rsync of STDIN to a file.

[Ryan Lynch]

On Thu, Nov 19, 2009 at 08:14, Mark Young <mark_young at hotmail.com> wrote:
> I've been unable to find any reference to rsync being used in this fashion.
> Can anyone tell me whether this is possible today, and if not whether it
> might be considered for a future version?

In client mode, 'rsync' can accept a list of files to include/exclude
on STDIN. In daemon mode, it uses STDIN to interact with Inetd. But it
doesn't support a usage like you're describing.

In other words, 'rsync' works like a replacement for 'scp', not 'ssh'
like you're doing, here.

But depending on your requirements, 'rsync' might not have any
improvements to offer you. Unless a significant portion of the file
data already exists on the remote side, 'rsync' will actually be
*slower* than using 'tar' plus 'ssh'. If you actually want to take
advantage of rsync, maybe you can explain a little more about your
requirements, and people can make suggestions. I would ask two
questions:

 - Do you absolutely need to have separate tarballs on the remote
side, per backup?
 - Do the remote-side backups absolutely need to be compressed?

-Ryan