Translating user id when creating image

Question

I want to create an image (for example ext3 image) from a given directory hierarchy. This directory hierarchy is owned by a given user. But on the final image, I want the files to be owned by superuser. Is there a solution for tranlating the user uid / gid to 0 ?

Here is a pseudo workflow :

1. Create file hierarchy, as user in /home/user/rootfs

2. Create an ext3 img on a file

3. loop mount the empty img (as user or root) in /somewhere/loopmount

4. cp -R --magic_uid_options 500=0 /home/user/rootfs /somewhere/loopmount

Or step 4 could be a normal copy and step 5 a clever find that would chown and chgrp recursively. Is there well known solution to this kind of problem ?

Answer 1

I don't know any "--magic_uid_options" for the cp command and you don't need to be clever for doing recursive chown or chgrp.

In fact I would:

• keep as much files/directory properties as possible when doing the copy (timestamp, ...)

  cp -pR /home/users/rootfs /somewhere/loopmount/
  

• chown all to root:root:

  chown -R root:root /somewhere/loopmount
  

Answer 2

You could make step 4, as root:

cd /home/user/rootfs
pax -rw -pp . /somewhere/loopmount

-pp preserves modes and times but creates files owned by the user and group running pax.