i made a bit of a foul up and i need to copy everything under /mnt/gentoo/k/ to /mnt/gentoo.

is there one command which will move every single directory and file under /mnt/gentoo/k (there is a complete linux filesystem, i.e. usr, sbin, etc, var...) to /mnt/gentoo/?

so that /mnt/gentoo/k/etc/fstab will be /mnt/gentoo/etc/fstab when I finished?

can you even do this in linux?

I am not sure if i got you right.

mv /mnt/gentoo/k/ /mnt/gentoo.

I always use the power of . and ..

For instance..

cd /mnt/gentoo
mv k/* .

That would move everything out of k/ into the present working directory..

perfect, nice one.

btw

What about reading the documentations first?
Especially when you have such a *very* *very* basic question!

well mate, considering the answer you gave was *wrong*, perhaps it's not so basic.

Well, on a small technical note he most likely made a mistake.. his command would actually move the k directory back into the same place it already is.. his command should have included an * after the k/* like this to work properly:

mv /mnt/gentoo/k/* /mnt/gentoo/

Then that would leave you with all the files in k in /mnt/gentoo and leave you with an empty k/ directory..

Oh well,
yes of course. Just have seen it myself.



Keep cool, boy!

exactly, "cannot copy k as file k already exists". i had already tried that and got exactly that response. that is why I was so careful to describe my problem.

it was the * syntax which I was looking for. the way I was attempting it was copying the file which represented k to the gentoo directory it was alrady in.

the * takes the contents of that directory, leaving k as a directory pointer competely untouched.

in any case, it does seem *very* *very* simple,

but to me it wasn't., and i could not find the answer in the documentation.