UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Could someone help me in recursive search and ftp'ing the files to remote server?

The host machine will have
/dir1/dira/list_of_files1
/dir1/dirb/list_of_files2
/dir1/dirc/list_of_files3
.
.
.
so., I need to search from dir1 recursively (only one level down) and find all the files that are 3 or 4 hours old and ftp all the files to the same directories in the remote host.
So, the remote host will also have same files under same directories.
Any help is greatly appreciated!!!

This should be simple, even with an ftp layer.

Do you need to worry about copying a file while being written? If so, you can detect others on the file with fuser. Can you wait on the writer to finish, near term? Are there other local readers that would confuse fuser? Can you make the files you want to move read-only, immediately once created, so implicity there are not being written?

First, both sender and recipient will cd to the head dir over the subtree in question. I like to use "find * -type f -newer /elsewhere/mark_file ! -newer /elsewhere/mark_next" and a marker file created with touch. 'touch' a new file at the start of every cycle, /elsewhere/mark_next. Then sleep a second so anything written in that second and also the next will be excluded. Sleep longer if it helps eliminate files being written. After the find and send, "mv /elsewhere/mark_next /elsewhere/mark_file" to support the next batch, seamlessly. Pipe the find to a "while read f" do loop that knows how to check for writing users and ftp the file using relative paths. If the files to be moved are read-only, test with 'if [ -w "$f" ]' and if writable, 'touch' their modify time forward so they are considered on the next pass.