using rsync with ssh to distribute to multiple hosts

[Jim Kleckner]

Good suggestions.

Also, if you are uncomfortable with an empty
passphrase and can tolerate entering it once
per session, you can use ssh-agent to hold
the credential in memory.  The keychain script
is also useful to locate an ssh-agent to be used
from unrelated non-child shells.

Jim

Eric Whiting wrote:

> 2 things to do that will fix things...
> 
> 1. Read man ssh and create public/private ssh keys with an empty passphrase.
> This will let the rsync run without a password -- you can cron it and it will
> just work... You can also use .rhosts and sync over rsh, but ssh with the keys
> is a better solution.
> 
> 2. Consider the destination syncs in parallel. Use simple bash for loops with &
> in the commands or use perl's Parallel::ForkManager to run several at once..  I
> have used both methods with good success.
> 
> eric
> 
> 
> 
> Jim Stafki wrote:
> 
>>Hello,
>>
>>I have tried to look this up in the archives before posting but I can not
>>connect to the news server at gmane.  I hope you can help, or perhaps point
>>me to documentation somewhere...
>>
>>I have a filesystem on an aix box that must be pushed periodically to
>>several unix boxes (over 100) and the directive from our unix admins is to
>>use rsync, which can use ssh to perform the transfer.  I would like some
>>opinions about the best way this should be done.  I have written a korn
>>shell script that uses a loop to execute the rsync command against a list of
>>hostnames.  This works fine, but for one inconvenience:  The user must enter
>>the password for every box that is in the list.  It is the same password in
>>most cases, but this is simply not acceptable.
>>
>>Is there a better way to do this with rsync?  Anyone have thoughts about
>>this?