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When backing up with rsync, How do I keep the full directory structure?

For example, the remote server is saturn, and I want to backup saturn's /home/udi/files/pictures to a local directory named backup.

I want to have (locally) backup/home/udi/files/pictures rather than backup/pictures.

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4 Answers 4

Reset to default
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Use the -R or --relative option to preserve the full path.

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  • just noting: using it with --remove-source-files will work like moving the file, but with the whole path
    – MacMartin
    Commented Mar 12 at 14:59
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Another common related use case it to keep a selected part of the directory tree with /./, e.g. if you wanted:

/home/udi/files/pictures

to go to:

backup/files/pictures

you can write:

rsync --relative /home/udi/./files/pictures backup

The magic /./ gets specially parsed by rsync before it passes that path to the system calls, and tells it where to start creating directories from. The /./ means nothing for other POSIX utilities in general, e.g. the path a/./b is the same as a/b in POSIX.

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With the Cygwin Windows rsync, and assuming the remote rsync is pointing to the root, I'd do:

rsync -vtrz --delete server::rsyncid/home/udi/files/pictures /cygdrive/d/backup/home/udi/files

That will put the contents of the remote pictures directory in /backup/home/udi/files/pictures. Presumably the syntax under unix would be similar.

JR

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  • It is not useful because we need to reproduce the whole directory hierarchy on the local side before executing the rsync command.
    – Ludovic Kuty
    Commented Apr 2, 2012 at 11:42
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You can make changes in cron due to when you want to start rsync

rsync -avz -e ssh ruser@rserver:/home/udi/files/pictures/* /backup/pictures/

also you may add ssh key to remote server connect without passwd

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