Installing and Administering Internet Services

418 Chapter10
Using rdist
Starting rdist
Starting rdist
After creating the distfile on the master host, you can start rdist from
the command line or from a cron file. rdist must be run as root on the
master host. There are two forms of the rdist command syntax. One
form is the following:
/usr/bin/rdist [-b] [-h] [-i] [-n] [-q] [-R] [-v] [-w]
[-y] [-d
var = value ] [-f distfile ] [-m host ] ... [ label ]
-d var = value sets the value of the variable var to value . value can be
an empty string, one name, or a list of names separated by tabs and/or
spaces and enclosed by a pair of parentheses. The -d option is used to
define variable definitions in the distfile. However, if you specify the -d
option for a variable that is already defined in the distfile, the -d option
has no effect (because the distfile overrides the -d option).
-f distfile specifies distfile as the distfile to be used to update files
and directories. If the distfile is not specified, rdist looks in the current
working directory for the file distfile, then the file Distfile.
-m host limits the updates to host , which is one of the hosts previously
identified in the distfile. Multiple -m arguments may be specified.
label performs only the command entries specified by label in the
distfile.
Other options are listed in Table 10-2.
The other form of the rdist command syntax is:
/usr/bin/rdist [-b] [-h] [-i] [-n] [-q] [-R] [-v] [-w]
[-y] -c
pathname ... [ login @] host [: destpath ]
-c pathname ... [ login @] host [: destpath ] updates file(s) in
pathname on the remote host host . (The -c arguments are interpreted as
a distfile.) login specifies the user name used to perform the update.
destpath specifies the path name of the installed file on the remote host.