Talk:Rsync

How to read this word?
Is there any official explanations? Yegle (talk) 10:47, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

What does the "r" in rsync stand for? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.155.163.235 (talk) 10:57, 5 April 2010 (UTC)
 * "r" stands for remote. 80.149.148.212 (talk) 14:31, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Question About Rsync.net
Should this website (http://www.rsync.net/) be referenced in anyway to this article? 76.81.25.214 08:40, 13 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Is the website related to rsync? It doesn't seem to be, apart from the name. So I would say "no". Thue | talk 18:15, 13 August 2007 (UTC)


 * it is; they're an offsite backup company that differentiates by offering rsync services. At their core. 68.70.67.226 (talk) 18:53, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

what are "remote" and "local" ?
in the second paragraph, it is not clear what "remote" and "local" mean in daemon mode. It could go either way. if it was "client" and "server" the "server" would be the machine where the "daemon" is. 68.70.67.226 (talk) 18:53, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

Removed content copied from website
The command line options that were just reverted were copied directly from http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/linux/cmd/cmd.csp?path=r/rsync - should someone keep an eye on that IP address to check they don't do the same thing again? --Tango 18:42, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Tutorial link
The tutorial linked is "Last updated on November 20th, 1999", in other words ancient. There must exist a better one?

The External Link "Tutorial: Backing up files with rsync" http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=04/09/15/1931240 is redirected to a page with ad-only content. There is no tutorial there. Should it be removed?
 * It is removed now --Unixguy 12:57, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

On Portal:Free software, rsync is currently the selected article
(2007-04-18) Just to let you know. The purpose of selecting an article is both to point readers to the article and to highlight it to potential contributors. It will remain on the portal for a week or so. The previous selected article was WorldWideWeb. Gronky 11:32, 18 April 2007 (UTC)


 * The selected article box has been updated again, rsync has been superceded by TeX. Gronky 14:19, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

rsync != librsync?
(2007-08-28) Looking at http://samba.anu.edu.au/rsync/ and http://librsync.sourceforge.net/ suggests that rsync and librsync contain two different implementations of a similar algorithm, with rdiff and rdiff-backup (mentioned in the article) using the latter. If this is the case then should the article should distinguish more between the algorithm, its various implementations and software that uses it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Edmundgreen (talk • contribs) 14:48, August 28, 2007 (UTC)


 * Yes :). Thue | talk 17:04, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

OS
"rsync is a software application for Unix systems" but "OS: 	Cross-platform", is that correct? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.239.63.225 (talk) 14:45, 7 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Unless there's another implementation of which I am unaware, rsync is UNIX only. In Windows, rsync leverages Cygwin, a POSIX (UNIX) compatibility layer (even the "standalone" rsync bundles). Whelkman (talk) 17:15, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

psync?
What are the main differences between rsync and psync? Actually there isn't any article about psync yet.--SiriusB (talk) 13:02, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Never heard of it, and it's not even made a Debian package, so I guess it's not used much? One thing the rsync article doesn't make very clear is that it's used a lot. JöG (talk) 00:01, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

"only one transmission"?
This text in the intro: An important feature of rsync not found in most similar programs/protocols is that the mirroring takes place with only one transmission in each direction. — what is it trying to say? I'm very familiar with using rsync and know approximately how it works, but I have no idea what that text is trying to say. At least (a) define "transmission" and (b) explain why it's so important. JöG (talk) 00:10, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

this entry is so confusingly written
can someone make it more readable, please? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 222.29.98.177 (talk) 04:49, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

MacOS compatibility?
Despite claims to the contrary, it appears that Yintersync and Duplicati don't support MacOS. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 123.3.238.231 (talk) 01:27, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

Collision probability
Due to the birthday paradox, the collision probability is not 2-160, but about 2-80. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.125.57.34 (talk) 12:47, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

Collision probability of two hashes being the same is still 2-160. For example, if there was only 1 bit, the possibilities would be (0,0), (0,1), (1,0), (1,1), ergo 1/2 = 2-1 probability. You are correct in that because of the birthday paradox, you only need about 280 hashes before the collision is very probable. That still has no effect on the probability of a *single* collision. --Petteri Aimonen (talk) 16:25, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

linking to an example in the External Links
I am attempting to link the following in the external links section: Yes it is a blog, but it presents information that is relevant and currently important to most users of linux systems (system on which rsync runs). It shows how to use rsync in a manner that replicates Apple's Time Machine. This method isn't easy to find and is very helpful.138.162.0.43 (talk) 15:10, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
 * How to run rsync to implement a 'Time Machine' backup scheme
 * Hi! I removed the link from the article because it goes against Wikipedia's guidelines for external links. Although the article might be useful, the external links section of Wikipedia is not the best place to promote it. Sorry about the trouble on this, and I hope you continue contributing to Wikipedia. --Odie5533 (talk) 15:14, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Hi :) Wouldn't the information available in that link fall under Number 4 of the ELNO? It contains information that is relevant and from a knowledgeable source though it may not be reliable. If it doesn't, what part of the ELNO does posting this link violate? I recently 'stumbled upon' the included link and it is very helpful for new users of linux for backing up their software using rsync. Since this article is about rsync and its backing up capabilities, I feel that this link warrents inclusion. 138.162.0.42 (talk) 16:01, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

i have added an 'example' to the examples section with a reference citation... hopefully this will be a better way to provide this information. 138.162.0.42 (talk) 16:15, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

A practical explanation would be helpful!!
Does Rsync go by file times to determine newness at all? And if so, how does it interpret them? People use Rsync even locally within filesystems and between external drives such as a USB dest. drive directly connected to the machine with the source drive from what I am able to gather. But if Rsync is doing all of this analyzing, and apparently not maintaining any databases (correct if wrong) would that not be more traffic between the drives than a straight copy? And if not... how can Rsync possibly guarantee the integrity of the files via a one time operation? It seems like if its going to be performing "rolling" checks over chunks of files then Rsync backup would require having Rsync rolling over the files so to speak nightly or as part of a sustained backup regime anyway... so to catch that one important change to a few bytes in some record in some binary file. Assuming the file system is not keeping track of that.

These questions seem to me what should be the meat of the article. I don't see any of these concerns being addressed. I don't have the answers, and can't seem to find the answers to easily myself. Thanks. Towards a more useful Wikipedia. --99.197.224.57 (talk) 11:17, 7 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I was just wondering this myself, as an rsync of a few gigabytes of data only takes a few seconds if there are no differences. It couldn't possibly be doing a checksum on every file. The man page explains it properly. By default rsync checks the modification time and size of each file, and doesn't bother checking any files that have the same mod time and size. You can override this behaviour by using the --checksum option, which forces it to do a checksum on every file. The article probably needs updated to mention this. --sciencewatcher (talk) 04:04, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

please fix circular link in the page
The top of the page lists the information "(Redirected from Rdiff-backup)" while there is an rdiff-backup entry in the table at the bottom of the page.

Clicking "rdiff-backup" in the table simply returns the rsync page again. Stuff happens.

Oh. And rdiff-backup is not simply rsync. It's an application. Having its own page would be nice.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.20.2.63 (talk) 03:12, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

don't trim
Please don't trim article on personal manners Alipoor90 (talk) 23:13, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Please see WP:NOTMANUAL. NE Ent 00:15, 15 December 2014 (UTC)
 * They are not manual, they are examples. Alipoor90 (talk) 00:38, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

What does the "r" stands for in rsync?
Thanks, Ben-Yeudith (talk) 01:22, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

They say it's for "remote sync" (e.g. at Digital Ocean), but I couldn't find one authoritative source. Yaroslav Nikitenko (talk) 16:34, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

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Remove rclone from rsync applications
I propose to remove rclone from the table because:

- rclone doesn't use rsync,

- rclone is listed in the previous section.

Yaroslav Nikitenko (talk) 16:38, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

I wrote much of the rclone article. As you say, rclone does not use rsync and doesn't belong there. When I started to write the stuff on rclone it was largely because the two were so confused. I wholly support your suggestion.Ed1964 (talk) 16:20, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

Today it is explicitly mentioned in the table that rclone "Does not actually use rsync". This is better (though I don't remember what there was a year ago). However, it is still not based on rsync; other "Variations" are listed in the previous section (not added to the table). Yaroslav Nikitenko (talk) 12:15, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

Examples
Should we add "/home/*" to the excluded list under the "Make a full backup of system root directory:" part? Usually, most Linux systems have /home mounted on a separate partition/drive? Sawyermade (talk) 01:54, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

Criteria for software inclusion
Software other than rsync can be added to "Variations" or to "rsync applications" sections. On articles like Comparison of file synchronization software I can see that that software is really established (though some programs are unsupported for about 12 years), and all tools have Wikipedia pages.

On the other hand, the list of rsync applications is narrower and the inclusion criteria may be more relaxed for the sake of completeness (even though this can be virtually impossible).

For example in 2021 the author added his program "tym" to the list of rsync applications. This program does not seem popular, and its last release was made in 2012.

I'm writing this because I created a new program using rsync myself (probably should give a link for concreteness); while I appreciate its features and quality, it is neither popular or known (at least at the moment). I added that to Arch Wiki, because such cases are explicitly allowed there; but for Wikipedia I'm not sure.

Is there an incentive to gather more Free Software rsync applications, or should they first satisfy some explicit criteria? Preferably objective ones; for example, Arch Wiki requires packages to be released in its user software repository AUR.

Yaroslav Nikitenko (talk) 12:37, 3 July 2022 (UTC)


 * I don't think there are explicit criteria. In my opinion the most practical and objective criterion would be whether the program has its own Wikipedia article. I came to this Talk page because I had removed a 'red link' program for that reason, but then noticed six others (yours among them) that did not have their own article either. I very much appreciate your approach by first asking if adding it was appropriate. But I think 'more relaxed' criteria may lead to a very non-encyclopedic list of programs out there. I chose to remove all six of them; if any of these programs is deemed notable enough one could write an article about it, and then put it back in this table as well. MichielN (talk) 15:25, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

I decided to add YARsync to the current table, because there are other external tools (without Wikipedia pages) there. I think it would be easier to remove that if it is decided off-topic here (than to add), feel free to do that. Yaroslav Nikitenko (talk) 13:10, 3 July 2022 (UTC)