rsync - resume broken transfer (idea of rsync)

Question

I have remote stations that collect data from sensors (ARM Debian) and transfers sets of data (about 1.1 MB) every 15 minutes (server is full Debian). On one station GSM reception is poor and standard scp transfers are often broken and have to be started from beginning.

Now I'm trying rsync. On station I invoked:

rsync --partial --remove-source-files --progress --rsh=ssh -z FILE root@SERVER:/DIR/

After several minutes file appeared on server. (is it possible to see current transfer status on receiving server - file appeared when transfer was completed?)

How to resume transfer when it's broken? If file is not deleted transfer was not completed?

Answer 1

Rsync exits with a non-zero exit code if the transfer doesn't complete. If you're using bash or a similar shell, a simple solution would be to run it like this:

until rsync --partial --etc
do
    sleep 1
    echo trying again
done

This will keep rerunning rsync indefinitely until it succeeds. The commands inside the do...done block are just an example. You could put something else there.