19.27 Rsync Remote Files

20210313

Rsync can be used to synchronise files locally or remotely.

Below we illustrate typical archival (-a or --archive) synchronisations, printing a log of the activity (-v or --verbose), compressing files during the transfer (-z or --compress), with numbers in a human-readable format (-h or --human-readable).

The long version, synchronising all local html files to a remote host (togaware.com):

rync --archive --verbose --compress --human-readable *.html togaware.com:site/

The short version of the same synchronisation:

rync -avzh *.html togaware.com:site/

To also update permissions use --chmod=. Here we ensure all the remote files are readable by everyone.

rync -avzh --chmod=a+r *.html togaware.com:site/

To ignore any file or directory named cache we use --exclude:

$ rsync -avzh --exclude 'cache' local/ togaware.com:BACKUP/local/

To ignore backup files identified as having a trailing tilde, for example:

$ rsync -avzh --exclude '*~' local/ togaware.com:BACKUP/local/

To remove any remote files that are not in the current source directory use --delete:

$ rsync -avzh --delete local/ togaware.com:BACKUP/local/

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