title: Using rsync to retrieve log files
body: <p>This question is hard to Google because of the existence of log files generated <em>by</em> rsync, which is not what I'm interested in.</p>
  
  <p>What I'd like to do is to use rsync to retrieve log files from a set of servers. Normally when I want a bunch of personal files from my home server to my laptop I'll do something along the lines of:</p>
  
  <p><code>rsync --rsh='ssh' -av --progress --partial user@host:source destination</code></p>
  
  <p>To say retrieve my vacation videos to show my family. But I would like to now use rsync to retrieve files from servers to a backup location. Since my log files are append only, and frequently written to, is there a way of making rsync smart enough to "follow" the changes rather than revalidating the initial million lines over and over again? If not, is there another application that people use for this? I don't want to use a UDP connection because I want the ability to handle spikes in traffic without losing data and TCP will be too slow, so I'd like to do local files with backups that catch up during periods of inactivity.</p>