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Old 7th October 2008
MustLearn MustLearn is offline
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Join Date: Oct 2008
Posts: 2
Unhappy Help With [seemingly] Simple Problem

Alright, this is one of those moments when a normal person is forced to become terminal typing freak (sorry guys =)) against their will...

I have a FreeBSD7 server box in my garage that serves the computers on my network with files. It has been a godsend: 2 1TB SATA drives raid-1'd and I have a peace of mind that all my files are secure in one place in the house that has doubled as my office.

The box has basic non-gui install of FreeBSD7 and I access it through WinSCP from other boxes around the house. Voila! So easy!

Well it was until I decided to bring some order to it - sort files in the right directories. This is usually a snap in XP, but UNIX would not allow things to be simple I guess: When I want to empty out few folders into another folder ("DUMP") and there are same files in both folders (one I am copying from (Downloads) and one I am moving them to(DUMP)) I get an error:

HTML Code:
General failure (server should provide error description).
Error code: 4
Error message from server: Failure
Request code: 18
My guess was that it found similar named files and flipped out only leaving me the options to skip or abort (I skipped). So I decided to do it through command line via Putty. Friend of mine suggested this command through bash:
HTML Code:
 mv Downloads/* .
Effect was the same: I get a polite error notifying me that: :
HTML Code:
FileName.extension: Directory not empty
Whoopty do!

XP would be nice enough to give me options: name of conflicting file; sizes; options: Abort, Overwrite, Skip

These options are crucial because some files may have changed and I may want to rename the file and save it as a newer version while keeping the old one. I usually find this out by looking at the file sizes.

Is there a way to do the same from command line?

I asked my friend and he just said I will have to manually look all the information up (to compare) and delete or rename. This would be madness when I have to deal with hundreds or thousands of files...I would be sitting in front of the monitor for weeks just busy with one task. He also said "I''m sure you can write a script" I guess that's the best way to tell the noob to bug off.



Please tell me if there is an easier way to approach my task.
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