rdist

[Kerien Fitzpatrick]

I have been RTFM'ing it for awhile and either I am clueless or rdist has
what I would consider a significant flaw.  After past experience I am
leaning towards me being clueless.

I have been setting up some dist files to handle pushing necessary files
to all of our diskfull & diskless clients.  Setting up a package for X11
distribution - I wanted the rdist install primitive to perform a binary
check instead of just the date/time.  I initially tried this line  install
-bv ;  -- the result was that rdist started INSTALLING files in /-bv since
root is running this.  What I thought would happen is that rdist would do
a binary comparison to determine if the files needed to be updated.  After
that I tried just the -b switch which acted as I thought it would and did
a binary comparison and then tried to install new files.

What I would like to do is to run this dist file every night and do a
binary check to determine what files need to be updated, but not to do it
- just send mail.  

Aside from this question - did anyone else find the rdist documentation
lacking?  Seems like a powerful package, but sparse documentation hides
the full power.  Anyone else out there using rdist that might have figured
out some neat tricks?  Send email and if there is enough interest I will
summarize to the net.

Thanks,
Kerien Fitzpatrick
Field Robotics Center
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA 15213
fitz at frc2.frc.ri.cmu.edu
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opinions...I'll give you opinions - as our asst. director said "What
is so difficult about writing software, just seems that all there is
to it is hitting keys in the right sequence."
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Kerien Fitzpatrick
Field Robotics Center
The Robotics Institute
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA 15213
(412)268-6564
Arpanet: fitz at rodan.frc.ri.cmu.edu