I want to copy (not move) my Timeshift Snapshots (Rsync) from my existing drive to another drive. Both drives are ext4. As far as I searched I am not able to find any viable results.

If not possible, just why?



Solved

https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-unix-apple-osx-bsd-rsync-copy-hard-links/

TLDR

sudo rsync -az -H --delete --numeric-ids /path/to/timeshift path/to/destination/

Where,

-a : Archive mode (i.e. recurse into directories, and preserve symlinks, file permissions, file modification times, file group, file owner, device files & special files)

-z : Compress file data during the transfer

H : Preserve hard links (i.e. copy hard links as hard links)

--delete : Delete extraneous files from the receiving side (ones that aren’t on the sending side), but only for the directories that are being synchronized i.e. keep exact replica of your /path/to/timeshift directory.

--numeric-ids : Transfer numeric group and user IDs rather than using user and group names and mapping them at both ends.

--progress : Show progress during transfer.

--log-file="/var/log/my-rsync-script.log" : Log what rsync command is doing to the /var/log/my-rsync-script.log file.


Thanks to @skullgiver@popplesburger.hilciferous.nl

Original Comment: https://lemmy.world/comment/11611743

  • @gpstarmanOP
    link
    11 month ago

    Surely just copying the files over should do the job?

    It gives me an error ‘cannot copy special files’. Even when doing as root.

    The article confuses me a bit. But I’ll look into it.

    Thank you.

    • Skull giver
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      fedilink
      31 month ago

      It seems to me like the copy utility you’re using (file manager?) doesn’t maintain soft links/hard links. You may need a command line tool to do the copying that does support it, like rsync, or a different GUI tool (though I admit I don’t know for sure what GUI tools specifically support this).

      • @gpstarmanOP
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        2
        edit-2
        1 month ago

        Yeah I was using Nemo.

        rsync

        Can you give me some guidance on how to copy using snaps rsync in CLI, please?

        Edit: I just read the article you linked. I’ll try that and let you know