rsync - Aug 2008 - How to escape spaces in rsync source and destination paths

This may not be an rsync-specific question, but it is certainly stopping me
from moving forward with rsync and I am sure it has a simple solution. I
have written a simple shell script to rsync disks attached to a Mac OS X
Server 10.4.11 Xserve box at our offices to a similar Mac OS X Server
10.4.11 setup at our colocation facility. The script runs rsync 3.0.3 on the
machine at the colocation facility but syncs the disks at our office back to
its own disks, so DIRS is the path to the directory being backed up, which
is remote, and BACKUP DIR is the path to the backup destination, which is on
the machine running the script.

The script works fine, except when I try to specify paths containing spaces.
As you can see from the script excerpts below and the result, the backslash
escape character isn't getting the job done and I can't figure out why.
I've
never had any trouble using the backslash escape in this way before.

Can anyone suggest a different approach, other than renaming all my paths to
eliminate spaces, which is the direction I seem to be heading :-)

--------------------------------------------------------

DIRS="admin@192.168.100.47:/Volumes/Christine/Complete_Rug_Image_Archive/Lay
ered\ Rooms/"

BACKUPDIR="/Volumes/Paris/Complete_Rug_Image_Archive/Layered\ Rooms/"

COMMAND="sudo /usr/local/bin/rsync  $OPTS $EXCLUDES $DIRS $BACKUPDIR"

result:

Unexpected local arg: Rooms/
If arg is a remote file/dir, prefix it with a colon (:).
rsync error: syntax or usage error (code 1) at main.c(1216) [receiver=3.0.3]
----------------------------------------------------------

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On Wed, Aug 20, 2008 at 10:32:23AM -0400, Carney Mimms
wrote:
> COMMAND="sudo /usr/local/bin/rsync  $OPTS $EXCLUDES $DIRS
$BACKUPDIR"
That's a sudo issue, since sudo runs the command and splits the args on
spaces.  You need to either add extra backslashes (\\\ for every \), add
extra quoting (e.g. "'$DIRS'", which would only work for a
single name),
or put the source args into a file and use --files-from (with an
explicit -r if you're expecting recursion).

..wayne..

On Aug 20, 2008, at 10:32 AM, "Carney Mimms"  
<Carney.Mimms@nourison.com> wrote:
> This may not be an rsync-specific question, but it is certainly  
> stopping me
> from moving forward with rsync and I am sure it has a simple  
> solution. I
> have written a simple shell script to rsync disks attached to a Mac  
> OS X
> Server 10.4.11 Xserve box at our offices to a similar Mac OS X Server
> 10.4.11 setup at our colocation facility. The script runs rsync  
> 3.0.3 on the
> machine at the colocation facility but syncs the disks at our office  
> back to
> its own disks, so DIRS is the path to the directory being backed up,  
> which
> is remote, and BACKUP DIR is the path to the backup destination,  
> which is on
> the machine running the script.
>
> The script works fine, except when I try to specify paths containing  
> spaces.
> As you can see from the script excerpts below and the result, the  
> backslash
> escape character isn't getting the job done and I can't figure out
> why. I've
> never had any trouble using the backslash escape in this way before.
>
> Can anyone suggest a different approach, other than renaming all my  
> paths to
> eliminate spaces, which is the direction I seem to be heading :-)
>
> --------------------------------------------------------
>
> DIRS="admin@192.168.100.47:/Volumes/Christine/ 
> Complete_Rug_Image_Archive/Lay
> ered\ Rooms/"
>
> BACKUPDIR="/Volumes/Paris/Complete_Rug_Image_Archive/Layered\
Rooms/"
>
> COMMAND="sudo /usr/local/bin/rsync  $OPTS $EXCLUDES $DIRS
$BACKUPDIR"
>
> result:
>
> Unexpected local arg: Rooms/
> If arg is a remote file/dir, prefix it with a colon (:).
> rsync error: syntax or usage error (code 1) at main.c(1216)  
> [receiver=3.0.3]
> ----------------------------------------------------------
>
You haven't shown us the Rsync portion of your script.

Are you using the protect args flag?

Kyle
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On OSX 10.4.11 , I am using this for instance and it seem there is  
not problem with spaces in file names of Volume names.
I did have problems originally, but after addig double quotes  
everywhere it worked fine.


folderSourceToBackup="/Users/"

VOLUMES="/Volumes/"

backupVolume=${VOLUMES}"${NOMVOLUME}"

exceptions="**/Caches/"

destination="/Sauvegardes_hebdomadaires/"

backupPath="${backupVolume}${destination}"


for i in ${folderSourceToBackup}*
do
USERNAME=$(basename ${i}) 				
echo -n "[*]: Starting  backup of user ${USERNAME} to ${backupPath}"  
| logger
rsync -aEv --delete --exclude=${exceptions} --delete-excluded  ${i} "$ 
{backupPath}" 2

done