Copying an entire tree

[Malcolm Kay]

On Fri, 22 Aug 2003 08:35, Dan Strick wrote:
> > No, I hadn't thought of using rsync for a purely local copy.  But now
> > that I've tried it, add it to the list of utilities that lose the flags.
> > (I'm particularly interested in preserving the schg and nodump flags.)
> >
> > So far, the only thing I know of that seems to do everything right
> > is cvsup.  But it's really a bit cumbersome to set up for a one-time
> > copy.
>
> I have another program that might be "a bit cumbersome to set up for a
> one-time copy."  You would have to edit a Makefile to specify its
> installation directory and do "make install".  Since the program is
> designed to maintain identical (i.e. with a carefully managed set of
> differences) branches of file systems on possibly large numbers of
> different machines, the command syntax can be a bit messy.  I routinely
> use a simple shell front-end to compare and copy file system branches
> on my machine(s).  This program may be overkill.  (Note: a command
> line flag is required to enable special file copies.)
>
> If you are desperate and have enough free space in the file system
> that is to contain the copy (which must not be the file system that
> contains the original), you could use dump/restore.  Since the version
> of dump that comes with FreeBSD only seems to be willing to dump only
> entire file systems, you have to copy the whole thing and delete
> the parts you don't like.  If the original and the copy have to be
> in the same file system or if you don't have enough free space there
> but you do have enough space somewhere else, you can make an intermediate
> copy and trim that one down before the final copy.

This should work without intermediate storage; just pipe from dump to restore; 
eg
# dump -0 -a -f -  filesystem | restore  -x -f -  selected-tree

Of course you need to be in the right place to get thr restore where you want 
it.

Dump/restore is also the only technique I've found to retain the holes in 
holey files.

Malcolm Kay