How to copy files and directories between two unix systems using rsync

Wikipedia describes rsync as follow: “rsync” is a utility for efficiently transferring and synchronizing files between a computer and an external hard drive and across networked computers by comparing the modification times and sizes of files. It is commonly found on Unix-like operating systems. ”
“rsync” is a utility for efficiently transferring and synchronizing files between a computer and an external hard drive and across networked computers by comparing the modification times and sizes of files. It is commonly found on Unix-like operating systems. ” Rsync is written in C as a single threaded applicationWikipedia

Rsync self describes as:
“a file transfer program capable of efficient remote update
via a fast differencing algorithm.”

Usage:
  • rsync [OPTION]… SRC [SRC]… DEST
  • rsync [OPTION]… SRC [SRC]… [USER@]HOST:DEST
  • rsync [OPTION]… SRC [SRC]… [USER@]HOST::DEST
  • rsync [OPTION]… SRC [SRC]… rsync://[USER@]HOST[:PORT]/DEST
  • rsync [OPTION]… [USER@]HOST:SRC [DEST]
  • rsync [OPTION]… [USER@]HOST::SRC [DEST]
  • rsync [OPTION]… rsync://[USER@]HOST[:PORT]/SRC [DEST]

The ‘:’ usages connect via remote shell, The ‘::’ and ‘rsync://’ usages connect to an rsync daemon, and require SRC or DEST to start with a module name. In our case we are going to use the remote shell
  • rsync [OPTION]… SRC [SRC]… [USER@]HOST:DEST
So, let’s suppose we have to unix systems, we can pull or push files from or to a remote server. Pulling folder content from remote:
rsync -azP username@ip_or_hostname:/src/path/  /dest/path
Pushing folder content to remote
rsync -azP /src/path username@ip_or_hostname:/dest/path/
Note: if you want to say “copy the content of a given directory but not the root directory” then remember to include the trailing slash at the end of the file Pushing file to remote
rsync -avz /path/to/file.zip root@domain.com:/var/apps/
Pulling file from remote
rsync -avz root@domain.com:/var/apps/file.zip /foler/where/fileWillBeSaved/
Thats all folks. If this tip was useful, remember to leave a thumbs up. 😄

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