Using HP-UX Internet Services (February 2007)

A distfile contains entries of the following types:
• Definitions of variables that are used with distfile commands.
• Commands that distribute files to other hosts.
• Commands to create lists of files that have changed since a specified date.
Each of these types of entries is described in the following sections.
Variable Definitions
You can use variables to represent a list of items, such as the names of files to be
distributed or the remote hosts to be updated. You can define variables anywhere in
the distfile, but they are usually grouped together at the beginning of the file.
Variables are then used in command entries. The format for defining variables is as
follows:
variable_name = name_list
where,
variable_name
Specifies the name used to reference the variable.
name_list Contains item names separated by a space and enclosed within
parentheses.
Spaces or tabs on either side of the equals (=) sign are ignored. Subsequent appearances
of the ${variable_name} in the distfile (except in comments) are replaced by
name_list. (You can omit braces if the variable_name consists of just one character.)
You can also specify variable definitions on the command line while invoking rdist;
variable definitions on the command line override the definitions in the distfile
(see “Starting rdist” (page 31)).
The following are examples of variable definition entries in a distfile:
HOSTS = ( matisse root@arpa)
FILES = ( /bin /lib /usr/bin /usr/games
/usr/include/{*.h,{stand,sys,vax*,pascal,machine}/*.h
/usr/lib /usr/man/man? /usr/ucb
/usr/local/rdist `cat ./std-files` )
EXLIB = (Mail.rc aliases aliases.dir aliases.pag crontab dshrc
sendmail.cf sendmail.fc sendmail.hf sendmail.st uucp vfont )
The variable definition entries in the distfile are described as follows:
• The first entry defines the variable HOSTS to represent two remote hosts, matisse
and arpa, that are to be updated. If you specify a remote host in the form
user@host, user is the user name on host that is used to update files and
Creating the distfile 27