I use csh.
[*,.*] is supposed to glob all files and directories and all dot files and dot directories
I had better check bash… dont want to mislead anyone
Won’t “.*” include “.” and “..” in csh ?
I checked
leave out the square brackets and comma
cp * .* ....
Yes, this is the usual bash syntax (given you have globskipdots option set, to avoid current and parent directories (. and ..) included in ".*`").
I had better patch that reply… it may confuse people. thank you
What we used to do to avoid that was
.[A-Z]* .[a-z]* .[0-9]*
I found something better
.[!.]*
it works because it matches at least two characters, the second of which must not be a dot
That does not require any environment variable like globskipdots be set.
I modified the original reply again.
You want to exclude exactly (and only) “.” and “..”.
I mean: “...” or “..a” are perfectly valid. The best bet is globskipdots, IMHO. As anyway you are using a bash syntax now, this would be fine (this option is the default for some distribs, at least on all I have: Debian, Ubuntu, and MX)…
Edit: if I understand what you try to do, what about “./”, instead of trying to list all files and directories in current directory ? Or did I miss something ?
I will have to check. ./ may prepend something at the destination.
Yes .[!.] will miss files that start with two dots
It will not, you simply copy current directory :
$ pwd
/tmp/src
$ ls -laR
.:
total 24
drwxr-xr-x 3 br br 4096 Sep 28 09:44 ./
drwxrwxrwt 13 root root 16384 Sep 28 09:46 ../
-rw-r--r-- 1 br br 0 Sep 27 22:54 ..a
drwxr-xr-x 2 br br 4096 Sep 28 09:39 dir/
-rw-r--r-- 1 br br 0 Sep 28 09:39 file
./dir:
total 8
drwxr-xr-x 2 br br 4096 Sep 28 09:39 ./
drwxr-xr-x 3 br br 4096 Sep 28 09:44 ../
-rw-r--r-- 1 br br 0 Sep 28 09:39 dirfile
$ rm -rf ../dst-{cp,rsync,tar}; mkdir ../dst-{cp,rsync,tar}
$ cp -R . ../dst-cp
$ rsync -a . ../dst-rsync/
$ tar cf - . | (cd ../dst-tar/; tar xf -)
$ ls -laR ../dst-{cp,rsync,tar}
../dst-cp:
total 24
drwxr-xr-x 3 br br 4096 Sep 28 09:46 ./
drwxrwxrwt 13 root root 16384 Sep 28 09:46 ../
-rw-r--r-- 1 br br 0 Sep 28 09:46 ..a
drwxr-xr-x 2 br br 4096 Sep 28 09:46 dir/
-rw-r--r-- 1 br br 0 Sep 28 09:46 file
../dst-cp/dir:
total 8
drwxr-xr-x 2 br br 4096 Sep 28 09:46 ./
drwxr-xr-x 3 br br 4096 Sep 28 09:46 ../
-rw-r--r-- 1 br br 0 Sep 28 09:46 dirfile
../dst-rsync:
total 24
drwxr-xr-x 3 br br 4096 Sep 28 09:44 ./
drwxrwxrwt 13 root root 16384 Sep 28 09:46 ../
-rw-r--r-- 1 br br 0 Sep 27 22:54 ..a
drwxr-xr-x 2 br br 4096 Sep 28 09:39 dir/
-rw-r--r-- 1 br br 0 Sep 28 09:39 file
../dst-rsync/dir:
total 8
drwxr-xr-x 2 br br 4096 Sep 28 09:39 ./
drwxr-xr-x 3 br br 4096 Sep 28 09:44 ../
-rw-r--r-- 1 br br 0 Sep 28 09:39 dirfile
../dst-tar:
total 24
drwxr-xr-x 3 br br 4096 Sep 28 09:44 ./
drwxrwxrwt 13 root root 16384 Sep 28 09:46 ../
-rw-r--r-- 1 br br 0 Sep 27 22:54 ..a
drwxr-xr-x 2 br br 4096 Sep 28 09:39 dir/
-rw-r--r-- 1 br br 0 Sep 28 09:39 file
../dst-tar/dir:
total 8
drwxr-xr-x 2 br br 4096 Sep 28 09:39 ./
drwxr-xr-x 3 br br 4096 Sep 28 09:44 ../
-rw-r--r-- 1 br br 0 Sep 28 09:39 dirfile
Note: I replaced “./” with “.”, which is the normal way to do, but there will be exactly no difference (even for rsync exception discussed previously, as the missing trailing ‘/’ in source will not create “.” at dst, for obvious reasons). I used “./” previously for pure cosmetic reasons.
My own backup script always (1) cd to source dir, and (2) perform the rsync on “.”.
OK, that is the best solution, because it does not depend on any bashisms
I will add a further note to my original reply, with due acknowledgement of course.
I dont want people seeing that and getting half the message
Thank you.
PS Your script is too complicated for me. I want a one line command that I understand.
It looks like complicated, only because it is a incremental backup script, not a copy one 
I did not want from beginning to use a backup software, as, would it disappear/be unavailable, I would not be able to find easily my data (where is my 5 days or 2 weeks or 6 months or 1 year data without the backup software ?).
This is a personal preference only: I like to get this data with a simple “cd” Even if I disappear, all is easily available, by date (without any software).
I agree. cp is unlikely to disappear.
I originally used tar without unpacking the destination
I tried borg for a while… it frightened me.
I reverted to rsync, but cp is probably the simplest… provided it deals with ACL’s…
we still have to resolve that.
Here is a test… if you wanted to copy a whole OS to another partition… would you use cp?.. would the new copy work?.. I know rsync -aAXvH works.
No: no cp, no rsync… I would do my own way: Hard copy the disk, then install grub.
But if you want to only care the OS (no grub) a simple copy will do it. No magic. And no boot (as you experienced).
Oh yes, you have to do a few things after the copy to make it boot
You have some interesting scripts, but too complicated for me. I like to do things by hand… so I understand.
Frankly speaking, these scripts started with one line command (similar to the “rsync” discussed here), that I had to type again and again, until I had that command in a script (sync.sh).
That script simply evolved (very slowly) later:
I just improved it to allow some parameters/config to specify files to exclude and destination, and to keep previous backup versions (day/week/…) without losing disk space. Nothing more. The rest is mostly cosmetic.
If you type a rsync backup command from time to time, I am 100% sure it will become a one line script soon… If yes, I guess you will add one first option in a not so far future… Voilà
You are right, things evolve.
At the moment I have a file with a collection of rsync commands that I copy/past… at least it avoids typos.
I will be adding some tar and cp recipes.
This has been interesting and educational. Thanks
I have to get back to timing clonezilla… yes I use that, I dont depend entirely on rsync copies.
Regards
Neville
Perfect. Ensure that you can get any backup without clonezilla, just an advise:
r$ ssh mydomain.xxx
Last login: Sat Sep 28 13:27:04 2024 from 133.159.120.39
$ ls -lrt /mnt/nas2/xxx/
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 114 Jan 1 2022 yearly-03/
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 114 Jan 1 2023 yearly-02/
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 54 Mar 1 2023 monthly-12/
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 54 Apr 1 2023 monthly-11/
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 54 May 1 2023 monthly-10/
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 54 Jun 1 2023 monthly-09/
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 54 Oct 1 2023 monthly-08/
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 114 Jan 1 2024 yearly-01/
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 54 Feb 1 2024 monthly-07/
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 54 Mar 1 2024 monthly-06/
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 54 Apr 1 03:36 monthly-05/
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 54 May 1 03:38 monthly-04/
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 54 Jun 1 03:36 monthly-03/
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 54 Jul 1 03:36 monthly-02/
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 54 Aug 18 03:37 weekly-06/
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 54 Aug 25 03:36 weekly-05/
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 54 Sep 1 03:39 weekly-04/
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 54 Sep 1 03:39 monthly-01/
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 54 Sep 8 03:40 weekly-03/
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 54 Sep 15 03:37 weekly-02/
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 54 Sep 19 03:36 daily-10/
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 54 Sep 20 03:36 daily-09/
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 54 Sep 21 03:35 daily-08/
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 54 Sep 22 03:35 weekly-01/
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 54 Sep 22 03:35 daily-07/
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 54 Sep 23 03:35 daily-06/
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 54 Sep 24 03:35 daily-05/
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 54 Sep 25 03:36 daily-04/
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 54 Sep 26 03:35 daily-03/
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 54 Sep 27 03:35 daily-02/
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 54 Sep 28 03:36 daily-01/
Will clonezilla allow you to access your history without clonezilla itself ?
If yes, go for it, I will happily follow, please let me know. The backups above will survive me, and my family will have easy access (no software needed).
I know I can go into a Clonezilla image directory and look at the files. Each partition can have multiple image files if it is large. I will have to investigate … by default clonezilla uses the partclone utility and zip compression.
Clonezilla is not meant for archiving. It does not do incrementals. It is meant for full recovery when your disk fails.
And if you don’t have clonezilla, can you recover ? My point was to access backups without any software (ls and cp will be enough). Again, I will love to use clonezilla, if I can get data back without clonezilla.
I am investigating. It looks complicated at the moment.
It seems what you do is restore the image to a temporary file using partclone then loop mount it and you can see the files.
Note what I said… clonezilla is not intended for archives.