New on LowEndTalk? Please Register and read our Community Rules.
All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
need help with rsync
Hi,
I want to sync my local music files with the older backup on my vps. As my upload speed is quite low, I don't want to just upload my whole music library (~10GB), just the new files and maybe if I deleted a file locally, so it should be deleted on my vps. I read that rsync is perfect for that, but I'm not sure which command I have to use for it. Is this the right one?
rsync -av --delete /Directory1/ /Directory2/
What I need:
*sync files between two directorys
*if there is a new file on my local pc upload it to the server
*if a file is deleted locally, delete it on my server
*if a file is changed locally, change it on my server
So I need my music locally backuped 1:1 to my VPS. Can you please help me with the rsync command?
Thank you 
Comments
http://www.thegeekstuff.com/2010/09/rsync-command-examples/
Thanks. According to this website this is my command:
rsync -avz /root/temp/ [email protected]:/home/thegeekstuff/temp/Does this change anything on my local directory? Does it delete files on remote if they are deleted locally?
This is what I use to back up a VPS folder to another VPS server.
one line below
/usr/bin/rsync -avzHx --delete --stats --progress --exclude-from '/home/localfolder/rsync-exclude.txt' -e "ssh -2 -p 22" /home/localfolder/ [email protected]:/home/remoteuser/remote-backup-folder/
The content of rsync-exclude.txt is as follows:
logs/*
public_html/tmp/*
It wont delete locally unless you add the --delete flag.
@MassNodes
and will it delete remotely? without --delte
No, it doesn't change anything locally. It mirrors the local /root/temp dir to the remote machine.
If you want to delete file on the remote that have been removed on the local, add in the --delete switch you had in your first post.
Also, you need to be careful with trailing slashes:
rsync -avz --delete /root/temp/ [email protected]:/home/thegeekstuff/tempNote the absence of a trailing slash on the destination directory (the remote end).
You can use --dry-run to test without transferring anything:
rsync -avz --delete --dry-run /root/temp/ [email protected]:/home/thegeekstuff/tempAnd you probably aren't running an rsync server on the remote, so you can transport it over ssh.
rsync -avz --delete --dry-run -e 'ssh' /root/temp/ [email protected]:/home/thegeekstuff/tempIt'll ask you for your ssh password. If you want to automate the syncing, setup a keypair between the two boxes, then:
rsync -avz --delete --dry-run -e 'ssh -i /path/to/key' /root/temp/ [email protected]:/home/thegeekstuff/tempAnd when it's all working as you want, change the v (verbose) to q (quiet) and remove the dry-run:
rsync -aqz --delete -e 'ssh -i /path/to/key' /root/temp/ [email protected]:/home/thegeekstuff/temp@sleddog
Thank you very much for this great explanation!
Just a little questions, what would happen if I would use the command you posted with the trailing slash on the remote end:
rsync -avz --delete --dry-run /root/temp/ [email protected]:/home/thegeekstuff/temp/I think you'd end up with everything on the remote end stored in /home/thegeekstuff/temp/temp/
Do some small transfers to test....
error found^^
So now I want it the other way round. I already checked the man page, so I just have to change the order from:
to:
Am I right?
Should work
Just a thought: I usually use
--delete-afterinstead of--deletein case I (or an application) accidentally move files. This way I'll notice rsync uploading several gigabytes before deleting them. It gives me a chance to abort and move files on the server to save time and bandwidth.Thank you. Will try it later
Thank you for the suggestions, so with the --delete-after flag it uploads the new files and then in the end it deletes the old files?
Is there a way to exclude system folders starting with . like .ssh from syncing? I didn't find anything.
theres the --exclude parameter .
Note: the directory path is relative to the folder you are backing up. Best to use full path.
Use --exclude or --exclude-from.
The path you specify is relative to your source base dir, i.e., if your syncing /home/thegeekstuff and want to exclude /home/thegeekstuff/.ssh you'd specify:
rsync --exclude=.ssh/ ...
If you have mutiple dirs/files to exclude you can put them in a text file and reference it with exclude-from:
rsync --exclude-from=/path/to/exclude-file ...
The file /path/to/exclude-file contains a list of relative paths and filenames, one per line. e.g.:
@MikHo and @sleddog
Thank you. I will do this later
But somehow my new command doesn't work as expected. I use this command on my local machine.
I already have a few files on my local machine under
but it looks like it will sync a lot of files (I only tried it with --dry-run). I added -c so that it uses md5sums for file comparison, but it still wants to sync way too much files.
Edit: if it helps, I copied the files which are already on my local machine with FileZilla.
Yes. It will delete files on the remote side that have been deleted from the local side. (Excluded files are ignored.)
From the man page...
--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 dirsI already read that.