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Date: Thu, 24 Nov 2011 07:08:29 -0800
From: perryh@pluto.rain.com
To: martin@dc.cis.okstate.edu
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Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: Rsync and Preservation of Ownership and Permissions
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Martin McCormick <martin@dc.cis.okstate.edu> wrote:

> 	Rsync is a great utility, but is there a way to preserve
> ownership and permissions if rsync remotely logs in to a backup
> server as a normal user?

AFAIK, no, because only root may change the ownership of a file --
see chown(2).

> 	Any ideas are greatly appreciated.

Perhaps you could have rsync log in to a jail on the backup server,
where it could safely be granted root permission.