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I RTFMed rsync to the bone, but I just cannot figure out what I'm doing wrong here. I'm trying to sync two folders across SSH. Folders are identical save for one file, as you can see here:

nick@rilmir-laptop:~$ ssh -i .ssh/rilmir_passless nick@rilmir ls -l /home/nick/foobar/
total 2540
-rwxrwxrwx 1 nick nick 427676 Jan 19  2008 P1010001.JPG
-rwxrwxrwx 1 nick nick 431335 Jan 19  2008 P1010002.JPG
-rwxrwxrwx 1 nick nick 432706 Jan 19  2008 P1010003.JPG
-rwxrwxrwx 1 nick nick 431954 Jan 19  2008 P1010004.JPG
-rwxrwxrwx 1 nick nick 420208 Jan 19  2008 P1010005-rilmir.JPG
-rwxrwxrwx 1 nick nick 420208 Jan 19  2008 P1010005.JPG
nick@rilmir-laptop:~$ ls -l /home/nick/foobar/
total 2540
-rw------- 1 nick nick 427676 Sij 19  2008 P1010001.JPG
-rw------- 1 nick nick 431335 Sij 19  2008 P1010002.JPG
-rw------- 1 nick nick 432706 Sij 19  2008 P1010003.JPG
-rw------- 1 nick nick 431954 Sij 19  2008 P1010004.JPG
-rw------- 1 nick nick 420208 Sij 19  2008 P1010005.JPG
-rw------- 1 nick nick 420208 Sij 19  2008 P1010005-laptop.JPG

So, now I try rsyncing them, and what I get is the whole host directory, as if rsync did not connect to the remote.

nick@rilmir-laptop:~$ rsync -avz --dry-run -e "ssh -i .ssh/rilmir_passless nick@rilmir:/home/nick/foobar/"  /home/nick/foobar/
sending incremental file list
drwxrwxr-x          4,096 2014/08/27 20:00:08 .
-rw-------        427,676 2008/01/19 15:13:12 P1010001.JPG
-rw-------        431,335 2008/01/19 15:13:12 P1010002.JPG
-rw-------        432,706 2008/01/19 15:13:12 P1010003.JPG
-rw-------        431,954 2008/01/19 15:13:12 P1010004.JPG
-rw-------        420,208 2008/01/19 15:13:12 P1010005-laptop.JPG
-rw-------        420,208 2008/01/19 15:13:12 P1010005.JPG

sent 138 bytes  received 449 bytes  1,174.00 bytes/sec
total size is 2,564,087  speedup is 4,368.12 (DRY RUN)
nick@rilmir-laptop:~$

My google-fu has failed me, I just cannot figure out why this fails. Any ideas?

Edit:
Yes, I know this is dry run, that is on purpose while testing.

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3
  • rsync by default runs over ssh if you specify remote location as user@host:/path/to/dir, you shouldn't provide ssh command. Also you are running in dry-mode, that means that there will be no actual changes in work of rsync command.
    – Navern
    Aug 27, 2014 at 18:27
  • 1
    I think the dry run is telling you it wants to make permissions changes to all the files - the a option is archive mode which preserves permissions.
    – John
    Aug 27, 2014 at 18:27
  • You could try without appending slash on the source folder and/or target folder. I had this issue once, and having the target postfixed with a slash means sync into that folder, instead of actually sync that folder.
    – 7ochem
    Dec 12, 2016 at 8:24

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
4

Remove dry-run (it means to just "simulate"), as well as use a proper format for the ssh parameters.

rsync -avz -e "ssh -i .ssh/rilmir_passless" nick@rilmir:/home/nick/foobar/ /home/nick/foobar/

By the way, this brings the remote contents to the local side. You may want --delete to remove stuff that is on the dest but not on the source.

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2
  • I'm sure I tried that format for ssh parameters sometime during debugging, but I obviously didn't because now everything works. Thanks!
    – dijxtra
    Aug 27, 2014 at 18:57
  • Ok, if it works, please make sure you accept the answer for future reference.
    – Florin Asăvoaie
    Aug 27, 2014 at 19:05

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