Backup with rsync

[Tony Nelson]

At 3:11 PM +0000 10/28/07, Timothy Murphy wrote:
>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?

Use an ssh key:  locally run `sshkeygen -t rsa` (or dsa), append the
resulting public key to the server's /root/.ssh/authorized_keys, set the
server's /etc/ssh/sshd_config PermitRootLogin to "without_password" (or
"forced_commands_only" and set up the command; I haven't tried that),
restart sshd.  See `man sshd_config` and `man ssh-keygen`.  Use a good
passphrase to locally protect the key (personally I use the remote
machine's password which I have made reasonably strong -- I pull 10 or more
letters and digits out of a bag).
-- 
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