rsync - May 2003 - Rsyncing Problem with - character!

Dear Rsync Users,
Please can I have a bit of rsync advice?

I am trying to rsync a file called.

'Draft text - with Holley comments.doc' from machine a to machine b.

Unfortunately this isn't working because I think rsync recognises the -
character and thinks it's an option.

I have tried escaping this out as well as putting it all in " " but
neither seems to work though...

This is the command I am running and the message I am getting.

rsync: on remote machine: -: unknown option
rsync error: syntax or usage error (code 1) at main.c(875)
rsync: connection unexpectedly closed (0 bytes read so far)
rsync error: error in rsync protocol data stream (code 12) at io.c(150)

/usr/bin/rsync --rsh=/usr/local/openssh/bin/ssh -avu --delete
"/export/home/tdf/Draft text \- with Holley comments.doc"
root@mymachine.mydomain.com:/home/tdf/Draft text \- with Holley
comments.doc

Any ideas what I can do to make this work?

Cheers,
Tom

On Fri, May 30, 2003 at 11:06:51AM +0100, Tom Freeman
wrote:
> Dear Rsync Users,
> Please can I have a bit of rsync advice?
> 
> I am trying to rsync a file called.
> 
> 'Draft text - with Holley comments.doc' from machine a to machine
b.
> 
> Unfortunately this isn't working because I think rsync recognises the -
> character and thinks it's an option.
> 
> I have tried escaping this out as well as putting it all in " "
but
> neither seems to work though...
> 
> This is the command I am running and the message I am getting.
> 
> rsync: on remote machine: -: unknown option
> rsync error: syntax or usage error (code 1) at main.c(875)
> rsync: connection unexpectedly closed (0 bytes read so far)
> rsync error: error in rsync protocol data stream (code 12) at io.c(150)
> 
> /usr/bin/rsync --rsh=/usr/local/openssh/bin/ssh -avu --delete
> "/export/home/tdf/Draft text \- with Holley comments.doc"
> root@mymachine.mydomain.com:/home/tdf/Draft text \- with Holley
> comments.doc
> 
> Any ideas what I can do to make this work?
Curious one.  It isn't the dash that is the problem but the
spaces.  They are getting interpolated away by the multiple
layers of shells.  If not for the dash it would have created
a file called "Draft" discarding the rest of the filename.

Two approaches seem to work.  The first is an extra layer of
quotes ie.
	rsync -av "file with space in name" server:"'t/file with
space in name'"
Notice the nested "'finame'"  The outermost layer get
stripped by ssh, the inner by the sh process ssh starts.
The other approach is to not specify the destination
filename on the commandline:
	rsync -av "file with space in name" leto:t/

<rant mode="useless">
	I hate spaces in filenames!

	I have been known to cron scripts that traversed
	trees renaming space filled filenames.  The users
	never noticed but for the fact that operations that
	previously failed now worked most of the time.
</rant>
	
 

-- 
________________________________________________________________
	J.W. Schultz            Pegasystems Technologies
	email address:		jw@pegasys.ws

		Remember Cernan and Schmitt

Hi,
Thanks for the quick response, I tried out what you said and this is
what I found.

This works:

/usr/bin/rsync --rsh=/usr/local/openssh/bin/ssh -avu --delete
"/export/home/tdf/Draft text - with Holley comments.doc"
root@mymachine.mydomain.com:/home/tdf/

But no matter how you put it, I can't seem to escape out the destination
file name. So this doesn't work

/usr/bin/rsync --rsh=/usr/local/openssh/bin/ssh -avu --delete
"/export/home/tdf/Draft text - with Holley comments.doc"
"root@mymachine.mydomain.com:/home/tdf/Draft text - with Holley
comments.doc"

neither does this

/usr/bin/rsync --rsh=/usr/local/openssh/bin/ssh -avu --delete
/export/home/tdf/Draft\ text\ \-\ with\ Holley\ comments.doc
root@mymachine.mydomain.com:/home/tdf/Draft\ text\ \-\ with\ Holley\
comments.doc

at least not with my shell.

This is a bit of a problem because I'm using rsync within a wrapper
written in Perl and I really don't want to have to rewrite the Perl code
to account for this limitation... can anyone think of a way to escape
out the destination file name so that rsync does not complain?

Your help is much appreciated,

Regards,
Tom

-----Original Message-----
From: Greger Cronquist [mailto:greger_cronquist@yahoo.se] 
Sent: 30 May 2003 11:12
To: Tom Freeman
Subject: Re: Rsyncing Problem with - character!

Usually, when using quotes, you skip ecape-characters. Depending on your

shell, both

/usr/bin/rsync --rsh=/usr/local/openssh/bin/ssh -avu --delete
"/export/home/tdf/Draft text - with Holley comments.doc"
"root@mymachine.mydomain.com:/home/tdf/Draft text - with Holley
comments.doc"

and

/usr/bin/rsync --rsh=/usr/local/openssh/bin/ssh -avu --delete
/export/home/tdf/Draft\ text\ \-\ with\ Holley\ comments.doc
root@mymachine.mydomain.com:/home/tdf/Draft\ text\ \-\ with\ Holley\
comments.doc

should work. I prefer the former, though you could simplify it to

/usr/bin/rsync --rsh=/usr/local/openssh/bin/ssh -avu --delete
"/export/home/tdf/Draft text - with Holley comments.doc"
root@mymachine.mydomain.com:/home/tdf/


Regards Greger

Tom Freeman wrote:
>Dear Rsync Users,
>Please can I have a bit of rsync advice?
>
>I am trying to rsync a file called.
>
>'Draft text - with Holley comments.doc' from machine a to machine b.
>
>Unfortunately this isn't working because I think rsync recognises the -
>character and thinks it's an option.
>
>I have tried escaping this out as well as putting it all in " "
but
>neither seems to work though...
>
>This is the command I am running and the message I am getting.
>
>rsync: on remote machine: -: unknown option
>rsync error: syntax or usage error (code 1) at main.c(875)
>rsync: connection unexpectedly closed (0 bytes read so far)
>rsync error: error in rsync protocol data stream (code 12) at io.c(150)
>
>/usr/bin/rsync --rsh=/usr/local/openssh/bin/ssh -avu --delete
>"/export/home/tdf/Draft text \- with Holley comments.doc"
>root@mymachine.mydomain.com:/home/tdf/Draft text \- with Holley
>comments.doc
>
>Any ideas what I can do to make this work?
>
>Cheers,
>Tom
>
>
>  
>