Tutorial

How To Copy Files With Rsync Over SSH

Updated on January 19, 2021

Linux Basics

Bulat Khamitov

Step 1 - Setup public SSH keys

On our origin server, we will generate public SSH keys with no password:

ssh-keygen -f ~/.ssh/id_rsa -q -P ""
cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

This is our public SSH key that can be placed on other hosts to give us access:

ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAADAQABAAABAQDLVDBIpdpfePg/a6h8au1HTKPPrg8wuTrjdh0QFVPpTI4KHctf6/FGg1NOgM++hrDlbrDVStKn/b3Mu65//tuvY5SG9sR4vrINCSQF++a+YRTGU6Sn4ltKpyj3usHERvBndtFXoDxsYKRCtPfgm1BGTBpoSl2A7lrwnmVSg+u11FOa1xSZ393aaBFDSeX8GlJf1SojWYIAbE25Xe3z5L232vZ5acC2PJkvKctzvUttJCP91gbNe5FSwDolE44diYbNYqEtvq2Jt8x45YzgFSVKf6ffnPwnUDwhtvc2f317TKx9l2Eq4aWqXTOMiPFA5ZRM/CF0IJCqeXG6s+qVfRjB root@cloudads

Copy this key to your clipboard and login to your destination server.

Place this SSH key into your ~/.ssh/authorized_keys file:

If your SSH folder does not exist, create it manually:

mkdir ~/.ssh
chmod 0700 ~/.ssh
touch ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
chmod 0644 ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

Step 3 - Rsync files over

Rsync is a great utility, as it allows you, among many other things, to copy files recursively with compression, and over an encrypted channel.

We will copy a file from our origin server (198.211.117.101) in /root/bigfile.txt over to our destination server (IP: 198.211.117.129) and save it in /root/bigfile.txt as well.

rsync -avz -e "ssh -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no -o UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null" --progress /root/bigfile.txt 198.211.117.129:/root/

If you are using a different user, for example "username" then you would have to append it in front of destination server. Make sure to have your public key in that user's ~/.ssh/authorized_keys file:

rsync -avz -e "ssh -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no -o UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null" --progress /root/bigfile.txt username@198.211.117.129:/

The SSH options are useful to keep Rsync quiet and not prompting everytime you connect to a new server.

Verify that you have received the file on destination server (198.211.117.129):

ls -la /root/bigfile.txt

And you are all done!

By Bulat Khamitov

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Bulat Khamitov

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scdavis41 • June 26, 2013

I’m having issues getting this to work. I tried sending to /root/ and also to a different user. When I send to root, I get this error:

rsync: change_dir#1 “/root/” failed: Permission denied (13)

When I try to send it to user@IP it thinks I’m sending it locally and creates a directory on my machine. So I tried sending it to: ssh://user@IP and also tried ssh://IP:/root/ – in both cases, it seems to get stuck. No errors, just stuck. Any suggestions on what to try next are appreciated in advance!

Kamal Nasser

DigitalOcean Employee

• June 26, 2013

@scdavis41 what exact command are you running?

scdavis41 • June 26, 2013

Here’s the command I’m running in trying to send it to root:

rsync -avz -e “ssh -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no -o UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null” --progress ~/rocktree/dev/apps/countdown-timer/index.php 192.81.208.45:/root/

And here is the full error:

rsync: change_dir#1 “/root/” failed: Permission denied (13) rsync error: errors selecting input/output files, dirs (code 3) at main.c(562) [Receiver=3.0.9] rsync: connection unexpectedly closed (8 bytes received so far) [sender] rsync error: error in rsync protocol data stream (code 12) at /SourceCache/rsync/rsync-42/rsync/io.c(452) [sender=2.6.9]

Kamal Nasser

DigitalOcean Employee

• June 26, 2013

To be able to upload to /root, you have to connect as root:

rsync -avz -e “ssh -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no -o UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null” --progress ~/rocktree/dev/apps/countdown-timer/index.php root@192.81.208.45:/root/

scdavis41 • June 26, 2013

Awesome! That did it. Thanks so much, Kamal.

Kamal Nasser

DigitalOcean Employee

• June 27, 2013

@scdavis41: Glad I could help! :]

toleandj • July 11, 2013

nice! thanks!

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hlima • July 30, 2013

thanks !!

urgen • July 30, 2013

how to run rsync over ssh in a crontab… im having this problem …do you have any suggestions ?? i gave full path to rsync ,ssh etc etc …the script works fine when executed but when place in crontab i doesnt work at all.

Kamal Nasser

DigitalOcean Employee

• July 30, 2013

@urgen: Please paste the line you added to your crontab file.