Linux "rsync" Command Line Options and Examples

a fast, versatile, remote

Rsync is a fast and extraordinarily versatile file copying tool. It can copy locally, to/from another host over any remote shell, or to/from a remote rsync daemon. It offers a large number of options that control every aspect of its behavior and permit very flexible specification of the set of files to be copied.

Usage:

Local: rsync [OPTION...] SRC... [DEST]

Command Line Options:

--version

print the rsync version number and exit.


                            rsync --version ...

-v

This option increases the amount of information you are given during the transfer. By default, rsyncworks silently. A single -v will give you information about what files are being transferred and abrief summary at the end. Two -v options will give you information on what files are being skipped andslightly more information at the end. More than two -v options should only be used if you are debuggingrsync.In a modern rsync, the -v option is equivalent to the setting of groups of --info and --debug options.You can choose to use these newer options in addition to, or in place of using --verbose, as anyfine-grained settings override the implied settings of -v. Both --info and --debug have a way to askfor help that tells you exactly what flags are set for each increase in verbosity.However, do keep in mind that a daemon’s "max verbosity" setting will limit how high of a level thevarious individual flags can be set on the daemon side. For instance, if the max is 2, then any infoand/or debug flag that is set to a higher value than what would be set by -vv will be downgraded to the


                            rsync -v ...

-vv

level in the daemon’s logging.


                            rsync -vv ...

--info

This option lets you have fine-grained control over the information output you want to see. An indi‐vidual flag name may be followed by a level number, with 0 meaning to silence that output, 1 being thedefault output level, and higher numbers increasing the output of that flag (for those that supporthigher levels). Use --info=help to see all the available flag names, what they output, and what flagnames are added for each increase in the verbose level. Some examples:rsync -a --info=progress2 src/ dest/rsync -avv --info=stats2,misc1,flist0 src/ dest/Note that --info=name’s output is affected by the --out-format and --itemize-changes (-i) options. Seethose options for more information on what is output and when.This option was added to 3.1.0, so an older rsync on the server side might reject your attempts atfine-grained control (if one or more flags needed to be send to the server and the server was too oldto understand them). See also the "max verbosity" caveat above when dealing with a daemon.


                            rsync --info ...

--debug

This option lets you have fine-grained control over the debug output you want to see. An individualflag name may be followed by a level number, with 0 meaning to silence that output, 1 being the defaultoutput level, and higher numbers increasing the output of that flag (for those that support higher lev‐els). Use --debug=help to see all the available flag names, what they output, and what flag names areadded for each increase in the verbose level. Some examples:rsync -avvv --debug=none src/ dest/rsync -avA --del --debug=del2,acl src/ dest/Note that some debug messages will only be output when --msgs2stderr is specified, especially thosepertaining to I/O and buffer debugging.This option was added to 3.1.0, so an older rsync on the server side might reject your attempts atfine-grained control (if one or more flags needed to be send to the server and the server was too oldto understand them). See also the "max verbosity" caveat above when dealing with a daemon.


                            rsync --debug ...

--msgs2stderr

This option changes rsync to send all its output directly to stderr rather than to send messages to theclient side via the protocol (which normally outputs info messages via stdout). This is mainlyintended for debugging in order to avoid changing the data sent via the protocol, since the extra pro‐tocol data can change what is being tested. The option does not affect the remote side of a transferwithout using --remote-option -- e.g. -M--msgs2stderr. Also keep in mind that a daemon connection doesnot have a stderr channel to send messages back to the client side, so if you are doing any dae‐mon-transfer debugging using this option, you should start up a daemon using --no-detach so that youcan see the stderr output on the daemon side.This option has the side-effect of making stderr output get line-buffered so that the merging of theoutput of 3 programs happens in a more readable manner.


                            rsync --msgs2stderr ...

-q

This option decreases the amount of information you are given during the transfer, notably suppressinginformation messages from the remote server. This option is useful when invoking rsync from cron.


                            rsync -q ...

--no-motd

This option affects the information that is output by the client at the start of a daemon transfer.This suppresses the message-of-the-day (MOTD) text, but it also affects the list of modules that thedaemon sends in response to the "rsync host::" request (due to a limitation in the rsync protocol), soomit this option if you want to request the list of modules from the daemon.


                            rsync --no-motd ...

-I

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, causing all files to be updated.


                            rsync -I ...

--size-only

This modifies rsync’s "quick check" algorithm for finding files that need to be transferred, changingit from the default of transferring files with either a changed size or a changed last-modified time tojust looking for files that have changed in size. This is useful when starting to use rsync afterusing another mirroring system which may not preserve timestamps exactly.


                            rsync --size-only ...

--modify-window

When comparing two timestamps, rsync treats the timestamps as being equal if they differ by no morethan the modify-window value. This is normally 0 (for an exact match), but you may find it useful toset this to a larger value in some situations. In particular, when transferring to or from an MS Win‐dows FAT filesystem (which represents times with a 2-second resolution), --modify-window=1 is useful(allowing times to differ by up to 1 second).


                            rsync --modify-window ...

-c

This changes the way rsync checks if the files have been changed and are in need of a transfer. With‐out this option, rsync uses a "quick check" that (by default) checks if each file’s size and time oflast modification match between the sender and receiver. This option changes this to compare a 128-bitchecksum for each file that has a matching size. Generating the checksums means that both sides willexpend a lot of disk I/O reading all the data in the files in the transfer (and this is prior to anyreading that will be done to transfer changed files), so this can slow things down significantly.The sending side generates its checksums while it is doing the file-system scan that builds the list ofthe available files. The receiver generates its checksums when it is scanning for changed files, andwill checksum any file that has the same size as the corresponding sender’s file: files with either achanged size or a changed checksum are selected for transfer.Note that rsync always verifies that each transferred file was correctly reconstructed on the receivingside by checking a whole-file checksum that is generated as the file is transferred, but that automaticafter-the-transfer verification has nothing to do with this option’s before-the-transfer "Does thisfile need to be updated?" check.For protocol 30 and beyond (first supported in 3.0.0), the checksum used is MD5. For older protocols,the checksum used is MD4.


                            rsync -c ...

-a

This is equivalent to -rlptgoD. It is a quick way of saying you want recursion and want to preservealmost everything (with -H being a notable omission). The only exception to the above equivalence iswhen --files-from is specified, in which case -r is not implied.Note that -a does not preserve hardlinks, because finding multiply-linked files is expensive. You mustseparately specify -H.


                            rsync -a ...

--no-OPTION

You may turn off one or more implied options by prefixing the option name with "no-". Not all optionsmay be prefixed with a "no-": only options that are implied by other options (e.g. --no-D, --no-perms)or have different defaults in various circumstances (e.g. --no-whole-file, --no-blocking-io,


                            rsync --no-OPTION ...

--no-dirs).

You may specify either the short or the long option name after the "no-" prefix (e.g.


                            rsync --no-dirs). ...

--no-R

For example: if you want to use -a (--archive) but don’t want -o (--owner), instead of converting -ainto -rlptgD, you could specify -a --no-o (or -a --no-owner).The order of the options is important: if you specify --no-r -a, the -r option would end up beingturned on, the opposite of -a --no-r. Note also that the side-effects of the --files-from option areNOT positional, as it affects the default state of several options and slightly changes the meaning of


                            rsync --no-R ...

-r

This tells rsync to copy directories recursively. See also --dirs (-d).Beginning with rsync 3.0.0, the recursive algorithm used is now an incremental scan that uses much lessmemory than before and begins the transfer after the scanning of the first few directories have beencompleted. This incremental scan only affects our recursion algorithm, and does not change anon-recursive transfer. It is also only possible when both ends of the transfer are at least version3.0.0.Some options require rsync to know the full file list, so these options disable the incremental recur‐sion mode. These include: --delete-before, --delete-after, --prune-empty-dirs, and --delay-updates.Because of this, the default delete mode when you specify --delete is now --delete-during when bothends of the connection are at least 3.0.0 (use --del or --delete-during to request this improved dele‐tion mode explicitly). See also the --delete-delay option that is a better choice than using


                            rsync -r ...

--delete-after.

Incremental recursion can be disabled using the --no-inc-recursive option or its shorter --no-i-ralias.


                            rsync --delete-after. ...

-R

Use relative paths. This means that the full path names specified on the command line are sent to theserver rather than just the last parts of the filenames. This is particularly useful when you want tosend several different directories at the same time. For example, if you used this command:rsync -av /foo/bar/baz.c remote:/tmp/... this would create a file named baz.c in /tmp/ on the remote machine. If instead you usedrsync -avR /foo/bar/baz.c remote:/tmp/then a file named /tmp/foo/bar/baz.c would be created on the remote machine, preserving its full path.These extra path elements are called "implied directories" (i.e. the "foo" and the "foo/bar" directo‐ries in the above example).Beginning with rsync 3.0.0, rsync always sends these implied directories as real directories in thefile list, even if a path element is really a symlink on the sending side. This prevents some reallyunexpected behaviors when copying the full path of a file that you didn’t realize had a symlink in itspath. If you want to duplicate a server-side symlink, include both the symlink via its path, and ref‐erent directory via its real path. If you’re dealing with an older rsync on the sending side, you mayneed to use the --no-implied-dirs option.It is also possible to limit the amount of path information that is sent as implied directories foreach path you specify. With a modern rsync on the sending side (beginning with 2.6.7), you can inserta dot and a slash into the source path, like this:rsync -avR /foo/./bar/baz.c remote:/tmp/That would create /tmp/bar/baz.c on the remote machine. (Note that the dot must be followed by aslash, so "/foo/." would not be abbreviated.) For older rsync versions, you would need to use a chdirto limit the source path. For example, when pushing files:(cd /foo; rsync -avR bar/baz.c remote:/tmp/)(Note that the parens put the two commands into a sub-shell, so that the "cd" command doesn’t remain ineffect for future commands.) If you’re pulling files from an older rsync, use this idiom (but only fora non-daemon transfer):rsync -avR --rsync-path="cd /foo; rsync" \remote:bar/baz.c /tmp/


                            rsync -R ...

--no-implied-dirs

This option affects the default behavior of the --relative option. When it is specified, theattributes of the implied directories from the source names are not included in the transfer. Thismeans that the corresponding path elements on the destination system are left unchanged if they exist,and any missing implied directories are created with default attributes. This even allows theseimplied path elements to have big differences, such as being a symlink to a directory on the receivingside.For instance, if a command-line arg or a files-from entry told rsync to transfer the file"path/foo/file", the directories "path" and "path/foo" are implied when --relative is used. If"path/foo" is a symlink to "bar" on the destination system, the receiving rsync would ordinarily delete"path/foo", recreate it as a directory, and receive the file into the new directory. With


                            rsync --no-implied-dirs ...

-b

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


                            rsync -b ...

--backup-dir

Note that if you don’t specify --backup-dir, (1) the --omit-dir-times option will be implied, and (2)if --delete is also in effect (without --delete-excluded), rsync will add a "protect" filter-rule forthe backup suffix to the end of all your existing excludes (e.g. -f "P *~"). This will prevent previ‐ously backed-up files from being deleted. Note that if you are supplying your own filter rules, youmay need to manually insert your own exclude/protect rule somewhere higher up in the list so that ithas a high enough priority to be effective (e.g., if your rules specify a trailing inclusion/exclusionof ’*’, the auto-added rule would never be reached).


                            rsync --backup-dir ...

--suffix

This option allows you to override the default backup suffix used with the --backup (-b) option. Thedefault suffix is a ~ if no --backup-dir was specified, otherwise it is an empty string.


                            rsync --suffix ...

-u

This forces rsync to skip any files which exist on the destination and have a modified time that isnewer than the source file. (If an existing destination file has a modification time equal to thesource file’s, it will be updated if the sizes are different.)Note that this does not affect the copying of dirs, symlinks, or other special files. Also, a differ‐ence of file format between the sender and receiver is always considered to be important enough for anupdate, no matter what date is on the objects. In other words, if the source has a directory where thedestination has a file, the transfer would occur regardless of the timestamps.This option is a transfer rule, not an exclude, so it doesn’t affect the data that goes into thefile-lists, and thus it doesn’t affect deletions. It just limits the files that the receiver requeststo be transferred.


                            rsync -u ...

--inplace

This option changes how rsync transfers a file when its data needs to be updated: instead of thedefault method of creating a new copy of the file and moving it into place when it is complete, rsyncinstead writes the updated data directly to the destination file.This has several effects:o Hard links are not broken. This means the new data will be visible through other hard links tothe destination file. Moreover, attempts to copy differing source files onto a multiply-linkeddestination file will result in a "tug of war" with the destination data changing back andforth.o In-use binaries cannot be updated (either the OS will prevent this from happening, or binariesthat attempt to swap-in their data will misbehave or crash).o The file’s data will be in an inconsistent state during the transfer and will be left that wayif the transfer is interrupted or if an update fails.o A file that rsync cannot write to cannot be updated. While a super user can update any file, anormal user needs to be granted write permission for the open of the file for writing to be suc‐cessful.o The efficiency of rsync’s delta-transfer algorithm may be reduced if some data in the destina‐tion file is overwritten before it can be copied to a position later in the file. This does notapply if you use --backup, since rsync is smart enough to use the backup file as the basis filefor the transfer.WARNING: you should not use this option to update files that are being accessed by others, so be care‐ful when choosing to use this for a copy.This option is useful for transferring large files with block-based changes or appended data, and alsoon systems that are disk bound, not network bound. It can also help keep a copy-on-write filesystemsnapshot from diverging the entire contents of a file that only has minor changes.The option implies --partial (since an interrupted transfer does not delete the file), but conflictswith --partial-dir and --delay-updates. Prior to rsync 2.6.4 --inplace was also incompatible with


                            rsync --inplace ...

--compare-dest

and --link-dest.


                            rsync --compare-dest ...

--append

This causes rsync to update a file by appending data onto the end of the file, which presumes that thedata that already exists on the receiving side is identical with the start of the file on the sendingside. If a file needs to be transferred and its size on the receiver is the same or longer than thesize on the sender, the file is skipped. This does not interfere with the updating of a file’snon-content attributes (e.g. permissions, ownership, etc.) when the file does not need to be trans‐ferred, nor does it affect the updating of any non-regular files. Implies --inplace, but does not con‐flict with --sparse (since it is always extending a file’s length).The use of --append can be dangerous if you aren’t 100% sure that the files that are longer have onlygrown by the appending of data onto the end. You should thus use include/exclude/filter rules toensure that such a transfer is only affecting files that you know to be growing via appended data.


                            rsync --append ...

--append-verify

This works just like the --append option, but the existing data on the receiving side is included inthe full-file checksum verification step, which will cause a file to be resent if the final verifica‐tion step fails (rsync uses a normal, non-appending --inplace transfer for the resend).Note: prior to rsync 3.0.0, the --append option worked like --append-verify, so if you are interactingwith an older rsync (or the transfer is using a protocol prior to 30), specifying either append optionwill initiate an --append-verify transfer.


                            rsync --append-verify ...

-d

Tell the sending side to include any directories that are encountered. Unlike --recursive, a direc‐tory’s contents are not copied unless the directory name specified is "." or ends with a trailing slash(e.g. ".", "dir/.", "dir/", etc.). Without this option or the --recursive option, rsync will skip alldirectories it encounters (and output a message to that effect for each one). If you specify both


                            rsync -d ...

--dirs

The --dirs option is implied by the --files-from option or the --list-only option (including an implied


                            rsync --dirs ...

-l

When symlinks are encountered, recreate the symlink on the destination.


                            rsync -l ...

-L

When symlinks are encountered, the item that they point to (the referent) is copied, rather than thesymlink. In older versions of rsync, this option also had the side-effect of telling the receivingside to follow symlinks, such as symlinks to directories. In a modern rsync such as this one, you’llneed to specify --keep-dirlinks (-K) to get this extra behavior. The only exception is when sendingfiles to an rsync that is too old to understand -K -- in that case, the -L option will still have theside-effect of -K on that older receiving rsync.


                            rsync -L ...

--copy-unsafe-links

This tells rsync to copy the referent of symbolic links that point outside the copied tree. Absolutesymlinks are also treated like ordinary files, and so are any symlinks in the source path itself when


                            rsync --copy-unsafe-links ...

--relative

is used. This option has no additional effect if --copy-links was also specified.


                            rsync --relative ...

--safe-links

This tells rsync to ignore any symbolic links which point outside the copied tree. All absolute sym‐links are also ignored. Using this option in conjunction with --relative may give unexpected results.


                            rsync --safe-links ...

--munge-links

This option tells rsync to (1) modify all symlinks on the receiving side in a way that makes them unus‐able but recoverable (see below), or (2) to unmunge symlinks on the sending side that had been storedin a munged state. This is useful if you don’t quite trust the source of the data to not try to slipin a symlink to a unexpected place.The way rsync disables the use of symlinks is to prefix each one with the string "/rsyncd-munged/".This prevents the links from being used as long as that directory does not exist. When this option isenabled, rsync will refuse to run if that path is a directory or a symlink to a directory.The option only affects the client side of the transfer, so if you need it to affect the server, spec‐ify it via --remote-option. (Note that in a local transfer, the client side is the sender.)This option has no affect on a daemon, since the daemon configures whether it wants munged symlinks viaits "munge symlinks" parameter. See also the "munge-symlinks" perl script in the support directory ofthe source code.


                            rsync --munge-links ...

-k

This option causes the sending side to treat a symlink to a directory as though it were a real direc‐tory. This is useful if you don’t want symlinks to non-directories to be affected, as they would beusing --copy-links.Without this option, if the sending side has replaced a directory with a symlink to a directory, thereceiving side will delete anything that is in the way of the new symlink, including a directory hier‐archy (as long as --force or --delete is in effect).See also --keep-dirlinks for an analogous option for the receiving side.


                            rsync -k ...

-K

This option causes the receiving side to treat a symlink to a directory as though it were a real direc‐tory, but only if it matches a real directory from the sender. Without this option, the receiver’ssymlink would be deleted and replaced with a real directory.For example, suppose you transfer a directory "foo" that contains a file "file", but "foo" is a symlinkto directory "bar" on the receiver. Without --keep-dirlinks, the receiver deletes symlink "foo",recreates it as a directory, and receives the file into the new directory. With --keep-dirlinks, thereceiver keeps the symlink and "file" ends up in "bar".One note of caution: if you use --keep-dirlinks, you must trust all the symlinks in the copy! If itis possible for an untrusted user to create their own symlink to any directory, the user could then (ona subsequent copy) replace the symlink with a real directory and affect the content of whatever direc‐tory the symlink references. For backup copies, you are better off using something like a bind mountinstead of a symlink to modify your receiving hierarchy.See also --copy-dirlinks for an analogous option for the sending side.


                            rsync -K ...

-H

This tells rsync to look for hard-linked files in the source and link together the corresponding fileson the destination. Without this option, hard-linked files in the source are treated as though theywere separate files.This option does NOT necessarily ensure that the pattern of hard links on the destination exactlymatches that on the source. Cases in which the destination may end up with extra hard links includethe following:o If the destination contains extraneous hard-links (more linking than what is present in thesource file list), the copying algorithm will not break them explicitly. However, if one ormore of the paths have content differences, the normal file-update process will break thoseextra links (unless you are using the --inplace option).o If you specify a --link-dest directory that contains hard links, the linking of the destinationfiles against the --link-dest files can cause some paths in the destination to become linkedtogether due to the --link-dest associations.Note that rsync can only detect hard links between files that are inside the transfer set. If rsyncupdates a file that has extra hard-link connections to files outside the transfer, that linkage will bebroken. If you are tempted to use the --inplace option to avoid this breakage, be very careful thatyou know how your files are being updated so that you are certain that no unintended changes happen dueto lingering hard links (and see the --inplace option for more caveats).If incremental recursion is active (see --recursive), rsync may transfer a missing hard-linked filebefore it finds that another link for that contents exists elsewhere in the hierarchy. This does notaffect the accuracy of the transfer (i.e. which files are hard-linked together), just its efficiency(i.e. copying the data for a new, early copy of a hard-linked file that could have been found later inthe transfer in another member of the hard-linked set of files). One way to avoid this inefficiency isto disable incremental recursion using the --no-inc-recursive option.


                            rsync -H ...

-p

This option causes the receiving rsync to set the destination permissions to be the same as the sourcepermissions. (See also the --chmod option for a way to modify what rsync considers to be the sourcepermissions.)When this option is off, permissions are set as follows:o Existing files (including updated files) retain their existing permissions, though the --exe‐cutability option might change just the execute permission for the file.o New files get their "normal" permission bits set to the source file’s permissions masked withthe receiving directory’s default permissions (either the receiving process’s umask, or the per‐missions specified via the destination directory’s default ACL), and their special permissionbits disabled except in the case where a new directory inherits a setgid bit from its parentdirectory.Thus, when --perms and --executability are both disabled, rsync’s behavior is the same as that of otherfile-copy utilities, such as cp(1) and tar(1).In summary: to give destination files (both old and new) the source permissions, use --perms. To givenew files the destination-default permissions (while leaving existing files unchanged), make sure thatthe --perms option is off and use --chmod=ugo=rwX (which ensures that all non-masked bits get enabled).If you’d care to make this latter behavior easier to type, you could define a popt alias for it, suchas putting this line in the file ~/.popt (the following defines the -Z option, and includes --no-g touse the default group of the destination dir):rsync alias -Z --no-p --no-g --chmod=ugo=rwXYou could then use this new option in a command such as this one:rsync -avZ src/ dest/(Caveat: make sure that -a does not follow -Z, or it will re-enable the two "--no-*" options mentionedabove.)The preservation of the destination’s setgid bit on newly-created directories when --perms is off wasadded in rsync 2.6.7. Older rsync versions erroneously preserved the three special permission bits fornewly-created files when --perms was off, while overriding the destination’s setgid bit setting on anewly-created directory. Default ACL observance was added to the ACL patch for rsync 2.6.7, so older(or non-ACL-enabled) rsyncs use the umask even if default ACLs are present. (Keep in mind that it isthe version of the receiving rsync that affects these behaviors.)


                            rsync -p ...

-E

This option causes rsync to preserve the executability (or non-executability) of regular files when


                            rsync -E ...

-A

This option causes rsync to update the destination ACLs to be the same as the source ACLs. The optionalso implies --perms.The source and destination systems must have compatible ACL entries for this option to work properly.See the --fake-super option for a way to backup and restore ACLs that are not compatible.


                            rsync -A ...

-X

This option causes rsync to update the destination extended attributes to be the same as the sourceones.For systems that support extended-attribute namespaces, a copy being done by a super-user copies allnamespaces except system.*. A normal user only copies the user.* namespace. To be able to backup andrestore non-user namespaces as a normal user, see the --fake-super option.Note that this option does not copy rsyncs special xattr values (e.g. those used by --fake-super)unless you repeat the option (e.g. -XX). This "copy all xattrs" mode cannot be used with --fake-super.


                            rsync -X ...

--chmod

This option tells rsync to apply one or more comma-separated "chmod" modes to the permission of thefiles in the transfer. The resulting value is treated as though it were the permissions that the send‐ing side supplied for the file, which means that this option can seem to have no effect on existingfiles if --perms is not enabled.In addition to the normal parsing rules specified in the chmod(1) manpage, you can specify an item thatshould only apply to a directory by prefixing it with a ’D’, or specify an item that should only applyto a file by prefixing it with a ’F’. For example, the following will ensure that all directories getmarked set-gid, that no files are other-writable, that both are user-writable and group-writable, andthat both have consistent executability across all bits:


                            rsync --chmod ...

-o

This option causes rsync to set the owner of the destination file to be the same as the source file,but only if the receiving rsync is being run as the super-user (see also the --super and --fake-superoptions). Without this option, the owner of new and/or transferred files are set to the invoking useron the receiving side.The preservation of ownership will associate matching names by default, but may fall back to using theID number in some circumstances (see also the --numeric-ids option for a full discussion).


                            rsync -o ...

-g

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 (or if --no-super was specified), only groupsthat the invoking user on the receiving side is a member of will be preserved. Without this option,the group is set to the default group of the invoking user on the receiving side.The preservation of group information will associate matching names by default, but may fall back tousing the ID number in some circumstances (see also the --numeric-ids option for a full discussion).


                            rsync -g ...

--devices

This option causes rsync to transfer character and block device files to the remote system to recreatethese devices. This option has no effect if the receiving rsync is not run as the super-user (see alsothe --super and --fake-super options).


                            rsync --devices ...

--specials

This option causes rsync to transfer special files such as named sockets and fifos.


                            rsync --specials ...

-D

The -D option is equivalent to --devices --specials.


                            rsync -D ...

-t

This tells rsync to transfer modification times along with the files and update them on the remote sys‐tem. Note that if this option is not used, the optimization that excludes files that have not beenmodified cannot be effective; in other words, a missing -t or -a will cause the next transfer to behaveas if it used -I, causing all files to be updated (though rsync’s delta-transfer algorithm will makethe update fairly efficient if the files haven’t actually changed, you’re much better off using -t).


                            rsync -t ...

-O

This tells rsync to omit directories when it is preserving modification times (see --times). If NFS issharing the directories on the receiving side, it is a good idea to use -O. This option is inferred ifyou use --backup without --backup-dir.This option also has the side-effect of avoiding early creation of directories in incremental recursioncopies. The default --inc-recursive copying normally does an early-create pass of all the sub-directo‐ries in a parent directory in order for it to be able to then set the modify time of the parent direc‐tory right away (without having to delay that until a bunch of recursive copying has finished). Thisearly-create idiom is not necessary if directory modify times are not being preserved, so it isskipped. Since early-create directories don’t have accurate mode, mtime, or ownership, the use of thisoption can help when someone wants to avoid these partially-finished directories.


                            rsync -O ...

-J

This tells rsync to omit symlinks when it is preserving modification times (see --times).


                            rsync -J ...

--super

This tells the receiving side to attempt super-user activities even if the receiving rsync wasn’t runby the super-user. These activities include: preserving users via the --owner option, preserving allgroups (not just the current user’s groups) via the --groups option, and copying devices via the


                            rsync --super ...

--fake-super

When this option is enabled, rsync simulates super-user activities by saving/restoring the privilegedattributes via special extended attributes that are attached to each file (as needed). This includesthe file’s owner and group (if it is not the default), the file’s device info (device & special filesare created as empty text files), and any permission bits that we won’t allow to be set on the realfile (e.g. the real file gets u-s,g-s,o-t for safety) or that would limit the owner’s access (sincethe real super-user can always access/change a file, the files we create can always be accessed/changedby the creating user). This option also handles ACLs (if --acls was specified) and non-user extendedattributes (if --xattrs was specified).This is a good way to backup data without using a super-user, and to store ACLs from incompatible sys‐tems.The --fake-super option only affects the side where the option is used. To affect the remote side of aremote-shell connection, use the --remote-option (-M) option:rsync -av -M--fake-super /src/ host:/dest/For a local copy, this option affects both the source and the destination. If you wish a local copy toenable this option just for the destination files, specify -M--fake-super. If you wish a local copy toenable this option just for the source files, combine --fake-super with -M--super.This option is overridden by both --super and --no-super.See also the "fake super" setting in the daemon’s rsyncd.conf file.


                            rsync --fake-super ...

-S

Try to handle sparse files efficiently so they take up less space on the destination. Conflicts with


                            rsync -S ...

--preallocate

This tells the receiver to allocate each destination file to its eventual size before writing data tothe file. Rsync will only use the real filesystem-level preallocation support provided by Linux’s fal‐locate(2) system call or Cygwin’s posix_fallocate(3), not the slow glibc implementation that writes azero byte into each block.Without this option, larger files may not be entirely contiguous on the filesystem, but with thisoption rsync will probably copy more slowly. If the destination is not an extent-supporting filesystem(such as ext4, xfs, NTFS, etc.), this option may have no positive effect at all.


                            rsync --preallocate ...

-n

This makes rsync perform a trial run that doesn’t make any changes (and produces mostly the same outputas a real run). It is most commonly used in combination with the -v, --verbose and/or -i, --item‐ize-changes options to see what an rsync command is going to do before one actually runs it.The output of --itemize-changes is supposed to be exactly the same on a dry run and a subsequent realrun (barring intentional trickery and system call failures); if it isn’t, that’s a bug. Other outputshould be mostly unchanged, but may differ in some areas. Notably, a dry run does not send the actualdata for file transfers, so --progress has no effect, the "bytes sent", "bytes received", "literaldata", and "matched data" statistics are too small, and the "speedup" value is equivalent to a runwhere no file transfers were needed.


                            rsync -n ...

-W

With this option rsync’s delta-transfer 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 destinationmachines is higher than the bandwidth to disk (especially when the "disk" is actually a networkedfilesystem). This is the default when both the source and destination are specified as local paths,but only if no batch-writing option is in effect.


                            rsync -W ...

-x

This tells rsync to avoid crossing a filesystem boundary when recursing. This does not limit theuser’s ability to specify items to copy from multiple filesystems, just rsync’s recursion through thehierarchy of each directory that the user specified, and also the analogous recursion on the receivingside during deletion. Also keep in mind that rsync treats a "bind" mount to the same device as beingon the same filesystem.If this option is repeated, rsync omits all mount-point directories from the copy. Otherwise, itincludes an empty directory at each mount-point it encounters (using the attributes of the mounteddirectory because those of the underlying mount-point directory are inaccessible).If rsync has been told to collapse symlinks (via --copy-links or --copy-unsafe-links), a symlink to adirectory on another device is treated like a mount-point. Symlinks to non-directories are unaffectedby this option.


                            rsync -x ...

--existing

This tells rsync to skip creating files (including directories) that do not exist yet on the destina‐tion. If this option is combined with the --ignore-existing option, no files will be updated (whichcan be useful if all you want to do is delete extraneous files).This option is a transfer rule, not an exclude, so it doesn’t affect the data that goes into thefile-lists, and thus it doesn’t affect deletions. It just limits the files that the receiver requeststo be transferred.


                            rsync --existing ...

--ignore-existing

This tells rsync to skip updating files that already exist on the destination (this does not ignoreexisting directories, or nothing would get done). See also --existing.This option is a transfer rule, not an exclude, so it doesn’t affect the data that goes into thefile-lists, and thus it doesn’t affect deletions. It just limits the files that the receiver requeststo be transferred.This option can be useful for those doing backups using the --link-dest option when they need to con‐tinue a backup run that got interrupted. Since a --link-dest run is copied into a new directory hier‐archy (when it is used properly), using --ignore existing will ensure that the already-handled filesdon’t get tweaked (which avoids a change in permissions on the hard-linked files). This does mean thatthis option is only looking at the existing files in the destination hierarchy itself.


                            rsync --ignore-existing ...

--remove-source-files

This tells rsync to remove from the sending side the files (meaning non-directories) that are a part ofthe 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 tomove files that show up in a particular directory over to another host, make sure that the finishedfiles get renamed into the source directory, not directly written into it, so that rsync can’t possiblytransfer a file that is not yet fully written. If you can’t first write the files into a differentdirectory, you should use a naming idiom that lets rsync avoid transferring files that are not yet fin‐ished (e.g. name the file "foo.new" when it is written, rename it to "foo" when it is done, and thenuse the option --exclude='*.new' for the rsync transfer).Starting with 3.1.0, rsync will skip the sender-side removal (and output an error) if the file’s sizeor modify time has not stayed unchanged.


                            rsync --remove-source-files ...

--delete

This tells rsync to delete extraneous files from the receiving side (ones that aren’t on the sendingside), but only for the directories that are being synchronized. You must have asked rsync to send thewhole directory (e.g. "dir" or "dir/") without using a wildcard for the directory’s contents (e.g."dir/*") since the wildcard is expanded by the shell and rsync thus gets a request to transfer individ‐ual files, not the files’ parent directory. Files that are excluded from the transfer are alsoexcluded from being deleted unless you use the --delete-excluded option or mark the rules as onlymatching on the sending side (see the include/exclude modifiers in the FILTER RULES section).Prior to rsync 2.6.7, this option would have no effect unless --recursive was enabled. Beginning with2.6.7, deletions will also occur when --dirs (-d) is enabled, but only for directories whose contentsare being copied.This option can be dangerous if used incorrectly! It is a very good idea to first try a run using the


                            rsync --delete ...

--dry-run

If the sending side detects any I/O errors, then the deletion of any files at the destination will beautomatically disabled. This is to prevent temporary filesystem failures (such as NFS errors) on thesending side from causing a massive deletion of files on the destination. You can override this withthe --ignore-errors option.The --delete option may be combined with one of the --delete-WHEN options without conflict, as well as


                            rsync --dry-run ...

--delete-excluded.

if none of the --delete-WHEN options are specified rsync will choose the


                            rsync --delete-excluded. ...

--delete-before

Request that the file-deletions on the receiving side be done before the transfer starts. See --delete(which is implied) for more details on file-deletion.Deleting before the transfer is helpful if the filesystem is tight for space and removing extraneousfiles would help to make the transfer possible. However, it does introduce a delay before the start ofthe transfer, and this delay might cause the transfer to timeout (if --timeout was specified). It alsoforces rsync to use the old, non-incremental recursion algorithm that requires rsync to scan all thefiles in the transfer into memory at once (see --recursive).


                            rsync --delete-before ...

--delete-during

Request that the file-deletions on the receiving side be done incrementally as the transfer happens.The per-directory delete scan is done right before each directory is checked for updates, so it behaveslike a more efficient --delete-before, including doing the deletions prior to any per-directory filterfiles being updated. This option was first added in rsync version 2.6.4. See --delete (which isimplied) for more details on file-deletion.


                            rsync --delete-during ...

--delete-delay

Request that the file-deletions on the receiving side be computed during the transfer (like


                            rsync --delete-delay ...

--delete-during)

and then removed after the transfer completes. This is useful when combined with


                            rsync --delete-during) ...

--delete-after

Request that the file-deletions on the receiving side be done after the transfer has completed. Thisis useful if you are sending new per-directory merge files as a part of the transfer and you want theirexclusions to take effect for the delete phase of the current transfer. It also forces rsync to usethe old, non-incremental recursion algorithm that requires rsync to scan all the files in the transferinto memory at once (see --recursive). See --delete (which is implied) for more details on file-dele‐tion.


                            rsync --delete-after ...

--delete-excluded

In addition to deleting the files on the receiving side that are not on the sending side, this tellsrsync to also delete any files on the receiving side that are excluded (see --exclude). See the FILTERRULES section for a way to make individual exclusions behave this way on the receiver, and for a way toprotect files from --delete-excluded. See --delete (which is implied) for more details on file-dele‐tion.


                            rsync --delete-excluded ...

--ignore-missing-args

When rsync is first processing the explicitly requested source files (e.g. command-line arguments or


                            rsync --ignore-missing-args ...

--delete-missing-args

This option takes the behavior of (the implied) --ignore-missing-args option a step farther: eachmissing arg will become a deletion request of the corresponding destination file on the receiving side(should it exist). If the destination file is a non-empty directory, it will only be successfullydeleted if --force or --delete are in effect. Other than that, this option is independent of any othertype of delete processing.The missing source files are represented by special file-list entries which display as a "*missing"entry in the --list-only output.


                            rsync --delete-missing-args ...

--ignore-errors

Tells --delete to go ahead and delete files even when there are I/O errors.


                            rsync --ignore-errors ...

--force

This option tells rsync to delete a non-empty directory when it is to be replaced by a non-directory.This is only relevant if deletions are not active (see --delete for details).Note for older rsync versions: --force used to still be required when using --delete-after, and it usedto be non-functional unless the --recursive option was also enabled.


                            rsync --force ...

--max-delete

This tells rsync not to delete more than NUM files or directories. If that limit is exceeded, all fur‐ther deletions are skipped through the end of the transfer. At the end, rsync outputs a warning(including a count of the skipped deletions) and exits with an error code of 25 (unless some moreimportant error condition also occurred).Beginning with version 3.0.0, you may specify --max-delete=0 to be warned about any extraneous files inthe destination without removing any of them. Older clients interpreted this as "unlimited", so if youdon’t know what version the client is, you can use the less obvious --max-delete=-1 as a backward-com‐patible way to specify that no deletions be allowed (though really old versions didn’t warn when thelimit was exceeded).


                            rsync --max-delete ...

--max-size

This tells rsync to avoid transferring any file that is larger than the specified SIZE. The SIZE valuecan be suffixed with a string to indicate a size multiplier, and may be a fractional value (e.g.


                            rsync --max-size ...

--min-size

This tells rsync to avoid transferring any file that is smaller than the specified SIZE, which can helpin not transferring small, junk files. See the --max-size option for a description of SIZE and otherinformation.Note that rsync versions prior to 3.1.0 did not allow --min-size=0.


                            rsync --min-size ...

-B

This forces the block size used in rsync’s delta-transfer algorithm to a fixed value. It is normallyselected based on the size of each file being updated. See the technical report for details.


                            rsync -B ...

-e

This option allows you to choose an alternative remote shell program to use for communication betweenthe local and remote copies of rsync. Typically, rsync is configured to use ssh by default, but you mayprefer 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 runan rsync daemon on the remote host, and all data will be transmitted through that remote shell connec‐tion, rather than through a direct socket connection to a running rsync daemon on the remote host. Seethe section "USING RSYNC-DAEMON FEATURES VIA A REMOTE-SHELL CONNECTION" above.Command-line arguments are permitted in COMMAND provided that COMMAND is presented to rsync as a singleargument. You must use spaces (not tabs or other whitespace) to separate the command and args fromeach other, and you can use single- and/or double-quotes to preserve spaces in an argument (but notbackslashes). Note that doubling a single-quote inside a single-quoted string gives you a sin‐gle-quote; likewise for double-quotes (though you need to pay attention to which quotes your shell isparsing and which quotes rsync is parsing). Some examples:


                            rsync -e ...

--rsync-path

Use this to specify what program is to be run on the remote machine to start-up rsync. Often used whenrsync is not in the default remote-shell’s path (e.g. --rsync-path=/usr/local/bin/rsync). Note thatPROGRAM is run with the help of a shell, so it can be any program, script, or command sequence you’dcare to run, so long as it does not corrupt the standard-in & standard-out that rsync is using to com‐municate.One tricky example is to set a different default directory on the remote machine for use with the


                            rsync --rsync-path ...

-M

This option is used for more advanced situations where you want certain effects to be limited to oneside of the transfer only. For instance, if you want to pass --log-file=FILE and --fake-super to theremote system, specify it like this:rsync -av -M --log-file=foo -M--fake-super src/ dest/If you want to have an option affect only the local side of a transfer when it normally affects bothsides, send its negation to the remote side. Like this:rsync -av -x -M--no-x src/ dest/Be cautious using this, as it is possible to toggle an option that will cause rsync to have a differentidea about what data to expect next over the socket, and that will make it fail in a cryptic fashion.Note that it is best to use a separate --remote-option for each option you want to pass. This makesyour useage compatible with the --protect-args option. If that option is off, any spaces in yourremote options will be split by the remote shell unless you take steps to protect them.When performing a local transfer, the "local" side is the sender and the "remote" side is the receiver.Note some versions of the popt option-parsing library have a bug in them that prevents you from usingan adjacent arg with an equal in it next to a short option letter (e.g. -M--log-file=/tmp/foo. If thisbug affects your version of popt, you can use the version of popt that is included with rsync.


                            rsync -M ...

-C

This is a useful shorthand for excluding a broad range of files that you often don’t want to transferbetween systems. It uses a similar algorithm to CVS to determine if a file should be ignored.The exclude list is initialized to exclude the following items (these initial items are marked as per‐ishable -- see the FILTER RULES section):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/.git/ .hg/ .bzr/then, files listed in a $HOME/.cvsignore are added to the list and any files listed in the CVSIGNOREenvironment 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 thepatterns listed therein. Unlike rsync’s filter/exclude files, these patterns are split on whitespace.See the cvs(1) manual for more information.If you’re combining -C with your own --filter rules, you should note that these CVS excludes areappended at the end of your own rules, regardless of where the -C was placed on the command-line. Thismakes them a lower priority than any rules you specified explicitly. If you want to control wherethese CVS excludes get inserted into your filter rules, you should omit the -C as a command-line optionand use a combination of --filter=:C and --filter=-C (either on your command-line or by putting the":C" and "-C" rules into a filter file with your other rules). The first option turns on theper-directory scanning for the .cvsignore file. The second option does a one-time import of the CVSexcludes mentioned above.


                            rsync -C ...

-f

This option allows you to add rules to selectively exclude certain files from the list of files to betransferred. This is most useful in combination with a recursive transfer.You may use as many --filter options on the command line as you like to build up the list of files toexclude. If the filter contains whitespace, be sure to quote it so that the shell gives the rule torsync as a single argument. The text below also mentions that you can use an underscore to replace thespace that separates a rule from its arg.See the FILTER RULES section for detailed information on this option.


                            rsync -f ...

--filter='dir-merge

This tells rsync to look for per-directory .rsync-filter files that have been sprinkled through thehierarchy and use their rules to filter the files in the transfer. If -F is repeated, it is a short‐hand for this rule:


                            rsync --filter='dir-merge ...

--filter='exclude

This filters out the .rsync-filter files themselves from the transfer.See the FILTER RULES section for detailed information on how these options work.


                            rsync --filter='exclude ...

--exclude

This option is a simplified form of the --filter option that defaults to an exclude rule and does notallow the full rule-parsing syntax of normal filter rules.See the FILTER RULES section for detailed information on this option.


                            rsync --exclude ...

--exclude-from

This option is related to the --exclude option, but it specifies a FILE that contains exclude patterns(one per line). Blank lines in the file and lines starting with ’;’ or ’#’ are ignored. If FILE is -,the list will be read from standard input.


                            rsync --exclude-from ...

--include

This option is a simplified form of the --filter option that defaults to an include rule and does notallow the full rule-parsing syntax of normal filter rules.See the FILTER RULES section for detailed information on this option.


                            rsync --include ...

--include-from

This option is related to the --include option, but it specifies a FILE that contains include patterns(one per line). Blank lines in the file and lines starting with ’;’ or ’#’ are ignored. If FILE is -,the list will be read from standard input.


                            rsync --include-from ...

--files-from

Using this option allows you to specify the exact list of files to transfer (as read from the specifiedFILE or - for standard input). It also tweaks the default behavior of rsync to make transferring justthe specified files and directories easier:o The --relative (-R) option is implied, which preserves the path information that is specifiedfor each item in the file (use --no-relative or --no-R if you want to turn that off).o The --dirs (-d) option is implied, which will create directories specified in the list on thedestination rather than noisily skipping them (use --no-dirs or --no-d if you want to turn thatoff).o The --archive (-a) option’s behavior does not imply --recursive (-r), so specify it explicitly,if you want it.o These side-effects change the default state of rsync, so the position of the --files-from optionon the command-line has no bearing on how other options are parsed (e.g. -a works the samebefore or after --files-from, as does --no-R and all other options).The filenames that are read from the FILE are all relative to the source dir -- any leading slashes areremoved and no ".." references are allowed to go higher than the source dir. For example, take thiscommand:rsync -a --files-from=/tmp/foo /usr remote:/backupIf /tmp/foo contains the string "bin" (or even "/bin"), the /usr/bin directory will be created as/backup/bin on the remote host. If it contains "bin/" (note the trailing slash), the immediate con‐tents of the directory would also be sent (without needing to be explicitly mentioned in the file --this began in version 2.6.4). In both cases, if the -r option was enabled, that dir’s entire hierarchywould also be transferred (keep in mind that -r needs to be specified explicitly with --files-from,since it is not implied by -a). Also note that the effect of the (enabled by default) --relativeoption is to duplicate only the path info that is read from the file -- it does not force the duplica‐tion 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 youspecify 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/copyThis would copy all the files specified in the /path/file-list file that was located on the remote"src" host.If the --iconv and --protect-args options are specified and the --files-from filenames are being sentfrom one host to another, the filenames will be translated from the sending host’s charset to thereceiving host’s charset.NOTE: sorting the list of files in the --files-from input helps rsync to be more efficient, as it willavoid re-visiting the path elements that are shared between adjacent entries. If the input is notsorted, some path elements (implied directories) may end up being scanned multiple times, and rsyncwill eventually unduplicate them after they get turned into file-list elements.


                            rsync --files-from ...

-0

This tells rsync that the rules/filenames it reads from a file are terminated by a null (’\0’) charac‐ter, not a NL, CR, or CR+LF. This affects --exclude-from, --include-from, --files-from, and any mergedfiles specified in a --filter rule. It does not affect --cvs-exclude (since all names read from a.cvsignore file are split on whitespace).


                            rsync -0 ...

-s

This option sends all filenames and most options to the remote rsync without allowing the remote shellto interpret them. This means that spaces are not split in names, and any non-wildcard special charac‐ters are not translated (such as ~, $, ;, &, etc.). Wildcards are expanded on the remote host by rsync(instead of the shell doing it).If you use this option with --iconv, the args related to the remote side will also be translated fromthe local to the remote character-set. The translation happens before wild-cards are expanded. Seealso the --files-from option.You may also control this option via the RSYNC_PROTECT_ARGS environment variable. If this variable hasa non-zero value, this option will be enabled by default, otherwise it will be disabled by default.Either state is overridden by a manually specified positive or negative version of this option (notethat --no-s and --no-protect-args are the negative versions). Since this option was first introducedin 3.0.0, you’ll need to make sure it’s disabled if you ever need to interact with a remote rsync thatis older than that.Rsync can also be configured (at build time) to have this option enabled by default (with is overriddenby both the environment and the command-line). This option will eventually become a new default set‐ting at some as-yet-undetermined point in the future.


                            rsync -s ...

-T

This option instructs rsync to use DIR as a scratch directory when creating temporary copies of thefiles transferred on the receiving side. The default behavior is to create each temporary file in thesame directory as the associated destination file. Beginning with rsync 3.1.1, the temp-file namesinside the specified DIR will not be prefixed with an extra dot (though they will still have a randomsuffix added).This option is most often used when the receiving disk partition does not have enough free space tohold a copy of the largest file in the transfer. In this case (i.e. when the scratch directory is on adifferent disk partition), rsync will not be able to rename each received temporary file over the topof the associated destination file, but instead must copy it into place. Rsync does this by copyingthe file over the top of the destination file, which means that the destination file will contain trun‐cated data during this copy. If this were not done this way (even if the destination file were firstremoved, the data locally copied to a temporary file in the destination directory, and then renamedinto place) it would be possible for the old file to continue taking up disk space (if someone had itopen), and thus there might not be enough room to fit the new version on the disk at the same time.If you are using this option for reasons other than a shortage of disk space, you may wish to combineit with the --delay-updates option, which will ensure that all copied files get put into subdirectoriesin the destination hierarchy, awaiting the end of the transfer. If you don’t have enough room toduplicate all the arriving files on the destination partition, another way to tell rsync that youaren’t overly concerned about disk space is to use the --partial-dir option with a relative path;because this tells rsync that it is OK to stash off a copy of a single file in a subdir in the destina‐tion hierarchy, rsync will use the partial-dir as a staging area to bring over the copied file, andthen rename it into place from there. (Specifying a --partial-dir with an absolute path does not havethis side-effect.)


                            rsync -T ...

-y

This option tells rsync that it should look for a basis file for any destination file that is missing.The current algorithm looks in the same directory as the destination file for either a file that has anidentical size and modified-time, or a similarly-named file. If found, rsync uses the fuzzy basis fileto try to speed up the transfer.If the option is repeated, the fuzzy scan will also be done in any matching alternate destinationdirectories that are specified via --compare-dest, --copy-dest, or --link-dest.Note that the use of the --delete option might get rid of any potential fuzzy-match files, so eitheruse --delete-after or specify some filename exclusions if you need to prevent this.


                            rsync -y ...

--link-dest.

NOTE: beginning with version 3.1.0, rsync will remove a file from a non-empty destination hierarchy ifan exact match is found in one of the compare-dest hierarchies (making the end result more closelymatch a fresh copy).


                            rsync --link-dest. ...

--copy-dest

This option behaves like --compare-dest, but rsync will also copy unchanged files found in DIR to thedestination directory using a local copy. This is useful for doing transfers to a new destinationwhile leaving existing files intact, and then doing a flash-cutover when all files have been success‐fully transferred.Multiple --copy-dest directories may be provided, which will cause rsync to search the list in theorder specified for an unchanged file. If a match is not found, a basis file from one of the DIRs willbe selected to try to speed up the transfer.If DIR is a relative path, it is relative to the destination directory. See also --compare-dest and


                            rsync --copy-dest ...

--link-dest

This option behaves like --copy-dest, but unchanged files are hard linked from DIR to the destinationdirectory. The files must be identical in all preserved attributes (e.g. permissions, possibly owner‐ship) in order for the files to be linked together. An example:rsync -av --link-dest=$PWD/prior_dir host:src_dir/ new_dir/If file’s aren’t linking, double-check their attributes. Also check if some attributes are gettingforced outside of rsync’s control, such a mount option that squishes root to a single user, or mounts aremovable drive with generic ownership (such as OS X’s "Ignore ownership on this volume" option).Beginning in version 2.6.4, multiple --link-dest directories may be provided, which will cause rsync tosearch the list in the order specified for an exact match. If a match is found that differs only inattributes, a local copy is made and the attributes updated. If a match is not found, a basis filefrom one of the DIRs will be selected to try to speed up the transfer.This option works best when copying into an empty destination hierarchy, as existing files may gettheir attributes tweaked, and that can affect alternate destination files via hard-links. Also, item‐izing of changes can get a bit muddled. Note that prior to version 3.1.0, an alternate-directory exactmatch would never be found (nor linked into the destination) when a destination file already exists.Note that if you combine this option with --ignore-times, rsync will not link any files togetherbecause it only links identical files together as a substitute for transferring the file, never as anadditional check after the file is updated.If DIR is a relative path, it is relative to the destination directory. See also --compare-dest and


                            rsync --link-dest ...

--copy-dest.

Note that rsync versions prior to 2.6.1 had a bug that could prevent --link-dest from working properlyfor a non-super-user when -o was specified (or implied by -a). You can work-around this bug by avoid‐ing the -o option when sending to an old rsync.


                            rsync --copy-dest. ...

-z

With this option, rsync compresses the file data as it is sent to the destination machine, whichreduces the amount of data being transmitted -- something that is useful over a slow connection.Note that this option typically achieves better compression ratios than can be achieved by using a com‐pressing remote shell or a compressing transport because it takes advantage of the implicit informationin the matching data blocks that are not explicitly sent over the connection. This matching-data com‐pression comes at a cost of CPU, though, and can be disabled by repeating the -z option, but only ifboth sides are at least version 3.1.1.Note that if your version of rsync was compiled with an external zlib (instead of the zlib that comespackaged with rsync) then it will not support the old-style compression, only the new-style(repeated-option) compression. In the future this new-style compression will likely become thedefault.The client rsync requests new-style compression on the server via the --new-compress option, so if yousee that option rejected it means that the server is not new enough to support -zz. Rsync also acceptsthe --old-compress option for a future time when new-style compression becomes the default.See the --skip-compress option for the default list of file suffixes that will not be compressed.


                            rsync -z ...

--compress-level

Explicitly set the compression level to use (see --compress) instead of letting it default. Allowedvalues for NUM are between 0 and 9; default when --compress option is specified is 6. If NUM isnon-zero, the --compress option is implied.


                            rsync --compress-level ...

--skip-compress

Override the list of file suffixes that will not be compressed. The LIST should be one or more filesuffixes (without the dot) separated by slashes (/).You may specify an empty string to indicate that no file should be skipped.Simple character-class matching is supported: each must consist of a list of letters inside the squarebrackets (e.g. no special classes, such as "[:alpha:]", are supported, and ’-’ has no special meaning).The characters asterisk (*) and question-mark (?) have no special meaning.Here’s an example that specifies 6 suffixes to skip (since 1 of the 5 rules matches 2 suffixes):


                            rsync --skip-compress ...

--numeric-ids

With this option rsync will transfer numeric group and user IDs rather than using user and group namesand mapping them at both ends.By default rsync will use the username and groupname to determine what ownership to give files. Thespecial uid 0 and the special group 0 are never mapped via user/group names even if the --numeric-idsoption is not specified.If a user or group has no name on the source system or it has no match on the destination system, thenthe numeric ID from the source system is used instead. See also the comments on the "use chroot" set‐ting in the rsyncd.conf manpage for information on how the chroot setting affects rsync’s ability tolook up the names of the users and groups and what you can do about it.


                            rsync --numeric-ids ...

--usermap

These options allow you to specify users and groups that should be mapped to other values by thereceiving side. The STRING is one or more FROM:TO pairs of values separated by commas. Any matchingFROM value from the sender is replaced with a TO value from the receiver. You may specify usernames oruser IDs for the FROM and TO values, and the FROM value may also be a wild-card string, which will bematched against the sender’s names (wild-cards do NOT match against ID numbers, though see below forwhy a ’*’ matches everything). You may instead specify a range of ID numbers via an inclusive range:LOW-HIGH. For example:


                            rsync --usermap ...

--usermap=0-99:nobody,wayne:admin,*:normal

The first match in the list is the one that is used. You should specify all your user mappings using asingle --usermap option, and/or all your group mappings using a single --groupmap option.Note that the sender’s name for the 0 user and group are not transmitted to the receiver, so you shouldeither match these values using a 0, or use the names in effect on the receiving side (typically"root"). All other FROM names match those in use on the sending side. All TO names match those in useon the receiving side.Any IDs that do not have a name on the sending side are treated as having an empty name for the purposeof matching. This allows them to be matched via a "*" or using an empty name. For instance:


                            rsync --usermap=0-99:nobody,wayne:admin,*:normal ...

--chown

This option forces all files to be owned by USER with group GROUP. This is a simpler interface thanusing --usermap and --groupmap directly, but it is implemented using those options internally, so youcannot mix them. If either the USER or GROUP is empty, no mapping for the omitted user/group willoccur. If GROUP is empty, the trailing colon may be omitted, but if USER is empty, a leading colonmust be supplied.If you specify "--chown=foo:bar, this is exactly the same as specifying "--usermap=*:foo


                            rsync --chown ...

--timeout

This option allows you to set a maximum I/O timeout in seconds. If no data is transferred for the spec‐ified time then rsync will exit. The default is 0, which means no timeout.


                            rsync --timeout ...

--contimeout

This option allows you to set the amount of time that rsync will wait for its connection to an rsyncdaemon to succeed. If the timeout is reached, rsync exits with an error.


                            rsync --contimeout ...

--address

By default rsync will bind to the wildcard address when connecting to an rsync daemon. The --addressoption allows you to specify a specific IP address (or hostname) to bind to. See also this option inthe --daemon mode section.


                            rsync --address ...

--port

This specifies an alternate TCP port number to use rather than the default of 873. This is only neededif you are using the double-colon (::) syntax to connect with an rsync daemon (since the URL syntax hasa way to specify the port as a part of the URL). See also this option in the --daemon mode section.


                            rsync --port ...

--sockopts

This option can provide endless fun for people who like to tune their systems to the utmost degree. Youcan set all sorts of socket options which may make transfers faster (or slower!). Read the man page forthe setsockopt() system call for details on some of the options you may be able to set. By default nospecial socket options are set. This only affects direct socket connections to a remote rsync daemon.This option also exists in the --daemon mode section.


                            rsync --sockopts ...

--blocking-io

This tells rsync to use blocking I/O when launching a remote shell transport. If the remote shell iseither rsh or remsh, rsync defaults to using blocking I/O, otherwise it defaults to using non-blockingI/O. (Note that ssh prefers non-blocking I/O.)


                            rsync --blocking-io ...

--outbuf

This sets the output buffering mode. The mode can be None (aka Unbuffered), Line, or Block (aka Full).You may specify as little as a single letter for the mode, and use upper or lower case.The main use of this option is to change Full buffering to Line buffering when rsync’s output is goingto a file or pipe.


                            rsync --outbuf ...

-i

Requests a simple itemized list of the changes that are being made to each file, including attributechanges. This is exactly the same as specifying --out-format='%i %n%L'. If you repeat the option,unchanged files will also be output, but only if the receiving rsync is at least version 2.6.7 (you canuse -vv with older versions of rsync, but that also turns on the output of other verbose messages).The "%i" escape has a cryptic output that is 11 letters long. The general format is like the stringYXcstpoguax, where Y is replaced by the type of update being done, X is replaced by the file-type, andthe other letters represent attributes that may be output if they are being modified.The update types that replace the Y are as follows:o A < means that a file is being transferred to the remote host (sent).o A > means that a file is being transferred to the local host (received).o A c means that a local change/creation is occurring for the item (such as the creation of adirectory or the changing of a symlink, etc.).o A h means that the item is a hard link to another item (requires --hard-links).o A . means that the item is not being updated (though it might have attributes that are beingmodified).o A * means that the rest of the itemized-output area contains a message (e.g. "deleting").The file-types that replace the X are: f for a file, a d for a directory, an L for a symlink, a D for adevice, and a S for a special file (e.g. named sockets and fifos).The other letters in the string above are the actual letters that will be output if the associatedattribute for the item is being updated or a "." for no change. Three exceptions to this are: (1) anewly created item replaces each letter with a "+", (2) an identical item replaces the dots with spa‐ces, and (3) an unknown attribute replaces each letter with a "?" (this can happen when talking to anolder rsync).The attribute that is associated with each letter is as follows:o A c means either that a regular file has a different checksum (requires --checksum) or that asymlink, device, or special file has a changed value. Note that if you are sending files to anrsync prior to 3.0.1, this change flag will be present only for checksum-differing regularfiles.o A s means the size of a regular file is different and will be updated by the file transfer.o A t means the modification time is different and is being updated to the sender’s value(requires --times). An alternate value of T means that the modification time will be set to thetransfer time, which happens when a file/symlink/device is updated without --times and when asymlink is changed and the receiver can’t set its time. (Note: when using an rsync 3.0.0client, you might see the s flag combined with t instead of the proper T flag for this time-set‐ting failure.)o A p means the permissions are different and are being updated to the sender’s value (requires


                            rsync -i ...

--perms).

o An o means the owner is different and is being updated to the sender’s value (requires --ownerand super-user privileges).o A g means the group is different and is being updated to the sender’s value (requires --groupand the authority to set the group).o The u slot is reserved for future use.o The a means that the ACL information changed.o The x means that the extended attribute information changed.One other output is possible: when deleting files, the "%i" will output the string "*deleting" foreach item that is being removed (assuming that you are talking to a recent enough rsync that it logsdeletions instead of outputting them as a verbose message).


                            rsync --perms). ...

--out-format

This allows you to specify exactly what the rsync client outputs to the user on a per-update basis.The format is a text string containing embedded single-character escape sequences prefixed with a per‐cent (%) character. A default format of "%n%L" is assumed if either --info=name or -v is specified(this tells you just the name of the file and, if the item is a link, where it points). For a fulllist of the possible escape characters, see the "log format" setting in the rsyncd.conf manpage.Specifying the --out-format option implies the --info=name option, which will mention each file, dir,etc. that gets updated in a significant way (a transferred file, a recreated symlink/device, or atouched directory). In addition, if the itemize-changes escape (%i) is included in the string (e.g. ifthe --itemize-changes option was used), the logging of names increases to mention any item that ischanged in any way (as long as the receiving side is at least 2.6.4). See the --itemize-changes optionfor a description of the output of "%i".Rsync will output the out-format string prior to a file’s transfer unless one of the transfer-statisticescapes is requested, in which case the logging is done at the end of the file’s transfer. When thislate logging is in effect and --progress is also specified, rsync will also output the name of the filebeing transferred prior to its progress information (followed, of course, by the out-format output).


                            rsync --out-format ...

--log-file

This option causes rsync to log what it is doing to a file. This is similar to the logging that a dae‐mon does, but can be requested for the client side and/or the server side of a non-daemon transfer. Ifspecified as a client option, transfer logging will be enabled with a default format of "%i %n%L". Seethe --log-file-format option if you wish to override this.Here’s a example command that requests the remote side to log what is happening:rsync -av --remote-option=--log-file=/tmp/rlog src/ dest/This is very useful if you need to debug why a connection is closing unexpectedly.


                            rsync --log-file ...

--log-file-format

This allows you to specify exactly what per-update logging is put into the file specified by the


                            rsync --log-file-format ...

--stats

This tells rsync to print a verbose set of statistics on the file transfer, allowing you to tell howeffective rsync’s delta-transfer algorithm is for your data. This option is equivalent to


                            rsync --stats ...

-8

This tells rsync to leave all high-bit characters unescaped in the output instead of trying to testthem to see if they’re valid in the current locale and escaping the invalid ones. All control charac‐ters (but never tabs) are always escaped, regardless of this option’s setting.The escape idiom that started in 2.6.7 is to output a literal backslash (\) and a hash (#), followed byexactly 3 octal digits. For example, a newline would output as "\#012". A literal backslash that isin a filename is not escaped unless it is followed by a hash and 3 digits (0-9).


                            rsync -8 ...

-h

Output numbers in a more human-readable format. There are 3 possible levels: (1) output numbers witha separator between each set of 3 digits (either a comma or a period, depending on if the decimal pointis represented by a period or a comma); (2) output numbers in units of 1000 (with a character suffixfor larger units -- see below); (3) output numbers in units of 1024.The default is human-readable level 1. Each -h option increases the level by one. You can take thelevel down to 0 (to output numbers as pure digits) by specifing the --no-human-readable (--no-h)option.The unit letters that are appended in levels 2 and 3 are: K (kilo), M (mega), G (giga), or T (tera).For example, a 1234567-byte file would output as 1.23M in level-2 (assuming that a period is your localdecimal point).Backward compatibility note: versions of rsync prior to 3.1.0 do not support human-readable level 1,and they default to level 0. Thus, specifying one or two -h options will behave in a comparable mannerin old and new versions as long as you didn’t specify a --no-h option prior to one or more -h options.See the --list-only option for one difference.


                            rsync -h ...

--partial

By default, rsync will delete any partially transferred file if the transfer is interrupted. In somecircumstances it is more desirable to keep partially transferred files. Using the --partial optiontells rsync to keep the partial file which should make a subsequent transfer of the rest of the filemuch faster.


                            rsync --partial ...

--partial-dir

A better way to keep partial files than the --partial option is to specify a DIR that will be used tohold the partial data (instead of writing it out to the destination file). On the next transfer, rsyncwill use a file found in this dir as data to speed up the resumption of the transfer and then delete itafter it has served its purpose.Note that if --whole-file is specified (or implied), any partial-dir file that is found for a file thatis being updated will simply be removed (since rsync is sending files without using rsync’sdelta-transfer algorithm).Rsync will create the DIR if it is missing (just the last dir -- not the whole path). This makes iteasy to use a relative path (such as "--partial-dir=.rsync-partial") to have rsync create the par‐tial-directory in the destination file’s directory when needed, and then remove it again when the par‐tial file is deleted.If the partial-dir value is not an absolute path, rsync will add an exclude rule at the end of all yourexisting excludes. This will prevent the sending of any partial-dir files that may exist on the send‐ing side, and will also prevent the untimely deletion of partial-dir items on the receiving side. Anexample: the above --partial-dir option would add the equivalent of "-f '-p .rsync-partial/'" at theend of any other filter rules.If you are supplying your own exclude rules, you may need to add your own exclude/hide/protect rule forthe partial-dir because (1) the auto-added rule may be ineffective at the end of your other rules, or(2) you may wish to override rsync’s exclude choice. For instance, if you want to make rsync clean-upany left-over partial-dirs that may be lying around, you should specify --delete-after and add a "risk"filter rule, e.g. -f 'R .rsync-partial/'. (Avoid using --delete-before or --delete-during unless youdon’t need rsync to use any of the left-over partial-dir data during the current run.)IMPORTANT: the --partial-dir should not be writable by other users or it is a security risk. E.g.AVOID "/tmp".You can also set the partial-dir value the RSYNC_PARTIAL_DIR environment variable. Setting this in theenvironment does not force --partial to be enabled, but rather it affects where partial files go when


                            rsync --partial-dir ...

--delay-updates

This option puts the temporary file from each updated file into a holding directory until the end ofthe transfer, at which time all the files are renamed into place in rapid succession. This attempts tomake the updating of the files a little more atomic. By default the files are placed into a directorynamed ".~tmp~" in each file’s destination directory, but if you’ve specified the --partial-dir option,that directory will be used instead. See the comments in the --partial-dir section for a discussion ofhow this ".~tmp~" dir will be excluded from the transfer, and what you can do if you want rsync tocleanup old ".~tmp~" dirs that might be lying around. Conflicts with --inplace and --append.This option uses more memory on the receiving side (one bit per file transferred) and also requiresenough free disk space on the receiving side to hold an additional copy of all the updated files. Notealso that you should not use an absolute path to --partial-dir unless (1) there is no chance of any ofthe files in the transfer having the same name (since all the updated files will be put into a singledirectory if the path is absolute) and (2) there are no mount points in the hierarchy (since thedelayed updates will fail if they can’t be renamed into place).See also the "atomic-rsync" perl script in the "support" subdir for an update algorithm that is evenmore atomic (it uses --link-dest and a parallel hierarchy of files).


                            rsync --delay-updates ...

-m

This option tells the receiving rsync to get rid of empty directories from the file-list, includingnested directories that have no non-directory children. This is useful for avoiding the creation of abunch of useless directories when the sending rsync is recursively scanning a hierarchy of files usinginclude/exclude/filter rules.Note that the use of transfer rules, such as the --min-size option, does not affect what goes into thefile list, and thus does not leave directories empty, even if none of the files in a directory matchthe transfer rule.Because the file-list is actually being pruned, this option also affects what directories get deletedwhen a delete is active. However, keep in mind that excluded files and directories can prevent exist‐ing items from being deleted due to an exclude both hiding source files and protecting destinationfiles. See the perishable filter-rule option for how to avoid this.You can prevent the pruning of certain empty directories from the file-list by using a global "protect"filter. For instance, this option would ensure that the directory "emptydir" was kept in thefile-list:


                            rsync -m ...

--filter

Here’s an example that copies all .pdf files in a hierarchy, only creating the necessary destinationdirectories to hold the .pdf files, and ensures that any superfluous files and directories in the des‐tination are removed (note the hide filter of non-directories being used instead of an exclude):rsync -avm --del --include=’*.pdf’ -f ’hide,! */’ src/ destIf you didn’t want to remove superfluous destination files, the more time-honored options of


                            rsync --filter ...

--progress

This option tells rsync to print information showing the progress of the transfer. This gives a boreduser something to watch. With a modern rsync this is the same as specifying


                            rsync --progress ...

--password-file

This option allows you to provide a password for accessing an rsync daemon via a file or via standardinput if FILE is -. The file should contain just the password on the first line (all other lines areignored). Rsync will exit with an error if FILE is world readable or if a root-run rsync command findsa non-root-owned file.This option does not supply a password to a remote shell transport such as ssh; to learn how to dothat, consult the remote shell’s documentation. When accessing an rsync daemon using a remote shell asthe transport, this option only comes into effect after the remote shell finishes its authentication(i.e. if you have also specified a password in the daemon’s config file).


                            rsync --password-file ...

--list-only

This option will cause the source files to be listed instead of transferred. This option is inferredif there is a single source arg and no destination specified, so its main uses are: (1) to turn a copycommand that includes a destination arg into a file-listing command, or (2) to be able to specify morethan one source arg (note: be sure to include the destination). Caution: keep in mind that a sourcearg with a wild-card is expanded by the shell into multiple args, so it is never safe to try to listsuch an arg without using this option. For example:rsync -av --list-only foo* dest/Starting with rsync 3.1.0, the sizes output by --list-only are affected by the --human-readable option.By default they will contain digit separators, but higher levels of readability will output the sizeswith unit suffixes. Note also that the column width for the size output has increased from 11 to 14characters for all human-readable levels. Use --no-h if you want just digits in the sizes, and the oldcolumn width of 11 characters.Compatibility note: when requesting a remote listing of files from an rsync that is version 2.6.3 orolder, you may encounter an error if you ask for a non-recursive listing. This is because a file list‐ing implies the --dirs option w/o --recursive, and older rsyncs don’t have that option. To avoid thisproblem, either specify the --no-dirs option (if you don’t need to expand a directory’s content), orturn on recursion and exclude the content of subdirectories: -r --exclude='/*/*'.


                            rsync --list-only ...

--bwlimit

This option allows you to specify the maximum transfer rate for the data sent over the socket, speci‐fied in units per second. The RATE value can be suffixed with a string to indicate a size multiplier,and may be a fractional value (e.g. "--bwlimit=1.5m"). If no suffix is specified, the value will beassumed to be in units of 1024 bytes (as if "K" or "KiB" had been appended). See the --max-size optionfor a description of all the available suffixes. A value of zero specifies no limit.For backward-compatibility reasons, the rate limit will be rounded to the nearest KiB unit, so no ratesmaller than 1024 bytes per second is possible.Rsync writes data over the socket in blocks, and this option both limits the size of the blocks thatrsync writes, and tries to keep the average transfer rate at the requested limit. Some "burstiness"may be seen where rsync writes out a block of data and then sleeps to bring the average rate into com‐pliance.Due to the internal buffering of data, the --progress option may not be an accurate reflection on howfast the data is being sent. This is because some files can show up as being rapidly sent when thedata is quickly buffered, while other can show up as very slow when the flushing of the output bufferoccurs. This may be fixed in a future version.


                            rsync --bwlimit ...

--stop-at

This option allows you to specify at what time to stop rsync, in year-month-dayThour:minute numericformat (e.g. 2004-12-31T23:59). You can specify a 2 or 4-digit year. You can also leave off variousitems and the result will be the next possible time that matches the specified data. For example,"1-30" specifies the next January 30th (at midnight), "04:00" specifies the next 4am, "1" specifies thenext 1st of the month at midnight, and ":59" specifies the next 59th minute after the hour. If youprefer, you may separate the date numbers using slashes instead of dashes.


                            rsync --stop-at ...

--time-limit

This option allows you to specify the maximum number of minutes rsync will run for.


                            rsync --time-limit ...

--write-batch

Record a file that can later be applied to another identical destination with --read-batch. See the"BATCH MODE" section for details, and also the --only-write-batch option.


                            rsync --write-batch ...

--only-write-batch

Works like --write-batch, except that no updates are made on the destination system when creating thebatch. This lets you transport the changes to the destination system via some other means and thenapply the changes via --read-batch.Note that you can feel free to write the batch directly to some portable media: if this media fills tocapacity before the end of the transfer, you can just apply that partial transfer to the destinationand repeat the whole process to get the rest of the changes (as long as you don’t mind a partiallyupdated destination system while the multi-update cycle is happening).Also note that you only save bandwidth when pushing changes to a remote system because this allows thebatched data to be diverted from the sender into the batch file without having to flow over the wire tothe receiver (when pulling, the sender is remote, and thus can’t write the batch).


                            rsync --only-write-batch ...

--read-batch

Apply all of the changes stored in FILE, a file previously generated by --write-batch. If FILE is -,the batch data will be read from standard input. See the "BATCH MODE" section for details.


                            rsync --read-batch ...

--protocol

Force an older protocol version to be used. This is useful for creating a batch file that is compati‐ble with an older version of rsync. For instance, if rsync 2.6.4 is being used with the --write-batchoption, but rsync 2.6.3 is what will be used to run the --read-batch option, you should use "--proto‐col=28" when creating the batch file to force the older protocol version to be used in the batch file(assuming you can’t upgrade the rsync on the reading system).


                            rsync --protocol ...

--iconv

Rsync can convert filenames between character sets using this option. Using a CONVERT_SPEC of "."tells rsync to look up the default character-set via the locale setting. Alternately, you can fullyspecify what conversion to do by giving a local and a remote charset separated by a comma in the order


                            rsync --iconv ...

-4

Tells rsync to prefer IPv4/IPv6 when creating sockets. This only affects sockets that rsync has directcontrol over, such as the outgoing socket when directly contacting an rsync daemon. See also theseoptions in the --daemon mode section.If rsync was complied without support for IPv6, the --ipv6 option will have no effect. The --versionoutput will tell you if this is the case.


                            rsync -4 ...

--checksum-seed

Set the checksum seed to the integer NUM. This 4 byte checksum seed is included in each block and MD4file checksum calculation (the more modern MD5 file checksums don’t use a seed). By default the check‐sum seed is generated by the server and defaults to the current time() . This option is used to set aspecific checksum seed, which is useful for applications that want repeatable block checksums, or inthe case where the user wants a more random checksum seed. Setting NUM to 0 causes rsync to use thedefault of time() for checksum seed.DAEMON OPTIONSThe options allowed when starting an rsync daemon are as follows:


                            rsync --checksum-seed ...

--daemon

This tells rsync that it is to run as a daemon. The daemon you start running may be accessed using anrsync client using the host::module or rsync://host/module/ syntax.If standard input is a socket then rsync will assume that it is being run via inetd, otherwise it willdetach from the current terminal and become a background daemon. The daemon will read the config file(rsyncd.conf) on each connect made by a client and respond to requests accordingly. See thersyncd.conf(5) man page for more details.


                            rsync --daemon ...

--config

This specifies an alternate config file than the default. This is only relevant when --daemon is spec‐ified. The default is /etc/rsyncd.conf unless the daemon is running over a remote shell program andthe remote user is not the super-user; in that case the default is rsyncd.conf in the current directory(typically $HOME).


                            rsync --config ...

--no-detach

When running as a daemon, this option instructs rsync to not detach itself and become a backgroundprocess. This option is required when running as a service on Cygwin, and may also be useful whenrsync is supervised by a program such as daemontools or AIX’s System Resource Controller. --no-detachis also recommended when rsync is run under a debugger. This option has no effect if rsync is run frominetd or sshd.


                            rsync --no-detach ...

--include-from/--exclude-from

INCLUDE/EXCLUDE PATTERN RULESYou can include and exclude files by specifying patterns using the "+", "-", etc. filter rules (as introducedin the FILTER RULES section above). The include/exclude rules each specify a pattern that is matched againstthe names of the files that are going to be transferred. These patterns can take several forms:o if the pattern starts with a / then it is anchored to a particular spot in the hierarchy of files, oth‐erwise it is matched against the end of the pathname. This is similar to a leading ^ in regularexpressions. Thus "/foo" would match a name of "foo" at either the "root of the transfer" (for aglobal rule) or in the merge-file’s directory (for a per-directory rule). An unqualified "foo" wouldmatch a name of "foo" anywhere in the tree because the algorithm is applied recursively from the topdown; it behaves as if each path component gets a turn at being the end of the filename. Even theunanchored "sub/foo" would match at any point in the hierarchy where a "foo" was found within a direc‐tory named "sub". See the section on ANCHORING INCLUDE/EXCLUDE PATTERNS for a full discussion of howto specify a pattern that matches at the root of the transfer.o if the pattern ends with a / then it will only match a directory, not a regular file, symlink, ordevice.o rsync chooses between doing a simple string match and wildcard matching by checking if the pattern con‐tains one of these three wildcard characters: ’*’, ’?’, and ’[’ .o a ’*’ matches any path component, but it stops at slashes.o use ’**’ to match anything, including slashes.o a ’?’ matches any character except a slash (/).o a ’[’ introduces a character class, such as [a-z] or [[:alpha:]].o in a wildcard pattern, a backslash can be used to escape a wildcard character, but it is matched liter‐ally when no wildcards are present. This means that there is an extra level of backslash removal whena pattern contains wildcard characters compared to a pattern that has none. e.g. if you add a wildcardto "foo\bar" (which matches the backslash) you would need to use "foo\\bar*" to avoid the "\b" becomingjust "b".o if the pattern contains a / (not counting a trailing /) or a "**", then it is matched against the fullpathname, including any leading directories. If the pattern doesn’t contain a / or a "**", then it ismatched only against the final component of the filename. (Remember that the algorithm is appliedrecursively so "full filename" can actually be any portion of a path from the starting directory ondown.)o a trailing "dir_name/***" will match both the directory (as if "dir_name/" had been specified) andeverything in the directory (as if "dir_name/**" had been specified). This behavior was added in ver‐sion 2.6.7.Note that, when using the --recursive (-r) option (which is implied by -a), every subcomponent of every pathis visited from the top down, so include/exclude patterns get applied recursively to each subcomponent’s fullname (e.g. to include "/foo/bar/baz" the subcomponents "/foo" and "/foo/bar" must not be excluded). Theexclude patterns actually short-circuit the directory traversal stage when rsync finds the files to send. Ifa pattern excludes a particular parent directory, it can render a deeper include pattern ineffectual becausersync did not descend through that excluded section of the hierarchy. This is particularly important whenusing a trailing ’*’ rule. For instance, this won’t work:+ /some/path/this-file-will-not-be-found+ /file-is-included


                            rsync --include-from/--exclude-from ...

This fails because the parent directory "some" is excluded by the ’*’ rule, so rsync never visits any of thefiles in the "some" or "some/path" directories. One solution is to ask for all directories in the hierarchyto be included by using a single rule: "+ */" (put it somewhere before the "- *" rule), and perhaps use the


                            rsync - ...

o A C is used to indicate that all the global CVS-exclude rules should be inserted as excludes in placeof the "-C". No arg should follow.o An s is used to indicate that the rule applies to the sending side. When a rule affects the sendingside, it prevents files from being transferred. The default is for a rule to affect both sides unless


                            rsync -! ...

--filter=':

That rule tells rsync to scan for the file .rsync-filter in all directories from the root down through theparent directory of the transfer prior to the start of the normal directory scan of the file in the directo‐ries that are sent as a part of the transfer. (Note: for an rsync daemon, the root is always the same as themodule’s "path".)Some examples of this pre-scanning for per-directory files:rsync -avF /src/path/ /dest/dirrsync -av --filter=': ../../.rsync-filter' /src/path/ /dest/dirrsync -av --filter=': .rsync-filter' /src/path/ /dest/dirThe first two commands above will look for ".rsync-filter" in "/" and "/src" before the normal scan beginslooking for the file in "/src/path" and its subdirectories. The last command avoids the parent-dir scan andonly looks for the ".rsync-filter" files in each directory that is a part of the transfer.If you want to include the contents of a ".cvsignore" in your patterns, you should use the rule ":C", whichcreates a dir-merge of the .cvsignore file, but parsed in a CVS-compatible manner. You can use this to affectwhere the --cvs-exclude (-C) option’s inclusion of the per-directory .cvsignore file gets placed into yourrules by putting the ":C" wherever you like in your filter rules. Without this, rsync would add the dir-mergerule for the .cvsignore file at the end of all your other rules (giving it a lower priority than your com‐mand-line rules). For example:cat <<EOT | rsync -avC --filter='. -' a/ b+ foo.o:C


                            rsync --filter=': ...

--copy-links

Turn all symlinks into normal files (leaving no symlinks for any other options to affect).


                            rsync --copy-links ...

--links

Turn all unsafe symlinks into files and duplicate all safe symlinks.


                            rsync --links ...

--cvs-exclude

RSYNC_ICONVSpecify a default --iconv setting using this environment variable. (First supported in 3.0.0.)RSYNC_PROTECT_ARGSSpecify a non-zero numeric value if you want the --protect-args option to be enabled by default, or azero value to make sure that it is disabled by default. (First supported in 3.1.0.)RSYNC_RSHThe RSYNC_RSH environment variable allows you to override the default shell used as the transport forrsync. Command line options are permitted after the command name, just as in the -e option.RSYNC_PROXYThe RSYNC_PROXY environment variable allows you to redirect your rsync client to use a web proxy whenconnecting to a rsync daemon. You should set RSYNC_PROXY to a hostname:port pair.RSYNC_PASSWORDSetting RSYNC_PASSWORD to the required password allows you to run authenticated rsync connections to anrsync daemon without user intervention. Note that this does not supply a password to a remote shelltransport such as ssh; to learn how to do that, consult the remote shell’s documentation.USER or LOGNAMEThe USER or LOGNAME environment variables are used to determine the default username sent to an rsyncdaemon. If neither is set, the username defaults to "nobody".HOME The HOME environment variable is used to find the user’s default .cvsignore file.FILES/etc/rsyncd.conf or rsyncd.conf


                            rsync --cvs-exclude ...