"Do this, and come back when you're done"

[Paul Rubin]

Kamus of Kadizhar <yan at NsOeSiPnAeMr.com> writes:
> No, actually, both machines are under my control (and in my house).
> I'm slinging large (1GB MOL) files around on an unreliable, slow
> wireless network.  I am trying to detect an incomplete copy across the
> network. The local machine is the video player and the remote machine
> is the archive server.  My kids have a habit of just shutting down the
> video server, resulting in incomplete transfers to the archives. If
> it's appropriate for this newsgroup, I'd like to post the entire
> effort for comments (it's my first bit of pyton code.)  So far, python
> has been the easiest language to learn I've ever come across.  I tried
> learning perl, and it was a disaster....  Too convoluted.  Python is a
> breath of fresh air.  Also, the docs and support here is
> excellent. :-)  My thanks to all the volunteers who put in time to
> build python.

Why don't you look at the rsync program.  It brings two machines into
sync with each other by automatically detecting differences between
files and sending only the deltas over the network.