I added the alexfolders directory inside the sun directory, the verbose feedback was the following

alex@alex-nuc8i7hnk:~$ rsync -av /home/alex/alexfolders /media/New-SD-512/sun
sending incremental file list

sent 614,817 bytes received 3,511 bytes 1,236,656.00 bytes/sec

It now doesn't do anything at all

Thanks

The trailing slash on the source matters. As scasey noted, if you did not have the trailing slash, you get a subdirectory named alexfolders in the sun directory. If you use the slash, the files go into the sun/ directory. Have you actually looked in the sun directory to see if it is actually empty? Is there a subdirectory? Perhaps names alexfolders? I don't think you understand the consequences of having or not having the trailing slash. If you omit it, you get a subdirectory, not just the files.

I showed you exactly how to do it in the post which mentioned it.

There's good documentation about verbosity and debugging rsync in the man page.
I think you need to set some flags for debugging to see what's actually happening.
I don't understand why you're getting incremental runs if the destination is empty.

my destination directories are 40GB. The initial run took a couple hours, as I recall (I'm pulling from a remote machine, so there's a transfer bottleneck). The daily runs take about 7 minutes, as only changed files are copied each day.

How much data is in /home/alex/alexfolders?

Yes, I looked in the sun directory following the previous suggestio I added manually the alexfolders.
Yes I do understand the job of the / at the source, that's why I didn't create the alexfolders at the start.

The Alex folders has inside it only folders, with some 32gb of files.

Now, the command line does nothing, it thinks that the backup was done already, but in fact, I have no backup at all

So, where do I go from here?
I am about to go to the hardware store to buy myself a rope...

Thanks for your time
Alex

alex@alex-nuc8i7hnk:~$ du -hs /home/alex/alexfolders
35G /home/alex/alexfolders

I just did another run, this time into the sat (Saturday) folder which I created before executing it, the end result looks wrong: It sent all the 35GB, but received only a small fraction of it...

sent 36,998,650,791 bytes received 400,349 bytes 130,970,092.53 bytes/sec
total size is 36,988,192,756 speedup is 1.00

OK, I changed the ownership of the target to root, it was to me alex,
Didn't change anything, it still wants me to issue the command with sudo

But, even then, the backup runs for a few minutes and doesn't copy anything

So, why when I execute this :
rsync -r /home/alex/Pictures/ /media/alex/New-SD-512/DTPictures - DTPictures Directory was made B4 command

it works, but this : rsync -r /home/alex/alexfolders /media/New-SD-512/sat
Does nothing?

It must be something so basic, that nobody thinks they need to tell me...

Thanks again
Alex

What do you get when you run I did not tell you to change the owner of the SD card to root, because root was already the owner. I told you to change it to you, and if you use the exact syntax I posted, you would do that. It's just a matter of copy and paste. And reading with comprehension. Which can be difficult. I know, I'm old and slow too.

Before answering, I just followed the rsync help to the website, it shows version 3.2.3 released early August, but my installed version is older : 3.1.3. I tried removing and reinstalling it, but it reinstalls the same older one.

What I see is the following, just the top part, it has hundreds of lines.
The ownership was to me, then I chnaged it to root. I tried to find the post with your instructions, can't find it will appreciate if you can send it again. Should it be me (alex) or root so that I don't need to enter sudo...

The following lines show that the copy wa sexecuted, but the folder when looking with file manager is emapty, so what do you make of this?

alex@alex-nuc8i7hnk:~$ du -h /media/New-SD-512/sat
54M /media/New-SD-512/sat/alexfolders/A-NMAA_New/Newsletters
4.0K /media/New-SD-512/sat/alexfolders/A-NMAA_New/mypictures
1.3M /media/New-SD-512/sat/alexfolders/A-NMAA_New/2019_11_famday
40M /media/New-SD-512/sat/alexfolders/A-NMAA_New/Members
619M /media/New-SD-512/sat/alexfolders/A-NMAA_New/2017_03_25_ScaleDay/Videoclips
1.9M /media/New-SD-512/sat/alexfolders/A-NMAA_New/2017_03_25_ScaleDay/Resized
677M /media/New-SD-512/sat/alexfolders/A-NMAA_New/2017_03_25_ScaleDay
12M /media/New-SD-512/sat/alexfolders/A-NMAA_New/2017_03_12_GiantScaleDay
4.0K /media/New-SD-512/sat/alexfolders/A-NMAA_New/Backup
56K /media/New-SD-512/sat/alexfolders/A-NMAA_New/csv-to-html-table-master/images
156K /media/New-SD-512/sat/alexfolders/A-NMAA_New/csv-to-html-table-master/fonts

What I make of it is that you omitted the trailing slash on the input file, so your backup is nested further down in the folder hierarchy. You have a subdirectory named alexfolders under sat, and further subfolders under that. The backup is clearly in place, but you have to go further down to find the files and other subfolders. BTW, I tend to use folder and directory interchangeably, and they both mean the same thing. Folders is, AFAIK, a newer term for directories. But anyway, rsync is doing its job exactly the way you told it to. What you told it may not be what you meant, but computers cannot read your mind. :-D

The newest, shiniest version of rsync, and any other package, may not be in the repositories yet. Be patient. I promise you there will be no significant change in functionality. That would be completely unacceptable to the Linux community, because so much depends on its stability. The version you have is more than adequate.

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PLEASE use code tags when posting output. It's very difficult to read without them. Either use the # button on the advanced editor or type them yourself. Again. check the link in my signature.

I agree completely. That's why only incrementals on subsequent runs. Good call on the du on the target!

alex4buba: I'm wondering why you thought the target directory was empty. Perhaps because it's owned by root, and you're using root to do the rsync, so the top-level files, at least are owned by root and you can't see them from your GUI file manager.

Change the ownership of the target to alex (man chown) or #55. Do another run without sudo to see that it works. Then your cron entries should work.

Good luck.

When in terminal and I enter that command, I get this:

alex@alex-nuc8i7hnk:~$ sudo chown -r alex:alex /media/New-SD-512
chown: invalid option -- 'r'

As you can see, this in terminal mode, not in GUI

So, where are the backup files? What do I need to do to see them?

Thanks