Recommended rsync options

[tschaboo]

I'm planning my migration from Nexenta CE to the latest FreeNAS release.

Is there something like a "standard" set of rsync flags that you always use?

I already found "--sparse" https://gergap.wordpress.com/2013/08/10/rsync-and-sparse-files/ here which should be helpful with the VMware images on the Nexenta server.

 

[fracai]

My go to is "-Pva"
-P is equivalent to --partial (turns on support for interrupting and resuming transfers) and --progress (progress info)
-v is verbose
-a turns on several "archive" related flags like retaining permissions, time stamps, etc.

 

[guermantes]

For SMB shares of Windows files, have a look at this post: Impaired rsync permissions support for Windows datasets. I shred a lot of hair before realizing why all may rsyncs failed when trying to retain permissions (-a, archive).