Linux – rsync –files-from specifies folders but does not copy files, recursive does not fix it

I suspect that xargs is your friend in this instance.

Completely untested:

 # cat file | xargs -IREPLACE rsync -v REPLACE server:/path

xargs will take data from stdin and add it to the commandline one parameter per input line until it fills the command line length, and then runs a separate command until all the input lines have been used up. This will mean that rsync could well run more than once. This shouldn't be a problem in this case, but could be with other commands.

Usually xargs just sticks the arguments on the end of the line, but with rsync you'd want to have the destination last, so we use the -I option to replace a string with the arguments. (This is the bit that's untested). I'm also a little unsure what rsync will do with the paths, so please test this carefully before using it in anger.

If you do have a problem with xargs, you could use something like:

for i in $(cat file); do rsync -v $i server:/path; done

If your file is larger, you probably want to use a while/read loop instead. This will be much slower as it will do a single file at a time.

I'm not sure I understand what you're trying to do, but you could create gzipped backups on the main server making sure that they're readily rsyncable and not bother decompressing anything in transit.

gzip(1)

--rsyncable
       While compressing, synchronize the output occasionally based on
       the  input.   This  increases  size by less than 1 percent most
       cases, but means that the rsync(1) program can much more  effi‐
       ciently  synchronize  files  compressed with this flag.  gunzip
       cannot tell the difference between a  compressed  file  created
       with this option, and one created without it.