Click on any of the 687 commands below to get a description and list of available options. All links in the command summaries point to the online version of the book on Safari Bookshelf.
System administration command. Remote file distribution client program. rdist maintains identical copies of files over multiple hosts. It reads commands from a file named distfile to direct the updating of files and/or directories. An alternative distfile can be specified with the -f option or the -c option.
Options
-anum
Do not update filesystems with fewer than num bytes free.
-Anum
Specify the minimum number of inodes that rdist requires.
-cname [login@] host[:dest]
Interpret the arguments as a small distfile, where login is the user to log in as, host is the destination host, name is the local file to transfer, and dest is the remote name where the file should be installed.
-dvar=value
Define var to have value. This option defines or overrides variable definitions in the distfile. Set the variable var to value.
-D
Debugging mode.
-ffile
Read input from file (by default, distfile). If file is -, read from standard input.
-F
Execute all commands sequentially, without forking.
-loptions
Specify logging options on the local machine.
-Loptions
Specify logging options on the remote machine.
-mmachine
Update only machine. May be specified multiple times for multiple machines.
-Mnum
Do not allow more than num child rdist processes to run simultaneously. Default is 4.
-n
Suppress normal execution. Instead, print the commands that would have been executed.
-ooptions
Specify one or more options, which must be comma-separated.
chknfs
Suppress operations on files that reside on NFS filesystems.
chkreadonly
Check filesystem to be sure it is not read-only before attempting to perform updates.
chksym
Do not update files that exist on the local host but are symbolic links on the remote host.
compare
Compare files; use this comparison rather than age as the criteria for determining which files should be updated.
follow
Interpret symbolic links, copying the file to which the link points instead of creating a link on the remote machine.
ignlnks
Ignore links that appear to be unresolvable.
nochkgroup
Do not update a file's group ownership unless the entire file needs updating.
nochkmode
Do not update file mode unless the entire file needs updating.
nochkowner
Do not update file ownership unless the entire file needs updating.
nodescend
Suppress recursive descent into directories.
noexec
Suppress rdist of executables that are in a.out format.
numchkgroup
Check group ownership by group ID instead of by name.
numchkowner
Check file ownership by user ID instead of by name.
quiet
Quiet mode; do not print commands as they execute.
remove
Remove files that exist on the remote host but not the local host.
savetargets
Save updated files in name.old.
sparse
Check for sparse files—for example, ndbm files.
verify
Print a list of all files on the remote machine that are out of date, but do not update them.
whole
Preserve directory structure by creating subdirectories on the remote machine. For example, if you rdist the file /foo/bar into the directory /baz, it would produce the file /baz/foo/bar instead of the default /baz/bar.
younger
Do not update files that are younger than the master files.
-ppath
Specify the path to search for rdistd on the remote machine.
-Ppath
Specify path to the transport command to use on the local machine. This is normally rsh, but may also be ssh. The path argument may also be specified as a colon-separated list of acceptable transports to use in order of preference.
-tseconds
Specify the timeout period (default 900 seconds) after which rdist will sever the connection if the remote server has not yet responded.