[vox-tech] Backup User Permissions

[Alex Mandel]

So I'm trying to setup automated remote backup of some files from
machine1 to machine2 using something simple like rsync. What I'm having
trouble figuring out is what user to run it as and how to get that user
the correct permissions.

In the example use case I want to copy my Apache logs over to a 2nd
machine to run awstats on it without putting much of a load on the
actual web server. I was thinking of creating a "backup" user,
generating a passphraseless key and then rsync on a cron timer.
Should this user be a system user (below 1000) or a regular user (above
1000), since it needs a key I would assume it needs to be a regular user
with a home directory?

Question 2 is how do I make sure it has permissions to read the logs?
It appears that most of /var/log/apache2 files are root:adm but some are
root:root. If they were all g+r for adm then just adding my backup user
to the adm group should work?

Looks like I need to go figure out why some logs have a different group.

Thanks,
Alex