SCP transfer only modified files

Question

I'm using below command to transfer files cross server

scp -rc blowfish /source/directory/* username@domain.net:/destination/directory

Is there a way to transfer only files modified files just like update command for cp?

score 63 · Accepted Answer · edited Dec 04 '14 at 13:24

63

rsync is your friend.

rsync -ru /source/directory/* username@domain.net:/destination/directory

If you want it to delete files at the destination that no longer exist at the source, add the --delete option.

edited Dec 04 '14 at 13:24

Cristian Ciupitu

answered May 23 '13 at 14:35

Flup

5

Although, if you are syncing to a web server and that server caches HTML, you might not want to use `--delete`, since visitors on a stale page might request an asset that no longer exists. – Jackson May 24 '16 at 21:56
@Jackson a clean process will not include variable data like caches or configs in the sources. – Chris Pillen Nov 17 '18 at 07:40
In some cases I have deal with servers outside of my domain that don't have `rsync` but have `scp`. Is there a comparable solution, even if it needs a few lines of scripting? – jacobq Dec 21 '18 at 14:58
1

The answer is helpful, but the question was can this be achieved with scp itself. – Mladen B. Nov 02 '19 at 20:02
1

@MladenB. How it can be achieved by scp? – Kamran Hosseini Dec 13 '19 at 04:48
Is rsync as safe as scp? – Kamran Hosseini Dec 13 '19 at 05:03

score 10 · Answer 2 · edited Mar 20 '19 at 12:26

10

Generally one asks for scp because there is a reason. I.e. can't install rsyncd on the target.

files=`find . -newermt "-3600 secs"`

for file in $files
do
       sshpass -p "" scp "$file" "root@$IP://usr/local/www/current/$file"
done

edited Mar 20 '19 at 12:26

Dave M

answered Mar 19 '19 at 13:29

Angelo Dureghello

Note that "-cmin N" is maybe a tad simpler. While N is a number of minutes the argument can be also a fractional number, e.g. "-cmin -0.5" gives you the files created in the last 30 seconds. In my experiments the argument had to be negative, tough. – Andreas Spindler Feb 16 '23 at 09:07

2 Answers2