Why cwRsync doesn't work on Windows?

I'm trying to run rsync on Windows with the cwrsync port.

I'm issuing the following command (note that this is just a dry run):

rsync -nPaAz foouser@webxx.example.com:/home/foobar/webapps/barbaz/ C:\\mybackupfolder\

but I get the following error

The source and destination cannot both be remote.
rsync error: syntax or usage error (code 1) at main.c(1148) [Receiver=3.0.8]

Could someone point me in the right direction?

Lorenzo

Posted 2011-09-20T22:10:27.633

Reputation: 281

Answers

For the destination try using:

/cygdrive/c/mybackupfolder/

Note that a colon tells rsync that the location is remote.

jftuga

Posted 2011-09-20T22:10:27.633

Reputation: 2 877

This actually works for me. You can just prepend /cygdrive/ before any windows drive. I installed rsync through Chocolatey (therefore cygwin based). – seb – 2019-08-08T11:36:43.110

Gotcha about the colon! But it doesn't seem to help. Tried this other version (%CD% is an env variable pointing to the current dir) too but still failing:

rsync -nPaAz foouser@webxx.example.com:/home/foobar/webapps/barbaz/ %CD% – Lorenzo – 2011-09-20T22:38:10.840

2what about changing to the destination directory and then just use "." for the destination? – jftuga – 2011-09-21T02:30:41.600

My environment: Windows 10, in powershell. Solution also worked in a DOS prompt.

The problem is caused by the : after the drive letters, which makes it look like a hostname specification. You have to use an alternative notation.

I was using rsync installed via Chocolatey, so no cygwin drives.

Windows 10 lets me do this on powershell:

dir //localhost/C$

so, this command, run in a Windows 10 powershell, worked just fine for me, after running into same exact problem.

rsync -av //localhost/d$/home/work/fb460.winbup/src //localhost/d$/home/work/fb460.winbup/tgt

JL Peyret

Posted 2011-09-20T22:10:27.633

Reputation: 673

Note this doesn't work or at least I couldn't make it work for ext2fsd drives. Your experience might differ. However as I wanted to copy from ext2 to ntfs I just changed to the ext2 drive and ran rsync -a some/path //localhost/c$/some/path – chx – 2017-05-02T09:20:40.733

I also installed via Chocolatey. This worked well for me! NTFS to NTFS. – jonathanbell – 2018-01-06T22:33:06.627

Got here from a similar problem with rsync for Windows.

Instead of using the path, just make a .bat file that uses CD C:\whereto\ then in the rsync command just use . as the directory to save to.

Example (something.bat):

@echo off  
cd C:\mybackupfolder\  
rsync -nPaAz foouser@webxx.example.com:/home/foobar/webapps/barbaz/ .

Vile

Posted 2011-09-20T22:10:27.633

Reputation: 51

Try

 rsync -nPaAz foouser@webxx.example.com:/home/foobar/webapps/barbaz/ C:/mybackupfolder/

Krumelur

Posted 2011-09-20T22:10:27.633

Reputation: 587

This does not work as expected for me. – Emre Yazici – 2012-04-29T22:54:55.687