Unison (was Re: [plug] Fastest way to transfer files over Internet)

[Ryan]

> I was trying not to mention Unison for once, but people keep mentioning
> rsync, so here goes: I use Unison ;-)

Well if you are going to be like that, I've got a question :)

I use unison also, across a 180 kbps PVC between a Debian box (which
does the unison runs) and an NT server SMB share mounted locally on the
Debian box.

I've got various wrapper scripts around it to allow me to specify
directories and users to synch etc. 

When I do a synch run it transfers _ALL_ the data across (according to
netwatch), but reports everything as normal, ie: no changes when there
are no changes and file update information when a file is updated. I've
read some sites that mention this is normal for SMB synchronisations and
that unison has to be running on the remote computer for the 'smart'
stuff to work.

Is that the case, or am I missing some options?  Anyone know if there is
a way to make what I'm doing run more efficiently using the Debian
server to instigate it all?  Is it possible to make unison on Debian
talk to unison on NT so it can transfer more efficiently?  All the
playing on the Windows client I did several months ago seemed to suggest
it can't 'listen' for another remote unison 'server' to kick it off, but
I'll happily stand corrected.

I'm running on Debian: unison {ldir} {rdir} -auto -batch

Thanks,

Ryan