at all. A message
2722"skipping non-regular" file is emitted for any symlinks that exist.
2723
2724If bf(--links) is specified, then symlinks are recreated with the same
2725target on the destination. Note that bf(--archive) implies
2726bf(--links).
2727
2728If bf(--copy-links) is specified, then symlinks are "collapsed" by
2729copying their referent, rather than the symlink.
2730
2731rsync also distinguishes "safe" and "unsafe" symbolic links. An
2732example where this might be used is a web site mirror that wishes
2733ensure the rsync module they copy does not include symbolic links to
2734bf(/etc/passwd) in the public section of the site. Using
2735bf(--copy-unsafe-links) will cause any links to be copied as the file
2736they point to on the destination. Using bf(--safe-links) will cause
2737unsafe links to be omitted altogether. (Note that you must specify
2738bf(--links) for bf(--safe-links) to have any effect.)
2739
2740Symbolic links are considered unsafe if they are absolute symlinks
2741(start with bf(/)), empty, or if they contain enough ".."
2742components to ascend from the directory being copied.
2743
2744Here's a summary of how the symlink options are interpreted. The list is
2745in order of precedence, so if your combination of options isn't mentioned,
2746use the first line that is a complete subset of your options:
2747
2748dit(bf(--copy-links)) Turn all symlinks into normal files (leaving no
2749symlinks for any other options to affect).
2750
2751dit(bf(--links --copy-unsafe-links)) Turn all unsafe symlinks into files
2752and duplicate all safe symlinks.
2753
2754dit(bf(--copy-unsafe-links)) Turn all unsafe symlinks into files, noisily
2755skip all safe symlinks.
2756
2757dit(bf(--links --safe-links)) Duplicate safe symlinks and skip unsafe
2758ones.
2759
2760dit(bf(--links)) Duplicate all symlinks.
2761
2762manpagediagnostics()
2763
2764rsync occasionally produces error messages that may seem a little
2765cryptic. The one that seems to cause the most confusion is "protocol
2766version mismatch -- is your shell clean?".
2767
2768This message is usually caused by your startup scripts or remote shell
2769facility producing unwanted garbage on the stream that rsync is using
2770for its transport. The way to diagnose this problem is to run your
2771remote shell like this:
2772
2773quote(tt(ssh remotehost /bin/true > out.dat))
2774
2775then look at out.dat. If everything is working correctly then out.dat
2776should be a zero length file. If you are getting the above error from
2777rsync then you will probably find that out.dat contains some text or
2778data. Look at the contents and try to work out what is producing
2779it. The most common cause is incorrectly configured shell startup
2780scripts (such as .cshrc or .profile) that contain output statements
2781for non-interactive logins.
2782
2783If you are having trouble debugging filter patterns, then
2784try specifying the bf(-vv) option. At this level of verbosity rsync will
2785show why each individual file is included or excluded.
2786
2787manpagesection(EXIT VALUES)
2788
2789startdit()
2790dit(bf(0)) Success
2791dit(bf(1)) Syntax or usage error
2792dit(bf(2)) Protocol incompatibility
2793dit(bf(3)) Errors selecting input/output files, dirs
2794dit(bf(4)) Requested action not supported: an attempt
2795was made to manipulate 64-bit files on a platform that cannot support
2796them; or an option was specified that is supported by the client and
2797not by the server.
2798dit(bf(5)) Error starting client-server protocol
2799dit(bf(6)) Daemon unable to append to log-file
2800dit(bf(10)) Error in socket I/O
2801dit(bf(11)) Error in file I/O
2802dit(bf(12)) Error in rsync protocol data stream
2803dit(bf(13)) Errors with program diagnostics
2804dit(bf(14)) Error in IPC code
2805dit(bf(20)) Received SIGUSR1 or SIGINT
2806dit(bf(21)) Some error returned by code(waitpid())
2807dit(bf(22)) Error allocating core memory buffers
2808dit(bf(23)) Partial transfer due to error
2809dit(bf(24)) Partial transfer due to vanished source files
2810dit(bf(25)) The --max-delete limit stopped deletions
2811dit(bf(30)) Timeout in data send/receive
2812dit(bf(35)) Timeout waiting for daemon connection
2813enddit()
2814
2815manpagesection(ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES)
2816
2817startdit()
2818dit(bf(CVSIGNORE)) The CVSIGNORE environment variable supplements any
2819ignore patterns in .cvsignore files. See the bf(--cvs-exclude) option for
2820more details.
2821dit(bf(RSYNC_ICONV)) Specify a default bf(--iconv) setting using this
2822environment variable.
2823dit(bf(RSYNC_RSH)) The RSYNC_RSH environment variable allows you to
2824override the default shell used as the transport for rsync. Command line
2825options are permitted after the command name, just as in the bf(-e) option.
2826dit(bf(RSYNC_PROXY)) The RSYNC_PROXY environment variable allows you to
2827redirect your rsync client to use a web proxy when connecting to a
2828rsync daemon. You should set RSYNC_PROXY to a hostname:port pair.
2829dit(bf(RSYNC_PASSWORD)) Setting RSYNC_PASSWORD to the required
2830password allows you to run authenticated rsync connections to an rsync
2831daemon without user intervention. Note that this does not supply a
2832password to a remote shell transport such as ssh; to learn how to do that,
2833consult the remote shell's documentation.
2834dit(bf(USER) or bf(LOGNAME)) The USER or LOGNAME environment variables
2835are used to determine the default username sent to an rsync daemon.
2836If neither is set, the username defaults to "nobody".
2837dit(bf(HOME)) The HOME environment variable is used to find the user's
2838default .cvsignore file.
2839enddit()
2840
2841manpagefiles()
2842
2843/etc/rsyncd.conf or rsyncd.conf
2844
2845manpageseealso()
2846
2847bf(rsyncd.conf)(5)
2848
2849manpagebugs()
2850
2851times are transferred as *nix time_t values
2852
2853When transferring to FAT filesystems rsync may re-sync
2854unmodified files.
2855See the comments on the bf(--modify-window) option.
2856
2857file permissions, devices, etc. are transferred as native numerical
2858values
2859
2860see also the comments on the bf(--delete) option
2861
2862Please report bugs! See the web site at
2863url(http://rsync.samba.org/)(http://rsync.samba.org/)
2864
2865manpagesection(VERSION)
2866
2867This man page is current for version 3.0.0 of rsync.
2868
2869manpagesection(INTERNAL OPTIONS)
2870
2871The options bf(--server) and bf(--sender) are used internally by rsync,
2872and should never be typed by a user under normal circumstances. Some
2873awareness of these options may be needed in certain scenarios, such as
2874when setting up a login that can only run an rsync command. For instance,
2875the support directory of the rsync distribution has an example script
2876named rrsync (for restricted rsync) that can be used with a restricted
2877ssh login.
2878
2879manpagesection(CREDITS)
2880
2881rsync is distributed under the GNU public license. See the file
2882COPYING for details.
2883
2884A WEB site is available at
2885url(http://rsync.samba.org/)(http://rsync.samba.org/). The site
2886includes an FAQ-O-Matic which may cover questions unanswered by this
2887manual page.
2888
2889The primary ftp site for rsync is
2890url(ftp://rsync.samba.org/pub/rsync)(ftp://rsync.samba.org/pub/rsync).
2891
2892We would be delighted to hear from you if you like this program.
2893Please contact the mailing-list at rsync@lists.samba.org.
2894
2895This program uses the excellent zlib compression library written by
2896Jean-loup Gailly and Mark Adler.
2897
2898manpagesection(THANKS)
2899
2900Especial thanks go out to: John Van Essen, Matt McCutchen, Wesley W. Terpstra,
2901David Dykstra, Jos Backus, Sebastian Krahmer, Martin Pool, and our
2902gone-but-not-forgotten compadre, J.W. Schultz.
2903
2904Thanks also to Richard Brent, Brendan Mackay, Bill Waite, Stephen Rothwell
2905and David Bell. I've probably missed some people, my apologies if I have.
2906
2907manpageauthor()
2908
2909rsync was originally written by Andrew Tridgell and Paul Mackerras.
2910Many people have later contributed to it. It is currently maintained
2911by Wayne Davison.
2912
2913Mailing lists for support and development are available at
2914url(http://lists.samba.org)(lists.samba.org)