using rsync

my cheat sheet on rsync

Nasser M. Abbasi, April 26, 2012

When on Linux

Suppose I have the master tree like this

      /home/me/data/A1
      /home/me/data/foo.txt
      /home/me/data/A2
      /home/me/data/A3

and wanted to make sure that my backup tree, located at /home/me/backup/data/ is an exact copy. so that the result is

     /home/me/backup/data/A1
     /home/me/backup/data/foo.txt
     /home/me/backup/data/A2
     /home/me/data/data/A3

The command is

     cd /home/me
     rsync -atrv --delete data /home/me/backup

Another case, is when I want to backup everything below data, but not the directory data itself.
For example, using the above source tree, I wanted the result to be
```
      /home/me/backup/A1
      /home/me/backup/foo.txt
      /home/me/backup/A2
      /home/me/data/A3
   
```
Then the command is
```
      cd /home/me
      rsync -atrv --delete data/ /home/me/backup
   
```
Notice the difference is the use of the / at the end of data.
So, if to include the directoy data and evertyhing thing below it, then use data in the command. But to only backup everything inside data then use data/

When on windows using cygwin

Start cygwin shell. Do not right-click and choose "run as adminstrator" but just click shell so that it runs as same user as me
Now, to backup the folder G:/data to L:/data then the command is

   cd /cygdrive/g
   rsync -apvtr --delete --chmod=ugo=rwX data/ /cygdrive/L/data/

Notice the use of "/" above. Also the use of chmod. If I do not use this, then all the files on L:/data/ will have permissions that does not allow me to read them. The fixes this. Credit for this trick is due to this post