Need to reload NAS while keeping original timestamps
 

Let me be the first to admit that I kludged this on the first go round. Now that that's out of the way, here's the backstory:

My company has come close to filling the ~700GB of storage built into our file server so I ordered and installed a Linksys NSS6000 NAS and filled it with 4 Seagate 750GB drives (checked their compatibility list before purchasing the drives). The system gave me a few problems in the configuration stage (mostly to do with user permissions) primarily because it's a Linux kernel being forced into providing security settings that can be edited from a Windows client. By the time I got that taken care of, the users were getting anxious (management included) to see the new box in action. I did a not-so-quick copy of the data from the server to the NAS over a dedicated gigabit network connection and remapped all clients to the new NAS.

The problem is that the copy did not include the --preserve=timestamps option. A couple of users (CEO being first on the list) have pointed out to me that the original timestamps are critical to the way they search through the archives of old information. Non-negotiable.

I do not have a CLI for the NAS, just a browser based interface over the local network. I waited on hold with LinkSYS for around 30 minutes before hanging up, so I don't know if a CLI is available. The user manual and the online information avoid the subject. I can't find any info one way or the other and my google-fu is coming up with nothing but ads and reviews. I've even read a few reviews, but they didn't tell me anything I didn't already know.

The solution I need is to be able to re-copy (I looked into the dd command, but that didn't seem like the right way to go for transferring data over the network) all of our data over to the NAS from the server preserving the original timestamps, but not overwriting anything that has changed since the day that everyones drives were re-mapped to the NAS. Anything that has changed since then needs to keep its new timestamp. I've got the basic command down to:

cp --preserve=timestamps <something to not overwrite new stuff> /mnt/Z/* /mnt/z

/mnt/Z/ = server's shared directory. Note: 'Z' is capitalized
/mnt/z/ = NAS share mounted on the server as an smbfs share. 'z' is not capitalized

Server: Dell Poweredge 1800 running Debian 3.1 Sarge, Samba 3.24
NAS: LinkSYS NSS6000 running Linux 2.6.17 kernel (probably their own distro, not sure)

As always, any help at all would be greatly appreciated.

-Dave

nothing to do with networking. moved to Linux - general.

Ok. Getting it in the right place was another goof on my part. Thanks, acid_kewpie.

Am I looking at this the wrong way? Is there another command I should be using instead of "cp"? I'm just looking for a viable solution, not a perfect solution. If it requires a script, I'll need a pointer to a decent tutorial (my script capabilities are next-to non-existent).