Question

I use rsync to mirror a remote server. It is said that using a root password with rsync is dangerous, so I created a special rsync user. It seems to work fine, but cannot copy some files because of file permissions. I want to mirror whole directories for backup, and I guess this cannot be done without using root password, I mean if root does not give permissions on a specific files, no other account can read them. Is there other solutions and why shouldn’t I use root account in rsync (I only do one way copying, that does not effect source).

Answer 1

If you want the whole server, then yes, you need root. However, instead of “pulling” (where you have a cron on your local server that does “rsync remote local”), can you possibly do it by “push” (where you have a cron on the remote server that does “rsync local remote”?) In this case, you won’t need to configure the remote server to accept inbound root connections.