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Duplicate a directory tree using tar and pipes

Terminal - Duplicate a directory tree using tar and pipes
(cd /source/dir ; tar cv .)|(cd /dest/dir ; tar xv)
2009-07-19 10:31:13
User: marssi
Functions: cd tar
-11
Up
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Duplicate a directory tree using tar and pipes

the f is for file and - stdout, This way little shorter.

I Like copy-directory function It does the job but looks like SH**, and this doesn't understand folders with whitespaces and can only handle full path, but otherwise fine,

function copy-directory () { ; FrDir="$(echo $1 | sed 's:/: :g' | awk '/ / {print $NF}')" ; SiZe="$(du -sb $1 | awk '{print $1}')" ; (cd $1 ; cd .. ; tar c $FrDir/ )|pv -s $SiZe|(cd $2 ; tar x ) ; }

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Alternatives

There are 4 alternatives - vote for the best!

Terminal - Alternatives
tar cpof - src |( cd des; tar xpof -)
2009-09-20 20:43:30
User: davidpotter42
Functions: cd tar
-2
Up
Down
Bulk copy large blocks of data between File Systems (run as root iff you do not own all of the files!)

Using tape archive create a tar file in Stdout (-) and pipe that into a compound command to extract the tar file from Stdin at the destination. This similar to "Copy via tar pipe ...", but copies across file systems boundaries. I prefer to use cp -pr for copying within the same file system.

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(cd /source/dir ; tar cvf - .)|(cd /dest/dir ; tar xvpf -)
2009-07-14 20:03:23
User: tkunz
Functions: cd tar
Tags: duplicate directory duplicate directories duplicate directory
-3
Up
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Duplicate a directory tree using tar and pipes
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Know a better way?

If you can do better, submit your command here.

What others think

how about a good old cp, since you're on the same machine? Also, I think you're missing the - from your tar commands because tar doesn't use stdin/stdout by default.

Comment by bwoodacre 199 weeks and 6 days ago

From man pages of tar.

-f, --file [HOSTNAME:]F

use archive file or device F (otherwise value of TAPE environment variable; if unset, "-", meaning stdin/stdout)

And I use it mostly on large folder copies on a mounted network drive. i.e my copy-directory function

Comment by marssi 199 weeks and 6 days ago

tar cvpf - . | tar -C /where/you/want/the/copy xvpf -

Comment by unixmonkey4704 199 weeks and 6 days ago

BITD you need -f - because the default was a tape drive device, not stdout :-) However, on a modern system, this doesn't beat cp -av (or if you want things like --exclude, rsync -av)

Comment by eichin 199 weeks and 5 days ago

You can also use find+cpio:

cd /src; find . | cpio -dump /dst

A nice variant is the -l option: It doesn't really copy the files, but creates a tree of hardlinks. Only works within the same file system, of course:

cd /src; find . | cpio -dumpl /dst

If some files contain white space characters, then you should use the -print0 option with find, and the -0 (zero) option with cpio.

On BSD systems, the cpdup command is most convenient and very efficient:

cpdup /src /dst

By the way, the cp command (with -r or -R) should be avoided. It's not portable, the exact semantics are not well-defined. Notably it doesn't copy all kinds of files correctly, on some platforms it doesn't handle hardlinks, FIFOs or other special files correctly.

Comment by inof 199 weeks and 4 days ago

The function is really overcomplicated. Rather than 'echo | sed | awk' you can use parameter expansion, ${1##*/} ... which will return the last item of the path. Also with the use 'sed |awk', awk understands fields, and you can tell what the FS is, so the above can abreviated to:

awk -F/ '{print $NF}' ... though again your better off with parameter expansion.

Comment by khayyam 6 weeks and 3 days ago

Your point of view

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