How to copy symlinks to target as normal folders

Question

i have a folder with symlinks:

marek@marek$ ls -al /usr/share/solr/
razem 36
drwxr-xr-x   5 root root  4096 2010-11-30 08:25 .
drwxr-xr-x 358 root root 12288 2010-11-26 12:25 ..
drwxr-xr-x   3 root root  4096 2010-11-24 14:29 admin
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root root    14 2010-11-24 14:29 conf -> /etc/solr/conf

i want to copy it to ~/solrTest but i want to copy files from symlink as well

when i try to cp -r /usr/share/solr/ ~/solrTest

i will have symlink here:

marek@marek$ ls -al ~/solrTest
razem 36
drwxr-xr-x   5 root root  4096 2010-11-30 08:25 .
drwxr-xr-x 358 root root 12288 2010-11-26 12:25 ..
drwxr-xr-x   3 root root  4096 2010-11-24 14:29 admin
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root root    14 2010-11-24 14:29 conf -> /etc/solr/conf

Answer 1

cp -Lr /usr/share/solr/ ~/solrTest

Check the man page for unix commands with man cp

   -L, --dereference
          always follow symbolic links in SOURCE

Answer 2

From man page:

‘-L’ ,‘--dereference’ - Follow symbolic links when copying from them. With this option, cp cannot create a symbolic link. For example, a symlink (to regular file) in the source tree will be copied to a regular file in the destination tree.

So this is the option you should try.

Answer 3

cp -r -L /usr/share/solr/ ~/solrTest

From the cp(1) man page:

-L, --dereference

always follow symbolic links in SOURCE

Answer 4

One quick solution is to:

$ mkdir dest_dir
$ cp symlink_dir/* dest_dir/

the drawback is that you have to create the destination directory first