rsync -e 'ssh -p 2222': rsync over SSH on a custom port or key

rsync -av -e 'ssh -p 2222' ./site/ user@server.example.com:/var/www/site/ copies over SSH to a server whose sshd listens on port 2222. -e (--rsh) sets the remote shell command, so any ssh option fits inside the quotes: a key with -i ~/.ssh/deploy_ed25519, a jump host with -J bastion, or -o StrictHostKeyChecking=accept-new. The command must be one argument for rsync, which is why it is quoted. For a server you use often, put the port and key in ~/.ssh/config and use the host alias instead.

Commands

# Custom port
rsync -av -e 'ssh -p 2222' ./site/ deploy@server.example.com:/var/www/site/

# Custom port and key
rsync -av -e 'ssh -p 2222 -i ~/.ssh/deploy_ed25519' ./site/ deploy@server.example.com:/var/www/site/

# Through a jump host
rsync -av -e 'ssh -J admin@bastion.example.com' ./backup/ deploy@10.0.0.5:/srv/backup/

# Pull from the server instead of pushing
rsync -av -e 'ssh -p 2222' deploy@server.example.com:/var/log/app/ ./logs/

server.example.com, deploy and the paths stand for your own host, user and directories.

Using ~/.ssh/config instead

Host web1
    HostName server.example.com
    Port 2222
    User deploy
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/deploy_ed25519

With that block, rsync -av ./site/ web1:/var/www/site/ uses the port, user and key automatically, and so do ssh web1 and scp. This keeps long -e strings out of scripts and makes the connection easy to test with ssh web1 alone.

Ways to pass ssh options

Errors you may see

• ssh: connect to host server.example.com port 22: Connection refused followed by rsync: connection unexpectedly closed and rsync error: ... (code 12) or (code 255): the port was not passed, so ssh used 22. Check the -e quoting.
• Permission denied (publickey): the key in -i or IdentityFile is not accepted by the server; test with ssh -p 2222 -i KEY user@host first.
• bash: rsync: command not found (or similar from the remote shell): rsync must be installed on both machines, because ssh starts a second rsync on the server.
• Host key verification failed: the server's key is not in known_hosts yet, or it changed. Connect once with plain ssh to check and accept it.

Test the connection first

ssh -p 2222 deploy@server.example.com 'rsync --version' confirms in one step that the port, the key and the remote rsync work. Then run the rsync command with -n to preview the transfer. rsync is available on Linux and macOS; on Windows run it in WSL or Cygwin, where ~/.ssh/config is the one of that environment.

FAQ