1

From manpage of rsync, 

-a, --archive

This is equivalent to -rlptgoD. It is a quick way of saying you want recursion and want to preserve almost everything (with -H being a notable omission). The only exception to the above equivalenceis when --files-from is specified, in which case -r is not implied.

Note that -a does not preserve hardlinks, because finding multiply-linked files is expensive. You must separately specify -H.

What is the closest for cp to rsync -a, in terms of input and result of file copy, ignoring transfer speed?

What does cp -arl miss compare to rsync -a? Only -D of rsync?

Does cp -arl behave the same as rsync -a except those aspects it misses?

Thanks.

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3

Note that rsync -a also doesn't preserve ACLs, extended attributes, hard links (as already noted), sparseness.

With GNU cp at least

cp -a

Preserves all that so does more than rsync. A closer rsync equivalent would be

rsync -aAHX

I don't think rsync can replicate the sparseness, but you can use --sparse so that sequences of NULs (whether they are allocated or holes) turn into holes in the destination.

Note that the (non-standard) -a option of cp implies -r. -l (another non-standard option), assuming GNU cp doesn't do what you want. It makes hard links instead of copying files.

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