How should I completely mirror a server user rsync, without using root password?

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,开发者_开发技巧 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).

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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.

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One option is to use an ssh login as root, but using ssh pubkey authentication instead of a password. In general, pubkeys are the wya to go, if you want to automate this later.

You'll want to look into the PermitRootLogin sshd_config setting, in particular the without-password setting or, if you want to get even more sophisticated and (probably) secure, the forced-commands-only setting.

Some useful links:

• http://troy.jdmz.net/rsync/index.html
• http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/209