question on find command

[Doug_3]

Hi there, I have a simple question I am unable to find an answer to in man, itrc or the internet.

I have been using find in various ways to locate files buried deep into dir structures. I want to make a quick cpio to a nfs share on a disaster recovery server. The command did not work as I expected, copying the directory but it did not copy the directories/files.

cd /
find . -xdev -depth -print | cpio -pdmuv /drnfs/cpio2011May26

This copied say /etc and associated directories but did not copy /mydir/mydir2/myfile123.

I must be missing something easy or not understanding how the find command navigates the directory structure. Any help will be greatly appreciated.
Regards,
Doug

[James R. Ferguson · Accepted solution]

Hi Doug:

The 'find()' did what you told it to do --- don't cross mountpoints.

You limited directory traversal to '/' without visiting any mountpoints (in HP-UX, '/usr', '/var', '/opt', etc.). SInce '/etc' isn't a separate mountpoint it was copied. I have to assume that '/mydir' is a mounted filesystem.

Regards!

...JRF...

[Wilfred Chau_1]

remove the -xdev option if you want to traverse on other filesystems.

[Doug_3]

sheesh, I blew right past that in the man page. Thanks to both of you.