Transfer files between two systems

[Marcel Boon]

Hi,

What is the savest and fastest way to transfering files (one dir) between two systems?
HP-UX 10.20 10mb network.

Marcel

[melvyn burnard]

Depending upon what you are trying to acheive, you could look at:

ftp
rcp
NFS mounted file systems

I would suggest first look at rcp, then ftp, using man pages.

For further information, you could visit:
http://www.docs.hp.com

[CHRIS ANORUO]

Use rcp -p -r originating_server:/directory target_server:/directory.
Update /.rhosts file with the server name and user name.

[Andreas Voss · Accepted solution]

Hi,

first check access permissions on destination system:
remsh who
If you get remshd: Login incorrect.
You have to create/edit $HOME/.rhosts at the destination system:
Add a line with the source systen hostname.
Then remsh should work.
To copy a directory (with all subdirs):
cd
find . -depth | cpio -ocB | remsh "cd ; cpio -imdvcB"
This will copy all the files with the benefit that all file attributes are set at the destination system equal to the source system.

Cheers

Andrew

[Dave Wherry]

As the posts said ftp, rcp they all work great. Your trade-offs are with rcp you need to open up the systems some with you .rhosts and hosts.equiv and such. If security is not that big of an issue with you rcp is very nice.
ftp is a little more secure as it requires interaction, but, can be scripted. Of course then you have an id and password in the script. You can work around that, it just takes a little more work.
Will you be doing the copies on a frequent basis? That will help determine what process you use. There is another process which I have looked at, but, honestly never tried. rdist. It is documented in the Internet Services, Installing and Administering Guide. You create a list of files on a master system that you want to have copied to other systems. Any time one of those files changes it gets copied out to the other system(s). If you need that type of functionality rdist looks very interesting. It's all automatic.

[Alan Riggs]

rdist is an excellent tool if you have directories or files that you need to keep synchronized across servers. It is fairly simple to set up a basic distfile.

[Shannon Petry]

Many variables determine what you SHOULD use.
First, is this frequent, or infrequent activity. Is this common activity, but not necessarilly shared data? or Is is data that needs to be shared? Is it backup data?

If this is infrequent (occasionally having to copy a file) save the security headache's and FTP the data needed. FTP allows put and get of multiple files in the same directory, so should be enough.

If this is more common, look at using either a $HOME/.rhosts or /etc/hosts.equiv, and rcp'ing the data.

If this is backup copy, or data that needs to be in two locations at the same time, rsync or rdist are good choices, with one large note. root should not be allowed to run rdist! Users should use rdist, or rsync and Never root!

If this is data that does not have to be in two locations, but used by two or more locations, then NFS is the best choice. Data can sit on a server, but clients access data as if it were local. If you are new to HP-UX, SAM does a pretty good job of helping you set up NFS client and server.

Best of luck!