How can I configure rsync to create target directory on remote server?

If you have more than the last leaf directory to be created, you can either run a separate ssh ... mkdir -p first, or use the --rsync-path trick as explained here :

rsync -a --rsync-path="mkdir -p /tmp/x/y/z/ && rsync" $source user@remote:/tmp/x/y/z/

Or use the --relative option as suggested by Tony. In that case, you only specify the root of the destination, which must exist, and not the directory structure of the source, which will be created:

rsync -a --relative /new/x/y/z/ user@remote:/pre_existing/dir/

This way, you will end up with /pre_existing/dir/new/x/y/z/

And if you want to have "y/z/" created, but not inside "new/x/", you can add ./ where you want --relativeto begin:

rsync -a --relative /new/x/./y/z/ user@remote:/pre_existing/dir/

would create /pre_existing/dir/y/z/.

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Assuming you are using ssh to connect rsync, what about to send a ssh command before:

ssh user@server mkdir -p existingdir/newdir

if it already exists, nothing happens

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From the rsync manual page (man rsync):

--mkpath                 create the destination's path component

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The -R, --relative option will do this.

For example: if you want to backup /var/named/chroot and create the same directory structure on the remote server then -R will do just that.

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this worked for me:

 rsync /dev/null node:existing-dir/new-dir/

I do get this message :

skipping non-regular file "null"

but I don't have to worry about having an empty directory hanging around.

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I don't think you can do it with one rsync command, but you can 'pre-create' the extra directory first like this:

rsync --recursive emptydir/ destination/newdir

where 'emptydir' is a local empty directory (which you might have to create as a temporary directory first).

It's a bit of a hack, but it works for me.

cheers

Chris

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This answer uses bits of other answers, but hopefully it'll be a bit clearer as to the circumstances. You never specified what you were rsyncing - a single directory entry or multiple files.

So let's assume you are moving a source directory entry across, and not just moving the files contained in it.

Let's say you have a directory locally called data/myappdata/ and you have a load of subdirectories underneath this. You have data/ on your target machine but no data/myappdata/ - this is easy enough:

rsync -rvv /path/to/data/myappdata/ user@host:/remote/path/to/data/myappdata

You can even use a different name for the remote directory:

rsync -rvv --recursive /path/to/data/myappdata user@host:/remote/path/to/data/newdirname

If you're just moving some files and not moving the directory entry that contains them then you would do:

rsync -rvv /path/to/data/myappdata/*.txt user@host:/remote/path/to/data/myappdata/

and it will create the myappdata directory for you on the remote machine to place your files in. Again, the data/ directory must exist on the remote machine.

Incidentally, my use of -rvv flag is to get doubly verbose output so it is clear about what it does, as well as the necessary recursive behaviour.

Just to show you what I get when using rsync (3.0.9 on Ubuntu 12.04)

$ rsync -rvv *.txt user@remote.machine:/tmp/newdir/
opening connection using: ssh -l user remote.machine rsync --server -vvre.iLsf . /tmp/newdir/
user@remote.machine's password:
sending incremental file list
created directory /tmp/newdir
delta-transmission enabled
bar.txt
foo.txt
total: matches=0  hash_hits=0  false_alarms=0 data=0

Hope this clears this up a little bit.

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eg:

from: /xxx/a/b/c/d/e/1.html

to: user@remote:/pre_existing/dir/b/c/d/e/1.html

rsync:

cd /xxx/a/ && rsync -auvR b/c/d/e/ user@remote:/pre_existing/dir/

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rsync source.pdf user1@192.168.56.100:~/not-created/target.pdf

If the target file is fully specified, the directory ~/not-created is not created.

rsync source.pdf user1@192.168.56.100:~/will-be-created/

But the target is specified with only a directory, the directory ~/will-be-created is created. / must be followed to let rsync know will-be-created is a directory.

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use rsync twice~

1: tranfer a temp file, make sure remote relative directories has been created.

tempfile=/Users/temp/Dir0/Dir1/Dir2/temp.txt
# Dir0/Dir1/Dir2/ is directory that wanted.
rsync -aq /Users/temp/ rsync://remote

2: then you can specify the remote directory for transfer files/directory

tempfile|dir=/Users/XX/data|/Users/XX/data/
rsync -avc /Users/XX/data rsync://remote/Dir0/Dir1/Dir2
# Tips: [SRC] with/without '/' is different

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This creates the dir tree /usr/local/bin in the destination and then syncs all containing files and folders recursively:

rsync --archive --include="/usr" --include="/usr/local" --include="/usr/local/bin" --include="/usr/local/bin/**" --exclude="*" user@remote:/ /home/user

Compared to mkdir -p, the dir tree even has the same perms as the source.

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If you are using a version or rsync that doesn't have 'mkpath', then --files-from can help. Suppose you need to create 'mysubdir' in the target directory

Create 'filelist.txt' to contain mysubdir/dummy

mkdir -p source_dir/mysubdir/
touch source_dir/mysubdir/dummy
rsync --files-from='filelist.txt' source_dir target_dir

rsync will copy mysubdir/dummy to target_dir, creating mysubdir in the process. Tested with rsync 3.1.3 on Raspberry Pi OS (debian).

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