Re: File permissions

[John H. <jo...@dr...>]

Hi Sanchar

> >I want to use rsync to backup servers but don't want to enable root
> >ssh. It would be useful if rsyncrypto could store file
> >ownership/permissions in the encrypted files and make the encrypted
> >files 0600 and owned by an arbitrary user - say backup.
> >
> Storing permissions inside the encrypted files is planned, but will take
> a little while to implement (mostly because I got Hodgkin's disease, and
> will take a few months to return to full capacity work).

Sorry to hear this, I imagine you are subject to some fairly horrendous
treatments. Hope you get well soon.

> The permissions of the encrypted files are governed, if memory serves me
> right, by the umask. Do whatever you like with it :-)
>
> I doubt I'll add a flag to change the ownership of the files during
> backup. You are free to run "chown -R" on the directory after rsyncrypto
> finishes.

That would be fine as long as the permissions are restored on decrypt.

> > That way I can
> >rsync using the user 'backup' with minimal ssh privileges. The decrypt
> >could then restore the original permissions.
> >
> Yes, it is also planned that the full permissions (including ownership
> and, at some later date, also ACL and filesystem attributes) will be
> restored by rsyncrypto. In fact, this feature is the only one holding me
> from announcing "rsyncrypto" production, as it will require changing the
> encrypted file structure, and I would like to do several necessary
> changes at once here.
> 
> > Perhaps this is already
> >possible or maybe you know of a simple workaround.
> >  
> >
> Aside from performing tar to stdout, and piping that to rsyncrypto, I'm
> afraid I know of no workaround yet :-(

This looks promising. Tarring whole directories before rsyncrypto would
work well as long as tar is consistent with respect to the ordering of
files within the archive. I'll give it a go.

Cheers

John