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I can't fathom why rsync isn't working...

Here's my directory and contents...

$ pwd
/home/alec/.dotfiles

$ ls
'~'      neomutt          tmux   vit     gitconfig    mbsyncrc   myclirc              taskrc   tmux.conf        vimrc     zshrc
 drush   remote-servers   vim    ackrc   khard.conf   msmtprc    ptpython_config.py   tigrc    tmuxinator.zsh   xinitrc

and here's my backup command...

rsync -avvr --exclude='view' /home/alec/.dotfiles /media/alec/storage/dotfiles

After running that command, the destination files are un-changed...

$ pwd
/media/alec/storage/dotfiles

$ ls
drush  hiddendrush  vim  gitconfig  tmux.conf  tmuxinator.zsh  vimrc  xinitrc  zshrc

I don't know how any more simple it could be. The --exclude='view' is because there's some contents in there that breaks the rsync command and that subdirectory's not needed anyway. What could be the problem?

When I type the command rsync prints to the terminal the entire contents of the source directory, hundreds of files, but they don't get copied to the destination. Why?

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1 Answer 1

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1

The problem lies in the command

rsync -avvr --exclude='view' /home/alec/.dotfiles /media/alec/storage/dotfiles

This takes the directory .dotfiles in /home/alec and copies it to directory /media/alec/storage/dotfiles, where it becomes /media/alec/storage/dotfiles/.dotfiles. This directory is not shown by ls unless you write ls -A

The command you want is

rsync -avvr --exclude='view' /home/alec/.dotfiles/ /media/alec/storage/dotfiles/

Note the addition of two trailing slashes. This will recursively copy everything in /home/alec/.dotfiles/ into /media/alec/storage/dotfiles/

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  • Thaaaank youuuuu <3
    – alec
    Aug 12, 2020 at 2:11
  • Don't forget to clean up your extra directory.
    – David G.
    Aug 12, 2020 at 2:13
  • The slash at the end of the destination path is unimportant. The slash at the end of the source path is important.
    – Kusalananda ♦
    Aug 12, 2020 at 5:33
  • @Kusalananda True, but probably worth doing anyway. It does make a difference if you have a single source file. With the slash, it makes directory and uses the source file's name therein. Without the slash, it doesn't make a directory and uses the exact name specified. (It is actually a bit inconsistent. rsync -a a b will make b/a/... if a is a directory, and just file b if a is a file.)
    – David G.
    Aug 12, 2020 at 14:56

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