rsync - a fast, versatile, remote (and local) file-copying tool at Linux.org

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rsync(1) rsync(1)

NAME
rsync - a fast, versatile, remote (and local) file-copying tool

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

Access via remote shell:
Pull: rsync [OPTION...] [USER@]HOST:SRC... [DEST]
Push: rsync [OPTION...] SRC... [USER@]HOST:DEST

Access via rsync daemon:
Pull: rsync [OPTION...] [USER@]HOST::SRC... [DEST]
rsync [OPTION...] rsync://[USER@]HOST[:PORT]/SRC... [DEST]
Push: rsync [OPTION...] SRC... [USER@]HOST::DEST
rsync [OPTION...] SRC... rsync://[USER@]HOST[:PORT]/DEST

Usages with just one SRC arg and no DEST arg will list the source files instead of copying.

DESCRIPTION
Rsync is a fast and extraordinarily versatile file copying tool. It can copy locally, to/from another host
over any remote shell, or to/from a remote rsync daemon. It offers a large number of options that control
every aspect of its behavior and permit very flexible specification of the set of files to be copied. It is
famous for its delta-transfer algorithm, which reduces the amount of data sent over the network by sending
only the differences between the source files and the existing files in the destination. Rsync is widely used
for backups and mirroring and as an improved copy command for everyday use.

Rsync finds files that need to be transferred using a "quick check" algorithm (by default) that looks for
files that have changed in size or in last-modified time. Any changes in the other preserved attributes (as
requested by options) are made on the destination file directly when the quick check indicates that the file’s
data does not need to be updated.

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)

GENERAL
Rsync copies files either to or from a remote host, or locally on the current host (it does not support copy‐
ing files between two remote hosts).

There are two different ways for rsync to contact a remote system: using a remote-shell program as the trans‐
port (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.
spawned process.

SETUP
See the file README for installation instructions.

Once installed, you can use rsync to any machine that you can access via a remote shell (as well as some that
you can access using the rsync daemon-mode protocol). For remote transfers, a modern rsync uses ssh for its
communications, but it may have been configured to use a different remote shell by default, such as rsh or
remsh.

You can also specify any remote shell you like, either by using the -e command line option, or by setting the
RSYNC_RSH environment variable.

Note that rsync must be installed on both the source and destination machines.

USAGE
You use rsync in the same way you use rcp. You must specify a source and a destination, one of which may be
remote.

Perhaps the best way to explain the syntax is with some examples:

rsync -t *.c foo:src/

This would transfer all files matching the pattern *.c from the current directory to the directory src on the
machine foo. If any of the files already exist on the remote system then the rsync remote-update protocol is
used to update the file by sending only the differences. See the tech report for details.

rsync -avz foo:src/bar /data/tmp

This would recursively transfer all files from the directory src/bar on the machine foo into the /data/tmp/bar
directory on the local machine. The files are transferred in "archive" mode, which ensures that symbolic
links, devices, attributes, permissions, ownerships, etc. are preserved in the transfer. Additionally, com‐
pression 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

ADVANCED USAGE
The syntax for requesting multiple files from a remote host is done by specifying additional remote-host args
in the same style as the first, or with the hostname omitted. For instance, all these work:

rsync -av host:file1 :file2 host:file{3,4} /dest/
rsync -av host::modname/file{1,2} host::modname/file3 /dest/
rsync -av host::modname/file1 ::modname/file{3,4}

Older versions of rsync required using quoted spaces in the SRC, like these examples:

rsync -av host:'dir1/file1 dir2/file2' /dest
rsync host::'modname/dir1/file1 modname/dir2/file2' /dest

This word-splitting still works (by default) in the latest rsync, but is not as easy to use as the first
method.

If you need to transfer a filename that contains whitespace, you can either specify the --protect-args (-s)
option, or you’ll need to escape the whitespace in a way that the remote shell will understand. For instance:

rsync -av host:'file\ name\ with\ spaces' /dest

CONNECTING TO AN RSYNC DAEMON
It is also possible to use rsync without a remote shell as the transport. In this case you will directly con‐
nect to a remote rsync daemon, typically using TCP port 873. (This obviously requires the daemon to be run‐
ning 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 pro‐
vided.

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

RSYNC_CONNECT_PROG to the commands you wish to run in place of making a direct socket connection. The string
may contain the escape "%H" to represent the hostname specified in the rsync command (so use "%%" if you need
a single "%" in your string). For example:

export RSYNC_CONNECT_PROG='ssh proxyhost nc %H 873'
rsync -av targethost1::module/src/ /dest/
rsync -av rsync:://targethost2/module/src/ /dest/

The command specified above uses ssh to run nc (netcat) on a proxyhost, which forwards all data to port 873
(the rsync daemon) on the targethost (%H).

USING RSYNC-DAEMON FEATURES VIA A REMOTE-SHELL CONNECTION
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 nor‐
mal 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 envi‐
ronment 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".

STARTING AN RSYNC DAEMON TO ACCEPT CONNECTIONS
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.

SORTED TRANSFER ORDER
Rsync always sorts the specified filenames into its internal transfer list. This handles the merging together
of the contents of identically named directories, makes it easy to remove duplicate filenames, and may confuse
someone when the files are transferred in a different order than what was given on the command-line.

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.

OPTIONS SUMMARY
Here is a short summary of the options available in rsync. Please refer to the detailed description below for
a complete description.

-v, --verbose increase verbosity
-q, --quiet 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; equals -rlptgoD (no -H,-A,-X)
--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
--append-verify --append w/old data in file checksum
-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
-E, --executability preserve executability
--chmod=CHMOD affect file and/or directory permissions
-A, --acls preserve ACLs (implies -p)
-n, --dry-run perform a trial run with no changes made
-W, --whole-file copy files whole (w/o delta-xfer 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 xfer, not during
--delete-during receiver deletes during the transfer
--delete-delay find deletions during, delete after
--delete-after receiver deletes after transfer, not during
--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=SECONDS set I/O timeout in seconds
--contimeout=SECONDS set daemon connection 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
--skip-compress=LIST skip compressing files with suffix in LIST
-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
-s, --protect-args no space-splitting; wildcard chars only
--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
--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
--iconv=CONVERT_SPEC request charset conversion of filenames
--checksum-seed=NUM set block/file checksum seed (advanced)
-4, --ipv4 prefer IPv4
-6, --ipv6 prefer IPv6
--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)

OPTIONS
Rsync accepts both long (double-dash + word) and short (single-dash + letter) options. The full list of the
available options are described below. If an option can be specified in more than one way, the choices are
comma-separated. Some options only have a long variant, not a short. If the option takes a parameter, the
parameter is only listed after the long variant, even though it must also be specified for the short. When
specifying a parameter, you can either use the form --option=param or replace the ’=’ with whitespace. The
parameter may need to be quoted in some manner for it to survive the shell’s command-line parsing. Keep in
mind that a leading tilde (~) in a filename is substituted by your shell, so --option=~/foo will not change
the tilde into your home directory (remove the ’=’ for that).

--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 options will give you information on what files are being skipped and
slightly more information at the end. More than two -v options 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
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 daemon.

-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
This modifies rsync’s "quick check" algorithm for finding files that need to be transferred, changing
it from the default of transferring files with either a changed size or a changed last-modified time to
just looking for files that have changed in size. 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 Win‐
dows FAT filesystem (which represents times with a 2-second resolution), --modify-window=1 is useful
(allowing times to differ by up to 1 second).

-c, --checksum
This changes the way rsync checks if the files have been changed and are in need of a transfer. With‐
out this option, rsync uses a "quick check" that (by default) checks if each file’s size and time of
last modification match between the sender and receiver. This option changes this to compare a 128-bit
checksum for each file that has a matching size. Generating the checksums means that both sides will
expend a lot of disk I/O reading all the data in the files in the transfer (and this is prior to any
reading that will be done to transfer changed files), so this can slow things down significantly.

The sending side generates its checksums while it is doing the file-system scan that builds the list of
the available files. The receiver generates its checksums when it is scanning for changed files, and
will checksum any file that has the same size as the corresponding sender’s file: files with either a
changed size or a changed checksum are selected for transfer.

Note that rsync always verifies that each transferred file was correctly reconstructed on the receiving
side by checking a whole-file checksum that is generated as the file is transferred, 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.

For protocol 30 and beyond (first supported in 3.0.0), the checksum used is MD5. For older protocols,
the checksum used is MD4.

-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,
This tells rsync to copy directories recursively. See also --dirs (-d).

Beginning with rsync 3.0.0, the recursive algorithm used is now an incremental scan that uses much less
memory than before and begins the transfer after the scanning of the first few directories have been
completed. This incremental scan only affects our recursion algorithm, and does not change a
non-recursive transfer. It is also only possible when both ends of the transfer are at least version
3.0.0.

Some options require rsync to know the full file list, so these options disable the incremental recur‐
sion mode. These include: --delete-before, --delete-after, --prune-empty-dirs, and --delay-updates.
Because of this, the default delete mode when you specify --delete is now --delete-during when both
ends of the connection are at least 3.0.0 (use --del or --delete-during to request this improved dele‐
tion mode explicitly). See also the --delete-delay option that is a better choice than using
--delete-after.

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

-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, preserving its full path.
These extra path elements are called "implied directories" (i.e. the "foo" and the "foo/bar" directo‐
ries in the above example).

Beginning with rsync 3.0.0, rsync always sends these implied directories as real directories in the
file list, even if a path element is really a symlink on the sending side. This prevents some really
unexpected behaviors when copying the full path of a file that you didn’t realize had a symlink in its
path. If you want to duplicate a server-side symlink, include both the symlink via its path, and ref‐
erent directory via its real path. If you’re dealing with an older rsync on the sending side, you may
need to use the --no-implied-dirs option.

It is also possible to limit the amount of path information that is sent as implied directories for
each path you specify. 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.) 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/)

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 the receiving
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 preserva‐
tion is to use the --keep-dirlinks option (which will also affect symlinks to directories in the rest
of the transfer).

When pulling files from an rsync older than 3.0.0, you may need to use this option if the sending side
has a symlink in the path you request and you wish the implied directories to be transferred as normal
directories.

-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 previ‐
ously 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 direc‐
tory 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).

Note that if you specify a relative path, the backup directory will be relative to the destination
directory, so you probably want to specify either an absolute path or a path that starts with "../".
If an rsync daemon is the receiver, the backup dir cannot go outside the module’s path hierarchy, so
take extra care not to delete it or copy into it.

--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 modification time equal to the
source file’s, it will be updated if the sizes are different.)

Note that this does not affect the copying of symlinks or other special files. Also, a difference of
file format between the sender and receiver is always considered to be important enough for an update,
This has several effects:

o Hard links are not broken. This means the new data will be visible through other hard links to
the destination file. Moreover, attempts to copy differing source files onto a multiply-linked
destination file will result in a "tug of war" with the destination data changing back and
forth.

o In-use binaries cannot be updated (either the OS will prevent this from happening, or binaries
that attempt to swap-in their data will misbehave or crash).

o The file’s data will be in an inconsistent state during the transfer and will be left that way
if the transfer is interrupted or if an update fails.

o A file that rsync cannot write to cannot be updated. While a super user can update any file, a
normal user needs to be granted write permission for the open of the file for writing to be suc‐
cessful.

o The efficiency of rsync’s delta-transfer algorithm may be reduced if some data in the destina‐
tion file is overwritten before it can be copied to a position later in the file. This does not
apply if you use --backup, since rsync is smart enough to use the backup file as the basis file
for the transfer.

WARNING: you should not use this option to update files that are being accessed by others, so be care‐
ful when choosing to use this for a copy.

This option is useful for transferring large files with block-based changes or appended data, and also
on systems that are disk bound, not network bound. It can also help keep a copy-on-write filesystem
snapshot from diverging the entire contents of a file that only has minor changes.

The option implies --partial (since an interrupted transfer does not delete the file), but conflicts
with --partial-dir and --delay-updates. Prior to rsync 2.6.4 --inplace was also incompatible with
--compare-dest and --link-dest.

--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 a file needs to be transferred and its size on the receiver is the same or longer than the
size on the sender, the file is skipped. This does not interfere with the updating of a file’s
non-content attributes (e.g. permissions, ownership, etc.) when the file does not need to be trans‐
ferred, nor does it affect the updating of any non-regular files. Implies --inplace, but does not con‐
flict with --sparse (since it is always extending a file’s length).

--append-verify
This works just like the --append option, but the existing data on the receiving side is included in
the full-file checksum verification step, which will cause a file to be resent if the final verifica‐
tion step fails (rsync uses a normal, non-appending --inplace transfer for the resend).

Note: prior to rsync 3.0.0, the --append option worked like --append-verify, so if you are interacting
with an older rsync (or the transfer is using a protocol prior to 30), specifying either append option
will initiate an --append-verify transfer.

-d, --dirs
Tell the sending side to include any directories that are encountered. Unlike --recursive, a direc‐

-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 sym‐
links 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 direc‐
tory. 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 hier‐
archy (as long as --force or --delete is in effect).

See also --keep-dirlinks for an analogous option for the receiving side.

--copy-dirlinks applies to all symlinks to directories in the source. If you want to follow only a few
specified symlinks, a trick you can use is to pass them as additional source args with a trailing
slash, using --relative to make the paths match up right. For example:

rsync -r --relative src/./ src/./follow-me/ dest/

This works because rsync calls lstat(2) on the source arg as given, and the trailing slash makes
lstat(2) follow the symlink, giving rise to a directory in the file-list which overrides the symlink
found during the scan of "src/./".

-K, --keep-dirlinks
This option causes the receiving side to treat a symlink to a directory as though it were a real direc‐
tory, but only if it matches a real directory from the sender. Without this option, the receiver’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".

One note of caution: if you use --keep-dirlinks, you must trust all the symlinks in the copy! If it
is possible for an untrusted user to create their own symlink to any directory, the user could then (on
matches that on the source. Cases in which the destination may end up with extra hard links include
the following:

o If the destination contains extraneous hard-links (more linking than what is present in the
source file list), the copying algorithm will not break them explicitly. However, if one or
more of the paths have content differences, the normal file-update process will break those
extra links (unless you are using the --inplace option).

o If you specify a --link-dest directory that contains hard links, the linking of the destination
files against the --link-dest files can cause some paths in the destination to become linked
together due to the --link-dest associations.

Note that rsync can only detect hard links between files that are inside the transfer set. If rsync
updates a file that has extra hard-link connections to files outside the transfer, that linkage will be
broken. If you are tempted to use the --inplace option to avoid this breakage, be very careful that
you know how your files are being updated so that you are certain that no unintended changes happen due
to lingering hard links (and see the --inplace option for more caveats).

If incremental recursion is active (see --recursive), rsync may transfer a missing hard-linked file
before it finds that another link for that contents exists elsewhere in the hierarchy. This does not
affect the accuracy of the transfer (i.e. which files are hard-linked together), just its efficiency
(i.e. copying the data for a new, early copy of a hard-linked file that could have been found later in
the transfer in another member of the hard-linked set of files). One way to avoid this inefficiency is
to disable incremental recursion using the --no-inc-recursive option.

-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 --exe‐
cutability option might change just the execute permission for the file.

o New files get their "normal" permission bits set to the source file’s permissions masked with
the receiving directory’s default permissions (either the receiving process’s umask, or the per‐
missions specified via the destination directory’s default ACL), and their special 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 (the following defines the -Z option, and includes --no-g to
use the default group of the destination dir):

rsync alias -Z --no-p --no-g --chmod=ugo=rwX

newly-created files when --perms was off, while overriding the destination’s setgid bit setting on a
newly-created directory. Default ACL observance was added to the ACL patch for rsync 2.6.7, so older
(or non-ACL-enabled) rsyncs use the umask even if default ACLs are present. (Keep in mind that it is
the version of the receiving rsync that affects these behaviors.)

-E, --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 corre‐
sponding 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’ per‐
mission enabled.

If --perms is enabled, this option is ignored.

-A, --acls
This option causes rsync to update the destination ACLs to be the same as the source ACLs. The option
also implies --perms.

The source and destination systems must have compatible ACL entries for this option to work properly.
See the --fake-super option for a way to backup and restore ACLs that are not compatible.

-X, --xattrs
This option causes rsync to update the destination extended attributes to be the same as the source
ones.

For systems that support extended-attribute namespaces, a copy being done by a super-user copies all
namespaces except system.*. A normal user only copies the user.* namespace. To be able to backup and
restore non-user namespaces as a normal user, see the --fake-super option.

Note that this option does not copy rsyncs special xattr values (e.g. those used by --fake-super)
unless you repeat the option (e.g. -XX). This "copy all xattrs" mode cannot be used with --fake-super.

--chmod
This option tells rsync to apply one or more comma-separated "chmod" modes to the permission of the
files in the transfer. The resulting value is treated as though it were the permissions that the send‐
ing side supplied for the file, which means that this option can seem to have no effect on 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, the following will ensure that all directories get
marked set-gid, that no files are other-writable, that both are user-writable and group-writable, and
that both have consistent executability across all bits:

--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.

-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 (see also
the --super and --fake-super options).

--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 sys‐
tem. 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 rsync’s delta-transfer 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 run as the super-user.
To turn off super-user activities, the super-user can use --no-super.

--fake-super
When this option is enabled, rsync simulates super-user activities by saving/restoring the privileged
attributes via special extended attributes that are attached to each file (as needed). This includes
the file’s owner and group (if it is not the default), the file’s device info (device & special files
are created as empty text files), and any permission bits that we won’t allow to be set on the real
file (e.g. the real file gets u-s,g-s,o-t for safety) or that would limit the owner’s access (since
the real super-user can always access/change a file, the files we create can always be accessed/changed
by the creating user). This option also handles ACLs (if --acls was specified) and non-user extended
attributes (if --xattrs was specified).

This is a good way to backup data without using a super-user, and to store ACLs from incompatible sys‐
tems.

The --fake-super option only affects the side where the option is used. To affect the remote side of a

-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.

-n, --dry-run
This makes rsync perform a trial run that doesn’t make any changes (and produces mostly the same output
as a real run). It is most commonly used in combination with the -v, --verbose and/or -i, --item‐
ize-changes options to see what an rsync command is going to do before one actually runs it.

The output of --itemize-changes is supposed to be exactly the same on a dry run and a subsequent real
run (barring intentional trickery and system call failures); if it isn’t, that’s a bug. Other output
should be mostly unchanged, but may differ in some areas. Notably, a dry run does not send the actual
data for file transfers, so --progress has no effect, the "bytes sent", "bytes received", "literal
data", and "matched data" statistics are too small, and the "speedup" value is equivalent to a run
where no file transfers were needed.

-W, --whole-file
With this option rsync’s delta-transfer algorithm is not used and the whole file is sent as-is instead.
The transfer may be faster if this option is used when the bandwidth between the source and 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,
but only if no batch-writing option is in effect.

-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 destina‐
tion. 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 delete extraneous files).

--ignore-existing
This tells rsync to skip updating files that already exist on the destination (this does not ignore
existing directories, or nothing would get done). See also --existing.

This option is a transfer rule, not an exclude, so it doesn’t affect the data that goes into the
file-lists, and thus it doesn’t affect deletions. It just limits the files that the receiver requests
Note that you should only use this option on source files that are quiescent. If you are using this to
move files that show up in a particular directory over to another host, make sure that the finished
files get renamed into the source directory, not directly written into it, so that rsync can’t possibly
transfer a file that is not yet fully written. If you can’t first write the files into a different
directory, you should use a naming idiom that lets rsync avoid transferring files that are not yet fin‐
ished (e.g. name the file "foo.new" when it is written, rename it to "foo" when it is done, and then
use the option --exclude='*.new' for the rsync transfer).

--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 individ‐
ual files, not the files’ parent directory. Files that are excluded from the 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 enabled. Beginning with
2.6.7, deletions will also occur when --dirs (-d) is enabled, but only for directories whose contents
are being copied.

This option can be dangerous if used incorrectly! It is a very good idea to first try a run using the
--dry-run option (-n) to see what files are going to be deleted.

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 from 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 choose the
--delete-during algorithm when talking to rsync 3.0.0 or newer, and the --delete-before algorithm when
talking to an older rsync. See also --delete-delay and --delete-after.

--delete-before
Request that the file-deletions on the receiving side be done before the transfer starts. See --delete
(which is implied) for more details on file-deletion.

Deleting before the transfer is helpful if the filesystem is tight for space and removing 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). It also
forces rsync to use the old, non-incremental recursion algorithm that requires rsync to scan all the
files in the transfer into memory at once (see --recursive).

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

--delete-delay
Request that the file-deletions on the receiving side be computed during the transfer (like
--delete-during), and then removed after the transfer completes. This is useful when combined with
the old, non-incremental recursion algorithm that requires rsync to scan all the files in the transfer
into memory at once (see --recursive). See --delete (which is implied) for more details on file-dele‐
tion.

--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-dele‐
tion.

--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. If that limit is exceeded, a warn‐
ing is output and rsync exits with an error code of 25 (new for 3.0.0).

Also new for version 3.0.0, you may specify --max-delete=0 to be warned about any extraneous files in
the destination without removing any of them. Older clients interpreted this as "unlimited", so if you
don’t know what version the client is, you can use the less obvious --max-delete=-1 as a backward-com‐
patible way to specify that no deletions be allowed (though older versions didn’t warn when the limit
was exceeded).

--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 indi‐
cated 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 and other
information.

-B, --block-size=BLOCKSIZE

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 sin‐
gle-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 com‐
municate.

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" host: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 a similar algorithm to CVS to determine if a file should be ignored.

The exclude list is initialized to exclude the following items (these initial items are marked as per‐
ishable -- see the FILTER RULES section):

RCS SCCS CVS CVS.adm RCSLOG cvslog.* tags TAGS .make.state .nse_depinfo *~ #* .#* ,* _$* *$
*.old *.bak *.BAK *.orig *.rej .del-* *.a *.olb *.o *.obj *.so *.exe *.Z *.elc *.ln core .svn/
.git/ .hg/ .bzr/

then, files listed in a $HOME/.cvsignore are added to the list and any files listed in the 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
exclude. If the filter contains whitespace, be sure to quote it so that the shell gives the rule to
rsync as a single argument. The text below also mentions that you can use an underscore to replace the
space that separates a rule from its arg.

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 short‐
hand 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
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 con‐
tents of the directory would also be sent (without needing to be explicitly mentioned in the file --
this began in version 2.6.4). In both cases, if the -r option was enabled, that dir’s entire 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 duplica‐
tion of the source-spec path (/usr in this case).

In addition, the --files-from file can be read from the remote host instead of the local host if 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.

If the --iconv and --protect-args options are specified and the --files-from filenames are being sent
from one host to another, the filenames will be translated from the sending host’s charset to the
receiving host’s charset.

NOTE: sorting the list of files in the --files-from input helps rsync to be more efficient, as it will
avoid re-visiting the path elements that are shared between adjacent entries. If the input is not
sorted, some path elements (implied directories) may end up being scanned multiple times, and rsync
will eventually unduplicate them after they get turned into file-list elements.

-0, --from0
This tells rsync that the rules/filenames it reads from a file are terminated by a null (’\0’) charac‐
ter, not a NL, CR, or CR+LF. This affects --exclude-from, --include-from, --files-from, and any 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).

-s, --protect-args
This option sends all filenames and most options to the remote rsync without allowing the remote shell
to interpret them. This means that spaces are not split in names, and any non-wildcard special charac‐
ters are not translated (such as ~, $, ;, &, etc.). Wildcards are expanded on the remote host by rsync
(instead of the shell doing it).

If you use this option with --iconv, the args related to the remote side will also be translated from
the local to the remote character-set. The translation happens before wild-cards are expanded. See
also the --files-from option.

-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.
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 destina‐
tion 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 success‐
fully 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 owner‐
ship) in order for the files to be linked together. An example:

rsync -av --link-dest=$PWD/prior_dir host:src_dir/ new_dir/

versions).

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 avoid‐
ing 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 com‐
pressing 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.

See the --skip-compress option for the default list of file suffixes that will not be compressed.

--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.

--skip-compress=LIST
Override the list of file suffixes that will not be compressed. The LIST should be one or more file
suffixes (without the dot) separated by slashes (/).

You may specify an empty string to indicate that no file should be skipped.

Simple character-class matching is supported: each must consist of a list of letters inside the square
brackets (e.g. no special classes, such as "[:alpha:]", are supported, and ’-’ has no special meaning).

The characters asterisk (*) and question-mark (?) have no special meaning.

Here’s an example that specifies 6 suffixes to skip (since 1 of the 5 rules matches 2 suffixes):

--skip-compress=gz/jpg/mp[34]/7z/bz2

The default list of suffixes that will not be compressed is this (in this version of rsync):

7z avi bz2 deb gz iso jpeg jpg mov mp3 mp4 ogg rpm tbz tgz z zip

This list will be replaced by your --skip-compress list in all but one situation: a copy from a daemon
rsync will add your skipped suffixes to its list of non-compressing files (and its list may be config‐
ured to a different default).

--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.
ified time then rsync will exit. The default is 0, which means no timeout.

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

--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 11 letters long. The general format is like the string
YXcstpoguax, 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).

o A * means that the rest of the itemized-output area contains a message (e.g. "deleting").

o A c means either that a regular file has a different checksum (requires --checksum) or that a
symlink, device, or special file has a changed value. Note that if you are sending files to an
rsync prior to 3.0.1, this change flag will be present only for checksum-differing regular
files.

o A s means the size of a regular file is different and will be updated by the file transfer.

o A t means the modification time is different and is being updated to the sender’s value
(requires --times). An alternate value of T means that the modification time will be set to the
transfer time, which happens when a file/symlink/device is updated without --times and when a
symlink is changed and the receiver can’t set its time. (Note: when using an rsync 3.0.0
client, you might see the s flag combined with t instead of the proper T flag for this time-set‐
ting failure.)

o A p means the permissions are different and are being updated to the sender’s value (requires
--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 u slot is reserved for future use.

o The a means that the ACL information changed.

o The x means that the extended attribute information changed.

One other output is possible: when deleting files, the "%i" will output the string "*deleting" 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 per‐
cent (%) character. A default format of "%n%L" is assumed if -v is specified (which reports the name
of the file and, if the item is a link, where it points). For a full list of the possible escape char‐
acters, see the "log format" setting in the rsyncd.conf manpage.

Specifying the --out-format 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 (e.g. if the --itemize-changes option was used),
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".

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 dae‐
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.

The default FORMAT used if --log-file is specified and this option is not is ’%i %n%L’.

--stats
This tells rsync to print a verbose set of statistics on the file transfer, allowing you to tell how
effective rsync’s delta-transfer 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 rsync’s
delta-transfer 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 ver‐
bose 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 charac‐
ters (but never tabs) are always escaped, regardless of this option’s setting.

The escape idiom that started in 2.6.7 is to output a literal backslash (\) and a hash (#), followed by
exactly 3 octal digits. For example, a newline would output as "\#012". A literal backslash that is

--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 rsync’s
delta-transfer 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 par‐
tial-directory in the destination file’s directory when needed, and then remove it again when the par‐
tial file is deleted.

If the partial-dir value is not an absolute path, rsync will add an exclude rule at the end of all your
existing excludes. This will prevent the sending of any partial-dir files that may exist on the send‐
ing side, and will also prevent the untimely deletion of partial-dir items on the receiving side. An
example: the above --partial-dir option would add the equivalent of "-f '-p .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 --par‐
tial. 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 --par‐
tial-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 want rsync to
cleanup old ".~tmp~" dirs that might be lying around. Conflicts with --inplace and --append.

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.

Note that the use of transfer rules, such as the --min-size option, does not affect what goes into the
file list, and thus does not leave directories empty, even if none of the files in a directory match
the transfer rule.

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 exist‐
ing items from being deleted due to an exclude both hiding source files and protecting destination
files. See the perishable filter-rule option for how to avoid this.

You can prevent the pruning of certain empty directories from the file-list by using a global "protect"
filter. For instance, this option would ensure that the directory "emptydir" was kept in 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 des‐
tination are removed (note the hide filter of non-directories being used instead of an exclude):

rsync -avm --del --include=’*.pdf’ -f ’hide,! */’ src/ 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 rsync’s delta-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)

lines are ignored).

This option does not supply a password to a remote shell transport such as ssh; to learn how to do
that, consult the remote shell’s documentation. When accessing an rsync daemon using a remote shell as
the transport, this option only comes into effect after the remote shell finishes its authentication
(i.e. if you have also specified a password in the daemon’s config file).

--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, or (2) to be able to specify more
than one source arg (note: be sure to include the destination). 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/

Compatibility note: when requesting a remote listing of files from an rsync that is version 2.6.3 or
older, you may encounter an error if you ask for a non-recursive listing. This is because a file list‐
ing implies the --dirs option w/o --recursive, and older rsyncs don’t have that option. To avoid this
problem, either specify the --no-dirs option (if you don’t need to expand a directory’s content), or
turn on recursion and exclude the content of subdirectories: -r --exclude='/*/*'.

--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

VERT_SPEC of "-" to turn off any conversion. The default setting of this option is site-specific, and
can also be affected via the RSYNC_ICONV environment variable.

For a list of what charset names your local iconv library supports, you can run "iconv --list".

If you specify the --protect-args option (-s), rsync will translate the filenames you specify on the
command-line that are being sent to the remote host. See also the --files-from option.

Note that rsync does not do any conversion of names in filter files (including include/exclude files).
It is up to you to ensure that you’re specifying matching rules that can match on both sides of the
transfer. For instance, you can specify extra include/exclude rules if there are filename differences
on the two sides that need to be accounted for.

When you pass an --iconv option to an rsync daemon that allows it, the daemon uses the charset speci‐
fied in its "charset" configuration parameter regardless of the remote charset you actually pass.
Thus, you may feel free to specify just the local charset for a daemon transfer (e.g. --iconv=utf8).

-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.

If rsync was complied without support for IPv6, the --ipv6 option will have no effect. The --version
output will tell you if this is the case.

--checksum-seed=NUM
Set the checksum seed to the integer NUM. This 4 byte checksum seed is included in each block and file
checksum calculation. By default the checksum seed is generated by the server and defaults to the cur‐
rent 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 check‐
sum seed. Setting NUM to 0 causes rsync to use the default of time() for checksum seed.

DAEMON OPTIONS
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 vir‐
tual 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 dae‐
mon sends. The client can still specify a smaller --bwlimit value, but their requested value will be
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" set‐
ting 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).

If rsync was complied without support for IPv6, the --ipv6 option will have no effect. The --version
output will tell you if this is the case.

-h, --help
When specified after --daemon, print a short help page describing the options available for starting an
rsync daemon.

FILTER RULES
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 follow‐
ing syntax:

RULE [PATTERN_OR_FILENAME]
RULE,MODIFIERS [PATTERN_OR_FILENAME]
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.

INCLUDE/EXCLUDE PATTERN RULES
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, oth‐
erwise it is matched against the end of the pathname. This is similar to a leading ^ in regular
expressions. Thus "/foo" would match a name of "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 a name of "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 filename. Even the
unanchored "sub/foo" would match at any point in the hierarchy where a "foo" was found within a direc‐
tory named "sub". See the section on ANCHORING INCLUDE/EXCLUDE PATTERNS for a full discussion of 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 regular file, symlink, or
device.

o rsync chooses between doing a simple string match and wildcard matching by checking if the pattern con‐
tains one of these three wildcard characters: ’*’, ’?’, and ’[’ .

o a ’*’ matches any path component, but it stops at slashes.

o use ’**’ to match anything, including slashes.

o a ’?’ matches any character except a slash (/).

o a ’[’ introduces a character class, such as [a-z] or [[:alpha:]].

o in a wildcard pattern, a backslash can be used to escape a wildcard character, but it is matched liter‐
ally when no wildcards are present.

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

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 names 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 "*")

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 cur‐
rent item. For example, "-/ /etc/passwd" would exclude the passwd file any time the transfer was send‐
ing 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.
marked as perishable, and will not prevent a directory that was removed on the source from being
deleted on the destination.

MERGE-FILE FILTER RULES
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 (above) in order to have the rules
that are read in from the file default to having that modifier set (except for the ! modifier, which
would not be useful). For instance, "merge,-/ .excl" would treat the contents of .excl as abso‐
lute-path excludes, while "dir-merge,s .filt" and ":sC" would each make all their per-directory rules
apply only on the sending side. If the merge rule specifies sides to affect (via the s or r modifier
or both), then the rules in the file must not specify sides (via a modifier or a rule prefix such as
hide).

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 direc‐
tory, 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 directo‐
ries 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 com‐
mand-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
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 chang‐
ing your use of the --relative option affects the path you need to use in your matching (in addition to chang‐
ing 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).

PER-DIRECTORY RULES AND DELETE
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

--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
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.

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 indi‐
vidually.

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 your convenience, a script file is also created when the write-batch option is used: it will be named the
same as the batch file with ".sh" appended. This script file contains a command-line suitable for updating a
destination tree using the associated 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 desti‐
nation path. This is useful when the destination tree path on the current host differs from the one used to
create the batch file.

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

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 encoun‐
tered 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 --fil‐
ter/--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.

SYMBOLIC LINKS
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 --ar‐
chive implies --links.

If --copy-links is specified, then symlinks are "collapsed" by copying their referent, rather than the sym‐
link.

Rsync can also distinguish "safe" and "unsafe" symbolic links. An example where this might be used is a web
site mirror that wishes to ensure that the rsync module that is copied 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 alto‐
gether. (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.

--links --safe-links
Duplicate safe symlinks and skip unsafe ones.

--links
Duplicate all symlinks.

DIAGNOSTICS
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.

EXIT VALUES
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 can‐
not 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()

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
CVSIGNORE
The CVSIGNORE environment variable supplements any ignore patterns in .cvsignore files. See the
--cvs-exclude option for more details.

RSYNC_ICONV
Specify a default --iconv setting using this environment variable. (First supported in 3.0.0.)

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 remote shell
transport such as ssh; to learn how to do that, consult the remote shell’s documentation.

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.

FILES
/etc/rsyncd.conf or rsyncd.conf