mv: "Directory not Empty" - how do you merge directories with `mv`?

Question

I tried to deploy my personal blog website to my remote server recently. When I tried to move a few files and directories to another place by executing mv, some unexpected errors happened. The command line echoed "Directory not Empty". After doing some googling, I tried again with '-f' switch or '-v', the same result showed. I logged in on the root account, and the process is here:

root@danielpan:~# shopt -s dotglob
root@danielpan:~# mv /var/www/html/wordpress/* /var/www/html
mv: cannot move `/var/www/html/wordpress/wp-content` to `/var/www/html/wp-content`: 
Directory not empty
root@danielpan:~# mv -f /var/www/html/wordpress/* /var/www/html
mv: cannot move `/var/www/html/wordpress/wp-content` to `/var/www/html/wp-content`:
Directory not empty

Anybody know why?

(I'm running Ubuntu 14.04)

There are good answers on unix.stackexchange [here](https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/127712/merging-folders-with-mv). — TamaMcGlinn, Sep 01 '20 at 10:06

score 29 · Answer 1 · edited Apr 14 '21 at 08:35

29

If You have sub-directories and "mv" is not working:

cp -R source/* destination/ 
rm -R source/

edited Apr 14 '21 at 08:35

humble_barnacle

460
1
4
19

answered Sep 11 '20 at 05:56

John Tribe

1,407
14
26

mr NAE · Answer 2 · 2021-07-20T13:50:04.740

3

Instead of copying directories by cp or rsync, I prefer

cd ${source_path}
find . -type d -exec mkdir -p ${destination_path}/{} \;
find . -type f -exec mv {} ${destination_path}/{} \;
cd $oldpwd

moves files (actually renames them) and overwrites existing ones. So it's fast enough. But when ${source_path} contains empty subfolders you can cleanup by rm -rf ${source_path}

edited Jul 20 '21 at 13:50

answered Jul 19 '21 at 12:04

mr NAE

3,144
1
15
35

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 19 '15 at 03:14

2

I found the solution finally. Because the /var/www/html/wp-content already exists, then when you try to copy /var/www/html/wordpress/wp-content there, error of Directory not Empty happens. So you need to copy /var/www/html/wordpress/wp-content/* to /var/www/html/wp-content. Just execute this:

mv /var/www/html/wordpress/wp-content/* /var/www/html/wp-content
rmdir /var/www/html/wordpress/wp-content
rmdir /var/www/html/wordpress

answered Mar 19 '15 at 03:14

SilentKnight

13,761
19
49
78

14

which fails if the target directory's wp-content already contains some non-empty directory to which you intended to add files. – TamaMcGlinn Sep 01 '20 at 09:03

mv: "Directory not Empty" - how do you merge directories with `mv`?

3 Answers3