Linux: Need to recursively copy files but skip non-existent file/dir

T_H 0
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I need to copy files from directories and subdirectories. Copy files to a destination directory and preserve same source file/directory structure. For some source files and directories i get "cannot access" or "No such file or directory" and the cp get stuck. I would like to skip those files/dir with error. Is there a single command i can use for it? Or it is best to write up a bash script?

Background: I am performing recovery of a dead vm, some files are corrupted, hence having those error message.

file linux copy
1 Answers

Use find and xargs to run a single cp per file. This should prevent hangs from cp getting internally confused.

I made a directory with 2 bad files. I made them root and forced a permission denied to demonstrate.

% ls -l old
old:
total 668
---------- 1 root   staff      0 Sep  7 08:38 bad1.txt
---------- 1 root   staff      0 Sep  7 08:38 bad2.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 risner staff    588 Sep  7 08:39 good1.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 risner staff 677977 Sep  7 08:39 good2.txt

I ran this command:

% (cd old; \
    find . -type f -print0 | \
    xargs -0 -I% cp -f -p % ../new/% \
  )
cp: cannot open './bad1.txt' for reading: Permission denied
cp: cannot open './bad2.txt' for reading: Permission denied
% ls -l new
total 668
-rw-r--r-- 1 risner risner    588 Sep  7 08:39 good1.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 risner risner 677977 Sep  7 08:39 good2.txt
James Risner0
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