rsync notes

15 May 2006

rsync notes

Summary

$ rsync -av -e ssh --delete --force source_host:source_dir/ dest_dir
 $ rsync -av -e ssh --delete --force source dest_host:dest_dir/

eg

$ rsync -av -e ssh                  sandia:stripes/music/spanish-french/ spanish-french/
 $ rsync -av -e ssh --delete --force sandia:stripes/music/spanish-french/ spanish-french/

Using SSH

Use rsync over ssh with the -e flag:

$ rsync -av -e ssh source dest_host:dest_dir

To automate rsync over ssh backups, use keychain. For example, for a user called backupuser:

$ cat ~sonia/bin/rsyncup.sh
 #!/bin/bash
 . /home/backupuser/.keychain/$HOSTNAME-sh
 rsync -av -e ssh  --delete --force /home /etc dest_host:home-etc-backup/

$ crontab -l
 1 4 * * * ~sonia/bin/rsyncup.sh

Trailing Slash

Summary – these are equivalent:

rsync $myflags sandia:stripes/books/     books/
 rsync $myflags sandia:stripes/books      .

A trailing slash on the source directory syncs the directory contents, but not the directory itself; without a trailing slash the source directory itself will be synced. The trailing slash has no affect on the destination directory.

For example, with this source directory structure:

~/a
 ~/a/dir1
 ~/a/dir2

$ rsync -av --stats ~/a/ destination_dir
 $ ls -F destination_dir
 dir1/ dir2/                 # ie synced as destination_dir/dir1

$ rsync -av --stats ~/a destination_dir
 $ ls -F destination_dir
 a/
 $ ls -F destination_dir/a
 dir1/ dir2/                 # ie synced as destination_dir/a/dir1

Limiting Bandwidth

Limit bandwidth used by rsync with the –bwlimit option; the value is in kilobytes/s (many network speeds are measured in kilobits, which are 1/8th of kilobytes).

$ rsync -av --bwlimit=256 src1 src2 dest

Deleting Files

If files are deleted from the source directory, they will only be deleted from the destination directory if the –delete option is used:

$ rsync -av --delete ~/a/ destination_dir

File Selection

Files can be included or excluded from syncing using –include-from or –exclude-from; it’s better not to use both as things can get rather confusing.

$ cat exclude.txt
 *tmp
 /etc/skel

$ rsync -av src1 src2 --exclude-from=exclude.txt dest_host:dest_dir

Filepaths

You can specify that directories specified in the source path be created at the destination using the -R option (usually not desired):

$ rsync -av -e ssh src_host:/var/www /dest
 $ ls -F /dest
 www/                     # notice /dest/var not created

$ rsync -avR -e ssh src_host:/var/www /dest
 $ ls -F /dest
 var/
 $ ls -F /dest/var
 www/                    # ie synced as /dest/var/www, not /dest/www

Rsync on Windows

• on Windows, install Cygwin, rsync, OpenSSH, vim
• add c:cygwinbin to the PATH system environment variable
• either get into a bash shell and run rsync normally, by running cmd then c:cygwincygwin.bat, or
• run rsync directly from the Windows command prompt:

c:cygwinbinrsync -av -e ssh src dest_host:dest_dir