[MAD-SAGE] rdist

[Stewart, John johns@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]

> I know that rdist is something that I've heard a lot of 
> people rip on for
> one reason or another, but I can't remember what those 
> reasons are. 

One reason I think rdist isn't great is that it uses file sizes and modify
times to determine whether a file should be copied. I also personally find
the syntax rather cryptic. Additionally, you need to have .rhosts or
something similar in place for authentication, which is very insecure. You'd
only want to do it between trusted hosts, when you have complete control
over the intervening network.

I personally use rsync, which uses a checksum to determine changed files.
Additionally (and this is the key reason I use it), it can be coupled with
ssh (as a replacement for rsh) to provide a much more secure way of getting
changes over. For example, I have a script which propogates changes to our
web server machine (on our DMZ) via rsync over ssh. The authorized_keys file
for that user account is configured to only allow the rsync process to
start, so a normal UNIX shell is not available.

The traffic is encrypted, plus there's an additional host key (using ssh)
that prevents unauthorized access via trivial IP spoofing.

My $.02

johnS