1 mailto(rsync-bugs@samba.org)
2 manpage(rsync)(1)(22 Apr 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 Some of the additional features of rsync are:
37 it() support for copying links, devices, owners, groups, and permissions
38 it() exclude and exclude-from options similar to GNU tar
39 it() a CVS exclude mode for ignoring the same files that CVS would ignore
40 it() can use any transparent remote shell, including ssh or rsh
41 it() does not require super-user privileges
42 it() pipelining of file transfers to minimize latency costs
43 it() support for anonymous or authenticated rsync daemons (ideal for
47 manpagesection(GENERAL)
49 Rsync copies files either to or from a remote host, or locally on the
50 current host (it does not support copying files between two remote hosts).
52 There are two different ways for rsync to contact a remote system: using a
53 remote-shell program as the transport (such as ssh or rsh) or contacting an
54 rsync daemon directly via TCP. The remote-shell transport is used whenever
55 the source or destination path contains a single colon (:) separator after
56 a host specification. Contacting an rsync daemon directly happens when the
57 source or destination path contains a double colon (::) separator after a
58 host specification, OR when an rsync:// URL is specified (see also the
59 "USING RSYNC-DAEMON FEATURES VIA A REMOTE-SHELL CONNECTION" section for
60 an exception to this latter rule).
62 As a special case, if a single source arg is specified without a
63 destination, the files are listed in an output format similar to "ls -l".
65 As expected, if neither the source or destination path specify a remote
66 host, the copy occurs locally (see also the bf(--list-only) option).
70 See the file README for installation instructions.
72 Once installed, you can use rsync to any machine that you can access via
73 a remote shell (as well as some that you can access using the rsync
74 daemon-mode protocol). For remote transfers, a modern rsync uses ssh
75 for its communications, but it may have been configured to use a
76 different remote shell by default, such as rsh or remsh.
78 You can also specify any remote shell you like, either by using the bf(-e)
79 command line option, or by setting the RSYNC_RSH environment variable.
81 Note that rsync must be installed on both the source and destination
86 You use rsync in the same way you use rcp. You must specify a source
87 and a destination, one of which may be remote.
89 Perhaps the best way to explain the syntax is with some examples:
91 quote(tt(rsync -t *.c foo:src/))
93 This would transfer all files matching the pattern *.c from the
94 current directory to the directory src on the machine foo. If any of
95 the files already exist on the remote system then the rsync
96 remote-update protocol is used to update the file by sending only the
97 differences. See the tech report for details.
99 quote(tt(rsync -avz foo:src/bar /data/tmp))
101 This would recursively transfer all files from the directory src/bar on the
102 machine foo into the /data/tmp/bar directory on the local machine. The
103 files are transferred in "archive" mode, which ensures that symbolic
104 links, devices, attributes, permissions, ownerships, etc. are preserved
105 in the transfer. Additionally, compression will be used to reduce the
106 size of data portions of the transfer.
108 quote(tt(rsync -avz foo:src/bar/ /data/tmp))
110 A trailing slash on the source changes this behavior to avoid creating an
111 additional directory level at the destination. You can think of a trailing
112 / on a source as meaning "copy the contents of this directory" as opposed
113 to "copy the directory by name", but in both cases the attributes of the
114 containing directory are transferred to the containing directory on the
115 destination. In other words, each of the following commands copies the
116 files in the same way, including their setting of the attributes of
120 tt(rsync -av /src/foo /dest)nl()
121 tt(rsync -av /src/foo/ /dest/foo)nl()
124 Note also that host and module references don't require a trailing slash to
125 copy the contents of the default directory. For example, both of these
126 copy the remote directory's contents into "/dest":
129 tt(rsync -av host: /dest)nl()
130 tt(rsync -av host::module /dest)nl()
133 You can also use rsync in local-only mode, where both the source and
134 destination don't have a ':' in the name. In this case it behaves like
135 an improved copy command.
137 Finally, you can list all the (listable) modules available from a
138 particular rsync daemon by leaving off the module name:
140 quote(tt(rsync somehost.mydomain.com::))
142 See the following section for more details.
144 manpagesection(ADVANCED USAGE)
146 The syntax for requesting multiple files from a remote host involves using
147 quoted spaces in the SRC. Some examples:
149 quote(tt(rsync host::'modname/dir1/file1 modname/dir2/file2' /dest))
151 This would copy file1 and file2 into /dest from an rsync daemon. Each
152 additional arg must include the same "modname/" prefix as the first one,
153 and must be preceded by a single space. All other spaces are assumed
154 to be a part of the filenames.
156 quote(tt(rsync -av host:'dir1/file1 dir2/file2' /dest))
158 This would copy file1 and file2 into /dest using a remote shell. This
159 word-splitting is done by the remote shell, so if it doesn't work it means
160 that the remote shell isn't configured to split its args based on
161 whitespace (a very rare setting, but not unknown). If you need to transfer
162 a filename that contains whitespace, you'll need to either escape the
163 whitespace in a way that the remote shell will understand, or use wildcards
164 in place of the spaces. Two examples of this are:
167 tt(rsync -av host:'file\ name\ with\ spaces' /dest)nl()
168 tt(rsync -av host:file?name?with?spaces /dest)nl()
171 This latter example assumes that your shell passes through unmatched
172 wildcards. If it complains about "no match", put the name in quotes.
174 manpagesection(CONNECTING TO AN RSYNC DAEMON)
176 It is also possible to use rsync without a remote shell as the transport.
177 In this case you will directly connect to a remote rsync daemon, typically
178 using TCP port 873. (This obviously requires the daemon to be running on
179 the remote system, so refer to the STARTING AN RSYNC DAEMON TO ACCEPT
180 CONNECTIONS section below for information on that.)
182 Using rsync in this way is the same as using it with a remote shell except
186 it() you either use a double colon :: instead of a single colon to
187 separate the hostname from the path, or you use an rsync:// URL.
188 it() the first word of the "path" is actually a module name.
189 it() the remote daemon may print a message of the day when you
191 it() if you specify no path name on the remote daemon then the
192 list of accessible paths on the daemon will be shown.
193 it() if you specify no local destination then a listing of the
194 specified files on the remote daemon is provided.
195 it() you must not specify the bf(--rsh) (bf(-e)) option.
198 An example that copies all the files in a remote module named "src":
200 verb( rsync -av host::src /dest)
202 Some modules on the remote daemon may require authentication. If so,
203 you will receive a password prompt when you connect. You can avoid the
204 password prompt by setting the environment variable RSYNC_PASSWORD to
205 the password you want to use or using the bf(--password-file) option. This
206 may be useful when scripting rsync.
208 WARNING: On some systems environment variables are visible to all
209 users. On those systems using bf(--password-file) is recommended.
211 You may establish the connection via a web proxy by setting the
212 environment variable RSYNC_PROXY to a hostname:port pair pointing to
213 your web proxy. Note that your web proxy's configuration must support
214 proxy connections to port 873.
216 manpagesection(USING RSYNC-DAEMON FEATURES VIA A REMOTE-SHELL CONNECTION)
218 It is sometimes useful to use various features of an rsync daemon (such as
219 named modules) without actually allowing any new socket connections into a
220 system (other than what is already required to allow remote-shell access).
221 Rsync supports connecting to a host using a remote shell and then spawning
222 a single-use "daemon" server that expects to read its config file in the
223 home dir of the remote user. This can be useful if you want to encrypt a
224 daemon-style transfer's data, but since the daemon is started up fresh by
225 the remote user, you may not be able to use features such as chroot or
226 change the uid used by the daemon. (For another way to encrypt a daemon
227 transfer, consider using ssh to tunnel a local port to a remote machine and
228 configure a normal rsync daemon on that remote host to only allow
229 connections from "localhost".)
231 From the user's perspective, a daemon transfer via a remote-shell
232 connection uses nearly the same command-line syntax as a normal
233 rsync-daemon transfer, with the only exception being that you must
234 explicitly set the remote shell program on the command-line with the
235 bf(--rsh=COMMAND) option. (Setting the RSYNC_RSH in the environment
236 will not turn on this functionality.) For example:
238 verb( rsync -av --rsh=ssh host::module /dest)
240 If you need to specify a different remote-shell user, keep in mind that the
241 user@ prefix in front of the host is specifying the rsync-user value (for a
242 module that requires user-based authentication). This means that you must
243 give the '-l user' option to ssh when specifying the remote-shell, as in
244 this example that uses the short version of the bf(--rsh) option:
246 verb( rsync -av -e "ssh -l ssh-user" rsync-user@host::module /dest)
248 The "ssh-user" will be used at the ssh level; the "rsync-user" will be
249 used to log-in to the "module".
251 manpagesection(STARTING AN RSYNC DAEMON TO ACCEPT CONNECTIONS)
253 In order to connect to an rsync daemon, the remote system needs to have a
254 daemon already running (or it needs to have configured something like inetd
255 to spawn an rsync daemon for incoming connections on a particular port).
256 For full information on how to start a daemon that will handling incoming
257 socket connections, see the bf(rsyncd.conf)(5) man page -- that is the config
258 file for the daemon, and it contains the full details for how to run the
259 daemon (including stand-alone and inetd configurations).
261 If you're using one of the remote-shell transports for the transfer, there is
262 no need to manually start an rsync daemon.
264 manpagesection(EXAMPLES)
266 Here are some examples of how I use rsync.
268 To backup my wife's home directory, which consists of large MS Word
269 files and mail folders, I use a cron job that runs
271 quote(tt(rsync -Cavz . arvidsjaur:backup))
273 each night over a PPP connection to a duplicate directory on my machine
276 To synchronize my samba source trees I use the following Makefile
280 rsync -avuzb --exclude '*~' samba:samba/ .
282 rsync -Cavuzb . samba:samba/
285 this allows me to sync with a CVS directory at the other end of the
286 connection. I then do CVS operations on the remote machine, which saves a
287 lot of time as the remote CVS protocol isn't very efficient.
289 I mirror a directory between my "old" and "new" ftp sites with the
292 tt(rsync -az -e ssh --delete ~ftp/pub/samba nimbus:"~ftp/pub/tridge")
294 This is launched from cron every few hours.
296 manpagesection(OPTIONS SUMMARY)
298 Here is a short summary of the options available in rsync. Please refer
299 to the detailed description below for a complete description. verb(
300 -v, --verbose increase verbosity
301 -q, --quiet suppress non-error messages
302 -c, --checksum skip based on checksum, not mod-time & size
303 -a, --archive archive mode; same as -rlptgoD (no -H)
304 --no-OPTION turn off an implied OPTION (e.g. --no-D)
305 -r, --recursive recurse into directories
306 -R, --relative use relative path names
307 --no-implied-dirs don't send implied dirs with --relative
308 -b, --backup make backups (see --suffix & --backup-dir)
309 --backup-dir=DIR make backups into hierarchy based in DIR
310 --suffix=SUFFIX backup suffix (default ~ w/o --backup-dir)
311 -u, --update skip files that are newer on the receiver
312 --inplace update destination files in-place
313 --append append data onto shorter files
314 -d, --dirs transfer directories without recursing
315 -l, --links copy symlinks as symlinks
316 -L, --copy-links transform symlink into referent file/dir
317 --copy-unsafe-links only "unsafe" symlinks are transformed
318 --safe-links ignore symlinks that point outside the tree
319 -k, --copy-dirlinks transform symlink to dir into referent dir
320 -K, --keep-dirlinks treat symlinked dir on receiver as dir
321 -H, --hard-links preserve hard links
322 -p, --perms preserve permissions
323 -E, --executability preserve executability
324 --chmod=CHMOD change destination permissions
325 -o, --owner preserve owner (super-user only)
326 -g, --group preserve group
327 --devices preserve device files (super-user only)
328 --specials preserve special files
329 -D same as --devices --specials
330 -t, --times preserve times
331 -O, --omit-dir-times omit directories when preserving times
332 --super receiver attempts super-user activities
333 -S, --sparse handle sparse files efficiently
334 -n, --dry-run show what would have been transferred
335 -W, --whole-file copy files whole (without rsync algorithm)
336 -x, --one-file-system don't cross filesystem boundaries
337 -B, --block-size=SIZE force a fixed checksum block-size
338 -e, --rsh=COMMAND specify the remote shell to use
339 --rsync-path=PROGRAM specify the rsync to run on remote machine
340 --existing ignore non-existing files on receiving side
341 --ignore-existing ignore files that already exist on receiver
342 --remove-sent-files sent files/symlinks are removed from sender
343 --del an alias for --delete-during
344 --delete delete files that don't exist on sender
345 --delete-before receiver deletes before transfer (default)
346 --delete-during receiver deletes during xfer, not before
347 --delete-after receiver deletes after transfer, not before
348 --delete-excluded also delete excluded files on receiver
349 --ignore-errors delete even if there are I/O errors
350 --force force deletion of dirs even if not empty
351 --max-delete=NUM don't delete more than NUM files
352 --max-size=SIZE don't transfer any file larger than SIZE
353 --min-size=SIZE don't transfer any file smaller than SIZE
354 --partial keep partially transferred files
355 --partial-dir=DIR put a partially transferred file into DIR
356 --delay-updates put all updated files into place at end
357 -m, --prune-empty-dirs prune empty directory chains from file-list
358 --numeric-ids don't map uid/gid values by user/group name
359 --timeout=TIME set I/O timeout in seconds
360 -I, --ignore-times don't skip files that match size and time
361 --size-only skip files that match in size
362 --modify-window=NUM compare mod-times with reduced accuracy
363 -T, --temp-dir=DIR create temporary files in directory DIR
364 -y, --fuzzy find similar file for basis if no dest file
365 --compare-dest=DIR also compare received files relative to DIR
366 --copy-dest=DIR ... and include copies of unchanged files
367 --link-dest=DIR hardlink to files in DIR when unchanged
368 -z, --compress compress file data during the transfer
369 --compress-level=NUM explicitly set compression level
370 -C, --cvs-exclude auto-ignore files in the same way CVS does
371 -f, --filter=RULE add a file-filtering RULE
372 -F same as --filter='dir-merge /.rsync-filter'
373 repeated: --filter='- .rsync-filter'
374 --exclude=PATTERN exclude files matching PATTERN
375 --exclude-from=FILE read exclude patterns from FILE
376 --include=PATTERN don't exclude files matching PATTERN
377 --include-from=FILE read include patterns from FILE
378 --files-from=FILE read list of source-file names from FILE
379 -0, --from0 all *from/filter files are delimited by 0s
380 --address=ADDRESS bind address for outgoing socket to daemon
381 --port=PORT specify double-colon alternate port number
382 --sockopts=OPTIONS specify custom TCP options
383 --blocking-io use blocking I/O for the remote shell
384 --stats give some file-transfer stats
385 -8, --8-bit-output leave high-bit chars unescaped in output
386 -h, --human-readable output numbers in a human-readable format
387 --progress show progress during transfer
388 -P same as --partial --progress
389 -i, --itemize-changes output a change-summary for all updates
390 --log-format=FORMAT output filenames using the specified format
391 --password-file=FILE read password from FILE
392 --list-only list the files instead of copying them
393 --bwlimit=KBPS limit I/O bandwidth; KBytes per second
394 --write-batch=FILE write a batched update to FILE
395 --only-write-batch=FILE like --write-batch but w/o updating dest
396 --read-batch=FILE read a batched update from FILE
397 --protocol=NUM force an older protocol version to be used
398 --checksum-seed=NUM set block/file checksum seed (advanced)
399 -4, --ipv4 prefer IPv4
400 -6, --ipv6 prefer IPv6
401 --version print version number
402 (-h) --help show this help (see below for -h comment)
405 Rsync can also be run as a daemon, in which case the following options are
407 --daemon run as an rsync daemon
408 --address=ADDRESS bind to the specified address
409 --bwlimit=KBPS limit I/O bandwidth; KBytes per second
410 --config=FILE specify alternate rsyncd.conf file
411 --no-detach do not detach from the parent
412 --port=PORT listen on alternate port number
413 --sockopts=OPTIONS specify custom TCP options
414 -v, --verbose increase verbosity
415 -4, --ipv4 prefer IPv4
416 -6, --ipv6 prefer IPv6
417 -h, --help show this help (if used after --daemon)
422 rsync uses the GNU long options package. Many of the command line
423 options have two variants, one short and one long. These are shown
424 below, separated by commas. Some options only have a long variant.
425 The '=' for options that take a parameter is optional; whitespace
429 dit(bf(--help)) Print a short help page describing the options
430 available in rsync and exit. For backward-compatibility with older
431 versions of rsync, the help will also be output if you use the bf(-h)
432 option without any other args.
434 dit(bf(--version)) print the rsync version number and exit.
436 dit(bf(-v, --verbose)) This option increases the amount of information you
437 are given during the transfer. By default, rsync works silently. A
438 single bf(-v) will give you information about what files are being
439 transferred and a brief summary at the end. Two bf(-v) flags will give you
440 information on what files are being skipped and slightly more
441 information at the end. More than two bf(-v) flags should only be used if
442 you are debugging rsync.
444 Note that the names of the transferred files that are output are done using
445 a default bf(--log-format) of "%n%L", which tells you just the name of the
446 file and, if the item is a link, where it points. At the single bf(-v)
447 level of verbosity, this does not mention when a file gets its attributes
448 changed. If you ask for an itemized list of changed attributes (either
449 bf(--itemize-changes) or adding "%i" to the bf(--log-format) setting), the
450 output (on the client) increases to mention all items that are changed in
451 any way. See the bf(--log-format) option for more details.
453 dit(bf(-q, --quiet)) This option decreases the amount of information you
454 are given during the transfer, notably suppressing information messages
455 from the remote server. This flag is useful when invoking rsync from
458 dit(bf(-I, --ignore-times)) Normally rsync will skip any files that are
459 already the same size and have the same modification time-stamp.
460 This option turns off this "quick check" behavior.
462 dit(bf(--size-only)) Normally rsync will not transfer any files that are
463 already the same size and have the same modification time-stamp. With the
464 bf(--size-only) option, files will not be transferred if they have the same size,
465 regardless of timestamp. This is useful when starting to use rsync
466 after using another mirroring system which may not preserve timestamps
469 dit(bf(--modify-window)) When comparing two timestamps, rsync treats the
470 timestamps as being equal if they differ by no more than the modify-window
471 value. This is normally 0 (for an exact match), but you may find it useful
472 to set this to a larger value in some situations. In particular, when
473 transferring to or from an MS Windows FAT filesystem (which represents
474 times with a 2-second resolution), bf(--modify-window=1) is useful
475 (allowing times to differ by up to 1 second).
477 dit(bf(-c, --checksum)) This forces the sender to checksum em(every)
478 regular file using a 128-bit MD4 checksum. It does this during the initial
479 file-system scan as it builds the list of all available files. The receiver
480 then checksums its version of each file (if it exists and it has the same
481 size as its sender-side counterpart) in order to decide which files need to
482 be updated: files with either a changed size or a changed checksum are
483 selected for transfer. Since this whole-file checksumming of all files on
484 both sides of the connection occurs in addition to the automatic checksum
485 verifications that occur during a file's transfer, this option can be quite
488 Note that rsync always verifies that each em(transferred) file was correctly
489 reconstructed on the receiving side by checking its whole-file checksum, but
490 that automatic after-the-transfer verification has nothing to do with this
491 option's before-the-transfer "Does this file need to be updated?" check.
493 dit(bf(-a, --archive)) This is equivalent to bf(-rlptgoD). It is a quick
494 way of saying you want recursion and want to preserve almost
495 everything (with -H being a notable omission).
496 The only exception to the above equivalence is when bf(--files-from) is
497 specified, in which case bf(-r) is not implied.
499 Note that bf(-a) bf(does not preserve hardlinks), because
500 finding multiply-linked files is expensive. You must separately
503 dit(--no-OPTION) You may turn off one or more implied options by prefixing
504 the option name with "no-". Not all options may be prefixed with a "no-":
505 only options that are implied by other options (e.g. bf(--no-D),
506 bf(--no-perms)) or have different defaults in various circumstances
507 (e.g. bf(--no-whole-file), bf(--no-blocking-io), bf(--no-dirs)). You may
508 specify either the short or the long option name after the "no-" prefix
509 (e.g. bf(--no-R) is the same as bf(--no-relative)).
511 For example: if you want to use bf(-a) (bf(--archive)) but don't want
512 bf(-o) (bf(--owner)), instead of converting bf(-a) into bf(-rlptgD), you
513 could specify bf(-a --no-o) (or bf(-a --no-owner)).
515 The order of the options is important: if you specify bf(--no-r -a), the
516 bf(-r) option would end up being turned on, the opposite of bf(-a --no-r).
517 Note also that the side-effects of the bf(--files-from) option are NOT
518 positional, as it affects the default state of several options and slightly
519 changes the meaning of bf(-a) (see the bf(--files-from) option for more
522 dit(bf(-r, --recursive)) This tells rsync to copy directories
523 recursively. See also bf(--dirs) (bf(-d)).
525 dit(bf(-R, --relative)) Use relative paths. This means that the full path
526 names specified on the command line are sent to the server rather than
527 just the last parts of the filenames. This is particularly useful when
528 you want to send several different directories at the same time. For
529 example, if you used this command:
531 quote(tt( rsync -av /foo/bar/baz.c remote:/tmp/))
533 ... this would create a file named baz.c in /tmp/ on the remote
534 machine. If instead you used
536 quote(tt( rsync -avR /foo/bar/baz.c remote:/tmp/))
538 then a file named /tmp/foo/bar/baz.c would be created on the remote
539 machine -- the full path name is preserved. To limit the amount of
540 path information that is sent, you have a couple options: (1) With
541 a modern rsync on the sending side (beginning with 2.6.7), you can
542 insert a dot and a slash into the source path, like this:
544 quote(tt( rsync -avR /foo/./bar/baz.c remote:/tmp/))
546 That would create /tmp/bar/baz.c on the remote machine. (Note that the
547 dot must be followed by a slash, so "/foo/." would not be abbreviated.)
548 (2) For older rsync versions, you would need to use a chdir to limit the
549 source path. For example, when pushing files:
551 quote(tt( (cd /foo; rsync -avR bar/baz.c remote:/tmp/) ))
553 (Note that the parens put the two commands into a sub-shell, so that the
554 "cd" command doesn't remain in effect for future commands.)
555 If you're pulling files, use this idiom (which doesn't work with an
559 tt( rsync -avR --rsync-path="cd /foo; rsync" \ )nl()
560 tt( remote:bar/baz.c /tmp/)
563 dit(bf(--no-implied-dirs)) This option affects the default behavior of the
564 bf(--relative) option. When it is specified, the attributes of the implied
565 directories from the source names are not included in the transfer. This
566 means that the corresponding path elements on the destination system are
567 left unchanged if they exist, and any missing implied directories are
568 created with default attributes. This even allows these implied path
569 elements to have big differences, such as being a symlink to a directory on
570 one side of the transfer, and a real directory on the other side.
572 For instance, if a command-line arg or a files-from entry told rsync to
573 transfer the file "path/foo/file", the directories "path" and "path/foo"
574 are implied when bf(--relative) is used. If "path/foo" is a symlink to
575 "bar" on the destination system, the receiving rsync would ordinarily
576 delete "path/foo", recreate it as a directory, and receive the file into
577 the new directory. With bf(--no-implied-dirs), the receiving rsync updates
578 "path/foo/file" using the existing path elements, which means that the file
579 ends up being created in "path/bar". Another way to accomplish this link
580 preservation is to use the bf(--keep-dirlinks) option (which will also
581 affect symlinks to directories in the rest of the transfer).
583 In a similar but opposite scenario, if the transfer of "path/foo/file" is
584 requested and "path/foo" is a symlink on the sending side, running without
585 bf(--no-implied-dirs) would cause rsync to transform "path/foo" on the
586 receiving side into an identical symlink, and then attempt to transfer
587 "path/foo/file", which might fail if the duplicated symlink did not point
588 to a directory on the receiving side. Another way to avoid this sending of
589 a symlink as an implied directory is to use bf(--copy-unsafe-links), or
590 bf(--copy-dirlinks) (both of which also affect symlinks in the rest of the
591 transfer -- see their descriptions for full details).
593 dit(bf(-b, --backup)) With this option, preexisting destination files are
594 renamed as each file is transferred or deleted. You can control where the
595 backup file goes and what (if any) suffix gets appended using the
596 bf(--backup-dir) and bf(--suffix) options.
598 Note that if you don't specify bf(--backup-dir), (1) the
599 bf(--omit-dir-times) option will be implied, and (2) if bf(--delete) is
600 also in effect (without bf(--delete-excluded)), rsync will add a "protect"
601 filter-rule for the backup suffix to the end of all your existing excludes
602 (e.g. -f "P *~"). This will prevent previously backed-up files from being
603 deleted. Note that if you are supplying your own filter rules, you may
604 need to manually insert your own exclude/protect rule somewhere higher up
605 in the list so that it has a high enough priority to be effective (e.g., if
606 your rules specify a trailing inclusion/exclusion of '*', the auto-added
607 rule would never be reached).
609 dit(bf(--backup-dir=DIR)) In combination with the bf(--backup) option, this
610 tells rsync to store all backups in the specified directory. This is
611 very useful for incremental backups. You can additionally
612 specify a backup suffix using the bf(--suffix) option
613 (otherwise the files backed up in the specified directory
614 will keep their original filenames).
616 dit(bf(--suffix=SUFFIX)) This option allows you to override the default
617 backup suffix used with the bf(--backup) (bf(-b)) option. The default suffix is a ~
618 if no -bf(-backup-dir) was specified, otherwise it is an empty string.
620 dit(bf(-u, --update)) This forces rsync to skip any files which exist on
621 the destination and have a modified time that is newer than the source
622 file. (If an existing destination file has a modify time equal to the
623 source file's, it will be updated if the sizes are different.)
625 In the current implementation of bf(--update), a difference of file format
626 between the sender and receiver is always
627 considered to be important enough for an update, no matter what date
628 is on the objects. In other words, if the source has a directory or a
629 symlink where the destination has a file, the transfer would occur
630 regardless of the timestamps. This might change in the future (feel
631 free to comment on this on the mailing list if you have an opinion).
633 dit(bf(--inplace)) This causes rsync not to create a new copy of the file
634 and then move it into place. Instead rsync will overwrite the existing
635 file, meaning that the rsync algorithm can't accomplish the full amount of
636 network reduction it might be able to otherwise (since it does not yet try
637 to sort data matches). One exception to this is if you combine the option
638 with bf(--backup), since rsync is smart enough to use the backup file as the
639 basis file for the transfer.
641 This option is useful for transfer of large files with block-based changes
642 or appended data, and also on systems that are disk bound, not network
645 The option implies bf(--partial) (since an interrupted transfer does not delete
646 the file), but conflicts with bf(--partial-dir) and bf(--delay-updates).
647 Prior to rsync 2.6.4 bf(--inplace) was also incompatible with bf(--compare-dest)
650 WARNING: The file's data will be in an inconsistent state during the
651 transfer (and possibly afterward if the transfer gets interrupted), so you
652 should not use this option to update files that are in use. Also note that
653 rsync will be unable to update a file in-place that is not writable by the
656 dit(bf(--append)) This causes rsync to update a file by appending data onto
657 the end of the file, which presumes that the data that already exists on
658 the receiving side is identical with the start of the file on the sending
659 side. If that is not true, the file will fail the checksum test, and the
660 resend will do a normal bf(--inplace) update to correct the mismatched data.
661 Only files on the receiving side that are shorter than the corresponding
662 file on the sending side (as well as new files) are sent.
663 Implies bf(--inplace), but does not conflict with bf(--sparse) (though the
664 bf(--sparse) option will be auto-disabled if a resend of the already-existing
667 dit(bf(-d, --dirs)) Tell the sending side to include any directories that
668 are encountered. Unlike bf(--recursive), a directory's contents are not copied
669 unless the directory name specified is "." or ends with a trailing slash
670 (e.g. ".", "dir/.", "dir/", etc.). Without this option or the
671 bf(--recursive) option, rsync will skip all directories it encounters (and
672 output a message to that effect for each one). If you specify both
673 bf(--dirs) and bf(--recursive), bf(--recursive) takes precedence.
675 dit(bf(-l, --links)) When symlinks are encountered, recreate the
676 symlink on the destination.
678 dit(bf(-L, --copy-links)) When symlinks are encountered, the item that
679 they point to (the referent) is copied, rather than the symlink. In older
680 versions of rsync, this option also had the side-effect of telling the
681 receiving side to follow symlinks, such as symlinks to directories. In a
682 modern rsync such as this one, you'll need to specify bf(--keep-dirlinks) (bf(-K))
683 to get this extra behavior. The only exception is when sending files to
684 an rsync that is too old to understand bf(-K) -- in that case, the bf(-L) option
685 will still have the side-effect of bf(-K) on that older receiving rsync.
687 dit(bf(--copy-unsafe-links)) This tells rsync to copy the referent of
688 symbolic links that point outside the copied tree. Absolute symlinks
689 are also treated like ordinary files, and so are any symlinks in the
690 source path itself when bf(--relative) is used. This option has no
691 additional effect if bf(--copy-links) was also specified.
693 dit(bf(--safe-links)) This tells rsync to ignore any symbolic links
694 which point outside the copied tree. All absolute symlinks are
695 also ignored. Using this option in conjunction with bf(--relative) may
696 give unexpected results.
698 dit(bf(-K, --copy-dirlinks)) This option causes the sending side to treat
699 a symlink to a directory as though it were a real directory. This is
700 useful if you don't want symlinks to non-directories to be affected, as
701 they would be using bf(--copy-links).
703 Without this option, if the sending side has replaced a directory with a
704 symlink to a directory, the receiving side will delete anything that is in
705 the way of the new symlink, including a directory hierarchy (as long as
706 bf(--force) or bf(--delete) is in effect).
708 See also bf(--keep-dirlinks) for an analogous option for the receiving
711 dit(bf(-K, --keep-dirlinks)) This option causes the receiving side to treat
712 a symlink to a directory as though it were a real directory, but only if it
713 matches a real directory from the sender. Without this option, the
714 receiver's symlink would be deleted and replaced with a real directory.
716 For example, suppose you transfer a directory "foo" that contains a file
717 "file", but "foo" is a symlink to directory "bar" on the receiver. Without
718 bf(--keep-dirlinks), the receiver deletes symlink "foo", recreates it as a
719 directory, and receives the file into the new directory. With
720 bf(--keep-dirlinks), the receiver keeps the symlink and "file" ends up in
723 See also bf(--copy-dirlinks) for an analogous option for the sending side.
725 dit(bf(-H, --hard-links)) This tells rsync to look for hard-linked files in
726 the transfer and link together the corresponding files on the receiving
727 side. Without this option, hard-linked files in the transfer are treated
728 as though they were separate files.
730 Note that rsync can only detect hard links if both parts of the link
731 are in the list of files being sent.
733 dit(bf(-p, --perms)) This option causes the receiving rsync to set the
734 destination permissions to be the same as the source permissions. (See
735 also the bf(--chmod) option for a way to modify what rsync considers to
736 be the source permissions.)
738 When this option is em(off), permissions are set as follows:
741 it() Existing files (including updated files) retain their existing
742 permissions, though the bf(--executability) option might change just
743 the execute permission for the file.
744 it() New files get their "normal" permission bits set to the source
745 file's permissions masked with the receiving end's umask setting, and
746 their special permission bits disabled except in the case where a new
747 directory inherits a setgid bit from its parent directory.
750 Thus, when bf(--perms) and bf(--executability) are both disabled,
751 rsync's behavior is the same as that of other file-copy utilities,
752 such as bf(cp)(1) and bf(tar)(1).
754 In summary: to give destination files (both old and new) the source
755 permissions, use bf(--perms). To give new files the destination-default
756 permissions (while leaving existing files unchanged), make sure that the
757 bf(--perms) option is off and use bf(--chmod=ugo=rwX) (which ensures that
758 all non-masked bits get enabled). If you'd care to make this latter
759 behavior easier to type, you could define a popt alias for it, such as
760 putting this line in the file ~/.popt (this defines the bf(-s) option,
761 and includes --no-g to use the default group of the destination dir):
763 quote(tt( rsync alias -s --no-p --no-g --chmod=ugo=rwX))
765 You could then use this new option in a command such as this one:
767 quote(tt( rsync -asv src/ dest/))
769 (Caveat: make sure that bf(-a) does not follow bf(-s), or it will re-enable
770 the "--no-*" options.)
772 The preservation of the destination's setgid bit on newly-created
773 directories when bf(--perms) is off was added in rsync 2.6.7. Older rsync
774 versions erroneously preserved the three special permission bits for
775 newly-created files when bf(--perms) was off, while overriding the
776 destination's setgid bit setting on a newly-created directory. (Keep in
777 mind that it is the version of the receiving rsync that affects this
780 dit(bf(-E, --executability)) This option causes rsync to preserve the
781 executability (or non-executability) of regular files when bf(--perms) is
782 not enabled. A regular file is considered to be executable if at least one
783 'x' is turned on in its permissions. When an existing destination file's
784 executability differs from that of the corresponding source file, rsync
785 modifies the destination file's permissions as follows:
788 it() To make a file non-executable, rsync turns off all its 'x'
790 it() To make a file executable, rsync turns on each 'x' permission that
791 has a corresponding 'r' permission enabled.
794 If bf(--perms) is enabled, this option is ignored.
796 dit(bf(--chmod)) This option tells rsync to apply one or more
797 comma-separated "chmod" strings to the permission of the files in the
798 transfer. The resulting value is treated as though it was the permissions
799 that the sending side supplied for the file, which means that this option
800 can seem to have no effect on existing files if bf(--perms) is not enabled.
802 In addition to the normal parsing rules specified in the bf(chmod)(1)
803 manpage, you can specify an item that should only apply to a directory by
804 prefixing it with a 'D', or specify an item that should only apply to a
805 file by prefixing it with a 'F'. For example:
807 quote(--chmod=Dg+s,ug+w,Fo-w,+X)
809 It is also legal to specify multiple bf(--chmod) options, as each
810 additional option is just appended to the list of changes to make.
812 See the bf(--perms) and bf(--executability) options for how the resulting
813 permission value can be applied to the files in the transfer.
815 dit(bf(-o, --owner)) This option causes rsync to set the owner of the
816 destination file to be the same as the source file, but only if the
817 receiving rsync is being run as the super-user (see also the bf(--super)
818 option to force rsync to attempt super-user activities).
819 Without this option, the owner is set to the invoking user on the
822 The preservation of ownership will associate matching names by default, but
823 may fall back to using the ID number in some circumstances (see also the
824 bf(--numeric-ids) option for a full discussion).
826 dit(bf(-g, --group)) This option causes rsync to set the group of the
827 destination file to be the same as the source file. If the receiving
828 program is not running as the super-user (or if bf(--no-super) was
829 specified), only groups that the invoking user on the receiving side
830 is a member of will be preserved.
831 Without this option, the group is set to the default group of the invoking
832 user on the receiving side.
834 The preservation of group information will associate matching names by
835 default, but may fall back to using the ID number in some circumstances
836 (see also the bf(--numeric-ids) option for a full discussion).
838 dit(bf(--devices)) This option causes rsync to transfer character and
839 block device files to the remote system to recreate these devices.
840 This option has no effect if the receiving rsync is not run as the
841 super-user and bf(--super) is not specified.
843 dit(bf(--specials)) This option causes rsync to transfer special files
844 such as named sockets and fifos.
846 dit(bf(-D)) The bf(-D) option is equivalent to bf(--devices) bf(--specials).
848 dit(bf(-t, --times)) This tells rsync to transfer modification times along
849 with the files and update them on the remote system. Note that if this
850 option is not used, the optimization that excludes files that have not been
851 modified cannot be effective; in other words, a missing bf(-t) or bf(-a) will
852 cause the next transfer to behave as if it used bf(-I), causing all files to be
853 updated (though the rsync algorithm will make the update fairly efficient
854 if the files haven't actually changed, you're much better off using bf(-t)).
856 dit(bf(-O, --omit-dir-times)) This tells rsync to omit directories when
857 it is preserving modification times (see bf(--times)). If NFS is sharing
858 the directories on the receiving side, it is a good idea to use bf(-O).
859 This option is inferred if you use bf(--backup) without bf(--backup-dir).
861 dit(bf(--super)) This tells the receiving side to attempt super-user
862 activities even if the receiving rsync wasn't run by the super-user. These
863 activities include: preserving users via the bf(--owner) option, preserving
864 all groups (not just the current user's groups) via the bf(--groups)
865 option, and copying devices via the bf(--devices) option. This is useful
866 for systems that allow such activities without being the super-user, and
867 also for ensuring that you will get errors if the receiving side isn't
868 being running as the super-user. To turn off super-user activities, the
869 super-user can use bf(--no-super).
871 dit(bf(-S, --sparse)) Try to handle sparse files efficiently so they take
872 up less space on the destination. Conflicts with bf(--inplace) because it's
873 not possible to overwrite data in a sparse fashion.
875 NOTE: Don't use this option when the destination is a Solaris "tmpfs"
876 filesystem. It doesn't seem to handle seeks over null regions
877 correctly and ends up corrupting the files.
879 dit(bf(-n, --dry-run)) This tells rsync to not do any file transfers,
880 instead it will just report the actions it would have taken.
882 dit(bf(-W, --whole-file)) With this option the incremental rsync algorithm
883 is not used and the whole file is sent as-is instead. The transfer may be
884 faster if this option is used when the bandwidth between the source and
885 destination machines is higher than the bandwidth to disk (especially when the
886 "disk" is actually a networked filesystem). This is the default when both
887 the source and destination are specified as local paths.
889 dit(bf(-x, --one-file-system)) This tells rsync to avoid crossing a
890 filesystem boundary when recursing. This does not limit the user's ability
891 to specify items to copy from multiple filesystems, just rsync's recursion
892 through the hierarchy of each directory that the user specified, and also
893 the analogous recursion on the receiving side during deletion. Also keep
894 in mind that rsync treats a "bind" mount to the same device as being on the
897 If this option is repeated, rsync omits all mount-point directories from
898 the copy. Otherwise, it includes an empty directory at each mount-point it
899 encounters (using the attributes of the mounted directory because those of
900 the underlying mount-point directory are inaccessible).
902 If rsync has been told to collapse symlinks (via bf(--copy-links) or
903 bf(--copy-unsafe-links)), a symlink to a directory on another device is
904 treated like a mount-point. Symlinks to non-directories are unaffected
907 dit(bf(--existing, --ignore-non-existing)) This tells rsync to skip
908 updating files that do not exist yet on the destination. If this option is
909 combined with the bf(--ignore-existing) option, no files will be updated
910 (which can be useful if all you want to do is to delete missing files).
912 dit(bf(--ignore-existing)) This tells rsync to skip updating files that
913 already exist on the destination. See also bf(--ignore-non-existing).
915 dit(bf(--remove-sent-files)) This tells rsync to remove from the sending
916 side the files and/or symlinks that are newly created or whose content is
917 updated on the receiving side. Directories and devices are not removed,
918 nor are files/symlinks whose attributes are merely changed.
920 dit(bf(--delete)) This tells rsync to delete extraneous files from the
921 receiving side (ones that aren't on the sending side), but only for the
922 directories that are being synchronized. You must have asked rsync to
923 send the whole directory (e.g. "dir" or "dir/") without using a wildcard
924 for the directory's contents (e.g. "dir/*") since the wildcard is expanded
925 by the shell and rsync thus gets a request to transfer individual files, not
926 the files' parent directory. Files that are excluded from transfer are
927 also excluded from being deleted unless you use the bf(--delete-excluded)
928 option or mark the rules as only matching on the sending side (see the
929 include/exclude modifiers in the FILTER RULES section).
931 Prior to rsync 2.6.7, this option would have no effect unless bf(--recursive)
932 was in effect. Beginning with 2.6.7, deletions will also occur when bf(--dirs)
933 (bf(-d)) is in effect, but only for directories whose contents are being copied.
935 This option can be dangerous if used incorrectly! It is a very good idea
936 to run first using the bf(--dry-run) option (bf(-n)) to see what files would be
937 deleted to make sure important files aren't listed.
939 If the sending side detects any I/O errors, then the deletion of any
940 files at the destination will be automatically disabled. This is to
941 prevent temporary filesystem failures (such as NFS errors) on the
942 sending side causing a massive deletion of files on the
943 destination. You can override this with the bf(--ignore-errors) option.
945 The bf(--delete) option may be combined with one of the --delete-WHEN options
946 without conflict, as well as bf(--delete-excluded). However, if none of the
947 --delete-WHEN options are specified, rsync will currently choose the
948 bf(--delete-before) algorithm. A future version may change this to choose the
949 bf(--delete-during) algorithm. See also bf(--delete-after).
951 dit(bf(--delete-before)) Request that the file-deletions on the receiving
952 side be done before the transfer starts. This is the default if bf(--delete)
953 or bf(--delete-excluded) is specified without one of the --delete-WHEN options.
954 See bf(--delete) (which is implied) for more details on file-deletion.
956 Deleting before the transfer is helpful if the filesystem is tight for space
957 and removing extraneous files would help to make the transfer possible.
958 However, it does introduce a delay before the start of the transfer,
959 and this delay might cause the transfer to timeout (if bf(--timeout) was
962 dit(bf(--delete-during, --del)) Request that the file-deletions on the
963 receiving side be done incrementally as the transfer happens. This is
964 a faster method than choosing the before- or after-transfer algorithm,
965 but it is only supported beginning with rsync version 2.6.4.
966 See bf(--delete) (which is implied) for more details on file-deletion.
968 dit(bf(--delete-after)) Request that the file-deletions on the receiving
969 side be done after the transfer has completed. This is useful if you
970 are sending new per-directory merge files as a part of the transfer and
971 you want their exclusions to take effect for the delete phase of the
973 See bf(--delete) (which is implied) for more details on file-deletion.
975 dit(bf(--delete-excluded)) In addition to deleting the files on the
976 receiving side that are not on the sending side, this tells rsync to also
977 delete any files on the receiving side that are excluded (see bf(--exclude)).
978 See the FILTER RULES section for a way to make individual exclusions behave
979 this way on the receiver, and for a way to protect files from
980 bf(--delete-excluded).
981 See bf(--delete) (which is implied) for more details on file-deletion.
983 dit(bf(--ignore-errors)) Tells bf(--delete) to go ahead and delete files
984 even when there are I/O errors.
986 dit(bf(--force)) This option tells rsync to delete a non-empty directory
987 when it is to be replaced by a non-directory. This is only relevant if
988 deletions are not active (see bf(--delete) for details).
990 Note for older rsync versions: bf(--force) used to still be required when
991 using bf(--delete-after), and it used to be non-functional unless the
992 bf(--recursive) option was also enabled.
994 dit(bf(--max-delete=NUM)) This tells rsync not to delete more than NUM
995 files or directories (NUM must be non-zero).
996 This is useful when mirroring very large trees to prevent disasters.
998 dit(bf(--max-size=SIZE)) This tells rsync to avoid transferring any
999 file that is larger than the specified SIZE. The SIZE value can be
1000 suffixed with a string to indicate a size multiplier, and
1001 may be a fractional value (e.g. "bf(--max-size=1.5m)").
1003 The suffixes are as follows: "K" (or "KiB") is a kibibyte (1024),
1004 "M" (or "MiB") is a mebibyte (1024*1024), and "G" (or "GiB") is a
1005 gibibyte (1024*1024*1024).
1006 If you want the multiplier to be 1000 instead of 1024, use "KB",
1007 "MB", or "GB". (Note: lower-case is also accepted for all values.)
1008 Finally, if the suffix ends in either "+1" or "-1", the value will
1009 be offset by one byte in the indicated direction.
1011 Examples: --max-size=1.5mb-1 is 1499999 bytes, and --max-size=2g+1 is
1014 dit(bf(--min-size=SIZE)) This tells rsync to avoid transferring any
1015 file that is smaller than the specified SIZE, which can help in not
1016 transferring small, junk files.
1017 See the bf(--max-size) option for a description of SIZE.
1019 dit(bf(-B, --block-size=BLOCKSIZE)) This forces the block size used in
1020 the rsync algorithm to a fixed value. It is normally selected based on
1021 the size of each file being updated. See the technical report for details.
1023 dit(bf(-e, --rsh=COMMAND)) This option allows you to choose an alternative
1024 remote shell program to use for communication between the local and
1025 remote copies of rsync. Typically, rsync is configured to use ssh by
1026 default, but you may prefer to use rsh on a local network.
1028 If this option is used with bf([user@]host::module/path), then the
1029 remote shell em(COMMAND) will be used to run an rsync daemon on the
1030 remote host, and all data will be transmitted through that remote
1031 shell connection, rather than through a direct socket connection to a
1032 running rsync daemon on the remote host. See the section "USING
1033 RSYNC-DAEMON FEATURES VIA A REMOTE-SHELL CONNECTION" above.
1035 Command-line arguments are permitted in COMMAND provided that COMMAND is
1036 presented to rsync as a single argument. You must use spaces (not tabs
1037 or other whitespace) to separate the command and args from each other,
1038 and you can use single- and/or double-quotes to preserve spaces in an
1039 argument (but not backslashes). Note that doubling a single-quote
1040 inside a single-quoted string gives you a single-quote; likewise for
1041 double-quotes (though you need to pay attention to which quotes your
1042 shell is parsing and which quotes rsync is parsing). Some examples:
1045 tt( -e 'ssh -p 2234')nl()
1046 tt( -e 'ssh -o "ProxyCommand nohup ssh firewall nc -w1 %h %p"')nl()
1049 (Note that ssh users can alternately customize site-specific connect
1050 options in their .ssh/config file.)
1052 You can also choose the remote shell program using the RSYNC_RSH
1053 environment variable, which accepts the same range of values as bf(-e).
1055 See also the bf(--blocking-io) option which is affected by this option.
1057 dit(bf(--rsync-path=PROGRAM)) Use this to specify what program is to be run
1058 on the remote machine to start-up rsync. Often used when rsync is not in
1059 the default remote-shell's path (e.g. --rsync-path=/usr/local/bin/rsync).
1060 Note that PROGRAM is run with the help of a shell, so it can be any
1061 program, script, or command sequence you'd care to run, so long as it does
1062 not corrupt the standard-in & standard-out that rsync is using to
1065 One tricky example is to set a different default directory on the remote
1066 machine for use with the bf(--relative) option. For instance:
1068 quote(tt( rsync -avR --rsync-path="cd /a/b && rsync" hst:c/d /e/))
1070 dit(bf(-C, --cvs-exclude)) This is a useful shorthand for excluding a
1071 broad range of files that you often don't want to transfer between
1072 systems. It uses the same algorithm that CVS uses to determine if
1073 a file should be ignored.
1075 The exclude list is initialized to:
1077 quote(quote(tt(RCS SCCS CVS CVS.adm RCSLOG cvslog.* tags TAGS .make.state
1078 .nse_depinfo *~ #* .#* ,* _$* *$ *.old *.bak *.BAK *.orig *.rej
1079 .del-* *.a *.olb *.o *.obj *.so *.exe *.Z *.elc *.ln core .svn/)))
1081 then files listed in a $HOME/.cvsignore are added to the list and any
1082 files listed in the CVSIGNORE environment variable (all cvsignore names
1083 are delimited by whitespace).
1085 Finally, any file is ignored if it is in the same directory as a
1086 .cvsignore file and matches one of the patterns listed therein. Unlike
1087 rsync's filter/exclude files, these patterns are split on whitespace.
1088 See the bf(cvs)(1) manual for more information.
1090 If you're combining bf(-C) with your own bf(--filter) rules, you should
1091 note that these CVS excludes are appended at the end of your own rules,
1092 regardless of where the bf(-C) was placed on the command-line. This makes them
1093 a lower priority than any rules you specified explicitly. If you want to
1094 control where these CVS excludes get inserted into your filter rules, you
1095 should omit the bf(-C) as a command-line option and use a combination of
1096 bf(--filter=:C) and bf(--filter=-C) (either on your command-line or by
1097 putting the ":C" and "-C" rules into a filter file with your other rules).
1098 The first option turns on the per-directory scanning for the .cvsignore
1099 file. The second option does a one-time import of the CVS excludes
1102 dit(bf(-f, --filter=RULE)) This option allows you to add rules to selectively
1103 exclude certain files from the list of files to be transferred. This is
1104 most useful in combination with a recursive transfer.
1106 You may use as many bf(--filter) options on the command line as you like
1107 to build up the list of files to exclude.
1109 See the FILTER RULES section for detailed information on this option.
1111 dit(bf(-F)) The bf(-F) option is a shorthand for adding two bf(--filter) rules to
1112 your command. The first time it is used is a shorthand for this rule:
1114 quote(tt( --filter='dir-merge /.rsync-filter'))
1116 This tells rsync to look for per-directory .rsync-filter files that have
1117 been sprinkled through the hierarchy and use their rules to filter the
1118 files in the transfer. If bf(-F) is repeated, it is a shorthand for this
1121 quote(tt( --filter='exclude .rsync-filter'))
1123 This filters out the .rsync-filter files themselves from the transfer.
1125 See the FILTER RULES section for detailed information on how these options
1128 dit(bf(--exclude=PATTERN)) This option is a simplified form of the
1129 bf(--filter) option that defaults to an exclude rule and does not allow
1130 the full rule-parsing syntax of normal filter rules.
1132 See the FILTER RULES section for detailed information on this option.
1134 dit(bf(--exclude-from=FILE)) This option is related to the bf(--exclude)
1135 option, but it specifies a FILE that contains exclude patterns (one per line).
1136 Blank lines in the file and lines starting with ';' or '#' are ignored.
1137 If em(FILE) is bf(-), the list will be read from standard input.
1139 dit(bf(--include=PATTERN)) This option is a simplified form of the
1140 bf(--filter) option that defaults to an include rule and does not allow
1141 the full rule-parsing syntax of normal filter rules.
1143 See the FILTER RULES section for detailed information on this option.
1145 dit(bf(--include-from=FILE)) This option is related to the bf(--include)
1146 option, but it specifies a FILE that contains include patterns (one per line).
1147 Blank lines in the file and lines starting with ';' or '#' are ignored.
1148 If em(FILE) is bf(-), the list will be read from standard input.
1150 dit(bf(--files-from=FILE)) Using this option allows you to specify the
1151 exact list of files to transfer (as read from the specified FILE or bf(-)
1152 for standard input). It also tweaks the default behavior of rsync to make
1153 transferring just the specified files and directories easier:
1156 it() The bf(--relative) (bf(-R)) option is implied, which preserves the path
1157 information that is specified for each item in the file (use
1158 bf(--no-relative) or bf(--no-R) if you want to turn that off).
1159 it() The bf(--dirs) (bf(-d)) option is implied, which will create directories
1160 specified in the list on the destination rather than noisily skipping
1161 them (use bf(--no-dirs) or bf(--no-d) if you want to turn that off).
1162 it() The bf(--archive) (bf(-a)) option's behavior does not imply bf(--recursive)
1163 (bf(-r)), so specify it explicitly, if you want it.
1164 it() These side-effects change the default state of rsync, so the position
1165 of the bf(--files-from) option on the command-line has no bearing on how
1166 other options are parsed (e.g. bf(-a) works the same before or after
1167 bf(--files-from), as does bf(--no-R) and all other options).
1170 The file names that are read from the FILE are all relative to the
1171 source dir -- any leading slashes are removed and no ".." references are
1172 allowed to go higher than the source dir. For example, take this
1175 quote(tt( rsync -a --files-from=/tmp/foo /usr remote:/backup))
1177 If /tmp/foo contains the string "bin" (or even "/bin"), the /usr/bin
1178 directory will be created as /backup/bin on the remote host. If it
1179 contains "bin/" (note the trailing slash), the immediate contents of
1180 the directory would also be sent (without needing to be explicitly
1181 mentioned in the file -- this began in version 2.6.4). In both cases,
1182 if the bf(-r) option was enabled, that dir's entire hierarchy would
1183 also be transferred (keep in mind that bf(-r) needs to be specified
1184 explicitly with bf(--files-from), since it is not implied by bf(-a)).
1186 that the effect of the (enabled by default) bf(--relative) option is to
1187 duplicate only the path info that is read from the file -- it does not
1188 force the duplication of the source-spec path (/usr in this case).
1190 In addition, the bf(--files-from) file can be read from the remote host
1191 instead of the local host if you specify a "host:" in front of the file
1192 (the host must match one end of the transfer). As a short-cut, you can
1193 specify just a prefix of ":" to mean "use the remote end of the
1194 transfer". For example:
1196 quote(tt( rsync -a --files-from=:/path/file-list src:/ /tmp/copy))
1198 This would copy all the files specified in the /path/file-list file that
1199 was located on the remote "src" host.
1201 dit(bf(-0, --from0)) This tells rsync that the rules/filenames it reads from a
1202 file are terminated by a null ('\0') character, not a NL, CR, or CR+LF.
1203 This affects bf(--exclude-from), bf(--include-from), bf(--files-from), and any
1204 merged files specified in a bf(--filter) rule.
1205 It does not affect bf(--cvs-exclude) (since all names read from a .cvsignore
1206 file are split on whitespace).
1208 dit(bf(-T, --temp-dir=DIR)) This option instructs rsync to use DIR as a
1209 scratch directory when creating temporary copies of the files transferred
1210 on the receiving side. The default behavior is to create each temporary
1211 file in the same directory as the associated destination file.
1213 This option is most often used when the receiving disk partition does not
1214 have enough free space to hold a copy of the largest file in the transfer.
1215 In this case (i.e. when the scratch directory in on a different disk
1216 partition), rsync will not be able to rename each received temporary file
1217 over the top of the associated destination file, but instead must copy it
1218 into place. Rsync does this by copying the file over the top of the
1219 destination file, which means that the destination file will contain
1220 truncated data during this copy. If this were not done this way (even if
1221 the destination file were first removed, the data locally copied to a
1222 temporary file in the destination directory, and then renamed into place)
1223 it would be possible for the old file to continue taking up disk space (if
1224 someone had it open), and thus there might not be enough room to fit the
1225 new version on the disk at the same time.
1227 If you are using this option for reasons other than a shortage of disk
1228 space, you may wish to combine it with the bf(--delay-updates) option,
1229 which will ensure that all copied files get put into subdirectories in the
1230 destination hierarchy, awaiting the end of the transfer. If you don't
1231 have enough room to duplicate all the arriving files on the destination
1232 partition, another way to tell rsync that you aren't overly concerned
1233 about disk space is to use the bf(--partial-dir) option with a relative
1234 path; because this tells rsync that it is OK to stash off a copy of a
1235 single file in a subdir in the destination hierarchy, rsync will use the
1236 partial-dir as a staging area to bring over the copied file, and then
1237 rename it into place from there. (Specifying a bf(--partial-dir) with
1238 an absolute path does not have this side-effect.)
1240 dit(bf(-y, --fuzzy)) This option tells rsync that it should look for a
1241 basis file for any destination file that is missing. The current algorithm
1242 looks in the same directory as the destination file for either a file that
1243 has an identical size and modified-time, or a similarly-named file. If
1244 found, rsync uses the fuzzy basis file to try to speed up the transfer.
1246 Note that the use of the bf(--delete) option might get rid of any potential
1247 fuzzy-match files, so either use bf(--delete-after) or specify some
1248 filename exclusions if you need to prevent this.
1250 dit(bf(--compare-dest=DIR)) This option instructs rsync to use em(DIR) on
1251 the destination machine as an additional hierarchy to compare destination
1252 files against doing transfers (if the files are missing in the destination
1253 directory). If a file is found in em(DIR) that is identical to the
1254 sender's file, the file will NOT be transferred to the destination
1255 directory. This is useful for creating a sparse backup of just files that
1256 have changed from an earlier backup.
1258 Beginning in version 2.6.4, multiple bf(--compare-dest) directories may be
1259 provided, which will cause rsync to search the list in the order specified
1261 If a match is found that differs only in attributes, a local copy is made
1262 and the attributes updated.
1263 If a match is not found, a basis file from one of the em(DIR)s will be
1264 selected to try to speed up the transfer.
1266 If em(DIR) is a relative path, it is relative to the destination directory.
1267 See also bf(--copy-dest) and bf(--link-dest).
1269 dit(bf(--copy-dest=DIR)) This option behaves like bf(--compare-dest), but
1270 rsync will also copy unchanged files found in em(DIR) to the destination
1271 directory using a local copy.
1272 This is useful for doing transfers to a new destination while leaving
1273 existing files intact, and then doing a flash-cutover when all files have
1274 been successfully transferred.
1276 Multiple bf(--copy-dest) directories may be provided, which will cause
1277 rsync to search the list in the order specified for an unchanged file.
1278 If a match is not found, a basis file from one of the em(DIR)s will be
1279 selected to try to speed up the transfer.
1281 If em(DIR) is a relative path, it is relative to the destination directory.
1282 See also bf(--compare-dest) and bf(--link-dest).
1284 dit(bf(--link-dest=DIR)) This option behaves like bf(--copy-dest), but
1285 unchanged files are hard linked from em(DIR) to the destination directory.
1286 The files must be identical in all preserved attributes (e.g. permissions,
1287 possibly ownership) in order for the files to be linked together.
1290 quote(tt( rsync -av --link-dest=$PWD/prior_dir host:src_dir/ new_dir/))
1292 Beginning in version 2.6.4, multiple bf(--link-dest) directories may be
1293 provided, which will cause rsync to search the list in the order specified
1295 If a match is found that differs only in attributes, a local copy is made
1296 and the attributes updated.
1297 If a match is not found, a basis file from one of the em(DIR)s will be
1298 selected to try to speed up the transfer.
1300 If em(DIR) is a relative path, it is relative to the destination directory.
1301 See also bf(--compare-dest) and bf(--copy-dest).
1303 Note that rsync versions prior to 2.6.1 had a bug that could prevent
1304 bf(--link-dest) from working properly for a non-super-user when bf(-o) was
1305 specified (or implied by bf(-a)). You can work-around this bug by avoiding
1306 the bf(-o) option when sending to an old rsync.
1308 dit(bf(-z, --compress)) With this option, rsync compresses the file data
1309 as it is sent to the destination machine, which reduces the amount of data
1310 being transmitted -- something that is useful over a slow connection.
1312 Note that this option typically achieves better compression ratios than can
1313 be achieved by using a compressing remote shell or a compressing transport
1314 because it takes advantage of the implicit information in the matching data
1315 blocks that are not explicitly sent over the connection.
1317 dit(bf(--compress-level=NUM)) Explicitly set the compression level to use
1318 (see bf(--compress)) instead of letting it default. If NUM is non-zero,
1319 the bf(--compress) option is implied.
1321 dit(bf(--numeric-ids)) With this option rsync will transfer numeric group
1322 and user IDs rather than using user and group names and mapping them
1325 By default rsync will use the username and groupname to determine
1326 what ownership to give files. The special uid 0 and the special group
1327 0 are never mapped via user/group names even if the bf(--numeric-ids)
1328 option is not specified.
1330 If a user or group has no name on the source system or it has no match
1331 on the destination system, then the numeric ID
1332 from the source system is used instead. See also the comments on the
1333 "use chroot" setting in the rsyncd.conf manpage for information on how
1334 the chroot setting affects rsync's ability to look up the names of the
1335 users and groups and what you can do about it.
1337 dit(bf(--timeout=TIMEOUT)) This option allows you to set a maximum I/O
1338 timeout in seconds. If no data is transferred for the specified time
1339 then rsync will exit. The default is 0, which means no timeout.
1341 dit(bf(--address)) By default rsync will bind to the wildcard address when
1342 connecting to an rsync daemon. The bf(--address) option allows you to
1343 specify a specific IP address (or hostname) to bind to. See also this
1344 option in the bf(--daemon) mode section.
1346 dit(bf(--port=PORT)) This specifies an alternate TCP port number to use
1347 rather than the default of 873. This is only needed if you are using the
1348 double-colon (::) syntax to connect with an rsync daemon (since the URL
1349 syntax has a way to specify the port as a part of the URL). See also this
1350 option in the bf(--daemon) mode section.
1352 dit(bf(--sockopts)) This option can provide endless fun for people
1353 who like to tune their systems to the utmost degree. You can set all
1354 sorts of socket options which may make transfers faster (or
1355 slower!). Read the man page for the code(setsockopt()) system call for
1356 details on some of the options you may be able to set. By default no
1357 special socket options are set. This only affects direct socket
1358 connections to a remote rsync daemon. This option also exists in the
1359 bf(--daemon) mode section.
1361 dit(bf(--blocking-io)) This tells rsync to use blocking I/O when launching
1362 a remote shell transport. If the remote shell is either rsh or remsh,
1363 rsync defaults to using
1364 blocking I/O, otherwise it defaults to using non-blocking I/O. (Note that
1365 ssh prefers non-blocking I/O.)
1367 dit(bf(-i, --itemize-changes)) Requests a simple itemized list of the
1368 changes that are being made to each file, including attribute changes.
1369 This is exactly the same as specifying bf(--log-format='%i %n%L').
1370 If you repeat the option, unchanged files will also be output, but only
1371 if the receiving rsync is at least version 2.6.7 (you can use bf(-vv)
1372 with older versions of rsync, but that also turns on the output of other
1375 The "%i" escape has a cryptic output that is 9 letters long. The general
1376 format is like the string bf(YXcstpogz), where bf(Y) is replaced by the
1377 type of update being done, bf(X) is replaced by the file-type, and the
1378 other letters represent attributes that may be output if they are being
1381 The update types that replace the bf(Y) are as follows:
1384 it() A bf(<) means that a file is being transferred to the remote host
1386 it() A bf(>) means that a file is being transferred to the local host
1388 it() A bf(c) means that a local change/creation is occurring for the item
1389 (such as the creation of a directory or the changing of a symlink, etc.).
1390 it() A bf(h) means that the item is a hard link to another item (requires
1392 it() A bf(.) means that the item is not being updated (though it might
1393 have attributes that are being modified).
1396 The file-types that replace the bf(X) are: bf(f) for a file, a bf(d) for a
1397 directory, an bf(L) for a symlink, a bf(D) for a device, and a bf(S) for a
1398 special file (e.g. named sockets and fifos).
1400 The other letters in the string above are the actual letters that
1401 will be output if the associated attribute for the item is being updated or
1402 a "." for no change. Three exceptions to this are: (1) a newly created
1403 item replaces each letter with a "+", (2) an identical item replaces the
1404 dots with spaces, and (3) an unknown attribute replaces each letter with
1405 a "?" (this can happen when talking to an older rsync).
1407 The attribute that is associated with each letter is as follows:
1410 it() A bf(c) means the checksum of the file is different and will be
1411 updated by the file transfer (requires bf(--checksum)).
1412 it() A bf(s) means the size of the file is different and will be updated
1413 by the file transfer.
1414 it() A bf(t) means the modification time is different and is being updated
1415 to the sender's value (requires bf(--times)). An alternate value of bf(T)
1416 means that the time will be set to the transfer time, which happens
1417 anytime a symlink is transferred, or when a file or device is transferred
1418 without bf(--times).
1419 it() A bf(p) means the permissions are different and are being updated to
1420 the sender's value (requires bf(--perms)).
1421 it() An bf(o) means the owner is different and is being updated to the
1422 sender's value (requires bf(--owner) and super-user privileges).
1423 it() A bf(g) means the group is different and is being updated to the
1424 sender's value (requires bf(--group) and the authority to set the group).
1425 it() The bf(z) slot is reserved for future use.
1428 One other output is possible: when deleting files, the "%i" will output
1429 the string "*deleting" for each item that is being removed (assuming that
1430 you are talking to a recent enough rsync that it logs deletions instead of
1431 outputting them as a verbose message).
1433 dit(bf(--log-format=FORMAT)) This allows you to specify exactly what the
1434 rsync client outputs to the user on a per-file basis. The format is a text
1435 string containing embedded single-character escape sequences prefixed with
1436 a percent (%) character. For a list of the possible escape characters, see
1437 the "log format" setting in the rsyncd.conf manpage. (Note that this
1438 option does not affect what a daemon logs to its logfile.)
1440 Specifying this option will mention each file, dir, etc. that gets updated
1441 in a significant way (a transferred file, a recreated symlink/device, or a
1442 touched directory) unless the itemize-changes escape (%i) is included in
1443 the string, in which case the logging of names increases to mention any
1444 item that is changed in any way (as long as the receiving side is at least
1445 2.6.4). See the bf(--itemize-changes) option for a description of the
1448 The bf(--verbose) option implies a format of "%n%L", but you can use
1449 bf(--log-format) without bf(--verbose) if you like, or you can override
1450 the format of its per-file output using this option.
1452 Rsync will output the log-format string prior to a file's transfer unless
1453 one of the transfer-statistic escapes is requested, in which case the
1454 logging is done at the end of the file's transfer. When this late logging
1455 is in effect and bf(--progress) is also specified, rsync will also output
1456 the name of the file being transferred prior to its progress information
1457 (followed, of course, by the log-format output).
1459 dit(bf(--stats)) This tells rsync to print a verbose set of statistics
1460 on the file transfer, allowing you to tell how effective the rsync
1461 algorithm is for your data.
1463 The current statistics are as follows: quote(itemize(
1464 it() bf(Number of files) is the count of all "files" (in the generic
1465 sense), which includes directories, symlinks, etc.
1466 it() bf(Number of files transferred) is the count of normal files that
1467 were updated via the rsync algorithm, which does not include created
1468 dirs, symlinks, etc.
1469 it() bf(Total file size) is the total sum of all file sizes in the transfer.
1470 This does not count any size for directories or special files, but does
1471 include the size of symlinks.
1472 it() bf(Total transferred file size) is the total sum of all files sizes
1473 for just the transferred files.
1474 it() bf(Literal data) is how much unmatched file-update data we had to
1475 send to the receiver for it to recreate the updated files.
1476 it() bf(Matched data) is how much data the receiver got locally when
1477 recreating the updated files.
1478 it() bf(File list size) is how big the file-list data was when the sender
1479 sent it to the receiver. This is smaller than the in-memory size for the
1480 file list due to some compressing of duplicated data when rsync sends the
1482 it() bf(File list generation time) is the number of seconds that the
1483 sender spent creating the file list. This requires a modern rsync on the
1484 sending side for this to be present.
1485 it() bf(File list transfer time) is the number of seconds that the sender
1486 spent sending the file list to the receiver.
1487 it() bf(Total bytes sent) is the count of all the bytes that rsync sent
1488 from the client side to the server side.
1489 it() bf(Total bytes received) is the count of all non-message bytes that
1490 rsync received by the client side from the server side. "Non-message"
1491 bytes means that we don't count the bytes for a verbose message that the
1492 server sent to us, which makes the stats more consistent.
1495 dit(bf(-8, --8-bit-output)) This tells rsync to leave all high-bit characters
1496 unescaped in the output instead of trying to test them to see if they're
1497 valid in the current locale and escaping the invalid ones. All control
1498 characters (but never tabs) are always escaped, regardless of this option's
1501 The escape idiom that started in 2.6.7 is to output a literal backslash (\)
1502 and a hash (#), followed by exactly 3 octal digits. For example, a newline
1503 would output as "\#012". A literal backslash that is in a filename is not
1504 escaped unless it is followed by a hash and 3 digits (0-9).
1506 dit(bf(-h, --human-readable)) Output numbers in a more human-readable format.
1507 This makes big numbers output using larger units, with a K, M, or G suffix. If
1508 this option was specified once, these units are K (1000), M (1000*1000), and
1509 G (1000*1000*1000); if the option is repeated, the units are powers of 1024
1512 dit(bf(--partial)) By default, rsync will delete any partially
1513 transferred file if the transfer is interrupted. In some circumstances
1514 it is more desirable to keep partially transferred files. Using the
1515 bf(--partial) option tells rsync to keep the partial file which should
1516 make a subsequent transfer of the rest of the file much faster.
1518 dit(bf(--partial-dir=DIR)) A better way to keep partial files than the
1519 bf(--partial) option is to specify a em(DIR) that will be used to hold the
1520 partial data (instead of writing it out to the destination file).
1521 On the next transfer, rsync will use a file found in this
1522 dir as data to speed up the resumption of the transfer and then delete it
1523 after it has served its purpose.
1525 Note that if bf(--whole-file) is specified (or implied), any partial-dir
1526 file that is found for a file that is being updated will simply be removed
1528 rsync is sending files without using the incremental rsync algorithm).
1530 Rsync will create the em(DIR) if it is missing (just the last dir -- not
1531 the whole path). This makes it easy to use a relative path (such as
1532 "bf(--partial-dir=.rsync-partial)") to have rsync create the
1533 partial-directory in the destination file's directory when needed, and then
1534 remove it again when the partial file is deleted.
1536 If the partial-dir value is not an absolute path, rsync will add an exclude
1537 rule at the end of all your existing excludes. This will prevent the
1538 sending of any partial-dir files that may exist on the sending side, and
1539 will also prevent the untimely deletion of partial-dir items on the
1540 receiving side. An example: the above bf(--partial-dir) option would add
1541 the equivalent of "bf(--exclude=.rsync-partial/)" at the end of any other
1544 If you are supplying your own exclude rules, you may need to add your own
1545 exclude/hide/protect rule for the partial-dir because (1) the auto-added
1546 rule may be ineffective at the end of your other rules, or (2) you may wish
1547 to override rsync's exclude choice. For instance, if you want to make
1548 rsync clean-up any left-over partial-dirs that may be lying around, you
1549 should specify bf(--delete-after) and add a "risk" filter rule, e.g.
1550 bf(-f 'R .rsync-partial/'). (Avoid using bf(--delete-before) or
1551 bf(--delete-during) unless you don't need rsync to use any of the
1552 left-over partial-dir data during the current run.)
1554 IMPORTANT: the bf(--partial-dir) should not be writable by other users or it
1555 is a security risk. E.g. AVOID "/tmp".
1557 You can also set the partial-dir value the RSYNC_PARTIAL_DIR environment
1558 variable. Setting this in the environment does not force bf(--partial) to be
1559 enabled, but rather it affects where partial files go when bf(--partial) is
1560 specified. For instance, instead of using bf(--partial-dir=.rsync-tmp)
1561 along with bf(--progress), you could set RSYNC_PARTIAL_DIR=.rsync-tmp in your
1562 environment and then just use the bf(-P) option to turn on the use of the
1563 .rsync-tmp dir for partial transfers. The only times that the bf(--partial)
1564 option does not look for this environment value are (1) when bf(--inplace) was
1565 specified (since bf(--inplace) conflicts with bf(--partial-dir)), and (2) when
1566 bf(--delay-updates) was specified (see below).
1568 For the purposes of the daemon-config's "refuse options" setting,
1569 bf(--partial-dir) does em(not) imply bf(--partial). This is so that a
1570 refusal of the bf(--partial) option can be used to disallow the overwriting
1571 of destination files with a partial transfer, while still allowing the
1572 safer idiom provided by bf(--partial-dir).
1574 dit(bf(--delay-updates)) This option puts the temporary file from each
1575 updated file into a holding directory until the end of the
1576 transfer, at which time all the files are renamed into place in rapid
1577 succession. This attempts to make the updating of the files a little more
1578 atomic. By default the files are placed into a directory named ".~tmp~" in
1579 each file's destination directory, but if you've specified the
1580 bf(--partial-dir) option, that directory will be used instead. See the
1581 comments in the bf(--partial-dir) section for a discussion of how this
1582 ".~tmp~" dir will be excluded from the transfer, and what you can do if
1583 you wnat rsync to cleanup old ".~tmp~" dirs that might be lying around.
1584 Conflicts with bf(--inplace) and bf(--append).
1586 This option uses more memory on the receiving side (one bit per file
1587 transferred) and also requires enough free disk space on the receiving
1588 side to hold an additional copy of all the updated files. Note also that
1589 you should not use an absolute path to bf(--partial-dir) unless (1)
1591 chance of any of the files in the transfer having the same name (since all
1592 the updated files will be put into a single directory if the path is
1594 and (2) there are no mount points in the hierarchy (since the
1595 delayed updates will fail if they can't be renamed into place).
1597 See also the "atomic-rsync" perl script in the "support" subdir for an
1598 update algorithm that is even more atomic (it uses bf(--link-dest) and a
1599 parallel hierarchy of files).
1601 dit(bf(-m, --prune-empty-dirs)) This option tells the receiving rsync to get
1602 rid of empty directories from the file-list, including nested directories
1603 that have no non-directory children. This is useful for avoiding the
1604 creation of a bunch of useless directories when the sending rsync is
1605 recursively scanning a hierarchy of files using include/exclude/filter
1608 Because the file-list is actually being pruned, this option also affects
1609 what directories get deleted when a delete is active. However, keep in
1610 mind that excluded files and directories can prevent existing items from
1611 being deleted (because an exclude hides source files and protects
1614 You can prevent the pruning of certain empty directories from the file-list
1615 by using a global "protect" filter. For instance, this option would ensure
1616 that the directory "emptydir" was kept in the file-list:
1618 quote( --filter 'protect emptydir/')
1620 Here's an example that copies all .pdf files in a hierarchy, only creating
1621 the necessary destination directories to hold the .pdf files, and ensures
1622 that any superfluous files and directories in the destination are removed
1623 (note the hide filter of non-directories being used instead of an exclude):
1625 quote( rsync -avm --del --include='*.pdf' -f 'hide,! */' src/ dest)
1627 If you didn't want to remove superfluous destination files, the more
1628 time-honored options of "--include='*/' --exclude='*'" would work fine
1629 in place of the hide-filter (if that is more natural to you).
1631 dit(bf(--progress)) This option tells rsync to print information
1632 showing the progress of the transfer. This gives a bored user
1634 Implies bf(--verbose) if it wasn't already specified.
1636 When the file is transferring, the data looks like this:
1638 verb( 782448 63% 110.64kB/s 0:00:04)
1640 This tells you the current file size, the percentage of the transfer that
1641 is complete, the current calculated file-completion rate (including both
1642 data over the wire and data being matched locally), and the estimated time
1643 remaining in this transfer.
1645 After a file is complete, the data looks like this:
1647 verb( 1238099 100% 146.38kB/s 0:00:08 (5, 57.1% of 396))
1649 This tells you the final file size, that it's 100% complete, the final
1650 transfer rate for the file, the amount of elapsed time it took to transfer
1651 the file, and the addition of a total-transfer summary in parentheses.
1652 These additional numbers tell you how many files have been updated, and
1653 what percent of the total number of files has been scanned.
1655 dit(bf(-P)) The bf(-P) option is equivalent to bf(--partial) bf(--progress). Its
1656 purpose is to make it much easier to specify these two options for a long
1657 transfer that may be interrupted.
1659 dit(bf(--password-file)) This option allows you to provide a password
1660 in a file for accessing a remote rsync daemon. Note that this option
1661 is only useful when accessing an rsync daemon using the built in
1662 transport, not when using a remote shell as the transport. The file
1663 must not be world readable. It should contain just the password as a
1666 dit(bf(--list-only)) This option will cause the source files to be listed
1667 instead of transferred. This option is inferred if there is a single source
1668 arg and no destination specified, so its main uses are: (1) to turn a copy
1669 command that includes a
1670 destination arg into a file-listing command, (2) to be able to specify more
1671 than one local source arg (note: be sure to include the destination), or
1672 (3) to avoid the automatically added "bf(-r --exclude='/*/*')" options that
1673 rsync usually uses as a compatibility kluge when generating a non-recursive
1674 listing. Caution: keep in mind that a source arg with a wild-card is expanded
1675 by the shell into multiple args, so it is never safe to try to list such an arg
1676 without using this option. For example:
1678 verb( rsync -av --list-only foo* dest/)
1680 dit(bf(--bwlimit=KBPS)) This option allows you to specify a maximum
1681 transfer rate in kilobytes per second. This option is most effective when
1682 using rsync with large files (several megabytes and up). Due to the nature
1683 of rsync transfers, blocks of data are sent, then if rsync determines the
1684 transfer was too fast, it will wait before sending the next data block. The
1685 result is an average transfer rate equaling the specified limit. A value
1686 of zero specifies no limit.
1688 dit(bf(--write-batch=FILE)) Record a file that can later be applied to
1689 another identical destination with bf(--read-batch). See the "BATCH MODE"
1690 section for details, and also the bf(--only-write-batch) option.
1692 dit(bf(--only-write-batch=FILE)) Works like bf(--write-batch), except that
1693 no updates are made on the destination system when creating the batch.
1694 This lets you transport the changes to the destination system via some
1695 other means and then apply the changes via bf(--read-batch).
1697 Note that you can feel free to write the batch directly to some portable
1698 media: if this media fills to capacity before the end of the transfer, you
1699 can just apply that partial transfer to the destination and repeat the
1700 whole process to get the rest of the changes (as long as you don't mind a
1701 partially updated destination system while the multi-update cycle is
1704 Also note that you only save bandwidth when pushing changes to a remote
1705 system because this allows the batched data to be diverted from the sender
1706 into the batch file without having to flow over the wire to the receiver
1707 (when pulling, the sender is remote, and thus can't write the batch).
1709 dit(bf(--read-batch=FILE)) Apply all of the changes stored in FILE, a
1710 file previously generated by bf(--write-batch).
1711 If em(FILE) is bf(-), the batch data will be read from standard input.
1712 See the "BATCH MODE" section for details.
1714 dit(bf(--protocol=NUM)) Force an older protocol version to be used. This
1715 is useful for creating a batch file that is compatible with an older
1716 version of rsync. For instance, if rsync 2.6.4 is being used with the
1717 bf(--write-batch) option, but rsync 2.6.3 is what will be used to run the
1718 bf(--read-batch) option, you should use "--protocol=28" when creating the
1719 batch file to force the older protocol version to be used in the batch
1720 file (assuming you can't upgrade the rsync on the reading system).
1722 dit(bf(-4, --ipv4) or bf(-6, --ipv6)) Tells rsync to prefer IPv4/IPv6
1723 when creating sockets. This only affects sockets that rsync has direct
1724 control over, such as the outgoing socket when directly contacting an
1725 rsync daemon. See also these options in the bf(--daemon) mode section.
1727 dit(bf(--checksum-seed=NUM)) Set the MD4 checksum seed to the integer
1728 NUM. This 4 byte checksum seed is included in each block and file
1729 MD4 checksum calculation. By default the checksum seed is generated
1730 by the server and defaults to the current code(time()). This option
1731 is used to set a specific checksum seed, which is useful for
1732 applications that want repeatable block and file checksums, or
1733 in the case where the user wants a more random checksum seed.
1734 Note that setting NUM to 0 causes rsync to use the default of code(time())
1738 manpagesection(DAEMON OPTIONS)
1740 The options allowed when starting an rsync daemon are as follows:
1743 dit(bf(--daemon)) This tells rsync that it is to run as a daemon. The
1744 daemon you start running may be accessed using an rsync client using
1745 the bf(host::module) or bf(rsync://host/module/) syntax.
1747 If standard input is a socket then rsync will assume that it is being
1748 run via inetd, otherwise it will detach from the current terminal and
1749 become a background daemon. The daemon will read the config file
1750 (rsyncd.conf) on each connect made by a client and respond to
1751 requests accordingly. See the bf(rsyncd.conf)(5) man page for more
1754 dit(bf(--address)) By default rsync will bind to the wildcard address when
1755 run as a daemon with the bf(--daemon) option. The bf(--address) option
1756 allows you to specify a specific IP address (or hostname) to bind to. This
1757 makes virtual hosting possible in conjunction with the bf(--config) option.
1758 See also the "address" global option in the rsyncd.conf manpage.
1760 dit(bf(--bwlimit=KBPS)) This option allows you to specify a maximum
1761 transfer rate in kilobytes per second for the data the daemon sends.
1762 The client can still specify a smaller bf(--bwlimit) value, but their
1763 requested value will be rounded down if they try to exceed it. See the
1764 client version of this option (above) for some extra details.
1766 dit(bf(--config=FILE)) This specifies an alternate config file than
1767 the default. This is only relevant when bf(--daemon) is specified.
1768 The default is /etc/rsyncd.conf unless the daemon is running over
1769 a remote shell program and the remote user is not the super-user; in that case
1770 the default is rsyncd.conf in the current directory (typically $HOME).
1772 dit(bf(--no-detach)) When running as a daemon, this option instructs
1773 rsync to not detach itself and become a background process. This
1774 option is required when running as a service on Cygwin, and may also
1775 be useful when rsync is supervised by a program such as
1776 bf(daemontools) or AIX's bf(System Resource Controller).
1777 bf(--no-detach) is also recommended when rsync is run under a
1778 debugger. This option has no effect if rsync is run from inetd or
1781 dit(bf(--port=PORT)) This specifies an alternate TCP port number for the
1782 daemon to listen on rather than the default of 873. See also the "port"
1783 global option in the rsyncd.conf manpage.
1785 dit(bf(--sockopts)) This overrides the bf(socket options) setting in the
1786 rsyncd.conf file and has the same syntax.
1788 dit(bf(-v, --verbose)) This option increases the amount of information the
1789 daemon logs during its startup phase. After the client connects, the
1790 daemon's verbosity level will be controlled by the options that the client
1791 used and the "max verbosity" setting in the module's config section.
1793 dit(bf(-4, --ipv4) or bf(-6, --ipv6)) Tells rsync to prefer IPv4/IPv6
1794 when creating the incoming sockets that the rsync daemon will use to
1795 listen for connections. One of these options may be required in older
1796 versions of Linux to work around an IPv6 bug in the kernel (if you see
1797 an "address already in use" error when nothing else is using the port,
1798 try specifying bf(--ipv6) or bf(--ipv4) when starting the daemon).
1800 dit(bf(-h, --help)) When specified after bf(--daemon), print a short help
1801 page describing the options available for starting an rsync daemon.
1804 manpagesection(FILTER RULES)
1806 The filter rules allow for flexible selection of which files to transfer
1807 (include) and which files to skip (exclude). The rules either directly
1808 specify include/exclude patterns or they specify a way to acquire more
1809 include/exclude patterns (e.g. to read them from a file).
1811 As the list of files/directories to transfer is built, rsync checks each
1812 name to be transferred against the list of include/exclude patterns in
1813 turn, and the first matching pattern is acted on: if it is an exclude
1814 pattern, then that file is skipped; if it is an include pattern then that
1815 filename is not skipped; if no matching pattern is found, then the
1816 filename is not skipped.
1818 Rsync builds an ordered list of filter rules as specified on the
1819 command-line. Filter rules have the following syntax:
1822 tt(RULE [PATTERN_OR_FILENAME])nl()
1823 tt(RULE,MODIFIERS [PATTERN_OR_FILENAME])nl()
1826 You have your choice of using either short or long RULE names, as described
1827 below. If you use a short-named rule, the ',' separating the RULE from the
1828 MODIFIERS is optional. The PATTERN or FILENAME that follows (when present)
1829 must come after either a single space or an underscore (_).
1830 Here are the available rule prefixes:
1833 bf(exclude, -) specifies an exclude pattern. nl()
1834 bf(include, +) specifies an include pattern. nl()
1835 bf(merge, .) specifies a merge-file to read for more rules. nl()
1836 bf(dir-merge, :) specifies a per-directory merge-file. nl()
1837 bf(hide, H) specifies a pattern for hiding files from the transfer. nl()
1838 bf(show, S) files that match the pattern are not hidden. nl()
1839 bf(protect, P) specifies a pattern for protecting files from deletion. nl()
1840 bf(risk, R) files that match the pattern are not protected. nl()
1841 bf(clear, !) clears the current include/exclude list (takes no arg) nl()
1844 When rules are being read from a file, empty lines are ignored, as are
1845 comment lines that start with a "#".
1847 Note that the bf(--include)/bf(--exclude) command-line options do not allow the
1848 full range of rule parsing as described above -- they only allow the
1849 specification of include/exclude patterns plus a "!" token to clear the
1850 list (and the normal comment parsing when rules are read from a file).
1852 does not begin with "- " (dash, space) or "+ " (plus, space), then the
1853 rule will be interpreted as if "+ " (for an include option) or "- " (for
1854 an exclude option) were prefixed to the string. A bf(--filter) option, on
1855 the other hand, must always contain either a short or long rule name at the
1858 Note also that the bf(--filter), bf(--include), and bf(--exclude) options take one
1859 rule/pattern each. To add multiple ones, you can repeat the options on
1860 the command-line, use the merge-file syntax of the bf(--filter) option, or
1861 the bf(--include-from)/bf(--exclude-from) options.
1863 manpagesection(INCLUDE/EXCLUDE PATTERN RULES)
1865 You can include and exclude files by specifying patterns using the "+",
1866 "-", etc. filter rules (as introduced in the FILTER RULES section above).
1867 The include/exclude rules each specify a pattern that is matched against
1868 the names of the files that are going to be transferred. These patterns
1869 can take several forms:
1872 it() if the pattern starts with a / then it is anchored to a
1873 particular spot in the hierarchy of files, otherwise it is matched
1874 against the end of the pathname. This is similar to a leading ^ in
1875 regular expressions.
1876 Thus "/foo" would match a file named "foo" at either the "root of the
1877 transfer" (for a global rule) or in the merge-file's directory (for a
1878 per-directory rule).
1879 An unqualified "foo" would match any file or directory named "foo"
1880 anywhere in the tree because the algorithm is applied recursively from
1882 top down; it behaves as if each path component gets a turn at being the
1883 end of the file name. Even the unanchored "sub/foo" would match at
1884 any point in the hierarchy where a "foo" was found within a directory
1885 named "sub". See the section on ANCHORING INCLUDE/EXCLUDE PATTERNS for
1886 a full discussion of how to specify a pattern that matches at the root
1888 it() if the pattern ends with a / then it will only match a
1889 directory, not a file, link, or device.
1890 it() rsync chooses between doing a simple string match and wildcard
1891 matching by checking if the pattern contains one of these three wildcard
1892 characters: '*', '?', and '[' .
1893 it() a '*' matches any non-empty path component (it stops at slashes).
1894 it() use '**' to match anything, including slashes.
1895 it() a '?' matches any character except a slash (/).
1896 it() a '[' introduces a character class, such as [a-z] or [[:alpha:]].
1897 it() in a wildcard pattern, a backslash can be used to escape a wildcard
1898 character, but it is matched literally when no wildcards are present.
1899 it() if the pattern contains a / (not counting a trailing /) or a "**",
1900 then it is matched against the full pathname, including any leading
1901 directories. If the pattern doesn't contain a / or a "**", then it is
1902 matched only against the final component of the filename.
1903 (Remember that the algorithm is applied recursively so "full filename"
1904 can actually be any portion of a path from the starting directory on
1906 it() a trailing "dir_name/***" will match both the directory (as if
1907 "dir_name/" had been specified) and all the files in the directory
1908 (as if "dir_name/**" had been specified). (This behavior is new for
1912 Note that, when using the bf(--recursive) (bf(-r)) option (which is implied by
1913 bf(-a)), every subcomponent of every path is visited from the top down, so
1914 include/exclude patterns get applied recursively to each subcomponent's
1915 full name (e.g. to include "/foo/bar/baz" the subcomponents "/foo" and
1916 "/foo/bar" must not be excluded).
1917 The exclude patterns actually short-circuit the directory traversal stage
1918 when rsync finds the files to send. If a pattern excludes a particular
1919 parent directory, it can render a deeper include pattern ineffectual
1920 because rsync did not descend through that excluded section of the
1921 hierarchy. This is particularly important when using a trailing '*' rule.
1922 For instance, this won't work:
1925 tt(+ /some/path/this-file-will-not-be-found)nl()
1926 tt(+ /file-is-included)nl()
1930 This fails because the parent directory "some" is excluded by the '*'
1931 rule, so rsync never visits any of the files in the "some" or "some/path"
1932 directories. One solution is to ask for all directories in the hierarchy
1933 to be included by using a single rule: "+ */" (put it somewhere before the
1934 "- *" rule), and perhaps use the bf(--prune-empty-dirs) option. Another
1935 solution is to add specific include rules for all
1936 the parent dirs that need to be visited. For instance, this set of rules
1941 tt(+ /some/path/)nl()
1942 tt(+ /some/path/this-file-is-found)nl()
1943 tt(+ /file-also-included)nl()
1947 Here are some examples of exclude/include matching:
1950 it() "- *.o" would exclude all filenames matching *.o
1951 it() "- /foo" would exclude a file (or directory) named foo in the
1952 transfer-root directory
1953 it() "- foo/" would exclude any directory named foo
1954 it() "- /foo/*/bar" would exclude any file named bar which is at two
1955 levels below a directory named foo in the transfer-root directory
1956 it() "- /foo/**/bar" would exclude any file named bar two
1957 or more levels below a directory named foo in the transfer-root directory
1958 it() The combination of "+ */", "+ *.c", and "- *" would include all
1959 directories and C source files but nothing else (see also the
1960 bf(--prune-empty-dirs) option)
1961 it() The combination of "+ foo/", "+ foo/bar.c", and "- *" would include
1962 only the foo directory and foo/bar.c (the foo directory must be
1963 explicitly included or it would be excluded by the "*")
1966 manpagesection(MERGE-FILE FILTER RULES)
1968 You can merge whole files into your filter rules by specifying either a
1969 merge (.) or a dir-merge (:) filter rule (as introduced in the FILTER RULES
1972 There are two kinds of merged files -- single-instance ('.') and
1973 per-directory (':'). A single-instance merge file is read one time, and
1974 its rules are incorporated into the filter list in the place of the "."
1975 rule. For per-directory merge files, rsync will scan every directory that
1976 it traverses for the named file, merging its contents when the file exists
1977 into the current list of inherited rules. These per-directory rule files
1978 must be created on the sending side because it is the sending side that is
1979 being scanned for the available files to transfer. These rule files may
1980 also need to be transferred to the receiving side if you want them to
1981 affect what files don't get deleted (see PER-DIRECTORY RULES AND DELETE
1987 tt(merge /etc/rsync/default.rules)nl()
1988 tt(. /etc/rsync/default.rules)nl()
1989 tt(dir-merge .per-dir-filter)nl()
1990 tt(dir-merge,n- .non-inherited-per-dir-excludes)nl()
1991 tt(:n- .non-inherited-per-dir-excludes)nl()
1994 The following modifiers are accepted after a merge or dir-merge rule:
1997 it() A bf(-) specifies that the file should consist of only exclude
1998 patterns, with no other rule-parsing except for in-file comments.
1999 it() A bf(+) specifies that the file should consist of only include
2000 patterns, with no other rule-parsing except for in-file comments.
2001 it() A bf(C) is a way to specify that the file should be read in a
2002 CVS-compatible manner. This turns on 'n', 'w', and '-', but also
2003 allows the list-clearing token (!) to be specified. If no filename is
2004 provided, ".cvsignore" is assumed.
2005 it() A bf(e) will exclude the merge-file name from the transfer; e.g.
2006 "dir-merge,e .rules" is like "dir-merge .rules" and "- .rules".
2007 it() An bf(n) specifies that the rules are not inherited by subdirectories.
2008 it() A bf(w) specifies that the rules are word-split on whitespace instead
2009 of the normal line-splitting. This also turns off comments. Note: the
2010 space that separates the prefix from the rule is treated specially, so
2011 "- foo + bar" is parsed as two rules (assuming that prefix-parsing wasn't
2013 it() You may also specify any of the modifiers for the "+" or "-" rules
2014 (below) in order to have the rules that are read in from the file
2015 default to having that modifier set. For instance, "merge,-/ .excl" would
2016 treat the contents of .excl as absolute-path excludes,
2017 while "dir-merge,s .filt" and ":sC" would each make all their
2018 per-directory rules apply only on the sending side.
2021 The following modifiers are accepted after a "+" or "-":
2024 it() A "/" specifies that the include/exclude rule should be matched
2025 against the absolute pathname of the current item. For example,
2026 "-/ /etc/passwd" would exclude the passwd file any time the transfer
2027 was sending files from the "/etc" directory, and "-/ subdir/foo"
2028 would always exclude "foo" when it is in a dir named "subdir", even
2029 if "foo" is at the root of the current transfer.
2030 it() A "!" specifies that the include/exclude should take effect if
2031 the pattern fails to match. For instance, "-! */" would exclude all
2033 it() A bf(C) is used to indicate that all the global CVS-exclude rules
2034 should be inserted as excludes in place of the "-C". No arg should
2036 it() An bf(s) is used to indicate that the rule applies to the sending
2037 side. When a rule affects the sending side, it prevents files from
2038 being transferred. The default is for a rule to affect both sides
2039 unless bf(--delete-excluded) was specified, in which case default rules
2040 become sender-side only. See also the hide (H) and show (S) rules,
2041 which are an alternate way to specify sending-side includes/excludes.
2042 it() An bf(r) is used to indicate that the rule applies to the receiving
2043 side. When a rule affects the receiving side, it prevents files from
2044 being deleted. See the bf(s) modifier for more info. See also the
2045 protect (P) and risk (R) rules, which are an alternate way to
2046 specify receiver-side includes/excludes.
2049 Per-directory rules are inherited in all subdirectories of the directory
2050 where the merge-file was found unless the 'n' modifier was used. Each
2051 subdirectory's rules are prefixed to the inherited per-directory rules
2052 from its parents, which gives the newest rules a higher priority than the
2053 inherited rules. The entire set of dir-merge rules are grouped together in
2054 the spot where the merge-file was specified, so it is possible to override
2055 dir-merge rules via a rule that got specified earlier in the list of global
2056 rules. When the list-clearing rule ("!") is read from a per-directory
2057 file, it only clears the inherited rules for the current merge file.
2059 Another way to prevent a single rule from a dir-merge file from being inherited is to
2060 anchor it with a leading slash. Anchored rules in a per-directory
2061 merge-file are relative to the merge-file's directory, so a pattern "/foo"
2062 would only match the file "foo" in the directory where the dir-merge filter
2065 Here's an example filter file which you'd specify via bf(--filter=". file":)
2068 tt(merge /home/user/.global-filter)nl()
2070 tt(dir-merge .rules)nl()
2075 This will merge the contents of the /home/user/.global-filter file at the
2076 start of the list and also turns the ".rules" filename into a per-directory
2077 filter file. All rules read in prior to the start of the directory scan
2078 follow the global anchoring rules (i.e. a leading slash matches at the root
2081 If a per-directory merge-file is specified with a path that is a parent
2082 directory of the first transfer directory, rsync will scan all the parent
2083 dirs from that starting point to the transfer directory for the indicated
2084 per-directory file. For instance, here is a common filter (see bf(-F)):
2086 quote(tt(--filter=': /.rsync-filter'))
2088 That rule tells rsync to scan for the file .rsync-filter in all
2089 directories from the root down through the parent directory of the
2090 transfer prior to the start of the normal directory scan of the file in
2091 the directories that are sent as a part of the transfer. (Note: for an
2092 rsync daemon, the root is always the same as the module's "path".)
2094 Some examples of this pre-scanning for per-directory files:
2097 tt(rsync -avF /src/path/ /dest/dir)nl()
2098 tt(rsync -av --filter=': ../../.rsync-filter' /src/path/ /dest/dir)nl()
2099 tt(rsync -av --filter=': .rsync-filter' /src/path/ /dest/dir)nl()
2102 The first two commands above will look for ".rsync-filter" in "/" and
2103 "/src" before the normal scan begins looking for the file in "/src/path"
2104 and its subdirectories. The last command avoids the parent-dir scan
2105 and only looks for the ".rsync-filter" files in each directory that is
2106 a part of the transfer.
2108 If you want to include the contents of a ".cvsignore" in your patterns,
2109 you should use the rule ":C", which creates a dir-merge of the .cvsignore
2110 file, but parsed in a CVS-compatible manner. You can
2111 use this to affect where the bf(--cvs-exclude) (bf(-C)) option's inclusion of the
2112 per-directory .cvsignore file gets placed into your rules by putting the
2113 ":C" wherever you like in your filter rules. Without this, rsync would
2114 add the dir-merge rule for the .cvsignore file at the end of all your other
2115 rules (giving it a lower priority than your command-line rules). For
2119 tt(cat <<EOT | rsync -avC --filter='. -' a/ b)nl()
2124 tt(rsync -avC --include=foo.o -f :C --exclude='*.old' a/ b)nl()
2127 Both of the above rsync commands are identical. Each one will merge all
2128 the per-directory .cvsignore rules in the middle of the list rather than
2129 at the end. This allows their dir-specific rules to supersede the rules
2130 that follow the :C instead of being subservient to all your rules. To
2131 affect the other CVS exclude rules (i.e. the default list of exclusions,
2132 the contents of $HOME/.cvsignore, and the value of $CVSIGNORE) you should
2133 omit the bf(-C) command-line option and instead insert a "-C" rule into
2134 your filter rules; e.g. "--filter=-C".
2136 manpagesection(LIST-CLEARING FILTER RULE)
2138 You can clear the current include/exclude list by using the "!" filter
2139 rule (as introduced in the FILTER RULES section above). The "current"
2140 list is either the global list of rules (if the rule is encountered while
2141 parsing the filter options) or a set of per-directory rules (which are
2142 inherited in their own sub-list, so a subdirectory can use this to clear
2143 out the parent's rules).
2145 manpagesection(ANCHORING INCLUDE/EXCLUDE PATTERNS)
2147 As mentioned earlier, global include/exclude patterns are anchored at the
2148 "root of the transfer" (as opposed to per-directory patterns, which are
2149 anchored at the merge-file's directory). If you think of the transfer as
2150 a subtree of names that are being sent from sender to receiver, the
2151 transfer-root is where the tree starts to be duplicated in the destination
2152 directory. This root governs where patterns that start with a / match.
2154 Because the matching is relative to the transfer-root, changing the
2155 trailing slash on a source path or changing your use of the bf(--relative)
2156 option affects the path you need to use in your matching (in addition to
2157 changing how much of the file tree is duplicated on the destination
2158 host). The following examples demonstrate this.
2160 Let's say that we want to match two source files, one with an absolute
2161 path of "/home/me/foo/bar", and one with a path of "/home/you/bar/baz".
2162 Here is how the various command choices differ for a 2-source transfer:
2165 Example cmd: rsync -a /home/me /home/you /dest nl()
2166 +/- pattern: /me/foo/bar nl()
2167 +/- pattern: /you/bar/baz nl()
2168 Target file: /dest/me/foo/bar nl()
2169 Target file: /dest/you/bar/baz nl()
2173 Example cmd: rsync -a /home/me/ /home/you/ /dest nl()
2174 +/- pattern: /foo/bar (note missing "me") nl()
2175 +/- pattern: /bar/baz (note missing "you") nl()
2176 Target file: /dest/foo/bar nl()
2177 Target file: /dest/bar/baz nl()
2181 Example cmd: rsync -a --relative /home/me/ /home/you /dest nl()
2182 +/- pattern: /home/me/foo/bar (note full path) nl()
2183 +/- pattern: /home/you/bar/baz (ditto) nl()
2184 Target file: /dest/home/me/foo/bar nl()
2185 Target file: /dest/home/you/bar/baz nl()
2189 Example cmd: cd /home; rsync -a --relative me/foo you/ /dest nl()
2190 +/- pattern: /me/foo/bar (starts at specified path) nl()
2191 +/- pattern: /you/bar/baz (ditto) nl()
2192 Target file: /dest/me/foo/bar nl()
2193 Target file: /dest/you/bar/baz nl()
2196 The easiest way to see what name you should filter is to just
2197 look at the output when using bf(--verbose) and put a / in front of the name
2198 (use the bf(--dry-run) option if you're not yet ready to copy any files).
2200 manpagesection(PER-DIRECTORY RULES AND DELETE)
2202 Without a delete option, per-directory rules are only relevant on the
2203 sending side, so you can feel free to exclude the merge files themselves
2204 without affecting the transfer. To make this easy, the 'e' modifier adds
2205 this exclude for you, as seen in these two equivalent commands:
2208 tt(rsync -av --filter=': .excl' --exclude=.excl host:src/dir /dest)nl()
2209 tt(rsync -av --filter=':e .excl' host:src/dir /dest)nl()
2212 However, if you want to do a delete on the receiving side AND you want some
2213 files to be excluded from being deleted, you'll need to be sure that the
2214 receiving side knows what files to exclude. The easiest way is to include
2215 the per-directory merge files in the transfer and use bf(--delete-after),
2216 because this ensures that the receiving side gets all the same exclude
2217 rules as the sending side before it tries to delete anything:
2219 quote(tt(rsync -avF --delete-after host:src/dir /dest))
2221 However, if the merge files are not a part of the transfer, you'll need to
2222 either specify some global exclude rules (i.e. specified on the command
2223 line), or you'll need to maintain your own per-directory merge files on
2224 the receiving side. An example of the first is this (assume that the
2225 remote .rules files exclude themselves):
2227 verb(rsync -av --filter=': .rules' --filter='. /my/extra.rules'
2228 --delete host:src/dir /dest)
2230 In the above example the extra.rules file can affect both sides of the
2231 transfer, but (on the sending side) the rules are subservient to the rules
2232 merged from the .rules files because they were specified after the
2233 per-directory merge rule.
2235 In one final example, the remote side is excluding the .rsync-filter
2236 files from the transfer, but we want to use our own .rsync-filter files
2237 to control what gets deleted on the receiving side. To do this we must
2238 specifically exclude the per-directory merge files (so that they don't get
2239 deleted) and then put rules into the local files to control what else
2240 should not get deleted. Like one of these commands:
2242 verb( rsync -av --filter=':e /.rsync-filter' --delete \
2244 rsync -avFF --delete host:src/dir /dest)
2246 manpagesection(BATCH MODE)
2248 Batch mode can be used to apply the same set of updates to many
2249 identical systems. Suppose one has a tree which is replicated on a
2250 number of hosts. Now suppose some changes have been made to this
2251 source tree and those changes need to be propagated to the other
2252 hosts. In order to do this using batch mode, rsync is run with the
2253 write-batch option to apply the changes made to the source tree to one
2254 of the destination trees. The write-batch option causes the rsync
2255 client to store in a "batch file" all the information needed to repeat
2256 this operation against other, identical destination trees.
2258 To apply the recorded changes to another destination tree, run rsync
2259 with the read-batch option, specifying the name of the same batch
2260 file, and the destination tree. Rsync updates the destination tree
2261 using the information stored in the batch file.
2263 For convenience, one additional file is creating when the write-batch
2264 option is used. This file's name is created by appending
2265 ".sh" to the batch filename. The .sh file contains
2266 a command-line suitable for updating a destination tree using that
2267 batch file. It can be executed using a Bourne (or Bourne-like) shell,
2269 passing in an alternate destination tree pathname which is then used
2270 instead of the original path. This is useful when the destination tree
2271 path differs from the original destination tree path.
2273 Generating the batch file once saves having to perform the file
2274 status, checksum, and data block generation more than once when
2275 updating multiple destination trees. Multicast transport protocols can
2276 be used to transfer the batch update files in parallel to many hosts
2277 at once, instead of sending the same data to every host individually.
2282 tt($ rsync --write-batch=foo -a host:/source/dir/ /adest/dir/)nl()
2283 tt($ scp foo* remote:)nl()
2284 tt($ ssh remote ./foo.sh /bdest/dir/)nl()
2288 tt($ rsync --write-batch=foo -a /source/dir/ /adest/dir/)nl()
2289 tt($ ssh remote rsync --read-batch=- -a /bdest/dir/ <foo)nl()
2292 In these examples, rsync is used to update /adest/dir/ from /source/dir/
2293 and the information to repeat this operation is stored in "foo" and
2294 "foo.sh". The host "remote" is then updated with the batched data going
2295 into the directory /bdest/dir. The differences between the two examples
2296 reveals some of the flexibility you have in how you deal with batches:
2299 it() The first example shows that the initial copy doesn't have to be
2300 local -- you can push or pull data to/from a remote host using either the
2301 remote-shell syntax or rsync daemon syntax, as desired.
2302 it() The first example uses the created "foo.sh" file to get the right
2303 rsync options when running the read-batch command on the remote host.
2304 it() The second example reads the batch data via standard input so that
2305 the batch file doesn't need to be copied to the remote machine first.
2306 This example avoids the foo.sh script because it needed to use a modified
2307 bf(--read-batch) option, but you could edit the script file if you wished to
2308 make use of it (just be sure that no other option is trying to use
2309 standard input, such as the "bf(--exclude-from=-)" option).
2314 The read-batch option expects the destination tree that it is updating
2315 to be identical to the destination tree that was used to create the
2316 batch update fileset. When a difference between the destination trees
2317 is encountered the update might be discarded with a warning (if the file
2318 appears to be up-to-date already) or the file-update may be attempted
2319 and then, if the file fails to verify, the update discarded with an
2320 error. This means that it should be safe to re-run a read-batch operation
2321 if the command got interrupted. If you wish to force the batched-update to
2322 always be attempted regardless of the file's size and date, use the bf(-I)
2323 option (when reading the batch).
2324 If an error occurs, the destination tree will probably be in a
2325 partially updated state. In that case, rsync can
2326 be used in its regular (non-batch) mode of operation to fix up the
2329 The rsync version used on all destinations must be at least as new as the
2330 one used to generate the batch file. Rsync will die with an error if the
2331 protocol version in the batch file is too new for the batch-reading rsync
2332 to handle. See also the bf(--protocol) option for a way to have the
2333 creating rsync generate a batch file that an older rsync can understand.
2334 (Note that batch files changed format in version 2.6.3, so mixing versions
2335 older than that with newer versions will not work.)
2337 When reading a batch file, rsync will force the value of certain options
2338 to match the data in the batch file if you didn't set them to the same
2339 as the batch-writing command. Other options can (and should) be changed.
2340 For instance bf(--write-batch) changes to bf(--read-batch),
2341 bf(--files-from) is dropped, and the
2342 bf(--filter)/bf(--include)/bf(--exclude) options are not needed unless
2343 one of the bf(--delete) options is specified.
2345 The code that creates the BATCH.sh file transforms any filter/include/exclude
2346 options into a single list that is appended as a "here" document to the
2347 shell script file. An advanced user can use this to modify the exclude
2348 list if a change in what gets deleted by bf(--delete) is desired. A normal
2349 user can ignore this detail and just use the shell script as an easy way
2350 to run the appropriate bf(--read-batch) command for the batched data.
2352 The original batch mode in rsync was based on "rsync+", but the latest
2353 version uses a new implementation.
2355 manpagesection(SYMBOLIC LINKS)
2357 Three basic behaviors are possible when rsync encounters a symbolic
2358 link in the source directory.
2360 By default, symbolic links are not transferred at all. A message
2361 "skipping non-regular" file is emitted for any symlinks that exist.
2363 If bf(--links) is specified, then symlinks are recreated with the same
2364 target on the destination. Note that bf(--archive) implies
2367 If bf(--copy-links) is specified, then symlinks are "collapsed" by
2368 copying their referent, rather than the symlink.
2370 rsync also distinguishes "safe" and "unsafe" symbolic links. An
2371 example where this might be used is a web site mirror that wishes
2372 ensure the rsync module they copy does not include symbolic links to
2373 bf(/etc/passwd) in the public section of the site. Using
2374 bf(--copy-unsafe-links) will cause any links to be copied as the file
2375 they point to on the destination. Using bf(--safe-links) will cause
2376 unsafe links to be omitted altogether. (Note that you must specify
2377 bf(--links) for bf(--safe-links) to have any effect.)
2379 Symbolic links are considered unsafe if they are absolute symlinks
2380 (start with bf(/)), empty, or if they contain enough bf("..")
2381 components to ascend from the directory being copied.
2383 Here's a summary of how the symlink options are interpreted. The list is
2384 in order of precedence, so if your combination of options isn't mentioned,
2385 use the first line that is a complete subset of your options:
2387 dit(bf(--copy-links)) Turn all symlinks into normal files (leaving no
2388 symlinks for any other options to affect).
2390 dit(bf(--links --copy-unsafe-links)) Turn all unsafe symlinks into files
2391 and duplicate all safe symlinks.
2393 dit(bf(--copy-unsafe-links)) Turn all unsafe symlinks into files, noisily
2394 skip all safe symlinks.
2396 dit(bf(--links --safe-links)) Duplicate safe symlinks and skip unsafe
2399 dit(bf(--links)) Duplicate all symlinks.
2401 manpagediagnostics()
2403 rsync occasionally produces error messages that may seem a little
2404 cryptic. The one that seems to cause the most confusion is "protocol
2405 version mismatch -- is your shell clean?".
2407 This message is usually caused by your startup scripts or remote shell
2408 facility producing unwanted garbage on the stream that rsync is using
2409 for its transport. The way to diagnose this problem is to run your
2410 remote shell like this:
2412 quote(tt(ssh remotehost /bin/true > out.dat))
2414 then look at out.dat. If everything is working correctly then out.dat
2415 should be a zero length file. If you are getting the above error from
2416 rsync then you will probably find that out.dat contains some text or
2417 data. Look at the contents and try to work out what is producing
2418 it. The most common cause is incorrectly configured shell startup
2419 scripts (such as .cshrc or .profile) that contain output statements
2420 for non-interactive logins.
2422 If you are having trouble debugging filter patterns, then
2423 try specifying the bf(-vv) option. At this level of verbosity rsync will
2424 show why each individual file is included or excluded.
2426 manpagesection(EXIT VALUES)
2430 dit(bf(1)) Syntax or usage error
2431 dit(bf(2)) Protocol incompatibility
2432 dit(bf(3)) Errors selecting input/output files, dirs
2433 dit(bf(4)) Requested action not supported: an attempt
2434 was made to manipulate 64-bit files on a platform that cannot support
2435 them; or an option was specified that is supported by the client and
2437 dit(bf(5)) Error starting client-server protocol
2438 dit(bf(6)) Daemon unable to append to log-file
2439 dit(bf(10)) Error in socket I/O
2440 dit(bf(11)) Error in file I/O
2441 dit(bf(12)) Error in rsync protocol data stream
2442 dit(bf(13)) Errors with program diagnostics
2443 dit(bf(14)) Error in IPC code
2444 dit(bf(20)) Received SIGUSR1 or SIGINT
2445 dit(bf(21)) Some error returned by code(waitpid())
2446 dit(bf(22)) Error allocating core memory buffers
2447 dit(bf(23)) Partial transfer due to error
2448 dit(bf(24)) Partial transfer due to vanished source files
2449 dit(bf(25)) The --max-delete limit stopped deletions
2450 dit(bf(30)) Timeout in data send/receive
2453 manpagesection(ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES)
2456 dit(bf(CVSIGNORE)) The CVSIGNORE environment variable supplements any
2457 ignore patterns in .cvsignore files. See the bf(--cvs-exclude) option for
2459 dit(bf(RSYNC_RSH)) The RSYNC_RSH environment variable allows you to
2460 override the default shell used as the transport for rsync. Command line
2461 options are permitted after the command name, just as in the bf(-e) option.
2462 dit(bf(RSYNC_PROXY)) The RSYNC_PROXY environment variable allows you to
2463 redirect your rsync client to use a web proxy when connecting to a
2464 rsync daemon. You should set RSYNC_PROXY to a hostname:port pair.
2465 dit(bf(RSYNC_PASSWORD)) Setting RSYNC_PASSWORD to the required
2466 password allows you to run authenticated rsync connections to an rsync
2467 daemon without user intervention. Note that this does not supply a
2468 password to a shell transport such as ssh.
2469 dit(bf(USER) or bf(LOGNAME)) The USER or LOGNAME environment variables
2470 are used to determine the default username sent to an rsync daemon.
2471 If neither is set, the username defaults to "nobody".
2472 dit(bf(HOME)) The HOME environment variable is used to find the user's
2473 default .cvsignore file.
2478 /etc/rsyncd.conf or rsyncd.conf
2486 times are transferred as *nix time_t values
2488 When transferring to FAT filesystems rsync may re-sync
2490 See the comments on the bf(--modify-window) option.
2492 file permissions, devices, etc. are transferred as native numerical
2495 see also the comments on the bf(--delete) option
2497 Please report bugs! See the website at
2498 url(http://rsync.samba.org/)(http://rsync.samba.org/)
2500 manpagesection(VERSION)
2502 This man page is current for version 2.6.8 of rsync.
2504 manpagesection(CREDITS)
2506 rsync is distributed under the GNU public license. See the file
2507 COPYING for details.
2509 A WEB site is available at
2510 url(http://rsync.samba.org/)(http://rsync.samba.org/). The site
2511 includes an FAQ-O-Matic which may cover questions unanswered by this
2514 The primary ftp site for rsync is
2515 url(ftp://rsync.samba.org/pub/rsync)(ftp://rsync.samba.org/pub/rsync).
2517 We would be delighted to hear from you if you like this program.
2519 This program uses the excellent zlib compression library written by
2520 Jean-loup Gailly and Mark Adler.
2522 manpagesection(THANKS)
2524 Thanks to Richard Brent, Brendan Mackay, Bill Waite, Stephen Rothwell
2525 and David Bell for helpful suggestions, patches and testing of rsync.
2526 I've probably missed some people, my apologies if I have.
2528 Especial thanks also to: David Dykstra, Jos Backus, Sebastian Krahmer,
2529 Martin Pool, Wayne Davison, J.W. Schultz.
2533 rsync was originally written by Andrew Tridgell and Paul Mackerras.
2534 Many people have later contributed to it.
2536 Mailing lists for support and development are available at
2537 url(http://lists.samba.org)(lists.samba.org)