TABLE OF CONTENTS
Rsync, which stands for remote sync, is a remote and local file synchronization tool. It uses an algorithm to minimize the amount of data copied by only moving the portions of files that have changed.
In this tutorial, we’ll define Rsync, review the syntax when using rsync, explain how to use Rsync to sync with a remote system, and other options available to you.
In order to practice using rsync to sync files between a local and remote system, you will need two machines to act as your local computer and your remote machine, respectively. These two machines could be virtual private servers, virtual machines, containers, or personal computers as long as they’ve been properly configured.
If you plan to follow this guide using servers, it would be prudent to set them up with administrative users and to configure a firewall on each of them. To set up these servers, follow our Initial Server Setup Guide.
Regardless of what types of machines you use to follow this tutorial, you will need to have created SSH keys on both of them. Then, copy each server’s public key to the other server’s authorized_keys file as outlined in Step 2 of that guide.
This guide was validated on machines running Ubuntu 20.04, although it should generally work with any computers running a Linux-based operating system that have rsync installed.
The syntax for rsync operates similar to other tools, such as ssh, scp, and cp.
First, change into your home directory by running the following command:
cd ~
Then create a test directory:
mkdir dir1
Create another test directory:
mkdir dir2
Now add some test files: