Mirroring 2 web servers

[LuckyTaxi]

Trying to mirror two web servers. I can rsync but then I thought about it some more.

Here are the issues.

- 6 sites on production server. each folder is own by different user
- dont want to generate public keys for root (i think if i rsync as root the permissions will transfer over correctly)
- i used one account (testuser) and rsynced the directories over, but unfortunately the folders on the backup server inherits "testuser" as the owner of the files.

So what do I need to do to transfer the permissions over correctly w/o using the root user?
This way I dont have to create a cronjob for 6 users.

Command I used:

rsync -avz <source> <destination>

 

[child of wonder]

-a will only preserve file ownership if you run the command as root.

Are you just looking to have a backup server in case the primary fails?

 

[LuckyTaxi]

yes and -a works just fine as root. The files came over with the correct username and permissions.
If i use a user other than root, it applies that user's credentials to the files.

In the event server1 fails, we switch to server2 by modifying dns.

 

[child of wonder]

What about using SSHFS to mount your web root(s) on server1 to server2 then running the rsync as root on server2? You would need to create a user that would have read access to the web directories and create a public key for it.

root@server2:~$ useradd -G fuse,<anyothergroups> user2 (so user has permissions to run sshfs and whatever you need to do so it has read permissions of web files on server1)
root@server2:~$ lsmod | grep fuse (make sure fuse module is loaded, if not, modprobe it)
root@server2:~$ sshfs user2@server1:/var/www /backup/www
root@server2:~$ rsync -avz --delete /backup/www/ /var/www/ (use --delete to get rid of files on the destination that no longer exist on the source)
root@server2:~$ fusermount -u /backup/www (unmount when done)

 

[LuckyTaxi]

i ended up using the root using. We lock SSH access from office and between servers in the DC. I would hope that's secure enough if someone did hack into the system from the outside.

 

[Brazen]

If you are running this as a script, you could rsync the files as a user, and then run some chown commands to fix the ownership changes.

Another option would be drbd.

 

[LuckyTaxi]

Originally posted by: Brazen
If you are running this as a script, you could rsync the files as a user, and then run some chown commands to fix the ownership changes.

Another option would be drbd.

ah ... i didnt think of that one. thanks!