Rename a directory containing many files

Question

I made a mistake in a rsync and all the files are copied long with its full path. All the files that I copied are at

/var/www/photos/2012/1007/1007

Attempt 1

Now I would like to fix the paths, by doing

 mv /var/www/photos/2012/1007/1007 /var/www/photos/2012

This gives the error:

mv: cannot move `/var/www/photos/2012/1007/1007' to `/var/www/photos/2012/1007': Directory not empty

Attempt 2

 mv /var/www/photos/2012/1007/1007/* /var/www/photos/2012/1007

I get the error:

-bash: /bin/mv: Argument list too long

Question: What will be the correct way to rename the folder that contains alot of files?

---

The files were actually copied to /var/www/photos/2012/1007/home/photos/public_html/2012/1007 but somehow I got them to /var/www/photos/2012/1007/1007

Rsync cmd:

rsync -zavrR --rsh="ssh -c arcfour -l root -p 2200" www.mydomain.com:/home/photos/public_html/2012/1007 /var/www/photos/2012/1007

Solution 1

This worked in my test with the paths you gave:

cd /var/www/photos
mv 2012 old
mv old/1007/1007 .
mv 1007 2012

What's happening is you are trying to move a directory over top of an existing directory - and it doesn't like doing that because there's stuff in the directory. By renaming 2012 first, you can move it without problems.

Solution 2

At least two ways I can think of:

1: First rename /var/www/photos/2012/1007 to /var/www/photos/2012/temppath, then mv /var/www/photos/2012/temppath/1007 -> /var/www/photos/2012/, then rmdir /var/www/photos/2012/temppath.

2: Use a simple script to move the contents:

for f in `find /var/www/photos/2012/1007/1007 -mindepth 1`; do mv $f /var/www/photos/2012/1007/1007/../; done

First method it probably a better answer to your question.

Comments

[Nyxynyx]

Awesome!!!! Will need to mv old 2012 before mv 1007 2012. Thanks!

[por]

Too late I was...