I have a situation in which I want to merge two file sturctures by copying one of the structures onto the other with the following command:
cp -aulv arxivBtry1/host/* arxivBtry2/host/ This should, I believe, make hardlinks into arxivBtry2/host/ for any plain file that is present in arxivBtry1/host/ if a newer version of that file is not already present in arxivBtry2/host/. And, also I think that if I interrupt this statement and restart it, it should do nothing to the hardlinks it has already inserted in arxivBtry2/host/ silently. But when I try this resume operation I get a long list of reports of removing files from arxivBtry2/host/. Why? Examination of arxivBtry2/host/, using ls -la indicates that the file in arxivBtry2/host/ that was reported removed is still there, so the removal reports seem to be false reports. More details about the environment: Both arxivBtry1/host/ and arxivBtry2/host/ are directories on an external harddisk that has 3 TeraB capacity and is half full. This ls output: root@big:/media/gfx2/hostmrg2# ls -ls total 44 4 drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 20140701_144028 arxivAtry1 4 drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 20140630_185519 arxivBtry1 4 drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 20140705_105447 arxivBtry2 4 drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 20140702_071706 glb2try1 4 drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 20140701_154330 glbltry1 4 drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 20140701_150432 mrg4try1 4 drwx------ 3 root root 4096 20140705_102058 sgt1fxd 4 drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 20140702_215246 sgt1xxx 4 drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 20140701_144837 wdp71try1 4 drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 20140701_123858 wdp7vtry1 4 drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 20140630_231448 wdp8try1 root@big:/media/gfx2/hostmrg2# The other lines in this listing are other directories each of which also has a sub-directory named 'host'. Once I understand what's going on, I intend to merge them into arxivBtry2/host/, also. I'd be happy to call this behavior a feature, not a bug, if it is already known to you and known to cause not harm to the actual merge of the plain files of the two structures into one structure. Thanks for your help, -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net