New rdist features

The most notable new feature of rdist is that it is broken into two separate programs: a client and a server. The client portion uses rcmd(TC) to bind to a privileged TCP/IP port so it can communicate with the rshd(ADMN) network server in order to execute a noninteractive shell on a remote machine. Therefore it must be run as root.

In addition, rdist allows you to:

• perform parallel remote file distributions by specifying how many simultaneous rdist processes should run on the command line. This feature helps accelerate the updating of many files on many hosts.

• execute a command after all the files have been distributed using cmdspecial.

• perform enhanced logging, including the ability to use syslog(SLIB), to a file.

• work with older versions of rdist by executing the original rdist program (now called ordist(TC)).