Rsync: provide a list of unsent files

Question

The Rsync -u flag prevents the overwriting of modified destination files. How can I get a list of files that were not sent due to this flag? The -v flag will let me know which files were sent, but I would like to know which ones weren't.

Answer 1

From the rsync man page:

-i, --itemize-changes

Requests a simple itemized list of the changes that are being made to each file, including attribute changes. This is exactly the same as specifying --out-format='%i %n%L'. If you repeat the option, unchanged files will also be output, but only if the receiving rsync is at least version 2.6.7 (you can use -vv with older versions of rsync, but that also turns on the output of other verbose messages).

In my testing, the -ii option isn't working with rsync 3.0.8, but -vv is. Your mileage may vary.

You could also get substantially the same information by invoking rsync with --dry-run and --existing in the opposite direction. So if your regular transfer looked like this:

rsync --update --recursive local:/directory/ remote:/directory/

You would use:

rsync --dry-run --existing --recursive remote:/directory/ local:/directory/

but -vv or -ii is safer and less prone to misinterpretation.