rsync followup - what did I run?

[Greg Rundlett (freephile)]

On Sun, Sep 27, 2009 at 10:41 PM, Scott Ehrlich <srehrlich-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> Many people have wondered what my rsync syntax was -
>
> [as root]: rsync -av /path/to/source me at remote-host:/path/to/dest
>
>
> I'll be adjusting it to adapt to perform incrementals, probably with --update.
>
> So, just need to learn why some of the .dotfiles, and other unknown
> files (unless I ran a diff) didn't successfully copy over.
>

Some ideas...

You already use --verbose, so you should see an error message at the
end indicating success (or failure).  You could also echo $? to see
the return value from rsync.  If it's not zero, then you can track
down the error that way.  I've seen many times where a permission
problem does result in files not being transferred.  Although I don't
think that should happen as root.  In any case, you should see rsync
print a failure message if it's not copying stuff.

Also, you can run various options while using --dry-run to see what is
or isn't going to happen (testing without waiting for long transfers).

One other thing I'd check is your CVSIGNORE environment value (echo
$CVSIGNORE or echo $HOME/.cvsignore) because rsync can use that --
although it doesn't appear that your telling it to in that command.??

With --stats and --progress you'll get some more info to possibly
pinpoint the problem.

In cases where I'm using -a as root, I've been able to identify other
"differences" by using --itemize-changes because that will list file
permission changes etc.

Greg Rundlett