Rsync Command in Linux With 12 Practical Examples

Rsync (Remote Sync) is a command-line tool for synchronizing files between two Unix-based systems. Rsync can also be used on the same system to synchronize files between two directories. Rsync uses a smart algorithm to send only the differences between source files and existing files to the destination. This means it uses less data on the network to save bandwidth.

Rsync is usually used for backing up large amounts of data or transferring data between two computers. It supports syncing files from local to local, local to remote, and remote to local. However, it does not support remote to remote file syncing.

In this post, we will look at some common uses for the rsync command-line tool.

Syntax

rsync [OPTION...] SOURCE... [DESTINATION]

• SOURCE can be a local directory like “/opt/backup” or a remote location like “user@example.com:/opt/remotedir/”
• DESTINATION can be a local directory or a remote system directory
• Both SOURCE and DESTINATION can refer to a local directory.
• Only one of SOURCE or DESTINATION can be remote. You can’t use both as remote locations.

Rsync Command Options

Rsync offers many useful options that control its behavior and make it more flexible for synchronizing files. Below is a list of some frequently used Rsync command options:

Rsync Examples

Here are 12 practical examples of the Rsync command in Unix/Linux systems.

Copy/Sync files and directories local-to-local

Rsync allows synchronizing files between directories on the local system. For example, you have backup files on your local machine under the /mnt/backup directory. You want to copy/sync all the files to a USB drive mounted on /mnt/disk1. Use the following command to synchronize all files and directories from /opt/backup to /mnt/disk1.

rsync -avhz /opt/backup /mnt/disk1/ 

sending incremental file list
backup/
backup/tecadmin.22Mar2022.sql
backup/tecadmin.22Mar2022.tar.gz
backup/tecadmin.23Mar2022.sql
backup/tecadmin.23Mar2022.tar.gz

sent 1.09G bytes  received 96 bytes  23.39M bytes/sec
total size is 1.47G  speedup is 1.35



Copy/Sync files and directories local-to-remote

Using rsync, we can quickly copy/synchronize files from local to remote systems. For example, you need to transfer a website to a new server. Use the below command to copy all files from the local /var/www/html directory to the remote (192.168.1.100) systems /var/www/html directory.

rsync -avhz /var/www/html root@192.168.1.100:/var/www/html/ 

The above command is helpful for a system administrator who copies files between two systems regularly.

Copy/Sync files and directories remote-to-local

Rsync can also copy files from a remote directory to a local directory. For example, you need to copy all backup files stored under /backups directory on a remote system to the local /opt/backups directory.

rsync -avhz root@192.168.1.100:/backups /opt/backups 

Using Rsync over SSH

Rsync connects to remote systems using the Rsync daemon directly via TCP. We can instruct rsync to use Secure shell (SSH) to connect to remote systems.

Use -e option to specify the remote shell. The below command will use ssh as a remote shell:

rsync -avhz -e ssh /src root@192.168.1.100:/dest/  

If the SSH server on the destination is running on a non-standard port, use this tutorial to connect rsync over a non-standard port.

Ignore files and directories that already exist on the destination

Use the Rsync command with --ignore-existing option to ignore all files that already exist on the destination. For example, you want to schedule a backup script to copy all files to the backup disk daily. In that case, you don’t want to copy all files again and again. This option will copy those files that are not available at the destination.

rsync -avhz --ignore-existing  /opt/backups /mnt/disk1 

Update file only if the source is newer

Use --update option to update the file on remote only if there is a newer version is local. Rsync will create a file on the destination if it does not exist. Also, it will update the file on the destination if the local timestamp is newer than the remote system file.

rsync --update -avhz /opt/backups /mnt/disk1/ 

Remove file from source after sync

Use --remove-source-files option to remove a file from the source after a successful transfer to the destination. For example, you need to schedule a backup of log files to the remote system. Also, you want to remove the log file from the local system after successfully copying it to the remote. This will help to free up disk space.

rsync --remove-source-files -avhz /var/log root@192.168.1.100:/backup/logs/ 

Exclude specific file or directory with Rsync

You can specify a file or pattern with the --exclude=PATTERN option to exclude it from rsync.

rsync -avh --exclude '*.zip' --exclude '*.log' /src user@remote.host:/dest 

Include Specific files with Rsync

The default Rsync includes all files under the source directory tree. Now, you need to include only specific files to synchronize to the destination.
Here you can specify --include=PATTERN to include specific files and exclude all files with * .

rsync -avhz --include '*.jpg' --include '*.txt' --exclude '*' /src user@remote.host:/dest 

Display Progress with Rsync

Use --progress option to display progress during the file transfer between source and destination with the rsync command.

rsync -avh --progress /src user@remote.host:/dest 

Change file permissions with Rsync

You can instruct Rsync to change the file’s owner and group owners on the destination. Use option --chown=USER:GROUP with Rsync to change file permissions.

rsync -avh --chown=USER:GROUP /src user@remote.host:/dest 

Similarly, you can use the –chmod=CHMOD option to change file or directory permissions on the destination.

rsync -avh --chmod=755 /src user@remote.host:/dest 

Rsync dry run only

Use --dry-run option to execute a dry run only. It will show you similar results as the original command but nothing will update on the destination. Basically, we can use this to check what Rsync will update before actually running it.

rsync -avh --dry-run /src user@remote.host:/dest 

Conclusion

Rsync is a great utility for transferring large amounts of data between two machines. You may also use Rsync to back up the entire system at a remote backup location. In this article, you have learned some practical Rsync command examples that are great for daily tasks.