On Tue, 2008-12-16 at 01:28 +0200, Hai Zaar wrote: > I have the following situation: file2 on remote host and file1 on > localhost. file1 and file2 are mostly the same. Simply running > rsync remotehost:file2 file2 > will actually transfer the entire file. But I would like to use the > factt that I have local file1 that is mostly similar to file2. I.e. > how can I make rsync to use file1 as a reference while transferring > file2? (cp file1 file2 locally and then using --inplace switch to > rsync sound like and idea, but look awkward for me. Anything better?)
Since you know the specific pair of files that are similar, I would just use the cp approach. There's no reason to use --inplace; if you are trying to reduce disk I/O, a better way to do that is to hard-link file1 to file2 locally instead of copying. If you don't like ever having incorrect data at the destination, you could put the copy or hard link in another directory and use --copy-dest. In fact, I maintain a hard-linked series of backups of my computer using rsnapshot, and I do something similar when I move a large directory on the source: I pass a --link-dest directory containing a symlink from the new path to the old path in the previous backup so that rsync can find the moved but unchanged files. -- Matt -- Please use reply-all for most replies to avoid omitting the mailing list. To unsubscribe or change options: https://lists.samba.org/mailman/listinfo/rsync Before posting, read: http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
