rsync -are ssh from to@pc:/dir
this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2025
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rsync over an SMB share was pretty seamless.
sftp
All my machines have my keys, nothing to set up, nothing to tear down.
you can use a regular ftp server with administrator and user rights, distribute rights to those who replenish, and those who just take - guests at home I transfer in this way from computer to computer without connecting them to a common network, what could be simpler? why invent some ways with keys or bash if there is a 40-year-old technology that just works great, and to open ftp it is enough to enter the IP address in the explorer
What do you mean by specifying IP address?
Ähm. So your not gonna like this but I just connect with vscode remote-ssh and drag'n drop em from the os file explorer into the vscode one.
So long story short scp I guess.
What's wrong with rsync? If you don't like IP addresses, use a domain name. If you use certificate authentication, you can tab complete the folders. It's a really nice UX IMO.
If you'll do this a lot, just mount the target directory with sshfs or NFS. Then use rsync or a GUI file manager.
Just don't run rsync as a daemon as that's a security nightmare
Why would you do that? That sounds awful...
The daemon tracks file state, so the transfers start quicker because rsync doesn’t have to scan the filesystem.
Right, but if you're transferring things that frequently, there are better solutions.
Not necessarily. Rsync deltas are very efficient, and not everything supports deltas.
It may very well be the correct tool for the job.
Anyway, problem fit wasn’t part of the question.
Yeah, there are probably a few perfect fits for it. I don't rsync between machines very often, so the only use case I might have is backups, which is already well covered with a number of tools. Otherwise I just want to sync a few directories.
It is, rsync sends data in plain text. There is a optional password that is also sent in plain text.
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Not gonna lie, I just map a network share and copy and paste through the gui.
Yeah, I mean I do still use rsync for the stuff that would take a long time, but for one-off file movement I just use a mounted network drive in the normal file browser, including on Windows and MacOS machines.
Same lol, somebody please enlighten me on a faster way!
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Just regular old WinSCP, or XPipe for smaller stuff and editing config files.
I need a GUI, I'll use rsync to migrate a lot of data to a new server or something occasionally, but it's just a pain compared to a nice graphical file browser.
I like unison personally. It is a bit more of a hassle but it works pretty well.
People have already covered most of the tools I typically use, but one I haven't seen listed yet that is sometimes convenient is python3 -m http.server which runs a small web server that shares whatever is in the directory you launched it from. I've used that to download files onto my phone before when I didn't have the right USB cables/adapters handy as well as for getting data out of VMs when I didn't want to bother setting up something more complex.
Honestly, this is an easy way to share files with non-technical people in the outside world, too. Just open up a port for that very specific purpose, send the link to your friend, watch the one file get downloaded, and then close the port and turn off the http server.
It's technically not very secure, so it's a bad idea to leave that unattended, but you can always encrypt a zip file to send it and let that file level encryption kinda make up for lack of network level encryption. And as a one-off thing, you should close up your firewall/port forwarding when you're done.
rsync over ssh or scp.
smb share if its desktop to desktop. If its from phone to PC, I throw it on nextcloud on the phone, then grab it from the web ui on pc.
Smb is the way to go if you have identity set up, since your PC auth will carry over for the connection to the smb share. Nextcloud will be less typing if not since you can just have persistent auth on the app / web.
Solid explorer on android is pretty useful too, it can access the SMB share. I use nextcloud for photo backup, but usually solid explorer for one off file transfers.
Syncthing
rsync is indeed fiddly. Consider SFTP in your GUI of choice. I mount the folder I need in my file browser and grab the files I need. No terminal needed and I can put the folders as favorites in the side bar.
If you want to use the terminal though, there is scp which is supported on both windows and Linux.
Its just scp [file to copy] [username]@[server IP]:[remote location]
That's essentially the same as rsync
Just slower if you already have some of the files there.
- sftp for quick shit like config files off a random server because its easy and is on by default with sshd in most distros
- rsync for big one-time moves
- smb for client-facing network shares
- NFS for SAN usage (mostly storage for virtual machines)
rclone. I have a few helper functions;
fn mount { rclone mount http: X: --network-mode }
fn kdrama {|x| rclone --multi-thread-streams=8 --checkers=2 --transfers=2 --ignore-existing --progress copy http:$x nas:Media/KDrama/$x --filter-from
~/.config/filter.txt }
fn tv {|x| rclone --multi-thread-streams=8 --checkers=2 --transfers=2 --ignore-existing --progress copy http:$x nas:Media/TV/$x --filter-from ~/.config/filter.txt }
fn downloads {|x| rclone --multi-thread-streams=8 --checkers=2 --transfers=2 --ignore-existing --progress copy http:$x nas:Media/Downloads/$x --filter-from ~/.config/filter.txt }
So I download something to my seedbox, then use rclone lsd http: to get the exact name of the folder/files, and run tv "filename" and it runs my function. Pulls all the files (based on filter.txt) using multiple threads to the correct folder on my NAS. Works great, and maxes out my connection.
WinSCP for editing server config
Rsync for manual transfers over slow connections
ZFS send/receive for what it was meant for
Samba for everything else that involves mounting on clients or other servers.
Magic wormhole is pretty dead simple https://magic-wormhole.readthedocs.io/en/latest/welcome.html#installation
I use this a lot at work for moving stuff between different test vms, as you don't need to check IPs/hostnames
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