rsync-web

A modern, lightweight web UI for rsync with real-time output streaming via WebSockets.

Features

• Real-time output streaming - Watch rsync progress live via WebSocket (no page refresh needed)
• Multiple concurrent jobs - Run and monitor several rsync operations simultaneously
• Command history - View past commands, reuse them, or modify and re-run
• File browser - Navigate directories and select source/destination paths visually
• SSH host integration - Automatically reads hosts from ~/.ssh/config
• Comprehensive rsync options - All common flags available via checkboxes:
  • Archive (-a), Verbose (-v), Compress (-z), Progress (-P)
  • Dry-run (-n), Delete (--delete), Human-readable (-h)
  • Recursive, symlinks, permissions, times, group, owner, devices
  • Partial, append, ignore-existing, size-only, checksum, backup
• Exclude patterns - Multi-line exclude support
• Custom options - Add any rsync flag (e.g., --bwlimit=1000)
• rsync availability check - Warns if rsync isn't installed on the system
• Cross-platform - Works on Linux and FreeBSD

Installation

Pre-built binaries

Download from Releases (coming soon) or build from source.

Build from source

# Clone
git clone https://github.com/jgbrwn/rsync-web.git
cd rsync-web

# Build for current platform
make build

# Or build for specific platforms
make build-linux    # Linux amd64
make build-freebsd  # FreeBSD amd64
make build-all      # Both platforms

Requires Go 1.21+ and rsync installed on the target system.

Usage

# Run from current directory (files browsable from pwd)
./rsync-web

# Custom listen address and port
./rsync-web -listen 0.0.0.0:8080

# Custom working directory for file browsing
./rsync-web -dir /data/backups

# Combine options
./rsync-web -listen 192.168.1.100:9000 -dir /mnt/storage

Then open http://127.0.0.1:8000 in your browser.

Command-line Options

How It Works

1. Select source and destination - Type paths manually, use the file browser, or pick SSH hosts
2. Configure options - Check the rsync flags you need, add excludes or custom options
3. Preview command - See the exact rsync command that will run
4. Run - Execute and watch real-time output in the browser
5. Monitor - Switch between multiple running jobs, cancel if needed
6. Reuse - Click any history entry to reload its settings

Architecture

• Backend: Go with gorilla/websocket for real-time streaming
• Database: SQLite (pure Go, no CGO) for command history
• Frontend: Vanilla JS with Tailwind CSS
• No external dependencies at runtime beyond rsync itself

FreeBSD Support

Fully tested on FreeBSD. Install rsync if needed:

pkg install rsync

All features work identically on FreeBSD and Linux.

Security Notes

• By default, listens only on 127.0.0.1 (localhost)
• File browser is restricted to the working directory and subdirectories
• No authentication built-in - use a reverse proxy if exposing to a network

License

MIT