Moving/merging a filesystem back into /

[Linda Walsh]

On 12/2/2013 11:31 AM, Charles Marcus wrote:
>  Hello,
>
>  I'm going to be moving a filesystem around, and was planning on using
>  rsync to do it, so like to get some advice from those more experienced
>  than I (both using rsync, and moving filesystems)...
---
If you have 'star' on your system, it might be faster.

I'd do it with the system *up*,  and, as someone else suggested, copy
/usr to /usr.tmp (assuming you are moving from /usr to the root fs.

For that matter, is there a reason not to give "cp" a try"

mkdir /usr.tmp && cp -ax /usr/. /usr.tmp/.

I guarantee it will be faster than rsync.  That or star -- if you want
to know options, I'd have to reread the manpage, way too much to
remember.

In a pinch, you could use cpio -- it also handles hard links (both of
the above will automatically handle hard-link tracking without crashing.

rsync should not crash due to hardlink issues.  Memory shouldn't
be a problem if you have large enough paging files... (though it might
get very 'dogslow', if you really have problems w/memory.

For the purpose you are stating, copying all of /usr using "cp"
or "star" would be better. 

If you have other things mounted on /usr, you can mount a copy of
/usr in /mnt/usr w/o the mounts with:

mount --bind /usr /mnt/usr

That will mount a copy of /usr on /mnt/usr but without the submounts
(as stated in the mount manpage).