On 04/26/2016 04:05 PM, John Jason Jordan wrote: > On Tue, 26 Apr 2016 11:53:52 -0700 > Paul Mullen <p...@nellump.net> dijo: > >> This is a job for rsync, anyhow. The following command should do >> exactly what you want: >> >> rsync -avx /home/jjj/Mail/ /media/jjj/Data/Mail >> >> Don't remove the trailing slash on the source path. It tells rsync to >> copy the contents of /home/jjj/Mail to /media/jjj/Data/Mail/, as >> opposed to creating a new Mail dir under /media/jjj/Data/Mail/ (i.e., >> /media/jjj/Data/Mail/Mail). The rsync man page has more details under >> the "Usage" section. >> >> rsync has a dry run mode that will show you the changes it would >> normally perform without actually making any. Just add the "-n" >> option to the command line. > > I thought of rsync too, but the advice from the Claws-Mail listserve > included the cp command, so that's what I used. > > The above command works, except that it does not remove mails from the > backup that have been deleted from the source. > > I have a couple dozen folders where I store mails that I want to save. > However, I leave mail in the Inbox until the thread has exhausted > itself, and then, if I think I want to save the thread for future > reference, I move it manually to one of my storage folders. If I don't > want to save it I just delete the mails from my Inbox. Either way, those > mails are no longer in the Inbox, so I don't want them populating my > backup Inbox. Otherwise the backup Inbox is going to end up with many > thousands of mails in it. And if I needed to restore my Inbox I'd never > be able to figure out which ones of the thousands to restore. > > And the same thing will happen with my storage folders. I don't delete > mails from them as much, but occasionally I do a housekeeping and throw > out stuff that I think I will never need again. I don't want them to > keep growing until they choke my backup into uselessness. > > I might be able to figure out how to change the command to accomplish > what I want, but I'm scared of rsync and its man page. :(
You probably would benefit from the --delete flag. From the man page, this flag will "delete extraneous files from dest dirs" which I believe is what you want to accomplish. dafr _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list PLUG@lists.pdxlinux.org http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug