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 [--ignore‐
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