rdist problems, from Sun to HP-UX

[dictum9]

I am going from Solaris 8 to HP-UX 11.23:

Source:

#: rdist -V
Version 6.1.5 (RELEASE) - Protocol Version 6, Release 6.1, Patch level 5

target:
swlist -R | grep InternetSrvcs.INETSVCS-RUN
QPKBASE.PHNE_34226.INETSVCS-RUN 1.0 InternetSrvcs.INETSVCS-RUN



Getting the error:

LOCAL ERROR: Unexpected input from server: "sh: rdistd: not found.".

what does it mean?

[Steven Schweda · Accepted solution]

I know nothing, but a Google search for
rdist rdistd
found
http://www.magnicomp.com/rdist/
which describes broadly how rdist works.

Apparently, it uses (by default) rsh to run
rdistd on the remote host. I'd guess that it
uses a path-less "rdistd" command to run that
server on the remote system, so rdistd would
need to be on the user's PATH on the remote
system.

sh: rdistd: not found
suggests to me that sh on the remote system
could not find rdistd. (And getting that
complaint from the remote system was
unexpected, leading the local rdist process
to pass the complaint along to you.)

The appropriate shell start-up file
("~/.profile"?) for this user on the remote
system should be adding to the PATH the
directory where the rdist executables have
been installed, I'd guess.

It's also possible that rdist includes some
user documentation describing how to set it
up (and even how to troubleshoot it).

[Duncan Edmonstone]

rdist is one of those tools that seems to have fallen by the wayside over the years in terms of development. The default version on HP-UX is ancient, and even the version on Solaris is about 9 years old. The HP-UX version doesn't have a seperate daemon process rdistdm which the SOlaris version is expecting.

Steven pointed you at the page which claims to describe how to get the Solaris version working with the older HP-UX version (in the Compatability section), but to be honest I just wouldn't bother - probably better to ditch rdist altogether if you can and move to rsync which has modern versions available for both HP-UX and Solaris:

http://hpux.connect.org.uk/hppd/hpux/Networking/Admin/rsync-3.0.4pre2/
http://www.sunfreeware.com/indexsparc8.html

HTH

Duncan

[dictum9]

See the really strange thing is that I am able to get to some HP-UX machines, some 11.23 and others not and I am not sure what the difference is between the working and the non-working machines.