Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!samsung!uunet!mcsun!unido!uniol!lehners
From: lehners@uniol.UUCP (Joerg Lehners)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Berkley-isms (was: Why no job control in 386/ix)
Message-ID: <1262@uniol.UUCP>
Date: 21 Nov 89 04:06:22 GMT
References: <21495@adm.BRL.MIL> <1634@ctisbv.cti-software.nl>
Organization: University of Oldenburg, W-Germany
Lines: 32

Hello !

pim@cti-software.nl (Pim Zandbergen) writes:

>Kemp@DOCKMASTER.NCSC.MIL writes:
>>Just for the record, is there *any* way to do a recursive copy
>>correctly?  I.e.  one that doesn't:
>> * turn symbolic links into actual files
>> * turn link loops into a series of infinitely nested copies
>> * alter the modify and change times
>> * choke on block and character special files
>> * turn holes in sparse files into real disk blocks
>I think afio will do this. I am not sure about the symlink
>stuff, though, as we're a SYS V only site.

Well, on our V.3 System 'cpio' itself is able to handle sysmbolic links
(the version of V.3 call Munix-3.1 has symlinks hacked in, but just
absolute ones), restore atime and mtime, does not choke on special files.
But: as Dave Kemp said: nor cpio neither tar is able to deal with
holes in file, nor cpio neither tar is able to restore the status
change time (ctime). Because the symlinks in Munix V.3 are just absolute
the copied sysmlinks point to files in the original hierarchy and not in
the copied hierachy.
Another problem are hard linked files. cpio itself is able to restore
hard linked files but not under all circumstances.

  Joerg
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