Run rsync with root permission on remote machine

Try this solution. In your sudoers file (/etc/sudoers) setup your user like this:

username ALL= NOPASSWD:/usr/bin/rsync

the NOPASSWD:/usr/bin/rsync tells sudo that when your user runs /usr/bin/rsync or just rsync that no password is needed.

Then your original --rsync-path="sudo rsync" should work.

This is the solution I came up with:

rsync -R -avz -e ssh --rsync-path="echo mypassword | sudo -S  mkdir -p /remote/lovely/folder && sudo rsync" /home/ubuntu/my/lovely/folder [email protected]:/remote/lovely/folder --delete

Bit of a mission!

The solution on this blog worked really well for me: http://www.pplux.com/2009/02/07/rsync-root-and-sudo/.

Basically:

stty -echo; ssh myUser@REMOTE_SERVER "sudo -v"; stty echo  
rsync -avze ssh --rsync-path='sudo rsync' myUser@REMOTE_SERVER:/REMOTE_PATH/ LOCAL_PATH 

The first line allows for interactive password entry, without showing the password on the screen. Works great for me on Ubuntu 9.04.