It often happens, at least to me, that I need to synchronize a directory to another server while maintaining permissions
and original ownership. While ssh root@box is a terrible idea™, you can use some epic hacks to do what you need to,
securely.
At a recent job, I faced a pretty bleak situation: my MacBook Pro had only 8 gigabytes of RAM and only 256 gigabytes of disk space. Because of “Apple Reasons™,” you can no longer upgrade your disk or add more RAM to new MacBook Pros. On top of all that, I wasn’t supposed to uninstall OSX, even though I only ever booted Linux. That meant that my root partition for my Linux install was only around 170 GB.