Static server side listing

[Mark Constable]

On 22/12/11 14:59, Kevin Korb wrote:
>>>> Is it possible to provide a static listing on a server, say
>>>> every 24 hours, that a standard end-user rsync can pull and
>>>> use?
>>>
>>> Sounds like a job for a snapshot.  If you are on Linux that
>>> would be an lvm2 snapshot.  Other operating systems with basic
>>> volume management usually have an equivalent.
>>
>> Thanks. That sounds like a way to manage the archived files but I
>> don't understand how that would eliminate the dynamic generation
>> of listings that rsyncd provides to clients?
 >
> It would provide a static copy.

Sure, of the archived files themselves. An alternate file tree would
do the same thing and give me more flexibility to prepare the alt
tree that is about to be swapped in at the next 24 hour swap over
point.

> The rest would be up to the OS to cache in RAM.

My 20k files situation could grow to 100k files so something has to
index them all dynamically 100/sec. Even if the directory indexes
are cached in ram that is still a lot of load on the cpus just to
do something that could be done once with the results provided as
a simple single static file, if it were possible.

I guess my question is now, what would it take to redirect what
rsyncd would normally send back to a client, as a listing, to a
local server file and then tell rsyncd to use that single pre
prepared file for future listing requests from clients?