Comments on: Backup Windows Files with Rsync via Cygwin

By: Rolf Maier

Rolf Maier — Mon, 26 Jul 2021 00:58:39 +0000

Instead of Notepad** you can add dos2unix to cygwin if the original install did not get it. ‘which dos2unix =’ will tell you).
Now do: cd ~/Downloads; ./setup-…..exe [~ is shorthand for the home directory in Unix/Linux.]
In the ‘Select Packages’ window pick ‘Not Installed’, in the empty box named View type dos2unix.
Now do a direct install or do in two steps; first download (default location: ~/Downloads), then install.
dos2unix does an in-place conversion. For more read the (automatically installed) manual
man dos2unix.

By: Tim Eveleigh

Tim Eveleigh — Sun, 13 Dec 2020 12:57:08 +0000

In reply to boshy.

“Im still trying to figure out how to make sure I dont keep creating the folder inside the folder by leaving off trailing slashe”

I had this problem too! You can use dot syntax (something like ‘path/to/./folder’ – some experimentation probably required to work out exactly what you want) to avoid creating unnecessary folders

By: DCE Speedy

DCE Speedy — Sun, 19 Jul 2020 19:29:38 +0000

In reply to boshy.

rsync creates the end folder name in the target folder *unless* you include the / at the end of both paths.

IMPORTANT WARNING: please use “–whole-file” instead of allowing the partial file to remain if the command is stopped or fails for some reason. I have found that binary partial copies don’t always copy properly on restart. I don’t know why and partial updates have worked in the past, but if this is a backup, don’t take chances. I move 100s of TB on large Linux databases quite often with parallel runs of rsync. It is a great tool, but the possible corruption issue has bit me in the tail more than once.

The following creates the end paths which you don’t want. (note -a includes -r and -t)

rsync -auvh –stats –progress –whole-file /src/path/folder1 /target/path/folder1

results /target/path/folder1/folder1

Adding the forward slashes, I know it is not well documented, copies the contents of /src/path/folder1 into /target/path/folder1

So the following does what you want.

rsync -auvh –stats –progress –whole-file /src/path/folder1/ /target/path/folder1/

results /target/path/folder1

By: boshy

boshy — Sun, 10 May 2020 07:02:10 +0000

This has been a really very useful guide to getting this up and running on some old Win7 machines, just backing up to ext drives. Im still trying to figure out how to make sure I dont keep creating the folder inside the folder by leaving off trailing slashes, once yuove made the initial data backup, so hope my next tests will work out.

Other things to note for other total noobs like me:
– To install only the packages you want from Cygwin, do not select the top’All’/install. It WILL install everything. Cygwin is massive, around 18gb I think, in total. Go to the specific packages and select install from those.
– Select a mirror that is close to your location, and preferably use ftp for speed.
– To access the C:/cygwin folder from your terminal, go up a level to C, as your initial terminal window is in your local user level.
– Any spaces in names of folders or user names can be surrounded by apostrophes to escape the spaces.
– Note that names of folders for ‘Documents’, ‘Pictures’ etc do not contain ‘My Pictures’, for example, they are just called ‘Documents’, Pictures’ when accessed from C.

Hope this helps someone else getting started with this.