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Simpler & faster?
Authored by: MattHaffner on Oct 05, '04 02:56:07PM

My standard rsync line works great with my iTunes directory:

rsync -ave ssh Music/iTunes/ DesktopMachine.local:Music/iTunes

Or, more verbosely:

rsync --archive --verbose --rsh=ssh Music/iTunes/ DesktopMachine.local:Music/iTunes

--archive puts together all the essential syncing features. Add --progress if you want fancier output. Add --delete if you really want the two directories to be *identical* (it removes files that aren't on the source). Add -z (--compress) if you are running over a slow link (although this may not help much with compressed audio files).

You almost never want to use -W (--whole-file). One of rsync's best features is how well and how fast it does incremental syncing. If you just change tags, artwork, etc. on a tune, you don't need to send the whole file to the destination. I would be surprised if this saved any time unless both machines are older with slow disks and are on a LAN. Any other use would probably be better with the default (i.e., not specifying whole-file).

Finally, --size-only will skip not only date-differing files, but changes you make that don't actually change the file size. If you update tags again, say change years or track numbers, that can be the case. That's why you want to leave the incremental checking in (see above paragraph). If the dates differ but content doesn't, rsync only has to update the time on the destination. You haven't wasted any time but are ensuring that the files are truly synced. When you specify --whole-file, it has to transfer the whole dang file no matter what.

rsync is one of the most fantastic command line utilities (closely followed by wget/curl) out there. It does have lots of fun options to play with, but what's great about it is that the defaults are often the best to go with. Trust it!



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Try syncOtunes
Authored by: ThoGen on Oct 07, '04 06:02:06AM

http://homepage.mac.com/oligrob/syncOtunes/syncOtunes.html



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