It seems like --preserve-numerical-ids option isn't working right on
rdiff-backup, or perhaps we're missundestading how it works, because I
can reproduce the problem you say, and it's not preserving uid and gid
as it should, according to 'man rdiff-backup'. Even using "rdiff-backup
-r now" it does NOT recover uid:gid original ownership. See this:
address@hidden:~$ ls -al test
total 8
drwxr-xr-x 2 fmmarzoa devel 4096 2009-02-23 20:07 .
drwxr-xr-x 77 fmmarzoa fmmarzoa 4096 2009-02-23 20:07 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 fmmarzoa devel 0 2009-02-23 20:07 testfile
I've a directory called "test" with uid:gid as fmmarzoa:devel, and a testfile
within the directory with same ownership. Now I backup it with:
address@hidden:~$ rdiff-backup --preserve-numerical-ids test test_backup
address@hidden:~$ ls -la test_backup
total 12
drwxr-xr-x 3 fmmarzoa fmmarzoa 4096 2009-02-23 20:07 .
drwxr-xr-x 78 fmmarzoa fmmarzoa 4096 2009-02-23 20:10 ..
drwx------ 3 fmmarzoa fmmarzoa 4096 2009-02-23 20:10 rdiff-backup-data
-rw-r--r-- 1 fmmarzoa fmmarzoa 0 2009-02-23 20:07 testfile
So in fact, ownership information has been lost. Obviously restoring
just doing a "cp test_backup test" will not recover the ownership data,
but restore command neither!:
address@hidden:~$ rdiff-backup -r now test_backup test
address@hidden:~$ ls -la test
total 8
drwxr-xr-x 2 fmmarzoa fmmarzoa 4096 2009-02-23 20:07 .
drwxr-xr-x 78 fmmarzoa fmmarzoa 4096 2009-02-23 20:12 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 fmmarzoa fmmarzoa 0 2009-02-23 20:07 testfile