rsync multiple remote directories to local machine preserving directory paths

Question

Would I be able to use rsync as such:

rsync -e ssh [email protected]:/path/to/file:/path/to/second/file/ /local/directory/ 

or would i have to do something else?

Answer 1

Directly from the rsync man page:

The syntax for requesting multiple files from a remote host is done by specifying additional remote-host args in the same style as the  first, or with the hostname omitted.  For instance, all these work:      rsync -av host:file1 :file2 host:file{3,4} /dest/     rsync -av host::modname/file{1,2} host::modname/file3 /dest/     rsync -av host::modname/file1 ::modname/file{3,4} 

This means your example should have a space added before the second path:

rsync -e ssh [email protected]:/path/to/file :/path/to/second/file/ /local/directory/ 

I'd suggest you first try it with the -n or --dry-run option, so you see what will be done, before the copy (and possible deletions) are actually performed.