You use rsync in the same way you use rcp. You must specify a
source and a destination, one of which may be remote.
Perhaps the best way to explain the syntax is with some examples:
rsync -t *.c foo:src/
This would transfer all files matching the pattern *.c from the
current directory to the directory src on the machine foo. If
any of the files already exist on the remote system then the
rsync remote-update protocol is used to update the file by
sending only the differences in the data. Note that the
expansion of wildcards on the command-line (*.c) into a list of
files is handled by the shell before it runs rsync and not by
rsync itself (exactly the same as all other Posix-style
programs).
rsync -avz foo:src/bar /data/tmp
This would recursively transfer all files from the directory
src/bar on the machine foo into the /data/tmp/bar directory on
the local machine. The files are transferred in archive mode,
which ensures that symbolic links, devices, attributes,
permissions, ownerships, etc. are preserved in the transfer.
Additionally, compression will be used to reduce the size of data
portions of the transfer.
rsync -avz foo:src/bar/ /data/tmp
A trailing slash on the source changes this behavior to avoid
creating an additional directory level at the destination. You
can think of a trailing / on a source as meaning "copy the
contents of this directory" as opposed to "copy the directory by
name", but in both cases the attributes of the containing
directory are transferred to the containing directory on the
destination. In other words, each of the following commands
copies the files in the same way, including their setting of the
attributes of /dest/foo:
rsync -av /src/foo /dest
rsync -av /src/foo/ /dest/foo
Note also that host and module references don't require a
trailing slash to copy the contents of the default directory.
For example, both of these copy the remote directory's contents
into "/dest":
rsync -av host: /dest
rsync -av host::module /dest
You can also use rsync in local-only mode, where both the source
and destination don't have a ':' in the name. In this case it
behaves like an improved copy command.
Finally, you can list all the (listable) modules available from a
particular rsync daemon by leaving off the module name:
rsync somehost.mydomain.com::
See the following section for more details.
