86 lines
3.7 KiB
Markdown
86 lines
3.7 KiB
Markdown
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# The `rsync` command
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The `rsync` command is probably one of the most used commands out there. It is used to securely copy files from one server to another over SSH.
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Compared to the `scp` command, which does a similar thing, `rsync` makes the transfer a lot faster, and in case of an interruption, you could restore/resume the transfer process.
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In this tutorial, I will show you how to use the `rsync` command and copy files from one server to another and also share a few useful tips!
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Before you get started, you would need to have 2 Linux servers. I will be using DigitalOcean for the demo and deploy 2 Ubuntu servers.
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You can use my referral link to get a free $100 credit that you could use to deploy your virtual machines and test the guide yourself on a few DigitalOcean servers:
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**[DigitalOcean $100 Free Credit](https://m.do.co/c/2a9bba940f39)**
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## Transfer Files from local server to remote
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This is one of the most common causes. Essentially this is how you would copy the files from the server that you are currently on (the source server) to remote/destination server.
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What you need to do is SSH to the server that is holding your files, cd to the directory that you would like to transfer over:
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```
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cd /var/www/html
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```
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And then run:
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```
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rsync -avz user@your-remote-server.com:/home/user/dir/
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```
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The above command would copy all the files and directories from the current folder on your server to your remote server.
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Rundown of the command:
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* `-a`: is used to specify that you want recursion and want to preserve the file permissions and etc.
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* `-v`: is verbose mode, it increases the amount of information you are given during the transfer.
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* `-z`: this option, rsync compresses the file data as it is sent to the destination machine, which reduces the amount of data being transmitted -- something that is useful over a slow connection.
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I recommend having a look at the following website which explains the commands and the arguments very nicely:
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[https://explainshell.com/explain?cmd=rsync+-avz](https://explainshell.com/explain?cmd=rsync+-avz)
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In case that the SSH service on the remote server is not running on the standard `22` port, you could use `rsync` with a special SSH port:
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```
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rsync -avz -e 'ssh -p 1234' user@your-remote-server.com:/home/user/dir/
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```
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## Transfer Files remote server to local
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In some cases you might want to transfer files from your remote server to your local server, in this case, you would need to use the following syntax:
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```
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rsync -avz your-user@your-remote-server.com:/home/user/dir/ /home/user/local-dir/
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```
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Again, in case that you have a non-standard SSH port, you can use the following command:
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```
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rsync -avz -e 'ssh -p 2510' your-user@your-remote-server.com:/home/user/dir/ /home/user/local-dir/
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```
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## Transfer only missing files
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If you would like to transfer only the missing files you could use the `--ignore-existing` flag.
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This is very useful for final sync in order to ensure that there are no missing files after a website or a server migration.
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Basically the commands would be the same apart from the appended --ignore-existing flag:
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```
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rsync -avz --ignore-existing user@your-remote-server.com:/home/user/dir/
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```
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## Conclusion
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Using `rsync` is a great way to quickly transfer some files from one machine over to another in a secure way over SSH.
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For more cool Linux networking tools, I would recommend checking out this tutorial here:
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[Top 15 Linux Networking tools that you should know!](https://devdojo.com/serverenthusiast/top-15-linux-networking-tools-that-you-should-know)
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Hope that this helps!
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Initially posted here: [How to Transfer Files from One Linux Server to Another Using rsync](https://devdojo.com/bobbyiliev/how-to-transfer-files-from-one-linux-server-to-another-using-rsync)
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