What is the proper way to move files around as root when using NFS?

[Red Squirrel]

Everything I read says to not use root squash. So without using that, what is the preferred method of moving files around NFS? This should be simple but due to how Linux permissions work it's rendered complicated.

Say I'm root on server 1, I have a NFS mount on server 2 with files that I want. I need to be root, because the place I want to put the files is only accessible via root, and the files on the NFS server are owned by root, or other user.

This wont work, unless I enable root squash. So how are situations like this typically handled? I can do a multi step process by zipping it up at the file server, changing the permissions to a regular user account, then using a regular user to copy it from the NFS share to that user's home directory, but there's got to be a better way to deal with this.

 

[theevilsharpie]

I use scp when I want to do a one-off copy as root.

 

[smakme7757]

Yea, scp is a nice tool.
If my brain is working well this morning you can just use it like this for fetching from a remote host as root:

Scp root@10.0.0.50:/mnt/nfsshare0/myfile.txt /home/redsqu/Documents

 

[mv2devnull]

rsync has more features.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Hmmm guess I'll just do that then. I was thinking maybe there's something through NFS I can do, kinda like in Windows where you have UNC paths and as long as you are admin permissions don't really matter.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Hmmm guess I'll just do that then. I was thinking maybe there's something through NFS I can do, kinda like in Windows where you have UNC paths and as long as you are admin permissions don't really matter.

Even then, you have to have admin rights on the server. They're enforcing permissions, local admin rights or not. If the Windows machines are authenticating back to AD, then that's the authority.

By the same token, if you're in a multi-server Linux environment in a workplace, they should probably be authenticating back to AD/LDAP. Then this isn't really an issue - you have the rights you're supposed to have, and your AD admins can create a domain admin account if they haven't already. (Or specific users can be added to sudoers group on the Linux system.)

The problem with root squash is that root on Server 1 has full read-write permissions for Server 2, which you might not want. If you DO want that, then go right ahead.