Creating Rsync script to copy files for multiple users and the shared directory

Question

I want to copy files to an external drive to use as a backup using RSync. I have installed OpenMediaVault to serve as NAS. I installed RSyncOsX to have a GUI to set parameters for Rsync to execute. Trying to set up the backup script I got confused.

The RSyncOSX manual https://rsyncosx.github.io/RsyncGUIfirststart says one has to give RsyncOSX permission on the root of the home catalog. This seems to suggest that I have to set up a script for all users on my Mac. Previously I used TimeMachine and I didn’t need to set this up for every user. I would like my backup script to work for all users including the shared directory.

I also want all file permissions to stay in place so user files are still protected from viewing by other users after they have been copied.

How am I to proceed?

Answer 1

Well after some more searching I found the answer here: https://superuser.com/questions/270911/run-rsync-with-root-permission-on-remote-machine. So what I have to do is create a script and then have it executed as root. The script can either be run from the NAS pulling data from the Mac or the other way around. Which I will probably do, because then I can run the script at shutdown.