copy the symbolic link in Solaris

Question

I am trying to copy a link on Solaris OS but find that it does not simply copy the link instead copies the whole contents of the directory/file the link is poinitng to? Which is not in other OSes like AIX,HP-UX,Linux.

Is this a normal behaviour of Solaris OS?

Answer 1

Charlie was close, you want the -L, -H or -P flags with the -R flag (probably just -R -P). Similar flags exist for chmod(1) and chgrp(1). I've pasted an excerpt from the man-page below.

Example:

$ touch x
$ ln -s x y 
$ ls -l x y 
-rw-r--r--   1 mjc      mjc            0 Mar 31 18:58 x
lrwxrwxrwx   1 mjc      mjc            1 Mar 31 18:58 y -> x
$ cp -R -P y z
$ ls -l z
lrwxrwxrwx   1 mjc      mjc            1 Mar 31 18:58 z -> x
$ 

Alternatively, plain old tar will happily work with symbolic links by default, even the venerable version that ships with Solaris:

tar -cf foo | ( cd bar && tar -xf - )

(where foo is a symlink or a directory containing symlinks).

 /usr/bin/cp -r | -R [-H | -L | -P] [-fip@] source_dir... target

 ...

 -H    Takes actions based on the type and  contents  of  the
       file  referenced  by  any symbolic link specified as a
       source_file operand.

       If the source_file operand is a symbolic link, then cp
       copies  the  file  referenced by the symbolic link for
       the source_file  operand.  All  other  symbolic  links
       encountered  during  traversal of a file hierarchy are
       preserved.


 -L    Takes actions based on the type and  contents  of  the
       file  referenced  by  any symbolic link specified as a
       source_file operand or any symbolic links  encountered
       during traversal of a file hierarchy.

       Copies files referenced by  symbolic  links.  Symbolic
       links encountered during traversal of a file hierarchy
       are not preserved.


 -P    Takes actions on any  symbolic  link  specified  as  a
       source_file  operand  or any symbolic link encountered
       during traversal of a file hierarchy.

       Copies symbolic links. Symbolic links encountered dur-
       ing traversal of a file hierarchy are preserved.