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Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!yarrina.connect.com.au!warrane.connect.com.au!godzilla.zeta.org.au!not-for-mail From: bde@zeta.org.au (Bruce Evans) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: Moving directories across filesystems Date: 18 Jun 1995 17:28:40 +1000 Organization: Kralizec Dialup Unix Sydney - +61-2-837-1183, v.32bis v.42bis Lines: 29 Message-ID: <3s0kj8$ia6@godzilla.zeta.org.au> References: <3r7c0h$qn1@news.bu.edu> <3rhvhr$r2h@si-nic.hrz.uni-siegen.de> NNTP-Posting-Host: godzilla.zeta.org.au In article <3rhvhr$r2h@si-nic.hrz.uni-siegen.de>, Peter Merz <peter@netz.hrz.uni-siegen.de> wrote: >Mikhail Teterin (mi@cs.bu.edu) wrote: >: I tried to : >: mv /root /usr/home/root >: And it failed (/usr was mounted on another partition). Is this a correct >: behavior now? Files are moved just fine It is supposed to work. I tried cd / cp -pR root z mv z ~ and everything was moved OK except the modification and access times of the directory were not preserved. mv across file systems is implemented as essentially `cp -pR' followed by `rm -r' of the source, so mv across file systems inherits many bugs from `cp -pR': directory times of nonempty directories are not preserved, and hard links are snapped. >That's the right behaviour. You cannot move dircetories across filesystems. Nope. You cannot rename either directories or files across file systems. mv is different from rename, and is supposed to handle directories in the same way as files, by creating them and copying their contents. You often don't want this behaviour. Copying whole file systems is very slow and not atomic. -- Bruce Evans bde@zeta.org.au