this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2025
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You might not even like rsync. Yeah it's old. Yeah it's slow. But if you're working with Linux you're going to need to know it.

In this video I walk through my favorite everyday flags for rsync.

Support the channel:
https://patreon.com/VeronicaExplains
https://ko-fi.com/VeronicaExplains
https://thestopbits.bandcamp.com/

Here's a companion blog post, where I cover a bit more detail: https://vkc.sh/everyday-rsync

Also, @BreadOnPenguins made an awesome rsync video and you should check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eifQI5uD6VQ

Lastly, I left out all of the ssh setup stuff because I made a video about that and the blog post goes into a smidge more detail. If you want to see a video covering the basics of using SSH, I made one a few years ago and it's still pretty good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FKsdbjzBcc

Chapters:
1:18 Invoking rsync
4:05 The --delete flag for rsync
5:30 Compression flag: -z
6:02 Using tmux and rsync together
6:30 but Veronica... why not use (insert shiny object here)

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[–] victorz@lemmy.world 0 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

But if you're working with Linux you're going to need to know it.

Nope. I never have needed to know it. I only ever used it because I was either curious to know how to use it or because it was more convenient than other solutions. But scp is basically just as convenient.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

It doesn't do diffs, so it's really bad if there's a lot of duplicate data.

[–] victorz@lemmy.world 1 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (1 children)

If you want to use it for backups, there are other solutions, so you still don't need to use it or know it. You can use something else. That's my only point. 🤷‍♂️

And "really bad" is all relative. If you are only backing up your home drive with documents or whatever, copying a few unnecessary gigabytes over a LAN connection isn't too bad at all. But scp isn't what you should be using for backups anyway. I only used rsync for file transfer...

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

I use rsync for all kinda of things:

  • deploying static files to a public webserver (blog or whatever)
  • backups - scheduled systems/cron task w/ SSH key
  • copying stuff from a USB drive

I only really use scp if the system doesn't already have rsync.

[–] victorz@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago

Alright. But you don't need to know rsync. That's my only point. 👍👍