I have spent a day researching and attempting to debug this issue.  I am hoping 
someone can tell me how (or disabuse me of the delusion that it's possible) to 
do the following:

- Mirror the contents of a directory on one server to a remote server where 
there are diverse ownership and permissions

- File and directory ownership on both the source and destination servers would 
normally prevent the user account initiating the rsync session from accessing, 
modifying, or changing attributes of the files and directories in question

- Session authentication of the initiating user on the remote server must be by 
public key

- No root logins are permitted on either server

I can successfully transfer the files with the user account, but if the files 
have ownership attributes that need to be set on the remote (destination) 
server, using the --owner, --group, and/or --perms options produces errors 
indicating the "Operation is not permitted".  When logged into the remote 
server as the user, I still cannot modify the attributes, only root (super 
user) can do this.  The "--super" command line option appears to have no effect.

Both servers are Red Hat Linux.  I am using rsync 3.0.9.

The only way I can conceive of doing this would be to record the file 
attributes, transfer the files (along with a record of their attributes), then 
run a script using sudo that would move the files into their final location and 
set the attributes.  This, however, would seem to defeat much of the purpose of 
rsync.

The manuals suggest there is a way to invoke super user functionality when 
contacting a daemon instance, but I could not get this to work.  However, this 
appears to require contacting an rsync daemon started by root.  Attempting to 
perform the rsync, while simultaneously using the public key, which can only be 
used when "ssh" is invoked, seems to exclude the use of the daemon on the 
remote side, effectively running the entire rsync session as the user without 
elevated privileges.

In short, I want to copy files from one server to another, and have all 
ownership and permissions preserved (including root), using rsync to perform 
"privileged" operations to set file attributes properly and a public key to 
authenticate the user.

Thanks.


Michael Peoples (mp4783)
Senior Systems Manager
AT&T - ATTSI
Office/Cell:  614-886-0923
mpeop...@att.com<mailto:mpeop...@att.com>

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