rsync(1) User Commands rsync(1)
NAME
rsync - a fast, versatile, local/remote file-copying tool
SYNOPSIS
Local:
rsync [OPTION...] SRC... [DEST]
Access via remote shell:
Pull:
rsync [OPTION...] [USER@]HOST:SRC... [DEST]
Push:
rsync [OPTION...] SRC... [USER@]HOST:DEST
Access via rsync daemon:
Pull:
rsync [OPTION...] [USER@]HOST::SRC... [DEST]
rsync [OPTION...] rsync://[USER@]HOST[:PORT]/SRC... [DEST]
Push:
rsync [OPTION...] SRC... [USER@]HOST::DEST
rsync [OPTION...] SRC... rsync://[USER@]HOST[:PORT]/DEST
Usages with just one SRC argument and no DEST argument will list the
source files instead of copying.
The online version of this manpage (which includes cross-linking of top-
ics) is available at ]8;;https://download.samba.org/pub/rsync/rsync.1\https://download.samba.org/pub/rsync/rsync.1]8;;\.
DESCRIPTION
Rsync is a fast and extraordinarily versatile file copying tool. It can
copy locally, to/from another host over a remote shell, or to/from a re-
mote rsync daemon. It offers a large number of options that control
every aspect of its behavior and permit very flexible specification of
the set of files to be copied. It is famous for its delta-transfer al-
gorithm, which reduces the amount of data sent over the network by send-
ing only the differences between the source files and the existing files
in the destination. Rsync is widely used for backups and mirroring and
as an improved copy command for everyday use.
Rsync finds files that need to be transferred using a "quick check" al-
gorithm (by default) that looks for files that have changed in size or
in last-modified time. Any changes in the other preserved attributes
(as requested by options) are made on the destination file directly when
the quick check indicates that the file's data does not need to be up-
dated.
Some of the additional features of rsync are:
o support for copying hard and soft links, devices, owners, groups,
and permissions
o exclude and exclude-from options similar to GNU tar
o a CVS exclude mode for ignoring the same files that CVS would ig-
nore
o can use any transparent remote shell, including ssh or rsh
o does not require super-user privileges
o pipelining of file transfers to minimize latency costs
o support for anonymous or authenticated rsync daemons (ideal for
mirroring)
GENERAL
Rsync copies files either to or from a remote host, or locally on the
current host. It does not support copying files between two different
remote hosts.
There are two different ways for rsync to contact a remote system: using
a remote-shell program as the transport (such as ssh or rsh), or by con-
tacting an rsync daemon directly via TCP. The remote-shell transport is
used whenever the source or destination path contains a single colon (:)
separator after a host specification. In this case, the local rsync
process uses the remote shell program to start an rsync process on the
remote system. The two rsync processes then communicate via the remote
shell program to accomplish the desired transfers. In this case, the
files that are accessible on the remote system are those accessible to
the user ID under which the remote shell starts the remote rsync
process.
Contacting an rsync daemon directly happens when the source or destina-
tion path contains a double colon (::) separator after a host specifica-
tion, OR when an rsync:// URL is specified. In this case, the remote
rsync daemon process will provide access only to specific sets of files,
called modules, according to its configuration. It is also possible to
contact an rsync daemon via a remote-shell transport; see the USING
RSYNC-DAEMON FEATURES VIA A REMOTE-SHELL CONNECTION section for details.
As a special case, if a single source argument is specified without a
destination, the files are listed in an output format similar to
"ls -l".
If neither the source or destination path specify a remote host, the
copy occurs locally (see also the --list-only option).
Rsync refers to the local side as the client and the remote side as the
server. The server is not to be confused with an rsync daemon. A dae-
mon is always a server, but a server can be either a daemon or a remote-
shell spawned process. If the transfer is local, then the rsync sub-
process which receives the contents of the files being transferred is
the server.
SETUP
Most Linux distributions include rsync as a package that can be in-
stalled using the package manager. If for any reason you need to build
and install rsync from source, see the file README.md for installation
instructions.
Once installed, you can use rsync to any machine that you can access via
a remote shell, or that has an rsync daemon available. For remote
transfers, rsync normally uses ssh for its communications. Alterna-
tively, you can specify any remote shell you like, either by using the
-e command line option, or by setting the RSYNC_RSH environment vari-
able.
Note that rsync must be installed on both the source and destination ma-
chines.
USAGE
You use rsync in a similar way to other file-copying commands such as cp
and rcp. You must specify a source and a destination, one of which may
be remote.
Perhaps the best way to explain the syntax is with some examples:
rsync -t *.c foo:src/
This would transfer all files matching the pattern *.c from the current
directory to the directory src on the machine foo. If any of the files
already exist on the remote system then the rsync remote-update protocol
is used to update the file by sending only the differences in the data.
Note that the expansion of wildcards on the command-line (*.c) into a
list of files is handled by the shell before it runs rsync and not by
rsync itself (as for other Posix-style programs).
rsync -avz foo:src/bar /data/tmp
This would recursively transfer all files from the directory src/bar on
the machine foo into the /data/tmp/bar directory on the local machine.
The files are transferred in archive mode, which ensures that symbolic
links, devices, attributes, permissions, ownerships, etc. are preserved
in the transfer. Additionally, compression will be used to reduce the
size of data portions of the transfer.
rsync -avz foo:src/bar/ /data/tmp
A trailing slash on the source changes this behavior to avoid creating
an additional directory level at the destination. You can think of a
trailing / on a source as meaning "copy the contents of this directory"
as opposed to "copy the directory by name", but in both cases the at-
tributes of the containing directory are transferred to the containing
directory on the destination. In other words, each of the following
commands copies the files in the same way, including their setting of
the attributes of /dest/foo:
rsync -av /src/foo /dest
rsync -av /src/foo/ /dest/foo
Note also that host and module references don't require a trailing slash
to copy the contents of the default directory. For example, both of
these copy the remote directory's contents into "/dest":
rsync -av host: /dest
rsync -av host::module /dest
You can also use rsync in local-only mode, where both the source and
destination don't have a ':' in the name. In this case it behaves like
an improved copy command.
Finally, you can list all the (listable) modules available from a par-
ticular rsync daemon by leaving off the module name:
rsync somehost.mydomain.com::
COPYING TO A DIFFERENT NAME
When you want to copy a directory to a different name, use a trailing
slash on the source directory to put the contents of the directory into
any destination directory you like:
rsync -ai foo/ bar/
Rsync also has the ability to copy a single file to a destination file
with a different name. The rules for this are:
o The transfer list must consist of a single item (either a file or
an empty directory)
o The final element of the destination path must not exist as a di-
rectory
o The destination path must not have been specified with a trailing
slash
Under those circumstances, rsync will use the specified destination path
as the filename of the destination (rather than constructing a filename
using the last element of the source path). It is best to use this id-
iom only when copying a file, and to use the above trailing-slash idiom
when copying a directory.
The following example copies the foo.c file as bar.c in the save direc-
tory (assuming that bar.c isn't a directory):
rsync -ai src/foo.c save/bar.c
The single-item copy rule can give unexpected results if a wildcard pat-
tern for the source yields a single item, and the destination, though
specified without a trailing slash, is intended to be a directory, but
that directory does not exist. For example, if src/*.c matches one file
and save/dir doesn't exist, this will perhaps confusingly name the des-
tination file save/dir:
rsync -ai src/*.c save/dir
To prevent such an accident, either make sure the destination directory
exists or specify the destination path with a trailing slash:
rsync -ai src/*.c save/dir/
SORTED TRANSFER ORDER
Rsync always sorts the specified filenames into its internal transfer
list. This handles the merging together of the contents of identically
named directories and makes it easy to remove duplicate filenames. It
can, however, result in files being transferred in a different order
from that specified on the command-line.
If you need a particular file to be transferred prior to another, the
only way to be guaranteed of that is to separate the files into differ-
ent rsync calls. If it is sufficient for the destination files to ap-
pear at almost the same time, consider using --delay-updates, which
doesn't affect the sorted transfer order, but does make the final file-
updating phase happen much more rapidly.
SECURITY
Rsync is frequently run across a network and with elevated privileges,
so it is worth thinking about who you are trusting and with what. This
section is a practical guide for safe use; the project's SECURITY.md de-
scribes the full threat model and the per-platform residuals.
Use an authenticated, encrypted transport
A plain host:path transfer runs over your remote shell (ssh by default),
which authenticates the peer and encrypts the connection -- this is the
safe default. A direct daemon connection (host::module or rsync://) is
not encrypted and its authentication is comparatively weak, so do not
send sensitive data across an untrusted network. Instead tunnel it over
ssh (see USING RSYNC-DAEMON FEATURES VIA A REMOTE-SHELL CONNECTION) or
wrap it in TLS with rsync-ssl(1), setting RSYNC_SSL_CA_CERT so that the
server certificate's chain and hostname are verified. When you must
supply a daemon password non-interactively, put it in a --password-file
that is readable only by you (mode 600) rather than on the command line.
Copying from an untrusted sending host
When receiving from a remote host, rsync takes steps to ensure that a
corrupted or compromised remote rsync process can't cause the local
rsync process to access files beyond the bounds of what was requested.
Rsync ensures that the list of files being transferred stays within the
requested tree, and will abort when a file list contains an absolute or
relative path that tries to escape the top of the transfer. It also
verifies that no extra source arguments were added to the transfer and
that the file list obeys the exclude rules that were sent to the sender.
For those who want to be extra careful, it is safest to copy untrusted
remote files into a dedicated destination directory. For example, in-
stead of copying into your home directory:
rsync -aiv host1:dir1 ~
dedicate a "host1-files" directory to the remote content:
rsync -aiv host1:dir1 ~/host1-files
See the --trust-sender option for additional details.
Copying between case-preserving and case-insensitive filesystems
Copying from case-preserving to case-insensitive filesystems requires
caution, because it is possible for the name of a symbolic link to over-
lap with the name of a file or directory once the case distinctions are
removed, which can cause potentially dangerous results such as files be-
ing written outside the destination directory hierarchy. If you must
perform such a copy, either disable symlinks via --no-links or enable
the munging of symlinks via --munge-links (and make sure you use the
right local or remote option). This does not, however, ensure that you
get a full copy of all the files (since that may not be possible when
the names overlap); a potentially better solution is to build a safe
list of filenames and pass it to --files-from.
Symbolic links
A malicious sender can include symlinks that point outside the destina-
tion tree (for example at /etc/passwd). Use --safe-links to ignore any
symlink that points outside the set of files being transferred, or
--munge-links to store every symlink in a form that is unusable on disk
but recoverable later; --no-links drops symlinks entirely. See the SYM-
BOLIC LINKS section for how these interact.
Separately, the directory and file paths that you supply on the command
line -- --backup-dir, --temp-dir, --partial-dir, the --link-dest/--com-
pare-dest/--copy-dest basis directories, --log-file, --files-from/--in-
clude-from/--exclude-from, --filter merge files,
--write-batch/--read-batch, and the destination itself -- are resolved
so that a symlink component is followed only when it is owned by you or
by root; an attacker-planted symlink along one of those paths is re-
fused. --insecure-links turns that protection off (restoring the his-
torical follow-any-symlink behaviour); use it only when every directory
along those paths is trusted, never on a path an unprivileged user can
write.
Use strong checksums
Rsync auto-negotiates the strongest checksum that both ends support, so
keeping both local and remote rsync versions reasonably current is usu-
ally all that is needed. You can pin the choice with --checksum-choice
(--cc, e.g. --cc=sha1 or one of the xxHash variants) or constrain nego-
tiation with the RSYNC_CHECKSUM_LIST environment variable; only very old
peers fall back to MD4/MD5. This pre-transfer "does this file need up-
dating?" checksum is separate from the whole-file checksum rsync nor-
mally computes to verify each transferred file afterward (verification
is off when --checksum-choice=none is forced).
Protocol version
The client and server automatically negotiate the newest protocol they
both support, so a current pair is already using the most recent ver-
sion; --protocol only forces an older version for compatibility and
should not be used to downgrade a connection. Avoiding old protocols is
therefore a matter of running a current rsync on both ends (a protocol
below 30 also forces the weak MD4 authentication digest on a daemon con-
nection -- see the AUTHENTICATION STRENGTH section of rsyncd.conf(5)).
ADVANCED USAGE
The syntax for requesting multiple files from a remote host is done by
specifying additional remote-host arguments in the same style as the
first, or with the hostname omitted. For instance, all these work:
rsync -aiv host:file1 :file2 host:file{3,4} /dest/
rsync -aiv host::modname/file{1,2} host::modname/extra /dest/
rsync -aiv host::modname/first ::extra-file{1,2} /dest/
Note that a daemon connection only supports accessing one module per
copy command, so if the start of a follow-up path doesn't begin with the
modname of the first path, it is assumed to be a path in the module
(such as the extra-file1 & extra-file2 that are grabbed above).
Because really old versions of rsync (prior to 3.0.0, released March
2008) only allowed specifying one remote-source argument, some people
have come to rely on the remote shell performing space splitting to
break a single argument into multiple paths. Such unintuitive behavior
is no longer supported by default, though you can request it, as de-
scribed in the next paragraph. Rsync now (since 3.2.4) passes filenames
to a remote shell in such a way as to preserve the characters you give
it. Thus, if you ask for a file with spaces in the name, that's what the
remote rsync looks for:
rsync -aiv host:'a simple file.pdf' /dest/
If you use scripts that have been written to manually apply extra quot-
ing to the remote rsync arguments, or to rely on remote argument split-
ting, you can ask rsync to let your script handle the extra escaping.
This is done by either adding the --old-args option to the rsync runs in
the script (which requires a new rsync) or exporting RSYNC_OLD_ARGS=1
and RSYNC_PROTECT_ARGS=0 (which works with old or new rsync versions).
CONNECTING TO AN RSYNC DAEMON
An rsync daemon provides a way to give access to one or more directory
hierarchies on a system in a controlled way, without having to provide
shell access to the system. Each directory hierarchy is called a "mod-
ule". The names, directories, access permissions and so on for each
module are defined by the rsync daemon configuration file, described in
rsyncd.conf(5). Connections to an rsync daemon typically use TCP port
873. The administrator of the system would normally arrange for the
rsync daemon to be running; refer to the STARTING AN RSYNC DAEMON TO AC-
CEPT CONNECTIONS section below for information on how to do that.
From the client point of view, using rsync to access an rsync daemon is
similar to using it with a remote shell except that:
o Use either double-colon syntax or rsync:// URL syntax instead of
the single-colon (remote shell) syntax.
o The first element of the "path" is actually a module name.
o Additional remote source arguments can use an abbreviated syntax
that omits the hostname and/or the module name, as discussed in
ADVANCED USAGE.
o The remote daemon may print a "message of the day" when you con-
nect.
o If you specify only the host (with no module or path) then a list
of accessible modules on the daemon is output.
o If you specify a remote source path but no destination, a listing
of the matching files on the remote daemon is output.
o To contact an rsync daemon directly, the --rsh (-e) option must
be omitted. If it is used, rsync will use the specified remote
shell program to start an rsync daemon on the remote system. See
the USING RSYNC-DAEMON FEATURES VIA A REMOTE-SHELL CONNECTION
section for information on this mode of operation.
An example that copies all the files in a remote module named "src":
rsync -av host::src /dest
Some modules on the remote daemon may require authentication. If so,
you will receive a password prompt when you connect. You can avoid the
password prompt by setting the environment variable RSYNC_PASSWORD to
the password you want to use or using the --password-file option. This
may be useful when scripting rsync.
WARNING: On some systems, environment variables are visible to all
users. On those systems using --password-file is recommended.
You may establish the connection via a web proxy by setting the environ-
ment variable RSYNC_PROXY to a hostname:port pair pointing to your web
proxy. Note that your web proxy's configuration must support proxy con-
nections to port 873.
You may also establish a daemon connection using a program as a proxy by
setting the environment variable RSYNC_CONNECT_PROG to the commands you
wish to run in place of making a direct socket connection. The string
may contain the escape "%H" to represent the hostname specified in the
rsync command (so use "%%" if you need a single "%" in your string).
For example:
export RSYNC_CONNECT_PROG='ssh proxyhost nc %H 873'
rsync -av targethost1::module/src/ /dest/
rsync -av rsync://targethost2/module/src/ /dest/
The command specified above uses ssh to run nc (netcat) on a proxyhost,
which forwards all data to port 873 (the rsync daemon) on the targethost
(%H).
Note also that if the RSYNC_SHELL environment variable is set, that pro-
gram will be used to run the RSYNC_CONNECT_PROG command instead of using
the default shell of the system() call.
USING RSYNC-DAEMON FEATURES VIA A REMOTE-SHELL CONNECTION
It is sometimes useful to use various features of an rsync daemon (such
as named modules) without actually allowing any new socket connections
into a system, other than what is already required to allow remote-shell
access. Rsync supports connecting to a host using a remote shell and
then spawning a single-use "daemon" server that expects to read its con-
fig file in the home directory of the remote user. This can be useful
if you want to encrypt a daemon-style transfer's data. However, since
the daemon is started by the remote user, you may not be able to use
features which require root privilege, such as chroot or setting the
user ID used by the daemon. (For another way to encrypt a daemon trans-
fer, consider using ssh to tunnel a local port to a remote machine, and
configure a normal rsync daemon on that remote host to allow connections
only from "localhost".)
From the user's perspective, a daemon transfer via a remote-shell con-
nection uses nearly the same command-line syntax as a normal rsync-dae-
mon transfer, with the only difference being that you must explicitly
set the remote shell program on the command-line with the --rsh=COMMAND
option. (Setting the RSYNC_RSH in the environment will not turn on this
functionality.) For example:
rsync -av --rsh=ssh host::module /dest
A "user@" prefix in front of the host serves two purposes at once in
this mode: it is the rsync-user value (used to log in to a module that
requires user-based authentication) and, by default, it is also passed
to the remote shell as the login user. So the simple form
rsync -av --rsh=ssh user@host::module /dest
runs ssh -l user host and offers "user" as the rsync-user to the module;
the two are forced to be the same name.
If you need the remote-shell (ssh) login to use a different name than
the rsync-user, give an explicit '-l' option to ssh in the remote-shell
command. When ssh is already told which user to log in as, rsync does
not add its own '-l', so the "user@" prefix is then used only as the
rsync-user. For example, using the short version of the --rsh option:
rsync -av -e "ssh -l ssh-user" rsync-user@host::module /dest
Here "ssh-user" is used at the ssh level while "rsync-user" is used to
log in to the "module".
In this setup, the daemon is started by the ssh command that is access-
ing the system (which can be forced via the ~/.ssh/authorized_keys file,
if desired). However, when accessing a daemon directly, it needs to be
started beforehand.
STARTING AN RSYNC DAEMON TO ACCEPT CONNECTIONS
In order to connect to an rsync daemon, the remote system needs to have
a daemon already running (or it needs to have configured something like
inetd to spawn an rsync daemon for incoming connections on a particular
port). For full information on how to start a daemon that will handling
incoming socket connections, see the manpage for rsyncd.conf(5), the
config file for the daemon. The manpage contains the full details for
how to run the daemon, including stand-alone and inetd configurations.
If you're using one of the remote-shell transports for the transfer,
there is no need to manually start an rsync daemon.
EXAMPLES
Here are some examples of how rsync can be used.
To backup a home directory, which consists of large MS Word files and
mail folders, a per-user cron job can be used that runs this each day:
rsync -aiz . bkhost:backup/joe/
To move some files from a remote host to the local host, you could run:
rsync -aiv --remove-source-files rhost:/tmp/{file1,file2}.c ~/src/
OPTION SUMMARY
Here is a short summary of the options available in rsync. Each option
also has its own detailed description later in this manpage.
--verbose, -v increase verbosity
--info=FLAGS fine-grained informational verbosity
--debug=FLAGS fine-grained debug verbosity
--stderr=e|a|c change stderr output mode (default: errors)
--quiet, -q suppress non-error messages
--no-motd suppress daemon-mode MOTD
--checksum, -c skip based on checksum, not mod-time & size
--archive, -a archive mode is -rlptgoD (no -A,-X,-U,-N,-H)
--no-OPTION turn off an implied OPTION (e.g. --no-D)
--recursive, -r recurse into directories
--inc-recursive, --i-r enable incremental recursion
--no-inc-recursive disable incremental recursion
--no-i-r same as --no-inc-recursive
--relative, -R use relative path names
--no-implied-dirs don't send implied directories with --relative
--backup, -b make backups (see --suffix & --backup-dir)
--backup-dir=DIR make backups into hierarchy based in DIR
--suffix=SUFFIX backup suffix (default ~ w/o --backup-dir)
--update, -u skip files that are newer on the receiver
--inplace update destination files in-place
--append append data onto shorter files
--append-verify --append w/old data in file checksum
--dirs, -d transfer directories without recursing
--old-dirs works like --dirs when talking to old rsync
--old-d same as --old-dirs
--mkpath create destination's missing path components
--links, -l copy symlinks as symlinks
--copy-links, -L transform symlink into referent file/directory
--copy-unsafe-links only "unsafe" symlinks are transformed
--safe-links ignore symlinks that point outside the tree
--insecure-links follow attacker-owned symlinks in operator paths
--confine-root=DIR refuse operator paths resolving outside DIR
--munge-links munge symlinks to make them safe & unusable
--copy-dirlinks, -k transform symlink to directory into referent directory
--keep-dirlinks, -K treat symlinked directory on receiver as directory
--hard-links, -H preserve hard links
--perms, -p preserve permissions
--executability, -E preserve executability
--chmod=CHMOD affect file and/or directory permissions
--acls, -A preserve ACLs (implies --perms)
--xattrs, -X preserve extended attributes
--owner, -o preserve owner (super-user only)
--group, -g preserve group
--devices preserve device files (super-user only)
--copy-devices copy device contents as a regular file
--write-devices write to devices as files (implies --inplace)
--specials preserve special files
--drop-D receiver refuses to create devices/specials
-D same as --devices --specials
--times, -t preserve modification times
--atimes, -U preserve access (use) times
--open-noatime avoid changing the atime on opened files
--crtimes, -N preserve create times (newness)
--omit-dir-times, -O omit directories from --times
--omit-link-times, -J omit symlinks from --times
--super receiver attempts super-user activities
--fake-super store/recover privileged attrs using xattrs
--sparse, -S turn sequences of nulls into sparse blocks
--preallocate allocate dest files before writing them
--dry-run, -n perform a trial run with no changes made
--whole-file, -W copy files whole (w/o delta-xfer algorithm)
--no-whole-file, --no-W use the delta-xfer algorithm
--checksum-choice=STR choose the checksum algorithm (aka --cc)
--one-file-system, -x don't cross filesystem boundaries
--block-size=SIZE, -B force a fixed checksum block-size
--rsh=COMMAND, -e specify the remote shell to use
--rsync-path=PROGRAM specify the rsync to run on remote machine
--existing skip creating new files on receiver
--ignore-non-existing skip creating new files on receiver
--ignore-existing skip updating files that exist on receiver
--remove-source-files sender removes synchronized files (non-directory)
--del an alias for --delete-during
--delete delete extraneous files from dest directories
--delete-before receiver deletes before xfer, not during
--delete-during receiver deletes during the transfer
--delete-delay find deletions during, delete after
--delete-after receiver deletes after transfer, not during
--delete-excluded also delete excluded files from dest directories
--ignore-missing-args ignore missing source arguments without error
--delete-missing-args delete missing source arguments from destination
--ignore-errors delete even if there are I/O errors
--force force deletion of directories even if not empty
--max-delete=NUM don't delete more than NUM files
--max-size=SIZE don't transfer any file larger than SIZE
--min-size=SIZE don't transfer any file smaller than SIZE
--max-alloc=SIZE change a limit relating to memory alloc
--partial keep partially transferred files
--partial-dir=DIR put a partially transferred file into DIR
--delay-updates put all updated files into place at end
--prune-empty-dirs, -m prune empty directory chains from file-list
--numeric-ids don't map uid/gid values by user/group name
--usermap=STRING custom username mapping
--groupmap=STRING custom groupname mapping
--chown=USER:GROUP simple username/groupname mapping
--timeout=SECONDS set I/O timeout in seconds
--contimeout=SECONDS set daemon connection timeout in seconds
--ignore-times, -I don't skip files that match size and time
--size-only skip files that match in size
--modify-window=NUM, -@ set the accuracy for mod-time comparisons
--temp-dir=DIR, -T create temporary files in directory DIR
--fuzzy, -y find similar file for basis if no dest file
--compare-dest=DIR also compare destination files relative to DIR
--copy-dest=DIR ... and include copies of unchanged files
--link-dest=DIR hardlink to files in DIR when unchanged
--compress, -z compress file data during the transfer
--compress-choice=STR choose the compression algorithm (aka --zc)
--compress-level=NUM explicitly set compression level (aka --zl)
--compress-threads=NUM explicitly set compression threads (aka --zt)
--skip-compress=LIST skip compressing files with suffix in LIST
--cvs-exclude, -C auto-ignore files in the same way CVS does
--filter=RULE, -f add a file-filtering RULE
-F same as --filter='dir-merge /.rsync-filter'
repeated: --filter='- .rsync-filter'
--exclude=PATTERN exclude files matching PATTERN
--exclude-from=FILE read exclude patterns from FILE
--include=PATTERN don't exclude files matching PATTERN
--include-from=FILE read include patterns from FILE
--files-from=FILE read list of source-file names from FILE
--from0, -0 all *-from/filter files are delimited by 0s
--old-args disable the modern argument-protection idiom
--secluded-args, -s use the protocol to safely send the arguments
--trust-sender trust the remote sender's file list
--copy-as=USER[:GROUP] specify user & optional group for the copy
--address=ADDRESS bind address for outgoing socket to daemon
--port=PORT specify double-colon alternate port number
--sockopts=OPTIONS specify custom TCP options
--blocking-io use blocking I/O for the remote shell
--outbuf=N|L|B set out buffering to None, Line, or Block
--stats give some file-transfer stats
--8-bit-output, -8 leave high-bit chars unescaped in output
--human-readable, -h output numbers in a human-readable format
--progress show progress during transfer
-P same as --partial --progress
--itemize-changes, -i output a change-summary for all updates
--remote-option=OPT, -M send OPTION to the remote side only
--out-format=FORMAT output updates using the specified FORMAT
--log-file=FILE log what we're doing to the specified FILE
--log-file-format=FMT log updates using the specified FMT
--password-file=FILE read daemon-access password from FILE
--early-input=FILE use FILE for daemon's early exec input
--list-only list the files instead of copying them
--bwlimit=RATE limit socket I/O bandwidth
--stop-after=MINS Stop rsync after MINS minutes have elapsed
--stop-at=y-m-dTh:m Stop rsync at the specified point in time
--fsync fsync every written file
--write-batch=FILE write a batched update to FILE
--only-write-batch=FILE like --write-batch but w/o updating dest
--read-batch=FILE read a batched update from FILE
--protocol=NUM force an older protocol version to be used
--iconv=CONVERT_SPEC request charset conversion of filenames
--checksum-seed=NUM set block/file checksum seed (advanced)
--ipv4, -4 prefer IPv4
--ipv6, -6 prefer IPv6
--version, -V print the version + other info and exit
--help, -h (*) show this help (* -h is help only on its own)
Rsync can also be run as a daemon, in which case the following options
are accepted:
--daemon run as an rsync daemon
--address=ADDRESS bind to the specified address
--bwlimit=RATE limit socket I/O bandwidth
--config=FILE specify alternate rsyncd.conf file
--dparam=OVERRIDE, -M override global daemon config parameter
--no-detach do not detach from the parent
--port=PORT listen on alternate port number
--log-file=FILE override the "log file" setting
--log-file-format=FMT override the "log format" setting
--sockopts=OPTIONS specify custom TCP options
--verbose, -v increase verbosity
--ipv4, -4 prefer IPv4
--ipv6, -6 prefer IPv6
--help, -h show this help (when used with --daemon)
OPTIONS
Rsync accepts both long (double-dash + word) and short (single-dash +
letter) options. The full list of the available options are described
below. If an option can be specified in more than one way, the choices
are comma-separated. Some options only have a long variant, not a
short.
If the option takes a parameter, the parameter is only listed after the
long variant, even though it must also be specified for the short. When
specifying a parameter, you can either use the form --option=param,
--option param, -o=param, -o param, or -oparam (the latter choices as-
sume that your option has a short variant).
The parameter may need to be quoted in some manner for it to survive the
shell's command-line parsing. Also keep in mind that a leading tilde
(~) in a pathname is substituted by your shell, so make sure that you
separate the option name from the pathname using a space (rather than an
equal sign) if you want the local shell to expand it.
--help Print a short help page describing the options available in rsync
and exit. You can also use -h for --help when it is used without
any other options or arguments (since otherwise it means --hu-
man-readable).
--version, -V
Print the rsync version plus other info and exit. When repeated,
the information is output in a JSON format that is still fairly
readable (client side only).
The output includes a list of compiled-in capabilities, a list of
optimizations, the default list of checksum algorithms, the de-
fault list of compression algorithms, the default list of daemon
auth digests, a link to the rsync web site, and a few other
items.
--verbose, -v
This option increases the amount of information you are given
during the transfer. By default, rsync works silently. A single
-v will give you information about what files are being trans-
ferred and a brief summary at the end. Two -v options will give
you information on what files are being skipped and slightly more
information at the end. More than two -v options should only be
used if you are debugging rsync.
The end-of-run summary tells you the number of bytes sent to the
remote rsync (which is the receiving side on a local copy), the
number of bytes received from the remote host, and the average
bytes per second of the transferred data computed over the entire
length of the rsync run. The second line shows the total size (in
bytes), which is the sum of all the file sizes that rsync consid-
ered transferring. It also shows a "speedup" value, which is a
ratio of the total file size divided by the sum of the sent and
received bytes (which is really just a feel-good bigger-is-better
number). Note that these byte values can be made more (or less)
human-readable by using the --human-readable (or --no-human-read-
able) options.
The -v option is equivalent to the setting of groups of --info
and --debug options. You can choose to use these newer options
in addition to, or in place of using --verbose, as any fine-
grained settings override the implied settings of -v. Both
--info and --debug have help texts available that tells you ex-
actly what flags are set for each increase in verbosity (use
--info=help or --debug=help to see them).
However, do keep in mind that a daemon's "max verbosity" setting
will limit how high the various individual flags can be set on
the daemon side. For instance, if the max is 2, then any info
and/or debug flag that is set to a higher value than what would
be set by -vv will be downgraded to the -vv level in the daemon's
logging.
--info=FLAGS
This option lets you have fine-grained control over the informa-
tion output you want to see. An individual flag name may be fol-
lowed by a level number, with 0 meaning to silence that output, 1
being the default output level, and higher numbers increasing the
output of that flag (for those that support higher levels). Use
--info=help to see all the available flag names, what they out-
put, and what flag names are added for each increase in the ver-
bose level. Some examples:
rsync -a --info=progress2 src/ dest/
rsync -avv --info=stats2,misc1,flist0 src/ dest/
Note that --info=name's output is affected by the --out-format
and --itemize-changes (-i) options. See those options for more
information on what is output and when.
This option was added to 3.1.0 (released September 2013), so an
older rsync on the server side might reject your attempts at
fine-grained control. See also the "max verbosity" caveat above
when dealing with a daemon.
--debug=FLAGS
This option lets you have fine-grained control over the debug
output you want to see. An individual flag name may be followed
by a level number, with 0 meaning to silence that output, 1 being
the default output level, and higher numbers increasing the out-
put of that flag (for those that support higher levels). Use
--debug=help to see all the available flag names, what they out-
put, and what flag names are added for each increase in the ver-
bose level. Some examples:
rsync -avvv --debug=none src/ dest/
rsync -avA --del --debug=del2,acl src/ dest/
Note that some debug messages will only be output when the
--stderr=all option is specified, especially those pertaining to
I/O and buffer debugging.
This option is not forwarded by the client to the server side, so
that you can specify different debug values for each side of the
transfer. This also allows you to specify debug options that are
only present in one of the rsync versions. If you want to dupli-
cate the same option on both sides, using brace expansion is an
easy way to save you some typing. This works in zsh and bash:
rsync -aiv {-M,}--debug=del2 src/ dest/
--stderr=errors|all|client
This option controls which processes output to stderr, and
whether info messages are output to stderr rather than stdout.
The mode strings can be abbreviated down as far as a single let-
ter. The 3 possible choices are:
o errors - (the default) causes all the rsync processes to
send errors directly to stderr, even if the process is on
the remote side of the transfer. Info messages are sent
to the client side via the protocol stream. If stderr is
not available (i.e. when directly connecting with a daemon
via a socket) errors fall back to being sent via the pro-
tocol stream.
o all - causes all rsync messages (info and error) to be
written directly to stderr from all (possible) processes.
This causes stderr to become line-buffered (instead of un-
buffered) and eliminates the ability to divide up the info
and error messages by file handle. For those doing debug-
ging or using several levels of verbosity, this option can
help to avoid clogging up the transfer stream (which
should prevent any chance of a deadlock bug hanging things
up). It also allows --debug to enable some extra I/O re-
lated messages.
o client - causes all rsync messages to be sent to the
client side via the protocol stream. One client process
outputs all messages, with errors on stderr and info mes-
sages on stdout. This was the default in older rsync ver-
sions, but can cause error delays when a lot of transfer
data is ahead of the messages. If you're pushing files to
an older rsync, you may want to use --stderr=all since
that idiom has been around for several releases.
Rsync also accepts the old --msgs2stderr and --no-msgs2stderr op-
tions, equivalent to the all and client settings, respectively,
and uses them when forwarding non-default settings to the remote
side, in case the remote rsync is an older version.
--quiet, -q
This option decreases the amount of information you are given
during the transfer, notably suppressing information messages
from the remote server. This option is useful when invoking
rsync from cron.
--no-motd
This option affects the information that is output by the client
at the start of a daemon transfer. This suppresses the message-
of-the-day (MOTD) text, but it also affects the list of modules
that the daemon sends in response to the "rsync host::" request
(due to a limitation in the rsync protocol), so omit this option
if you want to request the list of modules from the daemon.
--ignore-times, -I
Normally rsync will skip any files that are already the same size
and have the same modification timestamp. This option turns off
this "quick check" behavior, causing all files to be updated.
This option can be confusing compared to --ignore-existing and
--ignore-non-existing in that that they cause rsync to transfer
fewer files, while this option causes rsync to transfer more
files.
--size-only
This modifies rsync's "quick check" algorithm for finding files
that need to be transferred, changing it from the default of
transferring files with either a changed size or a changed last-
modified time to just looking for files that have changed in
size. This is useful when starting to use rsync after using an-
other mirroring system which may not preserve timestamps exactly.
--modify-window=NUM, -@
When comparing two timestamps, rsync treats the timestamps as be-
ing equal if they differ by no more than the modify-window value.
The default is 0, which matches just integer seconds. If you
specify a negative value (and the receiver is at least version
3.1.3, released January 2018) then nanoseconds will also be taken
into account. Specifying 1 is useful for copies to/from MS Win-
dows FAT filesystems, because FAT represents times with a 2-sec-
ond resolution (allowing times to differ from the original by up
to 1 second).
If you want all your transfers to default to comparing nanosec-
onds, you can create a ~/.popt file and put these lines in it:
rsync alias -a -a@-1
rsync alias -t -t@-1
With that as the default, you'd need to specify --modify-window=0
(aka -@0) to override it and ignore nanoseconds, e.g. if you're
copying between ext3 and ext4, or if the receiving rsync is older
than 3.1.3.
--checksum, -c
This changes the way rsync checks if the files have been changed
and are in need of a transfer. Without this option, rsync uses a
"quick check" that (by default) checks if each file's size and
time of last modification match between the sender and receiver.
This option changes this to compare a checksum for each file that
has a matching size. Generating the checksums means that both
sides will expend a lot of disk I/O reading all the data in the
files in the transfer, so this can slow things down significantly
(and this is prior to any reading that will be done to transfer
changed files)
The sending side generates its checksums while it is doing the
file-system scan that builds the list of the available files.
The receiver generates its checksums when it is scanning for
changed files, and will checksum any file that has the same size
as the corresponding sender's file: files with either a changed
size or a changed checksum are selected for transfer.
Note that rsync normally verifies that each transferred file was
correctly reconstructed on the receiving side by checking a
whole-file checksum that is generated as the file is transferred,
but that automatic after-the-transfer verification has nothing to
do with this option's before-the-transfer "Does this file need to
be updated?" check.
The checksum used is auto-negotiated between the client and the
server, but can be overridden using either the --checksum-choice
(--cc) option or an environment variable that is discussed in
that option's section.
--archive, -a
This is equivalent to -rlptgoD. It is a quick way of saying you
want recursion and want to preserve almost everything. Be aware
that it does not include preserving ACLs (-A), xattrs (-X),
atimes (-U), crtimes (-N), nor the finding and preserving of
hardlinks (-H).
The only exception to the above equivalence is when --files-from
is specified, in which case -r is not implied.
--no-OPTION
You may turn off one or more implied options by prefixing the op-
tion name with "no-". Not all positive options have a negated
opposite, but a lot do, including those that can be used to dis-
able an implied option (e.g. --no-D, --no-perms) or have differ-
ent defaults in various circumstances (e.g. --no-whole-file,
--no-blocking-io, --no-dirs). Every valid negated option accepts
both the short and the long option name after the "no-" prefix
(e.g. --no-R is the same as --no-relative).
As an example, if you want to use --archive (-a) but don't want
--owner (-o), instead of converting -a into -rlptgD, you can
specify -a --no-o (aka --archive --no-owner).
The order of the options is important: if you specify --no-r -a,
the -r option would end up being turned on, the opposite of
-a --no-r. Note also that the side-effects of the --files-from
option are NOT positional, as it affects the default state of
several options and slightly changes the meaning of -a (see the
--files-from option for more details).
--recursive, -r
This tells rsync to copy directories recursively. See also
--dirs (-d) for an option that allows the scanning of a single
directory.
See the --inc-recursive option for a discussion of the incremen-
tal recursion for creating the list of files to transfer.
--inc-recursive, --i-r
This option explicitly enables incremental recursion when scan-
ning for files, which is enabled by default when using the --re-
cursive option and both sides of the transfer are running rsync
3.0.0 (released March 2008) or newer.
Incremental recursion uses much less memory than non-incremental,
while also beginning the transfer more quickly (since it doesn't
need to scan the entire transfer hierarchy before it starts
transferring files). If no recursion is enabled in the source
files, this option has no effect.
Some options require rsync to know the full file list, so these
options disable the incremental recursion mode. These include:
o --delete-before (the old default of --delete)
o --delete-after
o --prune-empty-dirs
o --delay-updates
In order to be compatible with incremental recursion,
--delete-during is the default delete mode for --delete.
One side-effect of incremental recursion is that any missing sub-
directories inside a recursively-scanned directory are (by de-
fault) created prior to recursing into the sub-directories. This
earlier creation point (compared to a non-incremental recursion)
allows rsync to then set the modify time of the finished direc-
tory right away (without having to delay that until a bunch of
recursive copying has finished). However, these early directo-
ries don't yet have their completed mode, mtime, or ownership
set -- they have more restrictive rights until the subdirectory's
copying actually begins. This early-creation idiom can be
avoided by using the --omit-dir-times option.
Incremental recursion can be disabled using the --no-inc-recur-
sive (--no-i-r) option.
--no-inc-recursive, --no-i-r
Disables the incremental recursion algorithm of the --recursive
option. This makes rsync scan the full file list before it be-
gins to transfer files. See --inc-recursive for more info.
--relative, -R
Use relative paths. This means that the full path names speci-
fied on the command line are sent to the server rather than just
the last parts of the filenames. This is particularly useful
when you want to send several different directories at the same
time. For example, this command:
rsync -av /foo/bar/baz.c remote:/tmp/
would create a file named baz.c in /tmp/ on the remote machine.
If instead you used
rsync -avR /foo/bar/baz.c remote:/tmp/
then a file named /tmp/foo/bar/baz.c would be created on the re-
mote machine, preserving its full path. These extra path ele-
ments are called "implied directories" (i.e. the "foo" and the
"foo/bar" directories in the above example).
Rsync always sends these implied directories as real directories
in the file list, even if a path element is really a symlink on
the sending side. This prevents some really unexpected behaviors
when copying the full path of a file that has a symlink in its
path. If you want to duplicate a server-side symlink, include
both the symlink via its path, and the referent directory via its
real path. If you're dealing with an older rsync on the sending
side, you may need to use the --no-implied-dirs option.
It is also possible to limit the amount of path information that
is sent as implied directories for each path you specify. With a
modern rsync on the sending side (beginning with 2.6.7, released
March 2006), you can insert a dot and a slash into the source
path, like this:
rsync -avR /foo/./bar/baz.c remote:/tmp/
That would create /tmp/bar/baz.c on the receiving machine. (Note
that the dot must be followed by a slash, so "/foo/." would not
be abbreviated.) For older rsync versions, you would need to
change directory to limit the source path. For example, when
pushing files:
(cd /foo; rsync -avR bar/baz.c remote:/tmp/)
(Note that the parentheses put the two commands into a sub-shell,
so that the "cd" command doesn't remain in effect for future com-
mands.) If you're pulling files from an older rsync, use this id-
iom (but only for a non-daemon transfer):
rsync -avR --rsync-path="cd /foo; rsync" \
remote:bar/baz.c /tmp/
--no-implied-dirs
This option affects the default behavior of the --relative op-
tion. When it is specified, the attributes of the implied direc-
tories from the source names are not included in the transfer.
This means that the corresponding path elements on the destina-
tion system are left unchanged if they exist, and any missing im-
plied directories are created with default attributes. This even
allows these implied path elements to have big differences, such
as being a symlink to a directory on the receiving side.
For instance, if a command-line argument or a files-from entry
told rsync to transfer the file "path/foo/file", the directories
"path" and "path/foo" are implied when --relative is used. If
"path/foo" is a symlink to "bar" on the destination system, the
receiving rsync would ordinarily delete "path/foo", recreate it
as a directory, and receive the file into the new directory.
With --no-implied-dirs, the receiving rsync leaves the existing
"path/foo" symlink in place and follows it, so the file is writ-
ten through the symlink and ends up in "path/bar". Note the se-
curity implication: a pre-existing in-tree symlink-to-directory
on the receiving side will redirect where the file is written, so
only use --no-implied-dirs when you trust the destination's ex-
isting path elements. (A symlink whose target is absolute or es-
capes the destination tree is still refused by the secure path
resolver rather than followed.) Another way to accomplish this
link preservation is to use the --keep-dirlinks option (which
will also affect symlinks to directories in the rest of the
transfer).
When pulling files from an rsync older than 3.0.0 (March 2008),
you may need to use this option if the sending side has a symlink
in the path you request and you wish the implied directories to
be transferred as normal directories.
--backup, -b
With this option, preexisting destination files are renamed as
each file is transferred or deleted (that is, each file to be
deleted or overwritten gets renamed instead). You can control
where the backup file goes and what (if any) suffix gets appended
using the --backup-dir and --suffix options.
If you don't specify --backup-dir:
1. the --omit-dir-times option will be forced on
2. the use of --delete (without --delete-excluded), causes
rsync to add a "protect" filter-rule for the backup suffix
to the end of all your existing filters that looks like
this: -f "P *~". This rule prevents previously backed-up
files from being deleted.
Note that if you are supplying your own filter rules, you may
need to manually insert your own exclude/protect rule somewhere
higher up in the list so that it has a high enough priority to be
effective (e.g. if your rules specify a trailing inclusion/exclu-
sion of *, the auto-added rule would never be reached).
--backup-dir=DIR
This implies the --backup option, and tells rsync to store all
backups in the specified directory on the receiving side. This
can be used for incremental backups. You can additionally spec-
ify a backup suffix using the --suffix option (otherwise the
files backed up in the specified directory will keep their origi-
nal filenames).
Note that if you specify a relative path, the backup directory
will be relative to the destination directory, so you probably
want to specify either an absolute path or a path that starts
with "../". If an rsync daemon is the receiver, the backup di-
rectory cannot go outside the module's path hierarchy, so take
extra care not to delete or copy into the backup directory inad-
vertently.
--suffix=SUFFIX
This option allows you to override the default backup suffix used
with the --backup (-b) option. The default suffix is a ~ if no
--backup-dir was specified, otherwise it is an empty string.
--update, -u
This forces rsync to skip any files which exist on the destina-
tion and have a modified time that is newer than the source file.
(If an existing destination file has a modification time equal to
the source file's, it will be updated if the sizes are differ-
ent.)
Note that this does not affect the copying of directories, sym-
links, or other special files. Also, a difference of object type
between the sender and receiver is always considered to be impor-
tant enough for an update, no matter what date is on the objects.
For example, if the source has a directory where the destination
has a file, the transfer would occur regardless of the time-
stamps.
This option is a TRANSFER RULE, so don't expect any exclude side
effects.
A caution for those that choose to combine --inplace with --up-
date: an interrupted transfer will leave behind a partial file on
the receiving side that has a very recent modified time, so re-
running the transfer will probably not continue the interrupted
file. As such, it is usually best to avoid combining this with
--inplace unless you have implemented manual steps to handle any
interrupted in-progress files.
--inplace
This option changes how rsync transfers a file when its data
needs to be updated: instead of the default method of creating a
new copy of the file and moving it into place when it is com-
plete, rsync instead writes the updated data directly to the des-
tination file.
This has several effects:
o Hard links are not broken. This means the new data will
be visible through other hard links to the destination
file. Moreover, attempts to copy differing source files
onto a multiply-linked destination file will result in a
"tug of war" with the destination data changing back and
forth.
o In-use binaries cannot be updated (either the OS will pre-
vent this from happening, or binaries that attempt to
swap-in their data will misbehave or crash).
o The file's data will be in an inconsistent state during
the transfer and will be left that way if the transfer is
interrupted or if an update fails.
o A file that rsync cannot write to cannot be updated.
While a super user can update any file, a normal user
needs to be granted write permission for the open of the
file for writing to be successful.
o The efficiency of rsync's delta-transfer algorithm may be
reduced if some data in the destination file is overwrit-
ten before it can be copied to a position later in the
file. This does not apply if you use --backup, since
rsync is smart enough to use the backup file as the basis
file for the transfer.
WARNING: you should not use this option to update files that are
being accessed by others, so be careful when choosing to use this
for a copy.
This option is useful for transferring large files with block-
based changes or appended data, and also on systems that are disk
bound, not network bound. It can also help keep a copy-on-write
filesystem snapshot from diverging the entire contents of a file
that only has minor changes.
The option implies --partial (since an interrupted transfer does
not delete the file), but conflicts with --partial-dir and --de-
lay-updates.
--append
This special copy mode is only applicable to update files that
are known to be growing larger, that is, where any existing con-
tent on the receiving side is also known to be the same as the
content on the sender. The use of --append can be dangerous if
you aren't 100% sure that all the files in the transfer are
shared, growing files. You should thus use filter rules to en-
sure that you weed out any files that do not fit this criteria.
Rsync updates these growing file in-place without verifying any
of the existing content in the file (it only verifies the content
that it is appending). Rsync skips any files that exist on the
receiving side that are not shorter than the associated file on
the sending side. It also skips any files whose size on the
sending side gets shorter during the send negotiations (rsync
warns about a "diminished" file when this happens).
This does not interfere with the updating of a file's non-content
attributes (e.g. permissions, ownership, etc.) when the file
does not need to be transferred, nor does it affect the updating
of any directories or non-regular files.
--append-verify
This special copy mode works like --append except that all the
data in the file is included in the checksum verification, making
it less efficient but also potentially safer. This option can be
dangerous if you aren't 100% sure that all the files in the
transfer are shared, growing files. See the --append option for
more details.
Note: prior to rsync 3.0.0 (March 2008), the --append option
worked like --append-verify, so if you are interacting with an
older rsync (or the transfer is using a protocol prior to 30),
specifying either append option will initiate an --append-verify
transfer.
--dirs, -d
Tell the sending side to include any directories that are encoun-
tered. Unlike --recursive, a directory's contents are not copied
unless the directory name specified is "." or ends with a trail-
ing slash (e.g. ".", "dir/.", "dir/", etc.). Without this op-
tion or the --recursive option, rsync will skip all directories
it encounters (and output a message to that effect for each one).
If you specify both --dirs and --recursive, --recursive takes
precedence.
The --dirs option is implied by the --files-from option or the
--list-only option (including an implied --list-only usage) if
--recursive wasn't specified (so that directories are seen in the
listing). Specify --no-dirs (or --no-d) if you want to turn this
off.
See also the backward-compatibility helper option --old-dirs.
--old-dirs, --old-d
This backward-compatibility helper tells rsync to use a hack of
-r --exclude='/*/*' to get an older remote rsync to list a single
directory without recursing.
--mkpath
Create all missing path components of the destination path.
By default, rsync will create only the final component of the
destination path if it does not exist. If any other component
does not exist that is an error, as this can help to catch mis-
takes in the destination path specification. With this option,
rsync creates all the missing destination-path components, just
as if mkdir -p $DEST_PATH had been run on the receiving side.
When specifying a destination path, including a trailing slash
ensures that the whole path is treated as directory names to be
created, even when the file list has a single item. See the COPY-
ING TO A DIFFERENT NAME section for full details on how rsync de-
cides if a final destination-path component should be created as
a directory or not.
If you would like the newly-created destination directories to
match the directories on the sending side, you should be using
--relative (-R) instead of --mkpath. For instance, the following
two commands result in the same destination tree, but only the
second command ensures that the "some/extra/path" components
match the directories on the sending side:
rsync -ai --mkpath host:some/extra/path/*.c some/extra/path/
rsync -aiR host:some/extra/path/*.c ./
--links, -l
Add symlinks to the transferred files instead of noisily ignoring
them with a "non-regular file" warning for each symlink encoun-
tered. You can alternatively silence the warning by specifying
--info=nonreg0.
The default handling of symlinks is to recreate each symlink's
unchanged value on the receiving side.
See the SYMBOLIC LINKS section for multi-option info.
--copy-links, -L
The sender transforms each symlink encountered in the transfer
into the referent item, following the symlink chain to the file
or directory that it references. If a symlink chain is broken,
an error is output and the file is dropped from the transfer.
This option supersedes any other options that affect symlinks in
the transfer, since there are no symlinks left in the transfer.
This option does not change the handling of existing symlinks on
the receiving side.
See the --keep-dirlinks (-K) if you need a symlink to a directory
to be treated as a real directory on the receiving side.
See the SYMBOLIC LINKS section for multi-option info.
--copy-unsafe-links
This tells rsync to copy the referent of symbolic links that
point outside the copied tree. Absolute symlinks are also
treated like ordinary files, and so are any symlinks in the
source path itself when --relative is used.
A symlink is judged unsafe by a lexical test on its value, with-
out resolving it on disk. An absolute or empty target is always
unsafe. A relative target is unsafe if its ".." components would
climb above the top of the transfer; a ".." that appears anywhere
other than as a leading prefix (an embedded or trailing "/..") is
also treated as unsafe. The top is set by how the source is
specified: a trailing slash on the source (e.g. "/src/subdir/"
copied to "/dest/subdir") makes that directory itself the top, so
a symlink may not point above it; without the trailing slash
(e.g. "/src/subdir" copied to "/dest/") the source's parent
("/src") is the top, so "subdir" is a name inside the transfer
and a relative symlink may point to any other name within it.
Note that safe symlinks are only copied if --links was also spec-
ified or implied. The --copy-unsafe-links option has no extra ef-
fect when combined with --copy-links.
See the SYMBOLIC LINKS section for multi-option info.
--safe-links
This tells the receiving rsync to ignore any symbolic links in
the transfer which point outside the copied tree. All absolute
symlinks are also ignored.
Since this ignoring is happening on the receiving side, it will
still be effective even when the sending side has munged symlinks
(when it is using --munge-links). It also affects deletions,
since the file being present in the transfer prevents any match-
ing file on the receiver from being deleted when the symlink is
deemed to be unsafe and is skipped.
This option has no effect unless it is combined with --links (or
an option that implies --links such as --archive), because with-
out --links there will not be any symlinks in the transfer. Its
effect is superseded by --copy-unsafe-links.
Using this option in conjunction with --relative may give unex-
pected results.
See the SYMBOLIC LINKS section for multi-option info.
--insecure-links
By default rsync resolves the directory and file paths that the
operator supplies on the command line with a defensive directory-
tree walk that follows a symlink component only when it is owned
by uid 0 or by the running user, and refuses one owned by any
other user. This stops an attacker who can write inside one of
those directories from planting a symlink that redirects a privi-
leged rsync to a target outside the intended tree, while still
honouring the operator's own symlinks. The rule is the same for
absolute and relative paths. This applies to the destination di-
rectory and to the parameters to the following options:
--backup-dir, --temp-dir/-T, --partial-dir, --link-dest, --com-
pare-dest, --copy-dest, --log-file, --password-file,
--files-from, --include-from, --exclude-from, --filter merge
files, --write-batch and --read-batch.
--insecure-links turns that defence off, restoring the historical
behaviour of following any symlink in those paths. Use it only
when you fully trust every directory along each operator-supplied
path, as it re-exposes the symlink-redirection attacks the walk
prevents.
The option is local only: it is not sent to the remote side of
the transfer. A remote-shell peer that needs the opt-out must
set it there, e.g. via --rsync-path), and a daemon never honours
it -- a daemon that receives --insecure-links from a client re-
fuses the request. A daemon administrator who wants the legacy
behaviour for a single trusted module sets "insecure links = yes"
in that module's rsyncd.conf(5) section instead; a client can
never enable it.
See the SYMBOLIC LINKS section for multi-option info.
--confine-root=DIR
In the default symlink mode this bounds where operator option
paths and paths selected from a --files-from list are allowed to
resolve: one that ends up outside DIR is refused, even if every
symlink along it was owned by a trusted user. Explicit source
roots remain operator-selected transfer roots. The ownership
walk asks who planted a link; this asks where the path came out.
DIR must be absolute. Nothing is confined by default, and --con-
fine-root=/ is a no-op.
It exists for a wrapper that serves a restricted directory over a
remote shell, rrsync being the one shipped here, which passes it
automatically whenever its restricted dir is not "/". Such a
wrapper can vet the argv it is handed, but filter rules travel
over the protocol instead: a client can name a merge file outside
the restricted dir in a dir-merge rule and have the server read
it in as filter rules. On a pull that needs neither --delete nor
any verbosity, because an exclude-only merge (the "-" modifier)
makes every line a pattern, and the client reads the file's con-
tents off which of its own names went missing. Confining the
open is what closes that; a merge file inside DIR keeps working
as before.
A daemon ignores this option -- its module directory is already
the boundary, and the option arrives in a client-supplied argv,
so honouring it could only widen the module.
--insecure-links is refused alongside it. That opt-out restores
the historical open, which skips the walk that enforces the root,
so the two together would silently mean no confinement at all.
Like --drop-D, it is not forwarded to the remote side: it is
meant to be applied to one end of a connection by itself.
--munge-links
This option affects just one side of the transfer and tells rsync
to munge symlink values when it is receiving files or unmunge
symlink values when it is sending files. "Munging" changes the
symlink target so that the symlink cannot be followed success-
fully, but allows the original target of the symlink to be recov-
ered. "Unmunging" reverses this process so that the symlink
points to the original target.
This option can be enabled on the server side without the
client's knowledge, such as in an rsync daemon's configuration
file or by an option given to the rrsync (restricted rsync)
script. When specified on the client side, specify the option
normally if it is the client side that has or needs the munged
symlinks, or use -M--munge-links to give the option to the server
when it has or needs the munged symlinks. Note that on a local
transfer, the client is the sender, so specifying the option di-
rectly unmunges symlinks while specifying it as a remote option
munges symlinks.
This option has no effect when sent to a daemon via --remote-op-
tion because the daemon configures whether it wants munged sym-
links via its "munge symlinks" parameter.
The symlink value is munged or unmunged once it is in the trans-
fer, so any option that transforms symlinks into non-symlinks oc-
curs prior to the munging/unmunging except for --safe-links,
which is a choice that the receiver makes, so it bases its deci-
sion on the munged/unmunged value. This does mean that if a re-
ceiver has munging enabled, using --safe-links will cause all
symlinks to be ignored (since munging makes them all absolute).
The method that rsync uses to munge a symlink is to prefix its
value with the string "/rsyncd-munged/". This prevents the link
from being used, provided that the /rsyncd-munged directory does
not exist. When this option is enabled, rsync will refuse to run
if that path is a directory or a symlink to a directory (though
it only checks at startup). See also the "munge-symlinks" python
script in the support directory of the source code for a way to
munge/unmunge one or more symlinks in-place.
--copy-dirlinks, -k
This option causes the sending side to treat a symlink to a di-
rectory as though it were a real directory. This is useful if
you don't want symlinks to non-directories to be affected, as
they would be using --copy-links.
Without this option, if the sending side has replaced a directory
with a symlink to a directory, the receiving side will delete
anything that is in the way of the new symlink, including a di-
rectory hierarchy (as long as --force or --delete is in effect).
See also --keep-dirlinks for an analogous option for the receiv-
ing side.
--copy-dirlinks applies to all symlinks to directories in the
source. If you want to follow only a few specified symlinks, a
trick you can use is to pass them as additional source arguments
with a trailing slash, using --relative to make the paths match
up right. For example:
rsync -r --relative src/./ src/./follow-me/ dest/
See the SYMBOLIC LINKS section for multi-option info.
--keep-dirlinks, -K
This option causes the receiving side to treat a symlink to a di-
rectory as though it were a real directory, but only if it
matches a real directory from the sender. Without this option,
the receiver's symlink would be deleted and replaced with a real
directory.
For example, suppose you transfer a directory "foo" that contains
a file "file", but on the receiver, "foo" is a symlink to direc-
tory "bar". Without --keep-dirlinks, the receiver deletes sym-
link "foo", recreates it as a directory, and receives the file
into the new directory. With --keep-dirlinks, the receiver keeps
the symlink and "file" ends up in "bar".
One note of caution: if you use --keep-dirlinks, you must either
trust all the symlinks in the copy, or enable the --munge-links
option on the receiving side! If it is possible for an untrusted
user to create their own symlink to any real directory, the user
could then (on a subsequent copy) replace the symlink with a real
directory and affect the content of whatever directory the sym-
link references. For backup copies, you are better off using
something like a bind mount instead of a symlink to modify your
receiving hierarchy.
See also --copy-dirlinks for an analogous option for the sending
side.
See the SYMBOLIC LINKS section for multi-option info.
--hard-links, -H
This tells rsync to look for hard-linked files in the source and
link together the corresponding files on the destination. With-
out this option, hard-linked files in the source are treated as
though they were separate files.
This option does NOT necessarily ensure that the pattern of hard
links on the destination exactly matches that on the source.
Cases in which the destination may end up with extra hard links
include the following:
o If the destination contains extraneous hard-links (more
linking than what is present in the source file list), the
copying algorithm will not break them explicitly. How-
ever, if one or more of the paths have content differ-
ences, the normal file-update process will break those ex-
tra links (unless you are using the --inplace option).
o If you specify a --link-dest directory that contains hard
links, the linking of the destination files against the
--link-dest files can cause some paths in the destination
to become linked together due to the --link-dest associa-
tions.
Note that rsync can only detect hard links between files that are
inside the transfer set. If rsync updates a file that has extra
hard-link connections to files outside the transfer, that linkage
will be broken. If you are tempted to use the --inplace option
to avoid this breakage, be very careful that you know how your
files are being updated so that you are certain that no unin-
tended changes happen due to lingering hard links (and see the
--inplace option for more caveats).
If incremental recursion is active (see --inc-recursive), rsync
may transfer a missing hard-linked file before it finds that an-
other link for that contents exists elsewhere in the hierarchy.
This does not affect the accuracy of the transfer (i.e. which
files are hard-linked together), just its efficiency (i.e. copy-
ing the data for a new, early copy of a hard-linked file that
could have been found later in the transfer in another member of
the hard-linked set of files). One way to avoid this ineffi-
ciency is to disable incremental recursion using the --no-inc-re-
cursive option.
--perms, -p
This option causes the receiving rsync to set the destination
permissions to be the same as the source permissions. (See also
the --chmod option for a way to modify what rsync considers to be
the source permissions.)
When this option is off, permissions are set as follows:
o Existing files (including updated files) retain their ex-
isting permissions, though the --executability option
might change just the execute permission for the file.
o New files get their "normal" permission bits set to the
source file's permissions masked with the receiving direc-
tory's default permissions (either the receiving process's
umask, or the permissions specified via the destination
directory's default ACL), and their special permission
bits disabled except in the case where a new directory in-
herits a setgid bit from its parent directory.
Thus, when --perms and --executability are both disabled, rsync's
behavior is the same as that of other file-copy utilities, such
as cp(1) and tar(1).
In summary: to give destination files (both old and new) the
source permissions, use --perms. To give new files the destina-
tion-default permissions (while leaving existing files un-
changed), make sure that the --perms option is off and use
--chmod=ugo=rwX (which ensures that all non-masked bits get en-
abled). If you'd care to make this latter behavior easier to
type, you could define a popt alias for it, such as putting this
line in the file ~/.popt (the following defines the -Z option,
and includes --no-g to use the default group of the destination
directory):
rsync alias -Z --no-p --no-g --chmod=ugo=rwX
You could then use this new option in a command such as this one:
rsync -avZ src/ dest/
(Caveat: make sure that -a does not follow -Z, or it will re-en-
able the two --no-* options mentioned above.)
Note that if the remote rsync is older than 2.6.7 (March 2006)
and it is the receiver, the behavior when --perms is off may dif-
fer from that described above.
--executability, -E
This option causes rsync to preserve the executability or non-ex-
ecutability of regular files when --perms is not enabled. A reg-
ular file is considered to be executable if at least one 'x' is
turned on in its permissions. When an existing destination
file's executability differs from that of the corresponding
source file, rsync modifies the destination file's permissions as
follows:
o To make a file non-executable, rsync turns off all its 'x'
permissions.
o To make a file executable, rsync turns on each 'x' permis-
sion that has a corresponding 'r' permission enabled.
If --perms is enabled, this option is ignored.
--acls, -A
This option causes rsync to update the destination ACLs to be the
same as the source ACLs. The option also implies --perms.
The source and destination systems must have compatible ACL en-
tries for this option to work properly. See the --fake-super op-
tion for a way to backup and restore ACLs that are not compati-
ble.
--xattrs, -X
This option causes rsync to update the destination extended at-
tributes to be the same as the source ones.
For systems that support extended-attribute namespaces, a copy
being done by a super-user copies all namespaces except system.*.
A normal user only copies the user.* namespace. To be able to
backup and restore non-user namespaces as a normal user, see the
--fake-super option.
The above name filtering can be overridden by using one or more
filter options with the x modifier. When you specify an xattr-
affecting filter rule, rsync requires that you do your own sys-
tem/user filtering, as well as any additional filtering for what
xattr names are copied and what names are allowed to be deleted.
For example, to skip the system namespace, you could specify:
--filter='-x system.*'
To skip all namespaces except the user namespace, you could spec-
ify a negated-user match:
--filter='-x! user.*'
To prevent any attributes from being deleted, you could specify a
receiver-only rule that excludes all names:
--filter='-xr *'
Note that the -X option does not copy rsync's special xattr val-
ues (e.g. those used by --fake-super) unless you repeat the op-
tion (e.g. -XX). This "copy all xattrs" mode cannot be used with
--fake-super.
--chmod=CHMOD
This option tells rsync to apply one or more comma-separated
"chmod" modes to the permission of the files in the transfer.
The resulting value is treated as though it were the permissions
that the sending side supplied for the file, which means that
this option can seem to have no effect on existing files if
--perms is not enabled.
In addition to the normal parsing rules specified in the chmod(1)
manpage, you can specify an item that should only apply to a di-
rectory by prefixing it with a 'D', or specify an item that
should only apply to a file by prefixing it with a 'F'. For ex-
ample, the following will ensure that all directories get marked
set-gid, that no files are other-writable, that both are user-
writable and group-writable, and that both have consistent exe-
cutability across all bits:
--chmod=Dg+s,ug+w,Fo-w,+X
Using octal mode numbers is also allowed:
--chmod=D2775,F664
Symbolic permission-copy modes are also allowed, such as g=u, o=g
or g-o. A permission-copy item may copy from one class only (u,
g or o) and cannot be combined with rwxXst permission letters in
the same item. Use comma-separated items when you need both be-
haviours, such as g=o,o=.
A permission-copy = item also clears the special bit for each
destination class it updates (u clears setuid, g clears setgid,
and o clears sticky), matching GNU chmod behaviour.
It is also legal to specify multiple --chmod options, as each ad-
ditional option is just appended to the list of changes to make.
See the --perms and --executability options for how the resulting
permission value can be applied to the files in the transfer.
--owner, -o
This option causes rsync to set the owner of each destination
filesystem object (file, directory, etc.) to be the same as the
source object, but only if the receiving rsync is being run as
the super-user (see also the --super and --fake-super options).
Without this option, the owner of new and/or transferred files
are set to the invoking user on the receiving side.
The preservation of ownership will associate matching names by
default, but may fall back to using the ID number in some circum-
stances (see also the --numeric-ids option for a full discus-
sion).
--group, -g
This option causes rsync to set the group of each destination
filesystem object (file, directory, etc.) to be the same as the
source object. If the receiving program is not running as the
super-user (or if --no-super was specified), only groups that the
invoking user on the receiving side is a member of will be pre-
served. Without this option, the group is set to the default
group of the invoking user on the receiving side.
The preservation of group information will associate matching
names by default, but may fall back to using the ID number in
some circumstances (see also the --numeric-ids option for a full
discussion).
--devices
This option causes rsync to transfer character and block device
files to the remote system to recreate these devices. If the re-
ceiving rsync is not being run as the super-user, rsync silently
skips creating the device files (see also the --super and
--fake-super options).
By default, rsync generates a "non-regular file" warning for each
device file encountered when this option is not set. You can si-
lence the warning by specifying --info=nonreg0.
--specials
This option causes rsync to transfer special files, such as named
sockets and fifos. If the receiving rsync is not being run as
the super-user, rsync silently skips creating the special files
(see also the --super and --fake-super options).
By default, rsync generates a "non-regular file" warning for each
special file encountered when this option is not set. You can
silence the warning by specifying --info=nonreg0.
-D The -D option is equivalent to "--devices --specials".
--drop-D
This tells the receiving rsync to refuse to create device files
and special files, whatever the transfer requested. Entries for
them are skipped exactly as if -D had not been used, with the
usual "non-regular file" warning.
This differs from --no-D in that it changes only what is created,
not how the file list is encoded. --no-D also turns off the rdev
fields that devices and special files carry on the wire, so ap-
plying it to one end of a connection alone leaves the two ends
disagreeing about the encoding and the transfer fails. --drop-D
can therefore be added on the receiving side by itself, which is
what it exists for -- the rrsync wrapper uses it to stop a re-
stricted directory's clients creating device and special files in
it. Nodes already present there are left alone.
Because it only withholds creation, it has no effect on a sending
rsync.
This option is not forwarded to the remote side, since its whole
purpose is to be applied to one end of a connection by itself.
It therefore affects the rsync process you give it to and no
other: on a local copy, or on the receiving end of a --server in-
vocation such as the one rrsync builds. To set it on a remote
receiver from the command line, send it explicitly with --re-
mote-option (-M):
rsync -av -M--drop-D src/ host:dest/
Passing a plain --drop-D to a push affects only the local sender,
where it does nothing.
--copy-devices
This tells rsync to treat a device on the sending side as a regu-
lar file, allowing it to be copied to a normal destination file
(or another device if --write-devices was also specified).
This option is refused by default by an rsync daemon.
--write-devices
This tells rsync to treat a device on the receiving side as a
regular file, allowing the writing of file data into a device.
This option implies the --inplace option.
Be careful using this, as you should know what devices are
present on the receiving side of the transfer, especially when
running rsync as root.
This option is refused by default by an rsync daemon.
--times, -t
This tells rsync to set the modification times of the destination
files (including directories, symlinks, devices, etc.) to be the
same as the source files. Note that if this option is not used,
the optimization that excludes files that have not been modified
cannot be effective; in other words, a missing -t (or -a) will
cause the next transfer to behave as if it used --ignore-times
(-I), causing all files to be updated. (Although rsync's delta-
transfer algorithm will make the update fairly efficient if the
files haven't actually changed, you're much better off using -t.)
If the negotiated protocol is older than 30 -- usually because
the remote rsync is older than 3.0.0 (March 2008), but also if
--protocol forces it -- the range of modification times that can
be conveyed is restricted. If you have files dated older than
1970, make sure your rsync executables are upgraded so that the
full range of dates can be conveyed.
--atimes, -U
This tells rsync to set the access (use) times of the destination
files to the same value as the source files.
If repeated, it also sets the --open-noatime option, which can
help you to make the sending and receiving systems have the same
access times on the transferred files without needing to run
rsync an extra time after a file is transferred.
--open-noatime
This tells rsync to open files with the O_NOATIME flag (on sys-
tems that support it) to avoid changing the access time of the
files that are being transferred. If your OS does not support
the O_NOATIME flag then rsync will silently ignore this option.
Note also that some filesystems are mounted to avoid updating the
atime on read access even without the O_NOATIME flag being set.
--crtimes, -N,
This tells rsync to set the create times (newness) of the desti-
nation files to the same value as the source files. Your OS &
filesystem must support the setting of arbitrary creation (birth)
times for this option to be supported.
--omit-dir-times, -O
This tells rsync to omit directories when it is preserving modi-
fication, access, and create times. If NFS is sharing the direc-
tories on the receiving side, it is a good idea to use -O. This
option is inferred if you use --backup without --backup-dir.
This option also has the side-effect of avoiding early creation
of missing sub-directories when incremental recursion is enabled,
as discussed in the --inc-recursive section.
--omit-link-times, -J
This tells rsync to omit symlinks when it is preserving modifica-
tion, access, and create times.
--super
This tells the receiving side to attempt super-user activities
even if the receiving rsync wasn't run by the super-user. These
activities include: preserving users via the --owner option, pre-
serving all groups (not just the current user's groups) via the
--group option, and copying devices via the --devices option.
This is useful for systems that allow such activities without be-
ing the super-user, and also for ensuring that you will get er-
rors if the receiving side isn't being run as the super-user. To
turn off super-user activities, the super-user can use --no-su-
per.
--fake-super
When this option is enabled, rsync simulates super-user activi-
ties by saving/restoring the privileged attributes via special
extended attributes that are attached to each file (as needed).
This includes the file's owner and group (if it is not the de-
fault), the file's device info (device & special files are cre-
ated as empty text files), and any permission bits that we won't
allow to be set on the real file (e.g. the real file gets u-s,g-
s,o-t for safety) or that would limit the owner's access (since
the real super-user can always access/change a file, the files we
create can always be accessed/changed by the creating user).
This option also handles ACLs (if --acls was specified) and non-
user extended attributes (if --xattrs was specified).
This is a good way to backup data without using a super-user, and
to store ACLs from incompatible systems.
The --fake-super option only affects the side where the option is
used. To affect the remote side of a remote-shell connection,
use the --remote-option (-M) option:
rsync -av -M--fake-super /src/ host:/dest/
For a local copy, this option affects both the source and the
destination. If you wish a local copy to enable this option just
for the destination files, specify -M--fake-super. If you wish a
local copy to enable this option just for the source files, com-
bine --fake-super with -M--super.
This option is overridden by both --super and --no-super.
See also the fake super setting in the daemon's rsyncd.conf file.
--sparse, -S
Try to handle sparse files efficiently so they take up less space
on the destination. This relies on the destination filesystem
supporting sparse files, that is, files where some parts of the
file don't have corresponding disk blocks allocated for them be-
cause they contain all zero bytes.
If combined with --inplace the file created may not end up with
sparse blocks (depending on the filesystem type and kernel ver-
sion), unless the --whole-file option is also in effect. Note
that versions of rsync older than 3.1.3 (January 2018) will re-
ject the combination of --sparse and --inplace.
--preallocate
This tells the receiver to allocate each destination file to its
eventual size before writing data to the file. Rsync will only
use the real filesystem-level preallocation support provided by
Linux's fallocate(2) system call or Cygwin's posix_fallocate(3),
not the slow glibc implementation that writes a null byte into
each block.
Without this option, larger files may not be entirely contiguous
on the filesystem, but with this option rsync will probably copy
more slowly. If the destination is not an extent-supporting
filesystem (such as ext4, xfs, NTFS, etc.), this option may have
no positive effect at all.
If combined with --sparse, the file will only have sparse blocks
(as opposed to allocated sequences of null bytes) if the kernel
version and filesystem type support creating holes in the allo-
cated data.
--dry-run, -n
This makes rsync perform a trial run that doesn't make any
changes, and produces mostly the same output as a real run. It
is most commonly used in combination with the --verbose (-v)
and/or --itemize-changes (-i) options to see what an rsync com-
mand is going to do before one actually runs it.
The output of --itemize-changes is supposed to be exactly the
same on a dry run and a subsequent real run (barring external
changes to the source or destination and system call failures);
if it isn't, that's a bug. Other output should be mostly un-
changed, but may differ in some areas. Notably, a dry run does
not send the actual data for file transfers, so --progress has no
effect, the "bytes sent", "bytes received", "literal data", and
"matched data" statistics are too small, and the "speedup" value
is equivalent to a run where no file transfers were needed.
--whole-file, -W
This option disables rsync's delta-transfer algorithm, causing
the whole of all transferred files to be sent. The transfer may
be faster if this option is used when the bandwidth between the
source and destination machines is higher than the bandwidth to
disk (especially when the "disk" is actually a networked filesys-
tem). This is the default when both the source and destination
are specified as local paths, but only if no batch-writing option
is in effect.
--no-whole-file, --no-W
Disable whole-file updating when it is enabled by default for a
local transfer. This usually slows rsync down, but it can be
useful if you are trying to minimize the writes to the destina-
tion file (if combined with --inplace) or for testing the check-
sum-based update algorithm.
See also the --whole-file option.
--checksum-choice=STR, --cc=STR
This option overrides the checksum algorithms. If one algorithm
name is specified, it is used for both the transfer checksums and
the pre-transfer checksums (note that the pre-transfer checksum
is only performed if --checksum is specified). If two comma-sep-
arated names are supplied, the first name affects the transfer
checksums, and the second name affects the pre-transfer check-
sums.
The checksum options that you may be able to use are:
o auto (the default automatic choice)
o xxh128
o xxh3
o xxh64 (aka xxhash)
o md5
o md4
o sha1
o none
Run rsync --version to see the default checksum list compiled
into your version (which may differ from the list above).
If "none" is specified for the first (or only) name, the
--whole-file option is forced on and no checksum verification is
performed on the transferred data. If "none" is specified for
the second (or only) name, the --checksum option cannot be used.
The "auto" option is the default, where rsync bases its algorithm
choice on a negotiation between the client and the server as fol-
lows:
When both sides of the transfer are at least 3.2.0 (released June
2020), each side chooses its own most-preferred algorithm that
also appears in the peer's list. Both sides order their lists
strongest-first, so they converge on the strongest mutual choice.
If no common checksum choice is found, rsync exits with an error.
If the remote rsync is too old to support checksum negotiation, a
value is chosen based on the protocol version (which chooses be-
tween MD5 and various flavors of MD4 based on protocol age).
The default order can be customized by setting the environment
variable RSYNC_CHECKSUM_LIST to a space-separated list of accept-
able checksum names. If the string contains a "&" character, it
is separated into the "client string & server string", otherwise
the same string applies to both. If the string (or string por-
tion) contains no non-whitespace characters, the default checksum
list is used. This method does not allow you to specify the
transfer checksum separately from the pre-transfer checksum, and
it discards "auto" and all unknown checksum names. A list with
only invalid names results in a failed negotiation.
The use of the --checksum-choice option overrides this environ-
ment list.
--one-file-system, -x
This tells rsync to avoid crossing a filesystem boundary when re-
cursing. This does not limit the user's ability to specify items
to copy from multiple filesystems, just rsync's recursion through
the hierarchy of each directory that the user specified, and also
the analogous recursion on the receiving side during deletion.
Also keep in mind that rsync treats a "bind" mount to the same
device as being on the same filesystem.
If this option is repeated, rsync omits all mount-point directo-
ries from the copy. Otherwise, it includes an empty directory at
each mount-point it encounters (using the attributes of the
mounted directory because those of the underlying mount-point di-
rectory are inaccessible).
If rsync has been told to collapse symlinks (via --copy-links or
--copy-unsafe-links), a symlink to a directory on another device
is treated like a mount-point. Symlinks to non-directories are
unaffected by this option.
--ignore-non-existing, --existing
This tells rsync to skip creating files (including directories)
that do not exist yet on the destination. If this option is com-
bined with the --ignore-existing option, no files will be updated
(which can be useful if all you want to do is delete extraneous
files).
This option is a TRANSFER RULE, so don't expect any exclude side
effects.
--ignore-existing
This tells rsync to skip updating files that already exist on the
destination (this does not ignore existing directories, or noth-
ing would get done). See also --ignore-non-existing.
This option is a TRANSFER RULE, so don't expect any exclude side
effects.
This option can be useful for those doing backups using the
--link-dest option when they need to continue a backup run that
got interrupted. Since a --link-dest run is copied into a new
directory hierarchy (when it is used properly), using [--ig-
nore-existing will ensure that the already-handled files don't
get tweaked (which avoids a change in permissions on the hard-
linked files). This does mean that this option is only looking
at the existing files in the destination hierarchy itself.
When --info=skip2 is used rsync will output "FILENAME exists
(INFO)" messages where the INFO indicates one of "type change",
"sum change" (requires -c), "file change" (based on the quick
check), "attr change", or "uptodate". Using --info=skip1 (which
is also implied by 2 -v options) outputs the exists message with-
out the INFO suffix.
--remove-source-files
This tells rsync to remove from the sending side the files (mean-
ing non-directories) that are a part of the transfer and have
been successfully duplicated on the receiving side.
Note that you should only use this option on source files that
are quiescent. If you are using this to move files that show up
in a particular directory over to another host, make sure that
the finished files get renamed into the source directory, not di-
rectly written into it, so that rsync can't possibly transfer a
file that is not yet fully written. If you can't first write the
files into a different directory, you should use a naming idiom
that lets rsync avoid transferring files that are not yet fin-
ished (e.g. name the file "foo.new" when it is written, rename it
to "foo" when it is done, and then use the option --ex-
clude='*.new' for the rsync transfer).
Rsync will skip the sender-side removal, and output an error, if
the file's size or modify time has not stayed unchanged.
If the copy is local, rsync will ensure that the sender does not
remove a file the receiver just verified, such as when the user
accidentally makes the source and destination directory the same
path.
--delete
This tells rsync to delete extraneous files from the receiving
side (those that don't exist on the sending side), but only for
the directories that are being synchronized. You must have asked
rsync to send the whole directory (e.g. "dir" or "dir/"), rather
than asking for all the files in a directory via a wildcard (e.g.
"dir/*"), since the wildcard is expanded by the shell and rsync
thus gets a request to transfer individual files, not the files'
parent directory. Files that are excluded from the transfer are
also excluded from being deleted unless you use the --delete-ex-
cluded option or mark the rules as only matching on the sending
side (see the include/exclude modifiers in the FILTER RULES sec-
tion).
This option has no effect unless either --recursive or --dirs
(-d) is enabled. In the latter case, deletions only occur in di-
rectories whose contents are being copied.
This option can be dangerous if used incorrectly! It is a very
good idea to first try a run using the --dry-run (-n) option to
see what files are going to be deleted.
If the sending side detects any I/O errors, then the deletion of
any files at the destination will be automatically disabled.
This is to prevent temporary filesystem failures (such as NFS er-
rors) on the sending side from causing a massive deletion of
files on the destination. You can override this with the --ig-
nore-errors option.
The --delete option may be combined with one of the --delete-WHEN
options without conflict, as well as --delete-excluded. However,
if none of the --delete-WHEN options are specified, rsync will
choose the --delete-during algorithm when talking to rsync 3.0.0
(March 2008) or newer, or the --delete-before algorithm when
talking to an older rsync. See also --delete-delay and
--delete-after.
--delete-before
Request that the file-deletions on the receiving side be done be-
fore the transfer starts. See --delete (which is implied) for
more details on file-deletion.
Deleting before the transfer is helpful if the filesystem is
tight for space and removing extraneous files would help to make
the transfer possible. However, it does introduce a delay before
the start of the transfer, and this delay might cause the trans-
fer to timeout (if --timeout was specified). It also forces
rsync to use the old, non-incremental recursion algorithm that
requires rsync to scan all the files in the transfer into memory
at once (see --recursive).
--delete-during, --del
Request that the file-deletions on the receiving side be done in-
crementally as the transfer happens. The per-directory delete
scan is done right before each directory is checked for updates,
so it behaves like a more efficient --delete-before, including
doing the deletions prior to any per-directory filter files being
updated. See --delete (which is implied) for more details on
file-deletion.
--delete-delay
Request that the file-deletions on the receiving side be computed
during the transfer (like --delete-during), and then removed af-
ter the transfer completes. This is useful when combined with
--delay-updates and/or --fuzzy, and is more efficient than using
--delete-after, but can behave differently, since --delete-after
computes the deletions in a separate pass after all updates are
done. If the number of removed files overflows an internal
buffer, a temporary file will be created on the receiving side to
hold the names (it is removed while open, so you shouldn't see it
during the transfer). If the creation of the temporary file
fails, rsync will try to fall back to using --delete-after (which
it cannot do if --recursive is doing an incremental scan). See
--delete (which is implied) for more details on file-deletion.
--delete-after
Request that the file-deletions on the receiving side be done af-
ter the transfer has completed. This is useful if you are send-
ing new per-directory merge files as a part of the transfer and
you want their exclusions to take effect for the delete phase of
the current transfer. It also forces rsync to use the old, non-
incremental recursion algorithm that requires rsync to scan all
the files in the transfer into memory at once (see --recursive).
See --delete (which is implied) for more details on file-dele-
tion.
See also the --delete-delay option that might be a faster choice
for those that just want the deletions to occur at the end of the
transfer.
--delete-excluded
This option turns any unqualified exclude/include rules into
server-side rules that do not affect the receiver's deletions.
By default, an exclude or include has both a server-side effect
(to "hide" and "show" files when building the server's file list)
and a receiver-side effect (to "protect" and "risk" files when
deletions are occurring). Any rule that has no modifier to spec-
ify what sides it is executed on will be instead treated as if it
were a server-side rule only, avoiding any "protect" effects of
the rules.
A rule can still apply to both sides even with this option speci-
fied if the rule is given both the sender & receiver modifier
letters (e.g., -f'-sr foo'). Receiver-side protect/risk rules
can also be explicitly specified to limit the deletions. This
saves you from having to edit a bunch of -f'- foo' rules into
-f'-s foo' (aka -f'H foo') rules (not to mention the correspond-
ing includes).
See the FILTER RULES section for more information. See --delete
(which is implied) for more details on deletion.
--ignore-missing-args
When rsync is first processing the explicitly requested source
files (e.g. command-line arguments or --files-from entries), it
is normally an error if the file cannot be found. This option
suppresses that error, and does not try to transfer the file.
This does not affect subsequent vanished-file errors if a file
was initially found to be present and later is no longer there.
--delete-missing-args
This option takes the behavior of the (implied) --ignore-miss-
ing-args option a step farther: each missing argument will become
a deletion request of the corresponding destination file on the
receiving side (should it exist). If the destination file is a
non-empty directory, it will only be successfully deleted if
--force or --delete are in effect. Other than that, this option
is independent of any other type of delete processing.
The missing source files are represented by special file-list en-
tries which display as a "*missing" entry in the --list-only out-
put.
--ignore-errors
Tells --delete to go ahead and delete files even when there are
I/O errors.
--force
This option tells rsync to delete a non-empty directory when it
is to be replaced by a non-directory. This is only relevant if
deletions are not active (see --delete for details).
--max-delete=NUM
This tells rsync not to delete more than NUM files or directo-
ries. If that limit is exceeded, all further deletions are
skipped through the end of the transfer. At the end, rsync out-
puts a warning (including a count of the skipped deletions) and
exits with an error code of 25 (unless some more important error
condition also occurred).
You may specify --max-delete=0 to be warned about any extraneous
files in the destination without removing any of them. CAUTION:
a client rsync older than 3.0.0 (March 2008) treats
--max-delete=0 as unlimited, so use --max-delete=-1 if the com-
mand might be run by such an old rsync. (A 3.0.0 or newer client
protects an older remote by forwarding the option as
--max-delete=-1.)
--max-size=SIZE
This tells rsync to avoid transferring any file that is larger
than the specified SIZE. A numeric value can be suffixed with a
string to indicate the numeric units or left unqualified to spec-
ify bytes, and the numeric value can have a fractional part, such
as --max-size=1.5m.
This option is a TRANSFER RULE, so don't expect any exclude side
effects.
The first letter of a units string can be B (bytes), K (kilo), M
(mega), G (giga), T (tera), or P (peta). If the string is a sin-
gle char or has "ib" added to it (e.g. "G" or "GiB") then the
units are multiples of 1024. If you use a two-letter suffix that
ends with a "B" (e.g. "kb") then you get units that are multiples
of 1000. The string's letters can be any mix of upper and lower-
case that you want to use.
Finally, if the string ends with either "+1" or "-1", it is off-
set by one byte in the indicated direction. The largest possible
value is usually 8192P-1.
Examples: --max-size=1.5mb-1 is 1499999 bytes, and
--max-size=2g+1 is 2147483649 bytes.
--min-size=SIZE
This tells rsync to avoid transferring any file that is smaller
than the specified SIZE, which can help in not transferring
small, junk files. See the --max-size option for a description
of SIZE and other info.
--max-alloc=SIZE
By default rsync limits an individual malloc/realloc to about 1GB
in size. For most people this limit works just fine and prevents
a protocol error causing rsync to request massive amounts of mem-
ory. However, if you have many millions of files in a transfer,
a large amount of server memory, and you don't want to split up
your transfer into multiple parts, you can increase the per-allo-
cation limit to something larger, allowing rsync to consume more
memory.
Keep in mind that this is not a limit on the total size of allo-
cated memory. It is a sanity-check value for each individual al-
location.
See the --max-size option for a description of how SIZE can be
specified. The default suffix if none is given is bytes.
A value of 0 is an easy way to say "the largest limit this build
supports". It resolves to the same ceiling an explicit SIZE is
checked against, so it is never a higher limit than one you could
have typed out yourself.
Because the option is passed to the remote rsync as you wrote it,
each side resolves a 0 against its own maximum. That makes 0 the
only spelling that is correct for both ends of a transfer between
hosts of different word sizes: a literal value large enough to be
useful on a 64-bit client is rejected as too large by a 32-bit
daemon.
A value of 0 was accepted beginning in 3.2.3 and rejected in
3.5.0; the release after 3.5.0 accepts it again.
A daemon administrator who does not want clients to change the
configured allocation ceiling can set refuse options = max-alloc
in the module's rsyncd.conf. This refuses every client-supplied
value, including 0.
You can set a default value using the environment variable
RSYNC_MAX_ALLOC using the same SIZE values as supported by this
option. If the remote rsync doesn't understand the --max-alloc
option, you can override an environmental value by specifying
--max-alloc=1g, which will make rsync avoid sending the option to
the remote side (because "1G" is the default).
--block-size=SIZE, -B
This forces the block size used in rsync's delta-transfer algo-
rithm to a fixed value. It is normally selected based on the
size of each file being updated. See the technical report for
details.
The SIZE can be specified with a suffix as detailed in the
--max-size option.
--rsh=COMMAND, -e
This option allows you to choose an alternative remote shell pro-
gram to use for communication between the local and remote copies
of rsync. Typically, rsync is configured to use ssh by default.
If this option is used with [user@]host::module/path, then the
remote shell COMMAND will be used to run an rsync daemon on the
remote host, and all data will be transmitted through that remote
shell connection, rather than through a direct socket connection
to a running rsync daemon on the remote host. See the USING
RSYNC-DAEMON FEATURES VIA A REMOTE-SHELL CONNECTION section
above.
The RSYNC_PORT environment variable will be set when a daemon
connection is being made via a remote-shell connection. It is
set to 0 if the default daemon port is being assumed, or it is
set to the value of the rsync port that was specified via either
the --port option or a non-empty port value in an rsync:// URL
(for example rsync://host.example.com:984). This is useful if
the program being run is not actually rsync but rather something
such as an SSL or stunnel helper script; the script can use
RSYNC_PORT to determine whether it should connect to a default or
alternate port.
Command-line arguments are permitted in COMMAND provided that
COMMAND is presented to rsync as a single argument. You must use
spaces (not tabs or other whitespace) to separate the command and
arguments from each other, and you can use single- and/or double-
quotes to preserve spaces in an argument (but not backslashes).
Note that doubling a single-quote inside a single-quoted string
gives you a single-quote; likewise for double-quotes (though you
need to pay attention to which quotes your shell is parsing and
which quotes rsync is parsing). Some examples:
-e 'ssh -p 2234'
-e 'ssh -o "ProxyCommand nohup ssh firewall nc -w1 %h %p"'
(Note that ssh users can alternately customize site-specific con-
nect options in their .ssh/config file.)
You can also choose the remote shell program using the RSYNC_RSH
environment variable, which accepts the same range of values as
-e.
See also the --blocking-io option which is affected by this op-
tion.
--rsync-path=PROGRAM
Use this to specify what program is to be run on the remote ma-
chine to start-up rsync. Often used when rsync is not in the de-
fault remote-shell's path (e.g. --rsync-path=/usr/lo-
cal/bin/rsync). Note that PROGRAM is run with the help of a
shell, so it can be any program, script, or command sequence
you'd care to run, so long as it does not corrupt the standard-in
& standard-out that rsync is using to communicate.
One tricky example is to set a different default directory on the
remote machine for use with the --relative option. For instance:
rsync -avR --rsync-path="cd /a/b && rsync" host:c/d /e/
--remote-option=OPTION, -M
This option is used for more advanced situations where you want
certain effects to be limited to one side of the transfer only.
For instance, if you want to pass --log-file=FILE and --fake-su-
per to the remote system, specify it like this:
rsync -av -M --log-file=foo -M--fake-super src/ dest/
If you want to have an option affect only the local side of a
transfer when it normally affects both sides, send its negation
to the remote side. Like this:
rsync -av -x -M--no-x src/ dest/
Be cautious using this, as it is possible to toggle an option
that will cause rsync to have a different idea about what data to
expect next over the socket, and that will make it fail in a
cryptic fashion.
Note that you should use a separate -M option for each remote op-
tion you want to pass. On older rsync versions, the presence of
any spaces in the remote-option argument could cause it to be
split into separate remote arguments, but this requires the use
of --old-args in a modern rsync.
When performing a local transfer, the "local" side is the sender
and the "remote" side is the receiver.
Note some versions of the popt option-parsing library have a bug
in them that prevents you from using an adjacent argument with an
equal in it next to a short option letter (e.g.
-M--log-file=/tmp/foo). If this bug affects your version of
popt, you can use the version of popt that is included with
rsync.
--cvs-exclude, -C
This is a useful shorthand for excluding a broad range of files
that you often don't want to transfer between systems. It uses a
similar algorithm to CVS to determine if a file should be ig-
nored.
The exclude list is initialized to exclude the following items
(these initial items are marked as perishable -- see the FILTER
RULES section):
RCS SCCS CVS CVS.adm RCSLOG cvslog.* tags TAGS .make.state
.nse_depinfo *~ #* .#* ,* _$* *$ *.old *.bak *.BAK *.orig
*.rej .del-* *.a *.olb *.o *.obj *.so *.exe *.Z *.elc *.ln
core .svn/ .git/ .hg/ .bzr/
then, files listed in a $HOME/.cvsignore are added to the list
and any files listed in the CVSIGNORE environment variable (all
cvsignore names are delimited by whitespace).
Finally, any file is ignored if it is in the same directory as a
.cvsignore file and matches one of the patterns listed therein.
Unlike rsync's filter/exclude files, these patterns are split on
whitespace. See the cvs(1) manual for more information.
If you're combining -C with your own --filter rules, you should
note that these CVS excludes are appended at the end of your own
rules, regardless of where the -C was placed on the command-line.
This makes them a lower priority than any rules you specified ex-
plicitly. If you want to control where these CVS excludes get
inserted into your filter rules, you should omit the -C as a com-
mand-line option and use a combination of --filter=:C and --fil-
ter=-C (either on your command-line or by putting the ":C" and
"-C" rules into a filter file with your other rules). The first
option turns on the per-directory scanning for the .cvsignore
file. The second option does a one-time import of the CVS ex-
cludes mentioned above.
--filter=RULE, -f
This option allows you to add rules to selectively exclude cer-
tain files from the list of files to be transferred. This is
most useful in combination with a recursive transfer.
You may use as many --filter options on the command line as you
like to build up the list of files to exclude. If the filter
contains whitespace, be sure to quote it so that the shell gives
the rule to rsync as a single argument. You can use an under-
score instead of a space to separate a rule from its argument.
See the FILTER RULES section for detailed information on this op-
tion.
-F The -F option is a shorthand for adding two --filter rules to
your command. The first time it is used is a shorthand for this
rule:
--filter='dir-merge /.rsync-filter'
This tells rsync to look for per-directory .rsync-filter files
that have been sprinkled through the hierarchy and use their
rules to filter the files in the transfer. If -F is repeated, it
is a shorthand for this rule:
--filter='exclude .rsync-filter'
This filters out the .rsync-filter files themselves from the
transfer.
See the FILTER RULES section for detailed information on how
these options work.
--exclude=PATTERN
This option is a simplified form of the --filter option that
specifies an exclude rule and does not allow the full rule-pars-
ing syntax of normal filter rules. This is equivalent to speci-
fying -f'- PATTERN'.
See the FILTER RULES section for detailed information on this op-
tion.
--exclude-from=FILE
This option is related to the --exclude option, but it specifies
a FILE that contains exclude patterns (one per line). Blank
lines in the file are ignored, as are whole-line comments that
start with ';' or '#' (filename rules that contain those charac-
ters are unaffected).
If a line begins with "- " (dash, space) or "+ " (plus, space),
then the type of rule is being explicitly specified as an exclude
or an include (respectively). Any rules without such a prefix
are taken to be an exclude.
If a line consists of just "!", then the current filter rules are
cleared before adding any further rules.
If FILE is '-', the list will be read from standard input.
--include=PATTERN
This option is a simplified form of the --filter option that
specifies an include rule and does not allow the full rule-pars-
ing syntax of normal filter rules. This is equivalent to speci-
fying -f'+ PATTERN'.
See the FILTER RULES section for detailed information on this op-
tion.
--include-from=FILE
This option is related to the --include option, but it specifies
a FILE that contains include patterns (one per line). Blank
lines in the file are ignored, as are whole-line comments that
start with ';' or '#' (filename rules that contain those charac-
ters are unaffected).
If a line begins with "- " (dash, space) or "+ " (plus, space),
then the type of rule is being explicitly specified as an exclude
or an include (respectively). Any rules without such a prefix
are taken to be an include.
If a line consists of just "!", then the current filter rules are
cleared before adding any further rules.
If FILE is '-', the list will be read from standard input.
--files-from=FILE
Using this option tells rsync to read the exact list of files to
transfer from FILE (or standard input if FILE is '-'). It also
tweaks the default behavior of rsync to make transferring just
the specified files and directories easier:
o The --relative (-R) option is implied, which preserves the
path information that is specified for each item in the
file (use --no-relative or --no-R if you want to turn that
off).
o The --dirs (-d) option is implied, which will create di-
rectories specified in the list on the destination rather
than noisily skipping them (use --no-dirs or --no-d if you
want to turn that off).
o The --archive (-a) option's behavior does not imply --re-
cursive (-r), so specify it explicitly, if you want it.
o These side-effects change the default state of rsync, so
the position of the --files-from option on the command-
line has no bearing on how other options are parsed (e.g.
-a works the same before or after --files-from, as does
--no-R and all other options).
The filenames that are read from the FILE are all relative to the
source directory: any leading slash is removed, and ".." compo-
nents are resolved away so an entry cannot rise above the source
directory -- e.g. "../foo" is taken as "foo" within the source
directory. An entry that still contains an active ".." after
that resolution (one that cannot be collapsed) is rejected with
an error. Blank entries are ignored, as are whole-entry comments
that start with ';' or '#'. For example, take this command:
rsync -a --files-from=/tmp/foo /usr remote:/backup
If /tmp/foo contains the string "bin" (or even "/bin"), the
/usr/bin directory will be created as /backup/bin on the remote
host. If it contains "bin/" (note the trailing slash), the imme-
diate contents of the directory would also be sent, without need-
ing to be explicitly mentioned in the file. In both cases, if
the -r option was enabled, that directory's entire hierarchy
would also be transferred (keep in mind that -r needs to be spec-
ified explicitly with --files-from, since it is not implied by
-a. Also note that the effect of the (enabled by default) -r op-
tion is to duplicate only the path info that is read from the
file -- it does not force the duplication of the source-spec path
(/usr in this case).
In addition, the --files-from file can be read from the remote
host instead of the local host if you specify a "host:" in front
of the file (the host must match one end of the transfer). As a
short-cut, you can specify just a prefix of ":" to mean "use the
remote end of the transfer". For example:
rsync -a --files-from=:/path/file-list src:/ /tmp/copy
This would copy all the files specified in the /path/file-list
file that was located on the remote "src" host.
If the --iconv and --secluded-args options are specified and the
--files-from filenames are being sent from one host to another,
the filenames will be translated from the sending host's charset
to the receiving host's charset.
NOTE: sorting the list of files in the --files-from input helps
rsync to be more efficient, as it will avoid re-visiting the path
elements that are shared between adjacent entries. If the input
is not sorted, some path elements (implied directories) may end
up being scanned multiple times, and rsync will eventually undu-
plicate them after they get turned into file-list elements.
--from0, -0
This tells rsync that the rules or filenames it reads from a file
are terminated by a null ('\0') character, not a NL, CR, or
CR+LF. This affects --exclude-from, --include-from,
--files-from, and any merged files specified in a --filter rule.
It does not affect --cvs-exclude (since all names read from a
.cvsignore file are split on whitespace).
--old-args
This option tells rsync not to protect the argument values sent
to the remote side from unintended word-splitting or other misin-
terpretation. It also allows the client to treat an empty argu-
ment as a "." instead of generating an error.
The default in a modern rsync is for "shell-active" characters
(including spaces) to be backslash-escaped in the arguments that
are sent to the remote shell. The wildcard characters *, ?, [, &
] are not escaped in filename arguments (allowing them to expand
into multiple filenames) while being protected in option argu-
ments, such as --usermap.
If you have a script that wants to use old-style argument split-
ting in its filenames, specify this option once. If the remote
shell has a problem with any backslash escapes at all, specify
this option twice.
You may also control this setting via the RSYNC_OLD_ARGS environ-
ment variable. If it has the value "1", rsync will default to a
single-option setting. If it has the value "2" (or more), rsync
will default to a repeated-option setting. If it is "0", you'll
get the default escaping behavior. The environment is always
overridden by manually specified positive or negative options
(the negative is --no-old-args).
Note that this option also disables the extra safety check that
ensures that a remote sender isn't including extra top-level
items in the file-list that you didn't request. This side-effect
is necessary because we can't know for sure what names to expect
when the remote shell is interpreting the arguments.
This option conflicts with the --secluded-args option.
--secluded-args, -s
This option sends all filenames and most options to the remote
rsync via the protocol (rather than via the remote shell command
line), which avoids the possibility of the remote shell modifying
them. Wildcards are expanded on the remote host by rsync instead
of a shell.
Without this option, rsync does backslash-escaping of arguments
to prevent things like space splitting and unwanted special-char-
acter side-effects, which is normally sufficient to avoid un-
wanted modifications by the shell. This option is useful for
those times that you need the argument's character set to be con-
verted for the remote host, if the remote shell is incompatible
with the default backslash-escaping method, or there is some
other reason that you want the majority of the options and argu-
ments to bypass the command-line of the remote shell.
This option is incompatible with remote rsync versions prior to
3.0.0 (March 2008). It also has the drawback of being refused by
restricted shells that want to be able to inspect all the option
values for safety.
If you combine this option with --iconv, the arguments related to
the remote side will be translated from the local to the remote
character-set. The translation happens before wild-cards are ex-
panded. See also the --files-from option.
You may also control this setting via the RSYNC_PROTECT_ARGS en-
vironment variable. If it has a non-zero value, this setting
will be enabled by default, otherwise it will be disabled by de-
fault. Either state is overridden by a manually specified posi-
tive or negative version of this option (note that --no-s and
--no-secluded-args are the negative versions). This environment
variable is also superseded by a non-zero RSYNC_OLD_ARGS environ-
ment variable.
This option conflicts with the --old-args option.
This option used to be called --protect-args (before 3.2.6, Sep-
tember 2022) and that older name can still be used (though speci-
fying it as -s is always the easiest and most compatible choice).
--trust-sender
This option disables two extra validation checks that a local
client performs on the file list generated by a remote sender.
This option should only be used if you trust the sender to not
put something malicious in the file list (something that could
possibly be done via a modified rsync, a modified shell, or some
other similar manipulation).
Normally, the rsync client runs two extra validation checks when
pulling files from a remote rsync:
o It verifies that additional argument items didn't get
added at the top of the transfer.
o It verifies that none of the items in the file list are
names that should have been excluded (if filter rules were
specified).
Note that various options can turn off one or both of these
checks if the option interferes with the validation. For in-
stance:
o Using a per-directory filter file reads filter rules that
only the server knows about, so the filter checking is
disabled.
o Using the --old-args option allows the sender to manipu-
late the requested arguments, so the argument checking is
disabled.
o Reading the files-from list from the server side means
that the client doesn't know the argument list, so the ar-
gument checking is disabled.
o Using --read-batch disables both checks since the batch
file's contents will have been verified when it was cre-
ated.
This option may help an under-powered client server if the extra
pattern matching is slowing things down on a huge transfer. It
could also be used for a transfer from a trusted sender as a
workaround if there appeared to be a bug in the verification
logic.
When using this option it is a good idea to specify a dedicated
destination directory, as discussed in the SECURITY section.
--copy-as=USER[:GROUP]
This option instructs rsync to use the USER and (if specified af-
ter a colon) the GROUP for the copy operations. This only works
if the user that is running rsync has the ability to change
users. If the group is not specified then the user's default
groups are used.
This option can help to reduce the risk in the case where rsync
is being run as root, copying into or out of a directory that
might have live changes happening to it, and you want to make
sure that root-level read or write actions of system files are
not possible. While you could alternatively run all of rsync as
the specified user, sometimes you need the root-level host-access
credentials to be used, so this allows rsync to drop root for the
copying part of the operation after the remote-shell or daemon
connection is established.
The option only affects one side of the transfer unless the
transfer is local, in which case it affects both sides. Use the
--remote-option to affect the remote side, such as
-M--copy-as=joe. For a local transfer, the lsh (or lsh.sh) sup-
port file provides a local-shell helper script that can be used
to allow a "localhost:" or "lh:" host-spec to be specified with-
out needing to setup any remote shells, allowing you to specify
remote options that affect the side of the transfer that is using
the host-spec (and using hostname "lh" avoids the overriding of
the remote directory to the user's home directory).
For example, the following rsync writes the local files as user
"joe":
sudo rsync -aiv --copy-as=joe host1:backups/joe/ /home/joe/
This makes all files owned by user "joe", limits the groups to
those that are available to that user, and makes it impossible
for the joe user to do a timed exploit of the path to induce a
change to a file that the joe user has no permissions to change.
The following command does a local copy into the "dest/" direc-
tory as user "joe" (assuming you've installed support/lsh into a
directory on your $PATH):
sudo rsync -aive lsh -M--copy-as=joe src/ lh:dest/
--temp-dir=DIR, -T
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 each temporary
file in the same directory as the associated destination file.
The temp-file names inside the specified DIR will not be prefixed
with an extra dot, though they will still have a random suffix
added.
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 direc-
tory is on a different disk partition), rsync will not be able to
rename each received temporary file over the top of the associ-
ated destination file, but instead must copy it into place.
Rsync does this by copying the file over the top of the destina-
tion file, which means that the destination file will contain
truncated data during this copy. If this were not done this way,
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 --delay-updates
option, which will ensure that all copied files get put into sub-
directories in the destination hierarchy, awaiting the end of the
transfer. If you don't have enough room to duplicate all the ar-
riving files on the destination partition, another way to tell
rsync that you aren't overly concerned about disk space is to use
the --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
subdirectory 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 --partial-dir
with an absolute path does not have this side-effect.)
--fuzzy, -y
This option tells rsync that it should look for a basis file for
any destination file that is missing. With this option, rsync
looks in the same directory as the destination file for either a
file that has an identical size and modified-time, or a simi-
larly-named file. If found, rsync uses the fuzzy basis file to
try to speed up the transfer.
If the option is repeated, the fuzzy scan will also be done in
any matching alternate destination directories that are specified
via --compare-dest, --copy-dest, or --link-dest.
Note that the use of the --delete option might get rid of any po-
tential fuzzy-match files, so either use --delete-after or spec-
ify some filename exclusions if you need to prevent this.
--compare-dest=DIR
This option instructs rsync to use DIR on the destination machine
as an additional hierarchy to compare destination files against
doing transfers (if the files are missing in the destination di-
rectory). If a file is found in DIR that is identical to the
sender's file, the file will NOT be transferred to the destina-
tion directory. This is useful for creating a sparse backup of
just files that have changed from an earlier backup. This option
is typically used to copy into an empty (or newly created) direc-
tory.
Multiple --compare-dest directories may be provided, which will
cause rsync to search the list in the order specified for an ex-
act match. If a match is found that differs only in attributes,
a local copy is made and the attributes updated. If a match is
not found, a basis file from one of the DIRs will be selected to
try to speed up the transfer.
If DIR is a relative path, it is relative to the destination di-
rectory. See also --copy-dest and --link-dest.
NOTE: rsync will remove a file from a non-empty destination hier-
archy if an exact match is found in one of the compare-dest hier-
archies, making the end result more closely match a fresh copy.
--copy-dest=DIR
This option behaves like --compare-dest, but rsync will also copy
unchanged files found in DIR to the destination directory using a
local copy. This is useful for doing transfers to a new destina-
tion while leaving existing files intact, and then doing a flash-
cutover when all files have been successfully transferred.
Multiple --copy-dest directories may be provided, which will
cause rsync to search the list in the order specified for an un-
changed file. If a match is not found, a basis file from one of
the DIRs will be selected to try to speed up the transfer.
If DIR is a relative path, it is relative to the destination di-
rectory. See also --compare-dest and --link-dest.
--link-dest=DIR
This option behaves like --copy-dest, but unchanged files are
hard linked from DIR to the destination directory. The files
must be identical in all preserved attributes (e.g. permissions,
possibly ownership) in order for the files to be linked together.
An example:
rsync -av --link-dest=$PWD/prior_dir host:src_dir/ new_dir/
If files aren't linking, double-check their attributes. Also
check if some attributes are getting forced outside of rsync's
control, such a mount option that squishes root to a single user,
or mounts a removable drive with generic ownership (such as OS
X's "Ignore ownership on this volume" option).
Multiple --link-dest directories may be provided, which will
cause rsync to search the list in the order specified for an ex-
act match (there is a limit of 20 such directories). If a match
is found that differs only in attributes, a local copy is made
and the attributes updated. If a match is not found, a basis
file from one of the DIRs will be selected to try to speed up the
transfer.
Not every filesystem can hard-link a symlink, a device node, a
FIFO or a socket, and the destination need not agree with the one
rsync was built on -- macOS builds on APFS, which can, and may
write to HFS+, which cannot. Where the destination refuses to
link such an entry, it is copied instead and the transfer carries
on, so only that entry loses the space saving. This applies to
any refusal, because the error alone does not identify one:
link(2) reports EPERM both for a filesystem without hard links
and for an ordinary permission refusal. Regular files have al-
ways behaved this way.
One case is not covered. With --hard-links (-H), a group of such
entries hard-linked to each other in the source needs a second
link, from the first member to the rest, inside the destination
itself. Where that link is refused too -- a destination that
cannot hard-link the type at all -- the members after the first
are not created and the transfer fails. A --link-dest on another
filesystem is fine: only the link to DIR is impossible there, and
the ones within the destination still succeed.
This option works best when copying into an empty destination hi-
erarchy, as existing files may get their attributes tweaked, and
that can affect alternate destination files via hard-links.
Also, itemizing of changes can get a bit muddled. Note that
prior to version 3.1.0 (September 2013), an alternate-directory
exact match would never be found (nor linked into the destina-
tion) when a destination file already exists.
Note that if you combine this option with --ignore-times, rsync
will not link any files together because it only links identical
files together as a substitute for transferring the file, never
as an additional check after the file is updated.
If DIR is a relative path, it is relative to the destination di-
rectory. See also --compare-dest and --copy-dest.
Note that rsync versions prior to 2.6.1 (April 2004) had a bug
that could prevent --link-dest from working properly for a non-
super-user when --owner (-o) was specified (or implied). You can
work-around this bug by avoiding the -o option (or using --no-o)
when sending to a really old remote rsync.
--compress, -z
With this option, rsync compresses the file data as it is sent to
the destination machine, which reduces the amount of data being
transmitted -- something that is useful over a slow connection.
Rsync supports multiple compression methods and will choose one
for you unless you force the choice using the --compress-choice
(--zc) option.
Run rsync --version to see the default compress list compiled
into your version.
When both sides of the transfer are at least 3.2.0 (June 2020),
each side chooses its own most-preferred algorithm that also ap-
pears in the peer's list. Both sides order their lists
strongest-first, so they converge on the strongest mutual choice.
If no common compress choice is found, rsync exits with an error.
If the remote rsync is too old to support checksum negotiation,
its list is assumed to be "zlib".
The default order can be customized by setting the environment
variable RSYNC_COMPRESS_LIST to a space-separated list of accept-
able compression names. If the string contains a "&" character,
it is separated into the "client string & server string", other-
wise the same string applies to both. If the string (or string
portion) contains no non-whitespace characters, the default com-
press list is used. Any unknown compression names are discarded
from the list, but a list with only invalid names results in a
failed negotiation.
There are some older rsync versions that were configured to re-
ject a -z option and require the use of -zz because their com-
pression library was not compatible with the default zlib com-
pression method. You can usually ignore this weirdness unless
the rsync server complains and tells you to specify -zz.
--compress-choice=STR, --zc=STR
This option can be used to override the automatic negotiation of
the compression algorithm that occurs when --compress is used.
The option implies --compress unless "none" was specified, which
instead implies --no-compress.
The compression options that you may be able to use are:
o zstd
o lz4
o zlibx
o zlib
o none
Run rsync --version to see the default compress list compiled
into your version (which may differ from the list above).
Note that if you see an error about an option named --old-com-
press or --new-compress, this is rsync trying to send the --com-
press-choice=zlib or --compress-choice=zlibx option in a back-
ward-compatible manner that more rsync versions understand. This
error indicates that the older rsync version on the server will
not allow you to force the compression type.
Note that the "zlibx" compression algorithm is just the "zlib"
algorithm with matched data excluded from the compression stream
(to try to make it more compatible with an external zlib imple-
mentation).
--compress-level=NUM, --zl=NUM
Explicitly set the compression level to use (see --compress, -z)
instead of using the default. The --compress option is implied
as long as the level chosen is not a "don't compress" level for
the compression algorithm that is in effect (e.g. zlib compres-
sion treats level 0 as "off").
The level values vary depending on the checksum in effect. Be-
cause rsync will negotiate a checksum choice by default (when the
remote rsync is new enough), it can be good to combine this op-
tion with a --compress-choice (--zc) option unless you're sure of
the choice in effect. For example:
rsync -aiv --zc=zstd --zl=22 host:src/ dest/
For zlib & zlibx compression the valid values are from 1 to 9
with 6 being the default. Specifying --zl=0 turns compression
off, and specifying --zl=-1 chooses the default level of 6.
For zstd compression the valid values are from -131072 to 22 with
3 being the default. Specifying 0 chooses the default of 3.
For lz4 compression there are no levels, so the value is always
0.
If you specify a too-large or too-small value, the number is
silently limited to a valid value. This allows you to specify
something like --zl=999999999 and be assured that you'll end up
with the maximum compression level no matter what algorithm was
chosen.
If you want to know the compression level that is in effect,
specify --debug=nstr to see the "negotiated string" results.
This will report something like "Client compress: zstd (level 3)"
(along with the checksum choice in effect).
--compress-threads=NUM, --zt=NUM
Set the number of threads to spawn when compressing data. Setting
this option to 1 or more will instruct the compression library to
spawn 1 or more threads for compression. Ideally, increasing the
number of threads will increase transfer speed if the transfer is
CPU bound on the sender.
This option does not affect decompression.
Compression algorithms that allow threading:
o zstd (only when libzstd is compiled with threading sup-
port)
This option is ignored if one of the above alogithms is not se-
lected as the --compression-choice or if compression not enabled.
--skip-compress=LIST
NOTE: no compression method currently supports per-file compres-
sion changes, so this option has no effect.
Override the list of file suffixes that will be compressed as
little as possible. Rsync can set the compression level on a
per-file basis based on the file's suffix. If the compression
algorithm has an "off" level, then no compression occurs for
those files. Other algorithms that support changing the stream-
ing level on-the-fly will have the level minimized to reduces the
CPU usage as much as possible for a matching file.
The LIST should be one or more file suffixes (without the dot)
separated by slashes (/). You may specify an empty string to in-
dicate that no files should be skipped.
Simple character-class matching is supported: each must consist
of a list of letters inside the square brackets (e.g. no special
classes, such as "[:alpha:]", are supported, and '-' has no spe-
cial meaning).
The characters asterisk (*) and question-mark (?) have no special
meaning.
Here's an example that specifies 6 suffixes to skip (since 1 of
the 5 rules matches 2 suffixes):
--skip-compress=gz/jpg/mp[34]/7z/bz2
The default file suffixes in the skip-compress list in this ver-
sion of rsync are:
3g2 3gp 7z aac ace apk avi bz2 deb dmg ear f4v flac flv gpg
gz iso jar jpeg jpg lrz lz lz4 lzma lzo m1a m1v m2a m2ts m2v
m4a m4b m4p m4r m4v mka mkv mov mp1 mp2 mp3 mp4 mpa mpeg mpg
mpv mts odb odf odg odi odm odp ods odt oga ogg ogm ogv ogx
opus otg oth otp ots ott oxt png qt rar rpm rz rzip spx
squashfs sxc sxd sxg sxm sxw sz tbz tbz2 tgz tlz ts txz tzo
vob war webm webp xz z zip zst
This list will be replaced by your --skip-compress list in all
but one situation: a copy from a daemon rsync will add your
skipped suffixes to its list of non-compressing files (and its
list may be configured to a different default).
--numeric-ids
With this option rsync will transfer numeric group and user IDs
rather than using user and group names and mapping them at both
ends.
By default rsync will use the username and groupname to determine
what ownership to give files. The special uid 0 and the special
group 0 are never mapped via user/group names even if the --nu-
meric-ids option is not specified.
If a user or group has no name on the source system or it has no
match on the destination system, then the numeric ID from the
source system is used instead. See also the use chroot setting
in the rsyncd.conf manpage for some comments on how the chroot
setting affects rsync's ability to look up the names of the users
and groups and what you can do about it.
--usermap=STRING, --groupmap=STRING
These options allow you to specify users and groups that should
be mapped to other values by the receiving side. The STRING is
one or more FROM:TO pairs of values separated by commas. Any
matching FROM value from the sender is replaced with a TO value
from the receiver. You may specify usernames or user IDs for the
FROM and TO values, and the FROM value may also be a wild-card
string, which will be matched against the sender's names (wild-
cards do NOT match against ID numbers, though see below for why a
'*' matches everything). You may instead specify a range of ID
numbers via an inclusive range: LOW-HIGH. For example:
--usermap=0-99:nobody,wayne:admin,*:normal --groupmap=usr:1,1:usr
The first match in the list is the one that is used. You should
specify all your user mappings using a single --usermap option,
and/or all your group mappings using a single --groupmap option.
Note that the sender's name for the 0 user and group are not
transmitted to the receiver, so you should either match these
values using a 0, or use the names in effect on the receiving
side (typically "root"). All other FROM names match those in use
on the sending side. All TO names match those in use on the re-
ceiving side.
Any IDs that do not have a name on the sending side are treated
as having an empty name for the purpose of matching. This allows
them to be matched via a "*" or using an empty name. For in-
stance:
--usermap=:nobody --groupmap=*:nobody
An empty FROM value matches only sender-side IDs that have no
name. It is not a wildcard for named users or groups; use "*"
when you want to map every sender-side name.
When the --numeric-ids option is used, the sender does not send
any names, so all the IDs are treated as having an empty name.
This means that you will need to specify numeric FROM values if
you want to map these nameless IDs to different values.
For the --usermap option to work, the receiver will need to be
running as a super-user (see also the --super and --fake-super
options). For the --groupmap option to work, the receiver will
need to have permissions to set that group.
The --usermap option implies the --owner (-o) option, and the
--groupmap option implies the --group (-g) option (since rsync
needs to have those options enabled for the mapping options to
work).
An older rsync client may need to use -s to avoid a complaint
about wildcard characters, but a modern rsync handles this auto-
matically.
--chown=USER:GROUP
This option forces all files to be owned by USER with group
GROUP. This is a simpler interface than using --usermap &
--groupmap directly, but it is implemented using those options
internally, thus they cannot be mixed. If either the USER or
GROUP is empty, no mapping for the omitted user/group will occur.
If GROUP is empty, the trailing colon may be omitted, but if USER
is empty, a leading colon must be supplied.
If you specify "--chown=foo:bar", this is exactly the same as
specifying "--usermap=*:foo --groupmap=*:bar", only easier (and
with the same implied --owner and/or --group options).
An older rsync client may need to use -s to avoid a complaint
about wildcard characters, but a modern rsync handles this auto-
matically.
--timeout=SECONDS
This option allows you to set a maximum I/O timeout in seconds.
If no data is transferred for the specified time then rsync will
exit. The default is 0, which means no timeout.
--contimeout=SECONDS
This option allows you to set the amount of time that rsync will
wait for its connection to an rsync daemon to succeed. If the
timeout is reached, rsync exits with an error.
--address=ADDRESS
By default rsync will bind to the wildcard address when connect-
ing to an rsync daemon. The --address option allows you to spec-
ify a specific IP address (or hostname) to bind to.
See also the daemon version of the --address option.
--port=PORT
This specifies an alternate TCP port number to use rather than
the default of 873. This is only needed if you are using the
double-colon (::) syntax to connect with an rsync daemon (since
the URL syntax has a way to specify the port as a part of the
URL).
See also the daemon version of the --port option.
--sockopts=OPTIONS
This option can provide endless fun for people who like to tune
their systems to the utmost degree. You can set all sorts of
socket options which may make transfers faster (or slower!).
Read the manpage for the setsockopt() system call for details on
some of the options you may be able to set. By default no spe-
cial socket options are set. This only affects direct socket
connections to a remote rsync daemon.
See also the daemon version of the --sockopts option.
--blocking-io
This tells rsync to use blocking I/O when launching a remote
shell transport. If the remote shell is either rsh or remsh,
rsync defaults to using blocking I/O, otherwise it defaults to
using non-blocking I/O. (Note that ssh prefers non-blocking I/O.)
--outbuf=MODE
This sets the output buffering mode. The mode can be None (aka
Unbuffered), Line, or Block (aka Full). You may specify as lit-
tle as a single letter for the mode, and use upper or lower case.
The main use of this option is to change Full buffering to Line
buffering when rsync's output is going to a file or pipe.
--itemize-changes, -i
Requests a simple itemized list of the changes that are being
made to each file, including attribute changes. This is exactly
the same as specifying --out-format='%i %n%L'. If you repeat the
option, unchanged files will also be output, but only if the re-
ceiving rsync is at least version 2.6.7 (March 2006). You can use
-vv with older versions of rsync, but that also turns on the out-
put of other verbose messages.
The "%i" escape has a cryptic output that is 11 letters long.
The general format is like the string YXcstpoguax, where Y is re-
placed by the type of update being done, X is replaced by the
file-type, and the other letters represent attributes that may be
output if they are being modified.
The update types that replace the Y are as follows:
o A < means that a file is being transferred to the remote
host (sent).
o A > means that a file is being transferred to the local
host (received).
o A c means that a local change/creation is occurring for
the item (such as the creation of a directory or the
changing of a symlink, etc.).
o A h means that the item is a hard link to another item
(requires --hard-links).
o A . means that the item is not being updated (though it
might have attributes that are being modified).
o A * means that the rest of the itemized-output area con-
tains a message (e.g. "deleting").
The file-types that replace the X are: f for a file, a d for a
directory, an L for a symlink, a D for a device, and a S for a
special file (e.g. named sockets and fifos).
The other letters in the string indicate if some attributes of
the file have changed, as follows:
o "." - the attribute is unchanged.
o "+" - the file is newly created.
o " " - all the attributes are unchanged (all dots turn to
spaces).
o "?" - the change is unknown (when the remote rsync is
old).
o A letter indicates an attribute is being updated.
The attribute that is associated with each letter is as follows:
o A c means either that a regular file has a different
checksum (requires --checksum) or that a symlink, device,
or special file has a changed value. Note that if you are
sending files to an rsync prior to 3.0.1 (April 2008),
this change flag will be present only for checksum-differ-
ing regular files.
o A s means the size of a regular file is different and will
be updated by the file transfer.
o A t means the modification time is different and is being
updated to the sender's value (requires --times). An al-
ternate value of T means that the modification time will
be set to the transfer time, which happens when a
file/symlink/device is updated without --times and when a
symlink is changed and the receiver can't set its time.
o A p means the permissions are different and are being up-
dated to the sender's value (requires --perms).
o An o means the owner is different and is being updated to
the sender's value (requires --owner and super-user privi-
leges).
o A g means the group is different and is being updated to
the sender's value (requires --group and the authority to
set the group).
o
o A u|n|b indicates the following information:
u means the access (use) time is different and is
being updated to the sender's value (requires
--atimes)
o n means the create time (newness) is different and
is being updated to the sender's value (requires
--crtimes)
o b means that both the access and create times are
being updated
o An a means that the ACL information is being changed.
o An x means that the extended attribute information is be-
ing changed.
One other output is possible: when deleting files, the "%i" will
output the string "*deleting" for each item that is being removed
(assuming that you are talking to a recent enough rsync that it
logs deletions instead of outputting them as a verbose message).
--out-format=FORMAT
This allows you to specify exactly what the rsync client outputs
to the user on a per-update basis. The format is a text string
containing embedded single-character escape sequences prefixed
with a percent (%) character. A default format of "%n%L" is as-
sumed if either --info=name or -v is specified (this tells you
just the name of the file and, if the item is a link, where it
points). For a full list of the possible escape characters, see
the log format setting in the rsyncd.conf manpage.
Specifying the --out-format option implies the --info=name op-
tion, which will mention each file, directory, etc. that gets up-
dated in a significant way (a transferred file, a recreated sym-
link/device, or a touched directory). In addition, if the item-
ize-changes escape (%i) is included in the string (e.g. if the
--itemize-changes option was used), the logging of names in-
creases to mention any item that is changed in any way (as long
as the receiving side is at least 2.6.4). See the --item-
ize-changes option for a description of the output of "%i".
Rsync will output the out-format string prior to a file's trans-
fer unless one of the transfer-statistic escapes is requested, in
which case the logging is done at the end of the file's transfer.
When this late logging is in effect and --progress is also speci-
fied, rsync will also output the name of the file being trans-
ferred prior to its progress information (followed, of course, by
the out-format output).
--log-file=FILE
This option causes rsync to write the log of what it is doing to
a file. This is similar to the logging that a daemon does, but
can be requested for the client side and/or the server side of a
non-daemon transfer. If specified as a client option, transfer
logging will be enabled with a default format of "%i %n%L". See
the --log-file-format option if you wish to override this.
Here's an example command that requests the remote side to log
what is happening:
rsync -av --remote-option=--log-file=/tmp/rlog src/ dest/
This is very useful if you need to debug why a connection is
closing unexpectedly.
See also the daemon version of the --log-file option.
--log-file-format=FORMAT
This allows you to specify exactly what per-update logging is put
into the file specified by the --log-file option (which must also
be specified for this option to have any effect). If you specify
an empty string, updated files will not be mentioned in the log
file. For a list of the possible escape characters, see the
log format setting in the rsyncd.conf manpage.
The default FORMAT used if --log-file is specified and this op-
tion is not is '%i %n%L'.
See also the daemon version of the --log-file-format option.
--stats
This tells rsync to print a verbose set of statistics on the file
transfer, allowing you to tell how effective rsync's delta-trans-
fer algorithm is for your data. This option is equivalent to
--info=stats2 if combined with 0 or 1 -v options, or
--info=stats3 if combined with 2 or more -v options.
The current statistics are as follows:
o Number of files is the count of all "files" (in the
generic sense), which includes directories, symlinks, etc.
The total count will be followed by a list of counts by
filetype (if the total is non-zero). For example: "(reg:
5, dir: 3, link: 2, dev: 1, special: 1)" lists the totals
for regular files, directories, symlinks, devices, and
special files. If any value is 0, it is completely omit-
ted from the list.
o Number of created files is the count of how many "files"
(generic sense) were created (as opposed to updated). The
total count will be followed by a list of counts by file-
type (if the total is non-zero).
o Number of deleted files is the count of how many "files"
(generic sense) were deleted. The total count will be
followed by a list of counts by filetype (if the total is
non-zero). Note that this line is only output if dele-
tions are in effect, and only if the negotiated protocol
is at least 31 (the default when both sides are 3.1.0,
September 2013, or newer).
o Number of regular files transferred is the count of normal
files that were updated via rsync's delta-transfer algo-
rithm, which does not include directories, symlinks, etc.
o Total file size is the total sum of all file sizes in the
transfer. This does not count any size for directories or
special files, but does include the size of symlinks.
o Total transferred file size is the total sum of all files
sizes for just the transferred files.
o Literal data is how much unmatched file-update data the
sender had to send to the receiver for it to recreate the
updated files.
o Matched data is how much data the receiver got locally
when recreating the updated files.
o File list size is how big the file-list data was when the
sender sent it to the receiver. This is smaller than the
in-memory size for the file list due to some compressing
of duplicated data when rsync sends the list.
o File list generation time is the number of seconds that
the sender spent creating the file list. This requires a
modern rsync on the sending side for this to be present.
o File list transfer time is the number of seconds that the
sender spent sending the file list to the receiver.
o Total bytes sent is the count of all the bytes that rsync
sent from the client side to the server side.
o Total bytes received is the count of all non-message bytes
that rsync received by the client side from the server
side. "Non-message" bytes means that we don't count the
bytes for a verbose message that the server sent to us,
which makes the stats more consistent.
--8-bit-output, -8
This tells rsync to leave all high-bit characters unescaped in
the output (to standard output or standard error) instead of try-
ing to test them to see if they're valid in the current locale
and escaping the invalid ones. All control characters (but never
tabs) are always escaped, regardless of this option's setting.
The escape idiom that started in 2.6.7 (March 2006) is to output
a literal backslash (\) and a hash (#), followed by exactly 3 oc-
tal digits. For example, a newline would output as "\#012". A
literal backslash that is in a filename is not escaped unless it
is followed by a hash and 3 digits (0-9).
--human-readable, -h
Output numbers in a more human-readable format. There are 3 pos-
sible levels:
1. output numbers with a separator between each set of 3 dig-
its (either a comma or a period, depending on if the deci-
mal point is represented by a period or a comma).
2. output numbers in units of 1000 (with a character suffix
for larger units -- see below).
3. output numbers in units of 1024.
The default is human-readable level 1. Each -h option increases
the level by one. You can take the level down to 0 (to output
numbers as pure digits) by specifying the --no-human-readable
(--no-h) option.
The unit letters that are appended in levels 2 and 3 are: K
(kilo), M (mega), G (giga), T (tera), or P (peta). For example,
a 1234567-byte file would output as 1.23M in level-2 (assuming
that a period is your local decimal point).
Backward compatibility note: versions of rsync prior to 3.1.0
(September 2013) do not support human-readable level 1, and they
default to level 0. Thus, specifying one or two -h options will
behave in a comparable manner in old and new versions as long as
you didn't specify a --no-h option prior to one or more -h op-
tions. See the --list-only option for one difference.
--partial
By default, rsync will delete any partially transferred file if
the transfer is interrupted. In some circumstances it is more
desirable to keep partially transferred files. Using the --par-
tial option tells rsync to keep the partial file which should
make a subsequent transfer of the rest of the file much faster.
--partial-dir=DIR
This option modifies the behavior of the --partial option while
also implying that it be enabled. This enhanced partial-file
method puts any partially transferred files into the specified
DIR instead of writing the partial file out to the destination
file. On the next transfer, rsync will use a file found in this
directory as data to speed up the resumption of the transfer and
then delete it after it has served its purpose.
Note that if --whole-file is specified (or implied), any partial-
dir files that are found for a file that is being updated will
simply be removed (since rsync is sending files without using
rsync's delta-transfer algorithm).
Rsync will create the DIR if it is missing, but just the last di-
rectory -- not the whole path. This makes it easy to use a rela-
tive path (such as "--partial-dir=.rsync-partial") to have rsync
create the partial-directory in the destination file's directory
when it is needed, and then remove it again when the partial file
is deleted. Note that this directory removal is only done for a
relative pathname, as it is expected that an absolute path is to
a directory that is reserved for partial-dir work.
If the partial-dir value is not an absolute path, rsync will add
an exclude rule at the end of all your existing excludes. This
will prevent the sending of any partial-dir files that may exist
on the sending side, and will also prevent the untimely deletion
of partial-dir items on the receiving side. An example: the
above --partial-dir option would add the equivalent of this "per-
ishable" exclude at the end of any other filter rules:
-f '-p .rsync-partial/'
If you are supplying your own exclude rules, you may need to add
your own exclude/hide/protect rule for the partial-dir because:
1. the auto-added rule may be ineffective at the end of your
other rules, or
2. you may wish to override rsync's exclude choice.
For instance, if you want to make rsync clean-up any left-over
partial-directories that may be lying around, you should specify
--delete-after and add a "risk" filter rule, e.g. -f 'R .rsync-
partial/'. Avoid using --delete-before or --delete-during unless
you don't need rsync to use any of the left-over partial-dir data
during the current run.
IMPORTANT: the partial-dir directory should not be writable by
other users or it is a security risk! E.g. AVOID "/tmp"!
You can also set the partial-dir value the RSYNC_PARTIAL_DIR en-
vironment variable. Setting this in the environment does not
force --partial to be enabled, but rather it affects where par-
tial files go when --partial is specified. For instance, instead
of using --partial-dir=.rsync-tmp along with --progress, you
could set RSYNC_PARTIAL_DIR=.rsync-tmp in your environment and
then use the -P option to turn on the use of the .rsync-tmp dir
for partial transfers. The only times that the --partial option
does not look for this environment value are:
1. when --inplace was specified (since --inplace conflicts
with --partial-dir), and
2. when --delay-updates was specified (see below).
When a modern rsync resumes the transfer of a file in the par-
tial-dir, that partial file is now updated in-place instead of
creating yet another tmp-file copy (so it maxes out at dest + tmp
instead of dest + partial + tmp). This requires both ends of the
transfer to be at least version 3.2.0 (June 2020).
For the purposes of the daemon-config's "refuse options" setting,
--partial-dir does not imply --partial. This is so that a re-
fusal of the --partial option can be used to disallow the over-
writing of destination files with a partial transfer, while still
allowing the safer idiom provided by --partial-dir.
--delay-updates
This option puts the temporary file from each updated file into a
holding directory until the end of the transfer, at which time
all the files are renamed into place in rapid succession. This
attempts to make the updating of the files a little closer to
atomic. By default the files are placed into a directory named
.~tmp~ in each file's destination directory, but if you've speci-
fied the --partial-dir option, that directory will be used in-
stead. See the comments in the --partial-dir section for a dis-
cussion of how this .~tmp~ dir will be excluded from the trans-
fer, and what you can do if you want rsync to cleanup old .~tmp~
directories that might be lying around. Conflicts with --inplace
and --append.
This option implies --no-inc-recursive since it needs the full
file list in memory in order to be able to iterate over it at the
end.
This option uses more memory on the receiving side (one bit per
file transferred) and also requires enough free disk space on the
receiving side to hold an additional copy of all the updated
files. Note also that you should not use an absolute path to
--partial-dir unless:
1. there is no chance of any of the files in the transfer
having the same name (since all the updated files will be
put into a single directory if the path is absolute), and
2. there are no mount points in the hierarchy (since the de-
layed updates will fail if they can't be renamed into
place).
See also the "atomic-rsync" python script in the "support" subdi-
rectory for an update algorithm that is even closer to atomic (it
uses --link-dest and a parallel hierarchy of files).
--prune-empty-dirs, -m
This option tells the receiving rsync to get rid of empty direc-
tories from the file-list, including nested directories that have
no non-directory children. This is useful for avoiding the cre-
ation of a bunch of useless directories when the sending rsync is
recursively scanning a hierarchy of files using include/ex-
clude/filter rules.
This option can still leave empty directories on the receiving
side if you make use of TRANSFER_RULES.
Because the file-list is actually being pruned, this option also
affects what directories get deleted when a delete is active.
However, keep in mind that excluded files and directories can
prevent existing items from being deleted due to an exclude both
hiding source files and protecting destination files. See the
perishable filter-rule option for how to avoid this.
You can prevent the pruning of certain empty directories from the
file-list by using a global "protect" filter. For instance, this
option would ensure that the directory "emptydir" was kept in the
file-list:
--filter 'protect emptydir/'
Here's an example that copies all .pdf files in a hierarchy, only
creating the necessary destination directories to hold the .pdf
files, and ensures that any superfluous files and directories in
the destination are removed (note the hide filter of non-directo-
ries being used instead of an exclude):
rsync -avm --del --include='*.pdf' -f 'hide,! */' src/ dest
If you didn't want to remove superfluous destination files, the
more time-honored options of --include='*/' --exclude='*' would
work fine in place of the hide-filter (if that is more natural to
you).
--progress
This option tells rsync to print information showing the progress
of the transfer. This gives a bored user something to watch.
With a modern rsync this is the same as specifying
--info=flist2,name,progress, but any user-supplied settings for
those info flags takes precedence (e.g.
--info=flist0 --progress).
While rsync is transferring a regular file, it updates a progress
line that looks like this:
782448 63% 110.64kB/s 0:00:04
In this example, the receiver has reconstructed 782448 bytes or
63% of the sender's file, which is being reconstructed at a rate
of 110.64 kilobytes per second, and the transfer will finish in 4
seconds if the current rate is maintained until the end.
These statistics can be misleading if rsync's delta-transfer al-
gorithm is in use. For example, if the sender's file consists of
the basis file followed by additional data, the reported rate
will probably drop dramatically when the receiver gets to the
literal data, and the transfer will probably take much longer to
finish than the receiver estimated as it was finishing the
matched part of the file.
When the file transfer finishes, rsync replaces the progress line
with a summary line that looks like this:
1,238,099 100% 146.38kB/s 0:00:08 (xfr#5, to-chk=169/396)
In this example, the file was 1,238,099 bytes long in total, the
average rate of transfer for the whole file was 146.38 kilobytes
per second over the 8 seconds that it took to complete, it was
the 5th transfer of a regular file during the current rsync ses-
sion, and there are 169 more files for the receiver to check (to
see if they are up-to-date or not) remaining out of the 396 total
files in the file-list.
In an incremental recursion scan, rsync won't know the total num-
ber of files in the file-list until it reaches the ends of the
scan, but since it starts to transfer files during the scan, it
will display a line with the text "ir-chk" (for incremental re-
cursion check) instead of "to-chk" until the point that it knows
the full size of the list, at which point it will switch to using
"to-chk". Thus, seeing "ir-chk" lets you know that the total
count of files in the file list is still going to increase (and
each time it does, the count of files left to check will increase
by the number of the files added to the list).
-P The -P option is equivalent to "--partial --progress". Its pur-
pose is to make it much easier to specify these two options for a
long transfer that may be interrupted.
There is also a --info=progress2 option that outputs statistics
based on the whole transfer, rather than individual files. Use
this flag without outputting a filename (e.g. avoid -v or specify
--info=name0) if you want to see how the transfer is doing with-
out scrolling the screen with a lot of names. (You don't need to
specify the --progress option in order to use --info=progress2.)
Finally, you can get an instant progress report by sending rsync
a signal of either SIGINFO or SIGVTALRM. On BSD systems, a SIG-
INFO is generated by typing a Ctrl+T (Linux doesn't currently
support a SIGINFO signal). When the client-side process receives
one of those signals, it sets a flag to output a single progress
report which is output when the current file transfer finishes
(so it may take a little time if a big file is being handled when
the signal arrives). A filename is output (if needed) followed
by the --info=progress2 format of progress info. If you don't
know which of the 3 rsync processes is the client process, it's
OK to signal all of them (since the non-client processes ignore
the signal).
CAUTION: sending SIGVTALRM to an older rsync (pre-3.2.0, June
2020) will kill it.
--password-file=FILE
This option allows you to provide a password for accessing an
rsync daemon via a file or via standard input if FILE is -. The
file should contain just the password on the first line (all
other lines are ignored). Rsync will exit with an error if FILE
is world readable or if a root-run rsync command finds a non-
root-owned file.
This option does not supply a password to a remote shell trans-
port such as ssh; to learn how to do that, consult the remote
shell's documentation. When accessing an rsync daemon using a
remote shell as the transport, this option only comes into effect
after the remote shell finishes its authentication (i.e. if you
have also specified a password in the daemon's config file).
--early-input=FILE
This option allows rsync to send up to 5K of data to the "early
exec" script on its stdin. One possible use of this data is to
give the script a secret that can be used to mount an encrypted
filesystem (which you should unmount in the the "post-xfer exec"
script).
The daemon must be at least version 3.2.1 (June 2020).
--list-only
This option will cause the source files to be listed instead of
transferred. This option is inferred if there is a single source
argument and no destination specified, so its main uses are:
1. to turn a copy command that includes a destination argu-
ment into a file-listing command, or
2. to be able to specify more than one source argument.
Note: be sure to include the destination.
CAUTION: keep in mind that a source argument with a wild-card is
expanded by the shell into multiple arguments, so it is never
safe to try to specify a single wild-card argument to try to in-
fer this option. A safe example is:
rsync -av --list-only foo* dest/
This option always uses an output format that looks similar to
this:
drwxrwxr-x 4,096 2022/09/30 12:53:11 support
-rw-rw-r-- 80 2005/01/11 10:37:37 support/Makefile
The only option that affects this output style is the --hu-
man-readable (-h) option. The default is to output sizes as byte
counts with digit separators (in a 14-character-width column).
Specifying at least one -h option makes the sizes output with
unit suffixes. If you want old-style bytecount sizes without
digit separators (and an 11-character-width column) use --no-h.
Compatibility note: when requesting a remote listing of files
from an rsync that is version 2.6.3 or older (i.e., pre-2005),
you may encounter an error if you ask for a non-recursive list-
ing. This is because a file listing implies the --dirs option
without --recursive, and older rsyncs don't have that option. To
avoid this problem, either specify the --no-dirs option (if you
don't need to expand a directory's content), or turn on recursion
and exclude the content of subdirectories: -r --exclude='/*/*'.
--bwlimit=RATE
This option allows you to specify the maximum transfer rate for
the data sent over the socket, specified in units per second.
The RATE value can be suffixed with a string to indicate a size
multiplier, and may be a fractional value (e.g. --bwlimit=1.5m).
If no suffix is specified, the value will be assumed to be in
units of 1024 bytes (as if "K" or "KiB" had been appended). See
the --max-size option for a description of all the available suf-
fixes. A value of 0 specifies no limit.
For backward-compatibility reasons, the rate limit will be
rounded to the nearest KiB unit, so no rate smaller than 1024
bytes per second is possible.
Rsync writes data over the socket in blocks, and this option both
limits the size of the blocks that rsync writes, and tries to
keep the average transfer rate at the requested limit. Some
burstiness may be seen where rsync writes out a block of data and
then sleeps to bring the average rate into compliance.
Due to the internal buffering of data, the --progress option may
not be an accurate reflection on how fast the data is being sent.
This is because some files can show up as being rapidly sent when
the data is quickly buffered, while other can show up as very
slow when the flushing of the output buffer occurs. This may be
fixed in a future version.
See also the daemon version of the --bwlimit option.
--stop-after=MINS, (--time-limit=MINS)
This option tells rsync to stop copying when the specified number
of minutes has elapsed.
For maximal flexibility, rsync does not communicate this option
to the remote rsync since it is usually enough that one side of
the connection quits as specified. This allows the option's use
even when only one side of the connection supports it. You can
tell the remote side about the time limit using --remote-option
(-M), should the need arise.
The --time-limit version of this option is deprecated.
--stop-at=y-m-dTh:m
This option tells rsync to stop copying when the specified point
in time has been reached. The date & time can be fully specified
in a numeric format of year-month-dayThour:minute (e.g.
2000-12-31T23:59) in the local timezone. You may choose to sepa-
rate the date numbers using slashes instead of dashes.
The value can also be abbreviated in a variety of ways, such as
specifying a 2-digit year and/or leaving off various values. In
all cases, the value will be taken to be the next possible point
in time where the supplied information matches. If the value
specifies the current time or a past time, rsync exits with an
error.
For example, "1-30" specifies the next January 30th (at midnight
local time), "14:00" specifies the next 2 P.M., "1" specifies the
next 1st of the month at midnight, "31" specifies the next month
where we can stop on its 31st day, and ":59" specifies the next
59th minute after the hour.
For maximal flexibility, rsync does not communicate this option
to the remote rsync since it is usually enough that one side of
the connection quits as specified. This allows the option's use
even when only one side of the connection supports it. You can
tell the remote side about the time limit using --remote-option
(-M), should the need arise. Do keep in mind that the remote
host may have a different default timezone than your local host.
--fsync
Cause the receiving side to fsync each finished file. This may
slow down the transfer, but can help to provide peace of mind
when updating critical files.
--write-batch=FILE
Record a file that can later be applied to another identical des-
tination with --read-batch. See the "BATCH MODE" section for de-
tails, and also the --only-write-batch option.
This option overrides the negotiated checksum & compress lists
and always negotiates a choice based on old-school md5/md4/zlib
choices. This means batch mode is not compatible with newer com-
pression choices such as zstd or lz4.
--only-write-batch=FILE
Works like --write-batch, except that no updates are made on the
destination system when creating the batch. This lets you trans-
port the changes to the destination system via some other means
and then apply the changes via --read-batch.
Note that you can feel free to write the batch directly to some
portable media: if this media fills to capacity before the end of
the transfer, you can just apply that partial transfer to the
destination and repeat the whole process to get the rest of the
changes (as long as you don't mind a partially updated destina-
tion system while the multi-update cycle is happening).
Also note that you only save bandwidth when pushing changes to a
remote system because this allows the batched data to be diverted
from the sender into the batch file without having to flow over
the wire to the receiver (when pulling, the sender is remote, and
thus can't write the batch).
--read-batch=FILE
Apply all of the changes stored in FILE, a file previously gener-
ated by --write-batch. If FILE is -, the batch data will be read
from standard input. See the "BATCH MODE" section for details.
--protocol=NUM
Force an older protocol version to be used. This is useful for
creating a batch file that is compatible with an older version of
rsync. For instance, if rsync 2.6.4 is being used with the
--write-batch option, but rsync 2.6.3 is what will be used to run
the --read-batch option, you should use "--protocol=28" when cre-
ating the batch file to force the older protocol version to be
used in the batch file (assuming you can't upgrade the rsync on
the reading system).
--iconv=CONVERT_SPEC
Rsync can convert filenames between character sets using this op-
tion. Using a CONVERT_SPEC of "." tells rsync to look up the de-
fault character-set via the locale setting. Alternately, you can
fully specify what conversion to do by giving a local and a re-
mote charset separated by a comma in the order --iconv=LOCAL,RE-
MOTE, e.g. --iconv=utf8,iso88591. This order ensures that the
option will stay the same whether you're pushing or pulling
files. Finally, you can specify either --no-iconv or a CON-
VERT_SPEC of "-" to turn off any conversion. The default setting
of this option is site-specific, and can also be affected via the
RSYNC_ICONV environment variable.
For a list of what charset names your local iconv library sup-
ports, you can run "iconv --list".
If you specify the --secluded-args (-s) option, rsync will trans-
late the filenames you specify on the command-line that are being
sent to the remote host. See also the --files-from option.
Note that rsync does not do any conversion of names in filter
files (including include/exclude files). It is up to you to en-
sure that you're specifying matching rules that can match on both
sides of the transfer. For instance, you can specify extra in-
clude/exclude rules if there are filename differences on the two
sides that need to be accounted for.
When you pass an --iconv option to an rsync daemon that allows
it, the daemon uses the charset specified in its "charset" con-
figuration parameter regardless of the remote charset you actu-
ally pass. Thus, you may feel free to specify just the local
charset for a daemon transfer (e.g. --iconv=utf8).
--ipv4, -4 or --ipv6, -6
Tells rsync to prefer IPv4/IPv6 when creating sockets or running
ssh. This affects sockets that rsync has direct control over,
such as the outgoing socket when directly contacting an rsync
daemon, as well as the forwarding of the -4 or -6 option to ssh
when rsync can deduce that ssh is being used as the remote shell.
For other remote shells you'll need to specify the
"--rsh SHELL -4" option directly (or whatever IPv4/IPv6 hint op-
tions it uses).
See also the daemon version of these options.
If rsync was compiled without support for IPv6, the --ipv6 option
will have no effect. The rsync --version output will contain
"no IPv6" if is the case.
--checksum-seed=NUM
Set the checksum seed to the integer NUM. This 4 byte checksum
seed is included in each block and MD4 file checksum calculation
(the more modern file checksums don't use a seed). By default
the checksum seed is generated by the server and defaults to the
current time(). This option is used to set a specific checksum
seed, which is useful for applications that want repeatable block
checksums, or in the case where the user wants a more random
checksum seed. Setting NUM to 0 causes rsync to use the default
of time() for checksum seed.
DAEMON OPTIONS
The options allowed when starting an rsync daemon are as follows:
--daemon
This tells rsync that it is to run as a daemon. The daemon you
start running may be accessed using an rsync client using the
host::module or rsync://host/module/ syntax.
If standard input is a socket then rsync will assume that it is
being run via inetd, otherwise it will detach from the current
terminal and become a background daemon. The daemon will read
the config file (rsyncd.conf) on each connect made by a client
and respond to requests accordingly.
See the rsyncd.conf(5) manpage for more details.
--address=ADDRESS
By default rsync will bind to the wildcard address when run as a
daemon with the --daemon option. The --address option allows you
to specify a specific IP address (or hostname) to bind to. This
makes virtual hosting possible in conjunction with the --config
option.
See also the address global option in the rsyncd.conf manpage and
the client version of the --address option.
--bwlimit=RATE
This option allows you to specify the maximum transfer rate for
the data the daemon sends over the socket. The client can still
specify a smaller --bwlimit value, but no larger value will be
allowed.
See the client version of the --bwlimit option for some extra de-
tails.
--config=FILE
This specifies an alternate config file than the default. This
is only relevant when --daemon is specified. The default is
/etc/rsyncd.conf unless the daemon is running over a remote shell
program and the remote user is not the super-user; in that case
the default is rsyncd.conf in the current directory (typically
$HOME).
--dparam=OVERRIDE, -M
This option can be used to set a daemon-config parameter when
starting up rsync in daemon mode. It is equivalent to adding the
parameter at the end of the global settings prior to the first
module's definition. The parameter names can be specified with-
out spaces, if you so desire. For instance:
rsync --daemon -M pidfile=/path/rsync.pid
--no-detach
When running as a daemon, this option instructs rsync to not de-
tach itself and become a background process. This option is re-
quired when running as a service on Cygwin, and may also be use-
ful when rsync is supervised by a program such as daemontools or
AIX's System Resource Controller. --no-detach is also recom-
mended when rsync is run under a debugger. This option has no
effect if rsync is run from inetd or sshd.
--port=PORT
This specifies an alternate TCP port number for the daemon to
listen on rather than the default of 873.
See also the client version of the --port option and the port
global setting in the rsyncd.conf manpage.
--log-file=FILE
This option tells the rsync daemon to use the given log-file name
instead of using the "log file" setting in the config file.
See also the client version of the --log-file option.
--log-file-format=FORMAT
This option tells the rsync daemon to use the given FORMAT string
instead of using the "log format" setting in the config file. It
also enables "transfer logging" unless the string is empty, in
which case transfer logging is turned off.
See also the client version of the --log-file-format option.
--sockopts
This overrides the socket options setting in the rsyncd.conf file
and has the same syntax.
See also the client version of the --sockopts option.
--verbose, -v
This option increases the amount of information the daemon logs
during its startup phase. After the client connects, the dae-
mon's verbosity level will be controlled by the options that the
client used and the "max verbosity" setting in the module's con-
fig section.
See also the client version of the --verbose option.
--ipv4, -4 or --ipv6, -6
Tells rsync to prefer IPv4/IPv6 when creating the incoming sock-
ets that the rsync daemon will use to listen for connections.
One of these options may be required in older versions of Linux
to work around an IPv6 bug in the kernel (if you see an "address
already in use" error when nothing else is using the port, try
specifying --ipv6 or --ipv4 when starting the daemon).
See also the client version of these options.
If rsync was compiled without support for IPv6, the --ipv6 option
will have no effect. The rsync --version output will contain
"no IPv6" if is the case.
--help, -h
When specified after --daemon, print a short help page describing
the options available for starting an rsync daemon.
FILTER RULES
The filter rules allow for custom control of several aspects of how
files are handled:
o Control which files the sending side puts into the file list that
describes the transfer hierarchy
o Control which files the receiving side protects from deletion
when the file is not in the sender's file list
o Control which extended attribute names are skipped when copying
xattrs
The rules are either directly specified via option arguments or they can
be read in from one or more files. The filter-rule files can even be a
part of the hierarchy of files being copied, affecting different parts
of the tree in different ways.
SIMPLE INCLUDE/EXCLUDE RULES
We will first cover the basics of how include & exclude rules affect
what files are transferred, ignoring any deletion side-effects. Filter
rules mainly affect the contents of directories that rsync is "recurs-
ing" into, but they can also affect a top-level item in the transfer
that was specified as a argument.
The default for any unmatched file/directory is for it to be included in
the transfer, which puts the file/directory into the sender's file list.
The use of an exclude rule causes one or more matching files/directories
to be left out of the sender's file list. An include rule can be used
to limit the effect of an exclude rule that is matching too many files.
The order of the rules is important because the first rule that matches
is the one that takes effect. Thus, if an early rule excludes a file,
no include rule that comes after it can have any effect. This means that
you must place any include overrides somewhere prior to the exclude that
it is intended to limit.
When a directory is excluded, all its contents and sub-contents are also
excluded. The sender doesn't scan through any of it at all, which can
save a lot of time when skipping large unneeded sub-trees.
It is also important to understand that the include/exclude rules are
applied to every file and directory that the sender is recursing into.
Thus, if you want a particular deep file to be included, you have to
make sure that none of the directories that must be traversed on the way
down to that file are excluded or else the file will never be discovered
to be included. As an example, if the directory "a/path" was given as a
transfer argument and you want to ensure that the file
"a/path/down/deep/wanted.txt" is a part of the transfer, then the sender
must not exclude the directories "a/path", "a/path/down", or
"a/path/down/deep" as it makes it way scanning through the file tree.
When you are working on the rules, it can be helpful to ask rsync to
tell you what is being excluded/included and why. Specifying --de-
bug=FILTER or (when pulling files) -M--debug=FILTER turns on level 1 of
the FILTER debug information that will output a message any time that a
file or directory is included or excluded and which rule it matched.
Beginning in 3.2.4 it will also warn if a filter rule has trailing
whitespace, since an exclude of "foo " (with a trailing space) will not
exclude a file named "foo".
Exclude and include rules can specify wildcard PATTERN MATCHING RULES
(similar to shell wildcards) that allow you to match things like a file
suffix or a portion of a filename.
A rule can be limited to only affecting a directory by putting a trail-
ing slash onto the filename.
SIMPLE INCLUDE/EXCLUDE EXAMPLE
With the following file tree created on the sending side:
mkdir x/
touch x/file.txt
mkdir x/y/
touch x/y/file.txt
touch x/y/zzz.txt
mkdir x/z/
touch x/z/file.txt
Then the following rsync command will transfer the file "x/y/file.txt"
and the directories needed to hold it, resulting in the path
"/tmp/x/y/file.txt" existing on the remote host:
rsync -ai -f'+ x/' -f'+ x/y/' -f'+ x/y/file.txt' -f'- *' x host:/tmp/
Aside: this copy could also have been accomplished using the -R option
(though the 2 commands behave differently if deletions are enabled):
rsync -aiR x/y/file.txt host:/tmp/
The following command does not need an include of the "x" directory be-
cause it is not a part of the transfer (note the trailing slash). Run-
ning this command would copy just "/tmp/x/file.txt" because the "y" and
"z" directories get excluded:
rsync -ai -f'+ file.txt' -f'- *' x/ host:/tmp/x/
This command would omit the zzz.txt file while copying "x" and every-
thing else it contains:
rsync -ai -f'- zzz.txt' x host:/tmp/
FILTER RULES WHEN DELETING
By default the include & exclude filter rules affect both the sender (as
it creates its file list) and the receiver (as it creates its file lists
for calculating deletions). If no delete option is in effect, the re-
ceiver skips creating the delete-related file lists. This two-sided de-
fault can be manually overridden so that you are only specifying sender
rules or receiver rules, as described in the FILTER RULES IN DEPTH sec-
tion.
When deleting, an exclude protects a file from being removed on the re-
ceiving side while an include overrides that protection (putting the
file at risk of deletion). The default is for a file to be at risk --
its safety depends on it matching a corresponding file from the sender.
An example of the two-sided exclude effect can be illustrated by the
copying of a C development directory between 2 systems. When doing a
touch-up copy, you might want to skip copying the built executable and
the .o files (sender hide) so that the receiving side can build their
own and not lose any object files that are already correct (receiver
protect). For instance:
rsync -ai --del -f'- *.o' -f'- cmd' src host:/dest/
Note that using -f'-p *.o' is even better than -f'- *.o' if there is a
chance that the directory structure may have changed. The "p" modifier
is discussed in FILTER RULE MODIFIERS.
One final note, if your shell doesn't mind unexpanded wildcards, you
could simplify the typing of the filter options by using an underscore
in place of the space and leaving off the quotes. For instance,
-f -_*.o -f -_cmd (and similar) could be used instead of the filter op-
tions above.
FILTER RULES IN DEPTH
Rsync supports old-style include/exclude rules and new-style filter
rules. The older rules are specified using --include and --exclude as
well as the --include-from and --exclude-from. These are limited in be-
havior but they don't require a "-" or "+" prefix. An old-style exclude
rule is turned into a "- name" filter rule (with no modifiers) and an
old-style include rule is turned into a "+ name" filter rule (with no
modifiers).
Rsync builds an ordered list of filter rules as specified on the com-
mand-line and/or read-in from files. New style filter rules have the
following syntax:
RULE [PATTERN_OR_FILENAME]
RULE,MODIFIERS [PATTERN_OR_FILENAME]
You have your choice of using either short or long RULE names, as de-
scribed below. If you use a short-named rule, the ',' separating the
RULE from the MODIFIERS is optional. The PATTERN or FILENAME that fol-
lows (when present) must come after either a single space or an under-
score (_). Any additional spaces and/or underscores are considered to be
a part of the pattern name. Here are the available rule prefixes:
exclude, '-'
specifies an exclude pattern that (by default) is both a hide and
a protect.
include, '+'
specifies an include pattern that (by default) is both a show and
a risk.
merge, '.'
specifies a merge-file on the client side to read for more rules.
dir-merge, ':'
specifies a per-directory merge-file. Using this kind of filter
rule requires that you trust the sending side's filter checking,
so it has the side-effect mentioned under the --trust-sender op-
tion.
hide, 'H'
specifies a pattern for hiding files from the transfer. Equiva-
lent to a sender-only exclude, so -f'H foo' could also be speci-
fied as -f'-s foo'.
show, 'S'
files that match the pattern are not hidden. Equivalent to a
sender-only include, so -f'S foo' could also be specified as
-f'+s foo'.
protect, 'P'
specifies a pattern for protecting files from deletion. Equiva-
lent to a receiver-only exclude, so -f'P foo' could also be spec-
ified as -f'-r foo'.
risk, 'R'
files that match the pattern are not protected. Equivalent to a
receiver-only include, so -f'R foo' could also be specified as
-f'+r foo'.
clear, '!'
clears the current include/exclude list (takes no argument)
When rules are being read from a file (using merge or dir-merge), empty
lines are ignored, as are whole-line comments that start with a '#'
(filename rules that contain a hash character are unaffected).
Note also that the --filter, --include, and --exclude options take one
rule/pattern each. To add multiple ones, you can repeat the options on
the command-line, use the merge-file syntax of the --filter option, or
the --include-from / --exclude-from options.
PATTERN MATCHING RULES
Most of the rules mentioned above take an argument that specifies what
the rule should match. If rsync is recursing through a directory hier-
archy, keep in mind that each pattern is matched against the name of
every directory in the descent path as rsync finds the filenames to
send.
The matching rules for the pattern argument take several forms:
o If a pattern contains a / (not counting a trailing slash) or a
"**" (which can match a slash), then the pattern is matched
against the full pathname, including any leading directories
within the transfer. If the pattern doesn't contain a (non-
trailing) / or a "**", then it is matched only against the final
component of the filename or pathname. For example, foo means
that the final path component must be "foo" while foo/bar would
match the last 2 elements of the path (as long as both elements
are within the transfer).
o A pattern that ends with a / only matches a directory, not a reg-
ular file, symlink, or device.
o A pattern that starts with a / is anchored to the start of the
transfer path instead of the end. For example, /foo/** or
/foo/bar/** match only leading elements in the path. If the rule
is read from a per-directory filter file, the transfer path being
matched will begin at the level of the filter file instead of the
top of the transfer. See the section on ANCHORING INCLUDE/EX-
CLUDE PATTERNS for a full discussion of how to specify a pattern
that matches at the root of the transfer.
Rsync chooses between doing a simple string match and wildcard matching
by checking if the pattern contains one of these three wildcard charac-
ters: '*', '?', and '[' :
o a '?' matches any single character except a slash (/).
o a '*' matches zero or more non-slash characters.
o a '**' matches zero or more characters, including slashes.
o a '[' introduces a character class, such as [a-z] or [[:alpha:]],
that must match one character.
o a trailing *** in the pattern is a shorthand that allows you to
match a directory and all its contents using a single rule. For
example, specifying "dir_name/***" will match both the "dir_name"
directory (as if "dir_name/" had been specified) and everything
in the directory (as if "dir_name/**" had been specified).
o a backslash can be used to escape a wildcard character, but it is
only interpreted as an escape character if at least one wildcard
character is present in the match pattern. For instance, the pat-
tern "foo\bar" matches that single backslash literally, while the
pattern "foo\bar*" would need to be changed to "foo\\bar*" to
avoid the "\b" becoming just "b".
Here are some examples of exclude/include matching:
o Option -f'- *.o' would exclude all filenames ending with .o
o Option -f'- /foo' would exclude a file (or directory) named foo
in the transfer-root directory
o Option -f'- foo/' would exclude any directory named foo
o Option -f'- foo/*/bar' would exclude any file/directory named bar
which is at two levels below a directory named foo (if foo is in
the transfer)
o Option -f'- /foo/**/bar' would exclude any file/directory named
bar that was two or more levels below a top-level directory named
foo (note that /foo/bar is not excluded by this)
o Options -f'+ */' -f'+ *.c' -f'- *' would include all directories
and .c source files but nothing else
o Options -f'+ foo/' -f'+ foo/bar.c' -f'- *' would include only the
foo directory and foo/bar.c (the foo directory must be explicitly
included or it would be excluded by the "- *")
FILTER RULE MODIFIERS
The following modifiers are accepted after an include (+) or exclude (-)
rule:
o A / specifies that the include/exclude rule should be matched
against the absolute pathname of the current item. For example,
-f'-/ /etc/passwd' would exclude the passwd file any time the
transfer was sending files from the "/etc" directory, and "-/
subdir/foo" would always exclude "foo" when it is in a directory
named "subdir", even if "foo" is at the root of the current
transfer.
o A ! specifies that the include/exclude should take effect if the
pattern fails to match. For instance, -f'-! */' would exclude
all non-directories.
o A C is used to indicate that all the global CVS-exclude rules
should be inserted as excludes in place of the "-C". No argument
should follow.
o An s is used to indicate that the rule applies to the sending
side. When a rule affects the sending side, it affects what
files are put into the sender's file list. The default is for a
rule to affect both sides unless --delete-excluded was specified,
in which case default rules become sender-side only. See also
the hide (H) and show (S) rules, which are an alternate way to
specify sending-side includes/excludes.
o An r is used to indicate that the rule applies to the receiving
side. When a rule affects the receiving side, it prevents files
from being deleted. See the s modifier for more info. See also
the protect (P) and risk (R) rules, which are an alternate way to
specify receiver-side includes/excludes.
o A p indicates that a rule is perishable, meaning that it is ig-
nored in directories that are being deleted. For instance, the
--cvs-exclude (-C) option's default rules that exclude things
like "CVS" and "*.o" are marked as perishable, and will not pre-
vent a directory that was removed on the source from being
deleted on the destination.
o An x indicates that a rule affects xattr names in xattr
copy/delete operations (and is thus ignored when matching
file/directory names). If no xattr-matching rules are specified,
a default xattr filtering rule is used (see the --xattrs option).
MERGE-FILE FILTER RULES
You can merge whole files into your filter rules by specifying either a
merge (.) or a dir-merge (:) filter rule (as introduced in the FILTER
RULES section above).
There are two kinds of merged files -- single-instance ('.') and per-di-
rectory (':'). A single-instance merge file is read one time, and its
rules are incorporated into the filter list in the place of the "."
rule. For per-directory merge files, rsync will scan every directory
that it traverses for the named file, merging its contents when the file
exists into the current list of inherited rules. These per-directory
rule files must be created on the sending side because it is the sending
side that is being scanned for the available files to transfer. These
rule files may also need to be transferred to the receiving side if you
want them to affect what files don't get deleted (see PER-DIRECTORY
RULES AND DELETE below).
Some examples:
merge /etc/rsync/default.rules
. /etc/rsync/default.rules
dir-merge .per-dir-filter
dir-merge,n- .non-inherited-per-dir-excludes
:n- .non-inherited-per-dir-excludes
The following modifiers are accepted after a merge or dir-merge rule:
o A - specifies that the file should consist of only exclude pat-
terns, with no other rule-parsing except for in-file comments.
o A + specifies that the file should consist of only include pat-
terns, with no other rule-parsing except for in-file comments.
o A C is a way to specify that the file should be read in a CVS-
compatible manner. This turns on 'n', 'w', and '-', but also al-
lows the list-clearing token (!) to be specified. If no filename
is provided, ".cvsignore" is assumed.
o A e will exclude the merge-file name from the transfer; e.g.
"dir-merge,e .rules" is like "dir-merge .rules" and "- .rules".
o An n specifies that the rules are not inherited by subdirecto-
ries.
o A w specifies that the rules are word-split on whitespace instead
of the normal line-splitting. This also turns off comments.
Note: the space that separates the prefix from the rule is
treated specially, so "- foo + bar" is parsed as two rules (as-
suming that prefix-parsing wasn't also disabled).
o You may also specify any of the modifiers for the "+" or "-"
rules (above) in order to have the rules that are read in from
the file default to having that modifier set (except for the !
modifier, which would not be useful). For instance, "merge,-/
.excl" would treat the contents of .excl as absolute-path ex-
cludes, while "dir-merge,s .filt" and ":sC" would each make all
their per-directory rules apply only on the sending side. If the
merge rule specifies sides to affect (via the s or r modifier or
both), then the rules in the file must not specify sides (via a
modifier or a rule prefix such as hide).
Per-directory rules are inherited in all subdirectories of the directory
where the merge-file was found unless the 'n' modifier was used. Each
subdirectory's rules are prefixed to the inherited per-directory rules
from its parents, which gives the newest rules a higher priority than
the inherited rules. The entire set of dir-merge rules are grouped to-
gether in the spot where the merge-file was specified, so it is possible
to override dir-merge rules via a rule that got specified earlier in the
list of global rules. When the list-clearing rule ("!") is read from a
per-directory file, it only clears the inherited rules for the current
merge file.
Another way to prevent a single rule from a dir-merge file from being
inherited is to anchor it with a leading slash. Anchored rules in a
per-directory merge-file are relative to the merge-file's directory, so
a pattern "/foo" would only match the file "foo" in the directory where
the dir-merge filter file was found.
Here's an example filter file which you'd specify via --filter=". file":
merge /home/user/.global-filter
- *.gz
dir-merge .rules
+ *.[ch]
- *.o
- foo*
This will merge the contents of the /home/user/.global-filter file at
the start of the list and also turns the ".rules" filename into a per-
directory filter file. All rules read in prior to the start of the di-
rectory scan follow the global anchoring rules (i.e. a leading slash
matches at the root of the transfer).
If a per-directory merge-file is specified with a path that is a parent
directory of the first transfer directory, rsync will scan all the par-
ent directories from that starting point to the transfer directory for
the indicated per-directory file. For instance, here is a common filter
(see -F):
--filter=': /.rsync-filter'
That rule tells rsync to scan for the file .rsync-filter in all directo-
ries from the root down through the parent directory of the transfer
prior to the start of the normal directory scan of the file in the di-
rectories that are sent as a part of the transfer. (Note: for an rsync
daemon, the root is always the same as the module's "path".)
Some examples of this pre-scanning for per-directory files:
rsync -avF /src/path/ /dest/dir
rsync -av --filter=': ../../.rsync-filter' /src/path/ /dest/dir
rsync -av --filter=': .rsync-filter' /src/path/ /dest/dir
The first two commands above will look for ".rsync-filter" in "/" and
"/src" before the normal scan begins looking for the file in "/src/path"
and its subdirectories. The last command avoids the parent-directory
scan and only looks for the ".rsync-filter" files in each directory that
is a part of the transfer.
If you want to include the contents of a ".cvsignore" in your patterns,
you should use the rule ":C", which creates a dir-merge of the .cvsig-
nore file, but parsed in a CVS-compatible manner. You can use this to
affect where the --cvs-exclude (-C) option's inclusion of the per-direc-
tory .cvsignore file gets placed into your rules by putting the ":C"
wherever you like in your filter rules. Without this, rsync would add
the dir-merge rule for the .cvsignore file at the end of all your other
rules (giving it a lower priority than your command-line rules). For
example:
cat <<EOT | rsync -avC --filter='. -' a/ b
+ foo.o
:C
- *.old
EOT
rsync -avC --include=foo.o -f :C --exclude='*.old' a/ b
Both of the above rsync commands are identical. Each one will merge all
the per-directory .cvsignore rules in the middle of the list rather than
at the end. This allows their directory-specific rules to supersede the
rules that follow the :C instead of being subservient to all your rules.
To affect the other CVS exclude rules (i.e. the default list of exclu-
sions, the contents of $HOME/.cvsignore, and the value of $CVSIGNORE)
you should omit the -C command-line option and instead insert a "-C"
rule into your filter rules; e.g. "--filter=-C".
LIST-CLEARING FILTER RULE
You can clear the current include/exclude list by using the "!" filter
rule (as introduced in the FILTER RULES section above). The "current"
list is either the global list of rules (if the rule is encountered
while parsing the filter options) or a set of per-directory rules (which
are inherited in their own sub-list, so a subdirectory can use this to
clear out the parent's rules).
ANCHORING INCLUDE/EXCLUDE PATTERNS
As mentioned earlier, global include/exclude patterns are anchored at
the "root of the transfer" (as opposed to per-directory patterns, which
are anchored at the merge-file's directory). If you think of the trans-
fer as a subtree of names that are being sent from sender to receiver,
the transfer-root is where the tree starts to be duplicated in the des-
tination directory. This root governs where patterns that start with a
/ match.
Because the matching is relative to the transfer-root, changing the
trailing slash on a source path or changing your use of the --relative
option affects the path you need to use in your matching (in addition to
changing how much of the file tree is duplicated on the destination
host). The following examples demonstrate this.
Let's say that we want to match two source files, one with an absolute
path of "/home/me/foo/bar", and one with a path of "/home/you/bar/baz".
Here is how the various command choices differ for a 2-source transfer:
Example cmd: rsync -a /home/me /home/you /dest
+/- pattern: /me/foo/bar
+/- pattern: /you/bar/baz
Target file: /dest/me/foo/bar
Target file: /dest/you/bar/baz
Example cmd: rsync -a /home/me/ /home/you/ /dest
+/- pattern: /foo/bar (note missing "me")
+/- pattern: /bar/baz (note missing "you")
Target file: /dest/foo/bar
Target file: /dest/bar/baz
Example cmd: rsync -a --relative /home/me/ /home/you /dest
+/- pattern: /home/me/foo/bar (note full path)
+/- pattern: /home/you/bar/baz (ditto)
Target file: /dest/home/me/foo/bar
Target file: /dest/home/you/bar/baz
Example cmd: cd /home; rsync -a --relative me/foo you/ /dest
+/- pattern: /me/foo/bar (starts at specified path)
+/- pattern: /you/bar/baz (ditto)
Target file: /dest/me/foo/bar
Target file: /dest/you/bar/baz
The easiest way to see what name you should filter is to just look at
the output when using --verbose and put a / in front of the name (use
the --dry-run option if you're not yet ready to copy any files).
PER-DIRECTORY RULES AND DELETE
Without a delete option, per-directory rules are only relevant on the
sending side, so you can feel free to exclude the merge files themselves
without affecting the transfer. To make this easy, the 'e' modifier
adds this exclude for you, as seen in these two equivalent commands:
rsync -av --filter=': .excl' --exclude=.excl host:src/dir /dest
rsync -av --filter=':e .excl' host:src/dir /dest
However, if you want to do a delete on the receiving side AND you want
some files to be excluded from being deleted, you'll need to be sure
that the receiving side knows what files to exclude. The easiest way is
to include the per-directory merge files in the transfer and use
--delete-after, because this ensures that the receiving side gets all
the same exclude rules as the sending side before it tries to delete
anything:
rsync -avF --delete-after host:src/dir /dest
However, if the merge files are not a part of the transfer, you'll need
to either specify some global exclude rules (i.e. specified on the com-
mand line), or you'll need to maintain your own per-directory merge
files on the receiving side. An example of the first is this (assume
that the remote .rules files exclude themselves):
rsync -av --filter=': .rules' --filter='. /my/extra.rules'
--delete host:src/dir /dest
In the above example the extra.rules file can affect both sides of the
transfer, but (on the sending side) the rules are subservient to the
rules merged from the .rules files because they were specified after the
per-directory merge rule.
In one final example, the remote side is excluding the .rsync-filter
files from the transfer, but we want to use our own .rsync-filter files
to control what gets deleted on the receiving side. To do this we must
specifically exclude the per-directory merge files (so that they don't
get deleted) and then put rules into the local files to control what
else should not get deleted. Like one of these commands:
rsync -av --filter=':e /.rsync-filter' --delete \
host:src/dir /dest
rsync -avFF --delete host:src/dir /dest
TRANSFER RULES
In addition to the FILTER RULES that affect the recursive file scans
that generate the file list on the sending and (when deleting) receiving
sides, there are transfer rules. These rules affect which files the gen-
erator decides need to be transferred without the side effects of an ex-
clude filter rule. Transfer rules affect only files and never directo-
ries.
Because a transfer rule does not affect what goes into the sender's (and
receiver's) file list, it cannot have any effect on which files get
deleted on the receiving side. For example, if the file "foo" is
present in the sender's list but its size is such that it is omitted due
to a transfer rule, the receiving side does not request the file. How-
ever, its presence in the file list means that a delete pass will not
remove a matching file named "foo" on the receiving side. On the other
hand, a server-side exclude (hide) of the file "foo" leaves the file out
of the server's file list, and absent a receiver-side exclude (protect)
the receiver will remove a matching file named "foo" if deletions are
requested.
Given that the files are still in the sender's file list, the
--prune-empty-dirs option will not judge a directory as being empty even
if it contains only files that the transfer rules omitted.
Similarly, a transfer rule does not have any extra effect on which files
are deleted on the receiving side, so setting a maximum file size for
the transfer does not prevent big files from being deleted.
Examples of transfer rules include the default "quick check" algorithm
(which compares size & modify time), the --update option, the --max-size
option, the --ignore-non-existing option, and a few others.
BATCH MODE
Batch mode can be used to apply the same set of updates to many identi-
cal systems. Suppose one has a tree which is replicated on a number of
hosts. Now suppose some changes have been made to this source tree and
those changes need to be propagated to the other hosts. In order to do
this using batch mode, rsync is run with the write-batch option to apply
the changes made to the source tree to one of the destination trees.
The write-batch option causes the rsync client to store in a "batch
file" all the information needed to repeat this operation against other,
identical destination trees.
Generating the batch file once saves having to perform the file status,
checksum, and data block generation more than once when updating multi-
ple destination trees. Multicast transport protocols can be used to
transfer the batch update files in parallel to many hosts at once, in-
stead of sending the same data to every host individually.
To apply the recorded changes to another destination tree, run rsync
with the read-batch option, specifying the name of the same batch file,
and the destination tree. Rsync updates the destination tree using the
information stored in the batch file.
For your convenience, a script file is also created when the write-batch
option is used: it will be named the same as the batch file with ".sh"
appended. This script file contains a command line suitable for updat-
ing a destination tree using the associated batch file. It can be exe-
cuted using a Bourne (or Bourne-like) shell, optionally passing in an
alternate destination tree pathname which is then used instead of the
original destination path. This is useful when the destination tree
path on the current host differs from the one used to create the batch
file.
Examples:
$ rsync --write-batch=foo -a host:/source/dir/ /adest/dir/
$ scp foo* remote:
$ ssh remote ./foo.sh /bdest/dir/
$ rsync --write-batch=foo -a /source/dir/ /adest/dir/
$ ssh remote rsync --read-batch=- -a /bdest/dir/ <foo
In these examples, rsync is used to update /adest/dir/ from /source/dir/
and the information to repeat this operation is stored in "foo" and
"foo.sh". The host "remote" is then updated with the batched data going
into the directory /bdest/dir. The differences between the two examples
reveals some of the flexibility you have in how you deal with batches:
o The first example shows that the initial copy doesn't have to be
local -- you can push or pull data to/from a remote host using
either the remote-shell syntax or rsync daemon syntax, as de-
sired.
o The first example uses the created "foo.sh" file to get the right
rsync options when running the read-batch command on the remote
host.
o The second example reads the batch data via standard input so
that the batch file doesn't need to be copied to the remote ma-
chine first. This example avoids the foo.sh script because it
needed to use a modified --read-batch option, but you could edit
the script file if you wished to make use of it (just be sure
that no other option is trying to use standard input, such as the
--exclude-from=- option).
Caveats:
The read-batch option expects the destination tree that it is updating
to be identical to the destination tree that was used to create the
batch update fileset. When a difference between the destination trees
is encountered the update might be discarded with a warning (if the file
appears to be up-to-date already) or the file-update may be attempted
and then, if the file fails to verify, the update discarded with an er-
ror. This means that it should be safe to re-run a read-batch operation
if the command got interrupted. If you wish to force the batched-update
to always be attempted regardless of the file's size and date, use the
-I option (when reading the batch). If an error occurs, the destination
tree will probably be in a partially updated state. In that case, rsync
can be used in its regular (non-batch) mode of operation to fix up the
destination tree.
The rsync version used on all destinations must be at least as new as
the one used to generate the batch file. Rsync will die with an error
if the protocol version in the batch file is too new for the batch-read-
ing rsync to handle. See also the --protocol option for a way to have
the creating rsync generate a batch file that an older rsync can under-
stand. (Note that batch files changed format in version 2.6.3 (Septem-
ber 2004), so mixing versions older than that with newer versions will
not work.)
When reading a batch file, rsync will force the value of certain options
to match the data in the batch file if you didn't set them to the same
as the batch-writing command. Other options can (and should) be
changed. For instance --write-batch changes to --read-batch,
--files-from is dropped, and the --filter / --include / --exclude op-
tions are not needed unless one of the --delete options is specified.
The code that creates the BATCH.sh file transforms any filter/in-
clude/exclude options into a single list that is appended as a "here"
document to the shell script file. An advanced user can use this to
modify the exclude list if a change in what gets deleted by --delete is
desired. A normal user can ignore this detail and just use the shell
script as an easy way to run the appropriate --read-batch command for
the batched data.
SYMBOLIC LINKS
Three basic behaviors are possible when rsync encounters a symbolic link
in the source directory.
By default, symbolic links are not transferred at all. A message "skip-
ping non-regular" file is emitted for any symlinks that exist.
If --links is specified, then symlinks are added to the transfer (in-
stead of being noisily ignored), and the default handling is to recreate
them with the same target on the destination. Note that --archive im-
plies --links.
If --copy-links is specified, then symlinks are "collapsed" by copying
their referent, rather than the symlink.
Rsync can also distinguish "safe" and "unsafe" symbolic links. An exam-
ple where this might be used is a web site mirror that wishes to ensure
that the rsync module that is copied does not include symbolic links to
/etc/passwd in the public section of the site. Using --copy-un-
safe-links will cause any links to be copied as the file they point to
on the destination. Using --safe-links will cause unsafe links to be
omitted by the receiver. (Note that you must specify or imply --links
for --safe-links to have any effect.)
Symbolic links are considered unsafe if they are absolute symlinks
(start with /), empty, or if they contain enough ".." components to as-
cend from the top of the transfer.
Here's a summary of how the symlink options are interpreted. The list
is in order of precedence, so if your combination of options isn't men-
tioned, use the first line that is a complete subset of your options:
--copy-links
Turn all symlinks into normal files and directories (leaving no
symlinks in the transfer for any other options to affect).
--copy-dirlinks
Turn just symlinks to directories into real directories, leaving
all other symlinks to be handled as described below.
--links --copy-unsafe-links
Turn all unsafe symlinks into files and create all safe symlinks.
--copy-unsafe-links
Turn all unsafe symlinks into files, noisily skip all safe sym-
links.
--links --safe-links
The receiver skips creating unsafe symlinks found in the transfer
and creates the safe ones.
--links
Create all symlinks.
For the effect of --munge-links, see the discussion in that option's
section.
Note that the --keep-dirlinks option does not affect symlinks in the
transfer but instead affects how rsync treats a symlink to a directory
that already exists on the receiving side. See that option's section
for a warning.
DIAGNOSTICS
Rsync occasionally produces error messages that may seem a little cryp-
tic. The one that seems to cause the most confusion is "protocol ver-
sion mismatch -- is your shell clean?".
This message is usually caused by your startup scripts or remote shell
facility producing unwanted garbage on the stream that rsync is using
for its transport. The way to diagnose this problem is to run your re-
mote shell like this:
ssh remotehost /bin/true > out.dat
then look at out.dat. If everything is working correctly then out.dat
should be a zero length file. If you are getting the above error from
rsync then you will probably find that out.dat contains some text or
data. Look at the contents and try to work out what is producing it.
The most common cause is incorrectly configured shell startup scripts
(such as .cshrc or .profile) that contain output statements for non-in-
teractive logins.
If you are having trouble debugging filter patterns, then try specifying
the -vv option. At this level of verbosity rsync will show why each in-
dividual file is included or excluded.
EXIT VALUES
o 0 - Success
o 1 - Syntax or usage error
o 2 - Protocol incompatibility
o 3 - Errors selecting input/output files, directories
o
o 4 - Requested action not supported. Either:
an attempt was made to manipulate 64-bit files on a plat-
form that cannot support them
o an option was specified that is supported by the client
and not by the server
o 5 - Error starting client-server protocol
o 10 - Error in socket I/O
o 11 - Error in file I/O
o 12 - Error in rsync protocol data stream
o 13 - Errors with program diagnostics
o 14 - Error in IPC code
o 15 - Sibling process crashed (e.g. core dumped).
o 16 - Sibling process was killed by a signal.
o 19 - Received SIGUSR1.
o 20 - Received SIGINT, SIGTERM, or SIGHUP.
o 21 - Some error returned by waitpid()
o 22 - Error allocating core memory buffers
o 23 - Partial transfer due to error
o 24 - Partial transfer due to vanished source files
o 25 - The --max-delete limit stopped deletions
o 30 - Timeout in data send/receive
o 35 - Timeout waiting for daemon connection
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
CVSIGNORE
The CVSIGNORE environment variable supplements any ignore pat-
terns in .cvsignore files. See the --cvs-exclude option for more
details.
RSYNC_ICONV
Specify a default --iconv setting using this environment vari-
able.
RSYNC_OLD_ARGS
Specify a "1" if you want the --old-args option to be enabled by
default, a "2" (or more) if you want it to be enabled in the re-
peated-option state, or a "0" to make sure that it is disabled by
default. When this environment variable is set to a non-zero
value, it supersedes the RSYNC_PROTECT_ARGS variable.
This variable is ignored if --old-args, --no-old-args, or --se-
cluded-args is specified on the command line.
First supported in 3.2.4 (April 2022).
RSYNC_PROTECT_ARGS
Specify a non-zero numeric value if you want the --secluded-args
option to be enabled by default, or a zero value to make sure
that it is disabled by default.
This variable is ignored if --secluded-args, --no-secluded-args,
or --old-args is specified on the command line.
Starting in 3.2.4 (April 2022), this variable is ignored if
RSYNC_OLD_ARGS is set to a non-zero value.
RSYNC_RSH
This environment variable allows you to override the default
shell used as the transport for rsync. Command line options are
permitted after the command name, just as in the --rsh (-e) op-
tion.
RSYNC_PROXY
This environment variable allows you to redirect your rsync
client to use a web proxy when connecting to an rsync daemon.
You should set RSYNC_PROXY to a hostname:port pair.
RSYNC_PASSWORD
This environment variable allows you to set the password for an
rsync daemon connection, which avoids the password prompt. Note
that this does not supply a password to a remote shell transport
such as ssh (consult its documentation for how to do that).
USER or LOGNAME
The USER or LOGNAME environment variables are used to determine
the default username sent to an rsync daemon. If neither is set,
the username defaults to "nobody". If both are set, USER takes
precedence.
RSYNC_PARTIAL_DIR
This environment variable specifies the directory to use for a
--partial transfer without implying that partial transfers be en-
abled. See the --partial-dir option for full details.
RSYNC_COMPRESS_LIST
This environment variable allows you to customize the negotiation
of the compression algorithm by specifying an alternate order or
a reduced list of names. Use the command rsync --version to see
the available compression names. See the --compress option for
full details.
RSYNC_CHECKSUM_LIST
This environment variable allows you to customize the negotiation
of the checksum algorithm by specifying an alternate order or a
reduced list of names. Use the command rsync --version to see
the available checksum names. See the --checksum-choice option
for full details.
RSYNC_MAX_ALLOC
This environment variable sets an allocation maximum as if you
had used the --max-alloc option.
RSYNC_PORT
This environment variable is not read by rsync, but is instead
set in its sub-environment when rsync is running the remote shell
in combination with a daemon connection. This allows a script
such as rsync-ssl to be able to know the port number that the
user specified on the command line.
HOME This environment variable is used to find the user's default
.cvsignore file.
RSYNC_CONNECT_PROG
This environment variable is mainly used in debug setups to set
the program to use when making a daemon connection. See CONNECT-
ING TO AN RSYNC DAEMON for full details.
RSYNC_SHELL
This environment variable is mainly used in debug setups to set
the program to use to run the program specified by RSYNC_CON-
NECT_PROG. See CONNECTING TO AN RSYNC DAEMON for full details.
FILES
/etc/rsyncd.conf or rsyncd.conf
SEE ALSO
rsync-ssl(1), rsyncd.conf(5), rrsync(1)
BUGS
o Times are transferred as *nix time_t values.
o When transferring to FAT filesystems rsync may re-sync unmodified
files. See the comments on the --modify-window option.
o File permissions, devices, etc. are transferred as native numeri-
cal values.
o See also the comments on the --delete option.
Please report bugs! See the web site at ]8;;https://rsync.samba.org/\https://rsync.samba.org/]8;;\.
VERSION
This manpage is current for version 3.5.0 of rsync.
INTERNAL OPTIONS
The options --server and --sender are used internally by rsync, and
should never be typed by a user under normal circumstances. Some aware-
ness of these options may be needed in certain scenarios, such as when
setting up a login that can only run an rsync command. For instance,
the support directory of the rsync distribution has an example script
named rrsync (for restricted rsync) that can be used with a restricted
ssh login.
CREDITS
Rsync is distributed under the GNU General Public License. See the file
COPYING for details.
An rsync web site is available at ]8;;https://rsync.samba.org/\https://rsync.samba.org/]8;;\. The site
includes an FAQ-O-Matic which may cover questions unanswered by this
manual page.
The rsync github project is ]8;;https://github.com/RsyncProject/rsync\https://github.com/RsyncProject/rsync]8;;\.
We would be delighted to hear from you if you like this program. Please
contact the mailing-list at ]8;;mailto:rsync@lists.samba.org\rsync@lists.samba.org]8;;\.
This program uses the excellent zlib compression library written by
Jean-loup Gailly and Mark Adler.
THANKS
Special thanks go out to: John Van Essen, Matt McCutchen, Wesley W.
Terpstra, David Dykstra, Jos Backus, Sebastian Krahmer, Martin Pool, and
our gone-but-not-forgotten compadre, J.W. Schultz.
Thanks also to Richard Brent, Brendan Mackay, Bill Waite, Stephen Roth-
well and David Bell. I've probably missed some people, my apologies if
I have.
AUTHOR
Rsync was originally written by Andrew Tridgell and Paul Mackerras.
Many people from around the world have helped to maintain and improve
it.
Special thanks go to Wayne Davison, who maintained rsync from 2004 to
2024.
Mailing lists for support and development are available at
]8;;https://lists.samba.org/\https://lists.samba.org/]8;;\.
rsync 3.5.0 16 Sep 2026 rsync(1)
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