Following on from this question: rsync's relationship with special filesIn order to back up device files, rsync at the destination needs to be able to call mknod.  The usual approach would be to tell rsync to log in as root and use the switch --super.  (e.g.rsync -avz --super ./this root@thatserver:/backup/this) I don't particularly want to have rsync processes log in as root.According to 'man mknod':EPERM (error)...and the caller is not privileged (Linux: does not have the CAP_MKNOD  capability)...Is it possible to assign CAP_MKNOD to a user who is not root?  If so, how?
How can I give a user the CAP_MKNOD capabillity?
rsync;devices
You can add a capability to a binary file. For example, on the remote copy/bin/rsync to the user's home directory, eg /home/user/rsync and make itexecutable by them alone, then add the capability:sudo setcap CAP_MKNOD=ep /home/user/rsyncWhen the user runs this rsync on the remote it will be able to createdevice nodes.