FTP, RCP or DD

[Tony Constantine]

Hi,

Just wanted to pose a question regarding the movement of large chuncks of data across the network.

Which method is faster/prefered out of ftp rcp & dd

I personaly prefer ftp and have not had too much exposure to dd across networks.

Kev

[Pete Randall]

Kev (Tony?)

I think you're more likely to see something like cpio rather than dd across networks. I do recall a similar discussion a year or so ago and I believe that rcp was the winner.


Pete

[Simon Hargrave]

If moving eg a directory structure I would prefer to use tar over a pipe. For example to move /usr/local/fish from hosta to hostb: -

(on hosta)
cd /usr/local
tar cvf - fish | rexec hostb "cd /usr/local ; tar xvf -"

[Franky_1]

Hi,

just use tar for that kind of operation :

tar cfv - | remsh 'cd ; tar xfv -'

Regards

Franky

[Jeff_Traigle · Accepted solution]

These days, unless restricted by availability of software for older versions of HP-UX, I would lean towards ssh/sftp/scp for any transfers so no credentials or data are transmitted unencrypted.

[Geoff Wild]

Another thing to look at, if you are doing this on a regular basis, is rdist.

I do something like this for DR reasons:

Run from cron:

#! /bin/sh

# Keep the DRP copy of the prdadm up-to-date.
# Currently the files are in:
#
# /home/prdadm/DR
#
# See the rdist(1M) distfile for a list of exclusions.

DRPDIR=/app/admin/drp
DRPHOST=svr031

HOST=`/usr/bin/uname -n`
PRD=`cmviewcl |grep prddbci |awk '{print $5}'`
if [ "$HOST" = "$PRD" ]
then
mount | grep /home > /dev/null 2>&1
if [ $? -eq 0 ]
then
( su - prdadm -c "rdist -f $DRPDIR/distfile prdadm"; ) 2>&1 |\
tee $DRPDIR/drp.log 2>&1 |\
mailx -s "prdadm DRP rdist output" `cat /usr/local/mailadmin.list`
fi
fi


And in the dist file:
# cat /app/admin/drp/distfile
PRDDR = ( svr031 )

#
# File systems to be copied over to the DR host.
# Don't use -R in install - so as not to remove files on destination host
PRDADM = /home/prdadm

prdadm: ( ${PRDADM} ) -> ( ${PRDDR} )
install -w ;


Rgds...Geoff