i found a couple messages in the archives relating to backups vs. distribution and ownership issues without root privs that kinda touched on the idea of storing meta info (ownership, modes, acls) in a separate file. has anyone else looked at storing meta data in a side file of some sort? it seems that it could be done all on the client side. send over files with totally plain meta info and then send another file with text containing the actual meta data. the reason i'm looking at this is to use rsync as a backup system for "foreign" systems. ones that don't share uid space (or even os similarity) to the central server. basically use ssh with a non-root keypair so that data can be read/written to each servers backup space. by using separate meta files, we can handle windows or other systems that might have acls or permissions flags that don't match with unix. i realize that this is normally what tar/cpio/dump/etc would be used for, but rsync has the nice ability to use hardlinks to create pseudo snapshot backups that make it easy to retrieve things, plus the inherent speedup from the rsync algorithm. any input from the list about this idea?
On Tue, Aug 09, 2005 at 12:52:43PM -0700, Joe Pruett wrote:> has anyone else looked at storing meta data in a side file of some sort?I recommend using a program such as fakeroot (when used with the -s option to save the meta data) or pretendroot (which I haven't personally used). For instance, either run something like this for a daemon setup: fakeroot -s /path/fakeroot.data rsync --daemon --port=8873 \ --config=/path/rsyncd.conf (Make sure that the real user that is running the daemon can write to the lock file, the pid file, all the module paths, and any log file; also, disable chroot and be sure to use an unprivileged port.) Alternately, do something like this for a remote-shell-based copy: rsync -av --rsync-path="fakeroot -s /path/fakeroot.data" \ /src/ host:/dest/ Either option will allow the remote rsync to save all the owner, group, device, etc. info that the sending rsync provides. ..wayne..