The rsync option “-logDtprze.iLsf” for

rsync

I found an article online that gives instructions on how to backup your dedicated server using rsync.

In one of the steps of this article I am supposed to create a user called "rsync" and add sudo privileges to it. Everything is going well but the visudo options for the "rsync" user are pretty hard to understand. Some of the options for the "/usr/bin/rsync" command have virtually no documentation on the Internet.

Following is the visudo line that I am referring to:

rsync ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/rsync --server --sender -logDtprze.iLsf --numeric-ids . /

To begin with, I kind of understand the "–server –sender" properties. What is really bugging me is the option "-logDtprze.iLsf".

I have a CentOS server and this option is not available in the rsync documentation when I run the command "man rsync". Actually, every time I try to use this option in visudo, nothing works.

I eventually found a vague reference to "-logDtprze.iLsf" as being a new feature of rsync in Debian. I am not sure about that.

I just wanted to know what this option does and if it will be OK to ignore it in my backup set up.

I also wanted to understand the purpose of the period & slash at the end of the line ". /"

EDIT:
Thanks bodgit! I feel like an idiot! 🙂

Best Answer

It's the short options -l, -o, -g, -D, etc. which instead of spelling them out separately can be collapsed which is standard behaviour for most Unix tools, i.e. rm -rf is the same as rm -r -f.

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