That's a problem with scp, not with rsync. rsync dir_a server:dir_b Will there be a directory called dir_a on the server? Well, that depends on if dir_b exi

That's a problem with scp, not with rsync. rsync dir_a server:dir_b Will there be a directory called dir_a on the server? Well, that depends on if dir_b exists. Run the command again and the result may be different. That's not acceptable behaviour for a tool keep a remote directory synced.