UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hello,

I have inherited an old Solaris box and I have to copy all of its files onto another machine, a Centos Box. The Solaris box it so ancient is does not have rsync, scp or any other useful copy functions. I tried using RCP but it handles symlinks terribly: Extraneous data is written to my Cenots box prematurely filling it up. I am left with no free space on the hard drive to copy over the other required data from the Solaris box.

I have read that using cpio inconjunction with rsh will make for a smoother transfer. I am reading the manpages but need some help written the appropriate command. Can someone tell me the syntax for using cpio with rsh to transfer data over from one hard drive to another over a network please?

Thanks!

Can't be specific.

Example of the concept is here:

Hour 18: Miscellaneous Tools: remsh/rsh/rcmd/remote (Remote Shell)

Suggest you experiment with test files and directories which have unique names on both machines and checksum the files to be sure that the transfer method works. Most cross-platfrom cpio methods transfer the archive with ASCII headers and there is much variation in the syntax. Old cpio will not deal with large files (>2Gb) or large UIDs.