Rsync

Trailing Slashes

The one thing I can never remember: what it means for source and/or target to have trailing slashes.

Target - makes no difference

As long as the target specifies a directory, it makes no difference whether you write it with a trailing slash or not. I’ll write a trailing slash from here on, just to emphasize that I’m copying things into a directory.

Source no slash

With no trailing slash on the source, the tail part of any name in the source gets created on the target. E.g.:

$ rsync path/to/file.ext remote:target/
$ ssh remote ls target
file.ext

creates file remote:target/file.ext

$ ls path/of/dir
a b c
$ rsync -a path/of/dir remote:target/
$ ssh remote ls target
dir
$ ssh remote ls target/dir
a b c

creates directory remote:target/dir containing whatever files were in path/of/dir.

Source with slash

If the source is a directory and is written with a trailing slash, then no part of the directory path is copied to the target, only the contents of the specified directory.:

$ ls path/of/dir
a b c
$ rsync -a path/of/dir/ remote:target/
$ ssh remote ls target
a b c

Rsync to remote systems using ssh

Example:

rsync -Hlrtz --delete-during -M--fake-super /etc/ hostname:path/etc/

  • -H –hard-links: preserve hard links

  • -l –links: copy symlinks as symlinks

  • -M –remote-option=XXX: send OPTION to the remote side only

  • -r –recursive: recurse into directories

  • -t –times: preserve modtimes

  • -z –compress: compress during transfer

  • –delete-during: receiver deletes during the transfer

  • –fake-super: store/recover privileged attrs using xattrs

Assuming ssh hostname works…