How do I get access permissions right for my backup?

Question

I have a backup server in my LAN which mounts the home dir of user@laptop and creates a backup each hour using a python script.

The problem that I'm having is that I get some hundred "permission denied" errors from rsync. Some files won't copy if I start the backup as root, others won't copy if I start it as user.

The first thought that came to my mind was to set group ownership of home from user to root recursively. But I'm not sure if I should really do that..

Does anyone know how to proceed with this?

Some info about the setup:

uid and gid numbers are identical for user and root on both computers.

This is how I import/export home:

Export with: /etc/exports

192.168.178.10(ro,sync,no_subtree_check,root_squash)

Mount with: /etc/auto.user

-fstype=nfs4,ro,tcp 192.168.178.20:/home/username

Answer 1

Your export line says

192.168.178.10(ro,sync,no_subtree_check,root_squash)

The root_squash entry means "when remote user root tries to access the file, pretend the user is nobody instead. This means the remote root user has no privileged access at all.

Instead change root_squash to no_root_squash. ie

192.168.178.10(ro,sync,no_subtree_check,no_root_squash)

Now the remote root user will have root level read access to the files.