Re: cp: skipping file 'file', as it was replaced while being copied

[Kenneth Wolcott <kennethwolcott at gmail dot com>]

On Mon, May 16, 2016 at 2:49 PM, Linda Walsh <cygwin@tlinx.org> wrote:
> Kenneth Wolcott wrote:
>>
>> Hi;
>>
>>   cp: skipping file 'file', as it was replaced while being copied
>>
>>   I have several mounted partitions on my Windows machine (64bit Windows
>> 7).
>>
>>   Copying a file using cygwin cp , via mintty, from a mounted drive to
>> a local path, I frequently get the aforementioned message.
>>
>>   Is the partition not properly understood by Cygwin?
>>
>>   I really dislike having to use Windows in the first place, at least
>> Cygwin, when it works, makes it more bearable.
>>
>> The actual command was (line broken by backslash by me to make it more
>> readable):
>>
>>  cp /cygdrive/p/Engineering/Ken_Wolcott/new_Mobility_Audit_script/try1.pl
>> \
>> /cygdrive/c/Documents\ and\ Settings/kwolcott/Desktop/files4trombone/.
>>
> ---
> Does your 'cp' have any aliases or functions that get run?
>
> For example if you have a "cp -a" or "cp -au" as an alias, this
> can cause icky problems copying to or from a samba network drive
> from or to a local drive.
>
> I don't know if it is fixed in the latest tree, but I have
> a feeling it is not, because it's dang hard to fix.  But it has to
> do with maintaining files that are *linked* where it updates one of
> the linked files, then tries to copy the other, and finds it gone or
> finds some different answer for the link's updating due to it already
> having been copied over via the earlier linked-file.
>
> This can also happen due to having 2 differently-cased versions of the
> same file (as windows sees them as 1 file and tries to get rid of the copy).
> It can be reproduced on linux with any fs that allows
> case-insensitivity (but may also be case preserving).  Besides xfs
> having that for ascii since before xfs was on linux, I think some other
> FS's, zfs, maybe, and some planned future extensions
> to existing file systems.   Again, don't know the status of this
> bug either, but it might be related to how the case-insensitivity is
> done in the file system implementing it.
>
> Why do you have 'documents and settings' on your PC?  That went away
> with XP and was replaced by 'Users'.  Is the local file system
> NTFS?

1. I do think that the problem could be caused by have mixed-case
files in a case-insensitive partition..

2. I most often use the full path for cp, mv, rm, etc to avoid
customized behavior, so I don't think that's it.

3. I see that the "Documents and Settings" is a symlink, so I removed
it; thanks for mentioning that.

Thanks,
Ken

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