August 18, 2005

Safely Copy Directories in Unix

Learn a safe and reliable way to copy directories in Unix using tar—preserving file permissions and avoiding data loss even if the process is interrupted.

I use this a lot when I need/want to mount a new partition into a directory location that I have been previously been using (i.e. Vinum configuration in FreeBSD). What’s great for me is that it will copy file permissions over properly – and better yet, if it fails partway through you don’t lose any data.
# mkdir newdir # cd olddir # tar -cf - . | ( cd newdir && tar -xf - )