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RomanSt
Asked: 2011-02-05 06:09:49 +0800 CST

rsync to Windows with ":" in filenames

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I have a huge number of small files to rsync to a Windows machine. Most of them transferred just fine, but every file with a colon couldn't be transferred because the filename is invalid on Windows.

Is there any practical hack-around that I could use to get those files regardless? For example, some rsync setting or some filename-escaping script that I could pipe rsync through?

windows rsync

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    No, because the : is an invalid filename on Windows, rsync can't store it there since the OS will prevent it. You will have to rename those files.

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  2. You can install Windows Services for Unix/Subsystem for Unix-based Applications and run rsync on there, which will allow you to create files with : in them, or named CON, or whatever else you want. However, that may not be terribly useful, as you will only be able to access the files from other SUA applications, not regular Win32/Win64 apps. What are you trying to accomplish?

    If you end up going this route, you should probably enable NTFS case sensitivity as well.

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