Example Scenarios Using transfer

1. I originally wrote transfer so I could perform backups of my work on my home system to the Applied Math computers. Since my machine at home runs Linux, I have cron available for performing nightly incremental backups and weekly full backups of my important files and directories. This allows me to make sure that my dissertation gets backed up to tape in case I experience a failure at home. The drawback is that space is very limited at school which means that I cannot backup my large data files. This led to the creation of the exclusion facility.

   I run transfer with a connect script to dial school and establish a ppp connection and a disconnect script to terminate the ppp connection and hang up the phone once the transfers are complete. It is important to keep at least a couple of copies of your most important work in different places in case the unforseen happens. transfer has made this very easy.

2. Suppose you have large files which you would like to move to a large hard drive on your home system. All of us have probably faced this since school provides so little space. In this example, I will assume that you have the standard ppp account through the Academic Computing Center and that the only connection between your home system and the Internet is by dialing your modem into the ACC.

   Assuming that you have an FTP server running on your home computer, it is easy to accomplish this task using transfer. First dial into the ACC and start your FTP server software, if necessary. Then open a window on one of the Amath machines. You will run transfer on the Amath machine so the Amath machine will be the local host and your computer will be the remote host.

   At this point, either set up an information file or collect the relevant information for when transfer prompts you for information. Probably the most mysterious part of this is determining the host name to use since the ACC uses DHCP and assigns you a different host name (and IP address) every time you dial up. You can find this information by executing the command "who -mM" in the Amath window. Your host name will have the form cs???-??.classification.washington.edu.

   Once you have the information, simply run transfer to copy your files and directories to your home system.

3. You can also copy files and directories to other Internet hosts such as machines at the ACC that you have accounts on. Unfortunately, ACC machines provide even less space than Amath so there will only be space for the most important files. Nonetheless, it is easy to set up a cron job to backup important files regularly and the more regularly you copy things over, the less likely that you'll find yourself in a situation where you've lost your only copy of something.