Using HP-UX Internet Services (August 2003)

Distributing Files Using rdist
Overview
Chapter 538
Figure 5-1 shows the distribution of source files filea1, filea2, and
filea3 from the master host A to the remote hosts B and C.
Figure 5-1 Distributing Files with rdist
The rdist process does not prompt for passwords. The user on the
master host who starts rdist (usually a system or network
administrator) must have an account on the remote host and must be
allowed remote command execution. (The working directory on the
remote host is the user’s home directory.) You can also specify a user
name on a remote host for rdist that has the appropriate permissions
for accessing files on the remote host. For more information, see
“Creating the distfile” on page 42.
rdist on the master host reads commands from distfile, an ASCII file
that specifies the files or directories to be copied, the remote hosts to be
updated, and the operations to be performed for the update. You can
specify the distfile when invoking rdist on the master host using the
-f command-line option. Otherwise, rdist searches in the current
working directory for the file named Distfile to use as the input file.
System A
(Master Host)
rdist
System B
rdist
System C
rdist
Source Files:
filea1
filea2
filea3
Standard Output:
updating host B
installing: filea1
installing: filea2
installing: filea3
updating host C
. . .