Mirror is a package written in Perl that uses the ftp protocol to duplicate a directory hierarchy between the machine it is run on and a remote host. It avoids copying files unnecessarily by comparing the file timestamps and sizes before transfering. Amongst other things can optionally compress, gzip, and split files. It was written for use by archive maintainers but can be used by anyone wanting to transfer a lot of files over ftp. INSTALLATION: IF INSTALLING MIRROR JUST FOR ARCHIVE MAINTENANCE: Normally pick a directory that you want to run mirror from. Unravel the tar image in that directory. Edit the mirror.defaults to reflect local settings. IF YOU ARE PLANNING ON MAKING MIRROR AVAILABLE AS A USER COMMAND: Install into a publically accessible lib area (for example /usr/local/lib/mirror) and add a symlink from a suitable bin area to the mirror.pl in the lib directory. It this is not possible given your local setup install all the .pl scripts into a lib area that will be scanned by perl and install the binary in a suitable bin. If h2ph has been run for your system then you should probably remove socket.ph and use the one *meant* for your machine. If h2ph has not been run then you should persuade your systems administrators to do so. The contents of socket.ph are operating system specific and it is possible that what works for me will not work for you. AVAILABILITY: The latest version of mirror is available from: src.doc.ic.ac.uk [146.169.2.1] directory: computing/archiving/mirror (shortcut packages/mirror) ftp.th-darmstadt.de [130.83.55.75] directory: pub/networking/mirror ftp.sun.ac.za [146.232.212.3] directory: pub/unix/packages/mirror RELATED: Mirror is part of a family of related programs. The others are ftpmail and ftpcat. Ftpmail is a mail responder and ftpcat cats a remote file. These are to be found in src.doc.ic.ac.uk:packages/ftpmail/ and packages/ftpcat/. If you are interested in developing mirror (not just getting the latest releases but actually doing work) there is a mailing list mirror-people@doc.ic.ac.uk. Subscribe by emailing to mirror-people-request@doc.ic.ac.uk. But please do NOT do this unless you have the time to work on mirror.