find/cpio combination drops some link file

[George Liu_2]

I used
find . -xdev -depth -print |cpio -pxdm /mnt
to copy full directories to a new partition, but some files, most of them are symbolic links, were droped. Any idea?

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi George:

Try adding the '-follow' to 'find' (despite what the man pages say).

Regards!

...JRF...

[Bernie Vande Griend]

I think you're missing some options on the cpio that will retain symbolic links. (-l)
This is the command that I use:

find . -depth -print | cpio -plvdmu /outputdest

[harry d brown jr]

Why not use "cp -rp /currdir /mnt" instead of the find & cpio??

[Carlos Fernandez Riera · Accepted solution]

I dont use -depth. As root i think you dont need that option.


-follow option copy contents rather than links.

i use:

find /fs -xdev -print | cpio -pdumx

And no problem ( as root).

[George Liu_2]

Carlos is right. It seems -depth caused the problem. However, how to preserve the timestamp for the files? Thanks.