log transfers without user account

Anonymous Monk has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I would like to be able to use perl to create an ipc or rpc socket level collection from each server without logging in. I am talking about whole file transfers. Is there such a thing or has anyone used this approach? Every time I think I have found it upon reading the code more carefully I see they are still using ftp, cp, scp, http. I want to use an IO socket to copy these log files. Can this be done? in perl? can I use a secure IO socket?

Comment on log transfers without user account

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: log transfers without user account by mpeters (Chaplain) on Jul 19, 2005 at 17:41 UTC
You can only do this kind of thing if you can write both the client and the server code (daemon). And if you have a service running on a public machine that allows someone to just copy those files on a whim then you probably need to think about protecting that service with some sort of authentication and that puts you right back in the prospect of reinventing ftp or scp or http. -- More people are killed every year by pigs than by sharks, which shows you how good we are at evaluating risk. -- Bruce Schneier	[reply]
Re: log transfers without user account by tcf03 (Deacon) on Jul 19, 2005 at 17:46 UTC
Sounds like an awful lot of work for a problem with a myriad of solutions. What about Rsync and File::Rsync The August issue of sysadmin has an article about using rsync w/ ssh. There are also quite a few tutorials on the web. Ted -- "That which we persist in doing becomes easier, not that the task itself has become easier, but that our ability to perform it has improved." --Ralph Waldo Emerson	[reply]
Re: log transfers without user account by ikegami (Patriarch) on Jul 19, 2005 at 17:04 UTC
Of course you can write your own IP-based client and server in Perl. However, it would be cheaper and more secure to simply use a proven protocol like HTTP or HTTPS. Why are you avoiding these?	[reply]