Drew DeVault • 3/28/2026

tar: a slop-free alternative to rsync

This article presents tar combined with SSH as a lightweight alternative to rsync for transferring files over a network. It explains how to use tar with gzip compression and SSH to copy directories while preserving permissions, and compares the syntax to rsync. The author argues that tar's path handling is easier to reason about than rsync's trailing slash rules. A progress display option using pv and a custom wrapper tool called xtar are also mentioned. The article is a technical guide focused on file transfer methods in a Unix/Linux environment.

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#ssh #Rsync #File Transfer