Checking to see if rsync was successful

Question

Is it possible to check if an rsync is successful and potentially collect an error if its not?

As I am using --link-dest, I think this may be harder to detect.

I'm fairly new to bash, so any guidance would be appreciated.

Here is a slimmed down version of my script:

#!/bin/bash

set -e

site_host=(
    "[email protected]"
    "[email protected]"  
)

backup_dest=(
    "/Users/computername/Desktop/rsync/test1.co.uk"
    "/Users/computername/Desktop/rsync/test2.co.uk"
)

now=`date "+%d/%m/%Y %H:%M:%S"`
today=`date +"%d-%m-%Y"`
yesterday=`date -v -1d +"%d-%m-%Y"`

log="/Users/computername/Desktop/rsync/rsync.log"

site_count=${#site_host[@]}

for (( i = 0; i < site_count; i++ )); do

    site_source="${site_host[$i]}:~/public_html"
    site_dest="${backup_dest[$i]}/$today/"

    rsync -zavx -e 'ssh -p22' \
            --numeric-ids \
            --delete -r \
            --link-dest=../$yesterday $site_source $site_dest

    echo "$now - File Backup Completed - ${backup_dest[$i]}/$today" >> $log 

done

Updated:

#!/bin/bash

set -e

site_host=(
    "[email protected]"
    "[email protected]"  
)

backup_dest=(
    "/Users/computername/Desktop/rsync/test1.co.uk"
    "/Users/computername/Desktop/rsync/test2.co.uk"
)

now=`date "+%d/%m/%Y %H:%M:%S"`
today=`date +"%d-%m-%Y"`
yesterday=`date -v -1d +"%d-%m-%Y"`

log="/Users/computername/Desktop/rsync/rsync.log"

site_count=${#site_host[@]}

for (( i = 0; i < site_count; i++ )); do

    site_source="${site_host[$i]}:~/public_html"
    site_dest="${backup_dest[$i]}/$today/"

    failures=0

    if  rsync -zavx -e 'ssh -p22' \
            --numeric-ids \
            --delete -r \
            --link-dest=../$yesterday $site_source $site_dest;
    then

        echo "$now - File Backup Completed - ${backup_dest[$i]}/$today" >> $log 

    else

        echo "$now - File Backup Failed - ${backup_dest[$i]}/$today" >> $log 
        failures=$((failures+1))

    fi

    if ((failures != 0)); then exit 1; fi 

done

Answer 1

Like most programs, rsync returns a nonzero status if an error occurs. Since you have set -e at the top of the script, your script will exit with a nonzero status if rsync does.

If you want to do some recovery if rsync fails, you can keep going and analyze the status. With set -e, you need to put the rsync command in a conditional so that the script doesn't exit.

failures=0
…
  if rsync …; then
    echo "rsync succeeded"
  else
    echo "rsync failed"
    failures=$((failures+1))
  fi
…
if ((failures != 0)); then exit 1; fi

If you want to analyze the status code, a common idiom is status=0; rsync … || status=$?: this command always returns a success status since the command on the right-hand side of the || operator always succeeds, and status will be set to the status of the rsync command.

  status=0
  rsync … || status=$?
  if ((status != 0)); then
    …
  fi