Autarchy of the Private Cave

Note: this is a draft post back from 2010. As it is still useful to me, I’ve decided to publish it as is.

I had already mused on the powers of rsync before.

This time, a reminder to self on how to resume copying broken scp/mc/fish transfers, using rsync.

First, an assortment of example commands.
export RSYNC_RSH=ssh
rsync --partial file_to_transfer user@remotehost:/path/remote_file
rsync -av --partial --progress --inplace SRC DST
rsync --partial --progress --rsh=ssh host:/work/source.tar.bz2 .
rsync --partial --progress --rsh=ssh -r me@host.com:/datafiles/ ./

One could also try the --append option of rsync to base the transfer resumption on the sizes of the two files rather than verifying that their contents match.

Now a single command line explained in a little more details:
rsync -vrPtz -e ssh host:/remote_path/* /local_path/
Explained:
-e ssh rsync will use ssh client instead of rsh, which makes data exchange encrypted
-z compress file transfer
-t preserve time (other attributes, such as owner and permissions are also possible)
-P resume incomplete file transfer
-r recurse into subdirectories
-v verbose

To specify a port when using ssh you must add it to the ssh command.
Example: rsync --partial --progress --rsh="ssh -p 16703" user@host:path

I have read manpages of rsync today.
I feel enlightened.

I had a dream of rsync being one of the legendary nix Super-Cows.

A tiny perversive part of self created a PDF version of rsync manpages (43 pages).

It seems that Super-Cows can damage the brain, when stared at too intensely.