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Re: Problem selecting options for cp command

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On Mon, Sep 05, 2016 at 07:29:52AM -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:
> I attempted to copy contents of one partition to another using
>    cp -R /media/richard/myrepo /media/richard/test
> 
> /media/richard/myrepo is a hard disk partition
> /media/richard/test   is a USB flash drive
> 
> I received "illegal operation" error messages as symbolic links were
> encountered.
> "man cp" was too terse to be illuminating.

First: what do you *want*?
  (a) if cp finds a link it should copy it as a (now possibly
    dangling) link)
  (b) it should copy (recursively) the contents of the dir
    the link points to.

Once you are clear, it's easier to decide

Hint: when doing backup, you almost always want cp -a (*not* -R).
It will copy the links as links. If they point to some place
outside the tree under copy, they are dangling links in the copy.
On backups you almost always want that.

Regards
- -- tomás
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Problem selecting options for cp command Richard Owlett <rowlett@cloud85.net> - 2016-09-05 14:40 +0200
  Re: Problem selecting options for cp command Patrick Wiseman <pwiseman@gmail.com> - 2016-09-05 14:50 +0200
    Re: Problem selecting options for cp command <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2016-09-05 15:00 +0200
  Re: Problem selecting options for cp command Mark Fletcher <mark27q1@gmail.com> - 2016-09-05 14:50 +0200
    Re: Problem selecting options for cp command Richard Owlett <rowlett@cloud85.net> - 2016-09-05 16:30 +0200
      Re: Problem selecting options for cp command Lars Noodén <lars.nooden@gmail.com> - 2016-09-05 16:30 +0200
  Re: Problem selecting options for cp command <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2016-09-05 15:00 +0200
  Re: Problem selecting options for cp command Dan Purgert <dan@djph.net> - 2016-09-05 15:00 +0200
  Re: Problem selecting options for cp command Henrique de Moraes Holschuh <hmh@debian.org> - 2016-09-05 15:00 +0200
    Re: Problem selecting options for cp command <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2016-09-05 15:10 +0200
    Re: Problem selecting options for cp command Richard Owlett <rowlett@cloud85.net> - 2016-09-05 15:30 +0200
      Re: Problem selecting options for cp command Jonathan Dowland <jmtd@debian.org> - 2016-09-05 15:40 +0200
  Re: Problem selecting options for cp command "Thomas Schmitt" <scdbackup@gmx.net> - 2016-09-05 15:10 +0200

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