Advice requested regarding strange rdist error messages

[Chris Torek]

In article <2760 at rsch.WISC.EDU> pfeiffer at rsch.WISC.EDU (Phil Pfeiffer) writes:
>Problem:  rdist occasionally quits with strange error messages. 
>This output fragment, for example, is from an rdist job I ran today:

[many messages deleted]
>>rdist: /usr/pfeiffer/pfeiffer/mainl/muzak/rdist010562: No such file
>>or directory
> 
>I was wondering whether the problem was write-access conflicts.

No, though you are close:

>... I think this rdist problem has cropped up when I was manually scanning
>files at the same time an rdist job was touching them.

The way rdist copies files about might seem rather strange at first,
but if you think about it you will see why it is done that way.
Rdist creates little temporary working files for everything it will
update before it actually goes about updating them.  If you are
running another rdist at the same time, in particular with the `-R'
flag, it will tend to spot these `anomalous' files and remove them.
The first rdist complains as soon as it tries to find the file
again, and your rdist command is told to exit(1).

It is best to run exactly one rdist at a time, and only from one
`central' machine, so that multiple rdists will not interfere with
each other.  If you are sneaky, you can use `special's to sequence
rdist runs, if you must have more than one `master'.
-- 
In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 1516)
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CSNet:	chris at umcp-cs		ARPA:	chris at mimsy.umd.edu