rsync service:
Remote Synchronization. A server to enable remote synchronization of files in a specified directory tree.
Required(ON/OFF): View complete List of Services
Home PC : NO
Server : NO
Now lets see the manual of rsync service.
Manual rsync:
NAME
rsync - faster, flexible replacement for rcp
SYNOPSIS
rsync [OPTION]... SRC [SRC]... [USER@]HOST:DEST
rsync [OPTION]... [USER@]HOST:SRC DEST
rsync [OPTION]... SRC [SRC]... DEST
rsync [OPTION]... [USER@]HOST::SRC [DEST]
rsync [OPTION]... SRC [SRC]... [USER@]HOST::DEST
rsync [OPTION]... rsync://[USER@]HOST[:PORT]/SRC [DEST]
rsync [OPTION]... SRC [SRC]... rsync://[USER@]HOST[:PORT]/DEST
DESCRIPTION
rsync is a program that behaves in much the same way that rcp does, but has many more options and uses the rsync
remote-update protocol to greatly speed up file transfers when the destination file is being updated.
The rsync remote-update protocol allows rsync to transfer just the differences between two sets of files across the
network connection, using an efficient checksum-search algorithm described in the technical report that accompanies
this package.
Some of the additional features of rsync are:
support for copying links, devices, owners, groups, and permissions
exclude and exclude-from options similar to GNU tar
a CVS exclude mode for ignoring the same files that CVS would ignore
can use any transparent remote shell, including ssh or rsh
does not require root privileges
pipelining of file transfers to minimize latency costs
support for anonymous or authenticated rsync servers (ideal for mirroring)
GENERAL
There are eight different ways of using rsync. They are:
for copying local files. This is invoked when neither source nor destination path contains a : separator
for copying from the local machine to a remote machine using a remote shell program as the transport (such
as ssh or rsh). This is invoked when the destination path contains a single : separator.
for copying from a remote machine to the local machine using a remote shell program. This is invoked when
the source contains a : separator.
for copying from a remote rsync server to the local machine. This is invoked when the source path contains a
:: separator or an rsync:// URL.
for copying from the local machine to a remote rsync server. This is invoked when the destination path contains
a :: separator or an rsync:// URL.
for copying from a remote machine using a remote shell program as the transport, using rsync server on the
remote machine. This is invoked when the source path contains a :: separator and the --rsh=COMMAND (aka "-e
COMMAND") option is also provided.
for copying from the local machine to a remote machine using a remote shell program as the transport, using
rsync server on the remote machine. This is invoked when the destination path contains a :: separator and
the --rsh=COMMAND option is also provided.
for listing files on a remote machine. This is done the same way as rsync transfers except that you leave
off the local destination.
Note that in all cases (other than listing) at least one of the source and destination paths must be local.
SETUP
See the file README for installation instructions.
Once installed, you can use rsync to any machine that you can access via a remote shell (as well as some that you
can access using the rsync daemon-mode protocol). For remote transfers, a modern rsync uses ssh for its communications,
but it may have been configured to use a different remote shell by default, such as rsh or remsh.
You can also specify any remote shell you like, either by using the -e command line option, or by setting the
RSYNC_RSH environment variable.
One common substitute is to use ssh, which offers a high degree of security.
Note that rsync must be installed on both the source and destination machines.
USAGE
You use rsync in the same way you use 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. See the tech report for details.
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 attributes 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
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.
rsync somehost.mydomain.com::
This would list all the anonymous rsync modules available on the host somehost.mydomain.com. (See the following
section for more details.)
ADVANCED USAGE
The syntax for requesting multiple files from a remote host involves using quoted spaces in the SRC. Some examples:
rsync host::'modname/dir1/file1 modname/dir2/file2' /dest
This would copy file1 and file2 into /dest from an rsync daemon. Each additional arg must include the same "modname/"
prefix as the first one, and must be preceded by a single space. All other spaces are assumed to be a part
of the filenames.
rsync -av host:'dir1/file1 dir2/file2' /dest
This would copy file1 and file2 into /dest using a remote shell. This word-splitting is done by the remote shell,
so if it doesn't work it means that the remote shell isn't configured to split its args based on whitespace (a very
rare setting, but not unknown). If you need to transfer a filename that contains whitespace, you'll need to either
escape the whitespace in a way that the remote shell will understand, or use wildcards in place of the spaces. Two
examples of this are:
rsync -av host:'file\ name\ with\ spaces' /dest
rsync -av host:file?name?with?spaces /dest
This latter example assumes that your shell passes through unmatched wildcards. If it complains about "no match",
put the name in quotes.
CONNECTING TO AN RSYNC SERVER
It is also possible to use rsync without a remote shell as the transport. In this case you will connect to a remote
rsync server running on TCP port 873.
You may establish the connection via a web proxy by setting the environment variable RSYNC_PROXY to a hostname:port
pair pointing to your web proxy. Note that your web proxy's configuration must support proxy connections to port
873.
Using rsync in this way is the same as using it with a remote shell except that:
you use a double colon :: instead of a single colon to separate the hostname from the path or an rsync://
URL.
the remote server may print a message of the day when you connect.
if you specify no path name on the remote server then the list of accessible paths on the server will be
shown.
if you specify no local destination then a listing of the specified files on the remote server is provided.
Some paths on the remote server may require authentication. If so then 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.
CONNECTING TO AN RSYNC SERVER OVER A REMOTE SHELL PROGRAM
It is sometimes useful to be able to set up file transfers using rsync server capabilities on the remote machine,
while still using ssh or rsh for transport. This is especially useful when you want to connect to a remote machine
via ssh (for encryption or to get through a firewall), but you still want to have access to the rsync server features
(see RUNNING AN RSYNC SERVER OVER A REMOTE SHELL PROGRAM, below).
From the user's perspective, using rsync in this way is the same as using it to connect to an rsync server, except
that you must explicitly set the remote shell program on the command line with --rsh=COMMAND. (Setting RSYNC_RSH
in the environment will not turn on this functionality.)
In order to distinguish between the remote-shell user and the rsync server user, you can use '-l user' on your
remote-shell command:
rsync -av --rsh="ssh -l ssh-user" rsync-user@host::module[/path] local-path
The "ssh-user" will be used at the ssh level; the "rsync-user" will be used to check against the rsyncd.conf on the
remote host.
RUNNING AN RSYNC SERVER
An rsync server is configured using a configuration file. Please see the rsyncd.conf(5) man page for more information.
By default the configuration file is called /etc/rsyncd.conf, unless rsync is running over a remote shell
program and is not running as root; in that case, the default name is rsyncd.conf in the current directory on the
remote computer (typically $HOME).
RUNNING AN RSYNC SERVER OVER A REMOTE SHELL PROGRAM
See the rsyncd.conf(5) man page for full information on the rsync server configuration file.
Several configuration options will not be available unless the remote user is root (e.g. chroot, setuid/setgid,
etc.). There is no need to configure inetd or the services map to include the rsync server port if you run an
rsync server only via a remote shell program.
To run an rsync server out of a single-use ssh key, see this section in the rsyncd.conf(5) man page.
EXAMPLES
Here are some examples of how I use rsync.
To backup my wife's home directory, which consists of large MS Word files and mail folders, I use a cron job that
runs
rsync -Cavz . arvidsjaur:backup
each night over a PPP connection to a duplicate directory on my machine "arvidsjaur".
To synchronize my samba source trees I use the following Makefile targets:
get:
rsync -avuzb --exclude '*~' samba:samba/ .
put:
rsync -Cavuzb . samba:samba/
sync: get put
this allows me to sync with a CVS directory at the other end of the connection. I then do cvs operations on the
remote machine, which saves a lot of time as the remote cvs protocol isn't very efficient.
I mirror a directory between my "old" and "new" ftp sites with the command
rsync -az -e ssh --delete ~ftp/pub/samba/ nimbus:"~ftp/pub/tridge/samba"
this is launched from cron every few hours.
OPTIONS SUMMARY
Here is a short summary of the options available in rsync. Please refer to the detailed description below for a
complete description.
-v, --verbose increase verbosity
-q, --quiet decrease verbosity
-c, --checksum always checksum
-a, --archive archive mode, equivalent to -rlptgoD
-r, --recursive recurse into directories
-R, --relative use relative path names
--no-relative turn off --relative
--no-implied-dirs don't send implied dirs with -R
-b, --backup make backups (see --suffix & --backup-dir)
--backup-dir make backups into this directory
--suffix=SUFFIX backup suffix (default ~ w/o --backup-dir)
-u, --update update only (don't overwrite newer files)
--inplace update the destination files inplace
-K, --keep-dirlinks treat symlinked dir on receiver as dir
-l, --links copy symlinks as symlinks
-L, --copy-links copy the referent of all symlinks
--copy-unsafe-links copy the referent of "unsafe" symlinks
--safe-links ignore "unsafe" symlinks
-H, --hard-links preserve hard links
-p, --perms preserve permissions
-o, --owner preserve owner (root only)
-g, --group preserve group
-D, --devices preserve devices (root only)
-t, --times preserve times
-S, --sparse handle sparse files efficiently
-n, --dry-run show what would have been transferred
-W, --whole-file copy whole files, no incremental checks
--no-whole-file turn off --whole-file
-x, --one-file-system don't cross filesystem boundaries
-B, --block-size=SIZE force a fixed checksum block-size
-e, --rsh=COMMAND specify the remote shell
--rsync-path=PATH specify path to rsync on the remote machine
--existing only update files that already exist
--ignore-existing ignore files that already exist on receiver
--delete delete files that don't exist on sender
--delete-excluded also delete excluded files on receiver
--delete-after receiver deletes after transfer, not before
--ignore-errors delete even if there are I/O errors
--max-delete=NUM don't delete more than NUM files
--partial keep partially transferred files
--partial-dir=DIR put a partially transferred file into DIR
--force force deletion of dirs even if not empty
--numeric-ids don't map uid/gid values by user/group name
--timeout=TIME set I/O timeout in seconds
-I, --ignore-times turn off mod time & file size quick check
--size-only ignore mod time for quick check (use size)
--modify-window=NUM compare mod times with reduced accuracy
-T --temp-dir=DIR create temporary files in directory DIR
--compare-dest=DIR also compare received files relative to DIR
--link-dest=DIR create hardlinks to DIR for unchanged files
-P equivalent to --partial --progress
-z, --compress compress file data
-C, --cvs-exclude auto ignore files in the same way CVS does
--exclude=PATTERN exclude files matching PATTERN
--exclude-from=FILE exclude patterns listed in FILE
--include=PATTERN don't exclude files matching PATTERN
--include-from=FILE don't exclude patterns listed in FILE
--files-from=FILE read FILE for list of source-file names
-0 --from0 all file lists are delimited by nulls
--version print version number
--daemon run as an rsync daemon
--no-detach do not detach from the parent
--address=ADDRESS bind to the specified address
--config=FILE specify alternate rsyncd.conf file
--port=PORT specify alternate rsyncd port number
--blocking-io use blocking I/O for the remote shell
--no-blocking-io turn off --blocking-io
--stats give some file transfer stats
--progress show progress during transfer
--log-format=FORMAT log file transfers using specified format
--password-file=FILE get password from FILE
--bwlimit=KBPS limit I/O bandwidth, KBytes per second
--write-batch=FILE write a batch to FILE
--read-batch=FILE read a batch from FILE
--checksum-seed=NUM set block/file checksum seed
-4 --ipv4 prefer IPv4
-6 --ipv6 prefer IPv6
-h, --help show this help screen
OPTIONS
rsync uses the GNU long options package. Many of the command line options have two variants, one short and one
long. These are shown below, separated by commas. Some options only have a long variant. The '=' for options that
take a parameter is optional; whitespace can be used instead.
-h, --help
Print a short help page describing the options available in rsync
--version
print the rsync version number and exit
-v, --verbose
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 transferred and a brief summary
at the end. Two -v flags will give you information on what files are being skipped and slightly more information
at the end. More than two -v flags should only be used if you are debugging rsync.
-q, --quiet
This option decreases the amount of information you are given during the transfer, notably suppressing
information messages from the remote server. This flag is useful when invoking rsync from cron.
-I, --ignore-times
Normally rsync will skip any files that are already the same size and have the same modification time-stamp.
This option turns off this "quick check" behavior.
--size-only
Normally rsync will not transfer any files that are already the same size and have the same modification
time-stamp. With the --size-only option, files will not be transferred if they have the same size, regardless
of timestamp. This is useful when starting to use rsync after using another mirroring system which may
not preserve timestamps exactly.
--modify-window
When comparing two timestamps rsync treats the timestamps as being equal if they are within the value of
modify_window. This is normally zero, but you may find it useful to set this to a larger value in some situations.
In particular, when transferring to Windows FAT filesystems which cannot represent times with a 1
second resolution --modify-window=1 is useful.
-c, --checksum
This forces the sender to checksum all files using a 128-bit MD4 checksum before transfer. The checksum is
then explicitly checked on the receiver and any files of the same name which already exist and have the same
checksum and size on the receiver are not transferred. This option can be quite slow.
-a, --archive
This is equivalent to -rlptgoD. It is a quick way of saying you want recursion and want to preserve almost
everything.
Note however that -a does not preserve hardlinks, because finding multiply-linked files is expensive. You
must separately specify -H.
-r, --recursive
This tells rsync to copy directories recursively. If you don't specify this then rsync won't copy directories
at all.
-R, --relative
Use relative paths. This means that the full path names specified 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, if you used the command
rsync foo/bar/foo.c remote:/tmp/
then this would create a file called foo.c in /tmp/ on the remote machine. If instead you used
rsync -R foo/bar/foo.c remote:/tmp/
then a file called /tmp/foo/bar/foo.c would be created on the remote machine -- the full path name is preserved.
--no-relative
Turn off the --relative option. This is only needed if you want to use --files-from without its implied
--relative file processing.
--no-implied-dirs
When combined with the --relative option, the implied directories in each path are not explicitly duplicated
as part of the transfer. This makes the transfer more optimal and also allows the two sides to have non-
matching symlinks in the implied part of the path. For instance, if you transfer the file "/path/foo/file"
with -R, the default is for rsync to ensure that "/path" and "/path/foo" on the destination exactly match
the directories/symlinks of the source. Using the --no-implied-dirs option would omit both of these implied
dirs, which means that if "/path" was a real directory on one machine and a symlink of the other machine,
rsync would not try to change this.
-b, --backup
With this option, preexisting destination files are renamed as each file is transferred or deleted. You can
control where the backup file goes and what (if any) suffix gets appended using the --backup-dir and --suffix
options.
--backup-dir=DIR
In combination with the --backup option, this tells rsync to store all backups in the specified directory.
This is very useful for incremental backups. You can additionally specify a backup suffix using the --suffix
option (otherwise the files backed up in the specified directory will keep their original filenames).
If DIR is a relative path, it is relative to the destination directory (which changes in a recursive transfer).
--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.
-u, --update
This forces rsync to skip any files for which the destination file already exists and has a date later than
the source file.
In the currently implementation, a difference of file format is always considered to be important enough for
an update, no matter what date is on the objects. In other words, if the source has a directory or a symlink
where the destination has a file, the transfer would occur regardless of the timestamps. This might
change in the future (feel free to comment on this on the mailing list if you have an opinion).
-K, --keep-dirlinks
On the receiving side, if a symlink is pointing to a directory, it will be treated as matching a directory
from the sender.
--inplace
This causes rsync not to create a new copy of the file and then move it into place. Instead rsync will
overwrite the existing file, meaning that the rsync algorithm can't extract the full amount of network
reduction it might otherwise (since it does not yet try to sort data matches -- a future version may improve
this).
This option is useful for transfer of large files with block-based changes or appended data, and also on
systems that are disk bound, not network bound.
The option implies --partial (since an interrupted transfer does not delete the file), but conflicts with
--partial-dir, --compare-dest, and --link-dest (a future rsync version will hopefully update the protocol to
remove these restrictions).
WARNING: The file's data will be in an inconsistent state during the transfer (and possibly afterward if the
transfer gets interrupted), so you should not use this option to update files that are in use. Also note
that rsync will be unable to update a file inplace that is not writable by the receiving user.
-l, --links
When symlinks are encountered, recreate the symlink on the destination.
-L, --copy-links
When symlinks are encountered, the file that they point to (the referent) is copied, rather than the symlink.
In older versions of rsync, this option also had the side-effect of telling the receiving side to
follow symlinks, such as symlinks to directories. In a modern rsync such as this one, you'll need to specify
--keep-dirlinks (-K) to get this extra behavior. The only exception is when sending files to an rsync
that is too old to understand -K -- in that case, the -L option will still have the side-effect of -K on
that older receiving rsync.
--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.
--safe-links
This tells rsync to ignore any symbolic links which point outside the copied tree. All absolute symlinks are
also ignored. Using this option in conjunction with --relative may give unexpected results.
-H, --hard-links
This tells rsync to recreate hard links on the remote system to be the same as the local system. Without
this option hard links are treated like regular files.
Note that rsync can only detect hard links if both parts of the link are in the list of files being sent.
This option can be quite slow, so only use it if you need it.
-W, --whole-file
With this option the incremental rsync algorithm is not used and the whole file is sent as-is instead. 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 filesystem). This
is the default when both the source and destination are specified as local paths.
--no-whole-file
Turn off --whole-file, for use when it is the default.
-p, --perms
This option causes rsync to set the destination permissions to be the same as the source permissions.
Without this option, each new file gets its permissions set based on the source file's permissions and the
umask at the receiving end, while all other files (including updated files) retain their existing permissions
(which is the same behavior as other file-copy utilities, such as cp).
-o, --owner
This option causes rsync to set the owner of the destination file to be the same as the source file. On
most systems, only the super-user can set file ownership. By default, the preservation is done by name, but
may fall back to using the ID number in some circumstances. See the --numeric-ids option for a full discussion.
-g, --group
This option causes rsync to set the group of the destination file to be the same as the source file. If the
receiving program is not running as the super-user, only groups that the receiver is a member of will be
preserved. By default, the preservation is done by name, but may fall back to using the ID number in some
circumstances. See the --numeric-ids option for a full discussion.
-D, --devices
This option causes rsync to transfer character and block device information to the remote system to recreate
these devices. This option is only available to the super-user.
-t, --times
This tells rsync to transfer modification times along with the files and update them on the remote system.
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
-I, causing all files to be updated (though the rsync algorithm will make the update fairly efficient if the
files haven't actually changed, you're much better off using -t).
-n, --dry-run
This tells rsync to not do any file transfers, instead it will just report the actions it would have taken.
-S, --sparse
Try to handle sparse files efficiently so they take up less space on the destination.
NOTE: Don't use this option when the destination is a Solaris "tmpfs" filesystem. It doesn't seem to handle
seeks over null regions correctly and ends up corrupting the files.
-x, --one-file-system
This tells rsync not to cross filesystem boundaries when recursing. This is useful for transferring the
contents of only one filesystem.
--existing
This tells rsync not to create any new files - only update files that already exist on the destination.
--ignore-existing
This tells rsync not to update files that already exist on the destination.
--max-delete=NUM
This tells rsync not to delete more than NUM files or directories. This is useful when mirroring very large
trees to prevent disasters.
--delete
This tells rsync to delete any files on the receiving side that aren't on the sending side. Files that are
excluded from transfer are excluded from being deleted unless you use --delete-excluded.
This option has no effect if directory recursion is not selected.
This option can be dangerous if used incorrectly! It is a very good idea to run first using the dry run
option (-n) to see what files would be deleted to make sure important files aren't listed.
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 errors) on the sending
side causing a massive deletion of files on the destination. You can override this with the --ignore-errors
option.
--delete-excluded
In addition to deleting the files on the receiving side that are not on the sending side, this tells rsync
to also delete any files on the receiving side that are excluded (see --exclude). Implies --delete.
--delete-after
By default rsync does file deletions on the receiving side before transferring files to try to ensure that
there is sufficient space on the receiving filesystem. If you want to delete after transferring, use the
--delete-after switch. Implies --delete.
--ignore-errors
Tells --delete to go ahead and delete files even when there are I/O errors.
--force
This options tells rsync to delete directories even if they are not empty when they are to be replaced by
non-directories. This is only relevant without --delete because deletions are now done depth-first.
Requires the --recursive option (which is implied by -a) to have any effect.
-B, --block-size=BLOCKSIZE
This forces the block size used in the rsync algorithm to a fixed value. It is normally selected based on
the size of each file being updated. See the technical report for details.
-e, --rsh=COMMAND
This option allows you to choose an alternative remote shell program to use for communication between the
local and remote copies of rsync. Typically, rsync is configured to use ssh by default, but you may prefer
to use rsh on a local network.
If this option is used with [user@]host::module/path, then the remote shell COMMAND will be used to run an
rsync server 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 server on the remote host. See the section
"CONNECTING TO AN RSYNC SERVER OVER A REMOTE SHELL PROGRAM" above.
Command-line arguments are permitted in COMMAND provided that COMMAND is presented to rsync as a single
argument. For example:
-e "ssh -p 2234"
(Note that ssh users can alternately customize site-specific connect 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 option.
--rsync-path=PATH
Use this to specify the path to the copy of rsync on the remote machine. Useful when it's not in your path.
Note that this is the full path to the binary, not just the directory that the binary is in.
-C, --cvs-exclude
This is a useful shorthand for excluding a broad range of files that you often don't want to transfer
between systems. It uses the same algorithm that CVS uses to determine if a file should be ignored.
The exclude list is initialized to:
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/
then files listed in a //.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. See the cvs(1) manual for more information.
--exclude=PATTERN
This option allows you to selectively exclude certain files from the list of files to be transferred. This
is most useful in combination with a recursive transfer.
You may use as many --exclude options on the command line as you like to build up the list of files to
exclude.
See the EXCLUDE PATTERNS section for detailed information on this option.
--exclude-from=FILE
This option is similar to the --exclude option, but instead it adds all exclude patterns listed in the file
FILE to the exclude list. Blank lines in FILE and lines starting with ';' or '#' are ignored. If FILE is -
the list will be read from standard input.
--include=PATTERN
This option tells rsync to not exclude the specified pattern of filenames. This is useful as it allows you
to build up quite complex exclude/include rules.
See the EXCLUDE PATTERNS section for detailed information on this option.
--include-from=FILE
This specifies a list of include patterns from a file. If FILE is "-" the list will be read from standard
input.
--files-from=FILE
Using this option allows you to specify the exact list of files to transfer (as read from the specified FILE
or "-" for standard input). It also tweaks the default behavior of rsync to make transferring just the
specified files and directories easier. For instance, the --relative option is enabled by default when this
option is used (use --no-relative if you want to turn that off), all directories specified in the list are
created on the destination (rather than being noisily skipped without -r), and the -a (--archive) option's
behavior does not imply -r (--recursive) -- specify it explicitly, if you want it.
The file names that are read from the FILE are all relative to the source dir -- any leading slashes are
removed and no ".." references are allowed to go higher than the source dir. 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 (but the contents of the /usr/bin dir would not be sent unless you specified
-r or the names were explicitly listed in /tmp/foo). Also keep in mind that the effect of the (enabled by
default) --relative option 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.
-0, --from0
This tells rsync that the filenames it reads from a file are terminated by a null (' |