Moving /var/mail

[Mikhail Goriachev]

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.
> 
> 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.


You could do something like this[1]:

# tar -cvf - -C /home/kellyw . | tar -xpBf - -C /usr/kellyw



Regards,
Mikhail.

[1] - Taken from 'man tar', EXAMPLES section.

-- 
Mikhail Goriachev
Webanoide

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