Re: User Directories
>
> On Wed, 3 Mar 1999, E.L. Meijer (Eric) wrote:
>
> > > What do I have to do to move my user directories to a different
> > > partition/drive? I have looked around but I can not find what file (?)
> > > that user info like home directory is stored.
> > The home directory of a user is written in /etc/passwd. In that file
> > you can change the directory, then copy the stuff with cp -a, and remove
> > the old one with rm -rf. You may want to check
> >
> > man cp
> > man 5 passwd
>
> you'd also need a -p to keep permissions.
> AFAIK, though, cp -p doesn't respect symlinks and just makes duplicates,
> in this case you'd want to use tar
> basically a 'tar -cpf - -C homedirlocation|tar -xvpf -' but as I haven't
> just tested that, you should man tar to make sure I'm right.
I suggested using cp -a. In the man page it says:
OPTIONS
-a, --archive
Preserve as much as possible of the structure and
attributes of the original files in the copy. The
same as -dpR.
So this includes -p (keep permissions), -R (recurse), and -d (copy
symbolic links, do not dereference). I like the tar approach a lot
from a geek point of view :), but I do believe cp -a is simpler. I
also seem to remember there was a problem with tar that cp -a didn't
have (maybe this was with device files?), but we are entering the realm
of religious warfare here...
HTH,
Eric
--
E.L. Meijer (tgakem@chem.tue.nl) | tel. office +31 40 2472189
Eindhoven Univ. of Technology | tel. lab. +31 40 2475032
Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (TAK) | tel. fax +31 40 2455054
Reply to: