{"slug": "rsync", "name": "rsync", "category": "terminal", "category_name": "Terminal and shell", "description": "Command-line utility for fast, incremental file copying and synchronization, locally or over SSH.", "recommenders": 9, "commenters": 24, "warners": 1, "score": 9.403, "rising": -1.62, "first": "2025-11-03", "latest": "2026-10-12", "why": "HN commenters rely on rsync for backups and for syncing files between machines over SSH, and value that it preserves full file metadata and sends little data when files barely change.The most common caveats are bugs in recent releases and cruft in its old C codebase, plus a quirky CLI that makes some users fear syncing in the wrong direction.", "why_is_quote": false, "has_verdict": true, "sentiment": {"recommend": 12, "neutral": 13, "compare": 3, "warn": 1}, "spark": [0, 1, 2, 1, 1, 3, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0], "listed": true, "loved": ["Backups and sync", "SSH file transfer"], "caveat": "Recent release bugs", "short_quote": "rsync is one of the few utilities that preserve all metadata even when copying between distinct file systems", "icon": false, "domain": null, "github_repo": "github.com/rsyncproject/rsync", "official_url": "https://rsync.samba.org/", "pricing": "open source", "aliases": ["rsync"], "verdict": [{"text": "HN commenters rely on rsync for backups and for syncing files between machines over SSH,", "cites": [{"id": 790676386, "item_id": 49417274, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49417274", "by": "cube00", "date": "2026-08-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "rsync to my local storage at home so I have the required three copies.", "excerpt": "Not OP but I backup with a scheduled rclone to B2 and rsync to my local storage at home so I have the required three copies. I use the Maildir format so each message is its own file making it atomic.", "context": "", "use_case": "local backup copy", "switched_from": "", "story": "Google Workspace thinks my domain is an email provider (2025)"}, {"id": 763894577, "item_id": 47743411, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47743411", "by": "nickjj", "date": "2026-04-12", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "it's an amazing tool", "excerpt": "I evolved an rsync based backup script I've been using for almost a decade into https://github.com/nickjj/bmsu. I use this for backing up my life's work to an external drive but also syncing files to my laptop and phone too. It supports easy restoring as well. No traffic ever leaves your local network and since it uses rsync under the hood the devices being sync'd to don't need to run anything other than SSH. It's a ", "context": "", "use_case": "file syncing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (April 2026)"}, {"id": 762795232, "item_id": 47674702, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47674702", "by": "nickjj", "date": "2026-04-07", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use rsync to sync files / directories between my desktop, laptop and even phone (Android).", "excerpt": "Yep, I use rsync to sync files / directories between my desktop, laptop and even phone (Android). Also an external drive. I ended up creating https://github.com/nickjj/bmsu which calls rsync under the hood but helps you build up a valid rsync command with no surprises. It also codifies each of your backup / restore strategies so you're not having to run massively long rsync commands each time. It's 1 shell script wit", "context": "", "use_case": "syncing and backups", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Stop paying for Dropbox/Google Drive, use your own S3 bucket instead"}, {"id": 795787328, "item_id": 49736708, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49736708", "by": "janci", "date": "2026-09-17", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "My setup: rsync to Synology NAS, snapshotting there, sync to remote Synology NAS over VPN.", "excerpt": "My setup: rsync to Synology NAS, snapshotting there, sync to remote Synology NAS over VPN. (The other NAS is at my parent's and they have similar setup syncing to me) The best part: it is just files, not some proprietary archive. I have high confidence in this. I can restore with the most rudimentary tools. This setup has worked for me well on linux, windows and now mac. I migrated to new computer&os by restoring the", "context": "", "use_case": "backups to NAS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Backups Aren't Simple"}, {"id": 800881856, "item_id": 50055116, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50055116", "by": "opan", "date": "2026-10-12", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "On PCs and my phone I use sftp or rsync", "excerpt": "The main place I see FTP used is on modded video game consoles. 3DS, Switch, PS3, basically all of them get some FTP program early on so you don't need to move a flash drive or SD card back and forth anymore. On PCs and my phone I use sftp or rsync since ssh is pretty much everywhere and becomes very comfortable with a config file with aliases and keys set up.", "context": "", "use_case": "file transfer", "switched_from": "", "story": "IRCv3"}]}, {"text": " and value that it preserves full file metadata and sends little data when files barely change.", "cites": [{"id": 784926576, "item_id": 49057911, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49057911", "by": "adrian_b", "date": "2026-07-26", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "rsync is one of the few utilities that preserve all metadata even when copying between distinct file systems", "excerpt": "I cannot see the original comment as it was deleted, but it seems very weird. There are indeed a lot of Linux/UNIX programs that lose metadata when copying or archiving files, like losing extended file attributes or the high-resolution timestamps with nanosecond resolution. The filesystems that I use (XFS on Linux and UFS on FreeBSD) have timestamps with nanosecond resolution and also extended file attributes, so I w", "context": "", "use_case": "copying files preserving metadata", "switched_from": "", "story": "No Stack Overflow, No Autocomplete: What Coding Felt Like in the 80s"}, {"id": 784927536, "item_id": 49057971, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49057971", "by": "adrian_b", "date": "2026-07-26", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I have always verified that rsync copies the modification timestamps with nanosecond resolution", "excerpt": "OK, you may be right. I have always verified that rsync copies the modification timestamps with nanosecond resolution, because I use these timestamps, but I have never looked at the creation times, because I do not use them. I always have content hashes attached to files in an extended attribute. For detecting duplicates with different names I always use the content hash, which is much more reliable than a creation t", "context": "", "use_case": "copying files with metadata", "switched_from": "", "story": "No Stack Overflow, No Autocomplete: What Coding Felt Like in the 80s"}, {"id": 743545104, "item_id": 46471569, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46471569", "by": "craftkiller", "date": "2026-01-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I've been using this extensively recently.", "excerpt": "I've been using this extensively recently. I was setting up virtual machines that boot a live ISO containing all the software for the machine. I build that ISO with nix. Sometimes I need to change a small config file, which would lead to generating a new 1.7GiB ISO, but 99.9% of that ISO is identical to the previous one. So I used rsync. Blew my mind when after a day of working on these images, uploading 1.7GiB ISO a", "context": "builds VM live ISOs with nix", "use_case": "uploading large ISO images incrementally", "switched_from": "", "story": "The rsync algorithm (1996) [pdf]"}]}, {"text": "The most common caveats are bugs in recent releases and cruft in its old C codebase,", "cites": [{"id": 774746624, "item_id": 48421664, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48421664", "by": "e40", "date": "2026-06-05", "stance": "warn", "quote": "the bugs in the subsequent two versions really scare me", "excerpt": "While I'm grateful for all Andrew has done to create and maintain rsync, I rely heavily on it for backing up files between machines on my home network, so I've spent the time to figure out how to pin the Homebrew version of rsync to 3.4.1 because the bugs in the subsequent two versions really scare me (as does the original report that triggered all this). Here is the process I used to do it, which was way more comple", "context": "backs up files on a home network", "use_case": "backing up files between machines", "switched_from": "", "story": "Did Claude Increase Bugs in Rsync?"}, {"id": 773634912, "item_id": 48352182, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48352182", "by": "amluto", "date": "2026-05-31", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use rsync because Tridge wrote a fine piece of software, and he knows how to write serious software", "excerpt": "This is kind of a sad situation. Tridge is an excellect programmer and a very respected member of the community, and I totally get it. rsync, like most old C projects, has a lot of accumulated cruft, and things that would be nice to fix, and bugs. And those bugs come in at least three classes: semantic bugs, improper interactions with the OS, and memory safety bugs. And the author and long-time maintainer has the sam", "context": "", "use_case": "file synchronization", "switched_from": "", "story": "Remove all LLM generated commits before people get hurt by this nonsense"}, {"id": 774743618, "item_id": 48421476, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48421476", "by": "MYEUHD", "date": "2026-06-05", "stance": "compare", "quote": "The same is true for openrsync and rsync at approximately 18k vs 57k lines.", "excerpt": "I have already been using openrsync even before the recent AI drama. Just like I have been using doas for several years. All I need is `rsync -urvP` and I suspect the majority of users don't need the advanced features either. The smaller code base also means less bugs and vulnerabilities. As an example doas is ~1k lines vs 160k for sudo. That surely means a smaller attack surface. The same is true for openrsync and r", "context": "", "use_case": "file syncing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Did Claude Increase Bugs in Rsync?"}]}, {"text": " plus a quirky CLI that makes some users fear syncing in the wrong direction.", "cites": [{"id": 743587216, "item_id": 46474201, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46474201", "by": "imiric", "date": "2026-01-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Rsync is one of my favorite programs. I use it daily.", "excerpt": "Rsync is one of my favorite programs. I use it daily. The CLI is a bit quirky (e.g. trailing slashes), but once you get used to it, it makes sense. And I really always use the same flags: `-avmLP`, with `-n` for dry runs. One alternative I'd like to try is Google's abandoned CDC[1], which claims to be up to 30x faster than rsync in certain scenarios. Does anyone know if there is a maintained fork with full Linux supp", "context": "", "use_case": "file synchronization", "switched_from": "", "story": "The rsync algorithm (1996) [pdf]"}, {"id": 799099874, "item_id": 49943742, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49943742", "by": "CoastalCoder", "date": "2026-10-03", "stance": "compare", "quote": "I always have this vague fear that I'll rsync in the wrong direction", "excerpt": "Not just you. Also, I always have this vague fear that I'll rsync in the wrong direction, or accidentally blow away unrelated files in rsync's efforts to fully synchronize two directories (can't remember if this is a valid concern). I'm sure these concerns would go away if I used it regularly, but I just don't. \u2018cp' or \u2019scp\u2019 almost always meet my needs. Kinda like the way people are probably right that I should learn", "context": "", "use_case": "syncing directories", "switched_from": "", "story": "cp: -r or -R?"}]}], "praise": [{"label": "Backups and sync", "summary": "Widely used for home backups and keeping files synced across desktops, laptops, phones and drives.", "quotes": [{"id": 790676386, "item_id": 49417274, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49417274", "by": "cube00", "date": "2026-08-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "rsync to my local storage at home so I have the required three copies.", "excerpt": "Not OP but I backup with a scheduled rclone to B2 and rsync to my local storage at home so I have the required three copies. I use the Maildir format so each message is its own file making it atomic.", "context": "", "use_case": "local backup copy", "switched_from": "", "story": "Google Workspace thinks my domain is an email provider (2025)"}, {"id": 762795232, "item_id": 47674702, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47674702", "by": "nickjj", "date": "2026-04-07", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use rsync to sync files / directories between my desktop, laptop and even phone (Android).", "excerpt": "Yep, I use rsync to sync files / directories between my desktop, laptop and even phone (Android). Also an external drive. I ended up creating https://github.com/nickjj/bmsu which calls rsync under the hood but helps you build up a valid rsync command with no surprises. It also codifies each of your backup / restore strategies so you're not having to run massively long rsync commands each time. It's 1 shell script wit", "context": "", "use_case": "syncing and backups", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Stop paying for Dropbox/Google Drive, use your own S3 bucket instead"}, {"id": 795787328, "item_id": 49736708, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49736708", "by": "janci", "date": "2026-09-17", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "My setup: rsync to Synology NAS, snapshotting there, sync to remote Synology NAS over VPN.", "excerpt": "My setup: rsync to Synology NAS, snapshotting there, sync to remote Synology NAS over VPN. (The other NAS is at my parent's and they have similar setup syncing to me) The best part: it is just files, not some proprietary archive. I have high confidence in this. I can restore with the most rudimentary tools. This setup has worked for me well on linux, windows and now mac. I migrated to new computer&os by restoring the", "context": "", "use_case": "backups to NAS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Backups Aren't Simple"}]}, {"label": "SSH file transfer", "summary": "Commenters use it to move files between machines and servers wherever SSH is available, with no extra daemon needed.", "quotes": [{"id": 800881856, "item_id": 50055116, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50055116", "by": "opan", "date": "2026-10-12", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "On PCs and my phone I use sftp or rsync", "excerpt": "The main place I see FTP used is on modded video game consoles. 3DS, Switch, PS3, basically all of them get some FTP program early on so you don't need to move a flash drive or SD card back and forth anymore. On PCs and my phone I use sftp or rsync since ssh is pretty much everywhere and becomes very comfortable with a config file with aliases and keys set up.", "context": "", "use_case": "file transfer", "switched_from": "", "story": "IRCv3"}, {"id": 740629089, "item_id": 46289318, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46289318", "by": "freedomben", "date": "2025-12-16", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Add on rsync for file transfers and I've felt pretty set.", "excerpt": "This is cool very cool and I think I'll give it a try, though I'm wary about using a forked SSH so would love to see things land upstream. I've been using mosh now for over a decade and it is amazing. Add on rsync for file transfers and I've felt pretty set. If you haven't checked out mosh, you should definitely do so!", "context": "", "use_case": "file transfers", "switched_from": "", "story": "High Performance SSH/SCP"}, {"id": 763894577, "item_id": 47743411, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47743411", "by": "nickjj", "date": "2026-04-12", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "it's an amazing tool", "excerpt": "I evolved an rsync based backup script I've been using for almost a decade into https://github.com/nickjj/bmsu. I use this for backing up my life's work to an external drive but also syncing files to my laptop and phone too. It supports easy restoring as well. No traffic ever leaves your local network and since it uses rsync under the hood the devices being sync'd to don't need to run anything other than SSH. It's a ", "context": "", "use_case": "file syncing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (April 2026)"}]}, {"label": "Trusted, dependable tool", "summary": "Called a favorite daily tool and well-written, boring technology that commenters trust.", "quotes": [{"id": 743587216, "item_id": 46474201, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46474201", "by": "imiric", "date": "2026-01-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Rsync is one of my favorite programs. I use it daily.", "excerpt": "Rsync is one of my favorite programs. I use it daily. The CLI is a bit quirky (e.g. trailing slashes), but once you get used to it, it makes sense. And I really always use the same flags: `-avmLP`, with `-n` for dry runs. One alternative I'd like to try is Google's abandoned CDC[1], which claims to be up to 30x faster than rsync in certain scenarios. Does anyone know if there is a maintained fork with full Linux supp", "context": "", "use_case": "file synchronization", "switched_from": "", "story": "The rsync algorithm (1996) [pdf]"}, {"id": 773634912, "item_id": 48352182, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48352182", "by": "amluto", "date": "2026-05-31", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use rsync because Tridge wrote a fine piece of software, and he knows how to write serious software", "excerpt": "This is kind of a sad situation. Tridge is an excellect programmer and a very respected member of the community, and I totally get it. rsync, like most old C projects, has a lot of accumulated cruft, and things that would be nice to fix, and bugs. And those bugs come in at least three classes: semantic bugs, improper interactions with the OS, and memory safety bugs. And the author and long-time maintainer has the sam", "context": "", "use_case": "file synchronization", "switched_from": "", "story": "Remove all LLM generated commits before people get hurt by this nonsense"}, {"id": 762034132, "item_id": 47627133, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47627133", "by": "Hackbraten", "date": "2026-04-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Completely boring technology: aurutils, bash (with bash-it), bat, cp, git, grep, head, man, mv, pacman, rm, rsync, ssh, sudo, tmux, tree, vim.", "excerpt": "Completely boring technology: aurutils, bash (with bash-it), bat, cp, git, grep, head, man, mv, pacman, rm, rsync, ssh, sudo, tmux, tree, vim.", "context": "", "use_case": "file syncing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Which CLI tools do you use daily?"}]}, {"label": "Metadata preservation", "summary": "Preserves all metadata, including nanosecond timestamps, even across different filesystems.", "quotes": [{"id": 784926576, "item_id": 49057911, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49057911", "by": "adrian_b", "date": "2026-07-26", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "rsync is one of the few utilities that preserve all metadata even when copying between distinct file systems", "excerpt": "I cannot see the original comment as it was deleted, but it seems very weird. There are indeed a lot of Linux/UNIX programs that lose metadata when copying or archiving files, like losing extended file attributes or the high-resolution timestamps with nanosecond resolution. The filesystems that I use (XFS on Linux and UFS on FreeBSD) have timestamps with nanosecond resolution and also extended file attributes, so I w", "context": "", "use_case": "copying files preserving metadata", "switched_from": "", "story": "No Stack Overflow, No Autocomplete: What Coding Felt Like in the 80s"}, {"id": 784927536, "item_id": 49057971, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49057971", "by": "adrian_b", "date": "2026-07-26", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I have always verified that rsync copies the modification timestamps with nanosecond resolution", "excerpt": "OK, you may be right. I have always verified that rsync copies the modification timestamps with nanosecond resolution, because I use these timestamps, but I have never looked at the creation times, because I do not use them. I always have content hashes attached to files in an extended attribute. For detecting duplicates with different names I always use the content hash, which is much more reliable than a creation t", "context": "", "use_case": "copying files with metadata", "switched_from": "", "story": "No Stack Overflow, No Autocomplete: What Coding Felt Like in the 80s"}]}, {"label": "Efficient transfers", "summary": "One user found it sent about 600MiB over a day of repeatedly uploading near-identical 1.7GiB ISOs.", "quotes": [{"id": 743545104, "item_id": 46471569, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46471569", "by": "craftkiller", "date": "2026-01-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I've been using this extensively recently.", "excerpt": "I've been using this extensively recently. I was setting up virtual machines that boot a live ISO containing all the software for the machine. I build that ISO with nix. Sometimes I need to change a small config file, which would lead to generating a new 1.7GiB ISO, but 99.9% of that ISO is identical to the previous one. So I used rsync. Blew my mind when after a day of working on these images, uploading 1.7GiB ISO a", "context": "builds VM live ISOs with nix", "use_case": "uploading large ISO images incrementally", "switched_from": "", "story": "The rsync algorithm (1996) [pdf]"}]}, {"label": "Plain-file restores", "summary": "Backups stay as ordinary files that can be restored with basic tools.", "quotes": [{"id": 795787328, "item_id": 49736708, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49736708", "by": "janci", "date": "2026-09-17", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "My setup: rsync to Synology NAS, snapshotting there, sync to remote Synology NAS over VPN.", "excerpt": "My setup: rsync to Synology NAS, snapshotting there, sync to remote Synology NAS over VPN. (The other NAS is at my parent's and they have similar setup syncing to me) The best part: it is just files, not some proprietary archive. I have high confidence in this. I can restore with the most rudimentary tools. This setup has worked for me well on linux, windows and now mac. I migrated to new computer&os by restoring the", "context": "", "use_case": "backups to NAS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Backups Aren't Simple"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "Recent release bugs", "summary": "One user pinned version 3.4.1 because bugs in the two following versions scared them.", "quotes": [{"id": 774746624, "item_id": 48421664, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48421664", "by": "e40", "date": "2026-06-05", "stance": "warn", "quote": "the bugs in the subsequent two versions really scare me", "excerpt": "While I'm grateful for all Andrew has done to create and maintain rsync, I rely heavily on it for backing up files between machines on my home network, so I've spent the time to figure out how to pin the Homebrew version of rsync to 3.4.1 because the bugs in the subsequent two versions really scare me (as does the original report that triggered all this). Here is the process I used to do it, which was way more comple", "context": "backs up files on a home network", "use_case": "backing up files between machines", "switched_from": "", "story": "Did Claude Increase Bugs in Rsync?"}]}, {"label": "Codebase cruft", "summary": "Commenters describe accumulated cruft and bugs in its old C code, and some prefer the smaller openrsync.", "quotes": [{"id": 773634912, "item_id": 48352182, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48352182", "by": "amluto", "date": "2026-05-31", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use rsync because Tridge wrote a fine piece of software, and he knows how to write serious software", "excerpt": "This is kind of a sad situation. Tridge is an excellect programmer and a very respected member of the community, and I totally get it. rsync, like most old C projects, has a lot of accumulated cruft, and things that would be nice to fix, and bugs. And those bugs come in at least three classes: semantic bugs, improper interactions with the OS, and memory safety bugs. And the author and long-time maintainer has the sam", "context": "", "use_case": "file synchronization", "switched_from": "", "story": "Remove all LLM generated commits before people get hurt by this nonsense"}, {"id": 774725616, "item_id": 48420351, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48420351", "by": "amluto", "date": "2026-06-05", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use rsync because Tridge wrote a fine piece of software", "excerpt": "Reposting my previous comment because the post I commented on earlier was flagged to death: This is kind of a sad situation. Tridge is an excellect programmer and a very respected member of the community, and I totally get it. rsync, like most old C projects, has a lot of accumulated cruft, and things that would be nice to fix, and bugs. And those bugs come in at least three classes: semantic bugs, improper interacti", "context": "", "use_case": "file sync", "switched_from": "", "story": "Did Claude Increase Bugs in Rsync?"}, {"id": 774743618, "item_id": 48421476, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48421476", "by": "MYEUHD", "date": "2026-06-05", "stance": "compare", "quote": "The same is true for openrsync and rsync at approximately 18k vs 57k lines.", "excerpt": "I have already been using openrsync even before the recent AI drama. Just like I have been using doas for several years. All I need is `rsync -urvP` and I suspect the majority of users don't need the advanced features either. The smaller code base also means less bugs and vulnerabilities. As an example doas is ~1k lines vs 160k for sudo. That surely means a smaller attack surface. The same is true for openrsync and r", "context": "", "use_case": "file syncing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Did Claude Increase Bugs in Rsync?"}]}, {"label": "Quirky CLI", "summary": "Trailing-slash quirks and fears of syncing the wrong way or deleting unrelated files.", "quotes": [{"id": 743587216, "item_id": 46474201, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46474201", "by": "imiric", "date": "2026-01-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Rsync is one of my favorite programs. I use it daily.", "excerpt": "Rsync is one of my favorite programs. I use it daily. The CLI is a bit quirky (e.g. trailing slashes), but once you get used to it, it makes sense. And I really always use the same flags: `-avmLP`, with `-n` for dry runs. One alternative I'd like to try is Google's abandoned CDC[1], which claims to be up to 30x faster than rsync in certain scenarios. Does anyone know if there is a maintained fork with full Linux supp", "context": "", "use_case": "file synchronization", "switched_from": "", "story": "The rsync algorithm (1996) [pdf]"}, {"id": 799099874, "item_id": 49943742, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49943742", "by": "CoastalCoder", "date": "2026-10-03", "stance": "compare", "quote": "I always have this vague fear that I'll rsync in the wrong direction", "excerpt": "Not just you. Also, I always have this vague fear that I'll rsync in the wrong direction, or accidentally blow away unrelated files in rsync's efforts to fully synchronize two directories (can't remember if this is a valid concern). I'm sure these concerns would go away if I used it regularly, but I just don't. \u2018cp' or \u2019scp\u2019 almost always meet my needs. Kinda like the way people are probably right that I should learn", "context": "", "use_case": "syncing directories", "switched_from": "", "story": "cp: -r or -R?"}]}, {"label": "Bare-bones backups", "summary": "One user said their rsync backups lacked compression, encryption, desktop integration and deduplication.", "quotes": [{"id": 749863042, "item_id": 46866440, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46866440", "by": "eternityforest", "date": "2026-02-02", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I remember doing my own backups with rsync a super long time ago!  It worked pretty well", "excerpt": "I remember doing my own backups with rsync a super long time ago! It worked pretty well, but it didn't have compression, encryption, desktop integration, or deduplication, and adding anything would be one more script to maintain. Now I use Kopia, no real complaints there. I used to use Borg but until recently it needed some fussy extra community package to work on Synology.", "context": "", "use_case": "backups", "switched_from": "", "story": "Time Machine-style Backups with rsync (2018)"}]}], "who": [{"by": "kbenson", "context": "sysadmin managing many systems", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49966608", "date": "2026-10-05"}, {"by": "unanimous", "context": "former Ubuntu user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49737413", "date": "2026-09-17"}, {"by": "Hackbraten", "context": "Librem 5 user in Germany", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49200060", "date": "2026-08-06"}, {"by": "idoubtit", "context": "Linux user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49101064", "date": "2026-07-29"}, {"by": "collinmanderson", "context": "migrates websites between servers", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47820809", "date": "2026-04-18"}, {"by": "thegrey_one", "context": "jailbroken Kindle display setup", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47145503", "date": "2026-02-24"}, {"by": "craftkiller", "context": "builds VM live ISOs with nix", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46471569", "date": "2026-01-02"}, {"by": "_-_-__-_-_-", "context": "45000+ track music library since 2003", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45806980", "date": "2025-11-03"}], "tags": ["for backups", "for home networks", "for Linux users", "for server migrations"], "use_cases": ["file syncing", "file transfer", "file synchronization", "system backups", "syncing directories", "copying phone photos"], "compared": [{"slug": "openrsync", "name": "openrsync", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 2}, {"slug": "dropbox", "name": "Dropbox", "co": 1, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "rclone", "name": "rclone", "co": 3, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "ansible", "name": "Ansible", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "git", "name": "Git", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "syncthing", "name": "Syncthing", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "borgbackup", "name": "BorgBackup", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49732513", "title": "Backups Aren't Simple", "mentions": 3}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49056424", "title": "No Stack Overflow, No Autocomplete: What Coding Felt Like in the 80s", "mentions": 3}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48411635", "title": "Did Claude Increase Bugs in Rsync?", "mentions": 3}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46466734", "title": "The rsync algorithm (1996) [pdf]", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50041540", "title": "IRCv3", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49932236", "title": "The Tao of Backup", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {"neutral": 2}, "2025-12": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-01": {"recommend": 2}, "2026-02": {"recommend": 1, "neutral": 2}, "2026-03": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-04": {"recommend": 3}, "2026-05": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-06": {"recommend": 1, "compare": 1, "warn": 1, "neutral": 1}, "2026-07": {"neutral": 2, "recommend": 1}, "2026-08": {"neutral": 1, "compare": 1, "recommend": 1}, "2026-09": {"neutral": 3}, "2026-10": {"compare": 1, "neutral": 2}}, "quotes": [{"id": 800881856, "item_id": 50055116, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50055116", "by": "opan", "date": "2026-10-12", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "On PCs and my phone I use sftp or rsync", "excerpt": "The main place I see FTP used is on modded video game consoles. 3DS, Switch, PS3, basically all of them get some FTP program early on so you don't need to move a flash drive or SD card back and forth anymore. On PCs and my phone I use sftp or rsync since ssh is pretty much everywhere and becomes very comfortable with a config file with aliases and keys set up.", "context": "", "use_case": "file transfer", "switched_from": "", "story": "IRCv3"}, {"id": 799465729, "item_id": 49966608, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49966608", "by": "kbenson", "date": "2026-10-05", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "we also run an older system based on rsync which rsyncs the system to directory on a server", "excerpt": "You've missed the point. It doesn't matter that you can rebuild the system exactly, the example in question had little to do with how accurate the restores were, it had to do with the time to reinstall. I too can entirely rebuild many systems simple from kickstarting a new one and applying an ansible playbook. Do I want to? No, that's too slow, and I might be doing this operation for tens or hundreds of systems. We h", "context": "sysadmin managing many systems", "use_case": "system backups", "switched_from": "", "story": "The Tao of Backup"}, {"id": 799099874, "item_id": 49943742, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49943742", "by": "CoastalCoder", "date": "2026-10-03", "stance": "compare", "quote": "I always have this vague fear that I'll rsync in the wrong direction", "excerpt": "Not just you. Also, I always have this vague fear that I'll rsync in the wrong direction, or accidentally blow away unrelated files in rsync's efforts to fully synchronize two directories (can't remember if this is a valid concern). I'm sure these concerns would go away if I used it regularly, but I just don't. \u2018cp' or \u2019scp\u2019 almost always meet my needs. Kinda like the way people are probably right that I should learn", "context": "", "use_case": "syncing directories", "switched_from": "", "story": "cp: -r or -R?"}, {"id": 795798608, "item_id": 49737413, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49737413", "by": "unanimous", "date": "2026-09-17", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "It's mainly just rsync.", "excerpt": "When I was using Ubuntu, I would plug my phone into my laptop and run this small script: https://gist.github.com/wheelercj/8cce112fc8ee55fd4858847a526ff69f It's mainly just rsync. When the phone was plugged in, the photos were accessible at a path like \"/run/user/1000/gvfs/gphoto2:host=Apple_Inc._iPhone_abc123/\". Now I use Time Machine, but I still need to check whether it includes iCloud photos.", "context": "former Ubuntu user", "use_case": "copying phone photos", "switched_from": "", "story": "Backups Aren't Simple"}, {"id": 795787328, "item_id": 49736708, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49736708", "by": "janci", "date": "2026-09-17", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "My setup: rsync to Synology NAS, snapshotting there, sync to remote Synology NAS over VPN.", "excerpt": "My setup: rsync to Synology NAS, snapshotting there, sync to remote Synology NAS over VPN. (The other NAS is at my parent's and they have similar setup syncing to me) The best part: it is just files, not some proprietary archive. I have high confidence in this. I can restore with the most rudimentary tools. This setup has worked for me well on linux, windows and now mac. I migrated to new computer&os by restoring the", "context": "", "use_case": "backups to NAS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Backups Aren't Simple"}, {"id": 795766097, "item_id": 49735381, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49735381", "by": "chasil", "date": "2026-09-17", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I finally have rsync configured for some scratch temporary files.", "excerpt": "For my Oracle Linux systems, I rely on the vendor ReaR RPM package for the baseline backup. This is similar to the \"Ignite\" utility that I used in my HP-UX days. https://relax-and-recover.org/ This is two-fold useful, first as it enables boot from backup media for total recovery, second in that it creates a backup.tar.gz that holds everything that was not explitictly ignored in the /etc/rear/local.conf file. I'm runn", "context": "", "use_case": "copying scratch files", "switched_from": "", "story": "Backups Aren't Simple"}, {"id": 790676386, "item_id": 49417274, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49417274", "by": "cube00", "date": "2026-08-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "rsync to my local storage at home so I have the required three copies.", "excerpt": "Not OP but I backup with a scheduled rclone to B2 and rsync to my local storage at home so I have the required three copies. I use the Maildir format so each message is its own file making it atomic.", "context": "", "use_case": "local backup copy", "switched_from": "", "story": "Google Workspace thinks my domain is an email provider (2025)"}, {"id": 790247731, "item_id": 49390483, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49390483", "by": "LarryDarrell", "date": "2026-08-21", "stance": "compare", "quote": "I'm thinking about replacing it with rsync and just kick it off manually", "excerpt": "For discovering new music, I listen to my old college radio station. About once a month they play something good that makes me do a deep dive. I use Pianobar while I work, and creating a station based on a new (to me) artist tends to give me more to explore. I also use music-map.com from time to time. As for acquiring music, I use Bandcamp. If they aren't on there, I'm not above finding it via file sharing. I have a ", "context": "", "use_case": "syncing music library", "switched_from": "", "story": "GrapheneOS in 2027 available on high-end Motorola phones"}, {"id": 787200961, "item_id": 49200060, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49200060", "by": "Hackbraten", "date": "2026-08-06", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "For file transfer, I mostly use rsync, Git, or Unison.", "excerpt": "Taking photos is one of the things I got accustomed to not having. The picture quality on my Librem 5 is just too disappointing [0]. In the past I used Bluetooth for keyboard and mouse when I connected the phone to a monitor. (I no longer do because the USB port on my L5 has broken down so badly that it can no longer maintain a DisplayPort Alt mode connection.) I\u2019ve never used Bluetooth for music or similar, it keeps", "context": "Librem 5 user in Germany", "use_case": "file transfer", "switched_from": "", "story": "I'm switching my phone from Android to Linux"}, {"id": 785617024, "item_id": 49101064, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49101064", "by": "idoubtit", "date": "2026-07-29", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "exec a `rsync` command, then umount", "excerpt": "> - I literally endure calibre because that's how I feed koreader. Any alternatives? I use USB mass storage. In details, I configured KOReader not to start mass storage automatically, so I need two taps after connecting the USB. Then on my Linux PC, I mount the device, exec a `rsync` command, then umount. My ebooks directory uses Git (with LFS) so I can update it from several computers. I considered switching to git-", "context": "Linux user", "use_case": "syncing ebooks to device", "switched_from": "", "story": "KOReader"}, {"id": 784927536, "item_id": 49057971, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49057971", "by": "adrian_b", "date": "2026-07-26", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I have always verified that rsync copies the modification timestamps with nanosecond resolution", "excerpt": "OK, you may be right. I have always verified that rsync copies the modification timestamps with nanosecond resolution, because I use these timestamps, but I have never looked at the creation times, because I do not use them. I always have content hashes attached to files in an extended attribute. For detecting duplicates with different names I always use the content hash, which is much more reliable than a creation t", "context": "", "use_case": "copying files with metadata", "switched_from": "", "story": "No Stack Overflow, No Autocomplete: What Coding Felt Like in the 80s"}, {"id": 784926576, "item_id": 49057911, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49057911", "by": "adrian_b", "date": "2026-07-26", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "rsync is one of the few utilities that preserve all metadata even when copying between distinct file systems", "excerpt": "I cannot see the original comment as it was deleted, but it seems very weird. There are indeed a lot of Linux/UNIX programs that lose metadata when copying or archiving files, like losing extended file attributes or the high-resolution timestamps with nanosecond resolution. The filesystems that I use (XFS on Linux and UFS on FreeBSD) have timestamps with nanosecond resolution and also extended file attributes, so I w", "context": "", "use_case": "copying files preserving metadata", "switched_from": "", "story": "No Stack Overflow, No Autocomplete: What Coding Felt Like in the 80s"}, {"id": 784908784, "item_id": 49056799, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49056799", "by": "jasode", "date": "2026-07-26", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I spent several hours reading the rsync C Language source code line-by-line so I could write a custom patch", "excerpt": "Author is talking about manually typing in by hand the hundreds (or even thousands) of lines of code from magazines like COMPUTE!: https://www.google.com/search?q=compute%21+magazine+code+listings&tbm=isch It's interesting how different people view the past. I used spend hours and days typing in all that BASIC code but I don't look back on it with romantic nostalgia. We were forced to do that simply because modems an", "context": "", "use_case": "patching file dates", "switched_from": "", "story": "No Stack Overflow, No Autocomplete: What Coding Felt Like in the 80s"}, {"id": 778766208, "item_id": 48672888, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48672888", "by": "nickjj", "date": "2026-06-25", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "For syncing, I do it manually with rsync.", "excerpt": "The mobile app is quite good, it works and gets out of your way. I use it on Android. For syncing, I do it manually with rsync. Given the database is 1 file it's easy to move around. You can rsync / scp it over, use a USB cable, use cloud storage, etc.. I use a password manager in a \"read many, write infrequently\" way so I don't mind occasionally syncing it as needed.", "context": "", "use_case": "syncing password database", "switched_from": "", "story": "LastPass notifies users of yet another data breach"}, {"id": 774746624, "item_id": 48421664, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48421664", "by": "e40", "date": "2026-06-05", "stance": "warn", "quote": "the bugs in the subsequent two versions really scare me", "excerpt": "While I'm grateful for all Andrew has done to create and maintain rsync, I rely heavily on it for backing up files between machines on my home network, so I've spent the time to figure out how to pin the Homebrew version of rsync to 3.4.1 because the bugs in the subsequent two versions really scare me (as does the original report that triggered all this). Here is the process I used to do it, which was way more comple", "context": "backs up files on a home network", "use_case": "backing up files between machines", "switched_from": "", "story": "Did Claude Increase Bugs in Rsync?"}, {"id": 774743618, "item_id": 48421476, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48421476", "by": "MYEUHD", "date": "2026-06-05", "stance": "compare", "quote": "The same is true for openrsync and rsync at approximately 18k vs 57k lines.", "excerpt": "I have already been using openrsync even before the recent AI drama. Just like I have been using doas for several years. All I need is `rsync -urvP` and I suspect the majority of users don't need the advanced features either. The smaller code base also means less bugs and vulnerabilities. As an example doas is ~1k lines vs 160k for sudo. That surely means a smaller attack surface. The same is true for openrsync and r", "context": "", "use_case": "file syncing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Did Claude Increase Bugs in Rsync?"}, {"id": 774725616, "item_id": 48420351, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48420351", "by": "amluto", "date": "2026-06-05", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use rsync because Tridge wrote a fine piece of software", "excerpt": "Reposting my previous comment because the post I commented on earlier was flagged to death: This is kind of a sad situation. Tridge is an excellect programmer and a very respected member of the community, and I totally get it. rsync, like most old C projects, has a lot of accumulated cruft, and things that would be nice to fix, and bugs. And those bugs come in at least three classes: semantic bugs, improper interacti", "context": "", "use_case": "file sync", "switched_from": "", "story": "Did Claude Increase Bugs in Rsync?"}, {"id": 773634912, "item_id": 48352182, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48352182", "by": "amluto", "date": "2026-05-31", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use rsync because Tridge wrote a fine piece of software, and he knows how to write serious software", "excerpt": "This is kind of a sad situation. Tridge is an excellect programmer and a very respected member of the community, and I totally get it. rsync, like most old C projects, has a lot of accumulated cruft, and things that would be nice to fix, and bugs. And those bugs come in at least three classes: semantic bugs, improper interactions with the OS, and memory safety bugs. And the author and long-time maintainer has the sam", "context": "", "use_case": "file synchronization", "switched_from": "", "story": "Remove all LLM generated commits before people get hurt by this nonsense"}, {"id": 765132944, "item_id": 47820809, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47820809", "by": "collinmanderson", "date": "2026-04-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "rsync website files", "excerpt": "I just want to point out this guide uses many of the same tasks I use when migrating websites between servers while minimizing downtown. - reduce dns ttl (if not doing an ip swap) - rsync website files - rsync /etc/letsencrypt/ ssl certificates - copy over database (if writes don't happen often and database is small enough, this can be done without replica, just go read_only during migration) - test new server by put", "context": "migrates websites between servers", "use_case": "migrating websites between servers", "switched_from": "", "story": "Migrating from DigitalOcean to Hetzner: From $1,432 to $233 With Zero Downtime"}, {"id": 763894577, "item_id": 47743411, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47743411", "by": "nickjj", "date": "2026-04-12", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "it's an amazing tool", "excerpt": "I evolved an rsync based backup script I've been using for almost a decade into https://github.com/nickjj/bmsu. I use this for backing up my life's work to an external drive but also syncing files to my laptop and phone too. It supports easy restoring as well. No traffic ever leaves your local network and since it uses rsync under the hood the devices being sync'd to don't need to run anything other than SSH. It's a ", "context": "", "use_case": "file syncing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (April 2026)"}, {"id": 762795232, "item_id": 47674702, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47674702", "by": "nickjj", "date": "2026-04-07", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use rsync to sync files / directories between my desktop, laptop and even phone (Android).", "excerpt": "Yep, I use rsync to sync files / directories between my desktop, laptop and even phone (Android). Also an external drive. I ended up creating https://github.com/nickjj/bmsu which calls rsync under the hood but helps you build up a valid rsync command with no surprises. It also codifies each of your backup / restore strategies so you're not having to run massively long rsync commands each time. It's 1 shell script wit", "context": "", "use_case": "syncing and backups", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Stop paying for Dropbox/Google Drive, use your own S3 bucket instead"}, {"id": 762034132, "item_id": 47627133, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47627133", "by": "Hackbraten", "date": "2026-04-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Completely boring technology: aurutils, bash (with bash-it), bat, cp, git, grep, head, man, mv, pacman, rm, rsync, ssh, sudo, tmux, tree, vim.", "excerpt": "Completely boring technology: aurutils, bash (with bash-it), bat, cp, git, grep, head, man, mv, pacman, rm, rsync, ssh, sudo, tmux, tree, vim.", "context": "", "use_case": "file syncing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Which CLI tools do you use daily?"}, {"id": 756402896, "item_id": 47275181, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47275181", "by": "adrian_b", "date": "2026-03-06", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use every day rsync over SSH, and even between 7 to 10 years old computers it reaches the maximum link speed", "excerpt": "The claim of being 7x faster than rsync is very dubious. I would like to know the test conditions for such a result. I use every day rsync over SSH, and even between 7 to 10 years old computers it reaches the maximum link speed over 2.5 Gb/s Ethernet. So in order to need something faster than rsync and be able to test it, one must use at least 10 Gb/s Ethernet, where I do not know how good must be your CPU to reach l", "context": "", "use_case": "file transfer over SSH", "switched_from": "", "story": "Parsync, a tool for parallel SSH transfers \u2013 7x faster than rsync"}, {"id": 754328048, "item_id": 47145503, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47145503", "by": "thegrey_one", "date": "2026-02-24", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "And I use rsync from a raspberry pi to push a new image every minute.", "excerpt": "I took an even simpler route. After jailbreak and ssh I just made two scripts on the Kindle, one is triggered every minute, the other every half hour. Both draw the same image from the same location, the 30 minute one just adds a full refresh. This way the display is not fully refreshed every minute, but in time image is degrading so full refresh once every 30 minutes seems work out fine. This way Kindle has a very s", "context": "jailbroken Kindle display setup", "use_case": "pushing images to Kindle", "switched_from": "", "story": "Hacking an old Kindle to display bus arrival times"}, {"id": 749863042, "item_id": 46866440, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46866440", "by": "eternityforest", "date": "2026-02-02", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I remember doing my own backups with rsync a super long time ago!  It worked pretty well", "excerpt": "I remember doing my own backups with rsync a super long time ago! It worked pretty well, but it didn't have compression, encryption, desktop integration, or deduplication, and adding anything would be one more script to maintain. Now I use Kopia, no real complaints there. I used to use Borg but until recently it needed some fussy extra community package to work on Synology.", "context": "", "use_case": "backups", "switched_from": "", "story": "Time Machine-style Backups with rsync (2018)"}, {"id": 749688289, "item_id": 46855518, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46855518", "by": "nickjj", "date": "2026-02-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I can use rsync which is a tool I've been using for syncing files for a long time.", "excerpt": "I use Termux to run SSH on demand, it's quite nice for rsync'ing files between my phone and desktop. The on demand nature of it is a major selling point to me. When I open Termux and run SSH it's up, if I shut down Termux, SSH goes away with it. That and I can use rsync which is a tool I've been using for syncing files for a long time.", "context": "", "use_case": "syncing files phone to desktop", "switched_from": "", "story": "Termux"}, {"id": 743587216, "item_id": 46474201, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46474201", "by": "imiric", "date": "2026-01-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Rsync is one of my favorite programs. I use it daily.", "excerpt": "Rsync is one of my favorite programs. I use it daily. The CLI is a bit quirky (e.g. trailing slashes), but once you get used to it, it makes sense. And I really always use the same flags: `-avmLP`, with `-n` for dry runs. One alternative I'd like to try is Google's abandoned CDC[1], which claims to be up to 30x faster than rsync in certain scenarios. Does anyone know if there is a maintained fork with full Linux supp", "context": "", "use_case": "file synchronization", "switched_from": "", "story": "The rsync algorithm (1996) [pdf]"}, {"id": 743545104, "item_id": 46471569, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46471569", "by": "craftkiller", "date": "2026-01-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I've been using this extensively recently.", "excerpt": "I've been using this extensively recently. I was setting up virtual machines that boot a live ISO containing all the software for the machine. I build that ISO with nix. Sometimes I need to change a small config file, which would lead to generating a new 1.7GiB ISO, but 99.9% of that ISO is identical to the previous one. So I used rsync. Blew my mind when after a day of working on these images, uploading 1.7GiB ISO a", "context": "builds VM live ISOs with nix", "use_case": "uploading large ISO images incrementally", "switched_from": "", "story": "The rsync algorithm (1996) [pdf]"}, {"id": 740629089, "item_id": 46289318, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46289318", "by": "freedomben", "date": "2025-12-16", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Add on rsync for file transfers and I've felt pretty set.", "excerpt": "This is cool very cool and I think I'll give it a try, though I'm wary about using a forked SSH so would love to see things land upstream. I've been using mosh now for over a decade and it is amazing. Add on rsync for file transfers and I've felt pretty set. If you haven't checked out mosh, you should definitely do so!", "context": "", "use_case": "file transfers", "switched_from": "", "story": "High Performance SSH/SCP"}, {"id": 736306292, "item_id": 46019143, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46019143", "by": "amitav1", "date": "2025-11-22", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "using rsync to send them over to my server", "excerpt": "I use Org-mode w/ GNU Emacs for all of my blogging(shameless plug: amitav.net). I like Org-mode because it's easy enough to write, looks nice enough, can be exported in quite a few formats, and the code block handling is chef's kiss. It supports quite a few languages and has a feature I've seen in no other editor before, where you can chain together code from different code blocks, and evaluate it, inside of the docu", "context": "", "use_case": "publishing files to server", "switched_from": "", "story": "Markdown is holding you back"}, {"id": 732911681, "item_id": 45806980, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45806980", "by": "_-_-__-_-_-", "date": "2025-11-03", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "use rsync to synchronize a subset of these albums", "excerpt": "I have a music folder 45000+ tracks and counting dating from as far back as 2003. I sync this 450 GB folder to two computers using syncthing and then use rsync to synchronize a subset of these albums (folders by format) to SD Cards inside iPod's. I use Strawberry player for listening (a fork of Clementine) and a combination of beets and MusicBrainz for tagging. Then, I scrobble my listens on ListenBrainz. When I'm in", "context": "45000+ track music library since 2003", "use_case": "syncing music to SD cards", "switched_from": "", "story": "Maintaining a Music Library, Ten Years On"}]}