[ILUG] Copying directory trees

[John P. Looney]

On Tue, Jan 27, 2004 at 09:19:25AM +0000, Brendan Halpin mentioned:
> Say I want to move /usr/local to a new partition: what's the least
> error-prone way of doing the copy?
> 
> cp to the new location, delete old, edit fstab, mount new partition?
> tar /usr/local, delete old, edit fstab, mount new partition, untar?

 I always prefer tar, as you can put "ssh host" in front of it, and move
stuff around;

 ( cd /usr/local/ ; tar cf - ) | (cd /usr/newlocal/; tar xf - ) 
 mv /usr/local/ /usr/oldlocal
 mv /usr/newlocal/ /usr/local/

John