[wplug] dd

[Alexandros Papadopoulos]

On Thursday 17 February 2005 20:25, Jonathan S Billings wrote:
> Eric C. Cooper wrote:
> > On Thu, Feb 17, 2005 at 12:42:12PM -0500, Jonathan S Billings wrote:
> >>NEVER use 'cp -a' to copy system data to a new partition.  You'll
> >> lose all the metadata on the files and directories, such as
> >> permissions, ownership, timestamps and other bits.  The resulting
> >> OS will be useless.
> >
> > According to the cp man page,
> >     -a means -dpR
> >
> >     -p means preserve mode, ownership, timestamps
> >     -d means preserve symlinks
> >
> > I routinely copy filesystems to new disks this way and boot from
> > them.
>
> You're right, I misread 'cp -a' as 'cp -r'.
>
> I still don't like using cp, and would prefer using other tools.

Ah, ecc beat me to it - I was composing a complaint against the 
uselessness of cp -a.

cp is fine for copying regular filesystem contents, while dd is a lower 
level tool which can transfer disk areas that a GNU system can't even 
normally read and interpret (NTFS metadata, for instance).

-A