It does create a temp file, by default in the target directory and named .<FILE_NAME>.<RANDOM_STRING>
. So, if you are copying foo.txt
, it will create a tmp file called .foo.txt.GV4H3
(GV4H3
is the random string that will be different every time you run it). You can control this behavior using these rsync
options:
--partial
By default, rsync will delete any partially transferred
file if the transfer is interrupted. In some circum‐
stances it is more desirable to keep partially trans‐
ferred files. Using the --partial option tells rsync to
keep the partial file which should make a subsequent
transfer of the rest of the file much faster.
--partial-dir=DIR
A better way to keep partial files than the --partial
option is to specify a DIR that will be used to hold
the partial data (instead of writing it out to the des‐
tination file). On the next transfer, rsync will use a
file found in this dir as data to speed up the resump‐
tion of the transfer and then delete it after it has
served its purpose.
Please read the relevant parts of the rsync
man page (the following is only a small extract of the large section on how to use --partial-dir
).