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<p id="reply-intro">On 2021-03-09 21:29, Bruce Labitt wrote:</p>
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<div dir="ltr">A maybe not so smart rsync question...
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<div>If one uses rsync -avz src/bar /disk2 will that copy over everything from src/bar and create a directory bar on disk2? What if src/bar has other users or root? In other words, does the -a mean that it will preserve ownership and links and copy to /disk2? Just don't know if I need sudo or not.</div>
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<div>I dumbly did a copy. Well, that didn't preserve permissions or attributes. So deleting that... Since I'm trying to back up 100's of GB, thought I'd ask. This is taking a long time, even with USB3 drives and nvme. </div>
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<p>The '-a' flag is one of the few flags that actually means the same thing for both rsync and cp -- and does much the same thing, too. You should be able to use cp -av /src/bar /disk2 and have it copy attributes/permissions. You need the "sudo" in there to preserve ownership, as non-root can't assign other users' ownerships to the files. The main reason I might recommend "cp" over "rsync" is simply because I find "cp" a little less confusing -- what "rsync" does can vary depending on whether or not there are trailing slashes and so forth, and I never quite remember which is which. But the best thing about rsync is that if it barfs in the middle, you just up-arrow, and it starts over from where you left off. As with "cp", if you want the ownerships preserved, don't forget the "sudo". Note that unless you're transiting a network, I'd leave the "-z" off, because it'll just slow you down (substantially).</p>
<p>-Ken</p>
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