Backup with rsync

[Timothy Murphy]

I've been using rsync to backup my desktop
to another machine linked by ethernet.

Actually, to date I have only been backing up
my own files, and have had no problems.
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?