[rsync] rsync: how can I configure it to create target directory on server?

I would like to rsync from local computer to server. On a directory that does not exist, and I want rsync to create that directory on the server first.

How can I do that?

This answer uses bits of other answers, but hopefully it'll be a bit clearer as to the circumstances. You never specified what you were rsyncing - a single directory entry or multiple files.

So let's assume you are moving a source directory entry across, and not just moving the files contained in it.

Let's say you have a directory locally called data/myappdata/ and you have a load of subdirectories underneath this. You have data/ on your target machine but no data/myappdata/ - this is easy enough:

rsync -rvv /path/to/data/myappdata/ user@host:/remote/path/to/data/myappdata

You can even use a different name for the remote directory:

rsync -rvv --recursive /path/to/data/myappdata user@host:/remote/path/to/data/newdirname

If you're just moving some files and not moving the directory entry that contains them then you would do:

rsync -rvv /path/to/data/myappdata/*.txt user@host:/remote/path/to/data/myappdata/

and it will create the myappdata directory for you on the remote machine to place your files in. Again, the data/ directory must exist on the remote machine.

Incidentally, my use of -rvv flag is to get doubly verbose output so it is clear about what it does, as well as the necessary recursive behaviour.

Just to show you what I get when using rsync (3.0.9 on Ubuntu 12.04)

$ rsync -rvv *.txt [email protected]:/tmp/newdir/
opening connection using: ssh -l user remote.machine rsync --server -vvre.iLsf . /tmp/newdir/
[email protected]'s password:
sending incremental file list
created directory /tmp/newdir
delta-transmission enabled
bar.txt
foo.txt
total: matches=0  hash_hits=0  false_alarms=0 data=0

Hope this clears this up a little bit.

eg:

from: /xxx/a/b/c/d/e/1.html

to: user@remote:/pre_existing/dir/b/c/d/e/1.html

rsync:

cd /xxx/a/ && rsync -auvR b/c/d/e/ user@remote:/pre_existing/dir/

from rsync manual (man rsync)

--mkpath create the destination's path component

this worked for me:

 rsync /dev/null node:existing-dir/new-dir/

I do get this message :

skipping non-regular file "null"

but I don't have to worry about having an empty directory hanging around.

Assuming you are using ssh to connect rsync, what about to send a ssh command before:

ssh user@server mkdir -p existingdir/newdir

if it already exists, nothing happens

The -R, --relative option will do this.

For example: if you want to backup /var/named/chroot and create the same directory structure on the remote server then -R will do just that.

I don't think you can do it with one rsync command, but you can 'pre-create' the extra directory first like this:

rsync --recursive emptydir/ destination/newdir

where 'emptydir' is a local empty directory (which you might have to create as a temporary directory first).

It's a bit of a hack, but it works for me.

cheers

Chris