sup - 20100519-4 main

The SUP System is a set of programs developed by Carnegie Mellon
University that provide for collections of files to be maintained in
identical versions across a number of machines. These programs are:
.
SUP: The "client" program, run by users or system maintainers, which
initiates the upgrade activity on a machine requesting the
latest version of a collection of files. SUP will normally be
run as a daemon, firing up once each night (week, etc.) to
upgrade the specified file collections.
.
SUPFILESRV: The "file server" program, a daemon that is run by the
system maintainer to service requests for files initiated by client
SUP programs. The file server runs on every machine used as a
"repository" of distributable versions of files. It runs continuously
and listens for network connection requests by individual client
processes; for each individual client request, a process is forked to
service that request.
.
SUPSCAN: The "file scanner" program, that may optionally be run
periodically to speed up execution of the file server. It
pre-compiles a list of files on the file system that match the
specifications for a given file collection so that the file server
need not do this during each upgrade of that collection. The file
scanner is normally used daily for very large file collections that
are upgraded by many clients each day; it is not so useful for small
file collections or for those that are upgraded by only a few client
machines per day.