How does rdist work?

[Lee Harris_5]

Hi,

Just wondered if anyone knows how rdist does what it does? The thing I want to know is the way in which rdist actually copies files from one host to another.

For example, if updating a large file from host1 to host2, does rdist first copy the updated file from host1 to host2 naming it something like 'rdist$PID' then once the copy is complete, move the newer file over the top of the out dated file?

Therefore, if you had a filesystem on host1 which rdist was updating to host2 and the filesystem on host1 was very nearly full...would the process fail if there were large files to be copied accross which individually were larger than the amount of free space on that filesystem?

Regards - Lee

[Stephen Keane]

My understanding of rdist is that it DELETES the old version of the file BEFORE copying in the new version. Thus (provided the new file is not significantly bigger) it has space for the new file. It presumeably retries if it fails during the copy operation.