In Linux, the cp
command will preserve file permissions, ownership and timestamps when copying a file or directory.
To expressly instruct cp
to preserve file permissions and ownership, use the (lowercase) -p
option.
$ cp -p file.txt copy.txt
Preserve permissions when copying files from EXT4 to NTFS
Retaining file permissions and ownership is something easily overlooked when copying from a Linux EXT4 file system to a NTFS partition. For example, I frequently transfer documents to and from my desktop (EXT4) and laptop (EXT4) via a USB key (NTFS).
To preserve file permissions, begin by packing them into a tar
archive first.
$ tar -cpvf archive.tar folder/
Move the tar over to the destination machine and extract:
$ tar -xvf archive.tar
The file permissions will be intact when the tar is extracted on the destination EXT4 partition.