How to copy files in Terminal as root user

Question

I have 7000 files I would like to copy to a folder from home/Videos to /usr/share/someplace. How do I do this?

@Parto copy uses the `cp` command and move uses `mv` furthermore, `mv` does not require `-R` whereas `cp` does. — mchid, Mar 09 '15 at 19:49
@mchid Okay. How about --> http://askubuntu.com/questions/195983/how-to-copy-files-via-terminal?rq=1 — Parto, Mar 09 '15 at 19:52
@Parto still, that only shows how to copy a single file and not how to use a wildcard like `*` to copy all files in a given directory like the op wants to do here. — mchid, Mar 09 '15 at 19:53

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 09 '15 at 19:46

If you want to copy all the files in the Videos folder to /usr/share/someplace, run this command:

sudo cp -R ~/Videos/* /usr/share/someplace

Keep in mind that /usr/share/someplace must exist so if you need to create that file before you start, run this command first:

sudo mkdir /usr/share/someplace

If you want to move all those files, you can use the mv command instead of cp.

score 0 · Answer 2 · edited Mar 11 '15 at 03:29

0

You can also use -v option so u can see all the files that are copying.As

cp -rv ~/Videos/* /usr/share/someplace

OR

You can tar the files and copy them as:

tar -cvzf /usr/share/someplace/allfiles.tar.gz ~/Videos/* ....

edited Mar 11 '15 at 03:29

muru

answered Mar 10 '15 at 07:50

khanthegeek

2 Answers2