How to rsync files between two remotes?

Question

I would like to transfer files between two remote hosts using on local shell, but it seems rsync doesn't support synchronisation if two remotes are specified as follow:

$ rsync -vuar host1:/var/www host2:/var/www
The source and destination cannot both be remote.

What other workarounds/commands I could use to achieve similar results?

Answer 1

As you have discovered you cannot use rsync with a remote source and a remote destination. Assuming the two servers can't talk directly to each other, it is possible to use ssh to tunnel via your local machine.

Instead of

rsync -vuar host1:/var/www host2:/var/www

you can use this

ssh -R localhost:50000:host2:22 host1 'rsync -e "ssh -p 50000" -vuar /var/www localhost:/var/www'

In case you're wondering, the -R option sets up a reverse channel from port 50000 on host1 that maps (via your local machine) to port 22 on host2. There is no direct connection from host1 to host2.

Answer 2

You didn't say why you didn't want to log into one host and then copy to the other so I will share one of my reasons and solutions.

I couldn't log into one machine then rsync to the other because neither host had a SSH key that could log into the other. I solved this by using SSH agent forwarding to allow the first host to use my SSH key while I was logged in.

WARNING: SSH forwarding allows the host to use your SSH key for the duration of your login. While they can't copy your key they can log into other machines with it. Make sure you understand the risks and don't use agent forwarding for machines you don't trust.

The following command will use SSH agent forwarding to open a direct connection from host1 to host2. This has the advantage that the machine running the command isn't bottlenecking the transfer.

ssh -A host1 rsync -vuar /var/www host2:/var/www

Answer 3

I like roaima's answer, but the paths are the same in both examples, obscuring which is which. We've established that the following doesn't work:

rsync -vuar host1:/host1/path host2:/host2/path

But this does (I omitted the explicit bind_address of localhost from the -R option since that's the default):

ssh -R 50000:host2:22 host1 'rsync -e "ssh -p 50000" -vuar /host1/path localhost:/host2/path'

Note that you'll have to have ssh keys set up correctly between the two remote hosts, with the private key on host1 and the public key on host2.

To debug the connection, break this into two parts and add verbose status:

localhost$ ssh -v -R 50000:host2:22 host1

If this works, you'll have a shell on host1. Now try the rsync command from host1. I recommend doing this in a different window so the verbose ssh info doesn't get mixed together with the rsync status info:

host1$ rsync -e "ssh -p 50000" -vuar /host1/path localhost:/host2/path

Answer 4

Reformatting answer by roaima in bash script syntax (and adding line continuation characters '\' for clarity) I randomly picked port 22000...

SOURCE_USER=user1
SOURCE_HOST=hostname1
SOURCE_PATH=path1

TARGET_USER=user2
TARGET_HOST=host2
TARGET_PATH=path2

ssh -l $TARGET_USER -A -R localhost:22000:$TARGET_HOST:22 \
$SOURCE_USER@$SOURCE_HOST "rsync -e 'ssh -p 22000' -vuar $SOURCE_PATH \
$TARGET_USER@localhost:$TARGET_PATH"

Answer 5

The ideal way would be to run the rsync on one of those servers. But if you do not want to run a script on the remote server. You could run a script on your local system and do an ssh and execute the rsync there.

ssh user@$host1 <<ENDSSH >> /tmp/rsync.out 2>&1
rsync -vuar /var/www host2:/var/www
ENDSSH

Also, as you maybe aware rysnc does one way synchronization . If you'd like two way synchronization , you can look at osync (https://github.com/deajan/osync). I use it and found it to be helpful.

Answer 6

You could run an rsyncd (server) on one of the computers.

This is the approach I'm taking, since I do not want to use ssh to allow the 'source' (in rsync wording) access to the 'destination' as root without a password (as is required to use SSH tunneling with rsync in a script)

In my case, I simply set up an rsyncd server on the destination computer with a single user allowed from the source pc and used rsync from the source side.

Works great.

Answer 7

Try using this. It works for me.

ssh src_user@src_host 'rsync -av /src/dir/location/ dest_user@dest_host:/dest/dir/loc/'

Answer 8

An easy to use script

Over the years I've done this many times with more or less the same tricks as in every other answer here. However because it's very easy to get some detail wrong and spend a lot of time figuring out the issue I've come up with the script below that:

1. Makes it easy to specify all the details (source, destination, options)
2. Incrementally tests every single step and gives feedback if anything goes wrong, so that you know what to fix.
3. Works around cases where ssh -A fails to propagate authentication data (don't know why this happens sometimes since the workaround was easier than finding the root cause)
4. Finally does the job.

How to use the script

1. Make sure you can ssh to both hosts from localhost without typing a password.
2. Set the variables in the first few lines of the script
3. Execute it.

How it works

As I said it uses the same tricks as in every other answer here:

• ssh's -R option to ssh from localhost to host1 while at the same time setting up a port forwarding that then allows host1 to connect via localhost to host2 (-R localhost:$FREE_PORT:$TARGET_ADDR_PORT)
• ssh's -A option to allow easy authenticaion of the second ssh chanel

My this IS complicated! Is there any easier way?

When copying all or most bytes from source to destination it's FAR easier to use tar:

ssh $SOURCE_HOST "tar czf - $SOURCE_PATH" \
    | ssh $TARGET_HOST "tar xzf - -C $TARGET_PATH/"

The script

#!/bin/bash
#-------------------SET EVERYTHING BELOW-------------------
# whatever you type after ssh to connect to SOURCE/TARGE host 
# (e.g. 1.2.3.4:22, user@host:22000, ssh_config_alias, etc)
# So if you use "ssh foo" to connect to SOURCE then 
# you must set SOURCE_HOST=foo
SOURCE_HOST=host1 
TARGET_HOST=host2 
# The IP address or hostname and ssh port of TARGET AS SEEN FROM LOCALHOST
# So if ssh -p 5678 someuser@1.2.3.4 will connect you to TARGET then
# you must set TARGET_ADDR_PORT=1.2.3.4:5678 and
# you must set TARGET_USER=someuser
TARGET_ADDR_PORT=1.2.3.4:5678
TARGET_USER=someuser

SOURCE_PATH=/mnt/foo  # Path to rsync FROM
TARGET_PATH=/mnt/bar  # Path to rsync TO

RSYNC_OPTS="-av --bwlimit=14M --progress" # rsync options
FREE_PORT=54321 # just a free TCP port on localhost
#---------------------------------------------------------

echo -n "Test: ssh to $TARGET_HOST: "
ssh $TARGET_HOST echo PASSED| grep PASSED || exit 2

echo -n "Test: ssh to $SOURCE_HOST: "
ssh $SOURCE_HOST echo PASSED| grep PASSED || exit 3

echo -n "Verifying path in $SOURCE_HOST "
ssh $SOURCE_HOST stat $SOURCE_PATH | grep "File:" || exit 5

echo -n "Verifying path in $TARGET_HOST "
ssh $TARGET_HOST stat $TARGET_PATH | grep "File:" || exit 5

echo "configuring ssh from $SOURCE_HOST to $TARGET_HOST via locahost"
ssh $SOURCE_HOST "echo \"Host tmpsshrs; ControlMaster auto; ControlPath /tmp/%u_%r@%h:%p; hostname localhost; port $FREE_PORT; user $TARGET_USER\" | tr ';' '\n'  > /tmp/tmpsshrs"

# The ssh options that will setup the tunnel
TUNNEL="-R localhost:$FREE_PORT:$TARGET_ADDR_PORT"

echo 
echo -n "Test: ssh to $SOURCE_HOST then to $TARGET_HOST: "
if ! ssh -A $TUNNEL $SOURCE_HOST "ssh -A -F /tmp/tmpsshrs tmpsshrs echo PASSED" | grep PASSED ; then
        echo
        echo "Direct authentication failed, will use plan #B:"
        echo "Please open another terminal, execute the following command"
        echo "and leave the session running until rsync finishes"
        echo "(if you're asked for password use the one for $TARGET_USER@$TARGET_HOST)"
        echo "   ssh -t -A $TUNNEL $SOURCE_HOST ssh -F /tmp/tmpsshrs tmpsshrs"
        read -p "Press [Enter] when done..."
fi

echo "Starting rsync"
ssh -A $TUNNEL $SOURCE_HOST "rsync -e 'ssh -F /tmp/tmpsshrs' $RSYNC_OPTS $SOURCE_PATH tmpsshrs:$TARGET_PATH"

echo
echo "Cleaning up"
ssh $SOURCE_HOST "rm /tmp/tmpsshrs"

Answer 9

You could use a local temporary directory to copy the data from the remote source server and then copy this temp to remote destination server.

An example is this:

SRC=user@source-server:/some/path/in/source/* && \
DST=user@destin-server:/some/path/in/destin/* && \
TMP=/tmp/rsync && \
rm -fr $TMP && \
mkdir -p $TMP && \
rsync -av $SRC $TMP && \
rsync -av $TMP/* $DST/ && \
rm -fr $TMP

Answer 10

Not sure if this is of any use to anyone... This is the quick and nasty solution I came up with to sync files between two remote systems that the host is authorized to access, but where the remotes cannot access each other:

(){ local RSYNC_TMP=$(mktemp); rsync -aP src-host:~/filename $RSYNC_TMP; rsync -aP $RSYNC_TMP dest-host:~/filename; rm -rf $RSYNC_TMP }

This can be copy/pasted into zsh, so good for use if your host is macOS. This is not going to keep the file in question safe, however. Swapping out the file name for a directory name, and changing local RSYNC_TMP=$(mktemp) to local RSYNC_TMP=$(mktemp -d) should allow for directory transfer.

For a more secure temporary transfer mechanism, provided that your host is Linux, I'd be inclined to use [bwrap(1)][1] or somethibng like that to create a tmpfs mount that only lives for the duration of the process.

Answer 11

It's possible to use tar via ssh to transfer the files:

ssh -n user1@host1 'tar jcf - -C /var/www .' | ssh user2@host2 'tar jxvf - -C /var/www'

^{Change j parameter (for tar) to z in two places if you wish to compress the archive with gzip, instead of bzip2. Usually bzip2 has the higher compression than gzip, but it's slower, so change it depending on your needs (see: bzip2 vs gzip).}

Related: How to copy between two remote hosts using tar piped into SSH from remote server when behind a firewall?

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Alternatively (to safe the bandwidth, because of the transparent compression) it's possible to use sshfs to mount remote file-system as local and use rsync as usual, e.g.

$ sshfs user1@host1:/var/www /mnt
$ rsync -vuar /mnt user2@host2:/var/www

Answer 12

Just as an additional info:

If you use a jump host to connect the other two machines but they cannot reach each other directly, you can use sshfs as medium between these two machines like so (on the jump host):

$ mkdir ~/sourcepath ~/destpath
$ sshfs sourcehost:/target/dir ~/sourcepath
$ sshfs desthost:/target/dir ~/destpath
$ rsync -vua ~/sourcepath ~/desthpath

SSHFS provides the two paths on the jump host and rsync manages the synchronisation of the files like always (just with the difference that it's virtually done locally).