[Bioclusters] FYI-- NCBI officially supports rsync:// for ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

[Chris Dagdigian]

Someone told me over an IM session (thanks Al!) that they were using 
rsync to get data from NCBI. Since bio-mirror.org does not mirror the 
raw FASTA files I'm constantly downloading files from 
ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov using http or ftp clients.

Sure enough when I pointed rsync at ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov:: I got back 
valid service entries.

The rsync services mirrors the directory structure so you can do things 
like:

rsync -av ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov::blast/db/FASTA/ /local/data/FASTA/

I emailed tech support at NCBI to ask if this was a private or public 
service and the response was:

> Thanks for checking. 
> This service was just put in place. It is officially supported.

This is great news!

-Chris


-- 
Chris Dagdigian, <dag at sonsorol.org>
BioTeam  - Independent life science IT & informatics consulting
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