rsync doesn't copy files with restrictive permissions

Question

Trying to copy files with rsync, it complains:

rsync: send_files failed to open "VirtualBox/Machines/Lubuntu/Lubuntu.vdi" \
(in media): Permission denied (13)

That file is not copied. Indeed the file permissions of that file are very restrictive on the server side:

-rw-------    1 1000     1000     3133181952 Nov  1  2011 Lubuntu.vdi

I call rsync with

sudo rsync -av --fake-super root@sheldon::media /mnt/media

The rsync daemon runs as root on the server. root can copy that file (of course). rsyncd has "fake super = yes" set in /etc/rsyncd.conf.

What can I do so that the file is copied without changing the permissions of the file on the server?

If you use RSync as daemon on destination, please post grep rsync /var/log/daemon to improve your question — F. Hauri, Dec 29 '12 at 13:23

arober11 · Answer 1 · 2013-01-02 10:55:51Z

up vote 0 down vote

As you appear to have root access to both servers have you tried a: --force ?

Alternatively you could bypass the rsync daemon and try a direct sync e.g.

rsync -optg --rsh=/usr/bin/ssh --rsync-path=/usr/bin/rsync --verbose --recursive --delete-after --force  root@sheldon::media /mnt/media

answered Dec 29 '12 at 13:21

arober11

38617

Using ssh means encryption, which makes things slower. --force does only affect directories, if I read the man page correctly. – Torsten Bronger Jan 1 '13 at 23:08
Unless your using ancient kit, the CPU overhead of encrypting / decrypting the traffic shouldn't be noticeable, but you will loose 10-20% of your bandwidth, through the encapsulation process. Then again 80% of a working link is better than 100% of a non working one :) – arober11 Jan 2 '13 at 10:52
I do have an "ancient kit". ;-) (Slow ARM CPU on a NAS.) But I now mount the NAS with NFS and use rsync (with "sudo") locally. This solves the problem (and is even faster). However, I still think that my original problem must be solvable using the rsync protocol (remote, no ssh). – Torsten Bronger Jan 4 '13 at 7:55

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