Linux copy hidden files

Linux / Unix Rsync Copy Hidden Dot Files and Directories Only

/.foo, and so on) from /home/jobs directory to the /mnt/usb directory under Unix like operating system?

The rsync program is used for synchronizing files over a network or local disks. To view or display only hidden files with ls command:

Tutorial details
Difficulty level	Easy
Root privileges	No
Requirements	rsync / bash or ksh
Est. reading time	2m

ls -ld

Fig:01 ls command to view only hidden files

rsync not synchronizing all hidden .dot files?

In this example, you used the pattern .[^.]* or . * to select and display only hidden files using ls command. You can use the same pattern with any Unix command including rsync command. The syntax is as follows to copy hidden files with rsync:

In this example, copy all hidden files from my home directory to /mnt/test:

Fig.02 Rsync example to copy only hidden files

Rsync Copy Hidden Dot File Command Options

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1. -a – Archive mode copy. In this mode all given files are copied in recursive mode. Copy symlinks as symlinks, file permissions, date and time stapms, and much more.
2. -v – Verbose copy. In other words, show what the rsync is doing.
3. -z – Compress file data during the transfer.
4. -P – Display progress bar

Conclusion

You learned how to to use the rsync command to copy hidden dot files including directories. See rsync man page here for more info or type the following man command:
man rsync

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Wouldn’t “. *” leave out files like .a, .b, etc.?

Noop. Any details on ls version and Unix may help if you are not getting the same result.

root@node0 / # cd /tmp
root@node0 /tmp # ls -ld . *
ls: cannot access . *: No such file or directory
2 root@node0 /tmp # touch .a .b
root@node0 /tmp # ls -ld . *
ls: cannot access . *: No such file or directory
2 root@node0 /tmp # ls -ld .[^.]*
-rw-r–r–. 1 root root 0 Nov 11 23:07 .a
-rw-r–r–. 1 root root 0 Nov 11 23:07 .b
root@node0 /tmp # ls –version
ls (GNU coreutils) 8.4
Copyright (C) 2010 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later .
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

Written by Richard M. Stallman and David MacKenzie.

I love your website – Keep up the good work!

Maybe you are not using bash or a bash compatible shell?

Thanks!! Makes sense when you figure

/. * means anything that starts with a dot, has 2 more random chars, then everything after it (as to ignore . and .. ). Easy peasy, and will work for a million years! Thanks again!

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Linux / Unix: scp Copy All Hidden Dot Files

I ‘m using scp command to copy files from one server to another server. The problem is that I’m unable to copy all hidden files (such as .bash_history). How do I copy hidden files using the scp command under Unix like operating systems?

The scp command copies files between servers (computers) on a network. It uses ssh for data transfer, and uses the same authentication and provides the same security as ssh.

scp Command

The correct syntax is as follows to copy all files including hidden dot files:
$ scp -rp /path/to/source/. user@server2:/path/to/dest/
Where,

• -r : Recursively copy entire directories. Note that scp follows symbolic links encountered in the tree trave
• -p : Preserves modification times, access times, and modes from the original file.
• /path/to/source/ . : Appending a dot (.) symbol is very important when you specify /path/to/source as a source path. If you skip dot in path it will only copy normal files and scp will skip all hidden files.

rsync Command

I recommend that you use rsync command to copy files between Unix / Linux based servers and workstations.
$ rsync -avzP /path/to/source/ user@server2:/path/to/dest/
OR
$ rsync -avzP /path/to/source/ user@192.168.1.5:/path/to/dest/

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Future is here!

Future is here!

Copy hidden files and folders in Ubuntu

We can copy hidden files and folders in Ubuntu distribution through cp command-line utility. In addition to, other cp command-line utility options would also be discussed. It is worth mentioning here that, cp command only copies files (not folders) by default.

Furthermore, we would explain different combinations with the help of examples. Lets say we have source directory Source_DIR and Destination directory as Dest_DIR. Destination directory contains a random directory and file. Whereas, source directory contains a hidden file and directory. It also contains a normal file and directory. Observe, hidden file or directory names begin with . (a dot) sign.

I. To copy all the contents (hidden or otherwise) of a directory to other directory

This would copy all the contents inside Source_DIR to Dest_DIR and get us the outcome –

-r is used to copy directories recursively.

II. To copy Source directory inside Destination directory

This would copy Source_DIR and its contents inside Dest_DIR.

III. To copy without creating Source directory inside Destination directory

In II, we copied entire Source directory to Destination directory. But, in case we don’t want Source_DIR to be created inside Dest_DIR. Then, issue the following in terminal –

-T is for no target directory.

In conclusion, we have discussed how to copy hidden files and folders in Ubuntu distribution with the help of an example.

Additional Info –

We have used the command-line utility tree to get the contents of directories. With tree, we don’t have to get into each of directories to check for the relevant changes made. Since, the package isn’t installed by default for Ubuntu distribution. Therefore –

Note: Following operations would require you to have superuser privileges. In case you don’t have one, then contact your System Administrator for assistance.

To install tree command-line utility, issue the following in terminal –

Now, to check for a specific directory –

By default, tree command-line utility doesn’t list hidden files or directories. Therefore, to list even those hidden files/directories –

-a to print all files/directories.

We would discuss more about tree in subsequent articles.

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How to copy hidden (starting with a dot) files and subdirectories in linux?

How to copy hidden files and hidden subdirectories (the ones starting with a dot) in folder A to folder B? For example if I have this structure:

I would like to copy to B just the hidden files and hidden subdirectories in A:

I have already tried this command: cp A/.* B from this other superuser question. However, it does not copy the subdirectories. Also tried cp -r A/.* B , but it copies . so I end with an exact copy of A (including the normal files). Any help is appreciated.

5 Answers 5

As long as you’re only looking for hidden files and folders at the level of A and don’t want, for example

to be copied, you should be able to use this:

It basically means copy anything that starts with a . and then any character other than a . That filters out . and ..

Edit: Removed the -p from the cp command since Asker hasn’t indicated he wants to preserve any ownerships, dates, etc.

The problem with A/.* is that there is the directory . in A which also matches the pattern.

You can turn on extended glob patterns and use the following:

It matches files whose name starts with a dot and whose second character is neither a dot nor nothing ( ?(.) matches nothing or a dot, !(. ) negates it, i.e. !(?(.)) matches everything else than nothing or a dot).

For cases like this would recommend using find instead of cp like this:

The basic syntax breaks down like this:

• find A/ -type f : find items in the directory A/ whose type is a file (instead of a directory)…
• -maxdepth 1 -name ‘.*’ : To this for a maxdepth of 1 directories and whose name begins with . .
• -exec cp -p <> B/ \; : And once these files are found, exec the cp command with a -p flag to preserve dates/times from the source ( <> ) to the destination of B/ .

I like using maxdepth to add a layer of control so I am not accidentally copying a whole filesystem. But feel free to remove that.

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Recursively copying hidden files — Linux

Is there an easy way to recursively copy all hidden files in a directory to another directory? I would like to back up just all the settings files in a home directory, not the normal files. I tried:

but it recognizes . and .. and recursively copies all the non-hidden files too. Is there a way to get cp to ignore . and .. ?

6 Answers 6

My favorite to move dirs in general has been:

which tars up the current directory to stdout then pipes it to a subshell that first cd’s to the destination directory before untarring stdin. Simple, direct, extensible — consider what happens when you replace the () with an ssh to another machine. Or to answer your question you might do:

Almost every time this can be solved just with:

It’s pretty unusual to have a hidden file that doesn’t start with one of those characters.

Other pattern matches are available ( . * , .[^.]* ) — see the comments

You could use rsync .

that will copy the contents of the current directory (including dot files, but not including .. )

I implore you, step away from plain shell expansion on the cp command line — shell expansion has all sorts of ahem «interesting» corner cases (unwanted recursion caused by . and . spaces, non-printable stuff, hardlinks, symbolic links, and so on.) Use find instead (it comes in the findutils package, in case you don’t have it installed — which would be weird, all distributions install it by default):

Step by step explanation:

• -H will cause find not to follow symlinks (except if the actual toplevel directory name you gave it is a symlink; that it will follow.)
• /path/to/toplevel/dir/ is, obviously, supposed to be replaced by you with the path do the directory which hosts the settings files and directories you want to back up.
• -maxdepth 1 will stop find from recursively descending into any directories whose name starts with a dot. We don’t need it to recurse, cp will do that for us, we just need the names at this level.
• -name ‘.*’ tells find that we want all names that start with a dot. This won’t work correctly if the environment variable POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, but it rarely (if ever) is. This is the first match condition we have specified so far.
• a \( . \) is an and followed by a more complex condition in parentheses (I’ve used . to replace it, it’s explained below.) We need to escape the parentheses since they’ll otherwise be (mis)interpreted by the shell, hence the backslash in front of them,
• -type d -o -type f -o -type l are three conditions with an or between them. -type d matches directories, -type f matches regular files, and -type l matches symlinks. You can select what you want — for example, if you don’t want to backup settings directories, omit -type d (and the -o right behind it, obviously.)
• -exec . \; tells find to execute a command every time a match is encountered. The end of the command is marked by a semicolon, which we again need to escape with a backslash to avoid shell interpretation. Within that command line, you need to use <> where you want the name of the currently encountered match to end up. Since shells might also misinterpret the curly braces, you should place them in apostrophes, as in ‘<>‘ . The command we want to execute in this case is cp -a ‘<>‘ /path/to/destination/dir/ (-a means archive, which recurses in subdirectories, copies symlinks as links, and preserves permissions and extended attributes, and /path/to/destination/dir/ is obviously the name of the destination directory — replace it.)

So, in plain English, this find command line says this:

Start at /path/to/toplevel/dir/. Do not descend into any subdirectories. Find all directories, files and symlinks whose name starts with a dot. For each of those you have found found, copy it to /path/to/destination/dir/ preserving nature, permissions, and extended attributes.

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