rsync makes exact copies of filesystems. It's a mirroring tool, not a backup tool. It stores the information as a filesystem, and if it's not allowed to save group and user id on the filesystem, it doesn't. Perhaps you need an archiving system? maybe doing incremental backups? That said, if you need to record who owns what, how about using the --write-batch/--read-batch (rsync+) features? rsync it once just getting the files and their permissions. Then, do it again with --write-batch, which will create a file containing instructions on how to fix the ownerships. then, to restore, you can just rsync the files back, then apply the ownerships file with --read-batch. Of course, the batch file will contain other changes made between the sync and the batch, but at a quiescent time, it should be minimal, and you'd probably want the changes anyway.
Tim Conway [EMAIL PROTECTED] 303.682.4917 Philips Semiconductor - Longmont TC 1880 Industrial Circle, Suite D Longmont, CO 80501 Available via SameTime Connect within Philips, n9hmg on AIM perl -e 'print pack(nnnnnnnnnnnn, 19061,29556,8289,28271,29800,25970,8304,25970,27680,26721,25451,25970), ".\n" ' "There are some who call me.... Tim?" Philip Mak <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent by: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 12/30/2001 02:24 AM To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> cc: (bcc: Tim Conway/LMT/SC/PHILIPS) Subject: --owner --group without root access? Classification: Is there a way to preserve the owner and group permissions without having root access? Well, this is not possible on the filesystem level of course, but what about storing the owner/group information in a supplementary file that can be read by rsync to later reconstruct this information? I'm using rsync to perform a server-to-server backup of a machine's hard drive. If the hard drive being backed up were to actually fail, I would want to be able to restore all the files with their exact ownership information. However, I think that needing to have root access on the backup server should not be necessary to do this...