i want to write a shell command to sync current directory to backup directory with some requirments. the command i'm using is:
rsync -ptvHS --progress --delete-after --exclude /backup $pwd ~/backup
i want the directory timestamps to be ignored, eventhough i use -t to preserve the file timestamps.
Any idea?
thank you in advance
From the man page:
-t, --times preserve modification times
-O, --omit-dir-times omit directories from --times
-J, --omit-link-times omit symlinks from --times
Seems like you need to add -O to your command.
This is from rsync 3.1.2; you might find your version is too old.
Related
I want to copy a directory from remote machine to local using rsync, but without some inner folders.
I'm using this command:
rsync -rave --exclude 'js' --exclude 'css' --exclude 'fonts' root#{IP}:/rem_dir1/rem_dir2/public /local_dir1/local_dir2/public
But result of it is:
Unexpected remote arg: root#{IP}:/rem_dir1/rem_dir2/public
rsync error: syntax or usage error (code 1) at main.c(1361) [sender=3.1.2]
I'm sure remote root is correct. So the problem is in rsync command syntax.
What is the correct way to exclude several folders using rsync?
For example we have /public folder which contains dir1, dir2, dir3, dir4 and dir5. How to copy only dir1 and dir2 from /public?
As with your other question, the -rave makes no sense. You want just -av.
You can get fancy with include and exclude commands, but the easiest way to copy just two directories is just to list them:
rsync -av \
root#{IP}:/rem_dir1/rem_dir2/public/dir1 \
root#{IP}:/rem_dir1/rem_dir2/public/dir2 \
/local_dir1/local_dir2/public/
where \ is just line-continuation (so I can wrap the long line), and I deliberately only added / to the end of the destination path, not the source paths.
When running rsync with the --backup --delete-during and --backup-dir=PATH options, only files that are deleted are backed up, but directories are not if those directories were empty at the time they were deleted. I can't see an option that specifies directories should not be pruned from backup when being deleted.
Example:
mkdir /tmp/test_rsync_delete
cd /tmp/test_rsync_delete
mkdir -p a/a/a/a/a
ln -s . a/b
mkdir -p b/a/a
ln -s a/a b/a
touch b/a/a/a
mkdir c
mkdir backup
rsync -avi --delete-during --backup --backup-dir=backup a/ c/
find backup/ -exec ls -ldi {} \;
# Should be empty
rsync -avi --delete-during --backup --backup-dir=backup b/ c/
find backup/ -exec ls -ldi {} \;
# Will be missing the directory that was deleted to make way for the file.
Update
As per the above example, when you run it, you will notice that the empty directories were pruned/removed by the --delete option. However, the same directories were not backed up in the directory specified by the --backup-dir option. It's not necessarily the directories that are important, but the permissions and ownership that are important. If rsync fails when running in batch mode (--read-batch) then you need to be able to roll back by restoring the system to its previous state. If directories are not being backed up, then it's not really creating a reliable point from which to restore to - it will potentially be missing some directories.
So why does the --backup family of options not backup empty directories when they are going to be pruned by the --delete family of options?
This is not an answer to the specific question, but probably the answer to, what others were searching for, ending up here:
Just for info: this is what I was searching for when I found this question:
rsync -av --delete-after src dest
-av The "-a" means archive. This will preserve symlinks, permissions, timestamps, group/owners, and will be recursive. The "v" makes the job verbose. This won't be necessary, but you can see what's happening with the rsync so you know if you've done something wrong.
--delete-after Will tell rsync to compare the destination against the source and delete any extraneous files after the rsync has completed. This is a dangerous option, so use with caution.
I'm looking for an rsync-like program which will create any missing parent directories on the remote side.
For example, if I have /top/a/b/c/d on one server and only /top/a exists on the remote server, I want to copy d to the remote server and have the b and c directories created as well.
The command:
rsync /top/a/b/c/d remote:/top/a/b/c
won't work because /tmp/a/b doesn't exist on the remote server. And if it did exist then the file d would get copied to the path /top/a/b/c.
This is possible to do with rsync using --include and --exclude switches, but it is very involved, e.g.:
rsync -v -r a dest:dir \
--include 'a/b' \
--include 'a/b/c' \
--include 'a/b/c/d' \
--include 'a/b/c/d/e' \
--exclude 'a/*' \
--exclude 'a/b/*' \
--exclude 'a/b/c/*' \
--exclude 'a/b/c/d/*'
will only copy a/b/c/d/e to dest:dir/a/b/c/d/e even if the intermediate directories have files. (Note - the includes must precede the excludes.)
Are there any other options?
You may be looking for
rsync -aR
for example:
rsync -a --relative /top/a/b/c/d remote:/
See also this trick in other question.
rsync -aq --rsync-path='mkdir -p /tmp/imaginary/ && rsync' file user#remote:/tmp/imaginary/
From http://www.schwertly.com/2013/07/forcing-rsync-to-create-a-remote-path-using-rsync-path/, but don't copy and paste from there, his syntax is butchered.
it lets you execute arbitrary command to setup the path for rsync executables.
As of version 3.2.3 (6 Aug 2020), rynsc has a flag for this purpose.
From the rsync manual page (man rsync):
--mkpath create the destination's path component
i suggest that you enforce the existence manually:
ssh user#remote mkdir -p /top/a/b/c
rsync /top/a/b/c/d remote:/top/a/b/c
this creates the target folder if it does not exists already.
According to https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/496181/5783, since rsync 2.6.7, --relative works if you use . to anchor the starting parent directory to create at the destination:
derek#DESKTOP-2F2F59O:~/projects/rsync$ mkdir --parents top1/a/b/c/d
derek#DESKTOP-2F2F59O:~/projects/rsync$ mkdir --parents top2/a
derek#DESKTOP-2F2F59O:~/projects/rsync$ rsync --recursive --relative --verbose top1/a/./b/c/d top2/a/
sending incremental file list
b/
b/c/
b/c/d/
sent 99 bytes received 28 bytes 254.00 bytes/sec
total size is 0 speedup is 0.00
--relative does not work for me since I had different setup.
Maybe I just didn't understood how --relative works, but I found that the
ssh remote mkdir -p /top/a/b/c
rsync /top/a/b/c/d remote:/top/a/b/c
is easy to understand and does the job.
I was looking for a better solution, but mine seems to be better suited when you have too many sub-directories to create them manually.
Simply use cp as an intermediate step with the --parents option
cp --parents /your/path/sub/dir/ /tmp/localcopy
rsync [options] /tmp/localcopy/* remote:/destination/path/
cp --parents will create the structure for you.
You can call it from any subfolder if you want only one subset of the parent folders to be copied.
A shorter way in Linux to create rsync destination paths is to use the '$_' Special Variable. (I think, but cannot confirm, that it is also the same in OSX).
'$_' holds the value of the last argument of the previous command executed. So the question could be answered with:
ssh remote mkdir -p /top/a/b/c/ && rsync -avz /top/a/b/c/d remote:$_
I'm new to rsync and have read a bit about excluding files and directories but I don't fully understand and can't seem to get it working.
I'm simply trying to run a backup of all the websites in a server's webroot but don't want any of the CMS's cache files.
Is there away to exclude any directory named cache?
I've tried a lot of things over the weeks (that I don't remember), but more recently I've been trying these sorts of things:
sudo rsync -avzO -e --exclude *cache ssh username#11.22.33.44:/home/ /Users/username/webserver-backups/DEV/home/
and this:
sudo rsync -avzO -e --exclude cache/ ssh username#11.22.33.44:/home/ /Users/username/webserver-backups/DEV/home/
and this:
sudo rsync -avzO -e --exclude */cache/ ssh username#11.22.33.44:/home/ /Users/username/webserver-backups/DEV/home/
and this:
sudo rsync -avzO -e --exclude *cache/ ssh username#11.22.33.44:/home/ /Users/username/webserver-backups/DEV/home/
Sorry if this is easy, I just haven't been able to find info that I understand because they all talk about a path to exclude.
It's just that I don't have a specific path I want to exclude - just a directory name if that makes sense.
rsync --exclude cache/ ....
should work like peaches. I think you might be confusing some things since -e requires an option (like -e "ssh -l ssh-user"). Edit on looking at your command lines a little closer, it turns out this is exactly your problem. You should have said
--exclude cache/ -e ssh
although you could just drop -e ssh since ssh is the default.
I'd also recommend that you look at the filter rules:
rsync -FF ....
That way you can include .rsync-filter files throughout your directory tree, containing things like
-cache/
This makes things way more flexible, make command lines more readable and you can make exceptions inside specific subtrees.
I would like to rsync from local computer to server. On a directory that does not exist, and I want rsync to create that directory on the server first.
How can I do that?
If you have more than the last leaf directory to be created, you can either run a separate ssh ... mkdir -p first, or use the --rsync-path trick as explained here :
rsync -a --rsync-path="mkdir -p /tmp/x/y/z/ && rsync" $source user#remote:/tmp/x/y/z/
Or use the --relative option as suggested by Tony. In that case, you only specify the root of the destination, which must exist, and not the directory structure of the source, which will be created:
rsync -a --relative /new/x/y/z/ user#remote:/pre_existing/dir/
This way, you will end up with /pre_existing/dir/new/x/y/z/
And if you want to have "y/z/" created, but not inside "new/x/", you can add ./ where you want --relativeto begin:
rsync -a --relative /new/x/./y/z/ user#remote:/pre_existing/dir/
would create /pre_existing/dir/y/z/.
From the rsync manual page (man rsync):
--mkpath create the destination's path component
--mkpath was added in rsync 3.2.3 (6 Aug 2020).
Assuming you are using ssh to connect rsync, what about to send a ssh command before:
ssh user#server mkdir -p existingdir/newdir
if it already exists, nothing happens
The -R, --relative option will do this.
For example: if you want to backup /var/named/chroot and create the same directory structure on the remote server then -R will do just that.
this worked for me:
rsync /dev/null node:existing-dir/new-dir/
I do get this message :
skipping non-regular file "null"
but I don't have to worry about having an empty directory hanging around.
I don't think you can do it with one rsync command, but you can 'pre-create' the extra directory first like this:
rsync --recursive emptydir/ destination/newdir
where 'emptydir' is a local empty directory (which you might have to create as a temporary directory first).
It's a bit of a hack, but it works for me.
cheers
Chris
This answer uses bits of other answers, but hopefully it'll be a bit clearer as to the circumstances. You never specified what you were rsyncing - a single directory entry or multiple files.
So let's assume you are moving a source directory entry across, and not just moving the files contained in it.
Let's say you have a directory locally called data/myappdata/ and you have a load of subdirectories underneath this.
You have data/ on your target machine but no data/myappdata/ - this is easy enough:
rsync -rvv /path/to/data/myappdata/ user#host:/remote/path/to/data/myappdata
You can even use a different name for the remote directory:
rsync -rvv --recursive /path/to/data/myappdata user#host:/remote/path/to/data/newdirname
If you're just moving some files and not moving the directory entry that contains them then you would do:
rsync -rvv /path/to/data/myappdata/*.txt user#host:/remote/path/to/data/myappdata/
and it will create the myappdata directory for you on the remote machine to place your files in. Again, the data/ directory must exist on the remote machine.
Incidentally, my use of -rvv flag is to get doubly verbose output so it is clear about what it does, as well as the necessary recursive behaviour.
Just to show you what I get when using rsync (3.0.9 on Ubuntu 12.04)
$ rsync -rvv *.txt user#remote.machine:/tmp/newdir/
opening connection using: ssh -l user remote.machine rsync --server -vvre.iLsf . /tmp/newdir/
user#remote.machine's password:
sending incremental file list
created directory /tmp/newdir
delta-transmission enabled
bar.txt
foo.txt
total: matches=0 hash_hits=0 false_alarms=0 data=0
Hope this clears this up a little bit.
eg:
from: /xxx/a/b/c/d/e/1.html
to: user#remote:/pre_existing/dir/b/c/d/e/1.html
rsync:
cd /xxx/a/ && rsync -auvR b/c/d/e/ user#remote:/pre_existing/dir/
rsync source.pdf user1#192.168.56.100:~/not-created/target.pdf
If the target file is fully specified, the directory ~/not-created is not created.
rsync source.pdf user1#192.168.56.100:~/will-be-created/
But the target is specified with only a directory, the directory ~/will-be-created is created. / must be followed to let rsync know will-be-created is a directory.
use rsync twice~
1: tranfer a temp file, make sure remote relative directories has been created.
tempfile=/Users/temp/Dir0/Dir1/Dir2/temp.txt
# Dir0/Dir1/Dir2/ is directory that wanted.
rsync -aq /Users/temp/ rsync://remote
2: then you can specify the remote directory for transfer files/directory
tempfile|dir=/Users/XX/data|/Users/XX/data/
rsync -avc /Users/XX/data rsync://remote/Dir0/Dir1/Dir2
# Tips: [SRC] with/without '/' is different
This creates the dir tree /usr/local/bin in the destination and then syncs all containing files and folders recursively:
rsync --archive --include="/usr" --include="/usr/local" --include="/usr/local/bin" --include="/usr/local/bin/**" --exclude="*" user#remote:/ /home/user
Compared to mkdir -p, the dir tree even has the same perms as the source.
If you are using a version or rsync that doesn't have 'mkpath', then --files-from can help. Suppose you need to create 'mysubdir' in the target directory
Create 'filelist.txt' to contain
mysubdir/dummy
mkdir -p source_dir/mysubdir/
touch source_dir/mysubdir/dummy
rsync --files-from='filelist.txt' source_dir target_dir
rsync will copy mysubdir/dummy to target_dir, creating mysubdir in the process. Tested with rsync 3.1.3 on Raspberry Pi OS (debian).