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Khaled
Asked: 2011-02-09 01:53:55 +0800 CST

Will backup using rsync preserve ACLs?

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I am using backuppc to backup my server. The backups are done using rsyncd. Currently, I am not using ACLs, but I am think it is good to activate it to have finer control over permissions.

My question: Will backing up my files using rsync preserve the defined ACLs?

BTW, I read an article about ACLs. They are saying that ubuntu does not support ACLs with tar. Is this real/old or not? I may not have this problem if I am using rsync. Is this right?

10.04

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    As always when it comes to backing up stuff, do not fully trust answers from the net (like this one ;-)) and test it yourself before handling valuable data.

    Taking a look at http://packages.ubuntu.com/maverick/rsync (and there, specifically, at [rsync_3.0.7-2ubuntu1.dsc]), we see that the maintainer writes

      -- Paul Slootman <[email protected]>  Mon, 20 Nov 2006 15:43:12 +0100

  rsync (2.6.9-1) unstable; urgency=low

  * New upstream release.
  * (from experimental version 2.6.9~pre3-1)
    Applied a mix of the patches from Martin Pitt and David Härdeman for
    LSBfying init script.
    closes:#375985,#385877
  * Upstream now includes the patch for replacing a dir with a symlink when
    using --delete-after.
    closes:#350522
  * Now includes the ACL patch.

    So the package itself supports ACLs since 2006.

    As for your second question: I don't know about tar, but as long as you only rsync your files somewhere else, you should not be affected by any possible problems with tar. rsync does not use tar during transfers.

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