Linux provides different tools to copy directories entirely. The most popular and well-known tool is cp. In this tutorial, we will look at how to copy Linux directories entirely or specific content.
Copy Only Directory
In this first example, we will copy the only directory. We can just provide the source directory and destination directory names to the cp command. In this example, we will try to copy a single directory. As we can see we get an error like below.
$ cp backup newbackup
Copy Entire Directory Recursively
Now here is the real scenario. We will copy our directory named backup with a new named newbackup. We will use the -r option which makes copy operation recursively. Recursive means subdirectories and files will be copied too.
$ cp -r backup newbackup
Copy Special Files
During recursive copy operation, special file content will not be copied by default. We can copy special file contents with the -b option like below.
$ cp -r -b backup newbackupCopy While Preserving Source Directory Attributes
Files and directories provide some attributes in Linux operating systems. These attributes are file mode, ownership, timestamp, context, links, xattr, etc. During directory copy, we can copy these attributes too with the -a option like below.
$ cp -r -a -v backup new_backup
Copy Entire Directory To The Current User Home Directory
Linux bash shell provides some shortcuts about the paths. If we want to copy a directory completely into the current user home directory we can ~ tilde to specify the user home directory path. In this example, we will copy the directory named backup to the current user home directory.
$ cp -r backup ~/Copy Verbosely Providig Detailed Information
During copy operation, there will be no sign about the current operation. We can make this copy operation verbose where copied files will be printed to the shell. We will use -v command like below.
$ cp -r -v newbackup oldbackup
Copy Entire Directory with rsync Command
rsync is very popular and useful tools used to copy, sync, and backup files and directories. We can use rsync in order to copy the complete directory with its subdirectories locally or to the remote systems. We will use -r options to copy all directories and files recursively and also use -v option for verbose output.
$ rsync -r -v backup backup_old