man rsync

-i, --itemize-changes output a change-summary for all updates --list-only list the files instead of copying them --ignore-existing skip updating files that exist on receiver -v, --verbose increase verbosity

--existing, --ignore-non-existing This tells rsync to skip creating files (including directories) that do not exist yet on the destination. If this option is combined with the --ignore-existing option, no files will be updated (which can be useful if all you want to do is delete extraneous files).

This option is a transfer rule, not an exclude, so it doesn't affect the data that goes into the file-lists, and thus it doesn't affect deletions. It just limits the files that the receiver requests to be transferred.

--ignore-existing This tells rsync to skip updating files that already exist on the destination (this does not ignore existing directories, or nothing would get done). See also --existing.

This option is a transfer rule, not an exclude, so it doesn't affect the data that goes into the file-lists, and thus it doesn't affect deletions. It just limits the files that the receiver requests to be transferred.

This option can be useful for those doing backups using the --link-dest option when they need to continue a backup run that got interrupted. Since a --link-dest run is copied into a new directory hierarchy (when it is used properly), using --ignore existing will ensure that the already-handled files don't get tweaked (which avoids a change in permissions on the hard-linked files). This does mean that this option is only looking at the existing files in the destination hierarchy itself.

ML schrieb:

Hi All,

Rsyncing to a USB drive. I am in single user mode.

I am doing:

rsync -avx --stats --progress --ignore-existing --exclude 'home/backup/ data' / /mnt/sdb2/

But I dont see if ignoring existing. A previous rsync stalled and now it seems to be copying them again rather than ignoring them.

Does anyone have thoughts?

-ML