Re: Problem selecting options for cp command

[Richard Owlett <rowlett@cloud85.net>]

On 9/5/2016 7:46 AM, Mark Fletcher wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 5, 2016 at 9:30 PM Richard Owlett
> <rowlett@cloud85.net <mailto:rowlett@cloud85.net>> wrote:
>
>     I attempted to copy contents of one partition to another using
>          cp -R /media/richard/myrepo /media/richard/test
>
>     /media/richard/myrepo is a hard disk partition
>     /media/richard/test   is a USB flash drive
>
>     I received "illegal operation" error messages as symbolic links
>     were encountered.
>     "man cp" was too terse to be illuminating.
>
>
> I think cp -a is your best bet. It will copy everything,
> shouldn't choke on links, and will also set permissions etc
> correctly on the target device, assuming you have permissions to
> do so (you should be doing the copy as root, always assuming you
> want to keep permissions and access modes intact).
>
> I recently used it to copy hard disk partitions to a replacement
> SSD (some discussions about that are in the archives of this
> list) and it worked just dandy.
>
> Mark

"archive" had brought up mental image of dusty back rooms where 
things were being preserved for posterity. Not making a copy to 
actually be used.

Someone had suggested rsync but that has too many options for me 
to bungle. "cp" may be slower but appears more comfortable.

Thanks to all.