How to diff directories over ssh

I am trying to recursively compare a directory in the local host to a directory in a remote linux machine. However, when i execute the next command:

diff -r 'ssh [email protected]:/home/admin' /home/admin

it doesn't work saying:

> diff: ssh [email protected]:/home/admin: No such file or directory

what is the right way to compare recursively the directories contents?

Thanks in advance

If you needn't diff the detail in file, just get the difference of dir/file name, then try this:

(Note: need set "SSH login without password" , for detail , review this URL: http://www.linuxproblem.org/art_9.html)

diff <(ssh admin@10.0.0.10 ls -R /home/admin) <(ls -R /home/admin)

Try using "rsync" with the "-n" option, which just does a "dry run" and tells you what it would do.

You can mount the remote directory via sshfs, then you can use diff -r to compare the two directories as you want to do it.

Alternatively you could run similar find commands on both machines to print the file trees (e. g. file names, sizes, and dates) and then compare the outputs of both using diff. This would not compare file contents, of course:

diff <(ssh host find /home/admin -printf '"%8s %P\n"') \
     <(find /home/admin -printf '%8s %P\n')

Notice the double quoting of the printf-format string in the ssh call. One layer is removed by the ssh relay.

For all the examples below empty folders do not matter.

If the password is not required for ssh and you want to see the files

diff -y -W250 \
  <(ssh user@host1 "find /jbossas/modules -type f | xargs -I{} md5sum {} | sort -k2")
  <(ssh user@host2 "find /jbossas/modules -type f | xargs -I{} md5sum {} | sort -k2")

If the password is not required for ssh and you just want to know if the folders are the same

diff -y -W250 \
  <(ssh user@host1 "find /jbossas/modules -type f | xargs -I{} md5sum {} | sort | md5sum") \
  <(ssh user@host2 "find /jbossas/modules -type f | xargs -I{} md5sum {} | sort | md5sum")

If password is required for ssh

• Install the sshpass package
• Receive your password securely in the PASS variable (the password will be cleared in 60 seconds): echo -n "Password: "; IFS= read -rs PASS < /dev/tty; trap 'unset PASS; echo "PASS has been cleared"; trap - USR1' USR1; { sleep 60; kill -USR1 $$; } &

So...

diff -y -W250 \
  <(sshpass -p "$PASS" ssh user@host1 "find /jbossas/modules -type f | xargs -I{} md5sum {} | sort | md5sum") \
  <(sshpass -p "$PASS" ssh user@host2 "find /jbossas/modules -type f | xargs -I{} md5sum {} | sort | md5sum")

If sudo is needed on the remote host

diff -y -W250 \
  <(ssh user@host1 "echo \"$PASS\" | sudo -S find /jbossas/modules -type f | xargs -I{} md5sum {} | sort | md5sum") \
  <(ssh user@host1 "echo \"$PASS\" | sudo -S find /jbossas/modules -type f | xargs -I{} md5sum {} | sort | md5sum")

And you can merge the options.

I recommend icdiff instead of diff, but diff is enough.

I find krusader very useful for such task in case you need a GUI. See https://www.linux.com/news/synchronize-directories-komparator-and-kdiff3 for more details http://krusador.org.

example folder compare