Retaining permissions when copying a folder

Question

I am having an issue where I have Parent folder that has full permissions.. I can create a new folder and that folder also has full permissions. However when I copy a folder over to this parent Directory and try to create a new directory to this copied directory. it loses all permissions.. is there a way to retain permissions to the copied folders..

score 14 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 13 '21 at 17:03

14

Yes. When copying using cp, the -p option preserves permissions.

https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/cp.1.html

      -p     same as --preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps

       --preserve[=ATTR_LIST]
              preserve the specified attributes (default:
              mode,ownership,timestamps), if possible additional
              attributes: context, links, xattr, all

answered Mar 13 '21 at 17:03

steve

21,582
5
48
75

1

I normally use `cp -a` to preserve modtime as well. (And to enable recursive copying, in the rare case I'm using cp for that instead of rsync to preserve hardlinks.) – Peter Cordes Mar 15 '21 at 12:23
@PeterCordes Note that `-p` already preserves timestamps and `-a` is a non-POSIX extension. – nwellnhof Mar 15 '21 at 14:19

score 10 · Answer 2 · edited Mar 14 '21 at 03:17

10

In addition to steve's answer, you can use rsync.

 rsync -avhH /path/to/source /path/to/destination

The a switch preserves permissions, modify times, ownership, and also makes it recursive and copies symlinks. v makes it verbose and h and H respectively make the output human readable and copies hardlinks.

The a is important as that does what you want.

edited Mar 14 '21 at 03:17

Jeff Schaller

66,199
35
114
250

answered Mar 13 '21 at 17:28

Nasir Riley

10,665
2
18
27

`-a` is also available for `cp` with the same meaning – val - disappointed in SE Mar 15 '21 at 12:36

score 3 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 14 '21 at 16:42

3

I like a tar pipe for retaining user/group ownership and permissions, and for tar's flexibility for defining which files to copy

tar cf - -C sourcedir -T filelist | tar xvf - -C targetdir

answered Mar 14 '21 at 16:42

Louis Thompson

116
1

Retaining permissions when copying a folder

3 Answers3