"Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little more fun!"

Do you have a laptop ? And want frequently to copy files to another system ? Use mirror !

I frequently have to exchange files between my laptop and other systems, eg. my home desktop. This can be conveniently done using rdist(1).

I wrote a small script called mirror, which basically contains a call of rdist setting up a small Distfile using the shell's here syntax:

rdist  -d PWD=`pwd` -f - << EOF
${PWD} -> mirror
	install -oyounger ${PWD};
        except_pat ( ~\\$ );
EOF

This is not the place to deal with rdist-syntax in greater detail, so see rdist's-manpage, if you like. Files will be copied to host mirror. Of course you have to set up /etc/hosts appropiately.

So working on a project with files in ~/wsp/pbd/os-tools, I can simply say

nana:/home/bav/wsp/pbd/os-tools> mirror
mirror: updating host mirror
mirror: /home/bav/wsp/pbd/os-tools/main-window.tcl: updating
mirror: /home/bav/wsp/pbd/os-tools/os-tools.tcl: updating
mirror: /home/bav/wsp/pbd/os-tools/popups.tcl: updating
mirror: updating of mirror finished

Using the Option -verify, you can check what will be done without really doing anything:

nana:/home/bav/wsp/pbd/os-tools> mirror -verify
mirror: updating host mirror
mirror: /home/bav/wsp/pbd/os-tools/os-tools.tcl: need to update
mirror: /home/bav/wsp/pbd/os-tools/popups.tcl: need to update
mirror: updating of mirror finished

The option -f will remove extraneous files on node mirror. This is useful to get a real mirror:

nana:/home/bav/wsp/pbd/os-tools> mirror -f
mirror: updating host mirror
mirror: lulu: /home/bav/wsp/pbd/os-tools/qqq: removed
mirror: lulu: /home/bav/wsp/pbd/os-tools/otto: removed
mirror: /home/bav/wsp/pbd/os-tools/main-window.tcl: updating
mirror: /home/bav/wsp/pbd/os-tools/popups.tcl: updating
mirror: updating of mirror finished

Besides mirroring to another system's disk mirror can be used to mirror the current directory to a floppy. This comes in handy for a quick kind of backup. There is no real advantage of using rdist when operating locally.

If there is enough space available, I use cp with the options -ruvp. To do so, call mirror with the option -floppy:

nana:/home/bav/wsp/pbd/os-tools> mirror -floppy
./main-window.tcl -> /floppy/./main-window.tcl
./os-tools.tcl -> /floppy/./os-tools.tcl
./popups.tcl -> /floppy/./popups.tcl

In case you like this ideas, you can find my mirror-utility here.