Rsync Examples and Option Summary

(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 ‐‐relative, ‐R use relative path names ‐‐no‐implied‐dirs don’t send implied dirs 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, ‐‐old‐d works like ‐‐dirs when talking to old rsync ‐‐mkpath create destination’s missing path components ‐‐links, ‐l copy symlinks as symlinks ‐‐copy‐links, ‐L transform symlink into referent file/dir ‐‐copy‐unsafe‐links only "unsafe" symlinks are transformed ‐‐safe‐links ignore symlinks that point outside the tree ‐‐munge‐links munge symlinks to make them safe & unusable ‐‐copy‐dirlinks, ‐k transform symlink to dir into referent dir ‐‐keep‐dirlinks, ‐K treat symlinked dir on receiver as dir ‐‐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 ‐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

This section provides examples of rsync usage, such as backing up a home directory with a cron job and moving files from a remote host to the local host. It then presents a summary of rsync options, including verbosity control, checksum-based skipping, archive mode, recursion, relative paths, backups, updates, in-place updates, appending, directory handling, link handling, permission preservation, ownership preservation, device handling, time preservation, and more. Each option is briefly listed with its short form and a description.