Shell Programming and Scripting

Hi all,

i have a directory in server A. the directory path is /home/kevin. I need to scp the directory to another server B. i would like to ask, when i do a scp of the /home/kevin , i can expect all the files from A to go B. However, how about the hidden files? for example the ssh keys in the .ssh directory which are hidden, do the hidden files get scp-ed over as well?

I have not tried it because i do not want to unwittingly over write the identity keys in B.

In addition,
i was thinking of using the tar function. first i tar all in A then i extract the tar file in B. However, i realise in the tar file, the directory structure is home/kevin. what happened to the '/' infront of home? and if i extract the tar in B, would the files go to /home/kevin or home/kevin? there is a difference right, i suppose?

Hi new2ss,
For your first question:
scp-ing a directory (with the -r) option will also scp all files under that directory that have read permission for the id being used to scp the files. Whether a file is hidden or not will not make any difference.

About the second one:
The difference between /home/kevin and home/kevin in a tar file is simply that the first is an absolute path while the second is a relative path. In the second, if you extract from the tar file while in, say, /tmp, the new path will be created as /tmp/home/kevin. With the /home/kevin in the tar file, the same absolute path will be used.

blowtorch,

thanks for your explanation.

I have a the following directory in machine A " /home/new2ss"

i have created a tar of the files in the directory.
the contents in the tar is as follows
home/new2ss/file1
home/new2ss/file2
...
...

now that i want to extract the tar in machine B's /home/new2ss directory. How should i do it? since my tar achieve's files are all in relative filepath, in which directory should i extract it in machine B? Can i extract it in the "/" directory? Would it be a wise thing to do?

Or should i recreate the tar archieve with the filenames in absolute directory? If i do that, it does not matter where i extract it in B since the directory is absolute ?

Yes, to extract in /home/new2ss/..., you have to extract the tar in the / filesystem. Make sure that there are no files except home/new2ss/... in the archive, and it should be pretty safe.