1 mailto(rsync-bugs@samba.org)
2 manpage(rsync)(1)(6 Nov 2006)()()
3 manpagename(rsync)(faster, flexible replacement for rcp)
6 rsync [OPTION]... SRC [SRC]... DEST
8 rsync [OPTION]... SRC [SRC]... [USER@]HOST:DEST
10 rsync [OPTION]... SRC [SRC]... [USER@]HOST::DEST
12 rsync [OPTION]... SRC [SRC]... rsync://[USER@]HOST[:PORT]/DEST
16 rsync [OPTION]... [USER@]HOST:SRC [DEST]
18 rsync [OPTION]... [USER@]HOST::SRC [DEST]
20 rsync [OPTION]... rsync://[USER@]HOST[:PORT]/SRC [DEST]
24 Rsync is a program that behaves in much the same way that rcp does,
25 but has many more options and uses the rsync remote-update protocol to
26 greatly speed up file transfers when the destination file is being
29 The rsync remote-update protocol allows rsync to transfer just the
30 differences between two sets of files across the network connection, using
31 an efficient checksum-search algorithm described in the technical
32 report that accompanies this package.
34 Rsync finds files that need to be transferred using a "quick check" algorithm
35 that looks for files that have changed in size or in last-modified time (by
36 default). Any changes in the other preserved attributes (as requested by
37 options) are made on the destination file directly when the quick check
38 indicates that the file's data does not need to be updated.
40 Some of the additional features of rsync are:
43 it() support for copying links, devices, owners, groups, and permissions
44 it() exclude and exclude-from options similar to GNU tar
45 it() a CVS exclude mode for ignoring the same files that CVS would ignore
46 it() can use any transparent remote shell, including ssh or rsh
47 it() does not require super-user privileges
48 it() pipelining of file transfers to minimize latency costs
49 it() support for anonymous or authenticated rsync daemons (ideal for
53 manpagesection(GENERAL)
55 Rsync copies files either to or from a remote host, or locally on the
56 current host (it does not support copying files between two remote hosts).
58 There are two different ways for rsync to contact a remote system: using a
59 remote-shell program as the transport (such as ssh or rsh) or contacting an
60 rsync daemon directly via TCP. The remote-shell transport is used whenever
61 the source or destination path contains a single colon (:) separator after
62 a host specification. Contacting an rsync daemon directly happens when the
63 source or destination path contains a double colon (::) separator after a
64 host specification, OR when an rsync:// URL is specified (see also the
65 "USING RSYNC-DAEMON FEATURES VIA A REMOTE-SHELL CONNECTION" section for
66 an exception to this latter rule).
68 As a special case, if a single source arg is specified without a
69 destination, the files are listed in an output format similar to "ls -l".
71 As expected, if neither the source or destination path specify a remote
72 host, the copy occurs locally (see also the bf(--list-only) option).
76 See the file README for installation instructions.
78 Once installed, you can use rsync to any machine that you can access via
79 a remote shell (as well as some that you can access using the rsync
80 daemon-mode protocol). For remote transfers, a modern rsync uses ssh
81 for its communications, but it may have been configured to use a
82 different remote shell by default, such as rsh or remsh.
84 You can also specify any remote shell you like, either by using the bf(-e)
85 command line option, or by setting the RSYNC_RSH environment variable.
87 Note that rsync must be installed on both the source and destination
92 You use rsync in the same way you use rcp. You must specify a source
93 and a destination, one of which may be remote.
95 Perhaps the best way to explain the syntax is with some examples:
97 quote(tt(rsync -t *.c foo:src/))
99 This would transfer all files matching the pattern *.c from the
100 current directory to the directory src on the machine foo. If any of
101 the files already exist on the remote system then the rsync
102 remote-update protocol is used to update the file by sending only the
103 differences. See the tech report for details.
105 quote(tt(rsync -avz foo:src/bar /data/tmp))
107 This would recursively transfer all files from the directory src/bar on the
108 machine foo into the /data/tmp/bar directory on the local machine. The
109 files are transferred in "archive" mode, which ensures that symbolic
110 links, devices, attributes, permissions, ownerships, etc. are preserved
111 in the transfer. Additionally, compression will be used to reduce the
112 size of data portions of the transfer.
114 quote(tt(rsync -avz foo:src/bar/ /data/tmp))
116 A trailing slash on the source changes this behavior to avoid creating an
117 additional directory level at the destination. You can think of a trailing
118 / on a source as meaning "copy the contents of this directory" as opposed
119 to "copy the directory by name", but in both cases the attributes of the
120 containing directory are transferred to the containing directory on the
121 destination. In other words, each of the following commands copies the
122 files in the same way, including their setting of the attributes of
126 tt(rsync -av /src/foo /dest)nl()
127 tt(rsync -av /src/foo/ /dest/foo)nl()
130 Note also that host and module references don't require a trailing slash to
131 copy the contents of the default directory. For example, both of these
132 copy the remote directory's contents into "/dest":
135 tt(rsync -av host: /dest)nl()
136 tt(rsync -av host::module /dest)nl()
139 You can also use rsync in local-only mode, where both the source and
140 destination don't have a ':' in the name. In this case it behaves like
141 an improved copy command.
143 Finally, you can list all the (listable) modules available from a
144 particular rsync daemon by leaving off the module name:
146 quote(tt(rsync somehost.mydomain.com::))
148 See the following section for more details.
150 manpagesection(ADVANCED USAGE)
152 The syntax for requesting multiple files from a remote host involves using
153 quoted spaces in the SRC. Some examples:
155 quote(tt(rsync host::'modname/dir1/file1 modname/dir2/file2' /dest))
157 This would copy file1 and file2 into /dest from an rsync daemon. Each
158 additional arg must include the same "modname/" prefix as the first one,
159 and must be preceded by a single space. All other spaces are assumed
160 to be a part of the filenames.
162 quote(tt(rsync -av host:'dir1/file1 dir2/file2' /dest))
164 This would copy file1 and file2 into /dest using a remote shell. This
165 word-splitting is done by the remote shell, so if it doesn't work it means
166 that the remote shell isn't configured to split its args based on
167 whitespace (a very rare setting, but not unknown). If you need to transfer
168 a filename that contains whitespace, you'll need to either escape the
169 whitespace in a way that the remote shell will understand, or use wildcards
170 in place of the spaces. Two examples of this are:
173 tt(rsync -av host:'file\ name\ with\ spaces' /dest)nl()
174 tt(rsync -av host:file?name?with?spaces /dest)nl()
177 This latter example assumes that your shell passes through unmatched
178 wildcards. If it complains about "no match", put the name in quotes.
180 manpagesection(CONNECTING TO AN RSYNC DAEMON)
182 It is also possible to use rsync without a remote shell as the transport.
183 In this case you will directly connect to a remote rsync daemon, typically
184 using TCP port 873. (This obviously requires the daemon to be running on
185 the remote system, so refer to the STARTING AN RSYNC DAEMON TO ACCEPT
186 CONNECTIONS section below for information on that.)
188 Using rsync in this way is the same as using it with a remote shell except
192 it() you either use a double colon :: instead of a single colon to
193 separate the hostname from the path, or you use an rsync:// URL.
194 it() the first word of the "path" is actually a module name.
195 it() the remote daemon may print a message of the day when you
197 it() if you specify no path name on the remote daemon then the
198 list of accessible paths on the daemon will be shown.
199 it() if you specify no local destination then a listing of the
200 specified files on the remote daemon is provided.
201 it() you must not specify the bf(--rsh) (bf(-e)) option.
204 An example that copies all the files in a remote module named "src":
206 verb( rsync -av host::src /dest)
208 Some modules on the remote daemon may require authentication. If so,
209 you will receive a password prompt when you connect. You can avoid the
210 password prompt by setting the environment variable RSYNC_PASSWORD to
211 the password you want to use or using the bf(--password-file) option. This
212 may be useful when scripting rsync.
214 WARNING: On some systems environment variables are visible to all
215 users. On those systems using bf(--password-file) is recommended.
217 You may establish the connection via a web proxy by setting the
218 environment variable RSYNC_PROXY to a hostname:port pair pointing to
219 your web proxy. Note that your web proxy's configuration must support
220 proxy connections to port 873.
222 manpagesection(USING RSYNC-DAEMON FEATURES VIA A REMOTE-SHELL CONNECTION)
224 It is sometimes useful to use various features of an rsync daemon (such as
225 named modules) without actually allowing any new socket connections into a
226 system (other than what is already required to allow remote-shell access).
227 Rsync supports connecting to a host using a remote shell and then spawning
228 a single-use "daemon" server that expects to read its config file in the
229 home dir of the remote user. This can be useful if you want to encrypt a
230 daemon-style transfer's data, but since the daemon is started up fresh by
231 the remote user, you may not be able to use features such as chroot or
232 change the uid used by the daemon. (For another way to encrypt a daemon
233 transfer, consider using ssh to tunnel a local port to a remote machine and
234 configure a normal rsync daemon on that remote host to only allow
235 connections from "localhost".)
237 From the user's perspective, a daemon transfer via a remote-shell
238 connection uses nearly the same command-line syntax as a normal
239 rsync-daemon transfer, with the only exception being that you must
240 explicitly set the remote shell program on the command-line with the
241 bf(--rsh=COMMAND) option. (Setting the RSYNC_RSH in the environment
242 will not turn on this functionality.) For example:
244 verb( rsync -av --rsh=ssh host::module /dest)
246 If you need to specify a different remote-shell user, keep in mind that the
247 user@ prefix in front of the host is specifying the rsync-user value (for a
248 module that requires user-based authentication). This means that you must
249 give the '-l user' option to ssh when specifying the remote-shell, as in
250 this example that uses the short version of the bf(--rsh) option:
252 verb( rsync -av -e "ssh -l ssh-user" rsync-user@host::module /dest)
254 The "ssh-user" will be used at the ssh level; the "rsync-user" will be
255 used to log-in to the "module".
257 manpagesection(STARTING AN RSYNC DAEMON TO ACCEPT CONNECTIONS)
259 In order to connect to an rsync daemon, the remote system needs to have a
260 daemon already running (or it needs to have configured something like inetd
261 to spawn an rsync daemon for incoming connections on a particular port).
262 For full information on how to start a daemon that will handling incoming
263 socket connections, see the bf(rsyncd.conf)(5) man page -- that is the config
264 file for the daemon, and it contains the full details for how to run the
265 daemon (including stand-alone and inetd configurations).
267 If you're using one of the remote-shell transports for the transfer, there is
268 no need to manually start an rsync daemon.
270 manpagesection(EXAMPLES)
272 Here are some examples of how I use rsync.
274 To backup my wife's home directory, which consists of large MS Word
275 files and mail folders, I use a cron job that runs
277 quote(tt(rsync -Cavz . arvidsjaur:backup))
279 each night over a PPP connection to a duplicate directory on my machine
282 To synchronize my samba source trees I use the following Makefile
286 rsync -avuzb --exclude '*~' samba:samba/ .
288 rsync -Cavuzb . samba:samba/
291 this allows me to sync with a CVS directory at the other end of the
292 connection. I then do CVS operations on the remote machine, which saves a
293 lot of time as the remote CVS protocol isn't very efficient.
295 I mirror a directory between my "old" and "new" ftp sites with the
298 tt(rsync -az -e ssh --delete ~ftp/pub/samba nimbus:"~ftp/pub/tridge")
300 This is launched from cron every few hours.
302 manpagesection(OPTIONS SUMMARY)
304 Here is a short summary of the options available in rsync. Please refer
305 to the detailed description below for a complete description. verb(
306 -v, --verbose increase verbosity
307 -q, --quiet suppress non-error messages
308 --no-motd suppress daemon-mode MOTD (see caveat)
309 -c, --checksum skip based on checksum, not mod-time & size
310 -a, --archive archive mode; equals -rlptgoD (no -H,-A,-X)
311 --no-OPTION turn off an implied OPTION (e.g. --no-D)
312 -r, --recursive recurse into directories
313 -R, --relative use relative path names
314 --no-implied-dirs don't send implied dirs with --relative
315 -b, --backup make backups (see --suffix & --backup-dir)
316 --backup-dir=DIR make backups into hierarchy based in DIR
317 --suffix=SUFFIX backup suffix (default ~ w/o --backup-dir)
318 -u, --update skip files that are newer on the receiver
319 --inplace update destination files in-place
320 --append append data onto shorter files
321 -d, --dirs transfer directories without recursing
322 -l, --links copy symlinks as symlinks
323 -L, --copy-links transform symlink into referent file/dir
324 --copy-unsafe-links only "unsafe" symlinks are transformed
325 --safe-links ignore symlinks that point outside the tree
326 -k, --copy-dirlinks transform symlink to dir into referent dir
327 -K, --keep-dirlinks treat symlinked dir on receiver as dir
328 -H, --hard-links preserve hard links
329 -p, --perms preserve permissions
330 -E, --executability preserve executability
331 --chmod=CHMOD affect file and/or directory permissions
332 -A, --acls preserve ACLs (implies -p)
333 -X, --xattrs preserve extended attrs (implies -p)
334 -o, --owner preserve owner (super-user only)
335 -g, --group preserve group
336 --devices preserve device files (super-user only)
337 --specials preserve special files
338 -D same as --devices --specials
339 -t, --times preserve modification times
340 -O, --omit-dir-times omit directories from --times
341 --super receiver attempts super-user activities
342 --fake-super store/recover privileged attrs using xattrs
343 -S, --sparse handle sparse files efficiently
344 -n, --dry-run show what would have been transferred
345 -W, --whole-file copy files whole (without rsync algorithm)
346 -x, --one-file-system don't cross filesystem boundaries
347 -B, --block-size=SIZE force a fixed checksum block-size
348 -e, --rsh=COMMAND specify the remote shell to use
349 --rsync-path=PROGRAM specify the rsync to run on remote machine
350 --existing skip creating new files on receiver
351 --ignore-existing skip updating files that exist on receiver
352 --remove-source-files sender removes synchronized files (non-dir)
353 --del an alias for --delete-during
354 --delete delete extraneous files from dest dirs
355 --delete-before receiver deletes before transfer (default)
356 --delete-during receiver deletes during xfer, not before
357 --delete-delay find deletions during, delete after
358 --delete-after receiver deletes after transfer, not before
359 --delete-excluded also delete excluded files from dest dirs
360 --ignore-errors delete even if there are I/O errors
361 --force force deletion of dirs even if not empty
362 --max-delete=NUM don't delete more than NUM files
363 --max-size=SIZE don't transfer any file larger than SIZE
364 --min-size=SIZE don't transfer any file smaller than SIZE
365 --partial keep partially transferred files
366 --partial-dir=DIR put a partially transferred file into DIR
367 --delay-updates put all updated files into place at end
368 -m, --prune-empty-dirs prune empty directory chains from file-list
369 --numeric-ids don't map uid/gid values by user/group name
370 --timeout=TIME set I/O timeout in seconds
371 -I, --ignore-times don't skip files that match size and time
372 --size-only skip files that match in size
373 --modify-window=NUM compare mod-times with reduced accuracy
374 -T, --temp-dir=DIR create temporary files in directory DIR
375 -y, --fuzzy find similar file for basis if no dest file
376 --compare-dest=DIR also compare received files relative to DIR
377 --copy-dest=DIR ... and include copies of unchanged files
378 --link-dest=DIR hardlink to files in DIR when unchanged
379 -z, --compress compress file data during the transfer
380 --compress-level=NUM explicitly set compression level
381 -C, --cvs-exclude auto-ignore files in the same way CVS does
382 -f, --filter=RULE add a file-filtering RULE
383 -F same as --filter='dir-merge /.rsync-filter'
384 repeated: --filter='- .rsync-filter'
385 --exclude=PATTERN exclude files matching PATTERN
386 --exclude-from=FILE read exclude patterns from FILE
387 --include=PATTERN don't exclude files matching PATTERN
388 --include-from=FILE read include patterns from FILE
389 --files-from=FILE read list of source-file names from FILE
390 -0, --from0 all *from/filter files are delimited by 0s
391 --address=ADDRESS bind address for outgoing socket to daemon
392 --port=PORT specify double-colon alternate port number
393 --sockopts=OPTIONS specify custom TCP options
394 --blocking-io use blocking I/O for the remote shell
395 --stats give some file-transfer stats
396 -8, --8-bit-output leave high-bit chars unescaped in output
397 -h, --human-readable output numbers in a human-readable format
398 --progress show progress during transfer
399 -P same as --partial --progress
400 -i, --itemize-changes output a change-summary for all updates
401 --out-format=FORMAT output updates using the specified FORMAT
402 --log-file=FILE log what we're doing to the specified FILE
403 --log-file-format=FMT log updates using the specified FMT
404 --password-file=FILE read daemon-access password from FILE
405 --list-only list the files instead of copying them
406 --bwlimit=KBPS limit I/O bandwidth; KBytes per second
407 --write-batch=FILE write a batched update to FILE
408 --only-write-batch=FILE like --write-batch but w/o updating dest
409 --read-batch=FILE read a batched update from FILE
410 --protocol=NUM force an older protocol version to be used
411 --iconv=CONVERT_SPEC request charset conversion of filesnames
412 --checksum-seed=NUM set block/file checksum seed (advanced)
413 -4, --ipv4 prefer IPv4
414 -6, --ipv6 prefer IPv6
415 --version print version number
416 (-h) --help show this help (see below for -h comment))
418 Rsync can also be run as a daemon, in which case the following options are
420 --daemon run as an rsync daemon
421 --address=ADDRESS bind to the specified address
422 --bwlimit=KBPS limit I/O bandwidth; KBytes per second
423 --config=FILE specify alternate rsyncd.conf file
424 --no-detach do not detach from the parent
425 --port=PORT listen on alternate port number
426 --log-file=FILE override the "log file" setting
427 --log-file-format=FMT override the "log format" setting
428 --sockopts=OPTIONS specify custom TCP options
429 -v, --verbose increase verbosity
430 -4, --ipv4 prefer IPv4
431 -6, --ipv6 prefer IPv6
432 -h, --help show this help (if used after --daemon))
436 rsync uses the GNU long options package. Many of the command line
437 options have two variants, one short and one long. These are shown
438 below, separated by commas. Some options only have a long variant.
439 The '=' for options that take a parameter is optional; whitespace
443 dit(bf(--help)) Print a short help page describing the options
444 available in rsync and exit. For backward-compatibility with older
445 versions of rsync, the help will also be output if you use the bf(-h)
446 option without any other args.
448 dit(bf(--version)) print the rsync version number and exit.
450 dit(bf(-v, --verbose)) This option increases the amount of information you
451 are given during the transfer. By default, rsync works silently. A
452 single bf(-v) will give you information about what files are being
453 transferred and a brief summary at the end. Two bf(-v) flags will give you
454 information on what files are being skipped and slightly more
455 information at the end. More than two bf(-v) flags should only be used if
456 you are debugging rsync.
458 Note that the names of the transferred files that are output are done using
459 a default bf(--out-format) of "%n%L", which tells you just the name of the
460 file and, if the item is a link, where it points. At the single bf(-v)
461 level of verbosity, this does not mention when a file gets its attributes
462 changed. If you ask for an itemized list of changed attributes (either
463 bf(--itemize-changes) or adding "%i" to the bf(--out-format) setting), the
464 output (on the client) increases to mention all items that are changed in
465 any way. See the bf(--out-format) option for more details.
467 dit(bf(-q, --quiet)) This option decreases the amount of information you
468 are given during the transfer, notably suppressing information messages
469 from the remote server. This flag is useful when invoking rsync from
472 dit(bf(--no-motd)) This option affects the information that is output
473 by the client at the start of a daemon transfer. This suppresses the
474 message-of-the-day (MOTD) text, but it also affects the list of modules
475 that the daemon sends in response to the "rsync host::" request (due to
476 a limitation in the rsync protocol), so omit this option if you want to
477 request the list of modules from the daemon.
479 dit(bf(-I, --ignore-times)) Normally rsync will skip any files that are
480 already the same size and have the same modification timestamp.
481 This option turns off this "quick check" behavior, causing all files to
484 dit(bf(--size-only)) This modifies rsync's "quick check" algorithm for
485 finding files that need to be transferred, changing it from the default of
486 transferring files with either a changed size or a changed last-modified
487 time to just looking for files that have changed in size. This is useful
488 when starting to use rsync after using another mirroring system which may
489 not preserve timestamps exactly.
491 dit(bf(--modify-window)) When comparing two timestamps, rsync treats the
492 timestamps as being equal if they differ by no more than the modify-window
493 value. This is normally 0 (for an exact match), but you may find it useful
494 to set this to a larger value in some situations. In particular, when
495 transferring to or from an MS Windows FAT filesystem (which represents
496 times with a 2-second resolution), bf(--modify-window=1) is useful
497 (allowing times to differ by up to 1 second).
499 dit(bf(-c, --checksum)) This changes the way rsync checks if the files have
500 been changed and are in need of a transfer. Without this option, rsync
501 uses a "quick check" that (by default) checks if each file's size and time
502 of last modification match between the sender and receiver. This option
503 changes this to compare a 128-bit MD4 checksum for each file that has a
504 matching size. Generating the checksums means that both sides will expend
505 a lot of disk I/O reading all the data in the files in the transfer (and
506 this is prior to any reading that will be done to transfer changed files),
507 so this can slow things down significantly.
509 The sending side generates its checksums while it is doing the file-system
510 scan that builds the list of the available files. The receiver generates
511 its checksums when it is scanning for changed files, and will checksum any
512 file that has the same size as the corresponding sender's file: files with
513 either a changed size or a changed checksum are selected for transfer.
515 Note that rsync always verifies that each em(transferred) file was
516 correctly reconstructed on the receiving side by checking a whole-file
517 checksum that is generated when as the file is transferred, but that
518 automatic after-the-transfer verification has nothing to do with this
519 option's before-the-transfer "Does this file need to be updated?" check.
521 dit(bf(-a, --archive)) This is equivalent to bf(-rlptgoD). It is a quick
522 way of saying you want recursion and want to preserve almost
523 everything (with -H being a notable omission).
524 The only exception to the above equivalence is when bf(--files-from) is
525 specified, in which case bf(-r) is not implied.
527 Note that bf(-a) bf(does not preserve hardlinks), because
528 finding multiply-linked files is expensive. You must separately
531 dit(--no-OPTION) You may turn off one or more implied options by prefixing
532 the option name with "no-". Not all options may be prefixed with a "no-":
533 only options that are implied by other options (e.g. bf(--no-D),
534 bf(--no-perms)) or have different defaults in various circumstances
535 (e.g. bf(--no-whole-file), bf(--no-blocking-io), bf(--no-dirs)). You may
536 specify either the short or the long option name after the "no-" prefix
537 (e.g. bf(--no-R) is the same as bf(--no-relative)).
539 For example: if you want to use bf(-a) (bf(--archive)) but don't want
540 bf(-o) (bf(--owner)), instead of converting bf(-a) into bf(-rlptgD), you
541 could specify bf(-a --no-o) (or bf(-a --no-owner)).
543 The order of the options is important: if you specify bf(--no-r -a), the
544 bf(-r) option would end up being turned on, the opposite of bf(-a --no-r).
545 Note also that the side-effects of the bf(--files-from) option are NOT
546 positional, as it affects the default state of several options and slightly
547 changes the meaning of bf(-a) (see the bf(--files-from) option for more
550 dit(bf(-r, --recursive)) This tells rsync to copy directories
551 recursively. See also bf(--dirs) (bf(-d)).
553 Beginning with rsync 3.0.0, the recursive algorithm used is now an
554 incremental scan that uses much less memory than before and begins the
555 transfer after the scanning of the first few directories have been
556 completed. This incremental scan only affects our recursion algorithm, and
557 does not change a non-recursive transfer (e.g. when using a fully-specified
558 bf(--files-from) list). It is also only possible when both ends of the
559 transfer are at least version 3.0.0.
561 Some options require rsync to know the full file list, so these options
562 disable the incremental recursion mode. These include: bf(--delete-before),
563 bf(--delete-after), bf(--prune-empty-dirs), bf(--delay-updates), and bf(--hard-links).
564 Because of this, the default delete mode when you specify bf(--delete) is now
565 bf(--delete-during) when both ends of the connection are at least 3.0.0
566 (use bf(--del) or bf(--delete-during) to request this improved deletion mode
567 explicitly). See also the bf(--delete-delay) option that is a better choice
568 than using bf(--delete-after).
570 dit(bf(-R, --relative)) Use relative paths. This means that the full path
571 names specified on the command line are sent to the server rather than
572 just the last parts of the filenames. This is particularly useful when
573 you want to send several different directories at the same time. For
574 example, if you used this command:
576 quote(tt( rsync -av /foo/bar/baz.c remote:/tmp/))
578 ... this would create a file named baz.c in /tmp/ on the remote
579 machine. If instead you used
581 quote(tt( rsync -avR /foo/bar/baz.c remote:/tmp/))
583 then a file named /tmp/foo/bar/baz.c would be created on the remote
584 machine -- the full path name is preserved. To limit the amount of
585 path information that is sent, you have a couple options: (1) With
586 a modern rsync on the sending side (beginning with 2.6.7), you can
587 insert a dot and a slash into the source path, like this:
589 quote(tt( rsync -avR /foo/./bar/baz.c remote:/tmp/))
591 That would create /tmp/bar/baz.c on the remote machine. (Note that the
592 dot must be followed by a slash, so "/foo/." would not be abbreviated.)
593 (2) For older rsync versions, you would need to use a chdir to limit the
594 source path. For example, when pushing files:
596 quote(tt( (cd /foo; rsync -avR bar/baz.c remote:/tmp/) ))
598 (Note that the parens put the two commands into a sub-shell, so that the
599 "cd" command doesn't remain in effect for future commands.)
600 If you're pulling files, use this idiom (which doesn't work with an
604 tt( rsync -avR --rsync-path="cd /foo; rsync" \ )nl()
605 tt( remote:bar/baz.c /tmp/)
608 dit(bf(--no-implied-dirs)) This option affects the default behavior of the
609 bf(--relative) option. When it is specified, the attributes of the implied
610 directories from the source names are not included in the transfer. This
611 means that the corresponding path elements on the destination system are
612 left unchanged if they exist, and any missing implied directories are
613 created with default attributes. This even allows these implied path
614 elements to have big differences, such as being a symlink to a directory on
615 one side of the transfer, and a real directory on the other side.
617 For instance, if a command-line arg or a files-from entry told rsync to
618 transfer the file "path/foo/file", the directories "path" and "path/foo"
619 are implied when bf(--relative) is used. If "path/foo" is a symlink to
620 "bar" on the destination system, the receiving rsync would ordinarily
621 delete "path/foo", recreate it as a directory, and receive the file into
622 the new directory. With bf(--no-implied-dirs), the receiving rsync updates
623 "path/foo/file" using the existing path elements, which means that the file
624 ends up being created in "path/bar". Another way to accomplish this link
625 preservation is to use the bf(--keep-dirlinks) option (which will also
626 affect symlinks to directories in the rest of the transfer).
628 In a similar but opposite scenario, if the transfer of "path/foo/file" is
629 requested and "path/foo" is a symlink on the sending side, running without
630 bf(--no-implied-dirs) would cause rsync to transform "path/foo" on the
631 receiving side into an identical symlink, and then attempt to transfer
632 "path/foo/file", which might fail if the duplicated symlink did not point
633 to a directory on the receiving side. Another way to avoid this sending of
634 a symlink as an implied directory is to use bf(--copy-unsafe-links), or
635 bf(--copy-dirlinks) (both of which also affect symlinks in the rest of the
636 transfer -- see their descriptions for full details).
638 dit(bf(-b, --backup)) With this option, preexisting destination files are
639 renamed as each file is transferred or deleted. You can control where the
640 backup file goes and what (if any) suffix gets appended using the
641 bf(--backup-dir) and bf(--suffix) options.
643 Note that if you don't specify bf(--backup-dir), (1) the
644 bf(--omit-dir-times) option will be implied, and (2) if bf(--delete) is
645 also in effect (without bf(--delete-excluded)), rsync will add a "protect"
646 filter-rule for the backup suffix to the end of all your existing excludes
647 (e.g. bf(-f "Pp *~")). This will prevent previously backed-up files from being
648 deleted. Note that if you are supplying your own filter rules, you may
649 need to manually insert your own exclude/protect rule somewhere higher up
650 in the list so that it has a high enough priority to be effective (e.g., if
651 your rules specify a trailing inclusion/exclusion of '*', the auto-added
652 rule would never be reached).
654 dit(bf(--backup-dir=DIR)) In combination with the bf(--backup) option, this
655 tells rsync to store all backups in the specified directory on the receiving
656 side. This can be used for incremental backups. You can additionally
657 specify a backup suffix using the bf(--suffix) option
658 (otherwise the files backed up in the specified directory
659 will keep their original filenames).
661 dit(bf(--suffix=SUFFIX)) This option allows you to override the default
662 backup suffix used with the bf(--backup) (bf(-b)) option. The default suffix is a ~
663 if no -bf(-backup-dir) was specified, otherwise it is an empty string.
665 dit(bf(-u, --update)) This forces rsync to skip any files which exist on
666 the destination and have a modified time that is newer than the source
667 file. (If an existing destination file has a modification time equal to the
668 source file's, it will be updated if the sizes are different.)
670 In the current implementation of bf(--update), a difference of file format
671 between the sender and receiver is always
672 considered to be important enough for an update, no matter what date
673 is on the objects. In other words, if the source has a directory or a
674 symlink where the destination has a file, the transfer would occur
675 regardless of the timestamps. This might change in the future (feel
676 free to comment on this on the mailing list if you have an opinion).
678 dit(bf(--inplace)) This causes rsync not to create a new copy of the file
679 and then move it into place. Instead rsync will overwrite the existing
680 file, meaning that the rsync algorithm can't accomplish the full amount of
681 network reduction it might be able to otherwise (since it does not yet try
682 to sort data matches). One exception to this is if you combine the option
683 with bf(--backup), since rsync is smart enough to use the backup file as the
684 basis file for the transfer.
686 This option is useful for transfer of large files with block-based changes
687 or appended data, and also on systems that are disk bound, not network
690 The option implies bf(--partial) (since an interrupted transfer does not delete
691 the file), but conflicts with bf(--partial-dir) and bf(--delay-updates).
692 Prior to rsync 2.6.4 bf(--inplace) was also incompatible with bf(--compare-dest)
695 WARNING: The file's data will be in an inconsistent state during the
696 transfer (and possibly afterward if the transfer gets interrupted), so you
697 should not use this option to update files that are in use. Also note that
698 rsync will be unable to update a file in-place that is not writable by the
701 dit(bf(--append)) This causes rsync to update a file by appending data onto
702 the end of the file, which presumes that the data that already exists on
703 the receiving side is identical with the start of the file on the sending
704 side. If that is not true, the file will fail the checksum test, and the
705 resend will do a normal bf(--inplace) update to correct the mismatched data.
706 Only files on the receiving side that are shorter than the corresponding
707 file on the sending side (as well as new files) are sent.
708 Implies bf(--inplace), but does not conflict with bf(--sparse) (though the
709 bf(--sparse) option will be auto-disabled if a resend of the already-existing
712 dit(bf(-d, --dirs)) Tell the sending side to include any directories that
713 are encountered. Unlike bf(--recursive), a directory's contents are not copied
714 unless the directory name specified is "." or ends with a trailing slash
715 (e.g. ".", "dir/.", "dir/", etc.). Without this option or the
716 bf(--recursive) option, rsync will skip all directories it encounters (and
717 output a message to that effect for each one). If you specify both
718 bf(--dirs) and bf(--recursive), bf(--recursive) takes precedence.
720 dit(bf(-l, --links)) When symlinks are encountered, recreate the
721 symlink on the destination.
723 dit(bf(-L, --copy-links)) When symlinks are encountered, the item that
724 they point to (the referent) is copied, rather than the symlink. In older
725 versions of rsync, this option also had the side-effect of telling the
726 receiving side to follow symlinks, such as symlinks to directories. In a
727 modern rsync such as this one, you'll need to specify bf(--keep-dirlinks) (bf(-K))
728 to get this extra behavior. The only exception is when sending files to
729 an rsync that is too old to understand bf(-K) -- in that case, the bf(-L) option
730 will still have the side-effect of bf(-K) on that older receiving rsync.
732 dit(bf(--copy-unsafe-links)) This tells rsync to copy the referent of
733 symbolic links that point outside the copied tree. Absolute symlinks
734 are also treated like ordinary files, and so are any symlinks in the
735 source path itself when bf(--relative) is used. This option has no
736 additional effect if bf(--copy-links) was also specified.
738 dit(bf(--safe-links)) This tells rsync to ignore any symbolic links
739 which point outside the copied tree. All absolute symlinks are
740 also ignored. Using this option in conjunction with bf(--relative) may
741 give unexpected results.
743 dit(bf(-k, --copy-dirlinks)) This option causes the sending side to treat
744 a symlink to a directory as though it were a real directory. This is
745 useful if you don't want symlinks to non-directories to be affected, as
746 they would be using bf(--copy-links).
748 Without this option, if the sending side has replaced a directory with a
749 symlink to a directory, the receiving side will delete anything that is in
750 the way of the new symlink, including a directory hierarchy (as long as
751 bf(--force) or bf(--delete) is in effect).
753 See also bf(--keep-dirlinks) for an analogous option for the receiving
756 dit(bf(-K, --keep-dirlinks)) This option causes the receiving side to treat
757 a symlink to a directory as though it were a real directory, but only if it
758 matches a real directory from the sender. Without this option, the
759 receiver's symlink would be deleted and replaced with a real directory.
761 For example, suppose you transfer a directory "foo" that contains a file
762 "file", but "foo" is a symlink to directory "bar" on the receiver. Without
763 bf(--keep-dirlinks), the receiver deletes symlink "foo", recreates it as a
764 directory, and receives the file into the new directory. With
765 bf(--keep-dirlinks), the receiver keeps the symlink and "file" ends up in
768 See also bf(--copy-dirlinks) for an analogous option for the sending side.
770 dit(bf(-H, --hard-links)) This tells rsync to look for hard-linked files in
771 the transfer and link together the corresponding files on the receiving
772 side. Without this option, hard-linked files in the transfer are treated
773 as though they were separate files.
775 Note that rsync can only detect hard links if both parts of the link
776 are in the list of files being sent.
778 dit(bf(-p, --perms)) This option causes the receiving rsync to set the
779 destination permissions to be the same as the source permissions. (See
780 also the bf(--chmod) option for a way to modify what rsync considers to
781 be the source permissions.)
783 When this option is em(off), permissions are set as follows:
786 it() Existing files (including updated files) retain their existing
787 permissions, though the bf(--executability) option might change just
788 the execute permission for the file.
789 it() New files get their "normal" permission bits set to the source
790 file's permissions masked with the receiving directory's default
791 permissions (either the receiving process's umask, or the permissions
792 specified via the destination directory's default ACL), and
793 their special permission bits disabled except in the case where a new
794 directory inherits a setgid bit from its parent directory.
797 Thus, when bf(--perms) and bf(--executability) are both disabled,
798 rsync's behavior is the same as that of other file-copy utilities,
799 such as bf(cp)(1) and bf(tar)(1).
801 In summary: to give destination files (both old and new) the source
802 permissions, use bf(--perms). To give new files the destination-default
803 permissions (while leaving existing files unchanged), make sure that the
804 bf(--perms) option is off and use bf(--chmod=ugo=rwX) (which ensures that
805 all non-masked bits get enabled). If you'd care to make this latter
806 behavior easier to type, you could define a popt alias for it, such as
807 putting this line in the file ~/.popt (this defines the bf(-s) option,
808 and includes --no-g to use the default group of the destination dir):
810 quote(tt( rsync alias -s --no-p --no-g --chmod=ugo=rwX))
812 You could then use this new option in a command such as this one:
814 quote(tt( rsync -asv src/ dest/))
816 (Caveat: make sure that bf(-a) does not follow bf(-s), or it will re-enable
817 the "--no-*" options.)
819 The preservation of the destination's setgid bit on newly-created
820 directories when bf(--perms) is off was added in rsync 2.6.7. Older rsync
821 versions erroneously preserved the three special permission bits for
822 newly-created files when bf(--perms) was off, while overriding the
823 destination's setgid bit setting on a newly-created directory. Default ACL
824 observance was added to the ACL patch for rsync 2.6.7, so older (or
825 non-ACL-enabled) rsyncs use the umask even if default ACLs are present.
826 (Keep in mind that it is the version of the receiving rsync that affects
829 dit(bf(-E, --executability)) This option causes rsync to preserve the
830 executability (or non-executability) of regular files when bf(--perms) is
831 not enabled. A regular file is considered to be executable if at least one
832 'x' is turned on in its permissions. When an existing destination file's
833 executability differs from that of the corresponding source file, rsync
834 modifies the destination file's permissions as follows:
837 it() To make a file non-executable, rsync turns off all its 'x'
839 it() To make a file executable, rsync turns on each 'x' permission that
840 has a corresponding 'r' permission enabled.
843 If bf(--perms) is enabled, this option is ignored.
845 dit(bf(-A, --acls)) This option causes rsync to update the destination
846 ACLs to be the same as the source ACLs. This nonstandard option only
847 works if the remote rsync also supports it. bf(--acls) implies bf(--perms).
849 dit(bf(-X, --xattrs)) This option causes rsync to update the remote
850 extended attributes to be the same as the local ones. This will work
851 only if the remote machine's rsync supports this option also. This is
852 a non-standard option.
854 dit(bf(--chmod)) This option tells rsync to apply one or more
855 comma-separated "chmod" strings to the permission of the files in the
856 transfer. The resulting value is treated as though it was the permissions
857 that the sending side supplied for the file, which means that this option
858 can seem to have no effect on existing files if bf(--perms) is not enabled.
860 In addition to the normal parsing rules specified in the bf(chmod)(1)
861 manpage, you can specify an item that should only apply to a directory by
862 prefixing it with a 'D', or specify an item that should only apply to a
863 file by prefixing it with a 'F'. For example:
865 quote(--chmod=Dg+s,ug+w,Fo-w,+X)
867 It is also legal to specify multiple bf(--chmod) options, as each
868 additional option is just appended to the list of changes to make.
870 See the bf(--perms) and bf(--executability) options for how the resulting
871 permission value can be applied to the files in the transfer.
873 dit(bf(-o, --owner)) This option causes rsync to set the owner of the
874 destination file to be the same as the source file, but only if the
875 receiving rsync is being run as the super-user (see also the bf(--super)
876 and bf(--fake-super) options).
877 Without this option, the owner is set to the invoking user on the
880 The preservation of ownership will associate matching names by default, but
881 may fall back to using the ID number in some circumstances (see also the
882 bf(--numeric-ids) option for a full discussion).
884 dit(bf(-g, --group)) This option causes rsync to set the group of the
885 destination file to be the same as the source file. If the receiving
886 program is not running as the super-user (or if bf(--no-super) was
887 specified), only groups that the invoking user on the receiving side
888 is a member of will be preserved.
889 Without this option, the group is set to the default group of the invoking
890 user on the receiving side.
892 The preservation of group information will associate matching names by
893 default, but may fall back to using the ID number in some circumstances
894 (see also the bf(--numeric-ids) option for a full discussion).
896 dit(bf(--devices)) This option causes rsync to transfer character and
897 block device files to the remote system to recreate these devices.
898 This option has no effect if the receiving rsync is not run as the
899 super-user (see also the bf(--super) and bf(--fake-super) options).
901 dit(bf(--specials)) This option causes rsync to transfer special files
902 such as named sockets and fifos.
904 dit(bf(-D)) The bf(-D) option is equivalent to bf(--devices) bf(--specials).
906 dit(bf(-t, --times)) This tells rsync to transfer modification times along
907 with the files and update them on the remote system. Note that if this
908 option is not used, the optimization that excludes files that have not been
909 modified cannot be effective; in other words, a missing bf(-t) or bf(-a) will
910 cause the next transfer to behave as if it used bf(-I), causing all files to be
911 updated (though the rsync algorithm will make the update fairly efficient
912 if the files haven't actually changed, you're much better off using bf(-t)).
914 dit(bf(-O, --omit-dir-times)) This tells rsync to omit directories when
915 it is preserving modification times (see bf(--times)). If NFS is sharing
916 the directories on the receiving side, it is a good idea to use bf(-O).
917 This option is inferred if you use bf(--backup) without bf(--backup-dir).
919 dit(bf(--super)) This tells the receiving side to attempt super-user
920 activities even if the receiving rsync wasn't run by the super-user. These
921 activities include: preserving users via the bf(--owner) option, preserving
922 all groups (not just the current user's groups) via the bf(--groups)
923 option, and copying devices via the bf(--devices) option. This is useful
924 for systems that allow such activities without being the super-user, and
925 also for ensuring that you will get errors if the receiving side isn't
926 being running as the super-user. To turn off super-user activities, the
927 super-user can use bf(--no-super).
929 dit(bf(--fake-super)) When this option is enabled, rsync simulates
930 super-user activities by saving/restoring the privileged attributes via a
931 special extended attribute that is attached to each file (as needed). This
932 includes the file's owner and group (if it is not the default), the file's
933 device info (device & special files are created as empty text files), and
934 any permission bits that we won't allow to be set on the real file (e.g.
935 the real file gets u-s,g-s,o-t for safety) or that would limit the owner's
936 access (since the real super-user can always access/change a file, the
937 files we create can always be accessed/changed by the creating user).
939 The bf(--fake-super) option only affects the side where the option is used.
940 To affect the remote side of a remote-shell connection, specify an rsync
943 quote(tt( rsync -av --rsync-path="rsync --fake-super" /src/ host:/dest/))
945 Since there is only one "side" in a local copy, this option affects both
946 the sending and recieving of files. You'll need to specify a copy using
947 "localhost" if you need to avoid this. Note, however, that it is always
948 safe to copy from some non-fake-super files into some fake-super files
949 using a local bf(--fake-super) command because the non-fake source files
950 will just have their normal attributes.
952 This option is overridden by both bf(--super) and bf(--no-super).
954 See also the "fake super" setting in the daemon's rsyncd.conf file.
956 dit(bf(-S, --sparse)) Try to handle sparse files efficiently so they take
957 up less space on the destination. Conflicts with bf(--inplace) because it's
958 not possible to overwrite data in a sparse fashion.
960 NOTE: Don't use this option when the destination is a Solaris "tmpfs"
961 filesystem. It doesn't seem to handle seeks over null regions
962 correctly and ends up corrupting the files.
964 dit(bf(-n, --dry-run)) This tells rsync to not do any file transfers,
965 instead it will just report the actions it would have taken.
967 dit(bf(-W, --whole-file)) With this option the incremental rsync algorithm
968 is not used and the whole file is sent as-is instead. The transfer may be
969 faster if this option is used when the bandwidth between the source and
970 destination machines is higher than the bandwidth to disk (especially when the
971 "disk" is actually a networked filesystem). This is the default when both
972 the source and destination are specified as local paths.
974 dit(bf(-x, --one-file-system)) This tells rsync to avoid crossing a
975 filesystem boundary when recursing. This does not limit the user's ability
976 to specify items to copy from multiple filesystems, just rsync's recursion
977 through the hierarchy of each directory that the user specified, and also
978 the analogous recursion on the receiving side during deletion. Also keep
979 in mind that rsync treats a "bind" mount to the same device as being on the
982 If this option is repeated, rsync omits all mount-point directories from
983 the copy. Otherwise, it includes an empty directory at each mount-point it
984 encounters (using the attributes of the mounted directory because those of
985 the underlying mount-point directory are inaccessible).
987 If rsync has been told to collapse symlinks (via bf(--copy-links) or
988 bf(--copy-unsafe-links)), a symlink to a directory on another device is
989 treated like a mount-point. Symlinks to non-directories are unaffected
992 dit(bf(--existing, --ignore-non-existing)) This tells rsync to skip
993 creating files (including directories) that do not exist
994 yet on the destination. If this option is
995 combined with the bf(--ignore-existing) option, no files will be updated
996 (which can be useful if all you want to do is delete extraneous files).
998 dit(bf(--ignore-existing)) This tells rsync to skip updating files that
999 already exist on the destination (this does em(not) ignore existing
1000 directories, or nothing would get done). See also bf(--existing).
1002 This option can be useful for those doing backups using the bf(--link-dest)
1003 option when they need to continue a backup run that got interrupted. Since
1004 a bf(--link-dest) run is copied into a new directory hierarchy (when it is
1005 used properly), using bf(--ignore existing) will ensure that the
1006 already-handled files don't get tweaked (which avoids a change in
1007 permissions on the hard-linked files). This does mean that this option
1008 is only looking at the existing files in the destination hierarchy itself.
1010 dit(bf(--remove-source-files)) This tells rsync to remove from the sending
1011 side the files (meaning non-directories) that are a part of the transfer
1012 and have been successfully duplicated on the receiving side.
1014 dit(bf(--delete)) This tells rsync to delete extraneous files from the
1015 receiving side (ones that aren't on the sending side), but only for the
1016 directories that are being synchronized. You must have asked rsync to
1017 send the whole directory (e.g. "dir" or "dir/") without using a wildcard
1018 for the directory's contents (e.g. "dir/*") since the wildcard is expanded
1019 by the shell and rsync thus gets a request to transfer individual files, not
1020 the files' parent directory. Files that are excluded from transfer are
1021 also excluded from being deleted unless you use the bf(--delete-excluded)
1022 option or mark the rules as only matching on the sending side (see the
1023 include/exclude modifiers in the FILTER RULES section).
1025 Prior to rsync 2.6.7, this option would have no effect unless bf(--recursive)
1026 was enabled. Beginning with 2.6.7, deletions will also occur when bf(--dirs)
1027 (bf(-d)) is enabled, but only for directories whose contents are being copied.
1029 This option can be dangerous if used incorrectly! It is a very good idea
1030 to run first using the bf(--dry-run) option (bf(-n)) to see what files would be
1031 deleted to make sure important files aren't listed.
1033 If the sending side detects any I/O errors, then the deletion of any
1034 files at the destination will be automatically disabled. This is to
1035 prevent temporary filesystem failures (such as NFS errors) on the
1036 sending side causing a massive deletion of files on the
1037 destination. You can override this with the bf(--ignore-errors) option.
1039 The bf(--delete) option may be combined with one of the --delete-WHEN options
1040 without conflict, as well as bf(--delete-excluded). However, if none of the
1041 --delete-WHEN options are specified, rsync will choose the
1042 bf(--delete-during) algorithm when talking to an rsync 3.0.0 or newer, and
1043 the bf(--delete-before) algorithm when talking to an older rsync. See also
1044 bf(--delete-delay) and bf(--delete-after).
1046 dit(bf(--delete-before)) Request that the file-deletions on the receiving
1047 side be done before the transfer starts.
1048 See bf(--delete) (which is implied) for more details on file-deletion.
1050 Deleting before the transfer is helpful if the filesystem is tight for space
1051 and removing extraneous files would help to make the transfer possible.
1052 However, it does introduce a delay before the start of the transfer,
1053 and this delay might cause the transfer to timeout (if bf(--timeout) was
1054 specified). It also forces rsync to use the old, non-incremental recursion
1055 algorithm that requires rsync to scan all the files in the transfer into
1056 memory at once (see bf(--recursive)).
1058 dit(bf(--delete-during, --del)) Request that the file-deletions on the
1059 receiving side be done incrementally as the transfer happens. This is
1060 a faster method than choosing the before- or after-transfer algorithm,
1061 but it is only supported beginning with rsync version 2.6.4.
1062 See bf(--delete) (which is implied) for more details on file-deletion.
1064 dit(bf(--delete-delay)) Request that the file-deletions on the receiving
1065 side be computed during the transfer, and then removed after the transfer
1066 completes. If the number of removed files overflows an internal buffer, a
1067 temporary file will be created on the receiving side to hold the names (it
1068 is removed while open, so you shouldn't see it during the transfer). If
1069 the creation of the temporary file fails, rsync will try to fall back to
1070 using bf(--delete-after) (which it cannot do if bf(--recursive) is doing an
1073 dit(bf(--delete-after)) Request that the file-deletions on the receiving
1074 side be done after the transfer has completed. This is useful if you
1075 are sending new per-directory merge files as a part of the transfer and
1076 you want their exclusions to take effect for the delete phase of the
1077 current transfer. It also forces rsync to use the old, non-incremental
1078 recursion algorithm that requires rsync to scan all the files in the
1079 transfer into memory at once (see bf(--recursive)).
1080 See bf(--delete) (which is implied) for more details on file-deletion.
1082 dit(bf(--delete-excluded)) In addition to deleting the files on the
1083 receiving side that are not on the sending side, this tells rsync to also
1084 delete any files on the receiving side that are excluded (see bf(--exclude)).
1085 See the FILTER RULES section for a way to make individual exclusions behave
1086 this way on the receiver, and for a way to protect files from
1087 bf(--delete-excluded).
1088 See bf(--delete) (which is implied) for more details on file-deletion.
1090 dit(bf(--ignore-errors)) Tells bf(--delete) to go ahead and delete files
1091 even when there are I/O errors.
1093 dit(bf(--force)) This option tells rsync to delete a non-empty directory
1094 when it is to be replaced by a non-directory. This is only relevant if
1095 deletions are not active (see bf(--delete) for details).
1097 Note for older rsync versions: bf(--force) used to still be required when
1098 using bf(--delete-after), and it used to be non-functional unless the
1099 bf(--recursive) option was also enabled.
1101 dit(bf(--max-delete=NUM)) This tells rsync not to delete more than NUM
1102 files or directories.
1103 Beginning with version 3.0.0, you may specify bf(--max-delete=0) to
1104 be warned about any extraneous files in the destination, but be very
1105 careful to never specify a 0 value to an older rsync client, or the
1106 option will be silently ignored. (A 3.0.0 client will die with an
1107 error if the remote rsync is not new enough to handle the situation.)
1108 This is useful when mirroring very large trees to prevent disasters.
1110 dit(bf(--max-size=SIZE)) This tells rsync to avoid transferring any
1111 file that is larger than the specified SIZE. The SIZE value can be
1112 suffixed with a string to indicate a size multiplier, and
1113 may be a fractional value (e.g. "bf(--max-size=1.5m)").
1115 The suffixes are as follows: "K" (or "KiB") is a kibibyte (1024),
1116 "M" (or "MiB") is a mebibyte (1024*1024), and "G" (or "GiB") is a
1117 gibibyte (1024*1024*1024).
1118 If you want the multiplier to be 1000 instead of 1024, use "KB",
1119 "MB", or "GB". (Note: lower-case is also accepted for all values.)
1120 Finally, if the suffix ends in either "+1" or "-1", the value will
1121 be offset by one byte in the indicated direction.
1123 Examples: --max-size=1.5mb-1 is 1499999 bytes, and --max-size=2g+1 is
1126 dit(bf(--min-size=SIZE)) This tells rsync to avoid transferring any
1127 file that is smaller than the specified SIZE, which can help in not
1128 transferring small, junk files.
1129 See the bf(--max-size) option for a description of SIZE.
1131 dit(bf(-B, --block-size=BLOCKSIZE)) This forces the block size used in
1132 the rsync algorithm to a fixed value. It is normally selected based on
1133 the size of each file being updated. See the technical report for details.
1135 dit(bf(-e, --rsh=COMMAND)) This option allows you to choose an alternative
1136 remote shell program to use for communication between the local and
1137 remote copies of rsync. Typically, rsync is configured to use ssh by
1138 default, but you may prefer to use rsh on a local network.
1140 If this option is used with bf([user@]host::module/path), then the
1141 remote shell em(COMMAND) will be used to run an rsync daemon on the
1142 remote host, and all data will be transmitted through that remote
1143 shell connection, rather than through a direct socket connection to a
1144 running rsync daemon on the remote host. See the section "USING
1145 RSYNC-DAEMON FEATURES VIA A REMOTE-SHELL CONNECTION" above.
1147 Command-line arguments are permitted in COMMAND provided that COMMAND is
1148 presented to rsync as a single argument. You must use spaces (not tabs
1149 or other whitespace) to separate the command and args from each other,
1150 and you can use single- and/or double-quotes to preserve spaces in an
1151 argument (but not backslashes). Note that doubling a single-quote
1152 inside a single-quoted string gives you a single-quote; likewise for
1153 double-quotes (though you need to pay attention to which quotes your
1154 shell is parsing and which quotes rsync is parsing). Some examples:
1157 tt( -e 'ssh -p 2234')nl()
1158 tt( -e 'ssh -o "ProxyCommand nohup ssh firewall nc -w1 %h %p"')nl()
1161 (Note that ssh users can alternately customize site-specific connect
1162 options in their .ssh/config file.)
1164 You can also choose the remote shell program using the RSYNC_RSH
1165 environment variable, which accepts the same range of values as bf(-e).
1167 See also the bf(--blocking-io) option which is affected by this option.
1169 dit(bf(--rsync-path=PROGRAM)) Use this to specify what program is to be run
1170 on the remote machine to start-up rsync. Often used when rsync is not in
1171 the default remote-shell's path (e.g. --rsync-path=/usr/local/bin/rsync).
1172 Note that PROGRAM is run with the help of a shell, so it can be any
1173 program, script, or command sequence you'd care to run, so long as it does
1174 not corrupt the standard-in & standard-out that rsync is using to
1177 One tricky example is to set a different default directory on the remote
1178 machine for use with the bf(--relative) option. For instance:
1180 quote(tt( rsync -avR --rsync-path="cd /a/b && rsync" host:c/d /e/))
1182 dit(bf(-C, --cvs-exclude)) This is a useful shorthand for excluding a
1183 broad range of files that you often don't want to transfer between
1184 systems. It uses a similar algorithm to CVS to determine if
1185 a file should be ignored.
1187 The exclude list is initialized to exclude the following items (these
1188 initial items are marked as perishable -- see the FILTER RULES section):
1190 quote(quote(tt(RCS SCCS CVS CVS.adm RCSLOG cvslog.* tags TAGS .make.state
1191 .nse_depinfo *~ #* .#* ,* _$* *$ *.old *.bak *.BAK *.orig *.rej
1192 .del-* *.a *.olb *.o *.obj *.so *.exe *.Z *.elc *.ln core .svn/ .bzr/)))
1194 then, files listed in a $HOME/.cvsignore are added to the list and any
1195 files listed in the CVSIGNORE environment variable (all cvsignore names
1196 are delimited by whitespace).
1198 Finally, any file is ignored if it is in the same directory as a
1199 .cvsignore file and matches one of the patterns listed therein. Unlike
1200 rsync's filter/exclude files, these patterns are split on whitespace.
1201 See the bf(cvs)(1) manual for more information.
1203 If you're combining bf(-C) with your own bf(--filter) rules, you should
1204 note that these CVS excludes are appended at the end of your own rules,
1205 regardless of where the bf(-C) was placed on the command-line. This makes them
1206 a lower priority than any rules you specified explicitly. If you want to
1207 control where these CVS excludes get inserted into your filter rules, you
1208 should omit the bf(-C) as a command-line option and use a combination of
1209 bf(--filter=:C) and bf(--filter=-C) (either on your command-line or by
1210 putting the ":C" and "-C" rules into a filter file with your other rules).
1211 The first option turns on the per-directory scanning for the .cvsignore
1212 file. The second option does a one-time import of the CVS excludes
1215 dit(bf(-f, --filter=RULE)) This option allows you to add rules to selectively
1216 exclude certain files from the list of files to be transferred. This is
1217 most useful in combination with a recursive transfer.
1219 You may use as many bf(--filter) options on the command line as you like
1220 to build up the list of files to exclude.
1222 See the FILTER RULES section for detailed information on this option.
1224 dit(bf(-F)) The bf(-F) option is a shorthand for adding two bf(--filter) rules to
1225 your command. The first time it is used is a shorthand for this rule:
1227 quote(tt( --filter='dir-merge /.rsync-filter'))
1229 This tells rsync to look for per-directory .rsync-filter files that have
1230 been sprinkled through the hierarchy and use their rules to filter the
1231 files in the transfer. If bf(-F) is repeated, it is a shorthand for this
1234 quote(tt( --filter='exclude .rsync-filter'))
1236 This filters out the .rsync-filter files themselves from the transfer.
1238 See the FILTER RULES section for detailed information on how these options
1241 dit(bf(--exclude=PATTERN)) This option is a simplified form of the
1242 bf(--filter) option that defaults to an exclude rule and does not allow
1243 the full rule-parsing syntax of normal filter rules.
1245 See the FILTER RULES section for detailed information on this option.
1247 dit(bf(--exclude-from=FILE)) This option is related to the bf(--exclude)
1248 option, but it specifies a FILE that contains exclude patterns (one per line).
1249 Blank lines in the file and lines starting with ';' or '#' are ignored.
1250 If em(FILE) is bf(-), the list will be read from standard input.
1252 dit(bf(--include=PATTERN)) This option is a simplified form of the
1253 bf(--filter) option that defaults to an include rule and does not allow
1254 the full rule-parsing syntax of normal filter rules.
1256 See the FILTER RULES section for detailed information on this option.
1258 dit(bf(--include-from=FILE)) This option is related to the bf(--include)
1259 option, but it specifies a FILE that contains include patterns (one per line).
1260 Blank lines in the file and lines starting with ';' or '#' are ignored.
1261 If em(FILE) is bf(-), the list will be read from standard input.
1263 dit(bf(--files-from=FILE)) Using this option allows you to specify the
1264 exact list of files to transfer (as read from the specified FILE or bf(-)
1265 for standard input). It also tweaks the default behavior of rsync to make
1266 transferring just the specified files and directories easier:
1269 it() The bf(--relative) (bf(-R)) option is implied, which preserves the path
1270 information that is specified for each item in the file (use
1271 bf(--no-relative) or bf(--no-R) if you want to turn that off).
1272 it() The bf(--dirs) (bf(-d)) option is implied, which will create directories
1273 specified in the list on the destination rather than noisily skipping
1274 them (use bf(--no-dirs) or bf(--no-d) if you want to turn that off).
1275 it() The bf(--archive) (bf(-a)) option's behavior does not imply bf(--recursive)
1276 (bf(-r)), so specify it explicitly, if you want it.
1277 it() These side-effects change the default state of rsync, so the position
1278 of the bf(--files-from) option on the command-line has no bearing on how
1279 other options are parsed (e.g. bf(-a) works the same before or after
1280 bf(--files-from), as does bf(--no-R) and all other options).
1283 The filenames that are read from the FILE are all relative to the
1284 source dir -- any leading slashes are removed and no ".." references are
1285 allowed to go higher than the source dir. For example, take this
1288 quote(tt( rsync -a --files-from=/tmp/foo /usr remote:/backup))
1290 If /tmp/foo contains the string "bin" (or even "/bin"), the /usr/bin
1291 directory will be created as /backup/bin on the remote host. If it
1292 contains "bin/" (note the trailing slash), the immediate contents of
1293 the directory would also be sent (without needing to be explicitly
1294 mentioned in the file -- this began in version 2.6.4). In both cases,
1295 if the bf(-r) option was enabled, that dir's entire hierarchy would
1296 also be transferred (keep in mind that bf(-r) needs to be specified
1297 explicitly with bf(--files-from), since it is not implied by bf(-a)).
1299 that the effect of the (enabled by default) bf(--relative) option is to
1300 duplicate only the path info that is read from the file -- it does not
1301 force the duplication of the source-spec path (/usr in this case).
1303 In addition, the bf(--files-from) file can be read from the remote host
1304 instead of the local host if you specify a "host:" in front of the file
1305 (the host must match one end of the transfer). As a short-cut, you can
1306 specify just a prefix of ":" to mean "use the remote end of the
1307 transfer". For example:
1309 quote(tt( rsync -a --files-from=:/path/file-list src:/ /tmp/copy))
1311 This would copy all the files specified in the /path/file-list file that
1312 was located on the remote "src" host.
1314 dit(bf(-0, --from0)) This tells rsync that the rules/filenames it reads from a
1315 file are terminated by a null ('\0') character, not a NL, CR, or CR+LF.
1316 This affects bf(--exclude-from), bf(--include-from), bf(--files-from), and any
1317 merged files specified in a bf(--filter) rule.
1318 It does not affect bf(--cvs-exclude) (since all names read from a .cvsignore
1319 file are split on whitespace).
1321 dit(bf(-T, --temp-dir=DIR)) This option instructs rsync to use DIR as a
1322 scratch directory when creating temporary copies of the files transferred
1323 on the receiving side. The default behavior is to create each temporary
1324 file in the same directory as the associated destination file.
1326 This option is most often used when the receiving disk partition does not
1327 have enough free space to hold a copy of the largest file in the transfer.
1328 In this case (i.e. when the scratch directory in on a different disk
1329 partition), rsync will not be able to rename each received temporary file
1330 over the top of the associated destination file, but instead must copy it
1331 into place. Rsync does this by copying the file over the top of the
1332 destination file, which means that the destination file will contain
1333 truncated data during this copy. If this were not done this way (even if
1334 the destination file were first removed, the data locally copied to a
1335 temporary file in the destination directory, and then renamed into place)
1336 it would be possible for the old file to continue taking up disk space (if
1337 someone had it open), and thus there might not be enough room to fit the
1338 new version on the disk at the same time.
1340 If you are using this option for reasons other than a shortage of disk
1341 space, you may wish to combine it with the bf(--delay-updates) option,
1342 which will ensure that all copied files get put into subdirectories in the
1343 destination hierarchy, awaiting the end of the transfer. If you don't
1344 have enough room to duplicate all the arriving files on the destination
1345 partition, another way to tell rsync that you aren't overly concerned
1346 about disk space is to use the bf(--partial-dir) option with a relative
1347 path; because this tells rsync that it is OK to stash off a copy of a
1348 single file in a subdir in the destination hierarchy, rsync will use the
1349 partial-dir as a staging area to bring over the copied file, and then
1350 rename it into place from there. (Specifying a bf(--partial-dir) with
1351 an absolute path does not have this side-effect.)
1353 dit(bf(-y, --fuzzy)) This option tells rsync that it should look for a
1354 basis file for any destination file that is missing. The current algorithm
1355 looks in the same directory as the destination file for either a file that
1356 has an identical size and modified-time, or a similarly-named file. If
1357 found, rsync uses the fuzzy basis file to try to speed up the transfer.
1359 Note that the use of the bf(--delete) option might get rid of any potential
1360 fuzzy-match files, so either use bf(--delete-after) or specify some
1361 filename exclusions if you need to prevent this.
1363 dit(bf(--compare-dest=DIR)) This option instructs rsync to use em(DIR) on
1364 the destination machine as an additional hierarchy to compare destination
1365 files against doing transfers (if the files are missing in the destination
1366 directory). If a file is found in em(DIR) that is identical to the
1367 sender's file, the file will NOT be transferred to the destination
1368 directory. This is useful for creating a sparse backup of just files that
1369 have changed from an earlier backup.
1371 Beginning in version 2.6.4, multiple bf(--compare-dest) directories may be
1372 provided, which will cause rsync to search the list in the order specified
1374 If a match is found that differs only in attributes, a local copy is made
1375 and the attributes updated.
1376 If a match is not found, a basis file from one of the em(DIR)s will be
1377 selected to try to speed up the transfer.
1379 If em(DIR) is a relative path, it is relative to the destination directory.
1380 See also bf(--copy-dest) and bf(--link-dest).
1382 dit(bf(--copy-dest=DIR)) This option behaves like bf(--compare-dest), but
1383 rsync will also copy unchanged files found in em(DIR) to the destination
1384 directory using a local copy.
1385 This is useful for doing transfers to a new destination while leaving
1386 existing files intact, and then doing a flash-cutover when all files have
1387 been successfully transferred.
1389 Multiple bf(--copy-dest) directories may be provided, which will cause
1390 rsync to search the list in the order specified for an unchanged file.
1391 If a match is not found, a basis file from one of the em(DIR)s will be
1392 selected to try to speed up the transfer.
1394 If em(DIR) is a relative path, it is relative to the destination directory.
1395 See also bf(--compare-dest) and bf(--link-dest).
1397 dit(bf(--link-dest=DIR)) This option behaves like bf(--copy-dest), but
1398 unchanged files are hard linked from em(DIR) to the destination directory.
1399 The files must be identical in all preserved attributes (e.g. permissions,
1400 possibly ownership) in order for the files to be linked together.
1403 quote(tt( rsync -av --link-dest=$PWD/prior_dir host:src_dir/ new_dir/))
1405 Beginning in version 2.6.4, multiple bf(--link-dest) directories may be
1406 provided, which will cause rsync to search the list in the order specified
1408 If a match is found that differs only in attributes, a local copy is made
1409 and the attributes updated.
1410 If a match is not found, a basis file from one of the em(DIR)s will be
1411 selected to try to speed up the transfer.
1413 This option works best when copying into an empty destination hierarchy, as
1414 rsync treats existing files as definitive (so it never looks in the link-dest
1415 dirs when a destination file already exists), and as malleable (so it might
1416 change the attributes of a destination file, which affects all the hard-linked
1419 Note that if you combine this option with bf(--ignore-times), rsync will not
1420 link any files together because it only links identical files together as a
1421 substitute for transferring the file, never as an additional check after the
1424 If em(DIR) is a relative path, it is relative to the destination directory.
1425 See also bf(--compare-dest) and bf(--copy-dest).
1427 Note that rsync versions prior to 2.6.1 had a bug that could prevent
1428 bf(--link-dest) from working properly for a non-super-user when bf(-o) was
1429 specified (or implied by bf(-a)). You can work-around this bug by avoiding
1430 the bf(-o) option when sending to an old rsync.
1432 dit(bf(-z, --compress)) With this option, rsync compresses the file data
1433 as it is sent to the destination machine, which reduces the amount of data
1434 being transmitted -- something that is useful over a slow connection.
1436 Note that this option typically achieves better compression ratios than can
1437 be achieved by using a compressing remote shell or a compressing transport
1438 because it takes advantage of the implicit information in the matching data
1439 blocks that are not explicitly sent over the connection.
1441 dit(bf(--compress-level=NUM)) Explicitly set the compression level to use
1442 (see bf(--compress)) instead of letting it default. If NUM is non-zero,
1443 the bf(--compress) option is implied.
1445 dit(bf(--numeric-ids)) With this option rsync will transfer numeric group
1446 and user IDs rather than using user and group names and mapping them
1449 By default rsync will use the username and groupname to determine
1450 what ownership to give files. The special uid 0 and the special group
1451 0 are never mapped via user/group names even if the bf(--numeric-ids)
1452 option is not specified.
1454 If a user or group has no name on the source system or it has no match
1455 on the destination system, then the numeric ID
1456 from the source system is used instead. See also the comments on the
1457 "use chroot" setting in the rsyncd.conf manpage for information on how
1458 the chroot setting affects rsync's ability to look up the names of the
1459 users and groups and what you can do about it.
1461 dit(bf(--timeout=TIMEOUT)) This option allows you to set a maximum I/O
1462 timeout in seconds. If no data is transferred for the specified time
1463 then rsync will exit. The default is 0, which means no timeout.
1465 dit(bf(--address)) By default rsync will bind to the wildcard address when
1466 connecting to an rsync daemon. The bf(--address) option allows you to
1467 specify a specific IP address (or hostname) to bind to. See also this
1468 option in the bf(--daemon) mode section.
1470 dit(bf(--port=PORT)) This specifies an alternate TCP port number to use
1471 rather than the default of 873. This is only needed if you are using the
1472 double-colon (::) syntax to connect with an rsync daemon (since the URL
1473 syntax has a way to specify the port as a part of the URL). See also this
1474 option in the bf(--daemon) mode section.
1476 dit(bf(--sockopts)) This option can provide endless fun for people
1477 who like to tune their systems to the utmost degree. You can set all
1478 sorts of socket options which may make transfers faster (or
1479 slower!). Read the man page for the code(setsockopt()) system call for
1480 details on some of the options you may be able to set. By default no
1481 special socket options are set. This only affects direct socket
1482 connections to a remote rsync daemon. This option also exists in the
1483 bf(--daemon) mode section.
1485 dit(bf(--blocking-io)) This tells rsync to use blocking I/O when launching
1486 a remote shell transport. If the remote shell is either rsh or remsh,
1487 rsync defaults to using
1488 blocking I/O, otherwise it defaults to using non-blocking I/O. (Note that
1489 ssh prefers non-blocking I/O.)
1491 dit(bf(-i, --itemize-changes)) Requests a simple itemized list of the
1492 changes that are being made to each file, including attribute changes.
1493 This is exactly the same as specifying bf(--out-format='%i %n%L').
1494 If you repeat the option, unchanged files will also be output, but only
1495 if the receiving rsync is at least version 2.6.7 (you can use bf(-vv)
1496 with older versions of rsync, but that also turns on the output of other
1499 The "%i" escape has a cryptic output that is 11 letters long. The general
1500 format is like the string bf(YXcstpoguax), where bf(Y) is replaced by the
1501 type of update being done, bf(X) is replaced by the file-type, and the
1502 other letters represent attributes that may be output if they are being
1505 The update types that replace the bf(Y) are as follows:
1508 it() A bf(<) means that a file is being transferred to the remote host
1510 it() A bf(>) means that a file is being transferred to the local host
1512 it() A bf(c) means that a local change/creation is occurring for the item
1513 (such as the creation of a directory or the changing of a symlink, etc.).
1514 it() A bf(h) means that the item is a hard link to another item (requires
1516 it() A bf(.) means that the item is not being updated (though it might
1517 have attributes that are being modified).
1520 The file-types that replace the bf(X) are: bf(f) for a file, a bf(d) for a
1521 directory, an bf(L) for a symlink, a bf(D) for a device, and a bf(S) for a
1522 special file (e.g. named sockets and fifos).
1524 The other letters in the string above are the actual letters that
1525 will be output if the associated attribute for the item is being updated or
1526 a "." for no change. Three exceptions to this are: (1) a newly created
1527 item replaces each letter with a "+", (2) an identical item replaces the
1528 dots with spaces, and (3) an unknown attribute replaces each letter with
1529 a "?" (this can happen when talking to an older rsync).
1531 The attribute that is associated with each letter is as follows:
1534 it() A bf(c) means the checksum of the file is different and will be
1535 updated by the file transfer (requires bf(--checksum)).
1536 it() A bf(s) means the size of the file is different and will be updated
1537 by the file transfer.
1538 it() A bf(t) means the modification time is different and is being updated
1539 to the sender's value (requires bf(--times)). An alternate value of bf(T)
1540 means that the modification time will be set to the transfer time, which happens
1541 anytime a symlink is transferred, or when a regular file or device is
1542 transferred without bf(--times).
1543 it() A bf(p) means the permissions are different and are being updated to
1544 the sender's value (requires bf(--perms)).
1545 it() An bf(o) means the owner is different and is being updated to the
1546 sender's value (requires bf(--owner) and super-user privileges).
1547 it() A bf(g) means the group is different and is being updated to the
1548 sender's value (requires bf(--group) and the authority to set the group).
1549 it() The bf(u) slot is reserved for reporting update (access) time changes
1550 (a feature that is not yet released).
1551 it() The bf(a) means that the ACL information changed.
1552 it() The bf(x) slot is reserved for reporting extended attribute changes
1553 (a feature that is not yet released).
1556 One other output is possible: when deleting files, the "%i" will output
1557 the string "*deleting" for each item that is being removed (assuming that
1558 you are talking to a recent enough rsync that it logs deletions instead of
1559 outputting them as a verbose message).
1561 dit(bf(--out-format=FORMAT)) This allows you to specify exactly what the
1562 rsync client outputs to the user on a per-update basis. The format is a text
1563 string containing embedded single-character escape sequences prefixed with
1564 a percent (%) character. For a list of the possible escape characters, see
1565 the "log format" setting in the rsyncd.conf manpage.
1567 Specifying this option will mention each file, dir, etc. that gets updated
1568 in a significant way (a transferred file, a recreated symlink/device, or a
1569 touched directory). In addition, if the itemize-changes escape (%i) is
1570 included in the string, the logging of names increases to mention any
1571 item that is changed in any way (as long as the receiving side is at least
1572 2.6.4). See the bf(--itemize-changes) option for a description of the
1575 The bf(--verbose) option implies a format of "%n%L", but you can use
1576 bf(--out-format) without bf(--verbose) if you like, or you can override
1577 the format of its per-file output using this option.
1579 Rsync will output the out-format string prior to a file's transfer unless
1580 one of the transfer-statistic escapes is requested, in which case the
1581 logging is done at the end of the file's transfer. When this late logging
1582 is in effect and bf(--progress) is also specified, rsync will also output
1583 the name of the file being transferred prior to its progress information
1584 (followed, of course, by the out-format output).
1586 dit(bf(--log-file=FILE)) This option causes rsync to log what it is doing
1587 to a file. This is similar to the logging that a daemon does, but can be
1588 requested for the client side and/or the server side of a non-daemon
1589 transfer. If specified as a client option, transfer logging will be
1590 enabled with a default format of "%i %n%L". See the bf(--log-file-format)
1591 option if you wish to override this.
1593 Here's a example command that requests the remote side to log what is
1596 verb( rsync -av --rsync-path="rsync --log-file=/tmp/rlog" src/ dest/)
1598 This is very useful if you need to debug why a connection is closing
1601 dit(bf(--log-file-format=FORMAT)) This allows you to specify exactly what
1602 per-update logging is put into the file specified by the bf(--log-file) option
1603 (which must also be specified for this option to have any effect). If you
1604 specify an empty string, updated files will not be mentioned in the log file.
1605 For a list of the possible escape characters, see the "log format" setting
1606 in the rsyncd.conf manpage.
1608 dit(bf(--stats)) This tells rsync to print a verbose set of statistics
1609 on the file transfer, allowing you to tell how effective the rsync
1610 algorithm is for your data.
1612 The current statistics are as follows: quote(itemization(
1613 it() bf(Number of files) is the count of all "files" (in the generic
1614 sense), which includes directories, symlinks, etc.
1615 it() bf(Number of files transferred) is the count of normal files that
1616 were updated via the rsync algorithm, which does not include created
1617 dirs, symlinks, etc.
1618 it() bf(Total file size) is the total sum of all file sizes in the transfer.
1619 This does not count any size for directories or special files, but does
1620 include the size of symlinks.
1621 it() bf(Total transferred file size) is the total sum of all files sizes
1622 for just the transferred files.
1623 it() bf(Literal data) is how much unmatched file-update data we had to
1624 send to the receiver for it to recreate the updated files.
1625 it() bf(Matched data) is how much data the receiver got locally when
1626 recreating the updated files.
1627 it() bf(File list size) is how big the file-list data was when the sender
1628 sent it to the receiver. This is smaller than the in-memory size for the
1629 file list due to some compressing of duplicated data when rsync sends the
1631 it() bf(File list generation time) is the number of seconds that the
1632 sender spent creating the file list. This requires a modern rsync on the
1633 sending side for this to be present.
1634 it() bf(File list transfer time) is the number of seconds that the sender
1635 spent sending the file list to the receiver.
1636 it() bf(Total bytes sent) is the count of all the bytes that rsync sent
1637 from the client side to the server side.
1638 it() bf(Total bytes received) is the count of all non-message bytes that
1639 rsync received by the client side from the server side. "Non-message"
1640 bytes means that we don't count the bytes for a verbose message that the
1641 server sent to us, which makes the stats more consistent.
1644 dit(bf(-8, --8-bit-output)) This tells rsync to leave all high-bit characters
1645 unescaped in the output instead of trying to test them to see if they're
1646 valid in the current locale and escaping the invalid ones. All control
1647 characters (but never tabs) are always escaped, regardless of this option's
1650 The escape idiom that started in 2.6.7 is to output a literal backslash (\)
1651 and a hash (#), followed by exactly 3 octal digits. For example, a newline
1652 would output as "\#012". A literal backslash that is in a filename is not
1653 escaped unless it is followed by a hash and 3 digits (0-9).
1655 dit(bf(-h, --human-readable)) Output numbers in a more human-readable format.
1656 This makes big numbers output using larger units, with a K, M, or G suffix. If
1657 this option was specified once, these units are K (1000), M (1000*1000), and
1658 G (1000*1000*1000); if the option is repeated, the units are powers of 1024
1661 dit(bf(--partial)) By default, rsync will delete any partially
1662 transferred file if the transfer is interrupted. In some circumstances
1663 it is more desirable to keep partially transferred files. Using the
1664 bf(--partial) option tells rsync to keep the partial file which should
1665 make a subsequent transfer of the rest of the file much faster.
1667 dit(bf(--partial-dir=DIR)) A better way to keep partial files than the
1668 bf(--partial) option is to specify a em(DIR) that will be used to hold the
1669 partial data (instead of writing it out to the destination file).
1670 On the next transfer, rsync will use a file found in this
1671 dir as data to speed up the resumption of the transfer and then delete it
1672 after it has served its purpose.
1674 Note that if bf(--whole-file) is specified (or implied), any partial-dir
1675 file that is found for a file that is being updated will simply be removed
1677 rsync is sending files without using the incremental rsync algorithm).
1679 Rsync will create the em(DIR) if it is missing (just the last dir -- not
1680 the whole path). This makes it easy to use a relative path (such as
1681 "bf(--partial-dir=.rsync-partial)") to have rsync create the
1682 partial-directory in the destination file's directory when needed, and then
1683 remove it again when the partial file is deleted.
1685 If the partial-dir value is not an absolute path, rsync will add an exclude
1686 rule at the end of all your existing excludes. This will prevent the
1687 sending of any partial-dir files that may exist on the sending side, and
1688 will also prevent the untimely deletion of partial-dir items on the
1689 receiving side. An example: the above bf(--partial-dir) option would add
1690 the equivalent of "bf(-f '-p .rsync-partial/')" at the end of any other
1693 If you are supplying your own exclude rules, you may need to add your own
1694 exclude/hide/protect rule for the partial-dir because (1) the auto-added
1695 rule may be ineffective at the end of your other rules, or (2) you may wish
1696 to override rsync's exclude choice. For instance, if you want to make
1697 rsync clean-up any left-over partial-dirs that may be lying around, you
1698 should specify bf(--delete-after) and add a "risk" filter rule, e.g.
1699 bf(-f 'R .rsync-partial/'). (Avoid using bf(--delete-before) or
1700 bf(--delete-during) unless you don't need rsync to use any of the
1701 left-over partial-dir data during the current run.)
1703 IMPORTANT: the bf(--partial-dir) should not be writable by other users or it
1704 is a security risk. E.g. AVOID "/tmp".
1706 You can also set the partial-dir value the RSYNC_PARTIAL_DIR environment
1707 variable. Setting this in the environment does not force bf(--partial) to be
1708 enabled, but rather it affects where partial files go when bf(--partial) is
1709 specified. For instance, instead of using bf(--partial-dir=.rsync-tmp)
1710 along with bf(--progress), you could set RSYNC_PARTIAL_DIR=.rsync-tmp in your
1711 environment and then just use the bf(-P) option to turn on the use of the
1712 .rsync-tmp dir for partial transfers. The only times that the bf(--partial)
1713 option does not look for this environment value are (1) when bf(--inplace) was
1714 specified (since bf(--inplace) conflicts with bf(--partial-dir)), and (2) when
1715 bf(--delay-updates) was specified (see below).
1717 For the purposes of the daemon-config's "refuse options" setting,
1718 bf(--partial-dir) does em(not) imply bf(--partial). This is so that a
1719 refusal of the bf(--partial) option can be used to disallow the overwriting
1720 of destination files with a partial transfer, while still allowing the
1721 safer idiom provided by bf(--partial-dir).
1723 dit(bf(--delay-updates)) This option puts the temporary file from each
1724 updated file into a holding directory until the end of the
1725 transfer, at which time all the files are renamed into place in rapid
1726 succession. This attempts to make the updating of the files a little more
1727 atomic. By default the files are placed into a directory named ".~tmp~" in
1728 each file's destination directory, but if you've specified the
1729 bf(--partial-dir) option, that directory will be used instead. See the
1730 comments in the bf(--partial-dir) section for a discussion of how this
1731 ".~tmp~" dir will be excluded from the transfer, and what you can do if
1732 you want rsync to cleanup old ".~tmp~" dirs that might be lying around.
1733 Conflicts with bf(--inplace) and bf(--append).
1735 This option uses more memory on the receiving side (one bit per file
1736 transferred) and also requires enough free disk space on the receiving
1737 side to hold an additional copy of all the updated files. Note also that
1738 you should not use an absolute path to bf(--partial-dir) unless (1)
1740 chance of any of the files in the transfer having the same name (since all
1741 the updated files will be put into a single directory if the path is
1743 and (2) there are no mount points in the hierarchy (since the
1744 delayed updates will fail if they can't be renamed into place).
1746 See also the "atomic-rsync" perl script in the "support" subdir for an
1747 update algorithm that is even more atomic (it uses bf(--link-dest) and a
1748 parallel hierarchy of files).
1750 dit(bf(-m, --prune-empty-dirs)) This option tells the receiving rsync to get
1751 rid of empty directories from the file-list, including nested directories
1752 that have no non-directory children. This is useful for avoiding the
1753 creation of a bunch of useless directories when the sending rsync is
1754 recursively scanning a hierarchy of files using include/exclude/filter
1757 Because the file-list is actually being pruned, this option also affects
1758 what directories get deleted when a delete is active. However, keep in
1759 mind that excluded files and directories can prevent existing items from
1760 being deleted (because an exclude hides source files and protects
1763 You can prevent the pruning of certain empty directories from the file-list
1764 by using a global "protect" filter. For instance, this option would ensure
1765 that the directory "emptydir" was kept in the file-list:
1767 quote( --filter 'protect emptydir/')
1769 Here's an example that copies all .pdf files in a hierarchy, only creating
1770 the necessary destination directories to hold the .pdf files, and ensures
1771 that any superfluous files and directories in the destination are removed
1772 (note the hide filter of non-directories being used instead of an exclude):
1774 quote( rsync -avm --del --include='*.pdf' -f 'hide,! */' src/ dest)
1776 If you didn't want to remove superfluous destination files, the more
1777 time-honored options of "bf(--include='*/' --exclude='*')" would work fine
1778 in place of the hide-filter (if that is more natural to you).
1780 dit(bf(--progress)) This option tells rsync to print information
1781 showing the progress of the transfer. This gives a bored user
1783 Implies bf(--verbose) if it wasn't already specified.
1785 While rsync is transferring a regular file, it updates a progress line that
1788 verb( 782448 63% 110.64kB/s 0:00:04)
1790 In this example, the receiver has reconstructed 782448 bytes or 63% of the
1791 sender's file, which is being reconstructed at a rate of 110.64 kilobytes
1792 per second, and the transfer will finish in 4 seconds if the current rate
1793 is maintained until the end.
1795 These statistics can be misleading if the incremental transfer algorithm is
1796 in use. For example, if the sender's file consists of the basis file
1797 followed by additional data, the reported rate will probably drop
1798 dramatically when the receiver gets to the literal data, and the transfer
1799 will probably take much longer to finish than the receiver estimated as it
1800 was finishing the matched part of the file.
1802 When the file transfer finishes, rsync replaces the progress line with a
1803 summary line that looks like this:
1805 verb( 1238099 100% 146.38kB/s 0:00:08 (xfer#5, to-check=169/396))
1807 In this example, the file was 1238099 bytes long in total, the average rate
1808 of transfer for the whole file was 146.38 kilobytes per second over the 8
1809 seconds that it took to complete, it was the 5th transfer of a regular file
1810 during the current rsync session, and there are 169 more files for the
1811 receiver to check (to see if they are up-to-date or not) remaining out of
1812 the 396 total files in the file-list.
1814 dit(bf(-P)) The bf(-P) option is equivalent to bf(--partial) bf(--progress). Its
1815 purpose is to make it much easier to specify these two options for a long
1816 transfer that may be interrupted.
1818 dit(bf(--password-file)) This option allows you to provide a password in a
1819 file for accessing an rsync daemon. The file must not be world readable.
1820 It should contain just the password as a single line.
1822 When accessing an rsync daemon using a remote shell as the transport, this
1823 option only comes into effect after the remote shell finishes its
1824 authentication (i.e. if you have also specified a password in the daemon's
1827 dit(bf(--list-only)) This option will cause the source files to be listed
1828 instead of transferred. This option is inferred if there is a single source
1829 arg and no destination specified, so its main uses are: (1) to turn a copy
1830 command that includes a
1831 destination arg into a file-listing command, (2) to be able to specify more
1832 than one local source arg (note: be sure to include the destination), or
1833 (3) to avoid the automatically added "bf(-r --exclude='/*/*')" options that
1834 rsync usually uses as a compatibility kluge when generating a non-recursive
1835 listing. Caution: keep in mind that a source arg with a wild-card is expanded
1836 by the shell into multiple args, so it is never safe to try to list such an arg
1837 without using this option. For example:
1839 verb( rsync -av --list-only foo* dest/)
1841 dit(bf(--bwlimit=KBPS)) This option allows you to specify a maximum
1842 transfer rate in kilobytes per second. This option is most effective when
1843 using rsync with large files (several megabytes and up). Due to the nature
1844 of rsync transfers, blocks of data are sent, then if rsync determines the
1845 transfer was too fast, it will wait before sending the next data block. The
1846 result is an average transfer rate equaling the specified limit. A value
1847 of zero specifies no limit.
1849 dit(bf(--write-batch=FILE)) Record a file that can later be applied to
1850 another identical destination with bf(--read-batch). See the "BATCH MODE"
1851 section for details, and also the bf(--only-write-batch) option.
1853 dit(bf(--only-write-batch=FILE)) Works like bf(--write-batch), except that
1854 no updates are made on the destination system when creating the batch.
1855 This lets you transport the changes to the destination system via some
1856 other means and then apply the changes via bf(--read-batch).
1858 Note that you can feel free to write the batch directly to some portable
1859 media: if this media fills to capacity before the end of the transfer, you
1860 can just apply that partial transfer to the destination and repeat the
1861 whole process to get the rest of the changes (as long as you don't mind a
1862 partially updated destination system while the multi-update cycle is
1865 Also note that you only save bandwidth when pushing changes to a remote
1866 system because this allows the batched data to be diverted from the sender
1867 into the batch file without having to flow over the wire to the receiver
1868 (when pulling, the sender is remote, and thus can't write the batch).
1870 dit(bf(--read-batch=FILE)) Apply all of the changes stored in FILE, a
1871 file previously generated by bf(--write-batch).
1872 If em(FILE) is bf(-), the batch data will be read from standard input.
1873 See the "BATCH MODE" section for details.
1875 dit(bf(--protocol=NUM)) Force an older protocol version to be used. This
1876 is useful for creating a batch file that is compatible with an older
1877 version of rsync. For instance, if rsync 2.6.4 is being used with the
1878 bf(--write-batch) option, but rsync 2.6.3 is what will be used to run the
1879 bf(--read-batch) option, you should use "--protocol=28" when creating the
1880 batch file to force the older protocol version to be used in the batch
1881 file (assuming you can't upgrade the rsync on the reading system).
1883 dit(bf(--iconv=CONVERT_SPEC)) Rsync can convert filenames between character
1884 sets using this option. Using a CONVERT_SPEC of "." tells rsync to look up
1885 the default character-set via the locale setting. Alternately, you can
1886 fully specify what conversion to do by giving a local and a remote charset
1887 separated by a comma (local first), e.g. bf(--iconv=utf8,iso88591).
1888 Finally, you can specify a CONVERT_SPEC of "-" to turn off any conversion.
1889 The default setting of this option is site-specific, and can also be
1890 affected via the RSYNC_ICONV environment variable.
1892 Note that rsync does not do any conversion of names in filter files
1893 (including include/exclude files), in a files-from file, nor those
1894 specified on the command line. It is up to you to ensure that you're
1895 requesting the right names from a remote server, and you can specify
1896 extra include/exclude rules if there are filename differences on the
1897 two sides that need to be accounted for. (In the future there may be
1898 a way to specify a UTF-8 filter rule that gets auto-converted to the
1899 local side's character set.)
1901 dit(bf(-4, --ipv4) or bf(-6, --ipv6)) Tells rsync to prefer IPv4/IPv6
1902 when creating sockets. This only affects sockets that rsync has direct
1903 control over, such as the outgoing socket when directly contacting an
1904 rsync daemon. See also these options in the bf(--daemon) mode section.
1906 dit(bf(--checksum-seed=NUM)) Set the MD4 checksum seed to the integer
1907 NUM. This 4 byte checksum seed is included in each block and file
1908 MD4 checksum calculation. By default the checksum seed is generated
1909 by the server and defaults to the current code(time()). This option
1910 is used to set a specific checksum seed, which is useful for
1911 applications that want repeatable block and file checksums, or
1912 in the case where the user wants a more random checksum seed.
1913 Note that setting NUM to 0 causes rsync to use the default of code(time())
1917 manpagesection(DAEMON OPTIONS)
1919 The options allowed when starting an rsync daemon are as follows:
1922 dit(bf(--daemon)) This tells rsync that it is to run as a daemon. The
1923 daemon you start running may be accessed using an rsync client using
1924 the bf(host::module) or bf(rsync://host/module/) syntax.
1926 If standard input is a socket then rsync will assume that it is being
1927 run via inetd, otherwise it will detach from the current terminal and
1928 become a background daemon. The daemon will read the config file
1929 (rsyncd.conf) on each connect made by a client and respond to
1930 requests accordingly. See the bf(rsyncd.conf)(5) man page for more
1933 dit(bf(--address)) By default rsync will bind to the wildcard address when
1934 run as a daemon with the bf(--daemon) option. The bf(--address) option
1935 allows you to specify a specific IP address (or hostname) to bind to. This
1936 makes virtual hosting possible in conjunction with the bf(--config) option.
1937 See also the "address" global option in the rsyncd.conf manpage.
1939 dit(bf(--bwlimit=KBPS)) This option allows you to specify a maximum
1940 transfer rate in kilobytes per second for the data the daemon sends.
1941 The client can still specify a smaller bf(--bwlimit) value, but their
1942 requested value will be rounded down if they try to exceed it. See the
1943 client version of this option (above) for some extra details.
1945 dit(bf(--config=FILE)) This specifies an alternate config file than
1946 the default. This is only relevant when bf(--daemon) is specified.
1947 The default is /etc/rsyncd.conf unless the daemon is running over
1948 a remote shell program and the remote user is not the super-user; in that case
1949 the default is rsyncd.conf in the current directory (typically $HOME).
1951 dit(bf(--no-detach)) When running as a daemon, this option instructs
1952 rsync to not detach itself and become a background process. This
1953 option is required when running as a service on Cygwin, and may also
1954 be useful when rsync is supervised by a program such as
1955 bf(daemontools) or AIX's bf(System Resource Controller).
1956 bf(--no-detach) is also recommended when rsync is run under a
1957 debugger. This option has no effect if rsync is run from inetd or
1960 dit(bf(--port=PORT)) This specifies an alternate TCP port number for the
1961 daemon to listen on rather than the default of 873. See also the "port"
1962 global option in the rsyncd.conf manpage.
1964 dit(bf(--log-file=FILE)) This option tells the rsync daemon to use the
1965 given log-file name instead of using the "log file" setting in the config
1968 dit(bf(--log-file-format=FORMAT)) This option tells the rsync daemon to use the
1969 given FORMAT string instead of using the "log format" setting in the config
1970 file. It also enables "transfer logging" unless the string is empty, in which
1971 case transfer logging is turned off.
1973 dit(bf(--sockopts)) This overrides the bf(socket options) setting in the
1974 rsyncd.conf file and has the same syntax.
1976 dit(bf(-v, --verbose)) This option increases the amount of information the
1977 daemon logs during its startup phase. After the client connects, the
1978 daemon's verbosity level will be controlled by the options that the client
1979 used and the "max verbosity" setting in the module's config section.
1981 dit(bf(-4, --ipv4) or bf(-6, --ipv6)) Tells rsync to prefer IPv4/IPv6
1982 when creating the incoming sockets that the rsync daemon will use to
1983 listen for connections. One of these options may be required in older
1984 versions of Linux to work around an IPv6 bug in the kernel (if you see
1985 an "address already in use" error when nothing else is using the port,
1986 try specifying bf(--ipv6) or bf(--ipv4) when starting the daemon).
1988 dit(bf(-h, --help)) When specified after bf(--daemon), print a short help
1989 page describing the options available for starting an rsync daemon.
1992 manpagesection(FILTER RULES)
1994 The filter rules allow for flexible selection of which files to transfer
1995 (include) and which files to skip (exclude). The rules either directly
1996 specify include/exclude patterns or they specify a way to acquire more
1997 include/exclude patterns (e.g. to read them from a file).
1999 As the list of files/directories to transfer is built, rsync checks each
2000 name to be transferred against the list of include/exclude patterns in
2001 turn, and the first matching pattern is acted on: if it is an exclude
2002 pattern, then that file is skipped; if it is an include pattern then that
2003 filename is not skipped; if no matching pattern is found, then the
2004 filename is not skipped.
2006 Rsync builds an ordered list of filter rules as specified on the
2007 command-line. Filter rules have the following syntax:
2010 tt(RULE [PATTERN_OR_FILENAME])nl()
2011 tt(RULE,MODIFIERS [PATTERN_OR_FILENAME])nl()
2014 You have your choice of using either short or long RULE names, as described
2015 below. If you use a short-named rule, the ',' separating the RULE from the
2016 MODIFIERS is optional. The PATTERN or FILENAME that follows (when present)
2017 must come after either a single space or an underscore (_).
2018 Here are the available rule prefixes:
2021 bf(exclude, -) specifies an exclude pattern. nl()
2022 bf(include, +) specifies an include pattern. nl()
2023 bf(merge, .) specifies a merge-file to read for more rules. nl()
2024 bf(dir-merge, :) specifies a per-directory merge-file. nl()
2025 bf(hide, H) specifies a pattern for hiding files from the transfer. nl()
2026 bf(show, S) files that match the pattern are not hidden. nl()
2027 bf(protect, P) specifies a pattern for protecting files from deletion. nl()
2028 bf(risk, R) files that match the pattern are not protected. nl()
2029 bf(clear, !) clears the current include/exclude list (takes no arg) nl()
2032 When rules are being read from a file, empty lines are ignored, as are
2033 comment lines that start with a "#".
2035 Note that the bf(--include)/bf(--exclude) command-line options do not allow the
2036 full range of rule parsing as described above -- they only allow the
2037 specification of include/exclude patterns plus a "!" token to clear the
2038 list (and the normal comment parsing when rules are read from a file).
2040 does not begin with "- " (dash, space) or "+ " (plus, space), then the
2041 rule will be interpreted as if "+ " (for an include option) or "- " (for
2042 an exclude option) were prefixed to the string. A bf(--filter) option, on
2043 the other hand, must always contain either a short or long rule name at the
2046 Note also that the bf(--filter), bf(--include), and bf(--exclude) options take one
2047 rule/pattern each. To add multiple ones, you can repeat the options on
2048 the command-line, use the merge-file syntax of the bf(--filter) option, or
2049 the bf(--include-from)/bf(--exclude-from) options.
2051 manpagesection(INCLUDE/EXCLUDE PATTERN RULES)
2053 You can include and exclude files by specifying patterns using the "+",
2054 "-", etc. filter rules (as introduced in the FILTER RULES section above).
2055 The include/exclude rules each specify a pattern that is matched against
2056 the names of the files that are going to be transferred. These patterns
2057 can take several forms:
2060 it() if the pattern starts with a / then it is anchored to a
2061 particular spot in the hierarchy of files, otherwise it is matched
2062 against the end of the pathname. This is similar to a leading ^ in
2063 regular expressions.
2064 Thus "/foo" would match a name of "foo" at either the "root of the
2065 transfer" (for a global rule) or in the merge-file's directory (for a
2066 per-directory rule).
2067 An unqualified "foo" would match a name of "foo" anywhere in the
2068 tree because the algorithm is applied recursively from the
2069 top down; it behaves as if each path component gets a turn at being the
2070 end of the filename. Even the unanchored "sub/foo" would match at
2071 any point in the hierarchy where a "foo" was found within a directory
2072 named "sub". See the section on ANCHORING INCLUDE/EXCLUDE PATTERNS for
2073 a full discussion of how to specify a pattern that matches at the root
2075 it() if the pattern ends with a / then it will only match a
2076 directory, not a regular file, symlink, or device.
2077 it() rsync chooses between doing a simple string match and wildcard
2078 matching by checking if the pattern contains one of these three wildcard
2079 characters: '*', '?', and '[' .
2080 it() a '*' matches any non-empty path component (it stops at slashes).
2081 it() use '**' to match anything, including slashes.
2082 it() a '?' matches any character except a slash (/).
2083 it() a '[' introduces a character class, such as [a-z] or [[:alpha:]].
2084 it() in a wildcard pattern, a backslash can be used to escape a wildcard
2085 character, but it is matched literally when no wildcards are present.
2086 it() if the pattern contains a / (not counting a trailing /) or a "**",
2087 then it is matched against the full pathname, including any leading
2088 directories. If the pattern doesn't contain a / or a "**", then it is
2089 matched only against the final component of the filename.
2090 (Remember that the algorithm is applied recursively so "full filename"
2091 can actually be any portion of a path from the starting directory on
2093 it() a trailing "dir_name/***" will match both the directory (as if
2094 "dir_name/" had been specified) and everything in the directory
2095 (as if "dir_name/**" had been specified). This behavior was added in
2099 Note that, when using the bf(--recursive) (bf(-r)) option (which is implied by
2100 bf(-a)), every subcomponent of every path is visited from the top down, so
2101 include/exclude patterns get applied recursively to each subcomponent's
2102 full name (e.g. to include "/foo/bar/baz" the subcomponents "/foo" and
2103 "/foo/bar" must not be excluded).
2104 The exclude patterns actually short-circuit the directory traversal stage
2105 when rsync finds the files to send. If a pattern excludes a particular
2106 parent directory, it can render a deeper include pattern ineffectual
2107 because rsync did not descend through that excluded section of the
2108 hierarchy. This is particularly important when using a trailing '*' rule.
2109 For instance, this won't work:
2112 tt(+ /some/path/this-file-will-not-be-found)nl()
2113 tt(+ /file-is-included)nl()
2117 This fails because the parent directory "some" is excluded by the '*'
2118 rule, so rsync never visits any of the files in the "some" or "some/path"
2119 directories. One solution is to ask for all directories in the hierarchy
2120 to be included by using a single rule: "+ */" (put it somewhere before the
2121 "- *" rule), and perhaps use the bf(--prune-empty-dirs) option. Another
2122 solution is to add specific include rules for all
2123 the parent dirs that need to be visited. For instance, this set of rules
2128 tt(+ /some/path/)nl()
2129 tt(+ /some/path/this-file-is-found)nl()
2130 tt(+ /file-also-included)nl()
2134 Here are some examples of exclude/include matching:
2137 it() "- *.o" would exclude all names matching *.o
2138 it() "- /foo" would exclude a file (or directory) named foo in the
2139 transfer-root directory
2140 it() "- foo/" would exclude any directory named foo
2141 it() "- /foo/*/bar" would exclude any file named bar which is at two
2142 levels below a directory named foo in the transfer-root directory
2143 it() "- /foo/**/bar" would exclude any file named bar two
2144 or more levels below a directory named foo in the transfer-root directory
2145 it() The combination of "+ */", "+ *.c", and "- *" would include all
2146 directories and C source files but nothing else (see also the
2147 bf(--prune-empty-dirs) option)
2148 it() The combination of "+ foo/", "+ foo/bar.c", and "- *" would include
2149 only the foo directory and foo/bar.c (the foo directory must be
2150 explicitly included or it would be excluded by the "*")
2153 manpagesection(MERGE-FILE FILTER RULES)
2155 You can merge whole files into your filter rules by specifying either a
2156 merge (.) or a dir-merge (:) filter rule (as introduced in the FILTER RULES
2159 There are two kinds of merged files -- single-instance ('.') and
2160 per-directory (':'). A single-instance merge file is read one time, and
2161 its rules are incorporated into the filter list in the place of the "."
2162 rule. For per-directory merge files, rsync will scan every directory that
2163 it traverses for the named file, merging its contents when the file exists
2164 into the current list of inherited rules. These per-directory rule files
2165 must be created on the sending side because it is the sending side that is
2166 being scanned for the available files to transfer. These rule files may
2167 also need to be transferred to the receiving side if you want them to
2168 affect what files don't get deleted (see PER-DIRECTORY RULES AND DELETE
2174 tt(merge /etc/rsync/default.rules)nl()
2175 tt(. /etc/rsync/default.rules)nl()
2176 tt(dir-merge .per-dir-filter)nl()
2177 tt(dir-merge,n- .non-inherited-per-dir-excludes)nl()
2178 tt(:n- .non-inherited-per-dir-excludes)nl()
2181 The following modifiers are accepted after a merge or dir-merge rule:
2184 it() A bf(-) specifies that the file should consist of only exclude
2185 patterns, with no other rule-parsing except for in-file comments.
2186 it() A bf(+) specifies that the file should consist of only include
2187 patterns, with no other rule-parsing except for in-file comments.
2188 it() A bf(C) is a way to specify that the file should be read in a
2189 CVS-compatible manner. This turns on 'n', 'w', and '-', but also
2190 allows the list-clearing token (!) to be specified. If no filename is
2191 provided, ".cvsignore" is assumed.
2192 it() A bf(e) will exclude the merge-file name from the transfer; e.g.
2193 "dir-merge,e .rules" is like "dir-merge .rules" and "- .rules".
2194 it() An bf(n) specifies that the rules are not inherited by subdirectories.
2195 it() A bf(w) specifies that the rules are word-split on whitespace instead
2196 of the normal line-splitting. This also turns off comments. Note: the
2197 space that separates the prefix from the rule is treated specially, so
2198 "- foo + bar" is parsed as two rules (assuming that prefix-parsing wasn't
2200 it() You may also specify any of the modifiers for the "+" or "-" rules
2201 (below) in order to have the rules that are read in from the file
2202 default to having that modifier set. For instance, "merge,-/ .excl" would
2203 treat the contents of .excl as absolute-path excludes,
2204 while "dir-merge,s .filt" and ":sC" would each make all their
2205 per-directory rules apply only on the sending side.
2208 The following modifiers are accepted after a "+" or "-":
2211 it() A bf(/) specifies that the include/exclude rule should be matched
2212 against the absolute pathname of the current item. For example,
2213 "-/ /etc/passwd" would exclude the passwd file any time the transfer
2214 was sending files from the "/etc" directory, and "-/ subdir/foo"
2215 would always exclude "foo" when it is in a dir named "subdir", even
2216 if "foo" is at the root of the current transfer.
2217 it() A bf(!) specifies that the include/exclude should take effect if
2218 the pattern fails to match. For instance, "-! */" would exclude all
2220 it() A bf(C) is used to indicate that all the global CVS-exclude rules
2221 should be inserted as excludes in place of the "-C". No arg should
2223 it() An bf(s) is used to indicate that the rule applies to the sending
2224 side. When a rule affects the sending side, it prevents files from
2225 being transferred. The default is for a rule to affect both sides
2226 unless bf(--delete-excluded) was specified, in which case default rules
2227 become sender-side only. See also the hide (H) and show (S) rules,
2228 which are an alternate way to specify sending-side includes/excludes.
2229 it() An bf(r) is used to indicate that the rule applies to the receiving
2230 side. When a rule affects the receiving side, it prevents files from
2231 being deleted. See the bf(s) modifier for more info. See also the
2232 protect (P) and risk (R) rules, which are an alternate way to
2233 specify receiver-side includes/excludes.
2234 it() A bf(p) indicates that a rule is perishable, meaning that it is
2235 ignored in directories that are being deleted. For instance, the bf(-C)
2236 option's default rules that exclude things like "CVS" and "*.o" are
2237 marked as perishable, and will not prevent a directory that was removed
2238 on the source from being deleted on the destination.
2241 Per-directory rules are inherited in all subdirectories of the directory
2242 where the merge-file was found unless the 'n' modifier was used. Each
2243 subdirectory's rules are prefixed to the inherited per-directory rules
2244 from its parents, which gives the newest rules a higher priority than the
2245 inherited rules. The entire set of dir-merge rules are grouped together in
2246 the spot where the merge-file was specified, so it is possible to override
2247 dir-merge rules via a rule that got specified earlier in the list of global
2248 rules. When the list-clearing rule ("!") is read from a per-directory
2249 file, it only clears the inherited rules for the current merge file.
2251 Another way to prevent a single rule from a dir-merge file from being inherited is to
2252 anchor it with a leading slash. Anchored rules in a per-directory
2253 merge-file are relative to the merge-file's directory, so a pattern "/foo"
2254 would only match the file "foo" in the directory where the dir-merge filter
2257 Here's an example filter file which you'd specify via bf(--filter=". file":)
2260 tt(merge /home/user/.global-filter)nl()
2262 tt(dir-merge .rules)nl()
2267 This will merge the contents of the /home/user/.global-filter file at the
2268 start of the list and also turns the ".rules" filename into a per-directory
2269 filter file. All rules read in prior to the start of the directory scan
2270 follow the global anchoring rules (i.e. a leading slash matches at the root
2273 If a per-directory merge-file is specified with a path that is a parent
2274 directory of the first transfer directory, rsync will scan all the parent
2275 dirs from that starting point to the transfer directory for the indicated
2276 per-directory file. For instance, here is a common filter (see bf(-F)):
2278 quote(tt(--filter=': /.rsync-filter'))
2280 That rule tells rsync to scan for the file .rsync-filter in all
2281 directories from the root down through the parent directory of the
2282 transfer prior to the start of the normal directory scan of the file in
2283 the directories that are sent as a part of the transfer. (Note: for an
2284 rsync daemon, the root is always the same as the module's "path".)
2286 Some examples of this pre-scanning for per-directory files:
2289 tt(rsync -avF /src/path/ /dest/dir)nl()
2290 tt(rsync -av --filter=': ../../.rsync-filter' /src/path/ /dest/dir)nl()
2291 tt(rsync -av --filter=': .rsync-filter' /src/path/ /dest/dir)nl()
2294 The first two commands above will look for ".rsync-filter" in "/" and
2295 "/src" before the normal scan begins looking for the file in "/src/path"
2296 and its subdirectories. The last command avoids the parent-dir scan
2297 and only looks for the ".rsync-filter" files in each directory that is
2298 a part of the transfer.
2300 If you want to include the contents of a ".cvsignore" in your patterns,
2301 you should use the rule ":C", which creates a dir-merge of the .cvsignore
2302 file, but parsed in a CVS-compatible manner. You can
2303 use this to affect where the bf(--cvs-exclude) (bf(-C)) option's inclusion of the
2304 per-directory .cvsignore file gets placed into your rules by putting the
2305 ":C" wherever you like in your filter rules. Without this, rsync would
2306 add the dir-merge rule for the .cvsignore file at the end of all your other
2307 rules (giving it a lower priority than your command-line rules). For
2311 tt(cat <<EOT | rsync -avC --filter='. -' a/ b)nl()
2316 tt(rsync -avC --include=foo.o -f :C --exclude='*.old' a/ b)nl()
2319 Both of the above rsync commands are identical. Each one will merge all
2320 the per-directory .cvsignore rules in the middle of the list rather than
2321 at the end. This allows their dir-specific rules to supersede the rules
2322 that follow the :C instead of being subservient to all your rules. To
2323 affect the other CVS exclude rules (i.e. the default list of exclusions,
2324 the contents of $HOME/.cvsignore, and the value of $CVSIGNORE) you should
2325 omit the bf(-C) command-line option and instead insert a "-C" rule into
2326 your filter rules; e.g. "bf(--filter=-C)".
2328 manpagesection(LIST-CLEARING FILTER RULE)
2330 You can clear the current include/exclude list by using the "!" filter
2331 rule (as introduced in the FILTER RULES section above). The "current"
2332 list is either the global list of rules (if the rule is encountered while
2333 parsing the filter options) or a set of per-directory rules (which are
2334 inherited in their own sub-list, so a subdirectory can use this to clear
2335 out the parent's rules).
2337 manpagesection(ANCHORING INCLUDE/EXCLUDE PATTERNS)
2339 As mentioned earlier, global include/exclude patterns are anchored at the
2340 "root of the transfer" (as opposed to per-directory patterns, which are
2341 anchored at the merge-file's directory). If you think of the transfer as
2342 a subtree of names that are being sent from sender to receiver, the
2343 transfer-root is where the tree starts to be duplicated in the destination
2344 directory. This root governs where patterns that start with a / match.
2346 Because the matching is relative to the transfer-root, changing the
2347 trailing slash on a source path or changing your use of the bf(--relative)
2348 option affects the path you need to use in your matching (in addition to
2349 changing how much of the file tree is duplicated on the destination
2350 host). The following examples demonstrate this.
2352 Let's say that we want to match two source files, one with an absolute
2353 path of "/home/me/foo/bar", and one with a path of "/home/you/bar/baz".
2354 Here is how the various command choices differ for a 2-source transfer:
2357 Example cmd: rsync -a /home/me /home/you /dest nl()
2358 +/- pattern: /me/foo/bar nl()
2359 +/- pattern: /you/bar/baz nl()
2360 Target file: /dest/me/foo/bar nl()
2361 Target file: /dest/you/bar/baz nl()
2365 Example cmd: rsync -a /home/me/ /home/you/ /dest nl()
2366 +/- pattern: /foo/bar (note missing "me") nl()
2367 +/- pattern: /bar/baz (note missing "you") nl()
2368 Target file: /dest/foo/bar nl()
2369 Target file: /dest/bar/baz nl()
2373 Example cmd: rsync -a --relative /home/me/ /home/you /dest nl()
2374 +/- pattern: /home/me/foo/bar (note full path) nl()
2375 +/- pattern: /home/you/bar/baz (ditto) nl()
2376 Target file: /dest/home/me/foo/bar nl()
2377 Target file: /dest/home/you/bar/baz nl()
2381 Example cmd: cd /home; rsync -a --relative me/foo you/ /dest nl()
2382 +/- pattern: /me/foo/bar (starts at specified path) nl()
2383 +/- pattern: /you/bar/baz (ditto) nl()
2384 Target file: /dest/me/foo/bar nl()
2385 Target file: /dest/you/bar/baz nl()
2388 The easiest way to see what name you should filter is to just
2389 look at the output when using bf(--verbose) and put a / in front of the name
2390 (use the bf(--dry-run) option if you're not yet ready to copy any files).
2392 manpagesection(PER-DIRECTORY RULES AND DELETE)
2394 Without a delete option, per-directory rules are only relevant on the
2395 sending side, so you can feel free to exclude the merge files themselves
2396 without affecting the transfer. To make this easy, the 'e' modifier adds
2397 this exclude for you, as seen in these two equivalent commands:
2400 tt(rsync -av --filter=': .excl' --exclude=.excl host:src/dir /dest)nl()
2401 tt(rsync -av --filter=':e .excl' host:src/dir /dest)nl()
2404 However, if you want to do a delete on the receiving side AND you want some
2405 files to be excluded from being deleted, you'll need to be sure that the
2406 receiving side knows what files to exclude. The easiest way is to include
2407 the per-directory merge files in the transfer and use bf(--delete-after),
2408 because this ensures that the receiving side gets all the same exclude
2409 rules as the sending side before it tries to delete anything:
2411 quote(tt(rsync -avF --delete-after host:src/dir /dest))
2413 However, if the merge files are not a part of the transfer, you'll need to
2414 either specify some global exclude rules (i.e. specified on the command
2415 line), or you'll need to maintain your own per-directory merge files on
2416 the receiving side. An example of the first is this (assume that the
2417 remote .rules files exclude themselves):
2419 verb(rsync -av --filter=': .rules' --filter='. /my/extra.rules'
2420 --delete host:src/dir /dest)
2422 In the above example the extra.rules file can affect both sides of the
2423 transfer, but (on the sending side) the rules are subservient to the rules
2424 merged from the .rules files because they were specified after the
2425 per-directory merge rule.
2427 In one final example, the remote side is excluding the .rsync-filter
2428 files from the transfer, but we want to use our own .rsync-filter files
2429 to control what gets deleted on the receiving side. To do this we must
2430 specifically exclude the per-directory merge files (so that they don't get
2431 deleted) and then put rules into the local files to control what else
2432 should not get deleted. Like one of these commands:
2434 verb( rsync -av --filter=':e /.rsync-filter' --delete \
2436 rsync -avFF --delete host:src/dir /dest)
2438 manpagesection(BATCH MODE)
2440 Batch mode can be used to apply the same set of updates to many
2441 identical systems. Suppose one has a tree which is replicated on a
2442 number of hosts. Now suppose some changes have been made to this
2443 source tree and those changes need to be propagated to the other
2444 hosts. In order to do this using batch mode, rsync is run with the
2445 write-batch option to apply the changes made to the source tree to one
2446 of the destination trees. The write-batch option causes the rsync
2447 client to store in a "batch file" all the information needed to repeat
2448 this operation against other, identical destination trees.
2450 To apply the recorded changes to another destination tree, run rsync
2451 with the read-batch option, specifying the name of the same batch
2452 file, and the destination tree. Rsync updates the destination tree
2453 using the information stored in the batch file.
2455 For convenience, one additional file is creating when the write-batch
2456 option is used. This file's name is created by appending
2457 ".sh" to the batch filename. The .sh file contains
2458 a command-line suitable for updating a destination tree using that
2459 batch file. It can be executed using a Bourne (or Bourne-like) shell,
2461 passing in an alternate destination tree pathname which is then used
2462 instead of the original path. This is useful when the destination tree
2463 path differs from the original destination tree path.
2465 Generating the batch file once saves having to perform the file
2466 status, checksum, and data block generation more than once when
2467 updating multiple destination trees. Multicast transport protocols can
2468 be used to transfer the batch update files in parallel to many hosts
2469 at once, instead of sending the same data to every host individually.
2474 tt($ rsync --write-batch=foo -a host:/source/dir/ /adest/dir/)nl()
2475 tt($ scp foo* remote:)nl()
2476 tt($ ssh remote ./foo.sh /bdest/dir/)nl()
2480 tt($ rsync --write-batch=foo -a /source/dir/ /adest/dir/)nl()
2481 tt($ ssh remote rsync --read-batch=- -a /bdest/dir/ <foo)nl()
2484 In these examples, rsync is used to update /adest/dir/ from /source/dir/
2485 and the information to repeat this operation is stored in "foo" and
2486 "foo.sh". The host "remote" is then updated with the batched data going
2487 into the directory /bdest/dir. The differences between the two examples
2488 reveals some of the flexibility you have in how you deal with batches:
2491 it() The first example shows that the initial copy doesn't have to be
2492 local -- you can push or pull data to/from a remote host using either the
2493 remote-shell syntax or rsync daemon syntax, as desired.
2494 it() The first example uses the created "foo.sh" file to get the right
2495 rsync options when running the read-batch command on the remote host.
2496 it() The second example reads the batch data via standard input so that
2497 the batch file doesn't need to be copied to the remote machine first.
2498 This example avoids the foo.sh script because it needed to use a modified
2499 bf(--read-batch) option, but you could edit the script file if you wished to
2500 make use of it (just be sure that no other option is trying to use
2501 standard input, such as the "bf(--exclude-from=-)" option).
2506 The read-batch option expects the destination tree that it is updating
2507 to be identical to the destination tree that was used to create the
2508 batch update fileset. When a difference between the destination trees
2509 is encountered the update might be discarded with a warning (if the file
2510 appears to be up-to-date already) or the file-update may be attempted
2511 and then, if the file fails to verify, the update discarded with an
2512 error. This means that it should be safe to re-run a read-batch operation
2513 if the command got interrupted. If you wish to force the batched-update to
2514 always be attempted regardless of the file's size and date, use the bf(-I)
2515 option (when reading the batch).
2516 If an error occurs, the destination tree will probably be in a
2517 partially updated state. In that case, rsync can
2518 be used in its regular (non-batch) mode of operation to fix up the
2521 The rsync version used on all destinations must be at least as new as the
2522 one used to generate the batch file. Rsync will die with an error if the
2523 protocol version in the batch file is too new for the batch-reading rsync
2524 to handle. See also the bf(--protocol) option for a way to have the
2525 creating rsync generate a batch file that an older rsync can understand.
2526 (Note that batch files changed format in version 2.6.3, so mixing versions
2527 older than that with newer versions will not work.)
2529 When reading a batch file, rsync will force the value of certain options
2530 to match the data in the batch file if you didn't set them to the same
2531 as the batch-writing command. Other options can (and should) be changed.
2532 For instance bf(--write-batch) changes to bf(--read-batch),
2533 bf(--files-from) is dropped, and the
2534 bf(--filter)/bf(--include)/bf(--exclude) options are not needed unless
2535 one of the bf(--delete) options is specified.
2537 The code that creates the BATCH.sh file transforms any filter/include/exclude
2538 options into a single list that is appended as a "here" document to the
2539 shell script file. An advanced user can use this to modify the exclude
2540 list if a change in what gets deleted by bf(--delete) is desired. A normal
2541 user can ignore this detail and just use the shell script as an easy way
2542 to run the appropriate bf(--read-batch) command for the batched data.
2544 The original batch mode in rsync was based on "rsync+", but the latest
2545 version uses a new implementation.
2547 manpagesection(SYMBOLIC LINKS)
2549 Three basic behaviors are possible when rsync encounters a symbolic
2550 link in the source directory.
2552 By default, symbolic links are not transferred at all. A message
2553 "skipping non-regular" file is emitted for any symlinks that exist.
2555 If bf(--links) is specified, then symlinks are recreated with the same
2556 target on the destination. Note that bf(--archive) implies
2559 If bf(--copy-links) is specified, then symlinks are "collapsed" by
2560 copying their referent, rather than the symlink.
2562 rsync also distinguishes "safe" and "unsafe" symbolic links. An
2563 example where this might be used is a web site mirror that wishes
2564 ensure the rsync module they copy does not include symbolic links to
2565 bf(/etc/passwd) in the public section of the site. Using
2566 bf(--copy-unsafe-links) will cause any links to be copied as the file
2567 they point to on the destination. Using bf(--safe-links) will cause
2568 unsafe links to be omitted altogether. (Note that you must specify
2569 bf(--links) for bf(--safe-links) to have any effect.)
2571 Symbolic links are considered unsafe if they are absolute symlinks
2572 (start with bf(/)), empty, or if they contain enough ".."
2573 components to ascend from the directory being copied.
2575 Here's a summary of how the symlink options are interpreted. The list is
2576 in order of precedence, so if your combination of options isn't mentioned,
2577 use the first line that is a complete subset of your options:
2579 dit(bf(--copy-links)) Turn all symlinks into normal files (leaving no
2580 symlinks for any other options to affect).
2582 dit(bf(--links --copy-unsafe-links)) Turn all unsafe symlinks into files
2583 and duplicate all safe symlinks.
2585 dit(bf(--copy-unsafe-links)) Turn all unsafe symlinks into files, noisily
2586 skip all safe symlinks.
2588 dit(bf(--links --safe-links)) Duplicate safe symlinks and skip unsafe
2591 dit(bf(--links)) Duplicate all symlinks.
2593 manpagediagnostics()
2595 rsync occasionally produces error messages that may seem a little
2596 cryptic. The one that seems to cause the most confusion is "protocol
2597 version mismatch -- is your shell clean?".
2599 This message is usually caused by your startup scripts or remote shell
2600 facility producing unwanted garbage on the stream that rsync is using
2601 for its transport. The way to diagnose this problem is to run your
2602 remote shell like this:
2604 quote(tt(ssh remotehost /bin/true > out.dat))
2606 then look at out.dat. If everything is working correctly then out.dat
2607 should be a zero length file. If you are getting the above error from
2608 rsync then you will probably find that out.dat contains some text or
2609 data. Look at the contents and try to work out what is producing
2610 it. The most common cause is incorrectly configured shell startup
2611 scripts (such as .cshrc or .profile) that contain output statements
2612 for non-interactive logins.
2614 If you are having trouble debugging filter patterns, then
2615 try specifying the bf(-vv) option. At this level of verbosity rsync will
2616 show why each individual file is included or excluded.
2618 manpagesection(EXIT VALUES)
2622 dit(bf(1)) Syntax or usage error
2623 dit(bf(2)) Protocol incompatibility
2624 dit(bf(3)) Errors selecting input/output files, dirs
2625 dit(bf(4)) Requested action not supported: an attempt
2626 was made to manipulate 64-bit files on a platform that cannot support
2627 them; or an option was specified that is supported by the client and
2629 dit(bf(5)) Error starting client-server protocol
2630 dit(bf(6)) Daemon unable to append to log-file
2631 dit(bf(10)) Error in socket I/O
2632 dit(bf(11)) Error in file I/O
2633 dit(bf(12)) Error in rsync protocol data stream
2634 dit(bf(13)) Errors with program diagnostics
2635 dit(bf(14)) Error in IPC code
2636 dit(bf(20)) Received SIGUSR1 or SIGINT
2637 dit(bf(21)) Some error returned by code(waitpid())
2638 dit(bf(22)) Error allocating core memory buffers
2639 dit(bf(23)) Partial transfer due to error
2640 dit(bf(24)) Partial transfer due to vanished source files
2641 dit(bf(25)) The --max-delete limit stopped deletions
2642 dit(bf(30)) Timeout in data send/receive
2645 manpagesection(ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES)
2648 dit(bf(CVSIGNORE)) The CVSIGNORE environment variable supplements any
2649 ignore patterns in .cvsignore files. See the bf(--cvs-exclude) option for
2651 dit(bf(RSYNC_ICONV)) Specify a default bf(--iconv) setting using this
2652 environment variable.
2653 dit(bf(RSYNC_RSH)) The RSYNC_RSH environment variable allows you to
2654 override the default shell used as the transport for rsync. Command line
2655 options are permitted after the command name, just as in the bf(-e) option.
2656 dit(bf(RSYNC_PROXY)) The RSYNC_PROXY environment variable allows you to
2657 redirect your rsync client to use a web proxy when connecting to a
2658 rsync daemon. You should set RSYNC_PROXY to a hostname:port pair.
2659 dit(bf(RSYNC_PASSWORD)) Setting RSYNC_PASSWORD to the required
2660 password allows you to run authenticated rsync connections to an rsync
2661 daemon without user intervention. Note that this does not supply a
2662 password to a shell transport such as ssh.
2663 dit(bf(USER) or bf(LOGNAME)) The USER or LOGNAME environment variables
2664 are used to determine the default username sent to an rsync daemon.
2665 If neither is set, the username defaults to "nobody".
2666 dit(bf(HOME)) The HOME environment variable is used to find the user's
2667 default .cvsignore file.
2672 /etc/rsyncd.conf or rsyncd.conf
2680 times are transferred as *nix time_t values
2682 When transferring to FAT filesystems rsync may re-sync
2684 See the comments on the bf(--modify-window) option.
2686 file permissions, devices, etc. are transferred as native numerical
2689 see also the comments on the bf(--delete) option
2691 Please report bugs! See the website at
2692 url(http://rsync.samba.org/)(http://rsync.samba.org/)
2694 manpagesection(VERSION)
2696 This man page is current for version 2.6.9 of rsync.
2698 manpagesection(INTERNAL OPTIONS)
2700 The options bf(--server) and bf(--sender) are used internally by rsync,
2701 and should never be typed by a user under normal circumstances. Some
2702 awareness of these options may be needed in certain scenarios, such as
2703 when setting up a login that can only run an rsync command. For instance,
2704 the support directory of the rsync distribution has an example script
2705 named rrsync (for restricted rsync) that can be used with a restricted
2708 manpagesection(CREDITS)
2710 rsync is distributed under the GNU public license. See the file
2711 COPYING for details.
2713 A WEB site is available at
2714 url(http://rsync.samba.org/)(http://rsync.samba.org/). The site
2715 includes an FAQ-O-Matic which may cover questions unanswered by this
2718 The primary ftp site for rsync is
2719 url(ftp://rsync.samba.org/pub/rsync)(ftp://rsync.samba.org/pub/rsync).
2721 We would be delighted to hear from you if you like this program.
2723 This program uses the excellent zlib compression library written by
2724 Jean-loup Gailly and Mark Adler.
2726 manpagesection(THANKS)
2728 Thanks to Richard Brent, Brendan Mackay, Bill Waite, Stephen Rothwell
2729 and David Bell for helpful suggestions, patches and testing of rsync.
2730 I've probably missed some people, my apologies if I have.
2732 Especial thanks also to: David Dykstra, Jos Backus, Sebastian Krahmer,
2733 Martin Pool, Wayne Davison, J.W. Schultz.
2737 rsync was originally written by Andrew Tridgell and Paul Mackerras.
2738 Many people have later contributed to it.
2740 Mailing lists for support and development are available at
2741 url(http://lists.samba.org)(lists.samba.org)