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