Rsync daemon mode over ssh

rsync_daemon_over_ssh.md

rsync daemon mode over ssh

There are several common ways to do rsync backups of hosts over ssh:

1. As a non-root user. Upsides: very secure. Downside: cannot back up sensitive files.
2. As root, with a public key. Downsides: Whoever has the private key has full root access to the host being backed up.
3. As root, with a public key and a "forced command". Upsides: Restricts access to the server. Downsides: Requires either careful matching of rsync options (which might change over time), or "validator" scripts. Neither idea sounds very appealing to me.
4. Running rsync in daemon mode on the host being backed up. Upsides: Lots of useful options, like read-only mode, running as a different user if required, server-side excludes/includes, etc. Downsides: Opens up a TCP port that has full filesystem read access and is hard to secure (Ideally you could make the rsync daemon use a unix socket instead, that could be secured by filesystem permissions, but I haven't found a way to do that).

Here is another option that I haven't found much information on, but that I think combines the best aspects of solutions 3 and 4: using rsync daemon mode over ssh.

This is based on a relatively obscure feature mentioned in the rsync(1) man page under "USING RSYNC-DAEMON FEATURES VIA A REMOTE-SHELL CONNECTION":

It is sometimes useful to use various features of an rsync daemon (such as named modules) without actually allowing any new socket connections into a system (other than what is already required to allow remote-shell access). Rsync supports connecting to a host using a remote shell and then spawning a single-use "daemon" server that expects to read its config file in the home dir of the remote user.

The part about the configuration file is not correct, the daemon will look for /etc/rsyncd.conf instead. Or maybe it's a compile-time option, but at least on Ubuntu and CentOS the file is looked up in /etc. This is not a problem though, as we can override the location via a commandline option.

This allows us to set up the following:

• A special rsyncd.conf file on the host to be backed up that provides a read-only view of the filesystem, with optional includes/excludes (see the rsync man page for details). Example:

  # /root/rsyncd.conf
  uid = root
  gid = root
  log file = /var/log/rsyncd.backup.log
  [home]
      path = /home/
      read only = true
      exclude = lost+found/
  

• A key that is restricted to running rsync in daemon mode with the above config file:

  # /root/.ssh/authorized_keys
  command="rsync --config=/root/rsyncd.conf --server --daemon .",no-agent-forwarding,no-port-forwarding,no-pty,no-user-rc,no-X11-forwarding ssh-rsa ...
  

• And to restrict the ssh access of the root user to forced commands only:

  # /etc/sshd_config
  [...]
  PermitRootLogin forced-commands-only
  [...]
  

• On the host doing the backup, we trigger daemon mode over ssh by using rsync daemon notation for the source combined with the --rsh=ssh option, as described in the rsync man page:

  # rsync -av --rsh=ssh remote_host::home destination/
  

  When using rsnapshot, the correct backup line for /etc/rsnapshot.conf is:

  backup	remote_host::home	destination/home/	+rsync_long_args=--rsh=ssh
  

  Note that you have to specify the directory name again on the destination side, and of course use tabs to separate everything.

  When using swiftbackup, the format for the backup option is:

  backup =
      remote_host::home --rsh=ssh
  

What happens now is that rsync connects via ssh to the remote host, where the forced command starts an rsync daemon for the lifetime of the ssh connection that does not listen on a TCP port and only talks to the rsync process on the local side. We won't have to change the authorized_keys file if we change rsync options on the client, and as an added bonus the rsync access is read-only.

Thanks, that was helpful :)

I used this idea to make backups of my NextCloud server, thanks !

I thought this was great and tested it on one of our cloud server, where it worked like a charm.

On re-reading the rsync man page, though, I noticed what appeared to be slightly simpler and equally secure method, and am curious about your thoughts.

If you
a) set "hosts deny=0.0.0.0/0" and "hosts allow=<remote_host_IP_address>" in rsyncd.conf;
b) "ssh -L <some_local_port>:localhost:873>" to create an ssh tunnel;

then you can "rsync rsync://<remote_host:<some_local_port>/" to connect to the rsyncd on the remote host using the ssh tunnel, while denying the rest of the world access. This avoids modifying the sshd_config and authorized_key files.

very nicely done, thanks for this.