Backup with rsync

[Gordon Messmer]

Timothy Murphy wrote:
> But I was thinking of backing up the whole system,
> and I discovered that I would have to allow
> root login with ssh.
> I know how to do this in the sshd config
> but would prefer not to do it if possible.
>
> Is there a simple way round this?
>   

You can back up to a remote system without root login, but you'll lose 
all of your files owners and groups.  Non-root users can't change file 
ownership, and can't change group ownership to groups of which they are 
not a member.  Unless you use root or sudo (it's possible), you'll lose 
that information, which means you won't be able to do a direct system 
restore from that backup.  You'll only be able to restore the contents 
of select files, mostly configuration and data files.