The order of the options is important: if you specify bf(--no-r -a), the
bf(-r) option would end up being turned on, the opposite of bf(-a --no-r).
Note also that the side-effects of the bf(--files-from) option are NOT
-positional, as it affects the default state of several options and sligntly
+positional, as it affects the default state of several options and slightly
changes the meaning of bf(-a) (see the bf(--files-from) option for more
details).
file are split on whitespace).
dit(bf(-T, --temp-dir=DIR)) This option instructs rsync to use DIR as a
-scratch directory when creating temporary copies of the files
-transferred on the receiving side. The default behavior is to create
-the temporary files in the receiving directory.
+scratch directory when creating temporary copies of the files transferred
+on the receiving side. The default behavior is to create each temporary
+file in the same directory as the associated destination file.
+
+This option is most often used when the receiving disk partition does not
+have enough free space to hold a copy of the largest file in the transfer.
+In this case (i.e. when the scratch directory in on a different disk
+partition), rsync will not be able to rename each received temporary file
+over the top of the associated destination file, but instead must copy it
+into place. Rsync does this by copying the file over the top of the
+destination file, which means that the destination file will contain
+truncated data during this copy. If this were not done this way (even if
+the destination file were first removed, the data locally copied to a
+temporary file in the destination directory, and then renamed into place)
+it would be possible for the old file to continue taking up disk space (if
+someone had it open), and thus there might not be enough room to fit the
+new version on the disk at the same time.
+
+If you are using this option for reasons other than a shortage of disk
+space, you may wish to combine it with the bf(--delay-updates) option,
+which will ensure that all copied files get put into subdirectories in the
+destination hierarchy, awaiting the end of the transfer. If you don't
+have enough room to duplicate all the arriving files on the destination
+partition, another way to tell rsync that you aren't overly concerned
+about disk space is to use the bf(--partial-dir) option with a relative
+path; because this tells rsync that it is OK to stash off a copy of a
+single file in a subdir in the destination hierarchy, rsync will use the
+partial-dir as a staging area to bring over the copied file, and then
+rename it into place from there. (Specifying a bf(--partial-dir) with
+an absolute path does not have this side-effect.)
dit(bf(-y, --fuzzy)) This option tells rsync that it should look for a
basis file for any destination file that is missing. The current algorithm
output of "%i".
The bf(--verbose) option implies a format of "%n%L", but you can use
-bf(--log-format) without bv(--verbose) if you like, or you can override
+bf(--log-format) without bf(--verbose) if you like, or you can override
the format of its per-file output using this option.
Rsync will output the log-format string prior to a file's transfer unless
bf(--partial) option is to specify a em(DIR) that will be used to hold the
partial data (instead of writing it out to the destination file).
On the next transfer, rsync will use a file found in this
-dir as data to speed up the resumption of the transfer and then deletes it
+dir as data to speed up the resumption of the transfer and then delete it
after it has served its purpose.
+
Note that if bf(--whole-file) is specified (or implied), any partial-dir
file that is found for a file that is being updated will simply be removed
(since
specified. For instance, instead of using bf(--partial-dir=.rsync-tmp)
along with bf(--progress), you could set RSYNC_PARTIAL_DIR=.rsync-tmp in your
environment and then just use the bf(-P) option to turn on the use of the
-.rsync-tmp dir for partial transfers. The only time that the bf(--partial)
-option does not look for this environment value is (1) when bf(--inplace) was
-specified (since bf(--inplace) conflicts with bf(--partial-dir)), or (2) when
+.rsync-tmp dir for partial transfers. The only times that the bf(--partial)
+option does not look for this environment value are (1) when bf(--inplace) was
+specified (since bf(--inplace) conflicts with bf(--partial-dir)), and (2) when
bf(--delay-updates) was specified (see below).
For the purposes of the daemon-config's "refuse options" setting,
Matt McCutchen's Web Site / rsync / rsync.git / blobdiff