#top rsync¶

increase verbosity

suppress non-error messages

skip based on checksum, not mod-time & size

archive mode; same as -rlptgoD (no -H)

turn off an implied OPTION (e.g. --no-D)

recurse into directories

use relative path names

don't send implied dirs with --relative

make backups (see --suffix & --backup-dir)

make backups into hierarchy based in DIR

backup suffix (default ~ w/o --backup-dir)

skip files that are newer on the receiver

update destination files in-place

append data onto shorter files

transfer directories without recursing

copy symlinks as symlinks

transform symlink into referent file/dir

only "unsafe" symlinks are transformed

ignore symlinks that point outside the tree

transform symlink to dir into referent dir

treat symlinked dir on receiver as dir

preserve hard links

preserve permissions

preserve executability

preserve ACLs (implies -p) [non-standard]

preserve extended attrs (implies -p) [n.s.]

change destination permissions

preserve owner (super-user only)

preserve group

preserve device files (super-user only)

preserve special files

same as --devices --specials

preserve times

omit directories when preserving times

receiver attempts super-user activities

handle sparse files efficiently

show what would have been transferred

copy files whole (without rsync algorithm)

don't cross filesystem boundaries

force a fixed checksum block-size

specify the remote shell to use

specify the rsync to run on remote machine

ignore non-existing files on receiving side

ignore files that already exist on receiver

sent files/symlinks are removed from sender

an alias for --delete-during

delete files that don't exist on sender

receiver deletes before transfer (default)

receiver deletes during xfer, not before

receiver deletes after transfer, not before

also delete excluded files on receiver

delete even if there are I/O errors

force deletion of dirs even if not empty

don't delete more than NUM files

don't transfer any file larger than SIZE

don't transfer any file smaller than SIZE

keep partially transferred files

put a partially transferred file into DIR

put all updated files into place at end

prune empty directory chains from file-list

don't map uid/gid values by user/group name

set I/O timeout in seconds

don't skip files that match size and time

skip files that match in size

compare mod-times with reduced accuracy

create temporary files in directory DIR

find similar file for basis if no dest file

also compare received files relative to DIR

... and include copies of unchanged files

hardlink to files in DIR when unchanged

compress file data during the transfer

explicitly set compression level

auto-ignore files in the same way CVS does

add a file-filtering RULE

same as --filter='dir-merge /.rsync-filter'
repeated: --filter='- .rsync-filter'

exclude files matching PATTERN

read exclude patterns from FILE

don't exclude files matching PATTERN

read include patterns from FILE

read list of source-file names from FILE

all *from/filter files are delimited by 0s

bind address for outgoing socket to daemon

specify double-colon alternate port number

specify custom TCP options

use blocking I/O for the remote shell

give some file-transfer stats

leave high-bit chars unescaped in output

output numbers in a human-readable format

show progress during transfer

same as --partial --progress

output a change-summary for all updates

output filenames using the specified format

read password from FILE

list the files instead of copying them

limit I/O bandwidth; KBytes per second

write a batched update to FILE

like --write-batch but w/o updating dest

read a batched update from FILE

force an older protocol version to be used

set block/file checksum seed (advanced)

prefer IPv4

prefer IPv6

print version number

show this help (see below for -h comment)

run as an rsync daemon

bind to the specified address

limit I/O bandwidth; KBytes per second

specify alternate rsyncd.conf file

do not detach from the parent

listen on alternate port number

specify custom TCP options

increase verbosity

prefer IPv4

prefer IPv6

show this help (if used after --daemon)

describing the options available in rsync and exit. For backward-compatibility with older versions of rsync, the help will also be output if you use the -h option without any other args.

print the rsync version number and exit.

This option increases the amount of information you are given during the transfer. By default, rsync works silently. A single -v will give you information about what files are being transferred and a brief summary at the end. Two -v flags will give you information on what files are being skipped and slightly more information at the end. More than two -v flags should only be used if you are debugging rsync.

Note that the names of the transferred files that are output are done using a default --log-format of "%n%L", which tells you just the name of the file and, if the item is a link, where it points. At the single -v level of verbosity, this does not mention when a file gets its attributes changed. If you ask for an itemized list of changed attributes (either --itemize-changes or adding "%i" to the --log-format setting), the output (on the client) increases to mention all items that are changed in any way. See the --log-format option for more details.

This option decreases the amount of information you are given during the transfer, notably suppressing information messages from the remote server. This flag is useful when invoking rsync from cron.

Normally rsync will skip any files that are already the same size and have the same modification time-stamp. This option turns off this "quick check" behavior.

Normally rsync will not transfer any files that are already the same size and have the same modification time-stamp. With the --size-only option, files will not be transferred if they have the same size, regardless of timestamp. This is useful when starting to use rsync after using another mirroring system which may not preserve timestamps exactly.

When comparing two timestamps, rsync treats the timestamps as being equal if they differ by no more than the modify-window value. This is normally 0 (for an exact match), but you may find it useful to set this to a larger value in some situations. In particular, when transferring to or from an MS Windows FAT filesystem (which represents times with a 2-second resolution), --modify-window=1 is useful (allowing times to differ by up to 1 second).

This forces the sender to checksum every regular file using a 128-bit MD4 checksum. It does this during the initial file-system scan as it builds the list of all available files. The receiver then checksums its version of each file (if it exists and it has the same size as its sender-side counterpart) in order to decide which files need to be updated: files with either a changed size or a changed checksum are selected for transfer. Since this whole-file checksumming of all files on both sides of the connection occurs in addition to the automatic checksum verifications that occur during a file's transfer, this option can be quite slow.

Note that rsync always verifies that each transferred file was correctly reconstructed on the receiving side by checking its whole-file checksum, but that automatic after-the-transfer verification has nothing to do with this option's before-the-transfer "Does this file need to be updated?" check.

This is equivalent to -rlptgoD. It is a quick way of saying you want recursion and want to preserve almost everything (with -H being a notable omission). The only exception to the above equivalence is when --files-from is specified, in which case -r is not implied.

Note that -a does not preserve hardlinks, because finding multiply-linked files is expensive. You must separately specify -H.

You may turn off one or more implied options by prefixing the option name with "no-". Not all options may be prefixed with a "no-": only options that are implied by other options (e.g. --no-D, --no-perms) or have different defaults in various circumstances (e.g. --no-whole-file, --no-blocking-io, --no-dirs). You may specify either the short or the long option name after the "no-" prefix (e.g. --no-R is the same as --no-relative).

For example: if you want to use -a (--archive) but don't want -o (--owner), instead of converting -a into -rlptgD, you could specify -a --no-o (or -a --no-owner).

The order of the options is important: if you specify --no-r -a, the -r option would end up being turned on, the opposite of -a --no-r. Note also that the side-effects of the --files-from option are NOT positional, as it affects the default state of several options and slightly changes the meaning of -a (see the --files-from option for more details).

This tells rsync to copy directories recursively. See also --dirs (-d).

Use relative paths. This means that the full path names specified on the command line are sent to the server rather than just the last parts of the filenames. This is particularly useful when you want to send several different directories at the same time. For example, if you used this command:

rsync -av /foo/bar/baz.c remote:/tmp/

... this would create a file named baz.c in /tmp/ on the remote machine. If instead you used

rsync -avR /foo/bar/baz.c remote:/tmp/

then a file named /tmp/foo/bar/baz.c would be created on the remote machine -- the full path name is preserved. To limit the amount of path information that is sent, you have a couple options: (1) With a modern rsync on the sending side (beginning with 2.6.7), you can insert a dot and a slash into the source path, like this:

rsync -avR /foo/./bar/baz.c remote:/tmp/

That would create /tmp/bar/baz.c on the remote machine. (Note that the dot must be followed by a slash, so "/foo/." would not be abbreviated.) (2) For older rsync versions, you would need to use a chdir to limit the source path. For example, when pushing files:

(cd /foo; rsync -avR bar/baz.c remote:/tmp/)

(Note that the parens put the two commands into a sub-shell, so that the "cd" command doesn't remain in effect for future commands.) If you're pulling files, use this idiom (which doesn't work with an rsync daemon):

rsync -avR --rsync-path="cd /foo; rsync" \
remote:bar/baz.c /tmp/

This option affects the default behavior of the --relative option. When it is specified, the attributes of the implied directories from the source names are not included in the transfer. This means that the corresponding path elements on the destination system are left unchanged if they exist, and any missing implied directories are created with default attributes. This even allows these implied path elements to have big differences, such as being a symlink to a directory on one side of the transfer, and a real directory on the other side.

For instance, if a command-line arg or a files-from entry told rsync to transfer the file "path/foo/file", the directories "path" and "path/foo" are implied when --relative is used. If "path/foo" is a symlink to "bar" on the destination system, the receiving rsync would ordinarily delete "path/foo", recreate it as a directory, and receive the file into the new directory. With --no-implied-dirs, the receiving rsync updates "path/foo/file" using the existing path elements, which means that the file ends up being created in "path/bar". Another way to accomplish this link preservation is to use the --keepdirlinks option (which will also affect symlinks to directories in the rest of the transfer).

In a similar but opposite scenario, if the transfer of "path/foo/file" is requested and "path/foo" is a symlink on the sending side, running without --no-implied-dirs would cause rsync to transform "path/foo" on the receiving side into an identical symlink, and then attempt to transfer "path/foo/file", which might fail if the duplicated symlink did not point to a directory on the receiving side. Another way to avoid this sending of a symlink as an implied directory is to use --copy-unsafe-links, or --copy-dirlinks (both of which also affect symlinks in the rest of the transfer -- see their descriptions for full details).

With this option, preexisting destination files are renamed as each file is transferred or deleted. You can control where the backup file goes and what (if any) suffix gets appended using the --backup-dir and --suffix options.

Note that if you don't specify --backup-dir, (1) the --omit-dirtimes option will be implied, and (2) if --delete is also in effect (without --delete-excluded), rsync will add a "protect" filter-rule for the backup suffix to the end of all your existing excludes (e.g. -f "P *~"). This will prevent previously backed-up files from being deleted. Note that if you are supplying your own filter rules, you may need to manually insert your own exclude/protect rule somewhere higher up in the list so that it has a high enough priority to be effective (e.g., if your rules specify a trailing inclusion/exclusion of '*', the auto-added rule would never be reached).

In combination with the --backup option, this tells rsync to store all backups in the specified directory. This is very useful for incremental backups. You can additionally specify a backup suffix using the --suffix option (otherwise the files backed up in the specified directory will keep their original filenames).

This option allows you to override the default backup suffix used with the --backup (-b) option. The default suffix is a ~ if no --backup-dir was specified, otherwise it is an empty string.

This forces rsync to skip any files which exist on the destination and have a modified time that is newer than the source file. (If an existing destination file has a modify time equal to the source file's, it will be updated if the sizes are different.)

In the current implementation of --update, a difference of file format between the sender and receiver is always considered to be important enough for an update, no matter what date is on the objects. In other words, if the source has a directory or a symlink where the destination has a file, the transfer would occur regardless of the timestamps. This might change in the future (feel free to comment on this on the mailing list if you have an opinion).

This causes rsync not to create a new copy of the file and then move it into place. Instead rsync will overwrite the existing file, meaning that the rsync algorithm can't accomplish the full amount of network reduction it might be able to otherwise (since it does not yet try to sort data matches). One exception to this is if you combine the option with --backup, since rsync is smart enough to use the backup file as the basis file for the transfer.

This option is useful for transfer of large files with blockbased changes or appended data, and also on systems that are disk bound, not network bound.

The option implies --partial (since an interrupted transfer does not delete the file), but conflicts with --partial-dir and --delay-updates. Prior to rsync 2.6.4 --inplace was also incompatible with --compare-dest and --link-dest.

WARNING: The file's data will be in an inconsistent state during the transfer (and possibly afterward if the transfer gets interrupted), so you should not use this option to update files that are in use. Also note that rsync will be unable to update a file in-place that is not writable by the receiving user.

This causes rsync to update a file by appending data onto the end of the file, which presumes that the data that already exists on the receiving side is identical with the start of the file on the sending side. If that is not true, the file will fail the checksum test, and the resend will do a normal --inplace update to correct the mismatched data. Only files on the receiving side that are shorter than the corresponding file on the sending side (as well as new files) are sent. Implies --inplace, but does not conflict with --sparse (though the --sparse option will be auto-disabled if a resend of the already-existing data is required).

Tell the sending side to include any directories that are encountered. Unlike --recursive, a directory's contents are not copied unless the directory name specified is "." or ends with a trailing slash (e.g. ".", "dir/.", "dir/", etc.). Without this option or the --recursive option, rsync will skip all directories it encounters (and output a message to that effect for each one). If you specify both --dirs and --recursive, --recursive takes precedence.

When symlinks are encountered, recreate the symlink on the destination.

When symlinks are encountered, the item that they point to (the referent) is copied, rather than the symlink. In older versions of rsync, this option also had the side-effect of telling the receiving side to follow symlinks, such as symlinks to directories. In a modern rsync such as this one, you'll need to specify --keep-dirlinks (-K) to get this extra behavior. The only exception is when sending files to an rsync that is too old to understand -K -- in that case, the -L option will still have the side-effect of -K on that older receiving rsync.

This tells rsync to copy the referent of symbolic links that point outside the copied tree. Absolute symlinks are also treated like ordinary files, and so are any symlinks in the source path itself when --relative is used. This option has no additional effect if --copy-links was also specified.

This tells rsync to ignore any symbolic links which point outside the copied tree. All absolute symlinks are also ignored. Using this option in conjunction with --relative may give unexpected results.

This option causes the sending side to treat a symlink to a directory as though it were a real directory. This is useful if you don't want symlinks to non-directories to be affected, as they would be using --copy-links.

Without this option, if the sending side has replaced a directory with a symlink to a directory, the receiving side will delete anything that is in the way of the new symlink, including a directory hierarchy (as long as --force or --delete is in effect).

See also --keep-dirlinks for an analogous option for the receiving side.

This option causes the receiving side to treat a symlink to a directory as though it were a real directory, but only if it matches a real directory from the sender. Without this option, the receiver's symlink would be deleted and replaced with a real directory.

For example, suppose you transfer a directory "foo" that contains a file "file", but "foo" is a symlink to directory "bar" on the receiver. Without --keep-dirlinks, the receiver deletes symlink "foo", recreates it as a directory, and receives the file into the new directory. With --keep-dirlinks, the receiver keeps the symlink and "file" ends up in "bar".

See also --copy-dirlinks for an analogous option for the sending side.

This tells rsync to look for hard-linked files in the transfer and link together the corresponding files on the receiving side. Without this option, hard-linked files in the transfer are treated as though they were separate files.

Note that rsync can only detect hard links if both parts of the link are in the list of files being sent.

This option causes the receiving rsync to set the destination permissions to be the same as the source permissions. (See also the --chmod option for a way to modify what rsync considers to be the source permissions.)

When this option is off, permissions are set as follows:



Thus, when --perms and --executability are both disabled, rsync's behavior is the same as that of other file-copy utilities, such as cp(1) and tar(1).

In summary: to give destination files (both old and new) the source permissions, use --perms. To give new files the destination-default permissions (while leaving existing files unchanged), make sure that the --perms option is off and use --chmod=ugo=rwX (which ensures that all non-masked bits get enabled). If you'd care to make this latter behavior easier to type, you could define a popt alias for it, such as putting this line in the file ~/.popt (this defines the -s option, and includes --no-g to use the default group of the destination dir):

rsync alias -s --no-p --no-g --chmod=ugo=rwX

You could then use this new option in a command such as this one:

rsync -asv src/ dest/

(Caveat: make sure that -a does not follow -s, or it will reenable the "--no-*" options.)

The preservation of the destination's setgid bit on newly-created directories when --perms is off was added in rsync 2.6.7. Older rsync versions erroneously preserved the three special permission bits for newly-created files when --perms was off, while overriding the destination's setgid bit setting on a newly-created directory. Default ACL observance was added to the ACL patch for rsync 2.6.7, so older (or non-ACL-enabled) rsyncs use the umask even if default ACLs are present. (Keep in mind that it is the version of the receiving rsync that affects these behaviors.)

This option causes rsync to preserve the executability (or nonexecutability) of regular files when --perms is not enabled. A regular file is considered to be executable if at least one 'x' is turned on in its permissions. When an existing destination file's executability differs from that of the corresponding source file, rsync modifies the destination file's permissions as follows:



If --perms is enabled, this option is ignored.

This option causes rsync to update the destination ACLs to be the same as the source ACLs. This nonstandard option only works if the remote rsync also supports it. --acls implies --perms.

Note also that an optimization of the ACL-sending protocol used by this version makes it incompatible with sending files to an older ACL-enabled rsync unless you double the --acls option (e.g. -AA). This doubling is not needed when pulling files from an older rsync.

This option causes rsync to update the remote extended attributes to be the same as the local ones. This will work only if the remote machine's rsync supports this option also. This is a non-standard option.

This option tells rsync to apply one or more comma-separated "chmod" strings to the permission of the files in the transfer. The resulting value is treated as though it was the permissions that the sending side supplied for the file, which means that this option can seem to have no effect on existing files if --perms is not enabled.

In addition to the normal parsing rules specified in the chmod(1) manpage, you can specify an item that should only apply to a directory by prefixing it with a 'D', or specify an item that should only apply to a file by prefixing it with a 'F'.
For example:

--chmod=Dg+s,ug+w,Fo-w,+X

It is also legal to specify multiple --chmod options, as each additional option is just appended to the list of changes to make.

See the --perms and --executability options for how the resulting permission value can be applied to the files in the transfer.

This option causes rsync to set the owner of the destination file to be the same as the source file, but only if the receiving rsync is being run as the super-user (see also the --super option to force rsync to attempt super-user activities). Without this option, the owner is set to the invoking user on the receiving side.

The preservation of ownership will associate matching names by default, but may fall back to using the ID number in some circumstances (see also the --numeric-ids option for a full discussion).

This option causes rsync to set the group of the destination file to be the same as the source file. If the receiving program is not running as the super-user (or if --no-super was specified), only groups that the invoking user on the receiving side is a member of will be preserved. Without this option, the group is set to the default group of the invoking user on the receiving side.

The preservation of group information will associate matching names by default, but may fall back to using the ID number in some circumstances (see also the --numeric-ids option for a full discussion).

This option causes rsync to transfer character and block device files to the remote system to recreate these devices. This option has no effect if the receiving rsync is not run as the super-user and --super is not specified.

This option causes rsync to transfer special files such as named sockets and fifos.

The -D option is equivalent to --devices --specials.

This tells rsync to transfer modification times along with the files and update them on the remote system. Note that if this option is not used, the optimization that excludes files that have not been modified cannot be effective; in other words, a missing -t or -a will cause the next transfer to behave as if it used -I, causing all files to be updated (though the rsync algorithm will make the update fairly efficient if the files haven't actually changed, you're much better off using -t).

This tells rsync to omit directories when it is preserving modification times (see --times). If NFS is sharing the directories on the receiving side, it is a good idea to use -O. This option is inferred if you use --backup without --backup-dir.

This tells the receiving side to attempt super-user activities even if the receiving rsync wasn't run by the super-user. These activities include: preserving users via the --owner option, preserving all groups (not just the current user's groups) via the --groups option, and copying devices via the --devices option. This is useful for systems that allow such activities without being the super-user, and also for ensuring that you will get errors if the receiving side isn't being running as the super-user. To turn off super-user activities, the super-user can use --no-super.

Try to handle sparse files efficiently so they take up less space on the destination. Conflicts with --inplace because it's not possible to overwrite data in a sparse fashion.

NOTE: Don't use this option when the destination is a Solaris "tmpfs" filesystem. It doesn't seem to handle seeks over null regions correctly and ends up corrupting the files.

This tells rsync to not do any file transfers, instead it will just report the actions it would have taken.

With this option the incremental rsync algorithm is not used and the whole file is sent as-is instead. The transfer may be faster if this option is used when the bandwidth between the source and destination machines is higher than the bandwidth to disk (especially when the "disk" is actually a networked filesystem). This is the default when both the source and destination are specified as local paths.

This tells rsync to avoid crossing a filesystem boundary when recursing. This does not limit the user's ability to specify items to copy from multiple filesystems, just rsync's recursion through the hierarchy of each directory that the user specified, and also the analogous recursion on the receiving side during deletion. Also keep in mind that rsync treats a "bind" mount to the same device as being on the same filesystem.

If this option is repeated, rsync omits all mount-point directories from the copy. Otherwise, it includes an empty directory at each mount-point it encounters (using the attributes of the mounted directory because those of the underlying mount-point directory are inaccessible).

If rsync has been told to collapse symlinks (via --copy-links or --copy-unsafe-links), a symlink to a directory on another device is treated like a mount-point. Symlinks to non-directories are unaffected by this option.

This tells rsync to skip updating files that do not exist yet on the destination. If this option is combined with the --ignore-existing option, no files will be updated (which can be useful if all you want to do is to delete missing files).

This tells rsync to skip updating files that already exist on the destination. See also --ignore-non-existing.

This tells rsync to remove from the sending side the files and/or symlinks that are newly created or whose content is updated on the receiving side. Directories and devices are not removed, nor are files/symlinks whose attributes are merely changed.

This tells rsync to delete extraneous files from the receiving side (ones that aren't on the sending side), but only for the directories that are being synchronized. You must have asked rsync to send the whole directory (e.g. "dir" or "dir/") without using a wildcard for the directory's contents (e.g. "dir/*") since the wildcard is expanded by the shell and rsync thus gets a request to transfer individual files, not the files' parent directory. Files that are excluded from transfer are also excluded from being deleted unless you use the --delete-excluded option or mark the rules as only matching on the sending side (see the include/exclude modifiers in the FILTER RULES section). Prior to rsync 2.6.7, this option would have no effect unless --recursive was in effect. Beginning with 2.6.7, deletions will also occur when --dirs (-d) is in effect, but only for directories whose contents are being copied.

This option can be dangerous if used incorrectly! It is a very good idea to run first using the --dry-run option (-n) to see what files would be deleted to make sure important files aren't listed.

If the sending side detects any I/O errors, then the deletion of any files at the destination will be automatically disabled. This is to prevent temporary filesystem failures (such as NFS errors) on the sending side causing a massive deletion of files on the destination. You can override this with the --ignore-errors option.

The --delete option may be combined with one of the --delete-WHEN options without conflict, as well as --delete-excluded. However, if none of the --delete-WHEN options are specified, rsync will currently choose the --delete-before algorithm. A future version may change this to choose the --delete-during algorithm. See also --delete-after.

Request that the file-deletions on the receiving side be done before the transfer starts. This is the default if --delete or --delete-excluded is specified without one of the --delete-WHEN options. See --delete (which is implied) for more details on file-deletion.

Deleting before the transfer is helpful if the filesystem is tight for space and removing extraneous files would help to make the transfer possible. However, it does introduce a delay before the start of the transfer, and this delay might cause the transfer to timeout (if --timeout was specified).

Request that the file-deletions on the receiving side be done incrementally as the transfer happens. This is a faster method than choosing the before- or after-transfer algorithm, but it is only supported beginning with rsync version 2.6.4. See --delete (which is implied) for more details on file-deletion.

Request that the file-deletions on the receiving side be done after the transfer has completed. This is useful if you are sending new per-directory merge files as a part of the transfer and you want their exclusions to take effect for the delete phase of the current transfer. See --delete (which is implied) for more details on file-deletion.

In addition to deleting the files on the receiving side that are not on the sending side, this tells rsync to also delete any files on the receiving side that are excluded (see --exclude). See the FILTER RULES section for a way to make individual exclusions behave this way on the receiver, and for a way to protect files from --delete-excluded. See --delete (which is implied) for more details on file-deletion.

Tells --delete to go ahead and delete files even when there are I/O errors.

This option tells rsync to delete a non-empty directory when it is to be replaced by a non-directory. This is only relevant if deletions are not active (see --delete for details).

Note for older rsync versions: --force used to still be required when using --delete-after, and it used to be non-functional unless the --recursive option was also enabled.

This tells rsync not to delete more than NUM files or directories (NUM must be non-zero). This is useful when mirroring very large trees to prevent disasters.

This tells rsync to avoid transferring any file that is larger than the specified SIZE. The SIZE value can be suffixed with a string to indicate a size multiplier, and may be a fractional value (e.g. "--max-size=1.5m").

The suffixes are as follows: "K" (or "KiB") is a kibibyte (1024), "M" (or "MiB") is a mebibyte (1024*1024), and "G" (or "GiB") is a gibibyte (1024*1024*1024). If you want the multiplier to be 1000 instead of 1024, use "KB", "MB", or "GB". (Note: lower-case is also accepted for all values.) Finally, if the suffix ends in either "+1" or "-1", the value will be offset by one byte in the indicated direction.

Examples: --max-size=1.5mb-1 is 1499999 bytes, and --max-size=2g+1 is 2147483649 bytes.

This tells rsync to avoid transferring any file that is smaller than the specified SIZE, which can help in not transferring small, junk files. See the --max-size option for a description of SIZE.

This forces the block size used in the rsync algorithm to a fixed value. It is normally selected based on the size of each file being updated. See the technical report for details.

This option allows you to choose an alternative remote shell program to use for communication between the local and remote copies of rsync. Typically, rsync is configured to use ssh by default, but you may prefer to use rsh on a local network.

If this option is used with [user@]host::module/path, then the remote shell COMMAND will be used to run an rsync daemon on the remote host, and all data will be transmitted through that remote shell connection, rather than through a direct socket connection to a running rsync daemon on the remote host. See the section "USING RSYNC-DAEMON FEATURES VIA A REMOTE-SHELL CONNECTION" above.

Command-line arguments are permitted in COMMAND provided that COMMAND is presented to rsync as a single argument. You must use spaces (not tabs or other whitespace) to separate the command and args from each other, and you can use single- and/or double-quotes to preserve spaces in an argument (but not backslashes). Note that doubling a single-quote inside a singlequoted string gives you a single-quote; likewise for doublequotes (though you need to pay attention to which quotes your shell is parsing and which quotes rsync is parsing). Some examples:

-e 'ssh -o "ProxyCommand nohup ssh firewall nc -w1 %h %p"'

(Note that ssh users can alternately customize site-specific connect options in their .ssh/config file.)

You can also choose the remote shell program using the RSYNC_RSH environment variable, which accepts the same range of values as -e.

See also the --blocking-io option which is affected by this option.

Use this to specify what program is to be run on the remote machine to start-up rsync. Often used when rsync is not in the default remote-shell's path (e.g. --rsync-path=/usr/local/bin/rsync). Note that PROGRAM is run with the help of a shell, so it can be any program, script, or command sequence you'd care to run, so long as it does not corrupt the standard-in & standard-out that rsync is using to communicate.

One tricky example is to set a different default directory on the remote machine for use with the --relative option. For instance:

rsync -avR --rsync-path="cd /a/b && rsync" hst:c/d /e/

This is a useful shorthand for excluding a broad range of files
that you often don't want to transfer between systems. It uses
the same algorithm that CVS uses to determine if a file should
be ignored.

The exclude list is initialized to:

RCS SCCS CVS CVS.adm RCSLOG cvslog.* tags TAGS
.make.state .nse_depinfo *~ #* .#* ,* _$* *$ *.old *.bak
*.BAK *.orig *.rej .del-* *.a *.olb *.o *.obj *.so *.exe
*.Z *.elc *.ln core .svn/

then files listed in a $HOME/.cvsignore are added to the list
and any files listed in the CVSIGNORE environment variable (all
cvsignore names are delimited by whitespace).

Finally, any file is ignored if it is in the same directory as a .cvsignore file and matches one of the patterns listed therein. Unlike rsync's filter/exclude files, these patterns are split on whitespace. See the cvs(1) manual for more information.

If you're combining -C with your own --filter rules, you should note that these CVS excludes are appended at the end of your own rules, regardless of where the -C was placed on the commandline. This makes them a lower priority than any rules you specified explicitly. If you want to control where these CVS excludes get inserted into your filter rules, you should omit the -C as a command-line option and use a combination of --filter=:C and --filter=-C (either on your command-line or by putting the ":C" and "-C" rules into a filter file with your other rules). The first option turns on the per-directory scanning for the .cvsignore file. The second option does a one-time import of the CVS excludes mentioned above.

This option allows you to add rules to selectively exclude certain files from the list of files to be transferred. This is most useful in combination with a recursive transfer.

You may use as many --filter options on the command line as you like to build up the list of files to exclude.

See the FILTER RULES section for detailed information on this option.

The -F option is a shorthand for adding two --filter rules to your command. The first time it is used is a shorthand for this rule:

This tells rsync to look for per-directory .rsync-filter files that have been sprinkled through the hierarchy and use their rules to filter the files in the transfer. If -F is repeated, it is a shorthand for this rule:

This filters out the .rsync-filter files themselves from the transfer.

See the FILTER RULES section for detailed information on how these options work.

This option is a simplified form of the --filter option that defaults to an exclude rule and does not allow the full ruleparsing syntax of normal filter rules.

See the FILTER RULES section for detailed information on this option.

This option is related to the --exclude option, but it specifies a FILE that contains exclude patterns (one per line). Blank lines in the file and lines starting with ';' or '#' are ignored. If FILE is -, the list will be read from standard input.

This option is a simplified form of the --filter option that defaults to an include rule and does not allow the full ruleparsing syntax of normal filter rules.

See the FILTER RULES section for detailed information on this option.

This option is related to the --include option, but it specifies a FILE that contains include patterns (one per line). Blank lines in the file and lines starting with ';' or '#' are ignored. If FILE is -, the list will be read from standard input.

Using this option allows you to specify the exact list of files
to transfer (as read from the specified FILE or - for standard
input). It also tweaks the default behavior of rsync to make
transferring just the specified files and directories easier:





The file names that are read from the FILE are all relative to the source dir -- any leading slashes are removed and no ".." references are allowed to go higher than the source dir. For example, take this command:

rsync -a --files-from=/tmp/foo /usr remote:/backup

If /tmp/foo contains the string "bin" (or even "/bin"), the /usr/bin directory will be created as /backup/bin on the remote host. If it contains "bin/" (note the trailing slash), the immediate contents of the directory would also be sent (without needing to be explicitly mentioned in the file -- this began in version 2.6.4). In both cases, if the -r option was enabled, that dir's entire hierarchy would also be transferred (keep in mind that -r needs to be specified explicitly with --files-from, since it is not implied by -a). Also note that the effect of the (enabled by default) --relative option is to duplicate only the path info that is read from the file -- it does not force the duplication of the source-spec path (/usr in this case).

In addition, the --files-from file can be read from the remote host instead of the local host if you specify a "host:" in front of the file (the host must match one end of the transfer). As a short-cut, you can specify just a prefix of ":" to mean "use the remote end of the transfer". For example:

rsync -a --files-from=:/path/file-list src:/ /tmp/copy

This would copy all the files specified in the /path/file-list file that was located on the remote "src" host.

This tells rsync that the rules/filenames it reads from a file are terminated by a null ('\0') character, not a NL, CR, or CR+LF. This affects --exclude-from, --include-from, --files-from, and any merged files specified in a --filter rule. It does not affect --cvs-exclude (since all names read from a .cvsignore file are split on whitespace).

This option instructs rsync to use DIR as a scratch directory when creating temporary copies of the files transferred on the receiving side. The default behavior is to create each temporary file in the same directory as the associated destination file.

This option is most often used when the receiving disk partition does not have enough free space to hold a copy of the largest file in the transfer. In this case (i.e. when the scratch directory in on a different disk partition), rsync will not be able to rename each received temporary file over the top of the associated destination file, but instead must copy it into place. Rsync does this by copying the file over the top of the destination file, which means that the destination file will contain truncated data during this copy. If this were not done this way (even if the destination file were first removed, the data locally copied to a temporary file in the destination directory, and then renamed into place) it would be possible for the old file to continue taking up disk space (if someone had it open), and thus there might not be enough room to fit the new version on the disk at the same time.

If you are using this option for reasons other than a shortage of disk space, you may wish to combine it with the --delay-updates option, which will ensure that all copied files get put into subdirectories in the destination hierarchy, awaiting the end of the transfer. If you don't have enough room to duplicate all the arriving files on the destination partition, another way to tell rsync that you aren't overly concerned about disk space is to use the --partial-dir option with a relative path; because this tells rsync that it is OK to stash off a copy of a single file in a subdir in the destination hierarchy, rsync will use the partial-dir as a staging area to bring over the copied file, and then rename it into place from there. (Specifying a --partial-dir with an absolute path does not have this side-effect.)

This option tells rsync that it should look for a basis file for any destination file that is missing. The current algorithm looks in the same directory as the destination file for either a file that has an identical size and modified-time, or a similarly-named file. If found, rsync uses the fuzzy basis file to try to speed up the transfer.

Note that the use of the --delete option might get rid of any potential fuzzy-match files, so either use --delete-after or specify some filename exclusions if you need to prevent this.

This option instructs rsync to use DIR on the destination machine as an additional hierarchy to compare destination files against doing transfers (if the files are missing in the destination directory). If a file is found in DIR that is identical to the sender's file, the file will NOT be transferred to the destination directory. This is useful for creating a sparse backup of just files that have changed from an earlier backup.

Beginning in version 2.6.4, multiple --compare-dest directories may be provided, which will cause rsync to search the list in the order specified for an exact match. If a match is found that differs only in attributes, a local copy is made and the attributes updated. If a match is not found, a basis file from one of the DIRs will be selected to try to speed up the transfer.

If DIR is a relative path, it is relative to the destination directory. See also --copy-dest and --link-dest.

This option behaves like --compare-dest, but rsync will also copy unchanged files found in DIR to the destination directory using a local copy. This is useful for doing transfers to a new destination while leaving existing files intact, and then doing a flash-cutover when all files have been successfully transferred.

Multiple --copy-dest directories may be provided, which will cause rsync to search the list in the order specified for an unchanged file. If a match is not found, a basis file from one of the DIRs will be selected to try to speed up the transfer.

If DIR is a relative path, it is relative to the destination directory. See also --compare-dest and --link-dest.

This option behaves like --copy-dest, but unchanged files are hard linked from DIR to the destination directory. The files must be identical in all preserved attributes (e.g. permissions, possibly ownership) in order for the files to be linked together. An example:

rsync -av --link-dest=$PWD/prior_dir host:src_dir/ new_dir/

Beginning in version 2.6.4, multiple --link-dest directories may be provided, which will cause rsync to search the list in the order specified for an exact match. If a match is found that differs only in attributes, a local copy is made and the attributes updated. If a match is not found, a basis file from one of the DIRs will be selected to try to speed up the transfer.

If DIR is a relative path, it is relative to the destination directory. See also --compare-dest and --copy-dest.

Note that rsync versions prior to 2.6.1 had a bug that could prevent --link-dest from working properly for a non-super-user when -o was specified (or implied by -a). You can work-around this bug by avoiding the -o option when sending to an old rsync.

With this option, rsync compresses the file data as it is sent to the destination machine, which reduces the amount of data being transmitted -- something that is useful over a slow connection.

Note that this option typically achieves better compression ratios than can be achieved by using a compressing remote shell or a compressing transport because it takes advantage of the implicit information in the matching data blocks that are not explicitly sent over the connection.

Explicitly set the compression level to use (see --compress) instead of letting it default. If NUM is non-zero, the --compress option is implied.

With this option rsync will transfer numeric group and user IDs rather than using user and group names and mapping them at both ends.

By default rsync will use the username and groupname to determine what ownership to give files. The special uid 0 and the special group 0 are never mapped via user/group names even if the --numeric-ids option is not specified.

If a user or group has no name on the source system or it has no match on the destination system, then the numeric ID from the source system is used instead. See also the comments on the "use chroot" setting in the rsyncd.conf manpage for information on how the chroot setting affects rsync's ability to look up the names of the users and groups and what you can do about it.

This option allows you to set a maximum I/O timeout in seconds. If no data is transferred for the specified time then rsync will exit. The default is 0, which means no timeout.

By default rsync will bind to the wildcard address when connecting to an rsync daemon. The --address option allows you to specify a specific IP address (or hostname) to bind to. See also this option in the --daemon mode section.

This specifies an alternate TCP port number to use rather than the default of 873. This is only needed if you are using the double-colon (::) syntax to connect with an rsync daemon (since the URL syntax has a way to specify the port as a part of the URL). See also this option in the --daemon mode section.

This option can provide endless fun for people who like to tune their systems to the utmost degree. You can set all sorts of socket options which may make transfers faster (or slower!). Read the man page for the setsockopt() system call for details on some of the options you may be able to set. By default no special socket options are set. This only affects direct socket connections to a remote rsync daemon. This option also exists in the --daemon mode section.

This tells rsync to use blocking I/O when launching a remote shell transport. If the remote shell is either rsh or remsh, rsync defaults to using blocking I/O, otherwise it defaults to using non-blocking I/O. (Note that ssh prefers non-blocking I/O.)

Requests a simple itemized list of the changes that are being made to each file, including attribute changes. This is exactly the same as specifying --log-format='%i %n%L'. If you repeat the option, unchanged files will also be output, but only if the receiving rsync is at least version 2.6.7 (you can use -vv with older versions of rsync, but that also turns on the output of other verbose messages).

The "%i" escape has a cryptic output that is 9 letters long. The general format is like the string YXcstpogz, where Y is replaced by the type of update being done, X is replaced by the file-type, and the other letters represent attributes that may be output if they are being modified.

The update types that replace the Y are as follows:






The file-types that replace the X are: f for a file, a d for a directory, an L for a symlink, a D for a device, and a S for a special file (e.g. named sockets and fifos).

The other letters in the string above are the actual letters that will be output if the associated attribute for the item is being updated or a "." for no change. Three exceptions to this are: (1) a newly created item replaces each letter with a "+", (2) an identical item replaces the dots with spaces, and (3) an unknown attribute replaces each letter with a "?" (this can happen when talking to an older rsync).

The attribute that is associated with each letter is as follows:








One other output is possible: when deleting files, the "%i" will output the string "*deleting" for each item that is being removed (assuming that you are talking to a recent enough rsync that it logs deletions instead of outputting them as a verbose message).

This allows you to specify exactly what the rsync client outputs to the user on a per-file basis. The format is a text string containing embedded single-character escape sequences prefixed with a percent (%) character. For a list of the possible escape characters, see the "log format" setting in the rsyncd.conf manpage. (Note that this option does not affect what a daemon logs to its logfile.)

Specifying this option will mention each file, dir, etc. that gets updated in a significant way (a transferred file, a recreated symlink/device, or a touched directory) unless the itemize-changes escape (%i) is included in the string, in which case the logging of names increases to mention any item that is changed in any way (as long as the receiving side is at least 2.6.4). See the --itemize-changes option for a description of the output of "%i".

The --verbose option implies a format of "%n%L", but you can use --log-format without --verbose if you like, or you can override the format of its per-file output using this option.

Rsync will output the log-format string prior to a file's transfer unless one of the transfer-statistic escapes is requested, in which case the logging is done at the end of the file's transfer. When this late logging is in effect and --progress is also specified, rsync will also output the name of the file being transferred prior to its progress information (followed, of course, by the log-format output).

This tells rsync to print a verbose set of statistics on the file transfer, allowing you to tell how effective the rsync algorithm is for your data.

The current statistics are as follows:

This tells rsync to leave all high-bit characters unescaped in the output instead of trying to test them to see if they're valid in the current locale and escaping the invalid ones. All control characters (but never tabs) are always escaped, regardless of this option's setting.

The escape idiom that started in 2.6.7 is to output a literal backslash (\) and a hash (#), followed by exactly 3 octal digits. For example, a newline would output as "\#012". A literal backslash that is in a filename is not escaped unless it is followed by a hash and 3 digits (0-9).

Output numbers in a more human-readable format. This makes big numbers output using larger units, with a K, M, or G suffix. If this option was specified once, these units are K (1000), M (1000*1000), and G (1000*1000*1000); if the option is repeated, the units are powers of 1024 instead of 1000.

By default, rsync will delete any partially transferred file if the transfer is interrupted. In some circumstances it is more desirable to keep partially transferred files. Using the --partial option tells rsync to keep the partial file which should make a subsequent transfer of the rest of the file much faster.

A better way to keep partial files than the --partial option is to specify a DIR that will be used to hold the partial data (instead of writing it out to the destination file). On the next transfer, rsync will use a file found in this dir as data to speed up the resumption of the transfer and then delete it after it has served its purpose.

Note that if --whole-file is specified (or implied), any partial-dir file that is found for a file that is being updated will simply be removed (since rsync is sending files without using the incremental rsync algorithm).

Rsync will create the DIR if it is missing (just the last dir -- not the whole path). This makes it easy to use a relative path (such as "--partial-dir=.rsync-partial") to have rsync create the partial-directory in the destination file's directory when needed, and then remove it again when the partial file is deleted.

If the partial-dir value is not an absolute path, rsync will add an exclude rule at the end of all your existing excludes. This will prevent the sending of any partial-dir files that may exist on the sending side, and will also prevent the untimely deletion of partial-dir items on the receiving side. An example: the above --partial-dir option would add the equivalent of "--exclude=.rsync-partial/" at the end of any other filter rules.

If you are supplying your own exclude rules, you may need to add your own exclude/hide/protect rule for the partial-dir because (1) the auto-added rule may be ineffective at the end of your other rules, or (2) you may wish to override rsync's exclude choice. For instance, if you want to make rsync clean-up any left-over partial-dirs that may be lying around, you should specify --delete-after and add a "risk" filter rule, e.g. -f 'R .rsync-partial/'. (Avoid using --delete-before or --delete-during unless you don't need rsync to use any of the left-over partial-dir data during the current run.)

IMPORTANT: the --partial-dir should not be writable by other users or it is a security risk. E.g. AVOID "/tmp".

You can also set the partial-dir value the RSYNC_PARTIAL_DIR environment variable. Setting this in the environment does not force --partial to be enabled, but rather it affects where partial files go when --partial is specified. For instance, instead of using --partial-dir=.rsync-tmp along with --progress, you could set RSYNC_PARTIAL_DIR=.rsync-tmp in your environment and then just use the -P option to turn on the use of the .rsync-tmp dir for partial transfers. The only times that the --partial option does not look for this environment value are (1) when --inplace was specified (since --inplace conflicts with --partial-dir), and (2) when --delay-updates was specified (see below).

For the purposes of the daemon-config's "refuse options" setting, --partial-dir does not imply --partial. This is so that a refusal of the --partial option can be used to disallow the overwriting of destination files with a partial transfer, while still allowing the safer idiom provided by --partial-dir.

This option puts the temporary file from each updated file into a holding directory until the end of the transfer, at which time all the files are renamed into place in rapid succession. This attempts to make the updating of the files a little more atomic. By default the files are placed into a directory named ".~tmp~" in each file's destination directory, but if you've specified the --partial-dir option, that directory will be used instead. See the comments in the --partial-dir section for a discussion of how this ".~tmp~" dir will be excluded from the transfer, and what you can do if you wnat rsync to cleanup old ".~tmp~" dirs that might be lying around. Conflicts with --inplace and --append.

This option uses more memory on the receiving side (one bit per file transferred) and also requires enough free disk space on the receiving side to hold an additional copy of all the updated files. Note also that you should not use an absolute path to --partial-dir unless (1) there is no chance of any of the
files
in the transfer having the same name (since all the updated files will be put into a single directory if the path is absolute) and (2) there are no mount points in the hierarchy (since the delayed updates will fail if they can't be renamed into place).

See also the "atomic-rsync" perl script in the "support" subdir for an update algorithm that is even more atomic (it uses --link-dest and a parallel hierarchy of files).

This option tells the receiving rsync to get rid of empty directories from the file-list, including nested directories that have no non-directory children. This is useful for avoiding the creation of a bunch of useless directories when the sending rsync is recursively scanning a hierarchy of files using include/exclude/filter rules.

Because the file-list is actually being pruned, this option also affects what directories get deleted when a delete is active. However, keep in mind that excluded files and directories can prevent existing items from being deleted (because an exclude hides source files and protects destination files).

You can prevent the pruning of certain empty directories from the file-list by using a global "protect" filter. For instance, this option would ensure that the directory "emptydir" was kept in the file-list:

Here's an example that copies all .pdf files in a hierarchy, only creating the necessary destination directories to hold the .pdf files, and ensures that any superfluous files and directories in the destination are removed (note the hide filter of non-directories being used instead of an exclude):

rsync -avm --del --include='*.pdf' -f 'hide,! */' src/ dest

If you didn't want to remove superfluous destination files, the more time-honored options of "--include='*/' --exclude='*'" would work fine in place of the hide-filter (if that is more natural to you).

This option tells rsync to print information showing the progress of the transfer. This gives a bored user something to watch. Implies --verbose if it wasn't already specified.

When the file is transferring, the data looks like this:

782448 63% 110.64kB/s 0:00:04

This tells you the current file size, the percentage of the transfer that is complete, the current calculated file-completion rate (including both data over the wire and data being matched locally), and the estimated time remaining in this transfer.

After a file is complete, the data looks like this:

1238099 100% 146.38kB/s 0:00:08 (5, 57.1% of 396)

This tells you the final file size, that it's 100% complete, the final transfer rate for the file, the amount of elapsed time it took to transfer the file, and the addition of a total-transfer summary in parentheses. These additional numbers tell you how many files have been updated, and what percent of the total number of files has been scanned.

The -P option is equivalent to --partial --progress. Its pur pose is to make it much easier to specify these two options for a long transfer that may be interrupted.

This option allows you to provide a password in a file for accessing a remote rsync daemon. Note that this option is only useful when accessing an rsync daemon using the built in transport, not when using a remote shell as the transport. The file must not be world readable. It should contain just the password as a single line.

This option will cause the source files to be listed instead of transferred. This option is inferred if there is a single source arg and no destination specified, so its main uses are: (1) to turn a copy command that includes a destination arg into a file-listing command, (2) to be able to specify more than one local source arg (note: be sure to include the destination), or (3) to avoid the automatically added "-r --exclude='/*/*'" options that rsync usually uses as a compatibility kluge when generating a non-recursive listing. Caution: keep in mind that a source arg with a wild-card is expanded by the shell into multiple args, so it is never safe to try to list such an arg without using this option. For example:

rsync -av --list-only foo* dest/

This option allows you to specify a maximum transfer rate in kilobytes per second. This option is most effective when using rsync with large files (several megabytes and up). Due to the nature of rsync transfers, blocks of data are sent, then if rsync determines the transfer was too fast, it will wait before sending the next data block. The result is an average transfer rate equaling the specified limit. A value of zero specifies no limit.

Record a file that can later be applied to another identical destination with --read-batch. See the "BATCH MODE" section for details, and also the --only-write-batch option.

Works like --write-batch, except that no updates are made on the destination system when creating the batch. This lets you transport the changes to the destination system via some other means and then apply the changes via --read-batch.

Note that you can feel free to write the batch directly to some portable media: if this media fills to capacity before the end of the transfer, you can just apply that partial transfer to the destination and repeat the whole process to get the rest of the changes (as long as you don't mind a partially updated destination system while the multi-update cycle is happening).

Also note that you only save bandwidth when pushing changes to a remote system because this allows the batched data to be diverted from the sender into the batch file without having to flow over the wire to the receiver (when pulling, the sender is remote, and thus can't write the batch).

Apply all of the changes stored in FILE, a file previously generated by --write-batch. If FILE is -, the batch data will be read from standard input. See the "BATCH MODE" section for details.

Force an older protocol version to be used. This is useful for creating a batch file that is compatible with an older version of rsync. For instance, if rsync 2.6.4 is being used with the --write-batch option, but rsync 2.6.3 is what will be used to run the --read-batch option, you should use "--protocol=28" when creating the batch file to force the older protocol version to be used in the batch file (assuming you can't upgrade the rsync on the reading system).

Tells rsync to prefer IPv4/IPv6 when creating sockets. This only affects sockets that rsync has direct control over, such as the outgoing socket when directly contacting an rsync daemon. See also these options in the --daemon mode section.

Set the MD4 checksum seed to the integer NUM. This 4 byte checksum seed is included in each block and file MD4 checksum calculation. By default the checksum seed is generated by the server and defaults to the current time(). This option is used to set a specific checksum seed, which is useful for applications that want repeatable block and file checksums, or in the case where the user wants a more random checksum seed. Note that setting NUM to 0 causes rsync to use the default of time() for checksum seed.

This tells rsync that it is to run as a daemon. The daemon you start running may be accessed using an rsync client using the host::module or rsync://host/module/ syntax.

If standard input is a socket then rsync will assume that it is being run via inetd, otherwise it will detach from the current terminal and become a background daemon. The daemon will read the config file (rsyncd.conf) on each connect made by a client and respond to requests accordingly. See the rsyncd.conf(5) man page for more details.

By default rsync will bind to the wildcard address when run as a daemon with the --daemon option. The --address option allows you to specify a specific IP address (or hostname) to bind to. This makes virtual hosting possible in conjunction with the --config option. See also the "address" global option in the rsyncd.conf manpage.

This option allows you to specify a maximum transfer rate in kilobytes per second for the data the daemon sends. The client can still specify a smaller --bwlimit value, but their requested value will be rounded down if they try to exceed it. See the client version of this option (above) for some extra details.

This specifies an alternate config file than the default. This is only relevant when --daemon is specified. The default is /etc/rsyncd.conf unless the daemon is running over a remote shell program and the remote user is not the super-user; in that case the default is rsyncd.conf in the current directory (typically $HOME).

When running as a daemon, this option instructs rsync to not detach itself and become a background process. This option is required when running as a service on Cygwin, and may also be useful when rsync is supervised by a program such as daemontools or AIX's System Resource Controller. --no-detach is also recommended when rsync is run under a debugger. This option has no effect if rsync is run from inetd or sshd.

This specifies an alternate TCP port number for the daemon to listen on rather than the default of 873. See also the "port" global option in the rsyncd.conf manpage.

This overrides the socket options setting in the rsyncd.conf file and has the same syntax.

This option increases the amount of information the daemon logs during its startup phase. After the client connects, the daemon's verbosity level will be controlled by the options that the client used and the "max verbosity" setting in the module's config section.

Tells rsync to prefer IPv4/IPv6 when creating the incoming sockets that the rsync daemon will use to listen for connections. One of these options may be required in older versions of Linux to work around an IPv6 bug in the kernel (if you see an "address already in use" error when nothing else is using the port, try specifying --ipv6 or --ipv4 when starting the daemon).

When specified after --daemon, print a short help page describing the options available for starting an rsync daemon.