Using rsync to download large files over ssh with resume option

Posted by Niklas on July 10, 2012 Leave a comment (2) Go to comments

In the last months I have been doing this a lot so it might be best to put it up here so I don’t have to google it every time. There is a lot of cool features to rsync. The one we will concentrate on here is the –partial option that lets us resume a broken download. Have to start over with the download of a large file can be a real pain

Basic syntax

rsync --partial --progress --rsh=ssh user@host:remote_file local_file

I also use the –progress option to output the progress of the download

Example:

rsync --partial --progress --rsh=ssh niklas@niklasottosson.com:.vimrc .

This will download the file ‘.vimrc’ from my home directory on niklasottosson.com and into the folder I’m currently in. If the download is interrupted rsync will keep the partial downloaded file and resume from it when the downloaded is started again

Tested on OSX 10.7.4 and rsync version 3.0.3