copying simbolic links in linux

[williemercedes]

Hello Peoples:

I would like to know if it is possible to copy a simbolic link in linux.
I am trying to copy a link from my internal hard drive to an external-usb hard drive for backup purposes.

Thanks.
--Willie

[Ogion]

The option you search is:

-d, --no-dereference

But there is also an option -a which is for backup, cause it keeps symbolic Links, it keeps the file attributes (very important), and it does so recursively; so like:
cp -dpR

Ogion

P.S.: I needed just about 5 seconds to look that up in the manpage^ (Besides that i knew it alreaady)

[scm]

cpio does it nicely - much underused utility:

cpio <inputfilelist -pvdum targetdir

You can pipe find's output in instead of using an inputlist, or just echo a single file name if that's all you need.

cd /home/myhome; find . -print -depth | cpio -pvdum newhomedir

[williemercedes]

Hello there:

Thanks a lot Ogion and scm. I already have one more command at my disposal.
It is really doing the copying of symbolic links.
Thanks.
--Willie

[williemercedes]

[root@willie backup]# find . -print | cpio -o > archive.cpio
cpio: .: truncating inode number
cpio: test1: truncating inode number
cpio: logo2Lynk.png: truncating inode number
cpio: test2: truncating inode number
cpio: archive.cpio: truncating inode number
1 block
[root@willie backup]# ls
archive.cpio logo2Lynk.png test1 test2
[root@willie backup]# mv archive.cpio ../
[root@willie backup]# ls
fslogo2Lynk.png test1 test2
[root@willie backup]# ls -a
total 8
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 24 Dec 12 12:35 logo2Lynk.png -> /home/willie/logo.png
-rw-r--r-- 1 willie willie 37 Nov 28 17:43 test1
-rw-r--r-- 1 willie willie 36 Nov 28 17:44 test2
[root@willie backup]# rm -rf *
[root@willie backup]# ls
[root@willie willie]# cd backup/
[root@willie backup]# ll
total 0
(I just want to restore the .png files from my archive backup to my backup directory. see below):
[root@willie backup]# cpio -i "*.png" < /home/willie/archive.cpio
1 block
[root@willie backup]# ll
total 0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 24 Dec 12 13:40 fslogo2Lynk.png -> /home/willie/fslogo2.png
[root@willie backup]#