Get a list of deleted files from rsync

I synchronise my music collection between:

• My desktop's RAID10, where I rip CDs and download music to, and
• The house media centre, which controls audio players around the house

I do this with a very simple, little rsync command:

rsync -av /media/ned/music/ tank:/media/steve/music/

Occasionally I'll delete something on my desktop, or rename it. When I sync again Tank keeps the old copy and this can result in duplicates.

I know there are --delete-{before/after} options but I am very apprehensive about automatic deletions. There is no third backup yet, so if I make a mistake (which I have before) and rsync nukes my "backup" on Tank, I've lost data.

Is there a way to generate a list of potential deletions after a transfer has finished? Ideally rsync would present me the list and give me a [y/N] prompt but I'm more than happy doing this in a separate command (I'll just write a syncmusic script).

Solution 1:

Use the --dry-run option.

rsync -av --delete --dry-run /media/ned/music/ tank:/media/steve/music/ | grep deleting

This prints a list of things rsync would delete if you ran the command without the --dry-run option.

Solution 2:

What you are actually looking for is:

rsync --dry-run --delete-after -av --info=DEL  /media/ned/music/ tank:/media/steve/music/

If you want to check the progress as well then you can use:

rsync --dry-run --delete-after -av --info=DEL,PROGRESS2  /media/ned/music/ tank:/media/steve/music/