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rsyncd.conf(5) rsyncd.conf(5)
NAME
rsyncd.conf -- configuration file for rsync in daemon mode
SYNOPSIS
rsyncd.conf
DESCRIPTION
The rsyncd.conf file is the runtime configuration file for
rsync when run as an rsync daemon.
The rsyncd.conf file controls authentication, access, log-
ging and available modules.
FILE FORMAT
The file consists of modules and parameters. A module
begins with the name of the module in square brackets and
continues until the next module begins. Modules contain
parameters of the form "name = value".
The file is line-based -- that is, each newline-terminated
line represents either a comment, a module name or a
parameter.
Only the first equals sign in a parameter is significant.
Whitespace before or after the first equals sign is dis-
carded. Leading, trailing and internal whitespace in mod-
ule and parameter names is irrelevant. Leading and trail-
ing whitespace in a parameter value is discarded. Internal
whitespace within a parameter value is retained verbatim.
Any line beginning with a hash (#) is ignored, as are
lines containing only whitespace.
Any line ending in a \ is "continued" on the next line in
the customary UNIX fashion.
The values following the equals sign in parameters are all
either a string (no quotes needed) or a boolean, which may
be given as yes/no, 0/1 or true/false. Case is not signif-
icant in boolean values, but is preserved in string val-
ues.
LAUNCHING THE RSYNC DAEMON
The rsync daemon is launched by specifying the --daemon
option to rsync.
The daemon must run with root privileges if you wish to
use chroot, to bind to a port numbered under 1024 (as is
the default 873), or to set file ownership. Otherwise, it
must just have permission to read and write the appropri-
ate data, log, and lock files.
You can launch it either via inetd, as a stand-alone dae-
mon, or from an rsync client via a remote shell. If run
as a stand-alone daemon then just run the command "rsync
--daemon" from a suitable startup script.
When run via inetd you should add a line like this to
/etc/services:
rsync 873/tcp
and a single line something like this to /etc/inetd.conf:
rsync stream tcp nowait root /usr/bin/rsync rsyncd --daemon
Replace "/usr/bin/rsync" with the path to where you have
rsync installed on your system. You will then need to
send inetd a HUP signal to tell it to reread its config
file.
Note that you should not send the rsync daemon a HUP sig-
nal to force it to reread the rsyncd.conf file. The file
is re-read on each client connection.
GLOBAL PARAMETERS
The first parameters in the file (before a [module]
header) are the global parameters.
You may also include any module parameters in the global
part of the config file in which case the supplied value
will override the default for that parameter.
motd file
This parameter allows you to specify a "message of
the day" to display to clients on each connect.
This usually contains site information and any
legal notices. The default is no motd file.
pid file
This parameter tells the rsync daemon to write its
process ID to that file. If the file already
exists, the rsync daemon will abort rather than
overwrite the file.
port You can override the default port the daemon will
listen on by specifying this value (defaults to
873). This is ignored if the daemon is being run
by inetd, and is superseded by the --port command-
line option.
address
You can override the default IP address the daemon
will listen on by specifying this value. This is
ignored if the daemon is being run by inetd, and is
superseded by the --address command-line option.
socket options
This parameter can provide endless fun for people
who like to tune their systems to the utmost
degree. You can set all sorts of socket options
which may make transfers faster (or slower!). Read
the man page for the setsockopt() system call for
details on some of the options you may be able to
set. By default no special socket options are set.
These settings can also be specified via the
--sockopts command-line option.
MODULE PARAMETERS
After the global parameters you should define a number of
modules, each module exports a directory tree as a sym-
bolic name. Modules are exported by specifying a module
name in square brackets [module] followed by the parame-
ters for that module. The module name cannot contain a
slash or a closing square bracket. If the name contains
whitespace, each internal sequence of whitespace will be
changed into a single space, while leading or trailing
whitespace will be discarded.
comment
This parameter specifies a description string that
is displayed next to the module name when clients
obtain a list of available modules. The default is
no comment.
path This parameter specifies the directory in the dae-
mon's filesystem to make available in this module.
You must specify this parameter for each module in
rsyncd.conf.
use chroot
If "use chroot" is true, the rsync daemon will
chroot to the "path" before starting the file
transfer with the client. This has the advantage
of extra protection against possible implementation
security holes, but it has the disadvantages of
requiring super-user privileges, of not being able
to follow symbolic links that are either absolute
or outside of the new root path, and of complicat-
ing the preservation of users and groups by name
(see below).
As an additional safety feature, you can specify a
dot-dir in the module's "path" to indicate the
point where the chroot should occur. This allows
rsync to run in a chroot with a non-"/" path for
the top of the transfer hierarchy. Doing this
guards against unintended library loading (since
those absolute paths will not be inside the trans-
fer hierarchy unless you have used an unwise path-
name), and lets you setup libraries for the chroot
that are outside of the transfer. For example,
specifying "/var/rsync/./module1" will chroot to
the "/var/rsync" directory and set the inside-
chroot path to "/module1". If you had omitted the
dot-dir, the chroot would have used the whole path,
and the inside-chroot path would have been "/".
When "use chroot" is false or the inside-chroot
path is not "/", rsync will: (1) munge symlinks by
default for security reasons (see "munge symlinks"
for a way to turn this off, but only if you trust
your users), (2) substitute leading slashes in
absolute paths with the module's path (so that
options such as --backup-dir, --compare-dest, etc.
interpret an absolute path as rooted in the mod-
ule's "path" dir), and (3) trim ".." path elements
from args if rsync believes they would escape the
module hierarchy. The default for "use chroot" is
true, and is the safer choice (especially if the
module is not read-only).
When this parameter is enabled, rsync will not
attempt to map users and groups by name (by
default), but instead copy IDs as though
--numeric-ids had been specified. In order to
enable name-mapping, rsync needs to be able to use
the standard library functions for looking up names
and IDs (i.e. getpwuid() , getgrgid() , getpw-
name() , and getgrnam() ). This means the rsync
process in the chroot hierarchy will need to have
access to the resources used by these library func-
tions (traditionally /etc/passwd and /etc/group,
but perhaps additional dynamic libraries as well).
If you copy the necessary resources into the mod-
ule's chroot area, you should protect them through
your OS's normal user/group or ACL settings (to
prevent the rsync module's user from being able to
change them), and then hide them from the user's
view via "exclude" (see how in the discussion of
that parameter). At that point it will be safe to
enable the mapping of users and groups by name
using the "numeric ids" daemon parameter (see
below).
Note also that you are free to setup custom
user/group information in the chroot area that is
different from your normal system. For example,
you could abbreviate the list of users and groups.
numeric ids
Enabling this parameter disables the mapping of
users and groups by name for the current daemon
module. This prevents the daemon from trying to
load any user/group-related files or libraries.
This enabling makes the transfer behave as if the
client had passed the --numeric-ids command-line
option. By default, this parameter is enabled for
chroot modules and disabled for non-chroot modules.
A chroot-enabled module should not have this param-
eter enabled unless you've taken steps to ensure
that the module has the necessary resources it
needs to translate names, and that it is not possi-
ble for a user to change those resources.
munge symlinks
This parameter tells rsync to modify all incoming
symlinks in a way that makes them unusable but
recoverable (see below). This should help protect
your files from user trickery when your daemon mod-
ule is writable. The default is disabled when "use
chroot" is on and the inside-chroot path is "/",
otherwise it is enabled.
If you disable this parameter on a daemon that is
not read-only, there are tricks that a user can
play with uploaded symlinks to access daemon-
excluded items (if your module has any), and, if
"use chroot" is off, rsync can even be tricked into
showing or changing data that is outside the mod-
ule's path (as access-permissions allow).
The way rsync disables the use of symlinks is to
prefix each one with the string "/rsyncd-munged/".
This prevents the links from being used as long as
that directory does not exist. When this parameter
is enabled, rsync will refuse to run if that path
is a directory or a symlink to a directory. When
using the "munge symlinks" parameter in a chroot
area that has an inside-chroot path of "/", you
should add "/rsyncd-munged/" to the exclude setting
for the module so that a user can't try to create
it.
Note: rsync makes no attempt to verify that any
pre-existing symlinks in the module's hierarchy are
as safe as you want them to be (unless, of course,
it just copied in the whole hierarchy). If you
setup an rsync daemon on a new area or locally add
symlinks, you can manually protect your symlinks
from being abused by prefixing "/rsyncd-munged/" to
the start of every symlink's value. There is a
perl script in the support directory of the source
code named "munge-symlinks" that can be used to add
or remove this prefix from your symlinks.
When this parameter is disabled on a writable mod-
ule and "use chroot" is off (or the inside-chroot
path is not "/"), incoming symlinks will be modi-
fied to drop a leading slash and to remove ".."
path elements that rsync believes will allow a sym-
link to escape the module's hierarchy. There are
tricky ways to work around this, though, so you had
better trust your users if you choose this combina-
tion of parameters.
charset
This specifies the name of the character set in
which the module's filenames are stored. If the
client uses an --iconv option, the daemon will use
the value of the "charset" parameter regardless of
the character set the client actually passed. This
allows the daemon to support charset conversion in
a chroot module without extra files in the chroot
area, and also ensures that name-translation is
done in a consistent manner. If the "charset"
parameter is not set, the --iconv option is
refused, just as if "iconv" had been specified via
"refuse options".
If you wish to force users to always use --iconv
for a particular module, add "no-iconv" to the
"refuse options" parameter. Keep in mind that this
will restrict access to your module to very new
rsync clients.
max connections
This parameter allows you to specify the maximum
number of simultaneous connections you will allow.
Any clients connecting when the maximum has been
reached will receive a message telling them to try
later. The default is 0, which means no limit. A
negative value disables the module. See also the
"lock file" parameter.
log file
When the "log file" parameter is set to a non-empty
string, the rsync daemon will log messages to the
indicated file rather than using syslog. This is
particularly useful on systems (such as AIX) where
syslog() doesn't work for chrooted programs. The
file is opened before chroot() is called, allowing
it to be placed outside the transfer. If this
value is set on a per-module basis instead of glob-
ally, the global log will still contain any autho-
rization failures or config-file error messages.
If the daemon fails to open the specified file, it
will fall back to using syslog and output an error
about the failure. (Note that the failure to open
the specified log file used to be a fatal error.)
syslog facility
This parameter allows you to specify the syslog
facility name to use when logging messages from the
rsync daemon. You may use any standard syslog
facility name which is defined on your system. Com-
mon names are auth, authpriv, cron, daemon, ftp,
kern, lpr, mail, news, security, syslog, user,
uucp, local0, local1, local2, local3, local4,
local5, local6 and local7. The default is daemon.
This setting has no effect if the "log file" set-
ting is a non-empty string (either set in the per-
modules settings, or inherited from the global set-
tings).
max verbosity
This parameter allows you to control the maximum
amount of verbose information that you'll allow the
daemon to generate (since the information goes into
the log file). The default is 1, which allows the
client to request one level of verbosity.
lock file
This parameter specifies the file to use to support
the "max connections" parameter. The rsync daemon
uses record locking on this file to ensure that the
max connections limit is not exceeded for the mod-
ules sharing the lock file. The default is
/var/run/rsyncd.lock.
read only
This parameter determines whether clients will be
able to upload files or not. If "read only" is true
then any attempted uploads will fail. If "read
only" is false then uploads will be possible if
file permissions on the daemon side allow them. The
default is for all modules to be read only.
write only
This parameter determines whether clients will be
able to download files or not. If "write only" is
true then any attempted downloads will fail. If
"write only" is false then downloads will be possi-
ble if file permissions on the daemon side allow
them. The default is for this parameter to be dis-
abled.
list This parameter determines if this module should be
listed when the client asks for a listing of avail-
able modules. By setting this to false you can cre-
ate hidden modules. The default is for modules to
be listable.
uid This parameter specifies the user name or user ID
that file transfers to and from that module should
take place as when the daemon was run as root. In
combination with the "gid" parameter this deter-
mines what file permissions are available. The
default is uid -2, which is normally the user
"nobody".
gid This parameter specifies the group name or group ID
that file transfers to and from that module should
take place as when the daemon was run as root. This
complements the "uid" parameter. The default is gid
-2, which is normally the group "nobody".
fake super
Setting "fake super = yes" for a module causes the
daemon side to behave as if the --fake-user com-
mand-line option had been specified. This allows
the full attributes of a file to be stored without
having to have the daemon actually running as root.
filter The daemon has its own filter chain that determines
what files it will let the client access. This
chain is not sent to the client and is independent
of any filters the client may have specified.
Files excluded by the daemon filter chain (daemon-
excluded files) are treated as non-existent if the
client tries to pull them, are skipped with an
error message if the client tries to push them
(triggering exit code 23), and are never deleted
from the module. You can use daemon filters to
prevent clients from downloading or tampering with
private administrative files, such as files you may
add to support uid/gid name translations.
The daemon filter chain is built from the "filter",
"include from", "include", "exclude from", and
"exclude" parameters, in that order of priority.
Anchored patterns are anchored at the root of the
module. To prevent access to an entire subtree,
for example, "/secret", you must exclude everything
in the subtree; the easiest way to do this is with
a triple-star pattern like "/secret/***".
The "filter" parameter takes a space-separated list
of daemon filter rules, though it is smart enough
to know not to split a token at an internal space
in a rule (e.g. "- /foo -- /bar" is parsed as two
rules). You may specify one or more merge-file
rules using the normal syntax. Only one "filter"
parameter can apply to a given module in the config
file, so put all the rules you want in a single
parameter. Note that per-directory merge-file
rules do not provide as much protection as global
rules, but they can be used to make --delete work
better during a client download operation if the
per-dir merge files are included in the transfer
and the client requests that they be used.
exclude
This parameter takes a space-separated list of dae-
mon exclude patterns. As with the client --exclude
option, patterns can be qualified with "- " or "+ "
to explicitly indicate exclude/include. Only one
"exclude" parameter can apply to a given module.
See the "filter" parameter for a description of how
excluded files affect the daemon.
include
Use an "include" to override the effects of the
"exclude" parameter. Only one "include" parameter
can apply to a given module. See the "filter"
parameter for a description of how excluded files
affect the daemon.
exclude from
This parameter specifies the name of a file on the
daemon that contains daemon exclude patterns, one
per line. Only one "exclude from" parameter can
apply to a given module; if you have multiple
exclude-from files, you can specify them as a merge
file in the "filter" parameter. See the "filter"
parameter for a description of how excluded files
affect the daemon.
include from
Analogue of "exclude from" for a file of daemon
include patterns. Only one "include from" parame-
ter can apply to a given module. See the "filter"
parameter for a description of how excluded files
affect the daemon.
incoming chmod
This parameter allows you to specify a set of
comma-separated chmod strings that will affect the
permissions of all incoming files (files that are
being received by the daemon). These changes hap-
pen after all other permission calculations, and
this will even override destination-default and/or
existing permissions when the client does not spec-
ify --perms. See the description of the --chmod
rsync option and the chmod(1) manpage for informa-
tion on the format of this string.
outgoing chmod
This parameter allows you to specify a set of
comma-separated chmod strings that will affect the
permissions of all outgoing files (files that are
being sent out from the daemon). These changes
happen first, making the sent permissions appear to
be different than those stored in the filesystem
itself. For instance, you could disable group
write permissions on the server while having it
appear to be on to the clients. See the descrip-
tion of the --chmod rsync option and the chmod(1)
manpage for information on the format of this
string.
auth users
This parameter specifies a comma and space-sepa-
rated list of usernames that will be allowed to
connect to this module. The usernames do not need
to exist on the local system. The usernames may
also contain shell wildcard characters. If "auth
users" is set then the client will be challenged to
supply a username and password to connect to the
module. A challenge response authentication proto-
col is used for this exchange. The plain text user-
names and passwords are stored in the file speci-
fied by the "secrets file" parameter. The default
is for all users to be able to connect without a
password (this is called "anonymous rsync").
See also the "CONNECTING TO AN RSYNC DAEMON OVER A
REMOTE SHELL PROGRAM" section in rsync(1) for
information on how handle an rsyncd.conf-level
username that differs from the remote-shell-level
username when using a remote shell to connect to an
rsync daemon.
secrets file
This parameter specifies the name of a file that
contains the username:password pairs used for
authenticating this module. This file is only con-
sulted if the "auth users" parameter is specified.
The file is line based and contains username:pass-
word pairs separated by a single colon. Any line
starting with a hash (#) is considered a comment
and is skipped. The passwords can contain any char-
acters but be warned that many operating systems
limit the length of passwords that can be typed at
the client end, so you may find that passwords
longer than 8 characters don't work.
There is no default for the "secrets file" parame-
ter, you must choose a name (such as
/etc/rsyncd.secrets). The file must normally not
be readable by "other"; see "strict modes".
strict modes
This parameter determines whether or not the per-
missions on the secrets file will be checked. If
"strict modes" is true, then the secrets file must
not be readable by any user ID other than the one
that the rsync daemon is running under. If "strict
modes" is false, the check is not performed. The
default is true. This parameter was added to
accommodate rsync running on the Windows operating
system.
hosts allow
This parameter allows you to specify a list of pat-
terns that are matched against a connecting clients
hostname and IP address. If none of the patterns
match then the connection is rejected.
Each pattern can be in one of five forms:
o a dotted decimal IPv4 address of the form
a.b.c.d, or an IPv6 address of the form
a:b:c::d:e:f. In this case the incoming
machine's IP address must match exactly.
o an address/mask in the form ipaddr/n where
ipaddr is the IP address and n is the number
of one bits in the netmask. All IP
addresses which match the masked IP address
will be allowed in.
o an address/mask in the form ipaddr/maskaddr
where ipaddr is the IP address and maskaddr
is the netmask in dotted decimal notation
for IPv4, or similar for IPv6, e.g.
ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:: instead of /64. All IP
addresses which match the masked IP address
will be allowed in.
o a hostname. The hostname as determined by a
reverse lookup will be matched (case insen-
sitive) against the pattern. Only an exact
match is allowed in.
o a hostname pattern using wildcards. These
are matched using the same rules as normal
unix filename matching. If the pattern
matches then the client is allowed in.
Note IPv6 link-local addresses can have a scope in
the address specification:
fe80::1%link1
fe80::%link1/64
fe80::%link1/ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff::
You can also combine "hosts allow" with a separate
"hosts deny" parameter. If both parameters are
specified then the "hosts allow" parameter is
checked first and a match results in the client
being able to connect. The "hosts deny" parameter
is then checked and a match means that the host is
rejected. If the host does not match either the
"hosts allow" or the "hosts deny" patterns then it
is allowed to connect.
The default is no "hosts allow" parameter, which
means all hosts can connect.
hosts deny
This parameter allows you to specify a list of pat-
terns that are matched against a connecting clients
hostname and IP address. If the pattern matches
then the connection is rejected. See the "hosts
allow" parameter for more information.
The default is no "hosts deny" parameter, which
means all hosts can connect.
ignore errors
This parameter tells rsyncd to ignore I/O errors on
the daemon when deciding whether to run the delete
phase of the transfer. Normally rsync skips the
--delete step if any I/O errors have occurred in
order to prevent disastrous deletion due to a tem-
porary resource shortage or other I/O error. In
some cases this test is counter productive so you
can use this parameter to turn off this behavior.
ignore nonreadable
This tells the rsync daemon to completely ignore
files that are not readable by the user. This is
useful for public archives that may have some non-
readable files among the directories, and the
sysadmin doesn't want those files to be seen at
all.
transfer logging
This parameter enables per-file logging of down-
loads and uploads in a format somewhat similar to
that used by ftp daemons. The daemon always logs
the transfer at the end, so if a transfer is
aborted, no mention will be made in the log file.
If you want to customize the log lines, see the
"log format" parameter.
log format
This parameter allows you to specify the format
used for logging file transfers when transfer log-
ging is enabled. The format is a text string con-
taining embedded single-character escape sequences
prefixed with a percent (%) character. An optional
numeric field width may also be specified between
the percent and the escape letter (e.g. "%-50n %8l
%07p").
The default log format is "%o %h [%a] %m (%u) %f
%l", and a "%t [%p] " is always prefixed when using
the "log file" parameter. (A perl script that will
summarize this default log format is included in
the rsync source code distribution in the "support"
subdirectory: rsyncstats.)
The single-character escapes that are understood
are as follows:
o %a the remote IP address
o %b the number of bytes actually transferred
o %B the permission bits of the file (e.g.
rwxrwxrwt)
o %c the total size of the block checksums
received for the basis file (only when send-
ing)
o %f the filename (long form on sender; no
trailing "/")
o %G the gid of the file (decimal) or
"DEFAULT"
o %h the remote host name
o %i an itemized list of what is being updated
o %l the length of the file in bytes
o %L the string " -> SYMLINK", " => HARDLINK",
or "" (where SYMLINK or HARDLINK is a file-
name)
o %m the module name
o %M the last-modified time of the file
o %n the filename (short form; trailing "/" on
dir)
o %o the operation, which is "send", "recv",
or "del." (the latter includes the trailing
period)
o %p the process ID of this rsync session
o %P the module path
o %t the current date time
o %u the authenticated username or an empty
string
o %U the uid of the file (decimal)
For a list of what the characters mean that are
output by "%i", see the --itemize-changes option in
the rsync manpage.
Note that some of the logged output changes when
talking with older rsync versions. For instance,
deleted files were only output as verbose messages
prior to rsync 2.6.4.
timeout
This parameter allows you to override the clients
choice for I/O timeout for this module. Using this
parameter you can ensure that rsync won't wait on a
dead client forever. The timeout is specified in
seconds. A value of zero means no timeout and is
the default. A good choice for anonymous rsync dae-
mons may be 600 (giving a 10 minute timeout).
refuse options
This parameter allows you to specify a space-sepa-
rated list of rsync command line options that will
be refused by your rsync daemon. You may specify
the full option name, its one-letter abbreviation,
or a wild-card string that matches multiple
options. For example, this would refuse --checksum
(-c) and all the various delete options:
refuse options = c delete
The reason the above refuses all delete options is
that the options imply --delete, and implied
options are refused just like explicit options. As
an additional safety feature, the refusal of
"delete" also refuses remove-source-files when the
daemon is the sender; if you want the latter with-
out the former, instead refuse "delete-*" -- that
refuses all the delete modes without affecting
--remove-source-files.
When an option is refused, the daemon prints an
error message and exits. To prevent all compres-
sion when serving files, you can use "dont compress
= *" (see below) instead of "refuse options = com-
press" to avoid returning an error to a client that
requests compression.
dont compress
This parameter allows you to select filenames based
on wildcard patterns that should not be compressed
when pulling files from the daemon (no analogous
parameter exists to govern the pushing of files to
a daemon). Compression is expensive in terms of
CPU usage, so it is usually good to not try to com-
press files that won't compress well, such as
already compressed files.
The "dont compress" parameter takes a space-sepa-
rated list of case-insensitive wildcard patterns.
Any source filename matching one of the patterns
will not be compressed during transfer.
See the --skip-compress parameter in the rsync(1)
manpage for the list of file suffixes that are not
compressed by default. Specifying a value for the
"dont compress" parameter changes the default when
the daemon is the sender.
pre-xfer exec, post-xfer exec
You may specify a command to be run before and/or
after the transfer. If the pre-xfer exec command
fails, the transfer is aborted before it begins.
The following environment variables will be set,
though some are specific to the pre-xfer or the
post-xfer environment:
o RSYNC_MODULE_NAME: The name of the module
being accessed.
o RSYNC_MODULE_PATH: The path configured for
the module.
o RSYNC_HOST_ADDR: The accessing host's IP
address.
o RSYNC_HOST_NAME: The accessing host's name.
o RSYNC_USER_NAME: The accessing user's name
(empty if no user).
o RSYNC_PID: A unique number for this trans-
fer.
o RSYNC_REQUEST: (pre-xfer only) The mod-
ule/path info specified by the user (note
that the user can specify multiple source
files, so the request can be something like
"mod/path1 mod/path2", etc.).
o RSYNC_ARG#: (pre-xfer only) The pre-request
arguments are set in these numbered values.
RSYNC_ARG0 is always "rsyncd", and the last
value contains a single period.
o RSYNC_EXIT_STATUS: (post-xfer only) the
server side's exit value. This will be 0
for a successful run, a positive value for
an error that the server generated, or a -1
if rsync failed to exit properly. Note that
an error that occurs on the client side does
not currently get sent to the server side,
so this is not the final exit status for the
whole transfer.
o RSYNC_RAW_STATUS: (post-xfer only) the raw
exit value from waitpid() .
Even though the commands can be associated with a
particular module, they are run using the permis-
sions of the user that started the daemon (not the
module's uid/gid setting) without any chroot
restrictions.
AUTHENTICATION STRENGTH
The authentication protocol used in rsync is a 128 bit MD4
based challenge response system. This is fairly weak pro-
tection, though (with at least one brute-force hash-find-
ing algorithm publicly available), so if you want really
top-quality security, then I recommend that you run rsync
over ssh. (Yes, a future version of rsync will switch
over to a stronger hashing method.)
Also note that the rsync daemon protocol does not cur-
rently provide any encryption of the data that is trans-
ferred over the connection. Only authentication is pro-
vided. Use ssh as the transport if you want encryption.
Future versions of rsync may support SSL for better
authentication and encryption, but that is still being
investigated.
EXAMPLES
A simple rsyncd.conf file that allow anonymous rsync to a
ftp area at /home/ftp would be:
[ftp]
path = /home/ftp
comment = ftp export area
A more sophisticated example would be:
uid = nobody
gid = nobody
use chroot = yes
max connections = 4
syslog facility = local5
pid file = /var/run/rsyncd.pid
[ftp]
path = /var/ftp/./pub
comment = whole ftp area (approx 6.1 GB)
[sambaftp]
path = /var/ftp/./pub/samba
comment = Samba ftp area (approx 300 MB)
[rsyncftp]
path = /var/ftp/./pub/rsync
comment = rsync ftp area (approx 6 MB)
[sambawww]
path = /public_html/samba
comment = Samba WWW pages (approx 240 MB)
[cvs]
path = /data/cvs
comment = CVS repository (requires authentication)
auth users = tridge, susan
secrets file = /etc/rsyncd.secrets
The /etc/rsyncd.secrets file would look something like
this:
tridge:mypass
susan:herpass
FILES
/etc/rsyncd.conf or rsyncd.conf
SEE ALSO
rsync(1)
DIAGNOSTICS
BUGS
Please report bugs! The rsync bug tracking system is
online at http://rsync.samba.org/
VERSION
This man page is current for version 3.0.5 of rsync.
CREDITS
rsync is distributed under the GNU public license. See
the file COPYING for details.
The primary ftp site for rsync is
ftp://rsync.samba.org/pub/rsync.
A WEB site is available at http://rsync.samba.org/
We would be delighted to hear from you if you like this
program.
This program uses the zlib compression library written by
Jean-loup Gailly and Mark Adler.
THANKS
Thanks to Warren Stanley for his original idea and patch
for the rsync daemon. Thanks to Karsten Thygesen for his
many suggestions and documentation!
AUTHOR
rsync was written by Andrew Tridgell and Paul Mackerras.
Many people have later contributed to it.
Mailing lists for support and development are available at
http://lists.samba.org
28 Dec 2008 rsyncd.conf(5)