Copy Files From Flash Drive To Ubuntu

Question

I am attempting to copy files from my flash drive to my local drive on Ubuntu. This is the command that I ran

sudo cp -i  /media/owner/ESD-USB/mysql /var/lib/

But that output a message of - and the files were not copied over (replacing the original files)

cp: omitting directory '/media/owner/ESD-USB/mysql'

What do I need to do in order to copy this directory from my flash drive and over write the current directory on my hard drive?

Solution

You give directory as source argument and expect cp to copy the files. To do this, use -r (recursive) option:

sudo cp -r -i /media/owner/ESD-USB/mysql /var/lib/

This will create (or overwrite the content of) /var/lib/mysql/ directory. You probably want it that way. Otherwise, if you want to copy the files from within mysql to /var/lib/ (i.e. not to /var/lib/mysql/) you may use:

sudo cp -i /media/owner/ESD-USB/mysql/* /var/lib/