Using rsync to update a samba share from windows
February 5, 2009I have used this technique to migrate a windows fileserver to a ubuntu samba server. Rsync is a brilliant tool that uses a delta-algorithm to transfer files. This makes it easy to keep folders synchronized across networks.
First I mounted the the windows share on my linux box using this command. Note the iocharset and codepage. These are to keep my Norwegian characters normal
mount -t cifs //winserv/share /mount_dir -o username=johndoe,password=blabla,iocharset=utf8,codepage=cp850
Then, I used rsync to copy them into the new folders. Note the exclude, this is because /exports is a NetApp file system mounted via NFS, and I don’t want to include these backup dir’s into them mess.
rsync --verbose --progress --stats --recursive --times --perms --links --delete --exclude '.snapshot' /source_dir /dest_dir
Voila!
Ps. Add the option –dry-run to have a preview of what’s to come.





