Force Overwrite Non-Empty Directories Using mv – Command Guide

filesrenamersync

I am wanting to move (not just copy) a group of files/directories to a different directory some of which have name clashes with files/directories in the target directory. My main objective is to move the files, so I can tolerate the non-empty directory being overwritten.

I am currently using mv ... destination however, occasionally I get

mv: cannot move `target' to /destination/target': Directory not empty

I tried mv -f ... destination with no success and since I want the files to be gone from their original location, rsync doesn't seem to be appropriate.

As a bonus, is there a good solution for preserving the files intended to be overwritten somehow maybe by renaming?

Best Answer

If you use mv --backup=numbered
(or one of the other options for the --backup switch),
then mv will complete the merge and preserve the files intended to be overwritten.

Related Solutions

Using rsync to move (not copy) files between directories

You can pass --remove-source-files to rsync to move files instead of copying them.

But in your case, there's no point in using rsync, since the destination is empty. A plain mv will do the job as fast as possible.

In your case, what could make a difference to performance is the choice of network protocol, if you have a choice among NFS, Samba, sshfs, sftp, rsync over ssh, tar piped into ssh, etc. The relative speed of these methods depends on the file sizes, the network and disk bandwidth, and other factors, so there's no way to give general advice, you'll need to run your own benchmarks.

Rsync 3.1.0 is creating empty backup directories

Yes, this was intended behavior. Bug no 11423 was filed about it, and it was changed back in version 3.1.2.

https://bugzilla.samba.org/show_bug.cgi?id=11423#c12 :

While I continue to like the new early verification of the top-level backup dir at the start of the transfer, I've been persuaded to have it go back to not creating the directory until it is needed. Fixed for upcoming 3.1.2 release.

While most distributions don't provide packages for version 3.1.2 yet, it is really quick and easy to compile: I did the following on Debian Jessie, and it went fine, installing the new version into /usr/local/bin:

wget https://download.samba.org/pub/rsync/src/rsync-3.1.2.tar.gz
tar xvf rsync-3.1.2.tar.gz -C /tmp/
cd /tmp/rsync-3.1.2/
./configure
make
make install

If you use it as a daemon, your init script may call it by it's full path, so you may also want to replace it with a link to the new version:

/etc/init.d/rsync stop
mv /usr/bin/rsync /usr/bin/rsync.old
ln -si ../local/bin/rsync /usr/bin/rsync
/etc/init.d/rsync start

Update: If you are on Debian Jessie, you can actually just install the rsync package from Debian Stretch :

wget "http://ftp.ch.debian.org/debian/pool/main/r/rsync/rsync_3.1.2-1_amd64.deb"
dpkg -i rsync_3.1.2-1_amd64.deb

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Using rsync to move (not copy) files between directories

Rsync 3.1.0 is creating empty backup directories

Related Question