Rsync

NOTE: The contents of this page are not set in stone, and are subject to change! This page is a draft in active flux ... Please leave suggestions on the talk page.

This command is run in the standard Linux environment via the Terminal Activity. The GUI will probably not integrate comfortably with the XO Laptop's Sugar environment. Your user experience may vary considerably depending on the established environment and the other programs running on the laptop, may need re-installation after an OS Update. See the Linux software category for other commands.

LINUX COMMAND

rsync

A common linux command included with standard XO Laptop base linux software. Command function to copy or move files from one remote location to another (similar to cp, or scp commands). Offers many options for controlling which files, and behaviors of the transferring process (i.e. compression, secure/ssh, backups, etc)

OLPC developers frequently use RSYNC, and is found in many of the olpc scripts.

Functions

Basic command:

$ rsync (OPTIONS) /SOURCE /DESTINATION

Examples

$ rsync --update --recursive --times --filter="include *.jpg" /media/SOURCE /media/DESTINATION

This has the added 'magic of rsync' that it can be ran multiple times, and copy over only the newer '.jpg' files which have changed.

If one wants to 'delete' the files after the moving over, add option "--remove-sent-files". There are also options for "--verbose", "--progress", and "--stats", if you want more information on the progress of command.

Using option "--dry-run" would show actions without actually doing the request, good for testing scripts during development.

Install Notes

• Comes standard with all XO Laptop distributions.

Troubleshooting

• rsync connects on TCP and UDP port 873. [1]

References

• $ rsync --help for full option list
• $ man rsync for complete details, (however, the XO does NOT have man files, so run on another Linux PC, or search "man rsync" in Google on Browse activity
• Wikipedia
• http://rsync.samba.org/
• http://linuxcommand.org/man_pages/rsync1.html

February 10th, 2008 Rsync version 3.0.0pre9 is now available for release testing.

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