I want to use rsync for some ifs replication/backup stuff.  I've got it running fine but for some reason when I do the rsync the file ownership and permission settings are not being synchronized.  Files come over to the new ifs directory well.  But they show to be under the ownership of the user profile logged in to the ssh session where the rsync command was run.  Use this a lot on my Linux boxes but have never run into an issue like this.  For testing I am just doing a local ifs dir to another local ifs dir with no luck.  So I know the profiles exist because they are already used on the source dir.  Just wanted to get this working before trying across boxes which is my ultimate goal.

Has anybody else run into anything like this using rsync on an i?  

IBM i V7R4

rsync OSP is 3.2.3-5

Here's the syntax for two different ways I've been rsync'ing this.

rsync --archive --stats --verbose /sourcedir/ /targetdir/

rsync --archive --stats --verbose --owner --group --perms /sourcedir/ /targetdir/

I want to use rsync for some ifs replication/backup stuff.  I've got it running fine but for some reason when I do the rsync the file ownership and permission settings are not being synchronized.  Files come over to the new ifs directory well.  But they show to be under the ownership of the user profile logged in to the ssh session where the rsync command was run.  Use this a lot on my Linux boxes but have never run into an issue like this.  For testing I am just doing a local ifs dir to another local ifs dir with no luck.  So I know the profiles exist because they are already used on the source dir.  Just wanted to get this working before trying across boxes which is my ultimate goal.

Has anybody else run into anything like this using rsync on an i?  

IBM i V7R4

rsync OSP is 3.2.3-5

Here's the syntax for two different ways I've been rsync'ing this.

rsync --archive --stats --verbose /sourcedir/ /targetdir/

rsync --archive --stats --verbose --owner --group --perms /sourcedir/ /targetdir/

I found the solution yesterday.  It wasn't anything I've ever had to do on Linux itself but it works perfectly.  There is a parm --super on rsync that does a great job of preserving the file ownership and permissions.  I'm guessing the Linux variant gets and keeps all that info via the --archive parm.  But once I added the --super parm it has started bringing everything over perfectly.

The main thing I am wanting to synchronize is my imaging system which resides in the ifs.  It contains about 600,000-650,000 images at any given time.   Along with some small ancillary systems for EDI and customer stating and my Apache web server configurations.  Not massive stuff so rsync every 3-4 hours should be sufficient for my needs without having to script savf backups, ftp transfers and savf restores.

I want to use rsync for some ifs replication/backup stuff.  I've got it running fine but for some reason when I do the rsync the file ownership and permission settings are not being synchronized.  Files come over to the new ifs directory well.  But they show to be under the ownership of the user profile logged in to the ssh session where the rsync command was run.  Use this a lot on my Linux boxes but have never run into an issue like this.  For testing I am just doing a local ifs dir to another local ifs dir with no luck.  So I know the profiles exist because they are already used on the source dir.  Just wanted to get this working before trying across boxes which is my ultimate goal.

Has anybody else run into anything like this using rsync on an i?  

IBM i V7R4

rsync OSP is 3.2.3-5

Here's the syntax for two different ways I've been rsync'ing this.

rsync --archive --stats --verbose /sourcedir/ /targetdir/

rsync --archive --stats --verbose --owner --group --perms /sourcedir/ /targetdir/

I want to use rsync for some ifs replication/backup stuff.  I've got it running fine but for some reason when I do the rsync the file ownership and permission settings are not being synchronized.  Files come over to the new ifs directory well.  But they show to be under the ownership of the user profile logged in to the ssh session where the rsync command was run.  Use this a lot on my Linux boxes but have never run into an issue like this.  For testing I am just doing a local ifs dir to another local ifs dir with no luck.  So I know the profiles exist because they are already used on the source dir.  Just wanted to get this working before trying across boxes which is my ultimate goal.

Has anybody else run into anything like this using rsync on an i?  

IBM i V7R4

rsync OSP is 3.2.3-5

Here's the syntax for two different ways I've been rsync'ing this.

rsync --archive --stats --verbose /sourcedir/ /targetdir/

rsync --archive --stats --verbose --owner --group --perms /sourcedir/ /targetdir/

I've thought of others but this application really doesn't have big security concerns.  It's all happening behind my firewall on the internal network.  Separate buildings on the same campus.  Plus I'm going to activate rsync daemons to connect to but only allow rsync connections from each other in the config.  That will pretty much lock it down enough for what I need. 

I want to use rsync for some ifs replication/backup stuff.  I've got it running fine but for some reason when I do the rsync the file ownership and permission settings are not being synchronized.  Files come over to the new ifs directory well.  But they show to be under the ownership of the user profile logged in to the ssh session where the rsync command was run.  Use this a lot on my Linux boxes but have never run into an issue like this.  For testing I am just doing a local ifs dir to another local ifs dir with no luck.  So I know the profiles exist because they are already used on the source dir.  Just wanted to get this working before trying across boxes which is my ultimate goal.

Has anybody else run into anything like this using rsync on an i?  

IBM i V7R4

rsync OSP is 3.2.3-5

Here's the syntax for two different ways I've been rsync'ing this.

rsync --archive --stats --verbose /sourcedir/ /targetdir/

rsync --archive --stats --verbose --owner --group --perms /sourcedir/ /targetdir/

I want to use rsync for some ifs replication/backup stuff.  I've got it running fine but for some reason when I do the rsync the file ownership and permission settings are not being synchronized.  Files come over to the new ifs directory well.  But they show to be under the ownership of the user profile logged in to the ssh session where the rsync command was run.  Use this a lot on my Linux boxes but have never run into an issue like this.  For testing I am just doing a local ifs dir to another local ifs dir with no luck.  So I know the profiles exist because they are already used on the source dir.  Just wanted to get this working before trying across boxes which is my ultimate goal.

Has anybody else run into anything like this using rsync on an i?  

IBM i V7R4

rsync OSP is 3.2.3-5

Here's the syntax for two different ways I've been rsync'ing this.

rsync --archive --stats --verbose /sourcedir/ /targetdir/

rsync --archive --stats --verbose --owner --group --perms /sourcedir/ /targetdir/

I want to use rsync for some ifs replication/backup stuff.  I've got it running fine but for some reason when I do the rsync the file ownership and permission settings are not being synchronized.  Files come over to the new ifs directory well.  But they show to be under the ownership of the user profile logged in to the ssh session where the rsync command was run.  Use this a lot on my Linux boxes but have never run into an issue like this.  For testing I am just doing a local ifs dir to another local ifs dir with no luck.  So I know the profiles exist because they are already used on the source dir.  Just wanted to get this working before trying across boxes which is my ultimate goal.

Has anybody else run into anything like this using rsync on an i?  

IBM i V7R4

rsync OSP is 3.2.3-5

Here's the syntax for two different ways I've been rsync'ing this.

rsync --archive --stats --verbose /sourcedir/ /targetdir/

rsync --archive --stats --verbose --owner --group --perms /sourcedir/ /targetdir/

------------------------------
Montie Southern
------------------------------

Glad you found the --super flag, which is the answer here.

rsync is designed around Unix limitations, so it will only respect the --user flag if rsync is running as the "super user". Traditionally, this means you are running as UID 0 (root in Unix, QSECOFR on IBM i). You can bypass this internal check by adding the --super flag. Linux has the same problem and --archive doesn't help as it's just an alias for a bunch of options.

Note that as Marius mentioned, rsync currently can only save basic owner and group ownership and associated permissions. If you have any extra authorities added via CHGAUT, these will not be saved.

As for scp, I wouldn't consider it any more secure than rsync. Both use SSH under the covers and can take advantage of SSH's key-based authentication, however scp cannot preserve ownership information (only file mode and access/modified times). Also, I don't know if it is in any way useful in this case, since as far as I can tell from the example commands in the original post, this is all happening on the same system with no remote access at all.

------------------------------
Kevin Adler

Original Message:
Sent: Tue October 01, 2024 05:22 PM
From: Montie Southern
Subject: Getting ifs file ownership and permission settings right with rsync

I want to use rsync for some ifs replication/backup stuff.  I've got it running fine but for some reason when I do the rsync the file ownership and permission settings are not being synchronized.  Files come over to the new ifs directory well.  But they show to be under the ownership of the user profile logged in to the ssh session where the rsync command was run.  Use this a lot on my Linux boxes but have never run into an issue like this.  For testing I am just doing a local ifs dir to another local ifs dir with no luck.  So I know the profiles exist because they are already used on the source dir.  Just wanted to get this working before trying across boxes which is my ultimate goal.

Has anybody else run into anything like this using rsync on an i?  

IBM i V7R4

rsync OSP is 3.2.3-5

Here's the syntax for two different ways I've been rsync'ing this.

rsync --archive --stats --verbose /sourcedir/ /targetdir/

rsync --archive --stats --verbose --owner --group --perms /sourcedir/ /targetdir/

------------------------------
Montie Southern
------------------------------