well, first off, you make sure that the gnu cp is in your path first, or you specify the full path to cp. the other thing to ensure that there are no errors, redirect the output (including stderr) to a file then check the files for errors.
the only files you have to watch for are the root level directories that you're copying, cp -a takes care of the wacky file names based on the fact that it reads the filenames within the program (opendir) rather than on the command line.
-corris
On Fri, 7 Apr 2000, Bruce Sterling Woodcock wrote:
Date: Fri, 7 Apr 2000 13:41:10 -0700 From: Bruce Sterling Woodcock sirbruce@ix.netcom.com To: Robert Johannes rjohanne@damango.net Cc: Corris Randall corris@acc.com, "Rainchik, Aleksandr (MED, Non GE)" Aleksandr.Rainchik@amermsx.med.ge.com, toasters@mathworks.com Subject: Re: Huge one-time data transfer from UNIX to NetApp
Actually, looking more closely, the cp -a might actually work. I never use it since it's a gnuism and you can't be sure you'll have gnu cp on your machine. In general, those options are not available, so you're left with using -r, which doesn't preserve special files and such.
The tar I'm not sure what's wrong with; I just remember it not working in a particular case in the past.
Both scripts I think suffer from potential file naming problems if those files have a " in them or start with a - and so on.
Bruce