So I was going to back up my home folder by copying it to an external drive as follows:
sudo cp -r /home/my_home /media/backup/my_home
With the result that all folders on the external drives are now owned by root:root. How can I have cp keep the ownership and permissions from the original?
sudo cp -rp /home/my_home /media/backup/my_home
From cp manpage:
-p same as --preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps
--preserve[=ATTR_LIST]
preserve the specified attributes (default: mode,ownership,timestamps),
if possible additional attributes: context, links, xattr, all
You can also use rsync.
sudo rsync -a /home/my_home/ /media/backup/my_home/
From the rsync manpage:
-a, --archive
This is equivalent to -rlptgoD. It is a quick way of saying you want
recursion and want to preserve almost everything (with -H being a notable
omission). The only exception to the above equivalence is when
--files-from is specified, in which case -r is not implied.
Note that -a does not preserve hardlinks, because finding multiply-linked
files is expensive. You must separately specify -H.
See this question for a comparison between cp and rsync: https://stackoverflow.com/q/6339287/406686
Note the trailing slashes (see manpage for details).
cp -p is nice, but I like rsync's output so much more in general that I've aliased pcp to time rsync --progress -ah. Stands for "progress copy" in my mind. And both accept -r, so it works well for general terminal usage - but unfortunately, not in combination with sudo as shown in this question/answer.
– Izkata
Jul 20 '12 at 17:59
rsync -a, does not preserve extended attributes (-X) and no ACLs (-A) - the short description says archive mode; equals -rlptgoD (no -H,-A,-X). E.g. SELinux contexts will not be preserverd without -X. For many use cases this is fine, but if you make a backup of your system partition, missing -X might break quite a lot. As far as I know, cp -a really preserves all file attributes.
– Perseids
Sep 23 '14 at 06:44
sudo cp -a preserves ownership and groups, sudo rsync -a changes them into root. So, @Perseids is correct.
– John Hamilton
Mar 16 '18 at 11:59
/home folder with rsync -aX /home /mnt/sdd/ and it worked like a charm.
– Olivier Pons
Oct 18 '18 at 07:04
cp -a
Where -a is short for --archive — basically it copies a directory exactly as it is; the files retain all their attributes, and symlinks are not dereferenced (-d).
From man cp:
-a, --archive
same as -dR --preserve=all
I use cp -pdRx which will -p preserve mode, ownership & timestamps, -d preserve links (so you get symlinks instead the file contents copied), -R do it recursively and -x stay on one file system (only really useful if you're copying / or something with an active mount point).
PS: -R instead of -r is just habit from using ls -lR.
cp -ax is a slightly shorter version of the same thing. This worked great - thank you!
– EM0
Mar 25 '15 at 12:27
-r and -R. Check the man page (even the particular part too long to be quoted here).
– geckon
Jul 08 '15 at 13:23
-R, -r, --recursive copy directories recursively.
– StarNamer
Jul 08 '15 at 16:09
cp -ax: With sym-src-dir being a symlink to real-src-dir, when I executed cp -ax sym-src-dir dest-dir, all it did was create a symlink dest-dir pointing to real-src-dir; it did not copy anything from inside real-src-dir/* to ``dest-dir/`.
– Abdull
Aug 06 '23 at 11:58
-a switch. -a infers -d (which preserves links as links - rather than following them). If you want to follow all symlinks and include them as files/directories (instead of just symlinks) use -r --preserve=all. Please note that as per your example, it will include real-src-dir (but dir will be named sym-src-dir)
– Jeremy Davis
Aug 30 '23 at 21:37
You can do something like this:
tar cf - my_home | (cd /media/backup; sudo tar xf - )
tar keeps permissions, ownership and directory structure intact, but converts everything into a stream of bytes. You run a "subshell" (the parenthesized commands) that change directory, and then get tar to reverse the conversion. A steam of bytes becomes directories and files with correct ownership and permissions.
tar and using cp -rp as other answers suggest?
– lucidbrot
Apr 01 '20 at 15:18
tar and cp -rp would differ only in corner cases - how they handle symbolic links or other special files, handling extended attributes of some filesystems, or dealing with sparse files.
–
Apr 02 '20 at 13:40
cp has an option to preserve file ownership. From the manual page of cp:
-p Cause cp to preserve the following attributes of each source file in the copy: modification
time, access time, file flags, file mode, user ID, and group ID, as allowed by permissions.
Access Control Lists (ACLs) and Extended Attributes (EAs), including resource forks, will also
be preserved.
The answer is simple: cp has a -p option that preserves permissions (here's a fish).
But as Wojtek says in his comment, man cp (reading the fine manual) would be a good starting point (want to learn how to fish?).
you can use preserve=all, then your copy will keep all attributes like owner, group and timestamp of your files. So, do your backup safely with the following command.
cp -r --preserve=all /home/my_home /media/backup/my_home
rsync is good for copying terabytes of data. it adds resumability. And there are flags now to also copy extended attributes which is main issue in other comments.
rsync -aHAXS --info=progress2 --partial SOURCE_DIR DESTINATION_DIR
--hard-links, -H preserve hard links
--acls, -A preserve ACLs (implies --perms)
--xattrs, -X preserve extended attributes
--sparse, -S turn sequences of nulls into sparse blocks
--info=progress2 progress bar
cp does not offer e.g:
sudo rsync -aHAXS \ --filter='-x security.selinux' \ --no-compress \ --no-inc-recursive \ --stats \ --numeric-ids \ --info=progress2 \ /media/disk/ \ /
– social
Oct 22 '23 at 23:47
I had a similar problem that I wanted to copy a large folder from one hard drive to a new one but took a while for me to consider the different partition formats.
The original was on an ext4 formatted partition on the extraction location was an external drive formatted as exFat. Once I realized this I formatted the external hard drive to ext4 and it worked, but I also used the -h flag for de-refenrencing symlinks.
tar -cf myfolder.tar myfolder
cd /path/to/new/harddrive
tar -xhf myfolder.tar
I was using Ubuntu 22.04, for additional details.
Wanted to share this experience in case someone else finds it helpful.
sudo call, which however the OP seemes to be necessary ...)
– AdminBee
Jun 02 '20 at 09:46
well ive using Linux Zorin and my issue was trying to copy over my home folder to an external drive while my computer is booted on a iso ( bootable usb drive ) as ive messed up my sdd and it now doest bootup properly so im doing a new install, this time i hope to install windows 7 then zorin OZ successfully or just Zorin OS, im not sure if i should dual boot or do linux with virtual machine.
what i did :
install caja ( through command line or software store )
run caja as root ( i used command line and run it as ROOT )
copy and paste my files i wanted, skipped the stuff that didnt want to copy and hopefully the ones i dont care about )
DONE.
for me 20gb of my home folder is taking forever, the few minutes it has been feels like an internity right now.
Hope this helps anyone even with all my rambling here.
cp -a. This also includes the-recursive flag, but it does more than that—it preserves everything about the file; SELinux attributes, links, xattr, everything. It's "archive mode." There are better tools for making a backup, but if you're usingcpfor a backup, don't use anything other thancp -a. – Wildcard Oct 14 '15 at 03:54cp -adoesn't work on some systems: e.g. OS X, where (in some versions at least) one needed to usecp -pR. On my current OS X system though (10.10.15),cp -aseems to be honored. – dubiousjim Sep 30 '17 at 16:30diff <(getfacl -R folder1) <(getfacl -R folder2)i sill seem to get different access control lists :( – philx_x May 29 '19 at 18:20setcap/getcap. I recently had a problem wherepingwould returnoperation not permitted. Now I wonder what other binaries are missingsetcap. – Gizmo Jan 04 '21 at 08:27sudois needed to preserve user ownership, unless you're already the root user. See @telCom's comment. – jabbascript Feb 08 '22 at 16:28