On 11/07/16 23:41, Dr. Randall Fisher wrote:
Hi,
I use "diff -r" when comparing a directory tree to a copy that I have made
when the storage media is questionable. There are often broken symlinks in
the original (usually a backup from some defunct machine). When I do the
diff, I get thousands of messages along the lines of :
diff: gecko-clone-100714/var/X11R6/lib/xkb/xkbcomp: No such file or
directory
diff: /home2/Backups/gecko-clone-100714/var/X11R6/lib/xkb/xkbcomp: No such
file or directory
There are also messages along the lines of:
X/afifo is a fifo while Y/afifo is a fifo
... or a socket or a character special, etc.
These aren't really useful in this context and bury any really important
errors.
Could you add switches to :
1. Not dereference symlinks, but compare the symlink itself (i.e. no
message if they point to the same non-existant place)?
2. Not report the "this is an orange while that is an orange" messages?
Thank you,
Randy Fisher
Maybe diff(1) isn't the right tool? Have you considered using rsync(1)
with the -vn options (verbose reporting, no actual transfers) to see
what differs between the two trees? If you doubt the integrity of the
storage medium, you might want to add "-C" (use checksums) as well, thus
$ rsync -aHvCn src/ dest/
sending incremental file list
./
bxt_dmc_ver1.bin -> bxt_dmc_ver1_07.bin
sent 510 bytes received 22 bytes 1,064.00 bytes/sec
total size is 404,951 speedup is 761.19 (DRY RUN)
The output should list every directory checked (lines ending /) plus
those nondirectory objects which differ between src and dest (lines not
ending /) -- the latter are presumably what you're interested in.
HTH,
.Dave.
