Making a quick backup:root@guilmon:/mnt/backup/guilmon/home# cp -uvfrx --preserve=all /home/rena/ .The output is surprising - some files are said to be removed!removed ./rena/dev/lua/conkybitcoin/conkybitcoin.luaThe files being removed seem to be random and haven't changed. Why does it say it's removing them? Even stranger, it doesn't appear to have actually removed that file (nor the source). What's going on?
cp says it's removing files, but shouldn't be
backup;cp
cp with the --force and --verbose options (-f and -v in your command line) outputs the removed message whenever it removes a destination file before copying it. (--force tells cp to remove a destination file if it can't be opened, before trying the copy again.)In your example, it means that ./rena/dev/lua/conkybitcoin/conkybitcoin.lua couldn't be opened for writing, so cp removed it and copied it again from /home/rena.