rsync does not respect ownership in certain cases.

[drpebcak]

On an initial vagrant up, my synced folders act as expected - they are rysnced and chowned to deploy:users

config.vm.synced_folder '.', '/vagrant', type: 'rsync',
                                             rsync__exclude: '.git/',
                                             rsync__args: %w(--progress --perms --archive -z)
config.vm.synced_folder '/srv', '/srv', type: 'rsync', owner: 'deploy', group: 'users',
                                        rsync__exclude: '.git/',
                                        rsync__args: %w(--progress --perms --archive -z)

But after that, running vagrant reload or vagrant rsync gives this error (warning, EXTREMELY long error): https://gist.github.com/drpebcak/9537952

Essentially what it is doing is taking all my files and chowning them back to vagrant:vagrant, even though I don't want that!

[drpebcak]

Incidentally, looks like if I prevent the folders from syncing initially, and then run vagrant rsync it doesn't pay attention to the values I set for ownership (it syncs them as vagrant:vagrant).

[drpebcak]

Looks like I'm a stupid idiot who doesn't understand proper use of the --perms flag!

[drpebcak]

I'm really just too eager. This still happens even without the --perms flag (guess that means I did know what it was doing!).

[drpebcak]

So there seems to be multiple problems with the way rsync-auto is implemented...

There was an error when attempting to rsync a synced folder.
Please inspect the error message below for more info.

Host path: /srv/
Guest path: /srv
Command: rsync --progress --omit-dir-times --archive -z -e ssh -p 2222 -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no -i '/Users/tprice/.vagrant.d/insecure_private_key' --exclude .vagrant/ --exclude .git/ /srv/ vagrant@127.0.0.1:/srv
Error: @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
@    WARNING: REMOTE HOST IDENTIFICATION HAS CHANGED!     @
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
IT IS POSSIBLE THAT SOMEONE IS DOING SOMETHING NASTY!
Someone could be eavesdropping on you right now (man-in-the-middle attack)!
It is also possible that a host key has just been changed.
The fingerprint for the ECDSA key sent by the remote host is
36:b1:fe:51:83:71:61:3c:2b:46:f5:fd:04:0a:65:79.
Please contact your system administrator.
Add correct host key in /Users/tprice/.ssh/known_hosts to get rid of this message.
Offending ECDSA key in /Users/tprice/.ssh/known_hosts:114
Password authentication is disabled to avoid man-in-the-middle attacks.
Keyboard-interactive authentication is disabled to avoid man-in-the-middle attacks.
rsync: failed to set times on "/srv/restapi/etc": Operation not permitted (1)
rsync: failed to set times on "/srv/restapi/log": Operation not permitted (1)
rsync: failed to set times on "/srv/restapi/htdocs/images": Operation not permitted (1)
rsync: failed to set times on "/srv/sockets/config": Operation not permitted (1)
rsync: failed to set times on "/srv/sockets/log": Operation not permitted (1)
rsync error: some files could not be transferred (code 23) at /SourceCache/rsync/rsync-42/rsync/main.c(992) [sender=2.6.9]

rsync-auto doesn't seem to obey the flags I specified for each folder with rsync__args, nor does it play well with the owner: and group: settings.

[drpebcak]

I figured out a portion of this problem - OSX seems to come with an old version of rsync that tries to set times on symlinks, which fails miserably. I installed a newer version from brew and that rsync-auto problem went away.

However, I still receive the error message about remote host identification changing when I do a reload, and all my files get the ownership of vagrant:vagrant.

There was an error when attempting to rsync a synced folder.
Please inspect the error message below for more info.

Host path: /srv/
Guest path: /srv
Command: rsync --progress --omit-dir-times --archive -z -l -t -e ssh -p 2222 -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no -i '/Users/tprice/.vagrant.d/insecure_private_key' --exclude .vagrant/ --exclude .git/ /srv/ vagrant@127.0.0.1:/srv
Error: @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
@    WARNING: REMOTE HOST IDENTIFICATION HAS CHANGED!     @
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
IT IS POSSIBLE THAT SOMEONE IS DOING SOMETHING NASTY!
Someone could be eavesdropping on you right now (man-in-the-middle attack)!
It is also possible that a host key has just been changed.
The fingerprint for the ECDSA key sent by the remote host is
e3:17:c5:1f:4e:91:10:3f:3d:c5:af:d2:6a:bf:18:6d.
Please contact your system administrator.
Add correct host key in /Users/tprice/.ssh/known_hosts to get rid of this message.
Offending ECDSA key in /Users/tprice/.ssh/known_hosts:114
Password authentication is disabled to avoid man-in-the-middle attacks.
Keyboard-interactive authentication is disabled to avoid man-in-the-middle attacks.
rsync: failed to set times on "/srv/restapi/etc": Operation not permitted (1)
rsync: failed to set times on "/srv/restapi/log": Operation not permitted (1)
rsync: failed to set times on "/srv/restapi/htdocs/images": Operation not permitted (1)
rsync: failed to set times on "/srv/sockets/config": Operation not permitted (1)
rsync: failed to set times on "/srv/sockets/log": Operation not permitted (1)
rsync error: some files/attrs were not transferred (see previous errors) (code 23) at main.c(1236) [sender=3.1.0]

[thedavidmeister]

I've also seen this, where rsync sets file/folder permissions to vagrant:vagrant and so my provision scripts are fighting against rsync. The workaround for me was to stick all the folders I needed to enforce the permissions on behind a symlink but I don't think this is a good general solution.

[mitchellh]

You have to set the owner/group options on the synced_folder and it will chown to this after it syncs. This was fixed in 1.5.2

[manuelderuiter]

This issue still exists with Vagrant 1.6.2 in conjunction with rsync-auto.

Platform: Windows 7 x86_64
Vagrant version: 1.6.2
Rsync version: 3.0.9 (host and client)
Vagrant file:

shared_folder_path = "./code/"
target_code_path = "/var/www/"

config.vm.synced_folder shared_folder_path, target_code_path,
    type: "rsync",
    owner: "tomcat7",
    group: "tomcat7"

vagrant rsync sets the permissions (tomcat7:tomcat7) correct while rsync-auto chowns all the files to vagrant:vagrant. It looks like rsync-auto is ignoring the owner/group options.

Also tried killing the vagrant box and provisioned it again, but same result.

[SiliconValet]

Still having the issue on OSX, Vagrant 1.6.3. Initi

[thedavidmeister]

It's only "fixed" if you also set "chown: false" in the rsync config. It's in the docs for 1.6+