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Suppose I have three networked computers: A, B and C.

A mounts a directory from B and from C.

A/mnt/im-on-B/
A/mnt/im-on-C/

A then copies a file:

cp /mnt/im-on-B/file ../im-on-C/

What happens to the data - does it pass from B to C via A?

Is this significantly more inefficient than cping the file from B to C directly?

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1 Answer

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Yes to both questions. B transmits the data to A, which retransmits it to C. This means there's twice as much activity on the network as a direct copy from B to C would generate. How significant that is depends on the topology of your network and what other traffic there is.

The standard workaround is to SSH into either B or C, and then start the copy from there (using NFS mounts or scp or rsync or whatever). That way, the data goes directly from B to C and doesn't need to pass through or be duplicated by A.

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is there a way (system utility) to directly copy it from B to C from A but not passing the data through A? – amphibient Feb 26 at 21:56
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@foampile You could simply SSH into B or C computer and do you file operations bypassing A. There is a way to put SSH commands into a script and run it from A. How to ssh from within a bash script?. – Desmond Hume Feb 26 at 22:10

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