Listing Changed Files Without Two Copies?

[Matthias Schniedermeyer]

On 03.07.2009 18:06, Jon Watson wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> I am aware that rsync can be run to just list the files that have  
> changed between the source and destination. I would like to capitalize  
> on that feature to monitor some development that is going on in order to  
> get a complete list of files that have been changed on a server.
>
> I realize that I can create an initial rsync of the files to some other  
> location and then sometime later run rsync in list only mode against  
> that initial repository to find out what files have changed.
>
> I also realize that there are revisioning tools out there but they are  
> complete overkill for this particular issue.
>
> What I am curious about is if there is a way to achieve this without  
> maintaining two copies of the files. Is there any way to run rsync  
> against a fileset where rsync will produce a checksum or something for  
> those files and can then later determine what files have changed without  
> maintaining a second copy of those files?
>
> I realize rsync is primarily a backup tool (and a great one!) and this  
> probably falls outside of its purview.

man md5sum


Initially (With filenames that (may) contain spaces):
find * -type f -printf %p\\0 | xargs -0 md5sum > md5

Without filenames that contain spaces it's a little shorter:
find * -type f | xargs md5sum > md5

Then you have a file with an md5sum of all files


And to later check what files have changed:
md5sum -c md5


That's it.



Bis denn

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