Howto | Copy Directories & Preserve Permissions

Posted in: technology. Tagged: howto, linux, cli

The Command

$ cd /
$ tar cf - opt | (cd /archive; tar xf - )

You cannot run this command as “sudo”, if you need root access for your copy, then you will need to execute a “sudo su” or log in as root.

What the command will do

With any command that you are given by someone, you should always check what that command will do:

$ tar cf - opt | (cd /archive; tar xf - )
c = create
f - = file stdout
opt = source path
| = pipe all above to...
(
cd /archive;
x = extract
f - = file stdin
)

So this command will pipe a new archive from opt to stdout, which it will then recreate in /archive.

This will copy /opt into /archive/opt, preserving permissions, file modification times etc.

Read man tar for more details.