rsyncd.conf
The rsyncd.conf file is the runtime configuration file for rsync when run as an rsync server.
The rsyncd.conf file controls authentication, access, logging and available modules.
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 discarded. Leading, trailing and internal whitespace in module and parameter names is irrelevant. Leading and trailing 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 significant in boolean values, but is preserved in string values.
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 appropriate data, log, and lock files.
You can launch it either via inetd, as a stand-alone daemon, 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. If run from an rsync client via a remote shell (by specifying both the --rsh (-e) option and server mode with "::" or "rsync://"), the --daemon option is automatically passed to the remote side.
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 server a HUP signal to force it to
reread the rsyncd.conf
file. The file is re-read on each client
connection.
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.
After the global options you should define a number of modules, each module exports a directory tree as a symbolic name. Modules are exported by specifying a module name in square brackets [module] followed by the options for that module.
rsyncd.conf
.
In order to preserve usernames and groupnames, rsync needs to be able to use the standard library functions for looking up names and IDs (i.e. getpwuid(), getgrgid(), getpwname(), and getgrnam()). This means a process in the chroot namespace will need to have access to the resources used by these library functions (traditionally /etc/passwd and /etc/group). If these resources are not available, rsync will only be able to copy the IDs, just as if the --numeric-ids option had been specified.
Note that you are free to setup user/group information in the chroot area differently from your normal system. For example, you could abbreviate the list of users and groups. Also, you can protect this information from being downloaded/uploaded by adding an exclude rule to the rsync.conf file (e.g. "exclude = /etc/**"). Note that having the exclusion affect uploads is a relatively new feature in rsync, so make sure your server is running at least 2.6.3 to effect this. Also note that it is safest to exclude a directory and all its contents combining the rule "/some/dir/" with the rule "/some/dir/**" just to be sure that rsync will not allow deeper access to some of the excluded files inside the directory (rsync tries to do this automatically, but you might as well specify both to be extra sure).
/var/run/rsyncd.lock
.
Because this exclude list is not passed to the client it only applies on the server: that is, it excludes files received by a client when receiving from a server and files deleted on a server when sending to a server, but it doesn't exclude files from being deleted on a client when receiving from a server.
See also the CONNECTING TO AN RSYNC SERVER 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 server.
There is no default for the "secrets file" option, you must choose a name
(such as /etc/rsyncd.secrets
). The file must normally not be
readable by "other"; see "strict modes".
Each pattern can be in one of five forms:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- a hostname. The hostname as determined by a reverse lookup will be matched (case insensitive) against the pattern. Only an exact match is allowed in.
- 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" option. If both options are specified then the "hosts allow" option s checked first and a match results in the client being able to connect. The "hosts deny" option 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" option, which means all hosts can connect.
The default is no "hosts deny" option, which means all hosts can connect.
If you want to customize the log lines, see the "log format" option.
The default log format is "%o %h [%a] %m (%u) %f %l", and a "%t [%p] " is always prefixed when using the "log file" option. (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:
- %h for the remote host name
- %a for the remote IP address
- %l for the length of the file in bytes
- %p for the process ID of this rsync session
- %o for the operation, which is "send", "recv", or "del." (the latter includes the trailing period)
- %f for the filename (long form on sender; no trailing "/")
- %n for the filename (short form; trailing "/" on dir)
- %L either the string " -> SYMLINK", or " => HARDLINK" or an empty string (where SYMLINK or HARDLINK is a filename)
- %P for the module path
- %m for the module name
- %t for the current date time
- %u for the authenticated username (or the null string)
- %b for the number of bytes actually transferred
- %c when sending files this gives the number of checksum bytes received for this file
- %i an itemized list of what is being updated
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.
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-sent-files when the daemon is the sender; if you want the latter without the former, instead refuse "delete-*" -- that refuses all the delete modes without affecting --remove-sent-files.
When an option is refused, the server prints an error message and exits. To prevent all compression, you can use "dont compress = *" (see below) instead of "refuse options = compress" to avoid returning an error to a client that requests compression.
The "dont compress" option takes a space-separated list of case-insensitive wildcard patterns. Any source filename matching one of the patterns will not be compressed during transfer.
The default setting is *.gz *.tgz *.zip *.z *.rpm *.deb *.iso *.bz2
*.tbz
The authentication protocol used in rsync is a 128 bit MD4 based challenge response system. Although I believe that no one has ever demonstrated a brute-force break of this sort of system you should realize that this is not a "military strength" authentication system. It should be good enough for most purposes but if you want really top quality security then I recommend that you run rsync over ssh.
Also note that the rsync server protocol does not currently provide any encryption of the data that is transferred over the connection. Only authentication is provided. 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.
If rsync is run with both the --daemon and --rsh (-e) options, it will spawn an rsync daemon using a remote shell connection. Several configuration options will not be available unless the remote user is root (e.g. chroot, setuid/setgid, etc.). There is no need to configure inetd or the services map to include the rsync server port if you run an rsync server only via a remote shell program.
ADVANCED: To run an rsync server out of a single-use ssh key, use the "command=COMMAND" syntax in the remote user's authorized_keys entry, where command would be
rsync --server --daemon .
NOTE: rsync's argument parsing expects the trailing ".", so make sure that it's there. If you want to use an rsyncd.conf(5)-style configuration file other than the default, you can added a --config option to the command:
rsync --server --daemon --config=em(file)
.
Note that the "--server" here is the internal option that rsync uses to run the remote version of rsync that it communicates with, and thus you should not be using the --server option under normal circumstances.
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 = no 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
/etc/rsyncd.conf or rsyncd.conf
rsync(1)
The rsync server does not send all types of error messages to the client. this means a client may be mystified as to why a transfer failed. The error will have been logged by syslog on the server.
Please report bugs! The rsync bug tracking system is online at http://rsync.samba.org/
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 to Warren Stanley for his original idea and patch for the rsync server. Thanks to Karsten Thygesen for his many suggestions and documentation!
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://rsync.samba.org/ftp/rsync/lists.samba.org