[ILUG] data pushing on Linux, any suggestion?

[stephen mulcahy]

Emen Zhao wrote:
> Hello All,
> 
> Here is my scenario - I have a bunch of Linux servers. I want one of them
> act as a file server, where if any file in a specific folder gets updated,
> the updated version will be automatically push to all the other servers. Are
> there any ready-made tools up for this? Any suggestion?

Running rsync on a regular basis, while not firing the synchronisation 
off on the file update event, would be a very straightforward, reliable 
solution here. Set the frequency of running rsync to the frequency at 
which you need any updates to be pushed out to the other servers. Also, 
you may want to put a wrapper around rsync to ensure that only one 
instance runs at a time (or maybe rsync has a switch to ensure this 
behaviour, you'll have to check the man page).

If you're going down the file modification event route with 
dnotify/inotify and so on, you may need to put some measure in place to 
throttle the rate of synchronisation (such that if a lot of 
modifications get made on one of the servers, you don't end up with a 
huge storm of traffic immediately to all the others).

-stephen

-- 
Stephen Mulcahy     Atlantic Linux         http://www.atlanticlinux.ie
Registered in Ireland, no. 376591 (144 Ros Caoin, Roscam, Galway)