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Saturday 9 March 2013

Mirror and rsync

For the last 15 years, whenever I wanted to copy one server to another (usually for backup), I've used mirror.pl, a program written in 1991 and not updated since. It's worked fine. I've also used gencopy, a program that I wrote for doing the same thing. But recently, mirror.pl was having a lot of difficulty with one particular copy, so I fired up google to look for a possible alternative. That led me to rsync.

I've heard of it, but I was never interested enough to find out what it was. I discovered that it does pretty much everything that mirror.pl does, plus I think it's faster, plus it works on the server that mirror.pl was having trouble with.

rsync is installed as standard on every Fedora install, and on raspbian you get it with apt-get install rsync.
I think I'll be using it a lot in future.

8 comments:

  1. There is a copy of fedora now for the pi

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  2. And there was a Fedora for Raspberry Pi three months ago, but when I installed it, the pi could only recognise 256k of its 512k (and I think that changing that would have needed some very clever kernel hacking), and I decided that Raspbian was always going to be better supported than Fedora, so I've gone with that.

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  3. I'm sorry this isn't related to this blog entry but I just wanted to say what fond memories I have of Hot Cakes.

    As children my friends and I had great fun with it. Undercutting each other like crazy and using corporate espionage!

    I can't find my copy any more sadly and stumbled across your site while looking for the developer.

    Thanks for the hours of fun.

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  4. Good grief! I hadn't realised that anyone actually bought it. That was the first commercial program I wrote and sold, and it was for the BBC computer. I'm glad you enjoyed it. I still have a copy, on a cassette. Do you still have a BBC? I could probably make a copy for you.

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  5. Tell us more I'm intregede any thought of porting it to pi?

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  6. Need to get a life12 March 2013 at 13:57

    After realising that Caro's message wasn't really spam,I thought I would google Hot Cakes. But I can't find any references to it!! It obviously exists cos you said it does, so does this qualify for something like google wack-not or some such phrase?

    Update - I have just found one!! But guess what ! Its on Dr Solly.com AND.. I've just read a small potted history of its development, liked the bit when you said you had no idea of how to market software, I'm so glad you didnt take it up as a job, and you devoted your entire life to looking for specimin jars in the undergrowth. Oh and writing lots of blogs on "Country -File : Bike Style" I must read your history in full, I keep forgeting how good you are at story writing, as i have always marveled at your Christmas stories, and now I read them to my children.

    Anuyway, the wardens are coming around again and if they find my ipad again, they said they would tell Grouty, and that would spell trouble. So thanks for the updates, and I look forward to getting out of here one day soon and then i can publish my cache on that site, whatsitcalled?

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  7. No plans to port to pi. For one, I don't have the source code, unless someone has a BBC computer.

    Yes, the abject failure of Hot Cakes taught me a valuable lesson about marketing software.

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  8. Hmm, maybe I do have the source code. I'll have a bit of a dig around.

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