[NBLUG/talk] fear of rsync

[Troy Arnold]

On Wed, May 03, 2006 at 09:12:19AM -0700, Bob Blick wrote:
> 
> > Rsync is a one-way sync tool unlike some of the other tools like unison
> > which are two way. Unless you pass rsync the --delete option, it will only
> > add files that don't exist to the target (or rather, files that don't
> > exist
> > or updates files).
> 
> A hypothetical situation, then. Say I have successfully made a backup of a
> directory. Then I modify a file and decide to rsync, but I type it wrong
> and the direction is reversed, so my modified file gets un-modified?

rsync is no different than 'mv' in this respect.  The source arg always
comes before the dest arg.

If you can safely wrap your brain around the difference between:
mv data.today data.yesterday
and
mv data.yesterday data.today

Then you won't accidently screw yourself with rsync :)


-t