forums.xandros.com

justadrifter · Xplorer Joined: 25 May 2006 Posts: 14

I need the Linux equivalent of:

xcopy c:\folder h:\folder\ /s /e /d /c /y

which basically copies all new and updated files from c:\folder to h:\folder\, including all subdirectories, without stopping for confirmation every time it overwrites a file.

It would really be nice to somehow launch this with a desktop icon.

It would be nice beyond all belief if this could be a scheduled task.

Thanks!

drl · Posted: Fri Jul 21, 2006 9:07 am Post subject:

Hi, justadrifter.

I don't know anything about xcopy, but, going by your description, there's good news, good news, and bad news.

The first good news is that anything (that I know of) that can be executed from the command line can be scheduled. See man crontab and practice a bit.

The second good news is that there is a command that copies changed files, optionally recursively, from one directory to another.

The bad news is that the command, rsync, is complicated. See man rsync for details, examples, and practice.

I do this every night for my home directory.

Other posters may have additional suggestions.

Best wishes ... cheers, drl
_________________

[ "Sure, I can help you with that." -- USBank voice recognition system. ]
( Mn, 3.0.3B, 2.6.11-x1, AMD-64 3000+, ASUS A8V Deluxe, 1 GB, SATA + IDE, Matrox G400 AGP )

pitheris · Xandrosian Joined: 07 Mar 2006 Posts: 202 Location: USA

rsync -a source_directory destination
or
cp -a source_directory destination

The "a" is for archive and means that it will copy recursively and preserve permissions and symlinks and not overwrite files with the same date & size.. You will have problems if you are copying to a fat partition because there are no owners, permissions, or symlinks on a vfat system.

drl · Posted: Fri Jul 21, 2006 6:45 pm Post subject:

Hi, pitheris.

Thanks for adding the post on cp; I didn't know it had the extra capability. It looks like one might also need -u for update on the cp, yes?

I like rsync because it can also create what one might call an archive: for a file that it replaces in a target directory from a source, it copies the old version to a third separate directory. Not for everyone, but I like the extra insurance ... cheers, drl

shengchieh · Posted: Fri Jul 21, 2006 9:43 pm Post subject:

Out of curiousity, I did some googling about xcopy.
Here's what I found.

http://www.ss64.com/nt/xcopy.html
http://yolinux.com/TUTORIALS/unix_for_dos_users.html
http://www.bellevuelinux.org/freedos_commands.html

Sheng-Chieh
_________________

justadrifter · Xplorer Joined: 25 May 2006 Posts: 14

Thanks! That looks to be exactly what I was looking for.