command line Rsync options

Hello,
I am recovering data from an old NAS (in degraded mode) through ssh on my new NAS (TS-664 runing QTS 5.2.6.3195) and rsync.
Unfortunately, it seems that all options of rsync are not available.

Can one let me know what’s the version of rsync packaged with QTS and maybe a link to the appropriate documentation?

Cheers,
Frédéric

Type:
rsync -version
and
rsync -help

That should give you the version that is installed and the options available to you.

1 Like

“current” QTS/QuTS seems to have a decent version of rsync.

What do you get on the old box?
I normally use -aPv but I’ve had fun with either busybox or windows filesystems in the past.
--recursive --times --partial --progress --verbose should be included in pretty much any version of rsync and let you migrate data.

[weedy@TheVault ~]$ rsync --help
rsync  version 3.0.7  protocol version 30
Copyright (C) 1996-2009 by Andrew Tridgell, Wayne Davison, and others.
Web site: http://rsync.samba.org/
Capabilities:
    64-bit files, 64-bit inums, 64-bit timestamps, 64-bit long ints,
    no socketpairs, hardlinks, symlinks, IPv6, batchfiles, inplace,
    append, ACLs, xattrs, iconv, symtimes

rsync comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.  This is free software, and you
are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions.  See the GNU
General Public Licence for details.

rsync is a file transfer program capable of efficient remote update
via a fast differencing algorithm.

Usage: rsync [OPTION]... SRC [SRC]... DEST
  or   rsync [OPTION]... SRC [SRC]... [USER@]HOST:DEST
  or   rsync [OPTION]... SRC [SRC]... [USER@]HOST::DEST
  or   rsync [OPTION]... SRC [SRC]... rsync://[USER@]HOST[:PORT]/DEST
  or   rsync [OPTION]... [USER@]HOST:SRC [DEST]
  or   rsync [OPTION]... [USER@]HOST::SRC [DEST]
  or   rsync [OPTION]... rsync://[USER@]HOST[:PORT]/SRC [DEST]
The ':' usages connect via remote shell, while '::' & 'rsync://' usages connect
to an rsync daemon, and require SRC or DEST to start with a module name.

Options
 -v, --verbose               increase verbosity
 -q, --quiet                 suppress non-error messages
     --no-motd               suppress daemon-mode MOTD (see manpage caveat)
 -c, --checksum              skip based on checksum, not mod-time & size
 -a, --archive               archive mode; equals -rlptgoD (no -H,-A,-X)
     --no-OPTION             turn off an implied OPTION (e.g. --no-D)
 -r, --recursive             recurse into directories
 -R, --relative              use relative path names
     --no-implied-dirs       don't send implied dirs with --relative
 -b, --backup                make backups (see --suffix & --backup-dir)
     --backup-dir=DIR        make backups into hierarchy based in DIR
     --suffix=SUFFIX         set backup suffix (default ~ w/o --backup-dir)
 -u, --update                skip files that are newer on the receiver
     --inplace               update destination files in-place (SEE MAN PAGE)
     --append                append data onto shorter files
     --append-verify         like --append, but with old data in file checksum
 -d, --dirs                  transfer directories without recursing
 -l, --links                 copy symlinks as symlinks
 -L, --copy-links            transform symlink into referent file/dir
     --copy-unsafe-links     only "unsafe" symlinks are transformed
     --safe-links            ignore symlinks that point outside the source tree
 -k, --copy-dirlinks         transform symlink to a dir into referent dir
 -K, --keep-dirlinks         treat symlinked dir on receiver as dir
 -H, --hard-links            preserve hard links
 -p, --perms                 preserve permissions
 -E, --executability         preserve the file's executability
     --chmod=CHMOD           affect file and/or directory permissions
 -A, --acls                  preserve ACLs (implies --perms)
 -X, --xattrs                preserve extended attributes
 -o, --owner                 preserve owner (super-user only)
 -g, --group                 preserve group
     --devices               preserve device files (super-user only)
     --specials              preserve special files
 -D                          same as --devices --specials
 -t, --times                 preserve modification times
 -O, --omit-dir-times        omit directories from --times
     --super                 receiver attempts super-user activities
     --fake-super            store/recover privileged attrs using xattrs
 -S, --sparse                handle sparse files efficiently
 -n, --dry-run               perform a trial run with no changes made
 -W, --whole-file            copy files whole (without delta-xfer algorithm)
 -x, --one-file-system       don't cross filesystem boundaries
 -B, --block-size=SIZE       force a fixed checksum block-size
 -e, --rsh=COMMAND           specify the remote shell to use
     --rsync-path=PROGRAM    specify the rsync to run on the remote machine
     --existing              skip creating new files on receiver
     --ignore-existing       skip updating files that already exist on receiver
     --remove-source-files   sender removes synchronized files (non-dirs)
     --del                   an alias for --delete-during
     --delete                delete extraneous files from destination dirs
     --delete-before         receiver deletes before transfer, not during
     --delete-during         receiver deletes during transfer (default)
     --delete-delay          find deletions during, delete after
     --delete-after          receiver deletes after transfer, not during
     --delete-excluded       also delete excluded files from destination dirs
     --ignore-errors         delete even if there are I/O errors
     --force                 force deletion of directories even if not empty
     --max-delete=NUM        don't delete more than NUM files
     --max-size=SIZE         don't transfer any file larger than SIZE
     --min-size=SIZE         don't transfer any file smaller than SIZE
     --partial               keep partially transferred files
     --partial-dir=DIR       put a partially transferred file into DIR
     --delay-updates         put all updated files into place at transfer's end
 -m, --prune-empty-dirs      prune empty directory chains from the file-list
     --numeric-ids           don't map uid/gid values by user/group name
     --timeout=SECONDS       set I/O timeout in seconds
     --contimeout=SECONDS    set daemon connection timeout in seconds
 -I, --ignore-times          don't skip files that match in size and mod-time
     --size-only             skip files that match in size
     --modify-window=NUM     compare mod-times with reduced accuracy
 -T, --temp-dir=DIR          create temporary files in directory DIR
 -y, --fuzzy                 find similar file for basis if no dest file
     --compare-dest=DIR      also compare destination files relative to DIR
     --copy-dest=DIR         ... and include copies of unchanged files
     --link-dest=DIR         hardlink to files in DIR when unchanged
 -z, --compress              compress file data during the transfer
     --compress-level=NUM    explicitly set compression level
     --skip-compress=LIST    skip compressing files with a suffix in LIST
 -C, --cvs-exclude           auto-ignore files the same way CVS does
 -f, --filter=RULE           add a file-filtering RULE
 -F                          same as --filter='dir-merge /.rsync-filter'
                             repeated: --filter='- .rsync-filter'
     --exclude=PATTERN       exclude files matching PATTERN
     --exclude-from=FILE     read exclude patterns from FILE
     --include=PATTERN       don't exclude files matching PATTERN
     --include-from=FILE     read include patterns from FILE
     --files-from=FILE       read list of source-file names from FILE
 -0, --from0                 all *-from/filter files are delimited by 0s
 -s, --protect-args          no space-splitting; only wildcard special-chars
     --address=ADDRESS       bind address for outgoing socket to daemon
     --port=PORT             specify double-colon alternate port number
     --sockopts=OPTIONS      specify custom TCP options
     --blocking-io           use blocking I/O for the remote shell
     --stats                 give some file-transfer stats
 -8, --8-bit-output          leave high-bit chars unescaped in output
 -h, --human-readable        output numbers in a human-readable format
     --progress              show progress during transfer
 -P                          same as --partial --progress
 -i, --itemize-changes       output a change-summary for all updates
     --out-format=FORMAT     output updates using the specified FORMAT
     --log-file=FILE         log what we're doing to the specified FILE
     --log-file-format=FMT   log updates using the specified FMT
     --password-file=FILE    read daemon-access password from FILE
     --list-only             list the files instead of copying them
     --bwlimit=KBPS          limit I/O bandwidth; KBytes per second
     --write-batch=FILE      write a batched update to FILE
     --only-write-batch=FILE like --write-batch but w/o updating destination
     --read-batch=FILE       read a batched update from FILE
     --protocol=NUM          force an older protocol version to be used
     --iconv=CONVERT_SPEC    request charset conversion of filenames
     --qnap-mode=mode        0:Normal, 1:QRAID1, 2:USB copy 3:HD copy USB
     --check-dest                 Check if the destination path is valid
     --password=WORD         the password of QNAP mode
     --sever-mode=mode       0:Normal, 1:QNAP in daemon-mode
     --schedule=name         specify the schedule name
 -4, --ipv4                  prefer IPv4
 -6, --ipv6                  prefer IPv6
     --version               print version number
(-h) --help                  show this help (-h works with no other options)

Use "rsync --daemon --help" to see the daemon-mode command-line options.
Please see the rsync(1) and rsyncd.conf(5) man pages for full documentation.
See http://rsync.samba.org/ for updates, bug reports, and answers
1 Like

Thanks for the swift responses.
Indeed, rsync -version gave me the 3.0.7 … from 2009 !
I’m quite surprised that we don’t have a more recent version from Qnap :-/

It’s indeed missing features compared to the latest 3.4.1 from 2025.

Cheers…

Well we have the same version.
And it has --archive, what else do you need in order to one-shot your data over?

I hoped I could have a global progress indicator (to see the end of the tunnel), and show transfer speed (to compare to other transfer technique that I have tested).

But otherwise, it just work, no problem.

Ahhh, yeah… we don’t have --info=.

On your newer NAS do you have pv? I do.

rsync -ahiPv --stats /path/to/source/ /path/to/destination/ | pv -lep

It’s something, kinda.

Seems we don’t have pv… :-/

Have you considered setting up an Ubuntu server to meet your needs? It might be a solution.
Thanks!

You mean, a separate server?

By the way, can you let us know why such base tools are not available or uptodate in QNAP NAS ?

I was referring to Ubuntu Linux Station. You can find more details here: How to Use Ubuntu Linux Station | QNAP

I’ll be checking with the team separately about the issue you mentioned!

1 Like

Hi @frederic
After checking with our engineers, the system’s HBS provides another executable at /usr/bin/rsync.hbs.

Please use this one, as it is the version HBS uses to provide external rsync services. The /usr/bin/rsync you are currently using is not intended for external services and only exists for backward compatibility.

1 Like

Many thanks for the feedback!