rdist6 won't let root use ssh transport

[Tim Howe]

Vivek Khera <vivek at khera.org> writes:

> FreeBSD 5 doesn't include the stock rdist anymore, so I'm migrating my
> processes to use the rdist6 port.  However, it seems that if you run
> rdist6 as root, it ignores the -P /usr/bin/ssh flag an tries to use
> rcmd directly, which fails since my target systems do not have that
> service running.

Might I suggest looking into rsync?  It has excellent support for ssh
(and in modern versions even defaults to using it for transport) and in
general I've found it more amenable to scripting and sensible defaults
than rdist.  I and colleagues had excellent luck at a past employer of
mine porting rdist-based applications to rsync for additional
functionality, and currently I use it for certain semi-automated
processes as root (with proper options in sshd_config,
password-protected keys for root, and ssh-agent, of course).

MHO, YMMV, etc, but from my experience rsync has largely supplanted
rdist for good reason.

Also, I don't want to devolve into advocacy, but if anyone is curious I
might be able to get more details on their respective benefits and the
issues that were encountered in enterprise-level migration.

-- 
Tim Howe
Software Engineer
Celebrity Resorts

-- 
Tim Howe
Software Engineer 

Celebrity Resorts
4700 Millenia Blvd., 6th Floor
Orlando, FL  32839
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407-996-3029 (fax)
tim.howe at celebrityresorts.com

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