rsync --delete question

edmundo_ba · 08-23-2015, 01:08 PM

Hi everyone. I'm having a problem related to --delete option of rsync.

I want the files that don't exist anymore at the source to be deleted, but I want to keep a backup copy.

For this I run:

rsync -avz -b --backup-dir=/home/edg/br/b01 --delete Documents/ rsync://rsyncclient@192.168.0.50/documents

The backup dir is created, but then it is deleted, along with all the files that are supposed to be deleted, and rsync is also trying to delete a lot more.
This is the result I get:

sending incremental file list
Created backup_dir /home/edg/rb/b01/
deleting home/edg/rb/b01/
deleting home/edg/rb/
deleting home/edg/
deleting home/
./

sent 140 bytes received 114 bytes 101.60 bytes/sec
total size is 350,697 speedup is 1,380.70

Any suggestions on how to fix this?

edmundo_ba · 08-23-2015, 03:05 PM

I found my mistake, it's working now.

I thought the --backup-dir was the actual directory at the destination file system, but it's the path inside the module accessed by rsync.