topic Re: Recreate exact directory structure in another server in Operating System - Linux

Recreate exact directory structure in another server

kenny chia — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 04:06:46 GMT

Hi
I like to recreate a directory hierachy structure from one server to another. Is there a script to do this?
Requirements
1. Recreated dir must have same permissions, user name and group name
2. Symbolic links to directory must also be recreated as symbolic links (no deferencing)

I was thinking of using tar together with find. But find command cannot differentiate symbolically linked directories and symbolic linked files

Thanks

Re: Recreate exact directory structure in another server

Stuart Browne — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 04:33:01 GMT

If you just want to copy the directory structure, and not the files, you can use find with tar or cpio quite easily.

find . ! -type f | cpio -ovH newc > /tmp/dir.structure.cpio

Re: Recreate exact directory structure in another server

kenny chia — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 04:36:15 GMT

Hi
Thanks, but using

find . ! -type f

will also back up symbolically linked files which I have to exclude

Thanks

Re: Recreate exact directory structure in another server

Stuart Browne — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 05:08:42 GMT

So you want directories, and symbolic links to directories, but not symbolic links to files?

Ugh, that makes life a bit more difficult because of 2).

Ok, try:

find . ! -type f ! -xtype f | ...

Re: Recreate exact directory structure in another server

James R. Ferguson — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 11:38:19 GMT

Hi Kenny:

Linux/GNU has features that one would like to see in Unix!

An approach other than Stuart's very elegant one is to use Perl:

# cat ./showdir
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use File::Find;
use Cwd qw( realpath );
my @dir = @ARGV ? @ARGV : ('.');
find(
sub {
lstat;
my $name = $File::Find::name;
if ( -d _ ) { print "d $name\n" }
elsif ( -l _ && -d realpath($name) ) {
print "l $name -> ", realpath($name), "\n";
}
},
@dir
);
1; #_jrf_

...run as:

# ./showdir /path

For example:

# .showdir /home/jrf
d /home/jrf
l /home/jrf/linktotmp -> /tmp
d /home/jrf/Mail
...

Regards!

...JRF...

Re: Recreate exact directory structure in another server

Court Campbell — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 12:13:49 GMT

James,

You may already know about this. But your in luck.

http://hpux.cs.utah.edu/hppd/hpux/Gnu/findutils-4.2.31/

Re: Recreate exact directory structure in another server

cdemmert — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 12:32:14 GMT

When I want to copy a directory from one server to another I use the command

tar cf - | ssh 'cd ;tar xpvf -'

I hope you find it useful!

Re: Recreate exact directory structure in another server

James R. Ferguson — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 12:32:34 GMT

HI (again) :

Court, thanks, and yes I was aware of the HP-UX port. I'm a tool-builder for a variety of reasons, not the least of which --- TMTOWTDI.

Regards!

...JRF...

Re: Recreate exact directory structure in another server

kenny chia — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 21:50:59 GMT

Hi Stuart
Thanks for the tip..
I will use
# find . ! -type f ! -xtype f

But now I have a strange problem regarding file modification time

I used your suggested method to create the cpio file.

# find /home ! -type f ! -xtype f | cpio -ovH newc > file.cpio

I transfer file.cpio to another server and do an extraction using

# cpio -ivmH newc < file.cpio

Did an "ls -l" command and found that all the directories created have a modification time of "now". Very strange..

Run the same command again

# cpio -ivmH newc < file.cpio

Did an "ls -l" command and this time the file modification time is set to the correct original value!

Is there a bug in cpio or did I use the command wrongly?

Thanks