rsync via floppy

[Alberto Accomazzi]

Our project is considering supporting a mirror site which is going to be
off the network (essentially a stand-alone mirror for a local LAN in a
place without internet connectivity).  So I am in the (unfortunate) position
of having to decide how to do this (or if this can be done at all).

The current plan is to set up a PC running linux with a 120GB drive and a
DVD reader on the remote site and ship periodical updates to our dataset
that can be used to "patch" the local distribution, then run some updating
procedures to make the new database live.  I can think of a well-defined
plan to carry out the updates, but I'm weary about the lack of feedback about
the actual updating procedures (what if a filesystem fills up or a command
fails for whatever reason?).  I also don't have a lot of time to build a
customized system for doing this rsync on a floppy myself, so I'm hoping that
somebody on the list has some suggestions or tool that can be useful.

BTW, I think that given the nature of our dataset file patching a la rsync
is not strictly necessary, since we can probably fit a fresh copy of all
files that have changed on a DVD.  The problem I'm mostly worried about is
keeping enough metadata on both ends to reliably figure out the updating
strategy.

Thanks,

-- Alberto



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Alberto Accomazzi                        http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/~alberto
NASA Astrophysics Data System                      http://adswww.harvard.edu
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics       aaccomazzi at cfa.harvard.edu
60 Garden Street, MS 83, Cambridge, MA 02138 USA   
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