I will be working with a server on the Internet that uses rsync and is running Debian. I will be setting up initial /etc/rsyncd.conf and /etc/rsyncd.secrets files on it. But along the way, whenever a new user is added, they'll need to be updated. I can use ssh on this system, but, of course, I don't want to allow root access.
I'd like to be able to have these files updated automatically when I add a new user to another system. I could create new copies of the files locally, where the users are added and use scp to copy them to a directory on the server. But that's where there are problems. How can I chown the files to root, copy them to /etc, and chmod as needed for rsync to use them automatically?
I don't see a way to do that without security issues. I need to somehow ssh in and do an su or run three commands as sudo (I need to mv the file, chown it, and chmod it).
I am far from an expert in security, but I can see that if I have anything in place to make this easy, then anyone hacking my user account could easily mess up anything in the system.
Is there some way I can set this up so I can update rsyncd.conf and rsyncd.secrets only automatically when I have the newer versions on my local system to be uploaded?
Thanks for any ideas!
Hal