rsync - Oct 2005 - Two questions; Synchronious Scanning and Home Directories

After spending some time finding uses for rsync, (and there are many),
I've come across two possible areas of improvement.

The first is, would scanning on the destination or client side while
receiving the file list be possible? In theory, it would relieve some of
the delay incurred by the bandwidth from the server during the initial
downloading of the file list.

Not everyone would want to use it, so it would seem like a better thing
to offer with a switch. Not sure if it would even make a substantial
difference, though a few cases probably exist (large files, slow
connection and slightly faster destination volume).  I don't know myself
if it's possible, but asking never hurt anyone.

Another thing is would it be possible for the rsync daemon to use PAM as
a back-end? Perhaps having a [PAM=authmethod] entry in the config file?
This would open up rsync to having multiple repositories or other
insanity like home directories using PAM plugins for directory and
authentication information.

Though, that too is just a theoretical question which has probably been
brought up before much to the annoyance of others. But, didn't think it
would hurt to ask.

-Jason

On Sun, Oct 16, 2005 at 09:17:24PM -0400, Jason Hoover
wrote:
> The first is, would scanning on the destination or client side while
> receiving the file list be possible?
The best solution is to switch over to a more incremental protocol that
would allow us to avoid the pre-scan of an entire hierarchy.  This is
something I hope to be able to get back to working on soon.
> Another thing is would it be possible for the rsync daemon to use PAM
> as a back-end?
It would certainly be possible, but no one has done any work on such an
extension.

..wayne..