I have a Perl script that needs to delete a directory with all its contents.
Sometimes this directory contains a junction point into another directory. If I rmtree() naively, the rmtree() call will also delete all the files inside the target folder of the junction. I'm looking for a way to not do that, and instead just remove the junction.
Non Perl solutions would also be appreciated.
I just typed "junction point" into Google and found my way to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS_junction_point
Command Prompt (cmd.exe)
The dir
command in Windows 2000 or later
recognizes junction points, displaying
instead of in
directory listings (use dir with the
/A or /AL command-line switch).
Any
commands that would normally affect
files inside a normal directory will
act the same here. Thus the command
del myjunction should not be used —
this will just delete all the files in
the targeted directory.
The commands
rmdir and move work fine with
junctions, with the caveat that move
won't let the junction move to another
volume (as opposed to Windows
Explorer, as mentioned above.)
The
rmdir command is safe in that it only
deletes the junction point, not the
targeted files. Whilst walking through
the directory with the command line
interface, files can be deleted, but
unlike explorer, directories can also
be deleted (using rmdir /s dirname for
example.)
Using the linkd command with
the /d switch is a safe way to delete
junction points.
From what I can see you can, for example, use dir and grep the output for <JUNCTION> or use the Windows rmdir. I think you can use either of these from Perl via system.
To find out where are the reparse points (or "junction points", if you will):
dir /a:l /b > myjunctions.txt
Will show all reparse points in the current directory. You can add /s, but beware that reparse points inside reparse points will be listed as well.
Suppose myjunctions.txt contains the line x:\subdir\foo. To remove it, you issue
fsutil reparsepoint "x:\subdir\foo"
And voilá! Your junction point is gone, and the original directory is untouched!
FastCopy utility does this: http://ipmsg.org/tools/fastcopy.html.en
I am using this program for copying or deleting folders that may contain junctions as subfolders so that the junction targets remain untouched. The junction points are properly copied while copying, even when the target drive is different.
Windows Explorer at least in Windows 7 Ultimate works also as wanted while deleting - junction targets remain intact.
But copying folders that contain junctions as subfolders in Explorer still does not work as intended - it actually does something that I cannot yet perhaps quite entirely describe: the junction folders seem to be copied as normal folders, but their content is empty.
Related
My team faces the need to encrypt all files in a repository with AES256. For this purpose, we decided we are going to zip all files with such encryption, using the same key for all of them.
The problem we have is that these files sit in a NAS, so from windows boxes they are accessible by \ to them.
The directory structure is something like this:
Original Structure:
Root
-1
|--folder1
|---file1.ext
|---file2.ext
|--folder2
|---filea.ext
|---fileb.ext
|--folder2.a
|---filec.ext
and so on...
Essentially, what we need is to have all the original files contained in a zip file, keeping their original names, which would be something like this:
Desired Outcome:
|-Root
|-1
|--folder1
|---file1.zip
|---file2.zip
|--folder2
|---filea.zip
|---fileb.zip
|--folder2a
|---filec.zip
and so on...
To accomplish this, we tried a batch script that calls 7zip, but it only works if it's run from the root directory, which is something we cannot use as the files are not in a server.
Here is the syntax of the batch script we came up with:
FOR /R %%i IN ("*.wmv") DO "C:\Program Files\7-Zip\7z.exe" a -mx0 -tzip -pPasswordHere "%%~dpni.zip" "%%i"
But, as wrote previously, it only works when run from the root folder, which is something we cannot do as files sit on a network location.
Mapping the drive or making a symbolic link to it doesn't do the trick either.
I've also checked on 7zip to do this, namely, making use of its "-r" operator, but I couldn't find a way to get the desired outcome (namely, recurse through all folders in the remote tree structure -there are a lot of them...- and keep the original file name).
I'm open to any suggestions as any kind of script, trick or guizmo that gets the job done will be more than welcome. =)
Thanks a million in advance!,
Sebas.
----SOLUTION----
I actually found a sollution here, mapping the drive in a different way (it's so simple it just made me feel stupid(er), but it's altogheter beautiful).
Using the batch script below, the remote share can be mapped like so:
You can map a drive using
net use X: \\server\directory
and then you can change to that directory using
pushd X:
(Post from which the answer was taken from: Batch File Iterating through files on a local network server)
example
There is a file "sample.rar".
Folder structure is: "rising\dawn\ and here there are many (folders1, folders2 and file1, file2)" in this archive.
i have used following command
7z.exe x "sample.rar" "rising\dawn\*" -oi:\delete
The result is:
all files and folders in "rising\dawn\" are extracted to "i:\delete" folder but the empty parent folders "rising\dawn\" are also created in destination folder.
e.g. destination looks:
i:\delete\rising\dawn\folder1\file1.bmp
i:\delete\rising\dawn\folder2\subfolder
i:\delete\rising\dawn\file1.txt
i:\delete\rising\dawn\file2.txt
i don't want "rising\dawn\" empty folders to be created but the folder structure there onwards must be as is in the archive.
i want the result:
i:\delete\folder1\file1.bmp
i:\delete\folder2\subfolder
i:\delete\file1.txt
i:\delete\file2.txt
at last i found a way out solution. thanks to the winrar support. i have accepted it as an answer below.
if you find the question useful don't forget to click the up-vote button.
Finally this gave me the result.
Thanks to winrar support.
rar x -ep1 sample.rar rising\dawn\* d:\e\delete\
i have tried other answers given here, this is the only correct answer.
don't forget to upvote.
You can extract the archive normally and
1) move the lower level folder/files to where you would like it, then
2) remove the extra top level archive folders.
Code to do so will depend on the exact task.
Using e command instead of x and add -r option works well.
Like this:
7z.exe e -r "sample.rar" "rising\dawn\*" -oi:\delete
My executable version is "7-Zip [64] 9.20 2010-11-18",
And the platform is Windows 8.1.
This command line eliminates unnecessary parent folders and preserves the hierarchy of folders.
You need to use the e command rather than the x command:
7z.exe e "sample.rar" "scholar\update\*" -oi:\delete
Using e instead of x means 7zip will extract all matching files into the same folder (as specified via the -so switch, or the current directory if this isn't specified) rather than preserving the folder structure from inside the archive.
I have a program that creates temporary files in a specific folder. Then, automatically, after a few seconds, these files are deleted.
I wanted to copy those temporal files to an specific folder, I would like to use a powershell script to do this:
robocopy startFolder destinationFolder *.TIFF *.JPEG *.jpg *.PNG *.GIF *.BMP *.ICO *.PBM *.PGM *.PPM /s /XO
My problem is that I couldn't use a scheduled task (because of the problem with limitation of seconds) or install this powershell as a Windows Service with a powershell script (as far as I know is a bad practice) . I need this powershell running all the time trying to get files at the moment that they are created, before this folders were deleted.
Could you give me a hand please? Thanks!
Not sure it's quite what you want, but robocopy does have directory monitoring funcitonality built-in. You could add /mon:1 which should monitor the source directory and re-run the copy when it detects one change (a new or changed file, for example).
However, a down-side of this perhaps is that using this method, robocopy won't exit - it will run until you kill it.
Edit: I've just noticed you specify in your question title that this should run between two established times, in which case you could add the /rh:hhmm-hhmm option to specify times between which new copies can be started. For example, /rh:1000-1200 should only perform the copies (and hence monitoring) between 10am and midday.
Caveat: I've not tried using the "monitor" option of robocopy, so I'm not sure what sort of delay there would be between a change taking place, and the copy being re-run, but it's worth a shot.
I've been happily using robocopy for backing up my computers to an external usb drive. It's great since it only copies the files that were changed/updated/new. I can take my external drive to any machine and look at it just as if it's another drive on the computer.
I've recently purchased a 750g and another 1tb external hard drives. I ran a robocopy over the weekend that copied about 500g to my external drive. After the copy My Computer shows that ~500g has been used on the external drive. The strange thing is that when I click on the drive in Windows Explorer, nothing shows up in the right pane of Windows Explorer (and the + goes away in the left pane). I copied a single file (drag-and-drop) to this drive and it shows up in Windows Explorer. Command Prompt show the same thing. 1 file.
I know the files are on the drive as it shows up as the Free Space has been reduced.
I read that I should make sure simple file sharing is off, which it is. I also took ownership of the files as Administrator. Still nothing. It works the same on my WIndows XP machine and my Windows 7 Ultimate.
Has anyone else seen this? Or even better, does anyone know what I am doing wrong or how to solve this problem?
thanks!
Bill44077
In my case, the above didn't work.
This worked instead: attrib -h -s -a [ Drive : ][ Path ].
For example: attrib -h -s -a "C:\My hidden folder".
When copying from the root directory of a drive to a folder (non-root directory on a different drive), this can happen.
RoboCopy may set the new directory to hidden, as it copies the system attribute of the root folder of the drive over to the new folder.
You can prevent the new directory from becoming hidden by adding the /A-:SH option/flag/switch to your robocopy command.
See this Server Fault Answer to "Why does RoboCopy create a hidden system folder?
" for more information.
However, this may or may not prevent copying system attributes in other folders, according to this discussion on the Microsoft forum "ROBOCOPY hides destination Directory".
Here is an example taken from my longer, more thorough, Answer on Super User to the Question "How to preserve file attributes when one copies files in Windows?":
Robocopy D:\ C:\D_backup /A-:SH /DCOPY:T /COPYALL /E /R:0 /ZB /ETA /TEE /V /FP /XD D:\$RECYCLE.BIN /XD "D:\System Volume Information" /LOG:C:\D_backup_robocopy.LOG /MIR
However, if you already copied the directory without the /A-:SH option, running the command mentioned by Ricky above (attrib -h -s -a [ Drive : ][ Path ]) will fix the issue by unhiding the directory. Though, I found that -a was not needed.
So in my case, for the example above, attrib -h -s C:\D_backup (without the -a option) made D_backup visible.
Just ran into this issue myself, so it may be a late response and you may have worked it out already, but for those stumbling on this page here's my solution...
The problem is that for whatever reason, Robocopy has marked the directory with the System Attribute of hidden, making it invisible in the directory structure, unless you enable the viewing of system files.
The easiest way to resolve this is through the command line.
Open a command prompt and change the focus to the drive in question (e.g. x:)
Then use the command dir /A:S to display all directories with the System attribute set.
Locate your directory name and then enter the command ATTRIB -R -S x:\MyBackup /S /D where x:\ is the drive letter and MyBackup is your directory name.
The /S re-curses subfolders and /D processes folders as well.
This should clear the Read Only and System attributes on all directories and files, allowing you to view the directory normally.
In addition to the great answers SherylHohman and Ricky left I wanted to add that merely adding the /A-:SH switch for robocopy did not work and the copy created a hidden, system folder on the destination drive.
However, using the /A-:SHA parameter did work and my top level destination directory was not given the system or hidden attributes. Weirdly, my drive does not have the "a" (archived) attribute set so I am dumbfounded as to why this works at all. I do prefer simply removing these attributes to only the root destination folder after completion of the robocopy command per Ricky's suggestion so that these attributes are respected for any sub-directories. Though the /A- switch is easier to manage and (for my backup purposes) are not relevant to any directories I am backing up. You may want to consider not removing the system or hidden attributes if you're backing up your C:\ drive though.
You could try this, I say could, because the whole Windows 10 has annoying flaws everywhere, I have lost trust to Windows 10 and Microsoft.
Well I found that after I robocopied the whole Documents-folder to a root of external drive, I got a folder that is not named Documents but the Documents-folder is renamed&translated to my native language, so it could be some Language issue. (the /XD option tells robocopy to skip a folder)
C:\users\asdf\documents >robocopy . f:\ManuBackup /XD c:\Users\Asdf\Documents\OneDrive /s
File Explorer shows Tiedostot-name (=Documents in finnish) and Command Prompt shows ManuBackup-name. Also I have tried all attrib.exe commands to the ManuBackup-folder, don't trust me 100%
Okay this is and isn't programming related I guess...
I've got a whole bunch of little useful console utilities scattered across a suite of projects that I wrote and I want to dump them all to a single directory to make using them simpler. The only issue is that I have them all compiled in both Debug and Release mode.
Given that I only want the release mode versions in my utilities directory, what switch would allow me to specify that I want all executables from my tree structure but only from within Release folders:
Example:
Projects\
Project1\
Bin\
Debug\
Project1.exe
Release\
Project1.exe
Project2\
etc etc...
To
Utilities\
Project1.exe
Project2.exe
Project3.exe
Project4.exe
...
etc etc...
I figured this would be a cinch with XCopy - but it doesn't seem to allow me to exclude the Debug directories - or rather - only include items in my Release directories.
Any ideas?
You can restrict it to only release executables with the following. However, I do not believe the other requirement of flattening is possible using xcopy alone. To do the restriction:
First create a file such as exclude.txt and put this inside:
\Debug\
Then use the following command:
xcopy /e /EXCLUDE:exclude.txt *.exe C:\target
You can, however, accomplish what you want using xxcopy (free for non-commercial use). Read technical bulletin #16 for an explanation of the flattening features.
If the claim in that technical bulletin is correct, then it confirms that flattening cannot be accomplished with xcopy alone.
The following command will do exactly what you want using xxcopy:
xxcopy /sgfo /X:*\Debug\* .\Projects\*.exe .\Utilities
I recommend reading the technical bulletin, however, as it gives more sophisticated options for the flattening. I chose one of the most basic above.
Sorry, I haven't tried it yet, but shouldn't you be using:
xcopy release*.exe d:\destination /s
I am currently on my Mac so, I cant really check to be for sure.
This might not help you with assembling them all in one place now, but going forward have you considered adding a post-build event to the projects in Visual Studio (I'm assuming you are using it based on the directory names)
xcopy /Y /I /E "$(TargetDir)\$(TargetFileName)" "c:\somedirectory\$(TargetFileName)"
Ok, this is probably not going to work for you since you seem to be on a windows machine.
Here goes anyway, for the logic.
# From the base directory
mkdir Utilities
find . -type f | grep -w Release > utils.txt
for f in $(<utils.txt); do cp $f Utilities/; done
You can combine the find and cp lines into one, I split them for readability.
To do this on a windows machine you'll need Cygwin or some such Unix Utilities handy.
Maybe there are tools in the Windows shell to do this...
This may help get you started:
C:\>for %i in (*) do dir "%~dpi\*.exe"
Used in the dir command as a modifier to i, ~dp uses the drive and path of everything found in (*). If I run the above in a folder that has several subfolders containing executables, I get a dir list of all of the executables in each folder.
You should be able to modify that to add '\bin\release\' following the ~dpi portion and change dir to xcopy. A little experimentation should make it pretty easy.
To use the for statement above in a batch file, change '%' to '%%' in both places.