Rsync Over SSH – Alternatives for Linux, macOS, Unix

linuxmacosrsyncunix

I've been trying to use rsync on OSX to Linux or Unix box over which I don't have much control. I've been doing something like this

rsync -avz -e ssh remoteuser@remotehost:/remote/dir /this/dir/

Error returned is:

bash: rsync: command not found rsync:
connection unexpectedly closed (0
bytes received so far) [receiver]
rsync error: remote command not found
(code 127) at
/SourceCache/rsync/rsync-37.3/rsync/io.c(452)
[receiver=2.6.9]

However, after reading the docs I'm beginning to think that I would actually need to install an rsync daemon on the remote host.

  1. Must I install an rsync server on the remote host?
  2. Free alternatives — GUI or non-GUI — which do not require installing anything on the remote host?

Thanks!

Best Answer

You need an rsync command on the server, but you don't need to run a daemon.

Get an rsync binary that works on the server, put it somewhere in your home, and add this flag to your command line: --rsync-path=/home/user/path/to/rsync .

If you don't want to copy rsync to the servers, you can use scp, or sshfs.

sshfs user@host ~/sync/user-host
rsync -av ~/local-dir ~/sync/user-host/remote-dir

In that case rsync will run completely locally, but the changes will be propagated to the server.

Related Question