How to back up server with rsync, preserving ownership/permissions without root login

Posted by olilarkin on Super User See other posts from Super User or by olilarkin
Published on 2012-10-09T00:20:42Z Indexed on 2012/10/09 3:40 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 540

Filed under:

ssh

|

rsync

I am setting up a backup server on which I want to run rsync over ssh to backup content on other servers every night. I would like to set up ssh keys to make it password-less, but I want to preserve ownership of files and permissions. There are a number of users on the server to be backed up which won't all exist on the backup server.

What would be the best way to do this? I guess the backup job will need to connect as root to , but I don't want to enable root ssh access on the servers.

thanks for any tips,

oli

ps, all servers are running UBUNTU Server 12.04 LTS and are behind a university firewall.

© Super User or respective owner

Related posts about ssh

Problem with hadoop start-dfs.sh

as seen on Ask Ubuntu - Search for 'Ask Ubuntu'
I installed and configured hadoop on my Ubuntu 14.04 server, virtualized inside of hyper-v, however I am getting an issue when i run start-dfs.sh root@sUbuntu01:/var/log# start-dfs.sh 14/06/04 15:27:08 WARN util.NativeCodeLoader: Unable to load native-hadoop library for your platform... using builtin-java… >>> More
SSH problems (ssh_exchange_identification: read: Connection reset by peer)

as seen on Ask Ubuntu - Search for 'Ask Ubuntu'
I was running 11.10 and decided to do the full upgrade and come up to 12.04 after the update SSH (not SSHD) is now misbehaving when attempting to connect to other OpenSSH instances. I say OpenSSH as I am running a DropBear sshd on my router and I am able to connect to it. When attempting to connect… >>> More
SSH main process ended

as seen on Ask Ubuntu - Search for 'Ask Ubuntu'
I have a running ubuntu server 10.04.1. When I tried to login to the server via ssh, I could not. Instead, I got connection refused error. I tried to ping the machine and I got reply! So, the clear reason is that SSH daemon is stopped. After reboot, I was able to login to my server via ssh. After… >>> More
SSH server not working (respawns until stopped)

as seen on Ask Ubuntu - Search for 'Ask Ubuntu'
I have a running Ubuntu Server 10.04.1. When I tried to login to the server via ssh, I could not. Instead, I got connection refused error. I tried to ping the machine and I got reply! So, the clear reason is that SSH daemon is stopped. After reboot, I was able to login to my server via ssh. After… >>> More
Cannot SSH after resetting firewall on VPS

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
I'm having trouble trying to SSH to my Debian 5 VPS with blacknight. It was working fine until I did the following: Logged into 'Parallels Infrastructure Manager' - Container - Firewall - Set to 'Normal Firewall settings'. It told me there was an error with the IPTables and offered the option again… >>> More

Related posts about rsync

Rsync: how to mount truecrypt on-the-fly on the receiving side?

as seen on Super User - Search for 'Super User'
The short version: how can I keep an rsync backup on a truecrypt volume? The hard part is to mount/unmount this volume on the fly when it is needed for rsync. Details This is my current backup configuration (which works fairly well for the most part): backup source is on Win7 64 bit, destination… >>> More
Two Questions on for Rsync - rsync by date and by file name

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Hi, I have two questions with respect to rsync: 1: I have a bunch of files which are incremented by day of the year. Ex: file.txt.81, file.txt.82, etc. Now, these files are in different directories: data1/file.txt.81 data1/file.txt.82 data2/file2.txt.81 data2/file2.txt.82 How can I have rsync… >>> More
Cygwin rsync broken

as seen on Super User - Search for 'Super User'
I get an error with cygwin rsync trying to transfer files between local - remote host. Any ideas? C:\>rsync user@host:~/file newfile Password: rsync: connection unexpectedly closed (0 bytes received so far) [sender] rsync error: error in rsync protocol data stream (code 12) at io.c(601) [sender= 3… >>> More
macport selfupdate not working

as seen on Super User - Search for 'Super User'
macbookpro:~ eistrati$ port -v MacPorts 2.1.2 macbookpro:~ eistrati$ xcodebuild -version Xcode 4.5.2 Build version 4G2008a macbookpro:~ eistrati$ sudo port -d selfupdate DEBUG: Copying /Users/eistrati/Library/Preferences/com.apple.dt.Xcode.plist to /opt/local/var/macports/home/Library/Preferences DEBUG:… >>> More
Rsync from godaddy to OS X

as seen on Super User - Search for 'Super User'
I would like to use rsync to backup my website to my local computer (OS X). I started of with this guide and got pretty far. I use the following rsync-line: rsync -PzrlptgD --del --delete-excluded -r --rsync-path=~/bin/rsync user@server:~/ /local/backup/folder/ I wanted to use the -a option (same… >>> More