How To Copy or Transfer Files on Linux Servers with RSync

Nowadays Linux system admins have a lot of tools and options to facilitate the transfer of data and files from and to servers. SSH and FTP are the most popular protocols for data transfer. FTP, in one hand, is popular due to its ease of use but, on the other hand, SSH is far more secure and reliable.

For SSH-based data transfer scp and sftp are two specialized tools used by system admins for many years. However, none of these offer all the features and capabilities that rsync provides.

In this tutorial we will explain how Rsync works and how you can use it for transferring files and folders from and to Linux Servers. In the end of this tutorial you can also find an Rsync Cheat Sheet with explanation of rsync command parameters.

What is RSync

rsync is a utility for efficiently transferring and synchronizing files between computers and servers across local and public networks (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rsync). Rsync stands for “remote sync” and it uses an algorithm that minimizes the amount of data copied by only transferring files which have changed.

How to Install Rsync on Linux Server

To install Rsync on your Linux server, you can use the following commands below according to your Linux distribution:

sudo apt-get install rsync // for Debian/Ubuntu
pacman -S rsync // for Arch Linux
sudo dnf install rsync // for Fedora/CentOS/RHEL and Rocky Linux/AlmaLinux

Example 1: Copy an Entire Directory from Local Server to a Remote Server

Assuming you are connected on a Server A and you wish to transfer an entire directory named public_html which is under “/home” to a Server B (IP: 192.168.1.3), you can use the following command:

rsync -arvzh /home/public_html root@192.168.1.3:/home/

Example 2: Copy a Directory from Remote Server to a Local machine

The following command will help you sync the entire directory /var/backup from a remote server (IP: 192.168.1.3) to a server you are currently connected:

rsync -arvzh root@192.168.1.3:/var/backup /var/

Example 3: Use RSync for Files Transfer between Servers with Custom SSH Port

If you wish to transfer files to a Server which uses a non-standard SSH Port, then you need to supply the rsync command with the -e argument and specify the custom SSH port that the destination server uses. In our example below we assume that the SSH port is 2222, and we are going to transfer the file /home/public_html/index.html.

rsync -avzh -e 'ssh -p 2222' /home/public_html/index.html root@192.168.1.3:/home/public_html/

Example 4: Automatically Delete Files on Source Server after Successful Transfer

In cases when you are initiating data transfer for, lets say, backup purposes you may want to have the files on the originating server deleted after they have been transferred to the backup/destination server.

rsync -avzh --remove-source-files /root/backup.tar.gz root@192.168.1.3:/root/

Example 5: Test RSync Command with Dry Run

If you are not yet familiar with rsync, you may not want to execute commands that may mess up your data on source or destination servers. In this case, rsync provides a wonderful parameter that will not make any real changes but instead will show the output of what your command would do.

rsync -avzh --dry-run /root/backup.tar.gz root@192.168.1.3:/root/

Sample Output:

[root@ubuntu-server:~]# rsync --dry-run --remove-source-files -zvh /root/backup.tar.gz root@192.168.1.3:/root/

root@192.168.1.3's password: 
backup.tar.gz

sent 50 bytes  received 94 bytes  95.15 bytes/sec
total size is 267.30K  speedup is 3,873.97 (DRY RUN)

Rsync Cheat Sheet

Here is a cheat sheet for all rsync’s arguments which you may need to supply in your command for data transfer/sync.

-v, –verbose	increase verbosity
-q, –quiet	suppress non-error messages
–no-motd	suppress daemon-mode MOTD (see caveat)
-c, –checksum	skip based on checksum, not mod-time & size
-a, –archive	archive mode; equals -rlptgoD (no -H,-A,-X)
–no-OPTION	turn off an implied OPTION (e.g., –no-D)
-r, –recursive	recurse into directories
-R, –relative	use relative path names
–no-implied-dirs	don’t send implied dirs with –relative
-b, –backup	make backups (see –suffix & –backup-dir)
–backup-dir=DIR	make backups into hierarchy based in DIR
–suffix=SUFFIX	backup suffix (default ~ w/o –backup-dir)
-u, –update	skip files that are newer on the receiver
–inplace	update destination files in-place
–append	append data onto shorter files
–append-verify	–append w/old data in file checksum
-d, –dirs	transfer directories without recursing
-l, –links	copy symlinks as symlinks
-L, –copy-links	transform symlink into referent file/dir
–copy-unsafe-links	only “unsafe” symlinks are transformed
–safe-links	ignore symlinks that point outside the tree
-k, –copy-dirlinks	transform symlink to dir into referent dir
-K, –keep-dirlinks	treat symlinked dir on receiver as dir
-H, –hard-links	preserve hard links
-p, –perms	preserve permissions
-E, –executability	preserve executability
–chmod=CHMOD	affect file and/or directory permissions
-A, –acls	preserve ACLs (implies -p)
-X, –xattrs	preserve extended attributes
-o, –owner	preserve owner (super-user only)
-g, –group	preserve group
–devices	preserve device files (super-user only)
–specials	preserve special files
-D	same as –devices –specials
-t, –times	preserve modification times
-O, –omit-dir-times	omit directories from –times
–super	receiver attempts super-user activities
–fake-super	store/recover privileged attrs using xattrs
-S, –sparse	handle sparse files efficiently
-n, –dry-run	perform a trial run with no changes made
-W, –whole-file	copy files whole (w/o delta-xfer algorithm)
-x, –one-file-system	don’t cross filesystem boundaries
-B, –block-size=SIZE	force a fixed checksum block-size
-e, –rsh=COMMAND	specify the remote shell to use
–rsync-path=PROGRAM	specify the rsync to run on remote machine
–existing	skip creating new files on receiver
–ignore-existing	skip updating files that exist on receiver
–remove-source-files	sender removes synchronized files (non-dir)
–del	an alias for –delete-during
–delete	delete extraneous files from dest dirs
–delete-before	receiver deletes before transfer, 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 dirs
–ignore-errors	delete even if there are I/O errors
–force	force deletion of dirs even if not empty
–max-delete=NUM	don’t delete more than NUM files
–max-size=SIZE	don’t transfer any file larger than SIZE
–min-size=SIZE	don’t transfer any file smaller than SIZE
–partial	keep partially transferred files
–partial-dir=DIR	put a partially transferred file into DIR
–delay-updates	put all updated files into place at end
-m, –prune-empty-dirs	prune empty directory chains from file-list
–numeric-ids	don’t map uid/gid values by user/group name
–timeout=SECONDS	set I/O timeout in seconds
–contimeout=SECONDS	set daemon connection timeout in seconds
-I, –ignore-times	don’t skip files that match size and time
–size-only	skip files that match in size
–modify-window=NUM	compare mod-times with reduced accuracy
-T, –temp-dir=DIR	create temporary files in directory DIR
-y, –fuzzy	find similar file for basis if no dest file
–compare-dest=DIR	also compare received files relative to DIR
–copy-dest=DIR	… and include copies of unchanged files
–link-dest=DIR	hardlink to files in DIR when unchanged
-z, –compress	compress file data during the transfer
–compress-level=NUM	explicitly set compression level
–skip-compress=LIST	skip compressing files with suffix in LIST
-C, –cvs-exclude	auto-ignore files in the same way CVS does
-f, –filter=RULE	add a file-filtering RULE
-F	same as –filter=’dir-merge /.rsync-filter’ repeated: –filter=’- .rsync-filter’
–exclude=PATTERN	exclude files matching PATTERN
–exclude-from=FILE	read exclude patterns from FILE
–include=PATTERN	don’t exclude files matching PATTERN
–include-from=FILE	read include patterns from FILE
–files-from=FILE	read list of source-file names from FILE
-0, –from0	all *from/filter files are delimited by 0s
-s, –protect-args	no space-splitting; wildcard chars only
–address=ADDRESS	bind address for outgoing socket to daemon
–port=PORT	specify double-colon alternate port number
–sockopts=OPTIONS	specify custom TCP options
–blocking-io	use blocking I/O for the remote shell
–stats	give some file-transfer stats
-8, –8-bit-output	leave high-bit chars unescaped in output
-h, –human-readable	output numbers in a human-readable format
–progress	show progress during transfer
-P	same as –partial –progress
-i, –itemize-changes	output a change-summary for all updates
–out-format=FORMAT	output updates using the specified FORMAT
–log-file=FILE	log what we’re doing to the specified FILE
–log-file-format=FMT	log updates using the specified FMT
–password-file=FILE	read daemon-access password from FILE
–list-only	list the files instead of copying them
–bwlimit=KBPS	limit I/O bandwidth; KBytes per second
–write-batch=FILE	write a batched update to FILE
–only-write-batch=FILE	like –write-batch but w/o updating dest
–read-batch=FILE	read a batched update from FILE
–protocol=NUM	force an older protocol version to be used
–iconv=CONVERT_SPEC	request charset conversion of file names
–checksum-seed=NUM	set block/file checksum seed (advanced)
-4, –ipv4	prefer IPv4
-6, –ipv6	prefer IPv6
–version	print version number
-h, –help	show help