Moving /var/mail

[Jerry McAllister]

On Fri, Dec 01, 2006 at 02:20:42PM -0500, Lisa Casey wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I want to move /var/mail to /usr/var/mail, then symlink /var/mail to 
> /usr/var/mail to free up space on my (too small on this machine) /var. Of 
> course, I wish to maintain file permissions, ownerships, etc. I decided to 
> try a dry run using a user home directory first to make sure this would 
> work right. Good thing I did...
> 
> I created /usr/kellyw  and attempted to copy the contents of  /home/kellyw/ 
> to it. First of all, I tried tar cvpf /usr/kellyw/kellyw.tar /home/kellyw/
> 
> When I unpack the tar file, I wind up with /usr/kellyw/home/kellyw/*  Not 
> what I wanted. I wanted all of the files in /home/kellyw/ to wind up in 
> /usr/kellyw/
> 
> So I then tried to just copy the files using cp -p but I can't get the 
> syntax right on that:
> 
> # cd /home/kellyw
> # ls -l
> total 16
> -rw-r--r--  1 kellyw  kellyw  767 Aug 18 14:52 .cshrc
> -rw-r--r--  1 kellyw  kellyw  248 Aug 18 14:52 .login
> -rw-r--r--  1 kellyw  kellyw  158 Aug 18 14:52 .login_conf
> -rw-------  1 kellyw  kellyw  373 Aug 18 14:52 .mail_aliases
> -rw-r--r--  1 kellyw  kellyw  331 Aug 18 14:52 .mailrc
> -rw-r--r--  1 kellyw  kellyw  797 Aug 18 14:52 .profile
> -rw-------  1 kellyw  kellyw  276 Aug 18 14:52 .rhosts
> -rw-r--r--  1 kellyw  kellyw  975 Aug 18 14:52 .shrc
> # cp -p /home/kellyw/* /usr/kellyw/*
> cp: No match.
> # cp -p /home/kellyw/ /usr/kellyw/
> cp: /home/kellyw/ is a directory (not copied).
> # cp -p /home/kellyw/*.* /usr/kellyw/*.*
> cp: No match.

You don't want to use the '*' on the receiving directory.
If there are no other subdirectories in /home/kellyw then
just do this:    cp -p /home/kellyw/* /usr/kellyw/.

If it has subdirectories and you want it to recurse, then
do this:      cp -R -p /home/kellyw/ /usr/kellyw

Unfortunately, if there are hard links in that directory, it will also 
make new copies of those files rather than just making new hard links.

You might want to consider using tar instead of cp if your file structure
to be moved are at all complex.

   cd /home/kellyw
   tar cvpf /usr/kellyw/kelly.tar *
   cd /usr/kellyw
   tar xvpf kelly.tar
   rm kelly.tar
   cd /home/kellyw
   pwd            (just to be extra careful since rm -rf * is irrevocable)
   rm -rf *                   

////jerry

> 
> Can someone help me out with my syntax? The tar method would probably be 
> better (I guess) though I don't really care  which method I use as long as 
> it works (and preserves permissions, etc.). There are only about 60 
> mailboxes on this system.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Lisa Casey
> 
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