| rsyncsh |
| Copyright (C) 2001 by Martin Pool |
| |
| This is a quick hack to build an interactive shell around rsync, the |
| same way we have the ftp, lftp and ncftp programs for the FTP |
| protocol. The key application for this is connecting to a public |
| rsync server, such as rsync.kernel.org, change down through and list |
| directories, and finally pull down the file you want. |
| |
| rsync is somewhat ill-at-ease as an interactive operation, since every |
| network connection is used to carry out exactly one operation. rsync |
| kind of "forks across the network" passing the options and filenames |
| to operate upon, and the connection is closed when the transfer is |
| complete. (This might be fixed in the future, either by adapting the |
| current protocol to allow chained operations over a single socket, or |
| by writing a new protocol that better supports interactive use.) |
| |
| So, rsyncsh runs a new rsync command and opens a new socket for every |
| (network-based) command you type. |
| |
| This has two consequences. Firstly, there is more command latency |
| than is really desirable. More seriously, if the connection cannot be |
| done automatically, because for example it uses SSH with a password, |
| then you will need to enter the password every time. We might even |
| fix this in the future, though, by having a way to automatically feed |
| the password to SSH if it's entered once. |