Difference between : and :: in SSH

Question

What is the difference between these two segments of an SSH command, when specifying a remote source or destination directory?

[email protected]:/mnt/disk1/Adam/Dropbox/

[email protected]::/mnt/disk1/Adam/Dropbox/

In which cases should : be used over ::?

arandompenguin · Accepted Answer · 2014-03-31 21:44:52Z

3

As far as I'm aware, the double colon syntax is used when connecting to an rsync server without using ssh or rsh as the transport.

answered Mar 31, 2014 at 21:44

arandompenguin

1584 bronze badges

1

Is the double colon thing just an rsync thing then? Because I was advised to use it with rdiff-backup by the manual page but can't understand why.
– codaamok
Mar 31, 2014 at 22:02
I've only ever seen the double colon with rsync, or in some IPv6 addresses where a group containing only a zero has been compressed, e.g. fe80:0:0:0:2aa:ff:fe9a:4ca2 could be written like fe80::2aa:ff:fe9a:4ca2
– arandompenguin
Apr 1, 2014 at 19:14
After some more practice with rsync, rdiff-backup and ssh, it appears the :: only occurs within rsync and rdiff-backup. Maybe it's a double escape character sort of thing, similar to how the %%s works in rsync when using the --remote-schema option.
– codaamok
Apr 22, 2014 at 10:43
1

"The remote-shell transport is used whenever the source or destination path contains a single colon (:) separator after a host specification. Contacting an rsync daemon directly happens when the source or destination path contains a double colon (::) separator..." samba.org/ftp/rsync/rsync.html
– codaamok
Jan 19, 2018 at 8:58

Add a comment |

1 Answer 1