I'm trying to copy files from a remote source to the local system, but using a local list of files. This fails because it seems that rsync is insisting the file list must also be remote. # ./rsync -n --files-from=/tmp/files remotehost:/ /tmp/ rsync: on remote machine: --files-from=-: unknown option rsync error: syntax or usage error (code 1) at main.c(994) rsync: connection unexpectedly closed (0 bytes received so far) [receiver] rsync error: error in rsync protocol data stream (code 12) at io.c(434) The reason I want to do this is so that I can control file distributions from a central "golden host" (which can ssh or rsh everywhere).
This error: rsync: on remote machine: --files-from=-: unknown option is telling you that the remote rsync doesn't know about the --files-from option, so it needs to be upgraded for you to be able to pull files from it using --files-from. (This is because the sender needs to be told that it is getting a file list in addition to the command-line args, and when you're pulling files, the sender is the remote system.)