Why rsync uses mkdir without p option

Question

As I can see rsync can't sync file if some of directories in file path doesn't exist. Why it doesn't create this directories with mkdir -p command? Maybe it has an option for that? -r option doesn't work in that case.

Solution 1

Somebody asked a similar question here:

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

It doesn't look like rsync is able to do that. You would have to write a wrapper script that does a mkdir -p on the target directory before executing rsync. If your target directory is on a different server, you might be able to run the mkdir -p command in a script through ssh.

Solution 2

I have encountered the same problem same as you, if the directory of remote target is "/root/test" and I want to use rsync to replicate my files to the remote directory "/root/test/aaa/bbb", then "failed: No such file or directory (2)" will verbose out. The best solution is, give the command "ssh <username>@<remoteHostIP> mkdir -p <absolute_path>" for recursively create the sub-directories at the remote host. Then use rsync command will success.

Comments

[z3ple]

In the end I do the same. Looks like there is no convenient way to persuade rsync create directories recursively

[mivk]

The question you linked to now has an accepted answer which explains that the --relative option does make rsync create the needed directories.

[devasia2112]

even with the switch --rsync-path="mkdir -p /dir && rsync" it will not create a dir. I wrote a shell script and create new /dir right before rsync command is issued. It works like this.