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linuxbashshellrsync

Check if rsync command ran successful

The following bash-script is doing a rsync of a folder every hour:

#!/bin/bash
rsync -r -z -c /home/pi/queue [email protected]:/home/foobar
rm -rf rm /home/pi/queue/*
echo "Done"

But I found out that my Pi disconnected from the internet, so the rsync failed. So it did the following command, deleting the folder. How to determine if a rsync-command was successful, if it was, then it may remove the folder.

Solution

  • Usually, any Unix command shall return 0 if it ran successfully, and non-0 in other cases.

    Look at man rsync for exit codes that may be relevant to your situation, but I'd do that this way : 

    #!/bin/bash
rsync -r -z -c /home/pi/queue [email protected]:/home/foobar && rm -rf rm /home/pi/queue/* && echo "Done"

    Which will rm and echo done only if everything went fine.

    Other way to do it would be by using $? variable which is always the return code of the previous command : 

    #!/bin/bash
rsync -r -z -c /home/pi/queue [email protected]:/home/foobar
if [ "$?" -eq "0" ]
then
  rm -rf rm /home/pi/queue/*
  echo "Done"
else
  echo "Error while running rsync"
fi

    see man rsync, section EXIT VALUES