Under Linux, how do I copy files from one filesystem to the other (both gpfs) and preserve hard links?

Question

I have a directory with huge files and a number of directories, that have hardlinks on these huge files. How do I copy files from one filesystem to the other and preserve hard links?

score 4 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 11 '13 at 11:57

4

rsync can preserve hard-links with the -H option.

answered Mar 11 '13 at 11:57

Stone

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score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 11 '13 at 12:13

2

tar is preserving links (both symbolic and hard ones). To copy between filesystems, you would use it that way:

tar -cf - -C srcdir . | tar -xpf - -C destdir

See the tar man page for more details (this is where this example is actually coming from).

answered Mar 11 '13 at 12:13

Lætitia

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score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 11 '13 at 14:41

1

$ cp -r --preserve=links src dst

man cp:

   --preserve[=ATTR_LIST]
          preserve  the specified attributes (default: mode,ownership,timestamps), 
          if possible additional attributes: context, links, xattr, all

answered Mar 11 '13 at 14:41

quanta

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From the man page, it is not very clear that `cp` invoked that way preserves both symbolics and hard links. But after some testing, that seems to work, interesting! – Lætitia Mar 11 '13 at 17:07

Under Linux, how do I copy files from one filesystem to the other (both gpfs) and preserve hard links?

3 Answers3