Overhauling Rdist for the '90s
Michael Cooper · 1992
The rdist program was first released as part of 4.3BSD UNIX. It was one of the first programs to address the area of automated software distribution in a timely, consistent manner in a highly distributed environment. Since its first release it has gained very wide use on almost every major UNIX platform. Despite all of its initial advances, rdist has some deficiencies which have not been addressed in any public release of the software until now. This paper describes the past, present, and future of rdist. The program’s history, operation, comparisons to other similar packages, and a number of possible future improvements in performance and functionality are described. A detailed description of rdist version 6, a major new version of the software that will be included in 4.4BSD, is presented. Version 6 rdist addresses many of the deficiencies of the original rdist, including significantly improved performance when updating large numbers of hosts, better error handling and avoidance, improved security, and cleanup of the actual source code.