I am looking at an rsync command on a production server I inherited. It looks like this:

rsync -trz --password-file=<file> fax@destination::FAX <source directory>

I understand the password file, that exists and has a password in it.

The <source directory> exists on the machine running this, and it gets populated with files like it should.

the destination is a valid machine on the network.

What I don't understand is:

1) The user fax@destination does not exist. There is no user on that computer called fax. It is not in passwd, and you can't login with that account.

2) What does the source of ::FAX actually represent? There is no directory called FAX. What exactly is fax@destination::FAX? "fax" is not a user, and I have no idea what FAX means. The machine has hylafax installed, and this command copies fax results, but how?

Any ideas on what I'm missing?

The double colon is telling the rsyncd on the server side to use settings from the FAX module section defined in your rsyncd.conf file.

Usually /etc/rsyncd.conf

1 members found this post helpful.

Huh... I had no idea. Indeed, it is right there like you said it is. Everything - path to files, account to use, authorized user name, all in rsyncd.conf. I had no idea you could do that...

TYVM!!!!