How to rsync a file to a remote directory that doesn’t exist

rsync

Suppose I want to rsync file foo.txt on my local machine to file /home/me/somedirectory/bar.txt on a remote computer, and that somedirectory/ doesn't yet exist. How do I do this?

I tried rsync -e ssh -z foo.txt remotemachine:/home/me/somedirectory/bar.txt, but I get a rsync: push_dir#3 "/home/me/somedirectory" failed: No such file or directory (2) error.

(Copying the file without renaming it works, though. That is, this runs fine: rsync -e ssh -z foo.txt remotemachine:/home/me/somedirectory/`)

Best Answer

Just put a trailing slash on your target dir. Something like this:

rsync foo.txt remotemachine:somedirectory/

Assuming that "/home/me" is your home dir on the remote machine, there is no need to specify it in the command line. Also, you don't need to clutter up your rsync with the -e unless you just like to do that.

Related Solutions

Using rsync to delete a single file

Try this:

rsync -rv --delete --include=foo.txt '--exclude=*' /home/user/ user@remote:/home/user/

(highly recommend running with --dry-run first to test it) Although it seems like it would be easier to use ssh...

ssh user@remote "rm /home/user/foo.txt"

Unix – How to use an identity file with rsync

You may want to use ssh-agent and ssh-add to load the key into memory. ssh will try identities from ssh-agent automatically if it can find them. Commands would be

eval $(ssh-agent) # Create agent and environment variables
ssh-add ~/.ssh/1234-identity

ssh-agent is a user daemon which holds unencrypted ssh keys in memory. ssh finds it based on environment variables which ssh-agent outputs when run. Using eval to evaluate this output creates the environment variables. ssh-add is the command which manages the keys memory. The agent can be locked using ssh-add. A default lifetime for a key can be specified when ssh-agent is started, and or specified for a key when it is added.

You might also want to setup a ~/.ssh/config file to supply the port and key definition. (See `man ssh_config for more options.)

host 22.33.44.55
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/1234-identity
    Port 1234

Single quoting the ssh command will prevent shell expansion which is needed for ~ or $HOME. You could use the full or relative path to the key in single quotes.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Using rsync to delete a single file

Unix – How to use an identity file with rsync

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