How can I move files across network? — unattended / handles errors without waiting for user input?

Question

I am occasionally moving lots of files around (50+ GB) from one HDD to another over my LAN. This takes a while. I often come back to find that it stopped somewhere waiting for user input when there is a problem with a particular file (Cancel, Skip, Skip All or whatever). I could of course just wait for the first error and select 'Skip All' but that is a very bad solution - no logging, have to wait.

I am doing this in Nautilus.

I know there has to be a better way(s) to do this. I would like to be able to automatically skip all the problematic files and generate a log file that would tell me what files weren't moved and what the problem with each of those files was.

Is there a tool or script that will do this?

Answer 1

Have you tried rsync?

It's a command-line utility so it's not as user-friendly as Nautilus, but the command line is the best for automating stuff like you want. rsync will indeed try to transfer as much as possible, it will log all errors, and since it only transmits the "differences" or changes, it's "cheap" to just rerun it to bring things back up to sync.

Other than rsync, you need to install openssh-server on the receiving computer(s), then do something like this:

rsync -avu --progress source_folder remote-computer.local:Desktop/

the folder will be sent to remote-computer and placed on the Desktop.

Instead of remote-computer.local, you can use an IP address if you know the IP of the destination system, but by default the .local domain should work, so if a computer's hostname is "buckaroo", you can just specify it as buckaroo.local.