SCP transfer only modified files

Question

I'm using below command to transfer files cross server

scp -rc blowfish /source/directory/* [email protected]:/destination/directory

Is there a way to transfer only files modified files just like update command for cp?

Solution 1

rsync is your friend.

rsync -ru /source/directory/* [email protected]:/destination/directory

If you want it to delete files at the destination that no longer exist at the source, add the --delete option.

Solution 2

Generally one asks for scp because there is a reason. I.e. can't install rsyncd on the target.

files=`find . -newermt "-3600 secs"`

for file in $files
do
       sshpass -p "" scp "$file" "root@$IP://usr/local/www/current/$file"
done

Comments

[Jackson]

Although, if you are syncing to a web server and that server caches HTML, you might not want to use --delete, since visitors on a stale page might request an asset that no longer exists.

[Chris Pillen]

@Jackson a clean process will not include variable data like caches or configs in the sources.

[jacobq]

In some cases I have deal with servers outside of my domain that don't have rsync but have scp. Is there a comparable solution, even if it needs a few lines of scripting?

[Mladen B.]

The answer is helpful, but the question was can this be achieved with scp itself.

[Kamran Hosseini]

@MladenB. How it can be achieved by scp?

[Kamran Hosseini]

Is rsync as safe as scp?