rsync, article 3: How does rsync work?

This post is the third article in a series of blog posts about rsync, see the Series Overview. With rsync up and running, it’s time to take a peek under the hood of rsync to better understand how it works. How does rsync work? When talking about the rsync protocol, we need to distinguish between: protocol-level roles: “sender” and “receiver” TCP roles: “client” and “server” All roles can be mixed and matched: both rsync clients (or servers!) can either send or receive. Now that you know the te...