X-no-Archive:yes
This is an old puzzle, but I want to see what answers others have found.

We need to pull a file from a host during a batch processing window, after
the batch runs that produces the file, but before the system is taken down
for backup, currently a space of three to four hours, except for the
exceptions. Sometimes, things go wrong, and this can even delay the backup.

The system pulling the file is Wintel, and does not run an ftp server, and
its batch processing is pretty simple, rudimentary stuff, so I can only do
what I can hack up on my own out of stone knives and bear skins. The host in
question does not run SAMBA. So far as I can tell, there is no good
mechanism for a conversation between the two systems. We have considered
having the host in question ftp to an NT ftp server that this other system
could see, and pick up the file from there by some means, but that also adds
one more point of failure, as well as the need for someone on this host to
do some scripting (should that make me nervous?).

All other things being equal, I would say to download the file some
reasonable number of minutes before the backup begins, and if the host had
problems that could not be solved before that time, then those problems are
their problems, not ours (but that response won't win any peer recognition
awards), and we'll handle things the next day.

Greg Stigers
http://www.cgiusa.com
my perl script says the answer is forty-two