1 <!DOCTYPE book PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook V4.1//EN">
6 <year>1996 -- 2002</year>
7 <holder>Martin Pool</holder>
8 <holder>Andrew Tridgell</holder>
11 <firstname>Martin</firstname>
12 <surname>Pool</surname>
17 <title>Introduction</title>
19 <para>rsync is a flexible program for efficiently copying files or
22 <para>rsync has many options to select which files will be copied
23 and how they are to be transferred. It may be used as an
24 alternative to ftp, http, scp or rcp.
26 <para>The rsync remote-update protocol allows rsync to transfer just
27 the differences between two sets of files across the network link,
28 using an efficient checksum-search algorithm described in the
29 technical report that accompanies this package.</para>
31 <para>Some of the additional features of rsync are:</para>
36 <para>support for copying links, devices, owners, groups and
43 exclude and exclude-from options similar to GNU tar
49 a CVS exclude mode for ignoring the same files that CVS would ignore
54 can use any transparent remote shell, including rsh or ssh
59 does not require root privileges
64 pipelining of file transfers to minimize latency costs
69 support for anonymous or authenticated rsync servers (ideal for
79 <title>Using rsync</title>
86 Probably the most common case of rsync usage is to copy files
87 to or from a remote machine using
88 <application>ssh</application> as a network transport. In
89 this situation rsync is a good alternative to
90 <application>scp</application>.
94 The most commonly used arguments for rsync are
99 Reproduce the structure and attributes of the origin files as exactly
100 as possible: this includes copying subdirectories, symlinks, special
101 files, ownership and permissions. (@xref{Attributes to copy}.)
104 Be verbose. Primarily, display the name of each file as it is copied.
107 Compress network traffic, using a modified version of the
108 @command{zlib} library.
111 Display a progress indicator while files are transferred. This should
112 normally be ommitted if rsync is not run on a terminal.