[lug] Tape backup error

[Nate Duehr]

On Sunday 28 December 2003 07:58 pm, Jason Strnad wrote:
> The man page indicates that use of the hostname argument causes tar
> (gnu tar anyway) to use 'rmt' to perform the network operations.  As
> an 'r' utility, i'd expect you it would use the same facilities you
> might expect rsh (and similar) to use.  And hopefully those
> facilities have been disabled for security reasons. <grin>

Just back from Texas and saw this thread... one other comment to add, 
all good comments so far...

tar definitely is network-aware and uses rsh/rmt...

*Some* GNU software will recognize an exported environment variable of : 

RSH=SSH

... and will attempt the connection over SSH instead of RSH when asked. 

I've never looked to see what lib does this.  If it's part of the rsh 
libs, it's possible that an rsh-aware GNU/tar would also understand 
this.  

If it did, a quick key-exchange for password-less SSH between the tape 
server and the box being backed up, and you'd have a direct tar/ssh 
ability using only tar's command line and not the numerous good shell 
scripts other's provided.

If someone has time to try it out, holler if it works.  I won't get time 
to mess with it on the boxes at home until well into 2004!  ;-)

Happy New Year! -- Coming soon to a calendar near you.

-- 
Nate Duehr, nate at natetech.com