rsync

Fast incremental file transfer and synchronization.

Basics

• Dry-run with stats

rsync -avh --dry-run --stats src/ dest/

• Local copy (preserve perms, times)

rsync -a src/ dest/

• Remote copy over SSH

rsync -avz -e ssh src/ user@host:/path/

Trailing slash semantics

• src/ copies contents of dir; src copies the dir itself.

Common flags

• -a archive (recursive, preserve)
• -v verbose, -h human
• -z compress over network
• --delete make dest mirror src (dangerous; use with --dry-run first)
• --progress show progress

Examples

• Mirror to remote, delete extras

rsync -avz --delete src/ user@host:/srv/app/

• Exclude patterns

rsync -av --exclude '.git/' --exclude '*.log' src/ dest/

• Partial + resume

rsync -av --partial --inplace src/ dest/

• Use SSH port and key

rsync -avz -e 'ssh -p 2222 -i ~/.ssh/id_ed25519' src/ user@host:/path/

Checksum-based

• Force checksum comparison (slower)

rsync -avc src/ dest/

Pull from remote

• Remote to local

rsync -avz user@host:/path/data/ ./data/