rdist(1) manual page
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rdist - remote file distribution program
rdist [ -b ] [
-D ] [ -h ] [ -i ] [ -n ] [ -q ] [ -R ] [ -v ] [ -w ] [ -y ] [ -d macro = value
] [ -f distfile ] [ -m host ] ...
rdist [ -b ] [ -D ] [ -h ] [ -i ] [ -n ] [ -q
] [ -R ] [ -v ] [ -w ] [ -y ] -c pathname ... [ login@ ] hostname [ :destpath
]
SUNWcsu
rdist maintains copies of files on multiple
hosts. It preserves the owner, group, mode, and modification time of the
master copies, and can update programs that are executing. Normally, a copy
on a remote host is updated if its size or modification time differs from
the original on the local host. rdist reads the indicated distfile for instructions
on updating files and/or directories. If distfile is ‘-’, the standard input
is used. If no -f option is present, rdist first looks in its working directory
for distfile, and then for Distfile, for instructions.
In order to be able
to use rdist across machines, each host machine must have a /etc/host.equiv
file, or the user must have an entry in the .rhosts file in the home directory.
See hosts.equiv(4)
for more information.
- -b
- Binary comparison. Perform
a binary comparison and update files if they differ, rather than merely
comparing dates and sizes.
- -D
- Enable debugging.
- -h
- Follow symbolic links. Copy
the file that the link points to rather than the link itself.
- -i
- Ignore unresolved
links. rdist will normally try to maintain the link structure of files being
transferred and warn the user if all the links cannot be found.
- -n
- Print
the commands without executing them. This option is useful for debugging
a distfile.
- -q
- Quiet mode. Do not display the files being updated on the
standard output.
- -R
- Remove extraneous files. If a directory is being updated,
remove files on the remote host that do not correspond to those in the
master (local) directory. This is useful for maintaining truly identical
copies of directories.
- -v
- Verify that the files are up to date on all the
hosts. Any files that are out of date are displayed, but no files are updated,
nor is any mail sent.
- -w
- Whole mode. The whole file name is appended to the
destination directory name. Normally, only the last component of a name
is used when renaming files. This preserves the directory structure of the
files being copied, instead of flattening the directory structure. For instance,
renaming a list of files such as dir1/dir2 to dir3 would create files dir3/dir1
and dir3/dir2 instead of dir3 and dir3. When the -w option is used with a
filename that begins with ~, everything except the home directory is appended
to the destination name.
- -y
- Younger mode. Do not update remote copies that are younger than the master
copy, but issue a warning message instead.
- -d macro=value
- Define macro to
have value. This option is used to define or override macro definitions
in the distfile. value can be the empty string, one name, or a list of names
surrounded by parentheses and separated by white space.
- -c
- pathname ... [login@]hostname[:destpath]
Update each pathname on the named host. (Relative filenames are taken as
relative to your home directory.) If the ‘login@’ prefix is given, the update
is performed with the user ID of login. If the ‘:destpath’ is given, the
remote file is installed as that pathname.
- -f distfile
- Use the description file distfile. A ‘-’ as the distfile argument
denotes the standard input.
- -m host
- Limit which machines are to be updated.
Multiple -m arguments can be given to limit updates to a subset of the hosts
listed in the distfile.
NEWLINE
, TAB
, and SPACE
characters are all treated as white space; a mapping continues across input
lines until the start of the next mapping: either a single filename followed
by a ‘->’ or the opening parenthesis of a filename list.
Comments begin
with # and end with a NEWLINE
.
rdist has a limited macro facility.
Macros are only expanded in filename or hostname lists, and in the argument
lists of certain primitives. Macros cannot be used to stand for primitives
or their options, or the ‘->’ or ‘::’ symbols.
A macro definition is a line of
the form:
- macro = value
A macro reference is a string of the form:
- ${macro}
although (as with
make(1S)
) the braces can be omitted if the macro name consists of just
one character.
The shell meta-characters: [, ], {, }, * and ? are recognized
and expanded (on the local host only) just as they are with csh(1)
. Metacharacters
can be escaped by prepending a backslash.
The ~ character is also expanded
in the same way as with csh, however, it is expanded separately on the
local and destination hosts.
File names that do not begin with
‘/’ or ‘~’ are taken to be relative to user’s home directory on each destination
host; they are not relative to the current working directory. Multiple file
names must be enclosed within parentheses.
The following primitives can be used to specify actions rdist
is to take when updating remote copies of each file.
- install
- [ -b ] [ -h
] [ -i ] [ -R ] [ -v ] [ -w ] [ -y ] [newname]
Copy out-of-date files and directories (recursively). If no newname operand
is given, the name of the local file is given to the remote host’s copy.
If absent from the remote host, parent directories in a filename’s path
are created. To help prevent disasters, a non-empty directory on a target
host is not replaced with a regular file or a symbolic link by rdist. However,
when using the -R option, a non-empty directory is removed if the corresponding
filename is completely absent on the master host.
- The options for
- install have the same semantics as their command line
counterparts, but are limited in scope to a particular map. The login name
used on the destination host is the same as the local host unless the destination
name is of the format login@host. In that case, the update is performed
under the username login.
- notify address ...
- Send mail to the indicated TCP/IP
address of the form:
user@host
- that lists the files updated and any errors that may have occurred.
- If an address does not contain a ‘@host’ suffix, rdist uses the name of the
destination host to complete the address.
- except filename ...
- Omit from updates
the files named as arguments.
- except_pat pattern ...
- Omit from updates the
filenames that match each regular-expression pattern (see ed(1)
for more
information on regular expressions). Note that ‘\’ and ‘$’ characters must be
escaped in the distfile. Shell variables can also be used within a pattern,
however shell filename expansion is not supported.
- special
- [filename] ... "command-line"
Specify a Bourne shell, sh(1)
command line to execute on the remote host
after each named file is updated. If no filename argument is present, the
command-line is performed for every updated file, with the shell variable
FILE
set to the file’s name on the local host. The quotation marks allow
command-line to span input lines in the distfile; multiple shell commands
must be separated by semicolons (;).
- The default working directory for the
shell executing each
- command-line is the user’s home directory on the remote
host.
The following sample distfile instructs rdist to maintain identical
copies of a shared library, a shared-library initialized data file, several
include files, and a directory, on hosts named hermes and magus. On magus,
commands are executed as super-user. rdist notifies merlin@druid whenever
it discovers that a local file has changed relative to a timestamp file.
HOSTS = ( hermes root@magus )
FILES = ( /usr/local/lib/libcant.so.1.1
/usrlocal/lib/libcant.sa.1.1 /usr/local/include/{*.h}
/usr/local/bin )
(${FILES}) -> (${HOSTS})
install -R ;
${FILES} :: /usr/local/lib/timestamp
notify merlin@druid ;
- ~/.rhosts
- user’s trusted hosts and users
- /etc/host.equiv
- system trusted
hosts and users
- /tmp/rdist*
- temporary file for update lists
csh(1)
,
ed(1)
, make(1S)
, sh(1)
, stat(2)
, hosts.equiv(4)
A complaint about
mismatch of rdist version numbers may really stem from some problem with
starting your shell, for example, you are in too many groups.
The
super-user does not have its accustomed access privileges on NFS mounted
file systems. Using rdist to copy to such a file system may fail, or the
copies may be owned by user ‘nobody’.
Source files must reside or be mounted
on the local host.
There is no easy way to have a special command executed
only once after all files in a directory have been updated.
Variable expansion
only works for name lists; there should be a general macro facility.
rdist
aborts on files that have a negative modification time (before Jan 1, 1970).
There should be a ‘force’ option to allow replacement of non-empty directories
by regular files or symlinks. A means of updating file modes and owners
of otherwise identical files is also needed.
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