Bash – How to output a list of changed files from rsync

bashrsyncscripting

I am using rsync in a bash script to keep files in sync between a few servers and a NAS. One issue I have run into is trying to generate a list of the files that have changed from the during the rsync.

The idea is that when I run rsync, I can output the files that have changed into a text file – more hoping for an array in memory – then before the script exists I can run a chown on only the changed files.

Has anyone found a way to perform such a task?

# specify the source directory
source_directory=/Users/jason/Desktop/source

# specify the destination directory
# DO NOT ADD THE SAME DIRECTORY NAME AS RSYNC WILL CREATE IT FOR YOU
destination_directory=/Users/jason/Desktop/destination

# run the rsync command
rsync -avz $source_directory $destination_directory

# grab the changed items and save to an array or temp file?

# loop through and chown each changed file
for changed_item in "${changed_items[@]}"
do
        # chown the file owner and notify the user
        chown -R user:usergroup; echo '!! changed the user and group for:' $changed_item
done

Best Answer

You can use rsync's --itemize-changes (-i) option to generate a parsable output that looks like this:

~ $ rsync src/ dest/ -ai
.d..t.... ./
>f+++++++ newfile
>f..t.... oldfile

~ $ echo 'new stuff' > src/newfile

~ $ !rsync
rsync src/ dest/ -ai
>f.st.... newfile

The > character in the first position indicates a file was updated, the remaining characters indicate why, for example here s and t indicate that the file size and timestamp changed.

A quick and dirty way to get the file list might be:

rsync -ai src/ dest/ | egrep '^>'

Obviously more advanced parsing could produce cleaner output :-)

I came across this great link while trying to find out when --itemize-changes was introduced, very useful:

http://andreafrancia.it/2010/03/understanding-the-output-of-rsync-itemize-changes.html (archived link)

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