It is fairly simple to configure and use rsync. rsync has many features which
suites for
mirroring data among two or nore unix based systems in a LAN/WAN enviornment.
I am using redhat enterprise linux 4 in example below.
Operating system RHEL4

Configuring rsync server

1. Configure /etc/rsyncd.conf


By default the configuration file is called /etc/rsyncd.conf

uid = nobody
gid = nobody
use chroot = yes
read only = yes
#limit access to private LANs
hosts allow=192.168.10.0/255.255.0.0 10.0.0.0/255.0.0.0 172.16.0.0/255.240.0.0
hosts deny=*
max connections = 5
motd file = /etc/rsync/rsyncd.motd
#This will give you a separate log file
log file = /var/log/rsync.log
#This will log every file transferred - up to 85,000+ per user, per sync
transfer logging = yes
log format = %t %a %m %f %b
syslog facility = local3
timeout = 300
[MirrorDATA]
path = /home/rolo
comment = Mirror data on master server
exclude = usr/ etc/

2. On rhel rsync is under xinted services .
Edit /etc/xinetd.d/rsync file as follows

just change disable = yes to disable = no so that the rsync service can be
started.

# default: off
# description: The rsync server is a good addition to an ftp server, as it \
# allows crc checksumming etc.
service rsync
{
disable = no
socket_type = stream
wait = no
user = root
server = /usr/bin/rsync
server_args = --daemon
log_on_failure += USERID
}



3. Now restart the xinted service:

[root@master-server ~]# /etc/init.d/xinetd restart
Stopping xinetd: [ OK ]
Starting xinetd: [ OK ]


4. Check the service running.

[root@master-server ~]# lsof -i |grep rsyn
xinetd 26448 root 5u IPv4 104750 TCP *:rsync (LISTEN)


Now on client machine you can use rsync command to copy data using command.

[anuj@client-server ~]$ rsync -avz rsync://10.1.10.1/MirrorData
holy-moly WTF you doing here.

receiving file list ... done
drwxr-xr-x 4096 2008/02/18 12:19:09 .
drwxr-xr-x 4096 2008/02/18 12:19:09 alsa-utils-1.0.6
-rw-r--r-- 18009 2008/02/18 12:19:09 alsa-utils-1.0.6/COPYING
-rw-r--r-- 883 2008/02/18 12:19:09 alsa-utils-1.0.6/ChangeLog
-rw-r--r-- 757 2008/02/18 12:19:09 alsa-utils-1.0.6/README
-rw-r--r-- 187 2008/02/18 12:19:09 alsa-utils-1.0.6/TODO

sent 78 bytes received 179 bytes 514.00 bytes/sec
total size is 19836 speedup is 77.18


Anuj Singh.