The fakeroot environment can be saved for later use if you use the -s option to fakeroot. This will not work perfectly, however. Internally, faked keeps track of all files which have had operations done on them that the user would not normally be able to do, in order to fake the effect later. For example, if you create a device node, faked will actually create an empty file, but remember that it was a device node (along with the relevant details) so that if you subsequently do an "ls -l", you'll see it as a device node. The save option simply saves this list, so later fakeroot invocations can restore them. However, you can manipulate the files saved outside of the fakeroot environment (for example, you could delete the zero-length file that was the placeholder for the device node) and fakeroot will not know about it when it loads up the list again. This will cause the list to leak. The list cannot easily be verified, either, because it keys things by inode number, and there is no mechanism to look up anything from one of those alone. Such verification _could_ be done, but would in theory require a search through the _entire_ filesystem, every time. This isn't really acceptable for regular operation, and I don't need such a feature so I haven't written it. The file format is fairly straightforward and obvious, however, so if anybody else wants to... :-) So, this feature should only be used if you limit everything you do inside the fakeroot environment to the fakeroot environment. This is still useful - for example (assuming you have the appropriate key): $ fakeroot -s backup.environ # mkdir backup # cd backup # export RSYNC_RSH=ssh # rsync -a root@important.example.com:/ . [...] # exit $ Now, "fakeroot -i backup.environ" will get you exactly what you had backed up, user and group information, device nodes and everything. Of course, that information is still faked, but you should be able to happily rsync it back. This way you only need normal user privileges on the backup machine. This is great to back up multiple machines without a compromise affecting the backup machine and thereby compromising all the other machines you back up as well. Note that further rsync updates should be done with: $ fakeroot -i backup.environ -s backup.environ # cd backup # export RSYNC_RSH=ssh # rsync -a root@important.example.com:/ . [...] # exit $ so that further changes are still saved. In this scenario, the shortcoming will not affect anything, as the only modification of files which required root (and consequently were faked) is done inside the environment, and can therefore be tracked and saved. Have fun! Robie Basak <robie@principle.co.uk> Northern Principle Limited 25/3/2003.