running rsync as root to preserve contexts

[Murray McAllister <mmcallis redhat com>]

Hi,

I am not sure how rsync works, but should it have to be run as the root 
user to preserve contexts?

$ pwd
/home/murray

$ mkdir other
$ ls -dZ other/
drwxrwxr-x  murray murray unconfined_u:object_r:user_home_t:s0 other/

$ touch file && chcon -t samba_share_t file
$ ls -Z file
-rw-rw-r--  murray murray unconfined_u:object_r:samba_share_t:s0 file

$ rsync -aXHv file other/
sending incremental file list
file

sent 122 bytes  received 31 bytes  102.00 bytes/sec
total size is 0  speedup is 0.00
$ ls -Z other/
-rw-rw-r--  murray murray unconfined_u:object_r:user_home_t:s0 file

# samba_share_t type was not preserved.

$ sudo rsync -aXHv file other/
sending incremental file list

sent 128 bytes  received 17 bytes  290.00 bytes/sec

# running as sudo sends more bytes (previously 122).

total size is 0  speedup is 0.00
$ ls -Z other/
-rw-rw-r--  murray murray unconfined_u:object_r:samba_share_t:s0 file

# samba_share_t type was preserved.

I am using:

rsync-3.0.4-0.fc10.i386
openssh-askpass-5.1p1-3.fc10.i386
openssh-5.1p1-3.fc10.i386
openssh-clients-5.1p1-3.fc10.i386
libssh2-0.18-7.fc9.i386
openssh-server-5.1p1-3.fc10.i386

selinux-policy-3.5.13-38.fc10.noarch
selinux-policy-targeted-3.5.13-38.fc10.noarch

Cheers.