Re: file system copying nightmare

[Craig Sanders <cas@taz.net.au>]

On Sun, 8 Feb 1998, Hamish Moffatt wrote:

> On Sun, Feb 08, 1998 at 10:45:04PM +1100, Craig Sanders wrote:
> > > cp -ax /* /mnt
> > > ( cd /; tar clvf - * ) | ( cd /mnt; tar xf - )
> > > 
> > that's because you're TELLING cp and tar to copy /mnt.  * matches
> > everything, remember...so cp -af /* /mnt means copy everything in /
> > (including /mnt) to /mnt.
> 
> Hmmmm. Fair enough, although counter-intuitive to me at least.

no, it's not counter-intuitive if you remember that the shell expands
wildcards BEFORE passing the args to the program...

so 'cd / ; tar clvf - *' gets expanded to 'cd / ; tar clvf - bin boot
cdrom console dev etc floppy home lib lost+found mnt proc root sbin tmp
usr var vmlinuz vmlinuz.old'

and tar does exactly what you tell it to do - archive all of those files
and directories.  it will archive each of the directories in the order
listed on the command line and for each one, the -l option will restrict
it to just that fs mount. 



craig

--
craig sanders


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