Tar: A slop-free alternative to rsync

5 hours ago

Rsync is no longer the preferred tool for transferring files over SSH; tar is proposed as an alternative.
A tar command with ssh can transfer files, preserving ownership and permissions, similar to rsync -a.
Use tar -cz to create a compressed archive and pipe it through ssh for remote extraction with tar -xz.
Adding pv to the pipeline provides a lightweight progress display during the transfer.
Key tar options: -c to create, -x to extract, -f for file, -C to change directory, and -z for gzip compression.
Tar paths are straightforward: files are extracted exactly as archived, with -C adjusting the working directory.
An alternative program, rtar, is available to simplify this tar-over-ssh usage.

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