Re: rsync problem

On Jan 6, Michael Karges <[email protected]> wrote:
> I've installed fou4s on all machines in my network and updating SuSE 8.1
> seems to work fine. Now, I'd like to update KDE, too.
Nice :-)

> As far as I understood the rsync-protocol is used for that purpose. 
> I've uncommented the KDE-server line in the config file, but a 
> "saturn:~ # fou4s -uv" leads to:
> ________________________________________________________
> Generating patch descriptions from rsync://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/	
> suse/ftp.suse.com/suse/i386/supplementary/KDE/update_for_8.1/
> update_for_8.1/
> rsync: getaddrinfo: ftp.gwdg.de 873: Temporary failure in name 
> resolution
It seems that your machines can't resolve the hostname. Are you using a 
proxy? Firewall? From the manpage of rsync:
---snip---
       You  may  establish the connection via a web proxy by set­
       ting the  environment  variable  RSYNC_PROXY  to  a  host­
       name:port pair pointing to your web proxy.  Note that your
       web proxyŽs configuration must allow proxying to port 873.
---snip---

> I'm not used to the rsync-protocol, I've never used it before as 
> people claim it to be very insecure.
It is not encrypted, but can also be run over ssh. Rsync is a great 
protocol for keeping directories in sync over a network (and even local
harddisk!). It has recently had a remote compromise, but that doesn't mean 
that it is insecure.
The reason why it was chosen for fou4s is the ability to create directory 
listings in a useable format for the patch description generator. 
HTTP/Proxy listings are not in a fixed format, and FTP can't be used over 
a proxy (same problem with above - the listings are generated as HTML).

> [1] Workstations are behind a firewall. Do I need to open ports for 
> rsync to work?
If you use a proxy, it must be able to connect to port 873, as stated 
above. 
> [2] Do I need to set-up and run rsyncd?
If you want to provide your own mirror, yes.

> Also, I've mirrored a suse ftp-server (including KDE -packages) and
> updated machines by hand/script. I'd like to keep that mirror, but:  
> how to set-up fou4s to use that (local) mirror only for base system and
> KDE updates? Is it possible for the workstations to use NFS-shares from
> that mirror instead of external servers via ftp/ rsync?
You can use shared directories (mount to /var/cache/fou4s/packages), but 
you must first generate the patch descriptions using a (local) rsync 
server.

Markus
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