Synchronize Files With rsync

What if i have network drives mapped in my home dir (/home/andrew/remote/movies) and don\'t want them being copied?

@ Andrew: Then you could use the exclude argument:
--exclude=\'/home/andrew/remote/movies\'

Or create a text file like /root/sync_exclude with all the things you want to exclude separated by newlines and then use:
--exclude-from=/root/sync_exclude

Hi,

Can you provide some comment on this instruction

rsync -raz --progress --size-only --exclude=/home/[user]/test-rsync/exclude /home/[user]/test-rsync/* [servername]:/home/[user]/network/administrator/test-rsync/

How can I do a correct exclusion?

Thank you.

@ Jerry: In this case your excluding every file/dir that starts with /home/[user]/test-rsync/exclude

So if that\'s what you want it should work.

Hi Kelvin,

I am trying to synchronize

/home/jerry/test-rysnc/*

except this folder in

/home/jerry/test-rsync/exclude

which will include all its subfolders and files.

I have tried my command but still the folder \"exclude\" gets synchronized.

I am thinking could it be my badly written command or wrong parameter placement.

Thanks.

maybe try adding an asterisk to the path you want to exclude like this: /home/jerry/test-rsync/exclude/*

I\'m using this command on the OSX Terminal program and everything works except the --delete parameter. I\'ve tried with files and directories and it just doesn\'t want to delete them.

@ Logan: Maybe a rights issue? Otherwise type rsync --help to see if the mac version even supports the --delete option. Maybe it\'s called differently, I don\'t really know mac.

rsnapshot is a great tool for simplifying typical backup scenarios using rsync. With rsnapshot, you can create incremental backups, run remote programs before/after backups, etc.
http://www.rsnapshot.org/

Also, you can drop your key on the remote server using one command. As mentioned on http://www.bytejar.com/

([ -f .ssh/id_rsa.pub ]||ssh-keygen -t rsa) && ssh user@host \"([ -d .ssh ]||mkdir -m 700 .ssh) && cat>>.ssh/authorized_keys && chmod 600 .ssh/authorized_keys\" < .ssh/id_rsa.pub

# NOTES:
# replace user@host with the remote user and host you want
# the first time run, this will require you authenticate as user@host.
# subsequent times will be password free.
# this requires that you use a Bourne-derivative shell and GNU mkdir

great article.. espesialy the automation..i want to give it a try later for my backup.
i love rsync too.. great toolls..

thanks

http://komikz.blogsite.org
Online Comics..

The ssh installation section should explain how to send keys to a user@servername.example.com other than the root user.

Your script can do this because it allows input of a second argument (the user name) after the server name. I didn\'t realize this and used the user@servername.example.com single argument. It doesn\'t work because the script prepends \"root@\" thus trying to connect to root@user@servername.example.com

You don\'t mention the use of two arguments however.

Properly a user should enter:

servername.example.com username

I wrote about this also on the ssh page.

@ Steve: Thanks again, I\'ve replaced the outdated text with a link to the other article to avoid duplication.

Nice article-

One thing to note: the archive (-a) option for rsync includes the recursive (-r) option, so the added -r on the command line isn\'t necessary.

@ Jeff: You are absolutely right and I have just forgotten to update the article. I will soon come with a new article on some unknown rsync options to make up ;) stay tuned!

i want to sync data from my fileserver to my backup server through network Both also using Ubuntu

i want to sync data from my fileserver (192.168.89.55) to my backup server (192.168.89.100) through network. Fileserver running ubuntu 6.06 server and backup server running ubuntu 8.04 LTS. So, kevin can u give the step to run the sync data for this.....coz i\'m new to LINUX and still learning on this.......

@ Rajendran: Well it\'s all in the article, really. On .55 you do something like:

rsync -az /home/kevin/source/ 192.168.89.100:/home/kevin/destination

But if you really don\'t know what you\'re doing, maybe it\'s a bit too soon to be rsyncing.

When using the -a option the -r option is unnecessary.
So -raz is the same as -az,

@ Mario: You are right. Old article this one. Fixed tho, thanks.

Hello Kevin,

I\'m new to all this rsync/linux/cron staff.
I\'ve been asked to keep two web servers (one master and the other replica) synchronized on a daily basis using rsync.

Can you please explain to me how can I automate rsync to execute once a day, every day of the week (or month) at the same time with an example please?

Thank you,

@ Arie: That\'s the kind of advice you should pay for. You could have a look at my crontab article though.

Thanks... Its great

Thanks a lot ! Very good article...

Excellent job!
Very good article. Well organized and well written.
Thank you very much for sharing.
Regards
Poul Anker

Thanks a lot, easy to use , and implement... --delete seems not to work thouh

A better automation option to crontab would be inotifywait for linux, and building the script around it.

very good tutorial!!!!

Just 1 question,

Lets say the remote server doesn't allow ssh on port 22 but rather on port 2255, how do you specify the correct port for rsync to use?

--delete does not work because you have to use it like:
rsync [OPTIONS] $SOURCEDIR/ $DESTDIR

so without the * for the source dir and without the '/' for the destination dir

That's so helpful because i'm looling for a solution to auto-synchronize the file system between web servers. I'll try it. Thank so much

Really useful piece. The problem of trying to sync without hashes for huge directories has flummoxed me for ages. Glad you've helped me find a way around it by comparing on size only.

Thanks.

How do you know if your rsync fails or gives some kind of output?

Great article!!
Please put some 'restarting crontab' for who want some immediate effect.

From the man page, actually:
{CODE="text"]
--delete delete extraneous files from dest dirs
[/CODE]
So if you are doing a "pull" instead of "push" --delete should work at the local end.

Thanks man! you saved my day! I'm migrating a mail server and this made moving the inboxes a lot easier.

do you have a page for windows to windows synchronization through Cygwin and Rsync?