So I am trying to learn a little about Cygwin and rsync.

I'd like to rsync some data from a Windows machine to a Linux machine.

I've got Cygwin installed but I can't figure out how to tell Cygwin were rsync will be pulling the data from; basically, how to set the directories that I want to be rsnyc'd.

I've googled and googled but I can't seem to find the answer to this exact question.

Your mention of "shares" is a bit confusing.

Are you trying to rsync from local drives on the Windows machine to Linux? If so you don't need any shares. You simply rsync the files from current location to remote location.

e.g. rsync c:/windows/win.ini linuxuser@linuxhost:/windows

Alternatively you COULD setup shares the normal way from Windows (as if you were sharing out to another Windows machine) then install and configure Samba on the Linux host to mount the share. Once you did that you would use the cp (copy) command on the Linux host to copy the file from the share to another location.

I'm trying to rsync files from a remote Windows machine to a local Debian machine.

OK, I guess that's where my problem is. If I want to run rsync from a script on a nightly basis, how do I configure Cygwin to "listen(?)" for incoming rsync requests.

I had done this years ago, but I've forgotten how I did it.

I had a script run rsync every night to backup one machine to another.

You can run rsync in daemon mode to listen for requests with "rsync --daemon". You'd start that from a Cygwin window.

This requires an /etc/rsyncd.conf be setup. Typing "man rsyncd.conf" will give you some details on that.

I haven't done this on a Cygwin install myself (I usually would push from Windows). Of course you could do an automatic push from Windows by installing Vixie Cron into your Cygwin then using it to do an rsync at a scheduled point.

Thanks!