Hello David, Though the information here is on a BSD web site, it should apply equally to any OS. http://www.bsdnews.org/01/rsync_backups.php
And if you do end up needing a root login for some reason, look into the "forced-commands-only" alternative for PermitRootLogin in /etc/ssh/sshd_config (assuming you would have it set to No otherwise). If you go that route, you will want to run a script like the following to make sure that the only commands the root login will accept are to run rsync: #!/bin/sh case "$SSH_ORIGINAL_COMMAND" in *\&*) echo "Rejected" ;; *\;*) echo "Rejected" ;; rsync\ --server*) $SSH_ORIGINAL_COMMAND ;; *) echo "Rejected" ;; esac The O'Reilly book on SSH discusses this in some detail. Good luck Mike Haertjens On Monday 21 March 2005 04:13 pm, David Nicholls wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > Hi There. > > I am very sorry for the complete noob question :) > > I was looking at the basic remote rsync backup artical at: > > http://servers.linux.com/article.pl?sid=04/11/04/0346256&tid=119&tid=47&pag >enum=1 > > I am backing up various servers, both locally and remotely. I am only > interested in backing up /home and /var/log I can do almost everything > as a user backup, with the other users being members of group backup > with read permissions on all the relevant files needed to backup. > However, I also need to backup an email server which uses MailDir. The > default permissions of which are dwrx------, so cannot be placed into > the backup group. > > I don't want to 'auto' ssh using the root account, for obvious reasons, > I also do not think it a good idea to change the default permissions on > the MailDir directories! > > I just wondered if some kind soul would give me a pointer! Obviously I > need to make the solution as secure as possible and I'm sure there is > some stupidly obvious solution, but for once google isn't helping! :) > > As a possible answer to my own question, if I do not run rsync as a > daemon, when I invoke the rsync command, does it read settings from > rsyncd.conf? If so I can ssh using the backup user and run rsync as root? > > Thanks > > Dave > > > > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- > Version: GnuPG v1.2.5 (GNU/Linux) > > iD8DBQFCPzkC62r58u1gKlkRAiV9AKCPKYobw+4DARy4qHp95sdQscG/gQCeJBPn > 1Re2gOEeQvoL1mLTnV6eBhM= > =9Hvq > -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe or change options: https://lists.samba.org/mailman/listinfo/rsync Before posting, read: http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html