Rsync – Fixing ‘Failed to Set Permissions’ Error with -a or -p Option

permissionsrsync

When I use the -a option as is asked and answered in Preserve the permissions with rsync, I got a lot of "rsync: failed to set permissions on" errors.

rsync: failed to set permissions on "/ata/text/RCS/jvlc,v": Operation not permitted (1)
rsync: failed to set permissions on "/ata/text/RCS/jvm,v": Operation not permitted (1)
rsync: failed to set permissions on ...

Why is this? The files are normal files with permission of 0664.

Best Answer

Most likely, rsync on the destination end is not running as a user with permission to chmod those files (which would have to be either the file's owner or root).

Related Solutions

Rsync doesn’t preserve directory ownership even with -a

I had a similar problem when using rsync to backup my system to my server. I used:

rsync -aAXSHPr \
-e ssh \
--rsync-path="sudo /usr/bin/rsync/" \
--numeric-ids \
--delete \
--progress \
--exclude-from="/path/to/file/that/lists/excluded/folders.txt" \
--include-from="/path/to/file/that/lists/included/folders.txt" \
/ USER@SERVER:/path/to/folder/where/backup/should/go/

The solution is that there is not really a problem. I suspect that you aborted the rsync process once you saw that it creates folders with wrong permissions set. The crux is that rsync only sets the permissions of a parent-folder once it is done syncing all subfolders and files of it.

Rsync –no-perms still preserves permissions and ignores umask

From the rsync man page:

To give new files the destination-default permissions (while leaving existing files unchanged), make sure that the --perms option is off and use --chmod=ugo=rwX (which ensures that all non-masked bits get enabled).

So...

rsync --copy-links --recursive --times --group --no-perms --chmod=ugo=rwX afile afile2

... should do the trick with the example files you showed.

If the source files have permissions of, say 777...

rsync --copy-links --recursive --times --group --no-perms --chmod=ugo=rw,-X afile afile2

... will remove the executable flag.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Rsync doesn’t preserve directory ownership even with -a

Rsync –no-perms still preserves permissions and ignores umask

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