rsync - faster, flexible replacement for rcp
rsync [OPTION]... SRC [SRC]... DEST
rsync [OPTION]... SRC [SRC]... [USER@]HOST:DEST
rsync [OPTION]... SRC [SRC]... [USER@]HOST::DEST
rsync [OPTION]... SRC [SRC]... rsync://[USER@]HOST[:PORT]/DEST
rsync [OPTION]... SRC
rsync [OPTION]... [USER@]HOST:SRC [DEST]
rsync [OPTION]... [USER@]HOST::SRC [DEST]
rsync [OPTION]... rsync://[USER@]HOST[:PORT]/SRC [DEST]
rsync is a program that behaves in much the same way that rcp
does, but has many more options and uses the rsync remote-update protocol to
greatly speed up file transfers when the destination file is being
updated.
The rsync remote-update protocol allows rsync to transfer just the
differences between two sets of files across the network connection, using
an efficient checksum-search algorithm described in the technical report
that accompanies this package.
Some of the additional features of rsync are:
- o
- support for copying links, devices, owners, groups, and permissions
- o
- exclude and exclude-from options similar to GNU tar
- o
- a CVS exclude mode for ignoring the same files that CVS would ignore
- o
- can use any transparent remote shell, including ssh or rsh
- o
- does not require super-user privileges
- o
- pipelining of file transfers to minimize latency costs
- o
- support for anonymous or authenticated rsync daemons (ideal for mirroring)
Rsync copies files either to or from a remote host, or locally on
the current host (it does not support copying files between two remote
hosts).
There are two different ways for rsync to contact a remote system:
using a remote-shell program as the transport (such as ssh or rsh) or
contacting an rsync daemon directly via TCP. The remote-shell transport is
used whenever the source or destination path contains a single colon (:)
separator after a host specification. Contacting an rsync daemon directly
happens when the source or destination path contains a double colon (::)
separator after a host specification, OR when an rsync:// URL is specified
(see also the "USING RSYNC-DAEMON FEATURES VIA A REMOTE-SHELL
CONNECTION" section for an exception to this latter rule).
As a special case, if a single source arg is specified without a
destination, the files are listed in an output format similar to "ls
-l".
As expected, if neither the source or destination path specify a
remote host, the copy occurs locally (see also the --list-only
option).
See the file README for installation instructions.
Once installed, you can use rsync to any machine that you can
access via a remote shell (as well as some that you can access using the
rsync daemon-mode protocol). For remote transfers, a modern rsync uses ssh
for its communications, but it may have been configured to use a different
remote shell by default, such as rsh or remsh.
You can also specify any remote shell you like, either by using
the -e command line option, or by setting the RSYNC_RSH environment
variable.
Note that rsync must be installed on both the source and
destination machines.
You use rsync in the same way you use rcp. You must specify a
source and a destination, one of which may be remote.
Perhaps the best way to explain the syntax is with some
examples:
rsync -t *.c foo:src/
This would transfer all files matching the pattern *.c from the
current directory to the directory src on the machine foo. If any of the
files already exist on the remote system then the rsync remote-update
protocol is used to update the file by sending only the differences. See the
tech report for details.
rsync -avz foo:src/bar
/data/tmp
This would recursively transfer all files from the directory
src/bar on the machine foo into the /data/tmp/bar directory on the local
machine. The files are transferred in "archive" mode, which
ensures that symbolic links, devices, attributes, permissions, ownerships,
etc. are preserved in the transfer. Additionally, compression will be used
to reduce the size of data portions of the transfer.
rsync -avz foo:src/bar/
/data/tmp
A trailing slash on the source changes this behavior to avoid
creating an additional directory level at the destination. You can think of
a trailing / on a source as meaning "copy the contents of this
directory" as opposed to "copy the directory by name", but in
both cases the attributes of the containing directory are transferred to the
containing directory on the destination. In other words, each of the
following commands copies the files in the same way, including their setting
of the attributes of /dest/foo:
rsync -av /src/foo /dest
rsync -av /src/foo/ /dest/foo
Note also that host and module references don't require a trailing
slash to copy the contents of the default directory. For example, both of
these copy the remote directory's contents into "/dest":
rsync -av host: /dest
rsync -av host::module /dest
You can also use rsync in local-only mode, where both the source
and destination don't have a ':' in the name. In this case it behaves like
an improved copy command.
Finally, you can list all the (listable) modules available from a
particular rsync daemon by leaving off the module name:
rsync
somehost.mydomain.com::
See the following section for more details.
The syntax for requesting multiple files from a remote host
involves using quoted spaces in the SRC. Some examples:
rsync host::'modname/dir1/file1
modname/dir2/file2' /dest
This would copy file1 and file2 into /dest from an rsync daemon.
Each additional arg must include the same "modname/" prefix as the
first one, and must be preceded by a single space. All other spaces are
assumed to be a part of the filenames.
rsync -av host:'dir1/file1 dir2/file2'
/dest
This would copy file1 and file2 into /dest using a remote shell.
This word-splitting is done by the remote shell, so if it doesn't work it
means that the remote shell isn't configured to split its args based on
whitespace (a very rare setting, but not unknown). If you need to transfer a
filename that contains whitespace, you'll need to either escape the
whitespace in a way that the remote shell will understand, or use wildcards
in place of the spaces. Two examples of this are:
rsync -av host:'file\ name\ with\
spaces' /dest
rsync -av host:file?name?with?spaces /dest
This latter example assumes that your shell passes through
unmatched wildcards. If it complains about "no match", put the
name in quotes.
It is also possible to use rsync without a remote shell as the
transport. In this case you will directly connect to a remote rsync daemon,
typically using TCP port 873. (This obviously requires the daemon to be
running on the remote system, so refer to the STARTING AN RSYNC DAEMON TO
ACCEPT CONNECTIONS section below for information on that.)
Using rsync in this way is the same as using it with a remote
shell except that:
- o
- you either use a double colon :: instead of a single colon to separate the
hostname from the path, or you use an rsync:// URL.
- o
- the first word of the "path" is actually a module name.
- o
- the remote daemon may print a message of the day when you connect.
- o
- if you specify no path name on the remote daemon then the list of
accessible paths on the daemon will be shown.
- o
- if you specify no local destination then a listing of the specified files
on the remote daemon is provided.
- o
- you must not specify the --rsh (-e) option.
An example that copies all the files in a remote module named
"src":
rsync -av host::src /dest
Some modules on the remote daemon may require authentication. If
so, you will receive a password prompt when you connect. You can avoid the
password prompt by setting the environment variable RSYNC_PASSWORD to the
password you want to use or using the --password-file option. This
may be useful when scripting rsync.
WARNING: On some systems environment variables are visible to all
users. On those systems using --password-file is recommended.
You may establish the connection via a web proxy by setting the
environment variable RSYNC_PROXY to a hostname:port pair pointing to your
web proxy. Note that your web proxy's configuration must support proxy
connections to port 873.
It is sometimes useful to use various features of an rsync daemon
(such as named modules) without actually allowing any new socket connections
into a system (other than what is already required to allow remote-shell
access). Rsync supports connecting to a host using a remote shell and then
spawning a single-use "daemon" server that expects to read its
config file in the home dir of the remote user. This can be useful if you
want to encrypt a daemon-style transfer's data, but since the daemon is
started up fresh by the remote user, you may not be able to use features
such as chroot or change the uid used by the daemon. (For another way to
encrypt a daemon transfer, consider using ssh to tunnel a local port to a
remote machine and configure a normal rsync daemon on that remote host to
only allow connections from "localhost".)
From the user's perspective, a daemon transfer via a remote-shell
connection uses nearly the same command-line syntax as a normal rsync-daemon
transfer, with the only exception being that you must explicitly set the
remote shell program on the command-line with the --rsh=COMMAND
option. (Setting the RSYNC_RSH in the environment will not turn on this
functionality.) For example:
rsync -av --rsh=ssh host::module /dest
If you need to specify a different remote-shell user, keep in mind
that the user@ prefix in front of the host is specifying the rsync-user
value (for a module that requires user-based authentication). This means
that you must give the '-l user' option to ssh when specifying the
remote-shell, as in this example that uses the short version of the
--rsh option:
rsync -av -e "ssh -l ssh-user" rsync-user@host::module /dest
The "ssh-user" will be used at the ssh level; the
"rsync-user" will be used to log-in to the "module".
In order to connect to an rsync daemon, the remote system needs to
have a daemon already running (or it needs to have configured something like
inetd to spawn an rsync daemon for incoming connections on a particular
port). For full information on how to start a daemon that will handling
incoming socket connections, see the rsyncd.conf(5) man page -- that
is the config file for the daemon, and it contains the full details for how
to run the daemon (including stand-alone and inetd configurations).
If you're using one of the remote-shell transports for the
transfer, there is no need to manually start an rsync daemon.
Here are some examples of how I use rsync.
To backup my wife's home directory, which consists of large MS
Word files and mail folders, I use a cron job that runs
rsync -Cavz .
arvidsjaur:backup
each night over a PPP connection to a duplicate directory on my
machine "arvidsjaur".
To synchronize my samba source trees I use the following Makefile
targets:
get:
rsync -avuzb --exclude '*~' samba:samba/ .
put:
rsync -Cavuzb . samba:samba/
sync: get put
this allows me to sync with a CVS directory at the other end of
the connection. I then do CVS operations on the remote machine, which saves
a lot of time as the remote CVS protocol isn't very efficient.
I mirror a directory between my "old" and
"new" ftp sites with the command:
rsync -az -e ssh --delete ~ftp/pub/samba
nimbus:"~ftp/pub/tridge"
This is launched from cron every few hours.
Here is a short summary of the options available in rsync. Please
refer to the detailed description below for a complete description.
-v, --verbose increase verbosity
-q, --quiet suppress non-error messages
--no-motd suppress daemon-mode MOTD (see caveat)
-c, --checksum skip based on checksum, not mod-time & size
-a, --archive archive mode; same as -rlptgoD (no -H)
--no-OPTION turn off an implied OPTION (e.g. --no-D)
-r, --recursive recurse into directories
-R, --relative use relative path names
--no-implied-dirs don't send implied dirs with --relative
-b, --backup make backups (see --suffix & --backup-dir)
--backup-dir=DIR make backups into hierarchy based in DIR
--suffix=SUFFIX backup suffix (default ~ w/o --backup-dir)
-u, --update skip files that are newer on the receiver
--inplace update destination files in-place
--append append data onto shorter files
-d, --dirs transfer directories without recursing
-l, --links copy symlinks as symlinks
-L, --copy-links transform symlink into referent file/dir
--copy-unsafe-links only "unsafe" symlinks are transformed
--safe-links ignore symlinks that point outside the tree
-k, --copy-dirlinks transform symlink to dir into referent dir
-K, --keep-dirlinks treat symlinked dir on receiver as dir
-H, --hard-links preserve hard links
-p, --perms preserve permissions
--executability preserve executability
--chmod=CHMOD affect file and/or directory permissions
-o, --owner preserve owner (super-user only)
-g, --group preserve group
--devices preserve device files (super-user only)
--specials preserve special files
-D same as --devices --specials
-t, --times preserve times
-O, --omit-dir-times omit directories when preserving times
--super receiver attempts super-user activities
-S, --sparse handle sparse files efficiently
-n, --dry-run show what would have been transferred
-W, --whole-file copy files whole (without rsync algorithm)
-x, --one-file-system don't cross filesystem boundaries
-B, --block-size=SIZE force a fixed checksum block-size
-e, --rsh=COMMAND specify the remote shell to use
--rsync-path=PROGRAM specify the rsync to run on remote machine
--existing skip creating new files on receiver
--ignore-existing skip updating files that exist on receiver
--remove-source-files sender removes synchronized files (non-dir)
--del an alias for --delete-during
--delete delete extraneous files from dest dirs
--delete-before receiver deletes before transfer (default)
--delete-during receiver deletes during xfer, not before
--delete-after receiver deletes after transfer, not before
--delete-excluded also delete excluded files from dest dirs
--ignore-errors delete even if there are I/O errors
--force force deletion of dirs even if not empty
--max-delete=NUM don't delete more than NUM files
--max-size=SIZE don't transfer any file larger than SIZE
--min-size=SIZE don't transfer any file smaller than SIZE
--partial keep partially transferred files
--partial-dir=DIR put a partially transferred file into DIR
--delay-updates put all updated files into place at end
-m, --prune-empty-dirs prune empty directory chains from file-list
--numeric-ids don't map uid/gid values by user/group name
--timeout=TIME set I/O timeout in seconds
-I, --ignore-times don't skip files that match size and time
--size-only skip files that match in size
--modify-window=NUM compare mod-times with reduced accuracy
-T, --temp-dir=DIR create temporary files in directory DIR
-y, --fuzzy find similar file for basis if no dest file
--compare-dest=DIR also compare received files relative to DIR
--copy-dest=DIR ... and include copies of unchanged files
--link-dest=DIR hardlink to files in DIR when unchanged
-z, --compress compress file data during the transfer
--compress-level=NUM explicitly set compression level
-C, --cvs-exclude auto-ignore files in the same way CVS does
-f, --filter=RULE add a file-filtering RULE
-F same as --filter='dir-merge /.rsync-filter'
repeated: --filter='- .rsync-filter'
--exclude=PATTERN exclude files matching PATTERN
--exclude-from=FILE read exclude patterns from FILE
--include=PATTERN don't exclude files matching PATTERN
--include-from=FILE read include patterns from FILE
--files-from=FILE read list of source-file names from FILE
-0, --from0 all *from/filter files are delimited by 0s
--address=ADDRESS bind address for outgoing socket to daemon
--port=PORT specify double-colon alternate port number
--sockopts=OPTIONS specify custom TCP options
--blocking-io use blocking I/O for the remote shell
--stats give some file-transfer stats
-8, --8-bit-output leave high-bit chars unescaped in output
-h, --human-readable output numbers in a human-readable format
--progress show progress during transfer
-P same as --partial --progress
-i, --itemize-changes output a change-summary for all updates
--out-format=FORMAT output updates using the specified FORMAT
--log-file=FILE log what we're doing to the specified FILE
--log-file-format=FMT log updates using the specified FMT
--password-file=FILE read password from FILE
--list-only list the files instead of copying them
--bwlimit=KBPS limit I/O bandwidth; KBytes per second
--write-batch=FILE write a batched update to FILE
--only-write-batch=FILE like --write-batch but w/o updating dest
--read-batch=FILE read a batched update from FILE
--protocol=NUM force an older protocol version to be used
--checksum-seed=NUM set block/file checksum seed (advanced)
-4, --ipv4 prefer IPv4
-6, --ipv6 prefer IPv6
-E, --extended-attributes copy extended attributes, resource forks
--cache disable fcntl(F_NOCACHE)
--version print version number
(-h) --help show this help (see below for -h comment)
Rsync can also be run as a daemon, in which case the following
options are accepted:
--daemon run as an rsync daemon
--address=ADDRESS bind to the specified address
--bwlimit=KBPS limit I/O bandwidth; KBytes per second
--config=FILE specify alternate rsyncd.conf file
--no-detach do not detach from the parent
--port=PORT listen on alternate port number
--log-file=FILE override the "log file" setting
--log-file-format=FMT override the "log format" setting
--sockopts=OPTIONS specify custom TCP options
-v, --verbose increase verbosity
-4, --ipv4 prefer IPv4
-6, --ipv6 prefer IPv6
-h, --help show this help (if used after --daemon)
rsync uses the GNU long options package. Many of the command line
options have two variants, one short and one long. These are shown below,
separated by commas. Some options only have a long variant. The '=' for
options that take a parameter is optional; whitespace can be used
instead.
- --help
- Print a short help page describing the options available in rsync and
exit. For backward-compatibility with older versions of rsync, the help
will also be output if you use the -h option without any other
args.
- --version
- print the rsync version number and exit.
- -v, --verbose
- This option increases the amount of information you are given during the
transfer. By default, rsync works silently. A single -v will give
you information about what files are being transferred and a brief summary
at the end. Two -v flags will give you information on what files
are being skipped and slightly more information at the end. More than two
-v flags should only be used if you are debugging rsync.
- Note that the names of the transferred files that are output are done
using a default --out-format of "%n%L", which tells you
just the name of the file and, if the item is a link, where it points. At
the single -v level of verbosity, this does not mention when a file
gets its attributes changed. If you ask for an itemized list of changed
attributes (either --itemize-changes or adding "%i" to
the --out-format setting), the output (on the client) increases to
mention all items that are changed in any way. See the --out-format
option for more details.
- -q, --quiet
- This option decreases the amount of information you are given during the
transfer, notably suppressing information messages from the remote server.
This flag is useful when invoking rsync from cron.
- --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 the daemon sends in
response to the "rsync host::" request (due to a limitation in
the rsync protocol), so omit this option if you want to request the list
of modules from the deamon.
- -I, --ignore-times
- Normally rsync will skip any files that are already the same size and have
the same modification time-stamp. This option turns off this "quick
check" behavior, causing all files to be updated.
- --size-only
- Normally rsync will not transfer any files that are already the same size
and have the same modification time-stamp. With the --size-only
option, files will not be transferred if they have the same size,
regardless of timestamp. This is useful when starting to use rsync after
using another mirroring system which may not preserve timestamps
exactly.
- --modify-window
- When comparing two timestamps, rsync treats the timestamps as being equal
if they differ by no more than the modify-window value. This is normally 0
(for an exact match), but you may find it useful to set this to a larger
value in some situations. In particular, when transferring to or from an
MS Windows FAT filesystem (which represents times with a 2-second
resolution), --modify-window=1 is useful (allowing times to differ
by up to 1 second).
- -c, --checksum
- This forces the sender to checksum every regular file using a
128-bit MD4 checksum. It does this during the initial file-system scan as
it builds the list of all available files. The receiver then checksums its
version of each file (if it exists and it has the same size as its
sender-side counterpart) in order to decide which files need to be
updated: files with either a changed size or a changed checksum are
selected for transfer. Since this whole-file checksumming of all files on
both sides of the connection occurs in addition to the automatic checksum
verifications that occur during a file's transfer, this option can be
quite slow.
- Note that rsync always verifies that each transferred file was
correctly reconstructed on the receiving side by checking its whole-file
checksum, but that automatic after-the-transfer verification has nothing
to do with this option's before-the-transfer "Does this file need to
be updated?" check.
- -a, --archive
- This is equivalent to -rlptgoD. It is a quick way of saying you
want recursion and want to preserve almost everything (with -H being a
notable omission). The only exception to the above equivalence is when
--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 must separately specify
-H.
- --no-OPTION
- You may turn off one or more implied options by prefixing the option name
with "no-". Not all options may 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,
--no-dirs). You may specify either the short or the long option
name after the "no-" prefix (e.g. --no-R is the same as
--no-relative).
- For example: if you want to use -a (--archive) but don't
want -o (--owner), instead of converting -a into
-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 being turned on, the opposite of -a
--no-r. Note also that the side-effects of the --files-from
option are NOT positional, as it affects the default state of several
options and slightly changes the meaning of -a (see the
--files-from option for more details).
- -r, --recursive
- This tells rsync to copy directories recursively. See also --dirs
(-d).
- -R, --relative
- Use relative paths. This means that the full path names specified on the
command line are sent to the server rather than just the last parts of the
filenames. This is particularly useful when you want to send several
different directories at the same time. For example, if you used 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 used
rsync -avR /foo/bar/baz.c
remote:/tmp/
- then a file named /tmp/foo/bar/baz.c would be created on the remote
machine -- the full path name is preserved. To limit the amount of path
information that is sent, you have a couple options: (1) With a modern
rsync on the sending side (beginning with 2.6.7), you can insert a 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 a slash, so "/foo/." would not be
abbreviated.) (2) For older rsync versions, you would need to use a chdir
to 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 in effect for future commands.) If
you're pulling files, use this idiom (which doesn't work with an rsync
daemon):
rsync -avR --rsync-path="cd /foo;
rsync" \
remote:bar/baz.c /tmp/
- --no-implied-dirs
- This option affects the default behavior of the --relative option.
When it is specified, the attributes of the implied directories from the
source names are not included in the transfer. This means 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 these implied path elements to have
big differences, such as being a symlink to a directory on one side of the
transfer, and a real directory on the other side.
- 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 --no-implied-dirs,
the receiving rsync updates "path/foo/file" using the existing
path elements, which means that the file ends up being created in
"path/bar". Another way to accomplish this link preservation is
to use the --keep-dirlinks option (which will also affect symlinks
to directories in the rest of the transfer).
- In a similar but opposite scenario, if the transfer of
"path/foo/file" is requested and "path/foo" is a
symlink on the sending side, running without --no-implied-dirs
would cause rsync to transform "path/foo" on the receiving side
into an identical symlink, and then attempt to transfer
"path/foo/file", which might fail if the duplicated symlink did
not point to a directory on the receiving side. Another way to avoid this
sending of a symlink as an implied directory is to use
--copy-unsafe-links, or --copy-dirlinks (both of which also
affect symlinks in the rest of the transfer -- see their descriptions for
full details).
- -b, --backup
- With this option, preexisting destination files are renamed as each file
is transferred or deleted. You can control where the backup file goes and
what (if any) suffix gets appended using the --backup-dir and
--suffix options.
- 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 for the backup suffix to the end of all
your existing excludes (e.g. -f "P *~"). This will prevent
previously backed-up files from being deleted. Note that if you are
supplying your own filter rules, you may need to manually insert your own
exclude/protect rule somewhere higher up in the list so that it has a high
enough priority to be effective (e.g., if your rules specify a trailing
inclusion/exclusion of '*', the auto-added rule would never be
reached).
- --backup-dir=DIR
- In combination with the --backup option, this tells rsync to store
all backups in the specified directory on the receiving side. This can be
used for incremental backups. You can additionally specify a backup suffix
using the --suffix option (otherwise the files backed up in the
specified directory will keep their original filenames).
- --suffix=SUFFIX
- This option allows you to override the default backup suffix used with the
--backup (-b) option. The default suffix is a ~ if no
--backup-dir was specified, otherwise it is an empty string.
- -u, --update
- This forces rsync to skip any files which exist on the destination and
have a modified time that is newer than the source file. (If an existing
destination file has a modify time equal to the source file's, it will be
updated if the sizes are different.)
- In the current implementation of --update, a difference of file
format between the sender and receiver is always considered to be
important enough for an update, no matter what date is on the objects. In
other words, if the source has a directory or a symlink where the
destination has a file, the transfer would occur regardless of the
timestamps. This might change in the future (feel free to comment on this
on the mailing list if you have an opinion).
- --inplace
- This causes rsync not to create a new copy of the file and then move it
into place. Instead rsync will overwrite the existing file, meaning that
the rsync algorithm can't accomplish the full amount of network reduction
it might be able to otherwise (since it does not yet try to sort data
matches). One exception to this is if you combine the option with
--backup, since rsync is smart enough to use the backup file as the
basis file for the transfer.
- This option is useful for transfer of large files with block-based changes
or appended data, and also on systems that are disk bound, not network
bound.
- The option implies --partial (since an interrupted transfer does
not delete the file), but conflicts with --partial-dir and
--delay-updates. Prior to rsync 2.6.4 --inplace was also
incompatible with --compare-dest and --link-dest.
- WARNING: The file's data will be in an inconsistent state during the
transfer (and possibly afterward if the transfer gets interrupted), so you
should not use this option to update files that are in use. Also note that
rsync will be unable to update a file in-place that is not writable by the
receiving user.
- --append
- This causes rsync to update a file by appending data onto the end of the
file, which presumes that the data that already exists on the receiving
side is identical with the start of the file on the sending side. If that
is not true, the file will fail the checksum test, and the resend will do
a normal --inplace update to correct the mismatched data. Only
files on the receiving side that are shorter than the corresponding file
on the sending side (as well as new files) are sent. Implies
--inplace, but does not conflict with --sparse (though the
--sparse option will be auto-disabled if a resend of the
already-existing data is required).
- -d, --dirs
- Tell the sending side to include any directories that are encountered.
Unlike --recursive, a directory'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 all
directories it encounters (and output a message to that effect for each
one). If you specify both --dirs and --recursive,
--recursive takes precedence.
- -l, --links
- When symlinks are encountered, recreate the symlink on the
destination.
- -L, --copy-links
- When symlinks are encountered, the item that they point to (the referent)
is copied, rather than the symlink. In older versions of rsync, this
option also had the side-effect of telling the receiving side to follow
symlinks, such as symlinks to directories. In a modern rsync such as this
one, you'll need to specify --keep-dirlinks (-K) to get this
extra behavior. The only exception is when sending files to an rsync that
is too old to understand -K -- in that case, the -L option
will still have the side-effect of -K on that older receiving
rsync.
- --copy-unsafe-links
- This tells rsync to copy the referent of symbolic links that point outside
the copied tree. Absolute symlinks are also treated like ordinary files,
and so are any symlinks in the source path itself when --relative
is used. This option has no additional effect if --copy-links was
also specified.
- --safe-links
- This tells rsync to ignore any symbolic links which point outside the
copied tree. All absolute symlinks are also ignored. Using this option in
conjunction with --relative may give unexpected results.
- -K,
--copy-dirlinks
- This option causes the sending side to treat a symlink to a directory as
though it were a real directory. This is useful if you don't want symlinks
to non-directories to be affected, as they would be using
--copy-links.
- Without this option, if the sending side has replaced a directory with a
symlink to a directory, the receiving side will delete anything that is in
the way of the new symlink, including a directory hierarchy (as long as
--force or --delete is in effect).
- See also --keep-dirlinks for an analogous option for the receiving
side.
- -K,
--keep-dirlinks
- This option causes the receiving side to treat a symlink to a directory as
though it were a real directory, but only if it matches a real directory
from the sender. Without this option, the receiver's symlink 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 symlink to
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,
the receiver keeps the symlink and "file" ends up in
"bar".
- See also --copy-dirlinks for an analogous option for the sending
side.
- -H, --hard-links
- This tells rsync to look for hard-linked files in the transfer and link
together the corresponding files on the receiving side. Without this
option, hard-linked files in the transfer are treated as though they were
separate files.
- Note that rsync can only detect hard links if both parts of the link are
in the list of files being sent.
- -p, --perms
- This option causes the receiving rsync to set the destination permissions
to be the same as the source permissions. (See also the --chmod
option for a way to modify what rsync considers to be the source
permissions.)
- When this option is off, permissions are set as follows:
- o
- Existing files (including updated files) retain their existing
permissions, though the --executability 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 with the receiving end's umask setting, and
their special permission bits disabled except in the case where a new
directory inherits a setgid bit from its parent directory.
- Thus, when --perms and --executability are both disabled,
rsync's behavior is the same as that of other file-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 give new files the destination-default
permissions (while leaving existing files unchanged), make sure that the
--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, such as
putting this line in the file ~/.popt (this defines the -s option,
and includes --no-g to use the default group of the destination dir):
rsync alias -s --no-p --no-g
--chmod=ugo=rwX
- You could then use this new option in a command such as this one:
rsync -asv src/ dest/
- (Caveat: make sure that -a does not follow -s, or it will
re-enable the "--no-*" options.)
- The preservation of the destination's setgid bit on newly-created
directories when --perms is off was added in rsync 2.6.7. Older
rsync versions erroneously preserved the three special permission bits for
newly-created files when --perms was off, while overriding the
destination's setgid bit setting on a newly-created directory. (Keep in
mind that it is the version of the receiving rsync that affects this
behavior.)
- --executability
- This option causes rsync to preserve the executability (or
non-executability) of regular files when --perms is not enabled. A
regular file is considered to be executable if at least one 'x' is turned
on in its permissions. When an existing destination file's executability
differs from that of the corresponding source file, rsync modifies the
destination file's permissions as follows:
- o
- To make a file non-executable, rsync turns off all its 'x'
permissions.
- o
- To make a file executable, rsync turns on each 'x' permission that has a
corresponding 'r' permission enabled.
- If --perms is enabled, this option is ignored.
- --chmod
- This option tells rsync to apply one or more comma-separated
"chmod" strings to the permission of the files in the transfer.
The resulting value is treated as though it was the permissions that the
sending side supplied for the file, which means that this option can seem
to have no effect on existing files if --perms is not enabled.
- In addition to the normal parsing rules specified in the chmod(1)
manpage, you can specify an item that should only apply to a directory by
prefixing it with a 'D', or specify an item that should only apply to a
file by prefixing it with a 'F'. For example:
--chmod=Dg+s,ug+w,Fo-w,+X
- It is also legal to specify multiple --chmod options, as each
additional option is just appended to the list of changes to make.
- See the --perms and --executability options for how the
resulting permission value can be applied to the files in the
transfer.
- -o, --owner
- 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 option to force rsync to
attempt super-user activities). Without this option, the owner is set to
the invoking user on the receiving side.
- The preservation of ownership will associate matching names by default,
but may fall back to using the ID number in some circumstances (see also
the --numeric-ids option for a full discussion).
- -g, --group
- This option causes rsync to set the group of the destination file to be
the same as the source file. If the receiving program is not running as
the super-user (or if --no-super was specified), only groups that
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 to using the ID number in some circumstances
(see also the --numeric-ids option for a full discussion).
- --devices
- This option causes rsync to transfer character and block device files to
the remote system to recreate these devices. This option has no effect if
the receiving rsync is not run as the super-user and --super is not
specified.
- --specials
- This option causes rsync to transfer special files such as named sockets
and fifos.
- -D
- The -D option is equivalent to --devices
--specials.
- -t, --times
- This tells rsync to transfer modification times along with the files and
update them on the remote system. Note that if this option is not used,
the optimization that excludes files that have not been modified cannot be
effective; in other words, a missing -t or -a will cause the
next transfer to behave as if it used -I, causing all files to be
updated (though the rsync algorithm will make the update fairly efficient
if the files haven't actually changed, you're much better off using
-t).
- -O,
--omit-dir-times
- This tells rsync to omit directories when it is preserving modification
times (see --times). If NFS is sharing the directories on the
receiving side, it is a good idea to use -O. This option is
inferred if you use --backup without --backup-dir.
- --super
- This tells the receiving side to attempt super-user activities even if the
receiving rsync wasn't run by the super-user. These activities include:
preserving users via the --owner option, preserving all groups (not
just the current user's groups) via the --groups option, and
copying devices via the --devices option. This is useful for
systems that allow such activities without being the super-user, and also
for ensuring that you will get errors if the receiving side isn't being
running as the super-user. To turn off super-user activities, the
super-user can use --no-super.
- -S, --sparse
- Try to handle sparse files efficiently so they take up less space on the
destination. Conflicts with --inplace because it's not possible to
overwrite data in a sparse fashion.
- NOTE: Don't use this option when the destination is a Solaris
"tmpfs" filesystem. It doesn't seem to handle seeks over null
regions correctly and ends up corrupting the files.
- -n, --dry-run
- This tells rsync to not do any file transfers, instead it will just report
the actions it would have taken.
- -W, --whole-file
- With this option the incremental rsync algorithm is not used and the whole
file is sent as-is instead. The transfer may be faster if this option is
used when the bandwidth between the source and destination machines is
higher than the bandwidth to disk (especially when the "disk" is
actually a networked filesystem). This is the default when both the source
and destination are specified as local paths.
- -x,
--one-file-system
- This tells rsync to avoid crossing a filesystem boundary when recursing.
This does not limit the user's ability to specify items to copy from
multiple filesystems, just rsync's recursion through the hierarchy of each
directory that the user specified, and also the analogous recursion on the
receiving side during deletion. Also keep in mind that rsync treats a
"bind" mount to the same device as being on the same
filesystem.
- If this option is repeated, rsync omits all mount-point directories from
the copy. Otherwise, it includes an empty directory at each mount-point it
encounters (using the attributes of the mounted directory 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 a directory on another device is
treated like a mount-point. Symlinks to non-directories are unaffected by
this option.
- --existing,
--ignore-non-existing
- This tells rsync to skip creating files (including directories) that do
not exist yet on the destination. If this option is combined with the
--ignore-existing option, no files will be updated (which can be
useful if all you want to do is to delete extraneous files).
- --ignore-existing
- This tells rsync to skip updating files that already exist on the
destination (this does not ignore existing directores, or nothing
would get done). See also --existing.
- --remove-source-files
- This tells rsync to remove from the sending side the files (meaning
non-directories) that are a part of the transfer and have been
successfully duplicated on the receiving side.
- --delete
- This tells rsync to delete extraneous files from the receiving side (ones
that aren't on the sending side), but only for the directories that are
being synchronized. You must have asked rsync to send the whole 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 individual
files, not the files' parent directory. Files that are excluded from
transfer are also excluded from being deleted unless you use the
--delete-excluded option or mark the rules as only matching 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 in effect. Beginning with 2.6.7, deletions will
also occur when --dirs (-d) is in effect, but only for
directories whose contents are being copied.
- This option can be dangerous if used incorrectly! It is a very good idea
to run first using the --dry-run option (-n) to see what
files would be deleted to make sure important files aren't listed.
- If the sending side detects any I/O errors, then the deletion of any files
at the destination will be automatically disabled. This is to prevent
temporary filesystem failures (such as NFS errors) on the sending side
causing a massive deletion of files on the destination. You can override
this with the --ignore-errors option.
- The --delete option may be combined with one of the --delete-WHEN
options without conflict, as well as --delete-excluded. However, if
none of the --delete-WHEN options are specified, rsync will currently
choose the --delete-before algorithm. A future version may change
this to choose the --delete-during algorithm. See also
--delete-after.
- --delete-before
- Request that the file-deletions on the receiving side be done before the
transfer starts. This is the default if --delete or
--delete-excluded is specified without one of the --delete-WHEN
options. 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 extraneous files would help to make the transfer
possible. However, it does introduce a delay before the start of the
transfer, and this delay might cause the transfer to timeout (if
--timeout was specified).
- --delete-during,
--del
- Request that the file-deletions on the receiving side be done
incrementally as the transfer happens. This is a faster method than
choosing the before- or after-transfer algorithm, but it is only supported
beginning with rsync version 2.6.4. See --delete (which is implied)
for more details on file-deletion.
- --delete-after
- Request that the file-deletions on the receiving side be done after the
transfer has completed. This is useful if you are sending new
per-directory merge files as a part of the transfer and you want their
exclusions to take effect for the delete phase of the current transfer.
See --delete (which is implied) for more details on
file-deletion.
- --delete-excluded
- In addition to deleting the files on the receiving side that are not on
the sending side, this tells rsync to also delete any files on the
receiving side that are excluded (see --exclude). See the FILTER
RULES section for a way to make individual exclusions behave this way on
the receiver, and for a way to protect files from
--delete-excluded. See --delete (which is implied) for more
details on file-deletion.
- --ignore-errors
- Tells --delete to go ahead and delete files even when there are I/O
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 used to be non-functional unless
the --recursive option was also enabled.
- --max-delete=NUM
- This tells rsync not to delete more than NUM files or directories (NUM
must be non-zero). This is useful when mirroring very large trees to
prevent disasters.
- --max-size=SIZE
- This tells rsync to avoid transferring any file that is larger than the
specified SIZE. The SIZE value can be suffixed with a string to indicate a
size multiplier, and may be a fractional value (e.g.
"--max-size=1.5m").
- The suffixes are as follows: "K" (or "KiB") is a
kibibyte (1024), "M" (or "MiB") is a mebibyte
(1024*1024), and "G" (or "GiB") is a gibibyte
(1024*1024*1024). If you want the multiplier to be 1000 instead of 1024,
use "KB", "MB", or "GB". (Note: lower-case
is also accepted for all values.) Finally, if the suffix ends in either
"+1" or "-1", the value will be offset by one byte in
the indicated direction.
- Examples: --max-size=1.5mb-1 is 1499999 bytes, and --max-size=2g+1 is
2147483649 bytes.
- --min-size=SIZE
- This tells rsync to avoid transferring any file that is smaller than the
specified SIZE, which can help in not transferring small, junk files. See
the --max-size option for a description of SIZE.
- -B,
--block-size=BLOCKSIZE
- This forces the block size used in the rsync algorithm to a fixed value.
It is normally selected based on the size of each file being updated. See
the technical report for details.
- -e, --rsh=COMMAND
- This option allows you to choose an alternative remote shell program to
use for communication between the local and remote copies of rsync.
Typically, rsync is configured to use ssh by default, but you may prefer
to use rsh on a local network.
- If this option is used with [user@]host::module/path, then the
remote shell COMMAND will be used to run an rsync daemon on the
remote host, and all data will be transmitted through that remote shell
connection, rather than through a direct socket connection to a running
rsync daemon on the remote host. See the 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 single argument. You must use spaces (not tabs or
other whitespace) to separate the command and args from each other, and
you can use single- and/or double-quotes to preserve spaces in an argument
(but not backslashes). Note that doubling a single-quote inside a
single-quoted string gives you a single-quote; likewise for double-quotes
(though you need to pay attention to which quotes your shell is parsing
and which quotes rsync is parsing). Some examples:
-e 'ssh -p 2234'
-e 'ssh -o "ProxyCommand nohup ssh firewall nc -w1 %h
%p"'
- (Note that ssh users can alternately customize site-specific connect
options in their .ssh/config file.)
- You can also choose the remote shell program using the RSYNC_RSH
environment variable, which accepts the same range of values as
-e.
- See also the --blocking-io option which is affected by this
option.
- --rsync-path=PROGRAM
- Use this to specify what program is to be run on the remote machine to
start-up rsync. Often used when rsync is not in the default remote-shell's
path (e.g. --rsync-path=/usr/local/bin/rsync). Note that PROGRAM is run
with the help of a shell, so it can be any program, script, or command
sequence you'd care to run, so long as it does not corrupt the standard-in
& standard-out that rsync is using to communicate.
- One tricky example is to set a different default directory on the remote
machine for use with the --relative option. For instance:
rsync -avR --rsync-path="cd /a/b
&& rsync" hst:c/d /e/
- -C, --cvs-exclude
- This is a useful shorthand for excluding a broad range of files that you
often don't want to transfer between systems. It uses the same algorithm
that CVS uses to determine if a file should be ignored.
- The exclude list is initialized to:
RCS SCCS CVS CVS.adm RCSLOG cvslog.*
tags TAGS .make.state .nse_depinfo *~ #* .#* ,* _$* *$
*.old *.bak *.BAK *.orig *.rej .del-* *.a *.olb *.o
*.obj *.so *.exe *.Z *.elc *.ln core .svn/
- then files listed in a $HOME/.cvsignore are added to the list and any
files listed in the CVSIGNORE environment variable (all cvsignore names
are delimited by whitespace).
- Finally, any file is ignored if it is in the same directory as a
.cvsignore file and matches one of the patterns listed therein. 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 are appended at the end of your own
rules, regardless of where the -C was placed on the command-line.
This makes them a lower priority than any rules you specified explicitly.
If you want to control where these CVS excludes get inserted into your
filter rules, you should omit the -C as a command-line option and
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
the per-directory scanning for the .cvsignore file. The second option does
a one-time import of the CVS excludes mentioned above.
- -f, --filter=RULE
- This option allows you to add rules to selectively exclude certain files
from the list of files to be transferred. This is most useful in
combination with a recursive transfer.
- You may use as many --filter options on the command line as you
like to build up the list of files to exclude.
- See the FILTER RULES section for detailed information on this option.
- -F
- The -F option is a shorthand for adding two --filter rules
to your command. The first time it is used is a shorthand for this
rule:
--filter='dir-merge
/.rsync-filter'
- This tells rsync to look for per-directory .rsync-filter files that have
been sprinkled through the hierarchy and use their rules to filter the
files in the transfer. If -F is repeated, it is a shorthand for
this rule:
--filter='exclude
.rsync-filter'
- This filters out the .rsync-filter files themselves from the
transfer.
- See the FILTER RULES section for detailed information on how these options
work.
- --exclude=PATTERN
- This option is a simplified form of the --filter option that
defaults to an exclude rule and does not allow the full rule-parsing
syntax of normal filter rules.
- See the FILTER RULES section for detailed information on this option.
- --exclude-from=FILE
- 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.
- --include=PATTERN
- This option is a simplified form of the --filter option that
defaults to an include rule and does not allow the full rule-parsing
syntax of normal filter rules.
- See the FILTER RULES section for detailed information on this option.
- --include-from=FILE
- 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.
- --files-from=FILE
- Using this option allows you to specify the exact list of files to
transfer (as read from the specified FILE or - for standard input).
It also tweaks the default behavior of rsync to make transferring just the
specified files and directories easier:
- o
- The --relative (-R) option is implied, which preserves the
path information that is specified for 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 the destination rather than noisily
skipping them (use --no-dirs or --no-d if you want to turn
that off).
- 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 option on the command-line has no bearing on how
other options are parsed (e.g. -a works the same before or after
--files-from, as does --no-R and all other options).
- The file names that are read from the FILE are all relative to the source
dir -- any leading slashes are removed and no ".." references
are allowed to go higher than the source dir. For example, take this
command:
rsync -a --files-from=/tmp/foo /usr
remote:/backup
- If /tmp/foo contains the string "bin" (or even
"/bin"), the /usr/bin directory will be created as /backup/bin
on the remote host. If it contains "bin/" (note the trailing
slash), the immediate contents 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 hierarchy would 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) --relative option is to duplicate only the path info
that is read from the file -- it does not force the duplication of the
source-spec path (/usr in this case).
- In addition, the --files-from file can be read from the remote host
instead of the local host if you specify a "host:" in front of
the file (the host must match one end of the transfer). As a short-cut,
you can specify just a prefix of ":" to mean "use the
remote end of the transfer". For example:
rsync -a --files-from=:/path/file-list
src:/ /tmp/copy
- This would copy all the files specified in the /path/file-list file that
was located on the remote "src" host.
- -0, --from0
- This tells rsync that the rules/filenames it reads from a file are
terminated by a null ('\0') character, not a NL, CR, or CR+LF. This
affects --exclude-from, --include-from, --files-from,
and any merged files specified in a --filter rule. It does not
affect --cvs-exclude (since all names read from a .cvsignore file
are split on whitespace).
- -T, --temp-dir=DIR
- This option instructs rsync to use DIR as a scratch directory when
creating temporary copies of the files transferred on the receiving side.
The default behavior is to create each temporary file in the same
directory as the associated destination file.
- This option is most often used when the receiving disk partition does not
have enough free space to hold a copy of the largest file in the transfer.
In this case (i.e. when the scratch directory in on a different disk
partition), rsync will not be able to rename each received temporary file
over the top of the associated destination file, but instead must copy it
into place. Rsync does this by copying the file over the top of the
destination file, which means that the destination file will contain
truncated data during this copy. If this were not done this way (even if
the destination file were first removed, the data locally copied to a
temporary file in the destination directory, and then renamed into place)
it would be possible for the old file to continue taking up disk space (if
someone had it open), 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 combine it with the --delay-updates option,
which will ensure that all copied files get put into subdirectories in the
destination hierarchy, awaiting the end of the transfer. If you don't have
enough room to duplicate all the arriving files on the destination
partition, another way to tell rsync that you aren'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 destination hierarchy, rsync will use the
partial-dir as a staging area to bring over the copied file, and then
rename it into place from there. (Specifying a --partial-dir with
an absolute path does not have this side-effect.)
- -y, --fuzzy
- 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 an identical
size and modified-time, or a similarly-named file. If found, rsync uses
the fuzzy basis file to try to speed up the transfer.
- Note that the use of the --delete option might get rid of any
potential fuzzy-match files, so either use --delete-after or
specify some filename exclusions if you need to prevent this.
- --compare-dest=DIR
- This option instructs rsync to use DIR on the destination machine
as an additional hierarchy to compare destination files against doing
transfers (if the files are missing in the destination directory). If a
file is found in DIR that is identical to the sender's file, the
file will NOT be transferred to the destination directory. This is useful
for creating a sparse backup of just files that have changed from an
earlier backup.
- Beginning in version 2.6.4, multiple --compare-dest directories may
be provided, which will cause rsync to search the list in the order
specified for an exact match. If a match is found that differs only in
attributes, a local copy is made and the attributes updated. If a match is
not found, a basis file from one of the DIRs will be selected to
try to speed up the transfer.
- If DIR is a relative path, it is relative to the destination
directory. See also --copy-dest and --link-dest.
- --copy-dest=DIR
- This option behaves like --compare-dest, but rsync will also copy
unchanged files found in DIR to the destination directory using a
local copy. This is useful for doing transfers to a new destination while
leaving existing files intact, and then doing a flash-cutover when all
files have been successfully transferred.
- Multiple --copy-dest directories may be provided, which will cause
rsync to search the list in the order specified for an unchanged file. If
a match is not found, a basis file from one of the DIRs will be
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 --link-dest.
- --link-dest=DIR
- This option behaves like --copy-dest, but unchanged files are hard
linked from DIR to the destination directory. The files must be
identical in all preserved attributes (e.g. permissions, possibly
ownership) in order for the files to be linked together. An example:
rsync -av --link-dest=$PWD/prior_dir
host:src_dir/ new_dir/
- Beginning in version 2.6.4, multiple --link-dest directories may be
provided, which will cause rsync to search the list in the order specified
for an exact match. If a match is found that differs only in attributes, a
local copy is made and the attributes updated. If a match is not found, a
basis file from one of the DIRs will be selected to try to speed up
the transfer.
- Note that if you combine this option with --ignore-times, rsync
will not link any files together because it only links identical files
together as a substitute for transferring the file, never as an additional
check after the file is updated.
- If DIR is a relative path, it is relative to the destination
directory. See also --compare-dest and --copy-dest.
- Note that rsync versions prior to 2.6.1 had a bug that could prevent
--link-dest from working properly for a non-super-user when
-o was specified (or implied by -a). You can work-around
this bug by avoiding the -o option when sending to an old
rsync.
- -z, --compress
- With this option, rsync compresses the file data as it is sent to the
destination machine, which reduces 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 compressing remote shell or a compressing
transport because it takes advantage of the implicit information in the
matching data blocks that are not explicitly sent over the
connection.
- --compress-level=NUM
- Explicitly set the compression level to use (see --compress)
instead of letting it default. If NUM is non-zero, the --compress
option is implied.
- --numeric-ids
- With this option rsync will transfer numeric group and user IDs rather
than using user and group names and mapping them at both ends.
- By default rsync will use the username and groupname to determine what
ownership to give files. The special uid 0 and the special group 0 are
never mapped via user/group names even if the --numeric-ids option
is not specified.
- If a user or group has no name on the source system or it has no match on
the destination system, then the numeric ID from the source system is used
instead. See also the comments on the "use chroot" setting in
the rsyncd.conf manpage for information on how the chroot setting affects
rsync's ability to look up the names of the users and groups and what you
can do about it.
- --timeout=TIMEOUT
- This option allows you to set a maximum I/O timeout in seconds. If no data
is transferred for the specified time then rsync will exit. The default is
0, which means no timeout.
- --address
- By default rsync will bind to the wildcard address when connecting to an
rsync daemon. The --address option allows you to specify a specific
IP address (or hostname) to bind to. See also this option in the
--daemon mode section.
- --port=PORT
- This specifies an alternate TCP port number to use rather than the default
of 873. This is only needed if you are using the double-colon (::) syntax
to connect with an rsync daemon (since the URL syntax has a way to specify
the port as a part of the URL). See also this option in the
--daemon mode section.
- --sockopts
- This option can provide endless fun for people who like to tune their
systems to the utmost degree. You can set all sorts of socket options
which may make transfers faster (or slower!). Read the man page for the
setsockopt() system call for details on some of
the options you may be able to set. By default no special socket options
are set. This only affects direct socket connections to a remote rsync
daemon. This option also exists in the --daemon mode section.
- --blocking-io
- This tells rsync to use blocking I/O when launching a remote shell
transport. If the remote shell is either rsh or remsh, rsync defaults to
using blocking I/O, otherwise it defaults to using non-blocking I/O. (Note
that ssh prefers non-blocking I/O.)
- -i,
--itemize-changes
- Requests a simple itemized list of the changes that are being made to each
file, including attribute changes. 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 can use -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 9 letters long. The
general format is like the string YXcstpogz, where Y is
replaced by the type of update being done, X is replaced by the
file-type, and the 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 a directory 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 being modified).
- 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 a
device, 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 associated attribute for the item is being updated or a
"." for no change. Three exceptions to this are: (1) a newly
created item replaces each letter with a "+", (2) an identical
item replaces the dots with spaces, and (3) an unknown attribute replaces
each letter with a "?" (this can happen when talking to an older
rsync).
- The attribute that is associated with each letter is as follows:
- o
- A c means the checksum of the file is different and will be updated
by the file transfer (requires --checksum).
- o
- A s means the size of the 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 time will be set to the transfer time, which
happens anytime a symlink is transferred, or when a file or device is
transferred without --times.
- o
- A p means the permissions are different and are being updated to
the sender's value (requires --perms).
- o
- An o means the owner is different and is being updated to the
sender's value (requires --owner and super-user privileges).
- o
- A g means the group is different and is being updated to the
sender's value (requires --group and the authority to set the
group).
- o
- The z slot is reserved for future use.
- One other output is possible: when deleting files, the "%i" will
output the string "*deleting" for each item that is being
removed (assuming that you are talking to a recent enough rsync that it
logs deletions instead of outputting them as a verbose message).
- --out-format=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 percent (%)
character. For a list of the possible escape characters, see the "log
format" setting in the rsyncd.conf manpage.
- Specifying this option will mention each file, dir, etc. that gets updated
in a significant way (a transferred file, a recreated symlink/device, or a
touched directory). In addition, if the itemize-changes escape (%i) is
included in the string, the logging of names increases to mention any item
that is changed in any way (as long as the receiving side is at least
2.6.4). See the --itemize-changes option for a description of the
output of "%i".
- The --verbose option implies a format of "%n%L", but you
can use --out-format without --verbose if you like, or you
can override the format of its per-file output using this option.
- Rsync will output the out-format string prior to a file's transfer unless
one of the transfer-statistic escapes is requested, in which case the
logging is done at the end of the file's transfer. When this late logging
is in effect and --progress is also specified, rsync will also
output the name of the file being transferred prior to its progress
information (followed, of course, by the out-format output).
- --log-file=FILE
- This option causes rsync to log what it is doing to a file. This is
similar to the logging that a daemon does, but can be requested for the
client side and/or the server side of a non-daemon transfer. If specified
as a client option, transfer logging will be enabled with a default format
of "%i %n%L". See the --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 --rsync-path="rsync --log-file=/tmp/rlog" src/ dest/
- This is very useful if you need to debug why a connection is closing
unexpectedly.
- --log-file-format=FORMAT
- This allows you to specify exactly what per-update logging is put into the
file specified by the --log-file option (which must also be
specified for this option to have any effect). If you specify an empty
string, updated files will not be mentioned in the log file. For a list of
the possible escape characters, see the "log format" setting in
the rsyncd.conf manpage.
- --stats
- This tells rsync to print a verbose set of statistics on the file
transfer, allowing you to tell how effective the rsync algorithm is for
your data.
- The current statistics are as follows:
- o
- Number of files is the count of all "files" (in the
generic sense), which includes directories, symlinks, etc.
- o
- Number of files transferred is the count of normal files that were
updated via the rsync algorithm, which does not include created dirs,
symlinks, etc.
- o
- Total file size is the total sum of all file sizes in the transfer.
This does not count any size for directories or special files, but does
include the size of symlinks.
- o
- Total transferred file size is the total sum of all files sizes for
just the transferred files.
- o
- Literal data is how much unmatched file-update data we had to send
to the receiver for it to recreate the updated files.
- o
- Matched data is how much data the receiver got locally when
recreating the updated files.
- o
- File list size is how big the file-list data was when the sender
sent it to the receiver. This is smaller than the in-memory size for the
file list due to some compressing of duplicated data when rsync sends the
list.
- o
- File list generation time is the number of seconds that the sender
spent creating the file list. This requires a modern rsync on the sending
side for this to be present.
- o
- File list transfer time is the number of seconds that the sender
spent sending the file list to the receiver.
- o
- Total bytes sent is the count of all the bytes that rsync sent from
the client side to the server side.
- o
- Total bytes received is the count of all non-message bytes that
rsync received by the client side from the server side.
"Non-message" bytes means that we don't count the bytes for a
verbose message that the server sent to us, which makes the stats more
consistent.
- -8, --8-bit-output
- This tells rsync to leave all high-bit characters unescaped in the output
instead of trying to test them to see if they're valid in the current
locale and escaping the invalid ones. All control characters (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 by exactly 3 octal digits. For example, a
newline would output as "\#012". A literal backslash that is in
a filename is not escaped unless it is followed by a hash and 3 digits
(0-9).
- -h,
--human-readable
- Output numbers in a more human-readable format. This makes big numbers
output using larger units, with a K, M, or G suffix. If this option was
specified once, these units are K (1000), M (1000*1000), and G
(1000*1000*1000); if the option is repeated, the units are powers of 1024
instead of 1000.
- --partial
- By default, rsync will delete any partially transferred file if the
transfer is interrupted. In some circumstances it is more desirable to
keep partially transferred files. Using the --partial option tells
rsync to keep the partial file which should make a subsequent transfer of
the rest of the file much faster.
- --partial-dir=DIR
- A better way to keep partial files than the --partial option is to
specify a DIR that will be used to hold the partial data (instead
of writing it out to the destination file). On the next transfer, rsync
will use a file found in this dir as data to speed up the resumption of
the transfer and then delete it after it has served its purpose.
- Note that if --whole-file is specified (or implied), any
partial-dir file that is found for a file that is being updated will
simply be removed (since rsync is sending files without using the
incremental rsync algorithm).
- Rsync will create the DIR if it is missing (just the last dir --
not the whole path). This makes it easy to use a relative path (such as
"--partial-dir=.rsync-partial") to have rsync create the
partial-directory in the destination file's directory when needed, and
then remove it again when the partial file is deleted.
- If the partial-dir value is not an absolute path, rsync will add an
exclude rule at the end of all your existing excludes. This will prevent
the sending of any partial-dir files that may exist on the sending side,
and will also prevent the untimely deletion of partial-dir items on the
receiving side. An example: the above --partial-dir option would
add the equivalent of "--exclude=.rsync-partial/" at the
end of any other filter rules.
- If you are supplying your own exclude rules, you may need to add your own
exclude/hide/protect rule for the 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-up any 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 you don'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 the environment does not force --partial
to be enabled, but rather it affects where partial files go when
--partial is specified. For instance, instead of using
--partial-dir=.rsync-tmp along with --progress, you could
set RSYNC_PARTIAL_DIR=.rsync-tmp in your environment and then just use the
-P option to turn on the use of the .rsync-tmp dir for partial
transfers. The only times that the --partial option does not look
for this environment value are (1) when --inplace was specified
(since --inplace conflicts with --partial-dir), and (2) when
--delay-updates was specified (see below).
- For the purposes of the daemon-config's "refuse options"
setting, --partial-dir does not imply --partial. This
is so that a refusal of the --partial option can be used to
disallow the overwriting of destination files with a partial transfer,
while still allowing the safer idiom provided by
--partial-dir.
- --delay-updates
- This option puts the temporary file from each updated file into a holding
directory until the end of the transfer, at which time all the files are
renamed into place in rapid succession. This attempts to make the updating
of the files a little more atomic. By default the files are placed into a
directory named ".~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 of how this ".~tmp~" dir will be excluded from
the transfer, and what you can do if you wnat rsync to cleanup 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 requires enough free disk space on the receiving
side to hold an additional copy of all the updated files. Note also that
you should not use an absolute path to --partial-dir unless (1)
there is no chance of any of the files in the transfer having the same
name (since all the updated files will be put into a single directory if
the path is absolute) and (2) there are no mount points in the hierarchy
(since the delayed 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 even more
atomic (it uses --link-dest and a parallel hierarchy of
files).
- -m,
--prune-empty-dirs
- This option tells the receiving rsync to get rid of empty directories from
the file-list, including nested directories that have no non-directory
children. This is useful for avoiding the creation of a bunch of useless
directories when the sending rsync is recursively scanning a hierarchy of
files using include/exclude/filter rules.
- Because the file-list is actually being pruned, this option also affects
what directories get deleted when a delete is active. However, keep in
mind that excluded files and directories can prevent existing items from
being deleted (because an exclude hides source files and protects
destination files).
- 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
the file-list:
--filter 'protect emptydir/'
- Here's an example that copies all .pdf files in a hierarchy, only creating
the necessary destination directories to hold the .pdf files, and ensures
that any superfluous files and directories in the destination are removed
(note the hide filter of non-directories being used instead of an
exclude):
rsync -avm --del --include='*.pdf' -f 'hide,! */' src/
dest
- If you didn't want to remove superfluous destination files, the more
time-honored options of "--include='*/' --exclude='*'" would
work fine in place of the hide-filter (if that is more natural to
you).
- --progress
- This option tells rsync to print information showing the progress of the
transfer. This gives a bored user something to watch. Implies
--verbose if it wasn't already specified.
- While rsync is transferring a regular file, it updates a progress line
that looks like this:
-
782448 63% 110.64kB/s 0:00:04
- In this example, the receiver has reconstructed 782448 bytes or 63% of the
sender's file, which is being reconstructed at a rate of 110.64 kilobytes
per second, and the transfer will finish in 4 seconds if the current rate
is maintained until the end.
- These statistics can be misleading if the incremental transfer algorithm
is in use. For example, if the sender's file consists of the basis file
followed by additional data, the reported rate will probably drop
dramatically when the receiver gets to the literal data, and the transfer
will probably take much longer to finish than the receiver estimated as it
was finishing the matched part of the file.
- When the file transfer finishes, rsync replaces the progress line with a
summary line that looks like this:
-
1238099 100% 146.38kB/s 0:00:08 (xfer#5, to-check=169/396)
- In this example, the file was 1238099 bytes long in total, the average
rate of transfer for the whole file was 146.38 kilobytes per second over
the 8 seconds that it took to complete, it was the 5th transfer of a
regular file during the current rsync session, and there are 169 more
files for the receiver to check (to see if they are up-to-date or not)
remaining out of the 396 total files in the file-list.
- -P
- The -P option is equivalent to --partial --progress.
Its purpose is to make it much easier to specify these two options for a
long transfer that may be interrupted.
- --password-file
- This option allows you to provide a password in a file for accessing a
remote rsync daemon. Note that this option is only useful when accessing
an rsync daemon using the built in transport, not when using a remote
shell as the transport. The file must not be world readable. It should
contain just the password as a single line.
- --list-only
- This option will cause the source files to be listed instead of
transferred. This option is inferred if there is a single source arg and
no destination specified, so its main uses are: (1) to turn a copy command
that includes a destination arg into a file-listing command, (2) to be
able to specify more than one local source arg (note: be sure to include
the destination), or (3) to avoid the automatically added "-r
--exclude='/*/*'" options that rsync usually uses as a
compatibility kluge when generating a non-recursive listing. Caution: keep
in mind that a source arg with a wild-card is expanded by the shell into
multiple args, so it is never safe to try to list such an arg without
using this option. For example:
-
rsync -av --list-only foo* dest/
- --bwlimit=KBPS
- This option allows you to specify a maximum transfer rate in kilobytes per
second. This option is most effective when using rsync with large files
(several megabytes and up). Due to the nature of rsync transfers, blocks
of data are sent, then if rsync determines the transfer was too fast, it
will wait before sending the next data block. The result is an average
transfer rate equaling the specified limit. A value of zero specifies no
limit.
- --write-batch=FILE
- 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.
- --only-write-batch=FILE
- Works like --write-batch, except that no updates are made on the
destination system when creating the batch. This lets you transport the
changes to the destination system via some other means and then apply the
changes via --read-batch.
- Note that you can feel free to write the batch directly to some portable
media: if this media fills to capacity before the end of the transfer, you
can just apply that partial transfer to the destination and repeat the
whole process to get the rest of the changes (as long as you don't mind a
partially updated 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 the batched data to be diverted from the sender
into the batch file without having to flow over the wire to the receiver
(when pulling, the sender is remote, and thus can't write the batch).
- --read-batch=FILE
- 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.
- --protocol=NUM
- Force an older protocol version to be used. This is useful for creating a
batch file that is compatible with an older version of rsync. For
instance, if rsync 2.6.4 is being used with the --write-batch
option, but rsync 2.6.3 is what will be used to run the
--read-batch option, you should use "--protocol=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).
- -4, --ipv4 or -6, --ipv6
- Tells rsync to prefer IPv4/IPv6 when creating sockets. This only affects
sockets that rsync has direct control over, such as the outgoing socket
when directly contacting an rsync daemon. See also these options in the
--daemon mode section.
- --checksum-seed=NUM
- Set the MD4 checksum seed to the integer NUM. This 4 byte checksum seed is
included in each block and file MD4 checksum calculation. By default the
checksum seed is generated by the server and defaults to the current
time() . This option is used to set a specific
checksum seed, which is useful for applications that want repeatable block
and file checksums, or in the case where the user wants a more random
checksum seed. Note that setting NUM to 0 causes rsync to use the default
of time() for checksum seed.
- -E,
--extended-attributes
- Apple specific option to copy extended attributes, resource forks, and
ACLs. Requires at least Mac OS X 10.4 or suitably patched rsync.
- --cache
- Apple specific option to enable filesystem caching of rsync file i/o
Otherwise fcntl(F_NOCACHE) is used to limit memory growth.
The options allowed when starting an rsync daemon are as
follows:
- --daemon
- This tells rsync that it is to run as a daemon. The daemon you start
running may be accessed using an rsync 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 will detach 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 the
rsyncd.conf(5) man page for more details.
- --address
- By default rsync will bind to the wildcard address when run as a daemon
with the --daemon option. The --address option allows you to
specify a specific IP address (or hostname) to bind to. This makes virtual
hosting possible in conjunction with the --config option. See also
the "address" global option in the rsyncd.conf manpage.
- --bwlimit=KBPS
- This option allows you to specify a maximum transfer rate in kilobytes per
second for the data the daemon sends. The client can still specify a
smaller --bwlimit value, but their requested value will be rounded
down if they try to exceed it. See the client version of this option
(above) for some extra details.
- --config=FILE
- This specifies an alternate config file than the default. This is only
relevant when --daemon is specified. The default is
/etc/rsyncd.conf unless the daemon is running over a remote shell program
and the remote user is not the super-user; in that case the default is
rsyncd.conf in the current directory (typically $HOME).
- --no-detach
- When running as a daemon, this option instructs rsync to not detach itself
and become a background process. This option is required when running as a
service on Cygwin, and may also be useful when rsync is supervised by a
program such as daemontools or AIX's System Resource
Controller. --no-detach is also recommended when rsync is run
under a debugger. This option has no effect if rsync is run from inetd or
sshd.
- --port=PORT
- This specifies an alternate TCP port number for the daemon to listen on
rather than the default of 873. See also the "port" global
option in the rsyncd.conf manpage.
- --log-file=FILE
- This option tells the rsync daemon to use the given log-file name instead
of using the "log file" setting in the config file.
- --log-file-format=FORMAT
- This option tells the rsync daemon to use the given FORMAT string instead
of using the "log format" setting in the config file. It also
enables "transfer logging" unless the string is empty, in which
case transfer logging is turned off.
- --sockopts
- This overrides the socket options setting in the rsyncd.conf file
and has the same syntax.
- -v, --verbose
- This option increases the amount of information the daemon logs during its
startup phase. After the client connects, the daemon's verbosity level
will be controlled by the options that the client used and the "max
verbosity" setting in the module's config section.
- -4, --ipv4 or -6, --ipv6
- Tells rsync to prefer IPv4/IPv6 when creating the incoming sockets that
the rsync daemon will use to listen for connections. One of these options
may be required in older versions of Linux to work around an IPv6 bug in
the kernel (if you see an "address already in use" error when
nothing else is using the port, try specifying --ipv6 or
--ipv4 when starting the daemon).
- -h, --help
- When specified after --daemon, print a short help page describing
the options available for starting an rsync daemon.
The filter rules allow for flexible selection of which files to
transfer (include) and which files to skip (exclude). The rules either
directly specify include/exclude patterns or they specify a way to acquire
more include/exclude patterns (e.g. to read them from a file).
As the list of files/directories to transfer is built, rsync
checks each name to be transferred against the list of include/exclude
patterns in turn, and the first matching pattern is acted on: if it is an
exclude pattern, then that file is skipped; if it is an include pattern then
that filename is not skipped; if no matching pattern is found, then the
filename is not skipped.
Rsync builds an ordered list of filter rules as specified on the
command-line. Filter rules have the following syntax:
RULE [PATTERN_OR_FILENAME]
RULE,MODIFIERS [PATTERN_OR_FILENAME]
You have your choice of using either short or long RULE names, as
described below. If you use a short-named rule, the ',' separating the RULE
from the MODIFIERS is optional. The PATTERN or FILENAME that follows (when
present) must come after either a single space or an underscore (_). Here
are the available rule prefixes:
exclude, - specifies an exclude pattern.
include, + specifies an include pattern.
merge, . specifies a merge-file to read for more rules.
dir-merge, : specifies a per-directory merge-file.
hide, H specifies a pattern for hiding files from the transfer.
show, S files that match the pattern are not hidden.
protect, P specifies a pattern for protecting files from deletion.
risk, R files that match the pattern are not protected.
clear, ! clears the current include/exclude list (takes no arg)
When rules are being read from a file, empty lines are ignored, as
are comment lines that start with a "#".
Note that the --include/--exclude command-line
options do not allow the full range of rule parsing as described above --
they only allow the specification of include/exclude patterns plus a
"!" token to clear the list (and the normal comment parsing when
rules are read from a file). If a pattern does not begin with "- "
(dash, space) or "+ " (plus, space), then the rule will be
interpreted as if "+ " (for an include option) or "- "
(for an exclude option) were prefixed to the string. A --filter
option, on the other hand, must always contain either a short or long rule
name at the start of the rule.
Note also that the --filter, --include, and
--exclude options take one rule/pattern each. To add multiple ones,
you can repeat the options on the command-line, use the merge-file syntax of
the --filter option, or the
--include-from/--exclude-from options.
You can include and exclude files by specifying patterns using the
"+", "-", etc. filter rules (as introduced in the FILTER
RULES section above). The include/exclude rules each specify a pattern that
is matched against the 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, otherwise it is matched against the end of the
pathname. This is similar to a leading ^ in regular expressions. Thus
"/foo" would match a file named "foo" at either the
"root of the transfer" (for a global rule) or in the
merge-file's directory (for a per-directory rule). An unqualified
"foo" would match any file or directory named "foo"
anywhere in the tree because the algorithm is applied recursively from the
top down; it behaves as if each path component gets a turn at being the
end of the file name. Even the unanchored "sub/foo" would match
at any point in the hierarchy where a "foo" was found within a
directory named "sub". See the section on ANCHORING
INCLUDE/EXCLUDE PATTERNS for a full discussion of how to 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
file, link, or device.
- o
- rsync chooses between doing a simple string match and wildcard matching by
checking if the pattern contains one of these three wildcard characters:
'*', '?', and '[' .
- o
- a '*' matches any non-empty path component (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 literally when no wildcards are present.
- o
- if the pattern contains a / (not counting a trailing /) or a
"**", then it is matched against the full pathname, including
any leading directories. If the pattern doesn't contain a / or a
"**", then it is matched only against the final component of the
filename. (Remember that the algorithm is applied recursively so
"full filename" can actually be any portion of a path from the
starting directory on down.)
- o
- a trailing "dir_name/***" will match both the directory (as if
"dir_name/" had been specified) and all the files in the
directory (as if "dir_name/**" had been specified). (This
behavior is new for version 2.6.7.)
Note that, when using the --recursive (-r) option
(which is implied by -a), every subcomponent of every path is visited
from the top down, so include/exclude patterns get applied recursively to
each subcomponent's full name (e.g. to include "/foo/bar/baz" the
subcomponents "/foo" and "/foo/bar" must not be
excluded). The exclude patterns actually short-circuit the directory
traversal stage when rsync finds the files to send. If a pattern excludes a
particular parent directory, it can render a deeper include pattern
ineffectual because rsync did not descend through that excluded section of
the hierarchy. This is particularly important when using a trailing '*'
rule. For instance, this won't work:
+
/some/path/this-file-will-not-be-found
+ /file-is-included
- *
This fails because the parent directory "some" is
excluded by the '*' rule, so rsync never visits any of the files in the
"some" or "some/path" directories. One solution is to
ask for all directories in the hierarchy to be included by using a single
rule: "+ */" (put it somewhere before the "- *" rule),
and perhaps use the --prune-empty-dirs option. Another solution is to
add specific include rules for all the parent dirs that need to be visited.
For instance, this set of rules works fine:
+ /some/
+ /some/path/
+ /some/path/this-file-is-found
+ /file-also-included
- *
Here are some examples of exclude/include matching:
- o
- "- *.o" would exclude all filenames matching *.o
- o
- "- /foo" would exclude a file (or directory) named foo in the
transfer-root directory
- o
- "- foo/" would exclude any directory named foo
- o
- "- /foo/*/bar" would exclude any file named bar which is at two
levels below a directory named foo in the transfer-root directory
- o
- "- /foo/**/bar" would exclude any file named bar two or more
levels below a directory named foo in the transfer-root directory
- o
- The combination of "+ */", "+ *.c", and "-
*" would include all directories and C source files but nothing else
(see also the --prune-empty-dirs option)
- o
- The combination of "+ foo/", "+ foo/bar.c", and
"- *" would include only the foo directory and foo/bar.c (the
foo directory must be explicitly included or it would be excluded by the
"*")
You can merge whole files into your filter rules by specifying
either a merge (.) or a dir-merge (:) filter rule (as introduced in the
FILTER RULES section above).
There are two kinds of merged files -- single-instance ('.') and
per-directory (':'). A single-instance merge file is read one time, and its
rules are incorporated into the filter list in the place of the
"." rule. For per-directory merge files, rsync will scan every
directory that it traverses for the named file, merging its contents when
the file exists into the current list of inherited rules. These
per-directory rule files must be created on the sending side because it is
the sending side that is being scanned for the available files to transfer.
These rule files may also need to be transferred to the receiving side if
you want them to affect what files don't get deleted (see PER-DIRECTORY
RULES AND DELETE below).
Some examples:
merge /etc/rsync/default.rules
. /etc/rsync/default.rules
dir-merge .per-dir-filter
dir-merge,n- .non-inherited-per-dir-excludes
:n- .non-inherited-per-dir-excludes
The following modifiers are accepted after a merge or dir-merge
rule:
- o
- A - specifies that the file should consist of only exclude
patterns, with no other rule-parsing except for in-file comments.
- o
- A + specifies that the file should consist of only include
patterns, with no other rule-parsing except for in-file comments.
- o
- A C is a way to specify that the file should be read in a
CVS-compatible manner. This turns on 'n', 'w', and '-', but also allows
the list-clearing token (!) to be specified. If no filename is provided,
".cvsignore" is assumed.
- o
- A e will exclude the merge-file name from the transfer; e.g.
"dir-merge,e .rules" is like "dir-merge .rules" and
"- .rules".
- o
- An n specifies that the rules are not inherited by
subdirectories.
- o
- A w specifies that the rules are word-split on whitespace instead
of the normal line-splitting. This also turns off comments. Note: the
space that separates the prefix from the rule is treated specially, so
"- foo + bar" is parsed as two rules (assuming that
prefix-parsing wasn't also disabled).
- o
- You may also specify any of the modifiers for the "+" or
"-" rules (below) in order to have the rules that are read in
from the file default to having that modifier set. For instance,
"merge,-/ .excl" would treat the contents of .excl as
absolute-path excludes, while "dir-merge,s .filt" and
":sC" would each make all their per-directory rules apply only
on the sending side.
The following modifiers are accepted after a "+" or
"-":
- o
- A "/" specifies that the include/exclude rule should be matched
against the absolute pathname of the current item. For example, "-/
/etc/passwd" would exclude the passwd file any time the transfer was
sending files from the "/etc" directory, and "-/
subdir/foo" would always exclude "foo" when it is in a dir
named "subdir", even if "foo" is at the root of the
current transfer.
- o
- A "!" specifies that the include/exclude should take effect if
the pattern fails to match. For instance, "-! */" would exclude
all non-directories.
- o
- A C is used to indicate that all the global CVS-exclude rules
should be inserted as excludes in place of 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 sending side, it prevents files from being
transferred. The default is for a rule to affect both sides unless
--delete-excluded was specified, in which case default rules become
sender-side only. See also the hide (H) and show (S) rules, which are an
alternate way to specify sending-side includes/excludes.
- o
- An r is used to indicate that the rule applies to the receiving
side. When a rule affects the receiving side, it prevents files from being
deleted. See the s modifier for more info. See also the protect (P)
and risk (R) rules, which are an alternate way to specify receiver-side
includes/excludes.
Per-directory rules are inherited in all subdirectories of the
directory where the merge-file was found unless the 'n' modifier was used.
Each subdirectory's rules are prefixed to the inherited per-directory rules
from its parents, which gives the newest rules a higher priority than the
inherited rules. The entire set of dir-merge rules are grouped together in
the spot where the merge-file was specified, so it is possible to override
dir-merge rules via a rule that got specified earlier in the list of global
rules. When the list-clearing rule ("!") is read from a
per-directory file, it only clears the inherited rules for the current merge
file.
Another way to prevent a single rule from a dir-merge file from
being inherited is to anchor it with a leading slash. Anchored rules in a
per-directory merge-file are relative to the merge-file's directory, so a
pattern "/foo" would only match the file "foo" in the
directory where the dir-merge filter file was found.
Here's an example filter file which you'd specify via
--filter=". file":
merge /home/user/.global-filter
- *.gz
dir-merge .rules
+ *.[ch]
- *.o
This will merge the contents of the /home/user/.global-filter file
at the start of the list and also turns the ".rules" filename into
a per-directory filter file. All rules read in prior to the start of the
directory scan follow the global anchoring rules (i.e. a leading slash
matches at the root of the transfer).
If a per-directory merge-file is specified with a path that is a
parent directory of the first transfer directory, rsync will scan all the
parent dirs from that starting point to the transfer directory for the
indicated per-directory file. For instance, here is a common filter (see
-F):
--filter=': /.rsync-filter'
That rule tells rsync to scan for the file .rsync-filter in all
directories from the root down through the parent directory of the transfer
prior to the start of the normal directory scan of the file in the
directories that are sent as a part of the transfer. (Note: for an rsync
daemon, the root is always the same as the module's "path".)
Some examples of this pre-scanning for per-directory files:
rsync -avF /src/path/ /dest/dir
rsync -av --filter=': ../../.rsync-filter' /src/path/
/dest/dir
rsync -av --filter=': .rsync-filter' /src/path/
/dest/dir
The first two commands above will look for
".rsync-filter" in "/" and "/src" before the
normal scan begins looking for the file in "/src/path" and its
subdirectories. The last command avoids the parent-dir scan and only 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", which creates a
dir-merge of the .cvsignore file, but parsed in a CVS-compatible manner. You
can use this to affect where the --cvs-exclude (-C) option's
inclusion of the per-directory .cvsignore file gets placed into your rules
by putting the ":C" wherever you like in your filter rules.
Without this, rsync would add the dir-merge rule for the .cvsignore file at
the end of all your other rules (giving it a lower priority than your
command-line rules). For example:
cat <<EOT | rsync -avC --filter='.
-' a/ b
+ foo.o
:C
- *.old
EOT
rsync -avC --include=foo.o -f :C --exclude='*.old' a/ b
Both of the above rsync commands are identical. Each one will
merge all the per-directory .cvsignore rules in the middle of the list
rather than at the end. This allows their dir-specific rules to supersede
the rules that follow the :C instead of being subservient to all your rules.
To affect the other CVS exclude rules (i.e. the default list of exclusions,
the contents of $HOME/.cvsignore, and the value of $CVSIGNORE) you should
omit the -C command-line option and instead insert a "-C"
rule into your filter rules; e.g. "--filter=-C".
You can clear the current include/exclude list by using the
"!" filter rule (as introduced in the FILTER RULES section above).
The "current" list is either the global list of rules (if the rule
is encountered while parsing the filter options) or a set of per-directory
rules (which are inherited in their own sub-list, so a subdirectory can use
this to clear out the parent's rules).
As mentioned earlier, global include/exclude patterns are anchored
at the "root of the transfer" (as opposed to per-directory
patterns, which are anchored at the merge-file's directory). If you think of
the transfer as a subtree of names that are being sent from sender to
receiver, the transfer-root is where the tree starts to be duplicated in the
destination directory. This root governs where patterns that start with a /
match.
Because the matching is relative to the transfer-root, changing
the trailing slash on a source path or changing your use of the
--relative option affects the path you need to use in your matching
(in addition to changing how much of the file tree is duplicated on the
destination host). The following examples demonstrate this.
Let's say that we want to match two source files, one with an
absolute path of "/home/me/foo/bar", and one with a path of
"/home/you/bar/baz". Here is how the various command choices
differ for a 2-source transfer:
Example cmd: rsync -a /home/me /home/you /dest
+/- pattern: /me/foo/bar
+/- pattern: /you/bar/baz
Target file: /dest/me/foo/bar
Target file: /dest/you/bar/baz
Example cmd: rsync -a /home/me/ /home/you/ /dest
+/- pattern: /foo/bar (note missing "me")
+/- pattern: /bar/baz (note missing "you")
Target file: /dest/foo/bar
Target file: /dest/bar/baz
Example cmd: rsync -a --relative /home/me/ /home/you
/dest
+/- pattern: /home/me/foo/bar (note full path)
+/- pattern: /home/you/bar/baz (ditto)
Target file: /dest/home/me/foo/bar
Target file: /dest/home/you/bar/baz
Example cmd: cd /home; rsync -a --relative me/foo you/
/dest
+/- pattern: /me/foo/bar (starts at specified path)
+/- pattern: /you/bar/baz (ditto)
Target file: /dest/me/foo/bar
Target file: /dest/you/bar/baz
The easiest way to see what name you should filter is to just look
at the output when using --verbose and put a / in front of the name
(use the --dry-run option if you're not yet ready to copy any
files).
Without a delete option, per-directory rules are only relevant on
the sending side, so you can feel free to exclude the merge files themselves
without affecting the transfer. To make this easy, the 'e' modifier adds
this exclude for you, as seen in these two equivalent commands:
rsync -av --filter=': .excl'
--exclude=.excl host:src/dir /dest
rsync -av --filter=':e .excl' host:src/dir /dest
However, if you want to do a delete on the receiving side AND you
want some files to be excluded from being deleted, you'll need to be sure
that the receiving side knows what files to exclude. The easiest way is to
include the per-directory merge files in the transfer and use
--delete-after, because this ensures that the receiving side gets all
the same exclude rules as the sending side before it tries to delete
anything:
rsync -avF --delete-after host:src/dir
/dest
However, if the merge files are not a part of the transfer, you'll
need to either specify some global exclude rules (i.e. specified on the
command line), or you'll need to maintain your own per-directory merge files
on the receiving side. An example of the first is this (assume that the
remote .rules files exclude themselves):
rsync -av --filter=': .rules' --filter='. /my/extra.rules'
--delete host:src/dir /dest
In the above example the extra.rules file can affect both sides of
the transfer, but (on the sending side) the rules are subservient to the
rules merged from the .rules files because they were specified after the
per-directory merge rule.
In one final example, the remote side is excluding the
.rsync-filter files from the transfer, but we want to use our own
.rsync-filter files to control what gets deleted on the receiving side. To
do this we must specifically exclude the per-directory merge files (so that
they don't get deleted) and then put rules into the local files to control
what else should not get deleted. Like one of these commands:
rsync -av --filter=':e /.rsync-filter' --delete \
host:src/dir /dest
rsync -avFF --delete host:src/dir /dest
Batch mode can be used to apply the same set of updates to many
identical systems. Suppose one has a tree which is replicated on a number of
hosts. Now suppose some changes have been made to this source tree and those
changes need to be propagated to the other hosts. In order to do this using
batch mode, rsync is run with the write-batch option to apply the changes
made to the source tree to one of the destination trees. The write-batch
option causes the rsync client to store in a "batch file" all the
information needed to repeat this operation against other, identical
destination trees.
To apply the recorded changes to another destination tree, run
rsync with the read-batch option, specifying the name of the same batch
file, and the destination tree. Rsync updates the destination tree using the
information stored in the batch file.
For convenience, one additional file is creating when the
write-batch option is used. This file's name is created by appending
".sh" to the batch filename. The .sh file contains a command-line
suitable for updating a destination tree using that batch file. It can be
executed using a Bourne (or Bourne-like) shell, optionally passing in an
alternate destination tree pathname which is then used instead of the
original path. This is useful when the destination tree path differs from
the original destination tree path.
Generating the batch file once saves having to perform the file
status, checksum, and data block generation more than once when updating
multiple destination trees. Multicast transport protocols can be used to
transfer the batch update files in parallel to many hosts at once, instead
of sending the same data to every host individually.
Examples:
$ rsync --write-batch=foo -a
host:/source/dir/ /adest/dir/
$ scp foo* remote:
$ ssh remote ./foo.sh /bdest/dir/
$ rsync --write-batch=foo -a
/source/dir/ /adest/dir/
$ ssh remote rsync --read-batch=- -a /bdest/dir/ <foo
In these examples, rsync is used to update /adest/dir/ from
/source/dir/ and the information to repeat this operation is stored in
"foo" and "foo.sh". The host "remote" is then
updated with the batched data going into the directory /bdest/dir. The
differences between the two examples reveals some of the flexibility you
have in how you deal with batches:
- o
- The first example shows that the initial copy doesn't have to be local --
you can push or pull data to/from a remote host using either the
remote-shell syntax or rsync daemon syntax, as desired.
- o
- The first example uses the created "foo.sh" file to get the
right rsync options when running the read-batch command on the remote
host.
- o
- The second example reads the batch data via standard input so that the
batch file doesn't need to be copied to the remote machine first. This
example avoids the foo.sh script because it needed to use a modified
--read-batch option, but you could edit the script file if you
wished to make use of it (just be sure that no other option is trying to
use standard input, such as the "--exclude-from=-"
option).
Caveats:
The read-batch option expects the destination tree that it is
updating to be identical to the destination tree that was used to create the
batch update fileset. When a difference between the destination trees is
encountered the update might be discarded with a warning (if the file
appears to be up-to-date already) or the file-update may be attempted and
then, if the file fails to verify, the update discarded with an error. This
means that it should be safe to re-run a read-batch operation if the command
got interrupted. If you wish to force the batched-update to always be
attempted regardless of the file's size and date, use the -I option
(when reading the batch). If an error occurs, the destination tree will
probably be in a partially updated state. In that case, rsync can be used in
its regular (non-batch) mode of operation to fix up the destination
tree.
The rsync version used on all destinations must be at least as new
as the one used to generate the batch file. Rsync will die with an error if
the protocol version in the batch file is too new for the batch-reading
rsync to handle. See also the --protocol option for a way to have the
creating rsync generate a batch file that an older rsync can understand.
(Note that batch files changed format in version 2.6.3, so mixing versions
older than that with newer versions will not work.)
When reading a batch file, rsync will force the value of certain
options to match the data in the batch file if you didn't set them to the
same as the batch-writing command. Other options can (and should) be
changed. For instance --write-batch changes to --read-batch,
--files-from is dropped, and the
--filter/--include/--exclude options are not needed
unless one of the --delete options is specified.
The code that creates the BATCH.sh file transforms any
filter/include/exclude options into a single list that is appended as a
"here" document to the shell script file. An advanced user can use
this to modify the exclude list if a change in what gets deleted by
--delete is desired. A normal user can ignore this detail and just
use the shell script as an easy way to run the appropriate
--read-batch command for the batched data.
The original batch mode in rsync was based on "rsync+",
but the latest version uses a new implementation.
Three basic behaviors are possible when rsync encounters a
symbolic link in the source directory.
By default, symbolic links are not transferred at all. A message
"skipping non-regular" file is emitted for any symlinks that
exist.
If --links is specified, then symlinks are recreated with
the same target on the destination. Note that --archive implies
--links.
If --copy-links is specified, then symlinks are
"collapsed" by copying their referent, rather than the
symlink.
rsync also distinguishes "safe" and "unsafe"
symbolic links. An example where this might be used is a web site mirror
that wishes ensure the rsync module they copy does not include symbolic
links to /etc/passwd in the public section of the site. Using
--copy-unsafe-links will cause any links to be copied as the file
they point to on the destination. Using --safe-links will cause
unsafe links to be omitted altogether. (Note that you must specify
--links for --safe-links to have any effect.)
Symbolic links are considered unsafe if they are absolute symlinks
(start with /), empty, or if they contain enough
".." components to ascend from the directory being
copied.
Here's a summary of how the symlink options are interpreted. The
list is in order of precedence, so if your combination of options isn't
mentioned, use the first line that is a complete subset of your options:
- --copy-links
- Turn all symlinks into normal files (leaving no symlinks for any other
options to affect).
- --links
--copy-unsafe-links
- Turn all unsafe symlinks into files and duplicate all safe symlinks.
- --copy-unsafe-links
- Turn all unsafe symlinks into files, noisily skip all safe symlinks.
- --links
--safe-links
- Duplicate safe symlinks and skip unsafe ones.
- --links
- Duplicate all symlinks.
rsync occasionally produces error messages that may seem a little
cryptic. The one that seems to cause the most confusion is "protocol
version mismatch -- is your shell clean?".
This message is usually caused by your startup scripts or remote
shell facility producing unwanted garbage on the stream that rsync is using
for its transport. The way to diagnose this problem is to run your remote
shell like this:
ssh remotehost /bin/true >
out.dat
then look at out.dat. If everything is working correctly then
out.dat should be a zero length file. If you are getting the above error
from rsync then you will probably find that out.dat contains some text or
data. Look at the contents and try to work out what is producing it. The
most common cause is incorrectly configured shell startup scripts (such as
.cshrc or .profile) that contain output statements for non-interactive
logins.
If you are having trouble debugging filter patterns, then try
specifying the -vv option. At this level of verbosity rsync will show
why each individual file is included or excluded.
- 0
- Success
- 1
- Syntax or usage error
- 2
- Protocol incompatibility
- 3
- Errors selecting input/output files, dirs
- 4
- Requested action not supported: an attempt was made to manipulate 64-bit
files on a platform that cannot support them; or an option was specified
that is supported by the client and not by the server.
- 5
- Error starting client-server protocol
- 6
- Daemon unable to append to log-file
- 10
- Error in socket I/O
- 11
- Error in file I/O
- 12
- Error in rsync protocol data stream
- 13
- Errors with program diagnostics
- 14
- Error in IPC code
- 20
- Received SIGUSR1 or SIGINT
- 21
- Some error returned by waitpid()
- 22
- Error allocating core memory buffers
- 23
- Partial transfer due to error
- 24
- Partial transfer due to vanished source files
- 25
- The --max-delete limit stopped deletions
- 30
- Timeout in data send/receive
- CVSIGNORE
- The CVSIGNORE environment variable supplements any ignore patterns in
.cvsignore files. See the --cvs-exclude option for more
details.
- RSYNC_RSH
- The RSYNC_RSH environment variable allows you to override the default
shell used as the transport for rsync. Command line options are permitted
after the command name, just as in the -e option.
- RSYNC_PROXY
- The RSYNC_PROXY environment variable allows you to redirect your rsync
client to use a web proxy when connecting to a rsync daemon. You should
set RSYNC_PROXY to a hostname:port pair.
- RSYNC_PASSWORD
- Setting RSYNC_PASSWORD to the required password allows you to run
authenticated rsync connections to an rsync daemon without user
intervention. Note that this does not supply a password to a shell
transport such as ssh.
- USER or
LOGNAME
- The USER or LOGNAME environment variables are used to determine the
default username sent to an rsync daemon. If neither is set, the username
defaults to "nobody".
- HOME
- The HOME environment variable is used to find the user's default
.cvsignore file.
/etc/rsyncd.conf or rsyncd.conf
times are transferred as *nix time_t values
When transferring to FAT filesystems rsync may re-sync unmodified
files. See the comments on the --modify-window option.
file permissions, devices, etc. are transferred as native
numerical values
see also the comments on the --delete option
Please report bugs! See the website at http://rsync.samba.org/
This man page is current for version 2.6.9 of rsync.
The options --server and --sender are used
internally by rsync, and should never be typed by a user under normal
circumstances. Some awareness of these options may be needed in certain
scenarios, such as when setting up a login that can only run an rsync
command. For instance, the support directory of the rsync distribution has
an example script named rrsync (for restricted rsync) that can be used with
a restricted ssh login.
rsync is distributed under the GNU public license. See the file
COPYING for details.
A WEB site is available at http://rsync.samba.org/. The site
includes an FAQ-O-Matic which may cover questions unanswered by this manual
page.
The primary ftp site for rsync is
ftp://rsync.samba.org/pub/rsync.
We would be delighted to hear from you if you like this
program.
This program uses the excellent zlib compression library written
by Jean-loup Gailly and Mark Adler.
Thanks to Richard Brent, Brendan Mackay, Bill Waite, Stephen
Rothwell and David Bell for helpful suggestions, patches and testing of
rsync. I've probably missed some people, my apologies if I have.
Especial thanks also to: David Dykstra, Jos Backus, Sebastian
Krahmer, Martin Pool, Wayne Davison, J.W. Schultz.
rsync was originally written by Andrew Tridgell and Paul
Mackerras. Many people have later contributed to it.
Mailing lists for support and development are available at
http://lists.samba.org