Re: [gentoo-user] tar over ssh

[Tom Smith]

John Jolet wrote:

>
> On Jan 24, 2006, at 11:46 AM, Tom Smith wrote:
>
>> John Jolet wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> On Jan 24, 2006, at 11:20 AM, Tom Smith wrote:
>>>
>>>> Jeff wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Hey guys.
>>>>>
>>>>> I've got this big fat backup server with no space left on the hard
>>>>> drive
>>>>> to store a tar file. I'd like to pipe a tar through ssh, but not
>>>>> sure
>>>>> what the command would be. Something to the effect of:
>>>>>
>>>>> # cat /var/backup | ssh backup.homelan.com 'tar data.info.gz'
>>>>>
>>>>> So that, the data is actually being sent over ssh, and then
>>>>> archived on
>>>>> the destination machine.
>>>>>
>>>>> Help!
>>>>>
>>>>> :-)
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> Not possible. What you want is more along the lines of AFS, NFS,
>>>> SMB, or
>>>> the like.
>>>>
>>>
>>> WRONG.  I do it all the time.
>>
>>
>> Ok,. my bad. (Open mouth, insert foot. :-D )
>>
>> Being a *nix junkie, I tend to do some things old school--that is,
>> there
>> are specific tools that are (dare I say) more specialized to such a
>> task. You know... SSH = Secure SHell, SCP = Secure CoPy, SFTP = Secure
>> FTP... So I had never really looked into using the "ssh" program for
>> copying files between servers--it's always been more of a telnet-like
>> application for me.
>>
> hmmm, old school, eh?  I was doing that tar trick about 10 or 11
> years ago.
> you HAVE to do that if you have no room to complete the tar file on
> the source, THEN transfer it.  it's quicker than scping a lot of
> files and then tarring them up on the destination, especially if THAT
> doesn't have room for both the source files and the tar.  I did
> extensive performance testing for database migrations about 5 years
> ago and what I said was by far the most efficient, timewise (though,
> I didn't simply redirect to a file, but dd of=filename)

Well, perhaps "old school" has different meanings to different people.
:-) I was referring to the UNIX "tools" philosophy in which each program
has a very specific use, similar to qmail (the original, unmodified
qmail, that is). And this is usually the direction I take when looking
for "tools" to accomplish some task. But I suppose this philosophy
doesn't really apply quite as much nowadays.

I must say, though, I've always managed to anticipate the storage needs
of my servers so running low on or (even worse) running out of disk
space has never been a problem. So I've never had to research such
"tricks" to get things to work within those types of constraints. Call
me quirky, but that's part of being a sysadmin... Yes? ;-)
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