Rsync output

Question

I am new to rsync and I don’t understand the output I get, can someone help me,

the output contains lines such as

<f.st...... somefile.txt <f+++++++++ someOtherfile.zip .d..t...... someDir/ 

I don’t understand what the options on the left mean, and it's hard for me to find an answer on google. Thank.

Answer 1

I rephrased here the corresponding part of the man page for people who have problems finding it:

The first character indicates what happens to the file:

• < means that the file is being transferred to the remote host (sent).
• > means that the file is being transferred to the local host (received).
• c means that there is a local change / creation for the element (for example, creating a directory or changing a symbolic link, etc.).
• h means the element is a hard link to another element (requires --hard-links).
• . means that the item is not being updated (although it may have attributes that change).
• * means that there is a message in the rest of the highlighted output area (for example, “delete”).

The second character indicates what type of entry in the directory. In particular:

• f for file
• d for directory
• L for symbolic link
• d for device
• S for a special file (e.g. socket or fifo)

The remaining columns are described below:

• c means that the regular file has a different checksum or that the symbolic link, device, or special file has a changed value.
• S means that the size of a regular file is different and will be updated by transferring the file.
• t or t :
  • t means that the modification time is different and is updated to the sender value
  • t means that the modification time will be set to the transmission time
• p means that the permissions are different and are updated to the sender value
• o means the owner is different and updated to the sender value
• g means the group is different and updated to the sender value
• . not used

The following columns may be missing, depending on your transfer settings.

• a means the ACL information is modified
• x means extended attribute information has changed

Answer 2

There is a good explanation in the man page, in the itemize-changes section:

http://www.samba.org/ftp/rsync/rsync.html

(Between mirrored archives of mailing lists and (possibly outdated) copies of documentation, it can be difficult to get to this page)

Answer 3

I believe that the output comes from the “-i” flag, looks through the man page for “itemize” several times (or searches for “cryptic output”), and it shows what all the flags mean:

• < means that the file is being transferred to the remote host (sent).
• f for file
• d for directory
• s means that the size of a regular file is different and will be updated by transferring the file.
• t means that the modification time is different and updated

Answer 4

The "+" s are explained in the rsync man page as follows:

"The other letters in the line above are the actual letters that will be displayed if the associated attribute for the item is updated or". "Unchanged. Three exceptions to this are: (1) a newly created item replaces each letter" + ", (2) identical the element replaces the dots with spaces and (3) An unknown attribute replaces each letter with a “?” (this can be a pen when talking to an older rsync).

Answer 5

The version of rsync installed on my system does not give such an output (maybe you can clarify the parameters you use?), But rsync trying to reduce the amount of data sent over the network, scanning the remote and local files for identical "blocks" of data. Thus, only individual parts of a file that are actually different from each other should be sent along the line.

I think it is very likely that the characters that you see in the left column are indicators for the block matching process. + can mean "identical" (or . , I suppose), d , s and t can indicate shifted blocks in offset.