Config files distribution: copying a file to multiple hosts

Then you administer several dozens of boxes, similar data and configuration files are scattered on multiple hosts. Slurping is a useful technique of getting all those files into a single location, editing them and then pushing them back. It is a simple Unix Configuration Management Tools technique that is often more productive then complex packages like puppet. It is very simple to implement with classic Unix tools such as rdist or xargs+scp. And those methods works for "sysadmin hostile" flavors of Unix such as AIX and HP-UX, as in this case you can use Linux or Solaris as your head node for distribution.

Opposite to slurping operation is called file distribution. Here we need to upload one file or a list of files to specified list of hosts. It also has several variants.

Utility rdist is a classic Unix utility to maintain identical copies of files over multiple hosts. It preserves the owner, group, mode, and mtime of files if possible and can update programs that are executing. It can use SSH as transport protocol and in this sense can be viewed as more flexible and powerful form of scp. Unlike its more modern analog it can distribute files to multiple host, not just copy form one host to another like rsync.

It reads commands from do called distfile which contains the set of instructions to direct the updating of files and/or directories. If distfile is '-', the standard input is used. If no -f option is present, the program looks first for distfile, then the file with the name 'Distfile' to use as the input. If no names are specified on the command line, rdist will update all of the files and directories listed in distfile. Otherwise, the argument is taken to be the name of a file to be updated or the label of a command to execute. If label and file names conflict, it is assumed to be a label. These may be used together to update specific files using specific commands.

The -c option forces rdist to interpret the remaining arguments as a small distfile. The equivalent distfile is as follows.

(name ... ) -> [login@]host

To use a transport program other than rsh(1c) you need to specify the -P option or define an alias

alias rdist='rdist -P /usr/bin/ssh '

Whatever transport program is used, must be compatible with the above specified syntax for rsh(1c). If the transport program is not, it should be wrapped in a shell script which does understand this command line syntax and which then executes the real transport program. Here's an example which uses ssh(1) as the transport:

       rdist -P /usr/local/bin/ssh -f myDistfile

On each target host Rdist will attempt to run the command

rdistd -S

This command launch rdistd daemon (see separate description)

One is to use wrapper for ssh or scp such as MUltihost SSH Wrapper Mussh is a shell script that allows you to execute a command or script over SSH on multiple hosts with one command. When possible, it will use ssh-agent and RSA/DSA keys to minimize the need to enter your password more than once.

Another is to use one of the applications created for uploading files to multiple Web hosts. See iRadar Upload To Multiple File Hosts The Easy Way With The Open-Source Project, Neembuu Uploader [Cross-Platform]

Is one of your New Year's Resolutions to start actually backing up your data? If so, you're in luck because we'll be discussing today an open-source program that will let you upload to multiple file hosts at once. There are a couple of web apps that can do more or less the same, such as Gazup, MirrorCreator, and Load2All.

What distinguishes the application presented in this article, Neembuu Uploader, is that it's open-source and it also allows you to define your account login details so you can upload files to your own account. If you're intrigued by the sound of that, read on and find out how Neembuu Uploader works.

Installation

You can download the application from the main website, which looks very polished by the way, or you can head to this URL which is the directory for all the zipped files. In case you're wondering which zip file to grab, in this article I'm reviewing version 2.6 of Neembuu. For either of the versions, you'll need to make sure you've got at least version 1.6 or newer since Neembuu Uploader is a Java application (think of it as a sibling to jDownloader, but with the exact opposite feature set). You can always go and get the latest Java over at Java.com.

Use

Once you've downloaded the zip file, double-click on the .rar file to run the program. You'll get a window to type in all your login information for any of the 30 major file-hosting sites.

You can upload only changes file preselecting them with find or other filter. You can also use make for this purpose. You can also store files in configuration management system although is not very suitable for unix config file administration. But this way you get versioning as well.

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[May 02, 2013] AFD

Freecode

AFD is a program to automatically distribute files either locally or to remote hosts. The files are distributed by using FTP or SMTP, and can be sent in parallel and with priority. It provides a GUI to monitor and control the distribution and extensive logging of all activities.

CVSup

Freecode

CVSup is a software package for transferring and updating collections of files across a network. It consists of a server called cvsupd and a client called cvsup. CVSup is faster (often by an order of magnitude) and more flexible than traditional network packages such as rdist and sup. In addition, CVSup has special knowledge of RCS files (as used by CVS). Software projects using CVSup to distribute their CVS repositories include FreeBSD, KDE, and (shortly) Postgres.

Autodist

Mar 14, 2008 | Freecode

Autodist is a source distribution management system that allows powerful mechanisms to define what is included in and excluded from a distribution and what license is used. It is especially targeted at large software projects that create multiple distributions from a source tree. Autodist supports distribution management in directory, file, and file content level, and automatic relicensing of a distribution.

Flamethrower

Flamethrower is a multicast file distribution system. It was originally created to add multicast install capabilities to SystemImager, but is designed as a stand-alone package. It works with entire directory heirarchies, rather than single files. It uses a server configuration file, which takes module entries similar to rsyncd.conf. It is an on-demand system; multicast of a module is initiated when a client connects, but it waits a predetermined period for other clients to connect before beginning.

fileq

fileq transfers files from an incoming queue (directory) to a list of destinations. Destinations can only be directories on remote hosts. The respective transfers are performed using the sftp command line utility from the OpenSSH package. After a successful transfer to all destinations, the local queue (directory) is emptied. This tool can be very handy for automated distribution of files to different hosts using a cron job and public key based authentication in ssh connections.

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Config files distribution: copying a file to multiple hosts

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[May 02, 2013] AFD

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Mar 14, 2008 | Freecode

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