[wellylug] rsync - helps speed up downloads (tip for new users)

[Glen Ogilvie]

Hi,

I thought I should let the group know about how to use Rsync, and what it is 
useful for. 

Rsync is a program that syncronise's files and directories from one computer 
to another. It works by looking at what is different, then getting the 
changes. The really neat this about this is, it applies this idea of only 
getting the changes to parts of a file as well as whole files, so, it can 
speed up downloading iso images, if you have a similar iso image already on 
your system. 

For example, I had Mandrake 9.1Beta3, and downloaded the 9.1RC1 iso's, I used 
rsync to just get the changed bits, this speeded up my download by about 50%. 
If you want to get the speed increase, the old filename needs to be the same 
as the new one, I had to rename my old iso image files before using rsync.

------ how to use Rsync.

find an rsync server... I use rsync.planetmirror.com 

so
rsync rsync.planetmirror.com::
lists packages available (top level)

rsync rsync.planetmirror.com::mandrake/
lists package in the mandrake folder (note the trailing slash)

rsync rsync.planetmirror.com::mandrake/9.0/iso/i586/
list packages in mandrake/9.0/iso/i586/

rsync -Pa --stats rsync.planetmirror.com::mandrake/9.0/iso/i586/MD5SUMS .
will download the MD5SUMS file, showing stats, including progress and partial 
file download, and will do an archive copy.  It will download it to the 
current directly (.)

often, rsync with -r (recursive) is used instead of -a  and also -z can be 
useful, which compresses data during file transfer. (does not work with all 
rsync servers)

rsync -Pan --stats rsync.planetmirror.com::mandrake/9.0/iso/i586/* .
would download all files in the remote folder.. except, -n says pretend (dry) 
and not actually do it, but show what it would do.

Hope you guys find this useful.  I've found rsync saving me hours on ftp 
servers.  It can do a lot of ther things as well, however, have not covered 
them in this message. 

Cheers
Glen Ogilvie

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