Jack Mendez writes: > never said it could > only spoke about the fact that it does keep the permissions of the files > that it transfers. But he also wants to keep the ownership. That requires what he calls the "meta" container, of which tar is a perfect choice. There are others. If there was any criticism in my post, it was only about whether it answered the question. What you said is correct as far as you took things, but you can't go the rest of the way because rsync is the wrong tool for that job. It's the right tool for incrementally copying the tar archive, though once it is created with owners and permissions data intact, just as we've been saying. > At 07:54 AM 9/28/2004, you wrote: > >Not exactly. rsync will do as you say, but only if those users also > >exist on the target system. It cannot create new user accounts, and > >shouldn't be able to, either. > > > >Now that I've strayed into 'shoulds,' I suppose we could posit the > >notion of rsync for passwd and shadow, but this just too wacky because > >it's dangerous. > >Jack Mendez writes: > >> there are several ways to accomplish what you want to do, rsync has very > >> helpful documentation, I'd suggest reading the manpages for it however, > >> here are a few quick solutions > >> rsync -av will preserve all permissions on the destination machine, and > >> you will need to make sure when transferring this back to use the same > >> switch > >> if you are backing up entire file systems and are special files you > >need to > >> use the linkdest option so the files get transferred properly > >> additionally you can also backup remote file systems nfs smb etc, using > >> rsync but be careful about using permissions based transfers with this > >data > >> because sometimes particularly with windows based smb mounts, the rsync > >is > >> unable to preserve owner. > >> > >> Jack > >> At 01:34 AM 9/28/2004, you wrote: > >> >If rsync is used to backup data for multiple users, on to a system > >whereon > >> >the recipient for the files, is a single user, rsync will, of course, > >set > >> >the user and group of all files, to the recipient user. > >> > > >> >If dealing with a large number of users, it is less than ideal, to > >create > >> >all of the users on the target backup server. > >> > > >> >Is there any way to do such backups, in the rsync method, while still > >> >preserving ownership data, but without creating all of the users > >involved? > >> >Some sort of meta ownership data. > >> > > >> >If not, what might be another method of doing this? > >> > > >> >_______________________________________________ > >> >Speakup mailing list > >> >Speakup at braille.uwo.ca > >> >http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup > >> > >> > >> > >> _______________________________________________ > >> Speakup mailing list > >> Speakup at braille.uwo.ca > >> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup > > > >-- > > > > Janina Sajka, Chair > > Accessibility Workgroup > > Free Standards Group (FSG) > > > >janina at freestandards.org Phone: +1 202.494.7040 > > > > > >_______________________________________________ > >Speakup mailing list > >Speakup at braille.uwo.ca > >http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup > > > > _______________________________________________ > Speakup mailing list > Speakup at braille.uwo.ca > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup -- Janina Sajka, Chair Accessibility Workgroup Free Standards Group (FSG) janina at freestandards.org Phone: +1 202.494.7040