[Techtalk] Day 3, no Windows

[hobbit at aloss.ukuu.org.uk]

On Fri, Aug 16, 2002 at 09:53:30AM +1000 or thereabouts, Carlo Hamalainen wrote:
> I also recommend the rsync program that somebody mentioned on this list a
> few days ago. I've just discovered it myself (had always thought it was a
> program for maintaining big FTP sites). I didn't know it was a one-liner!

Yeah, I always thought it was for large jobs too. 
 
> With rsync, I can keep a directory perfectly up-to-date. To upload files
> from home or office to server, I use:
> 
> rsync -avz -e ssh work server:
> 
> And to pull the latest directory down, I do
> 
> rsync -avz -e ssh server:work .

Heh. Barring the order of the options, I have exactly the same.
Which I put into a one-line file I made executable in the directory
I'm always running it from, so that I do "./rs[tab][return]" and
kick it off in six characters :) 

(rsync --help)
 -e, --rsh=COMMAND           specify rsh replacement
 -v, --verbose               increase verbosity
 -z, --compress              compress file data
 -a, --archive               archive mode
 
> So easy! I should also add a --delete option, to remove old files that
> disappear from the latest copy.

Did you see the handy thing in the man page for that? Under --delete
it says, 
        This  option  can be dangerous if used incorrectly!
        It is a very good idea to run first using  the  dry
        run  option (-n) to see what files would be deleted
        to make sure important files aren't listed.
 
I love this kind of "what would happen if..?" option.

 o rsync and gnupg both have --dry-run/-n. 
 o rpm has a --test option (this won't do post-install script checks;
   but it tells you what would happen if you de the rest. I use it a 
   lot to check dependencies. Roundabout way to do it, but..) 
 o cdrecord has a -dummy (one hyphen) option (it goes through all the
   motions but with no laser)

Any more? 

Telsa