Re: General method for copying a partition
On 20100218_130038, Stephen Powell wrote:
> On Wed, 17 Feb 2010 15:04:32 -0500 (EST), Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. wrote:
> > On Wednesday 17 February 2010 13:40:20 Stephen Powell wrote:
> >> On Wed, 17 Feb 2010 12:26:43 -0500 (EST), Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. wrote:
> >>> Use this instead:
> >>> cp -a /media/. /mnt
> >>> OR
> >>> cp -a /media/{.[!.],}* /mnt
> >>
> >> Your second method doesn't work in ash because ash does not support
> >> brace expansion.
> >
> > Sorry, I sometimes forget that brace expansion isn't part of the standard
> > Shell Command Language.
> >
> > You could write them out separately:
> > cp -a /media/.[!.]* /media/* /mnt
> > BUT
> > That could still fail depending on how your shell treats patterns that do not
> > match any existing pathnames (standard behavior is to leave the pattern
> > string, but both bash and zsh have options of different behavior) and how your
> > cp utility handles source_file arguments that do not exist.
>
> All valid points. I'm going with
>
> cp -a /media/. /mnt
>
> There will always be a "/media/." directory. And although rsync is a nice
> tool, the specific application here is copying from one local filesystem
> to another local filesystem, the target having just been formatted with mkfs
> prior to mounting and is therefore totally empty. Therefore, there is no
> "synchronization" needed. "Copy everything" is the order of the day.
> Furthermore, rsync is not part of the standard system, nor is it available
> when using the Debian Installer in a rescue-like mode. (Still, rsync is a
> nice tool to know about; and I'm glad that the posts concerning it were made.)
>
> Thanks to all responders! You've thought of several methods that I never would
> have thought of on my own.
>
A small variant on this cp command would also be useful for a second, or later,
copying of /media onto the same device mounted on /mnt:
cp -a --backup=t /media/. /mnt
This will handle file name collisions in a useful way by appending .~n~ to
the file name on /mnt when a file with the same name is copied from /media.
(n is a number that is incremented each time the happens for a given name)
--
Paul E Condon
pecondon@mesanetworks.net
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