rsync and emelfm2

I mess with emelfm2 a lot, mostly because the two-pane arrangement is far more convenient and intuitive to me than the more common explorer-type interface, even if it has tabs.

And after spotting a blog post a week or so ago that gave a quick and easy intro to rsync, I came up with this as a right click option for emelfm2, that syncs a selected folder to the opposite pane. Pick a folder and right-click down to “Edit filetype.” Then Add an option and use whatever label you like. For the Command, use …

rsync -rtlDvu --progress %d/%f %D

Unless WordPress.com mangles my code, that will sync a selected directory across panes, neat as a pin. Use whatever options you prefer, or just -a instead, for a generic archive copy.

I would like to set emelfm2 up to rsync single files too, but that might be more work than it’s worth, since I don’t see a filetype for “all files” off hand. It doesn’t bother me anyway; I’m usually pushing folders around the network.

rsync is great stuff by the way. I can’t speak to specifics, but I’m fairly confident that rsync moves stuff faster than a straight cp command. And if for some reason your connection drops or there’s a power failure, rsync is generally smart enough to pick up files where it left off, and continue without data problems. As far as I know, cp can’t.

And that can be important, when your wireless router denies traffic to your machine, because the transfer rate is too high. 😳