17

I am transferring a large amount of files from one computer to another using rsync. I am doing this by SSHing into the source computer and executing a command like this:

sudo rsync ssh --rsync-path="sudo rsync" source_dir [email protected]:dest_dir.

Even if I add nohup before this command, whenever I close out the terminal window from which I SSHed, the connection closes.

How can I have it so that my file transfer still continues when I close my SSH connection?

Improve this question

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
19

The reason why nohup is not helping you is because the program works with standard IO files.

Here is' an excerpt from Wiki Page for nohup:

Note - Nohupping backgrounded jobs is typically used to avoid terminating them when logging off from a remote SSH session. A different issue that often arises in this situation is that ssh is refusing to log off ("hangs"), since it refuses to lose any data from/to the background job(s). This problem can also be overcome by redirecting all three I/O streams:

nohup ./myprogram > foo.out 2> foo.err < /dev/null & Also note that a closing SSH session does not always send a HUP signal to depending processes. Among others, this depends on whether a pseudo-terminal was allocated or not.

You can use screen for that.

Create a screen session with: screen -S rsync then, you detach your screen with CTRL+A d

And you can disconnect from SSH

Improve this answer
2
  • 4
    I want to add that when performing any work which will if interrupted, eg by a lost connection be problematic, then run it in a screen session. Screen is designed to protect against accidental connection loss. You can log in remotely, start screen, start your work, and if you lose connection you can re-connect to any running screen instance. Screen has got other useful functionality - capturing the session to a log file, having multiple "screens" in a single session (saving network overhead), and multiple viewers (Classroom style). Also worth mentioning that tmux is a screen alternative.
    – Johan
    Mar 17, 2013 at 8:13
  • FYI, -S lets you give a name (in this case "rsync") to your screen session.
    – TTT
    Aug 21, 2022 at 16:00
8

That screen command is fine, but didn't work for my needs exactly.

This worked a lot better:

nohup rsync -va --delete ###.###.###.###:/var/www/sites/ /var/www/sites < /dev/null &
Improve this answer
1
  • worked for me, just like the accepted answer, thanks
    – Salaros
    Sep 14, 2018 at 20:16

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .