ignore files in use (being written to) when using rsync

To check if a file is currently open (if a file is currently written is for sure open by some process) the standard way is to use lsof:

if lsof /your/file > /dev/null; then echo "file currently open"; fi

You can use this snippet to filter find results for only not opened files and use them to feed rsync:

find . -type f -exec sh -c 'if ! lsof `readlink -f {}` > /dev/null; then echo `basename {}`; fi' \; | tr '\n' '\0' | rsync -avz --from0 --files-from=- ./ user@host:destination/

Some notes:

• readlink -f is needed to have full path of a file, lsof accept only full path
• tr '\n' '\0' emulate find -print0