Re: [rdiff-backup-users] Preserving ownership problems

[Andrew Ferguson]

Steve Annessa wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I need to preserve ownership of files and directories across different
> systems. Right now, I have rdiff-backup pushing from the backup clients
> to the servers; I would prefer to keep it this way. I have the
> "--preserve-numerical-ids" option set. When I look at the backups I see
> that all of the files are owned by the user that ssh'd into the box. Is
> this a system limitation? The backup server and all clients are running
> Debian etch and they're all using rdiff-backup 1.1.14.


Hi Steve,

The behavior depends on how you run rdiff-backup. If you login to the
backup server using a non-root user, then it is indeed a system
limitation that it cannot chown() the files to the different users.

However, if you login to the backup server as root, then you can have
rdiff-backup try to preserve either the owner's username (by default) or
the owner's userid (the --preserve-numerical-ids option). The success
will depend on the setup of the server's accounts.


Either way, rdiff-backup is storing the correct information in its
metadata. If you restore as root, or as the appropriate user,
rdiff-backup will chown() the restored files correctly.


Andrew


-- 
Andrew Ferguson - address@hidden