[lug] scp tools?

[D. Stimits]

Peter Hutnick wrote:
> 
> On Tuesday 12 March 2002 10:02 pm, D. Stimits wrote:
> > In any case, it requires sftp-server to be in the user path or at least
> > on the machine. I *think* sftp-server is probably a separate install
> > step, but I don't know for sure. What I am certain of is that sftp works
> > between my local network machines, but not to his machine; and using
> > locate, there is no sftp-server on his system anywhere. I will see if I
> > can talk him into looking into it, but he is on the extreme of busy (he
> > owns something similar to an ISP business, he's almost a one-man show,
> > entirely Linux). It would definitely be a big hit for me to see gftp
> > work to his machine over sftp.
> 
> I haven't ever used sftp.  Don't know anything about it.  *But*, you say
> above "it requires sftp-server to be in the user path".  You can do that (for
> your user account) via scp and ssh, no?
> 
> Something like:
> 
> localhost$ scp sftp-server remote_user at remotehost:~/bin/.
> localhost$ ssh remote_user at remotehost
> remotehost$ chmod 600 bin/sftp-server
> remotehost$ echo "export PATH=$PATH:~/bin" >> .bashrc
> 
> Again, I don't know anything more about the task at hand than what you
> presented above.  I also am assuming that you have a [cross]compiler that
> will work on your local machine to build the bin for the remote machine, or
> that you have compiler access on the remote machine (which would, of course,
> change the first step a bit).

I have compiler access on the remote machine, plus it is the same RH 7.1
that I use...full binary compatibility if I really desire.

> 
> I'd like to add, in the "useless advice that doesn't answer the actual
> question" department, that I don't use sftp because I find that scp fills my
> needs for secure file transfer.  scp is great on its own when I know what I
> am actually trying to do, and a local shell and an ssh shell on the remote
> machine side by side are so much more useful than FTP's clunky interface when
> I am just browsing around or whatever.

The scheme is that I have my own internal net, and 56k to the world. The
remote machine has a very secure internal net, its own machines are
pretty much firewalled in layers (and to update anything about the
binaries available to access the machine would probably cause me to lose
my accounts). It also has at least a T3, I think maybe redundant T3's. I
have read-only cvs access on the internal cvs machine there, but need to
write and test things. The testing requires the DNS and other services
of another machine in the remote area, of which I have two regular user
accounts on it, accessible to the outside only via ssh, plus the ports
for software testing (the application is tcp/ip). The code portion I'm
dealing with is about 1.5 MB, the whole project is about 10 to 11 MB in
source. I am doing a complete rewrite of a large part of the code, and
end up needing to update 25 or so files at a time to test on the machine
I have full accounts on...but I can't use cvs to that machine, so I am
dealing with lots of file transfers, even if they are a diff. My update
to that machine is basically via overwriting or via diff files...and
there are lots. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but I can't seem to use
wildcards with scp, thus I wanted a tool to bulk select. gftp is ideal
because it also can check for differences between directories, and show
file sizes and such.

> 
> What I am really trying to say is that if you try to "just get by" with ssh
> and scp for a few days while looking for a "better" solution you may find
> that you stop looking for a better solution!  But, of course, YMMV.

I've got by this way for 6 months. This is why it annoys me, it slows
down progress to the extreme, spending a couple of hours just to figure
out which files were updated. Using diff's it is worse, because I do not
have complete control over the source directory on the remote machine,
and it can end up that my diff's are against the wrong revision, so
complete overwrite is better (assuming compression is enabled).

But, the good news is that I did finally find out how to set up gftp to
explicitly tell it how to do things with ssh protocols, and it works
now. So aside from needing a read/write cvs on the cvs server, rather
than read-only, I'm pretty happy with it.

D. Stimits, stimits at idcomm.com

> 
> Good luck!
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