-snip-

cd /mnt/usr find . -xdev -depth | cpio -padlm --sparse /usr

-snip-

hmmm... I'll have a rethink. I don't like using commands I don't really understand, since I can't fix 'em if something goes wrong.

I don't really understand the cpio -p switch or --sparse. (after RTFM)

Also, I am not too well up on hard links, I know about softlinks (ln -s)- how can I tell if a file is a hard link?

what makes this doubly dangerous, is that I'm doing this because I presently have 2 linux systems on the same box.Due to previous OS's being there, I had to do a lot of jiggery pokery i.e. red hat has /usr on hda, but / on hdb. But as Red Hat is only on there as legacy (while I work out why my debian doesn't play DVD's very well)I want to move Redhat's /usr to it's root partition,and use that space for debian's /usr. *ick*

I'm gonna chown Redhat's /home/ partition, that's pretty easy, and the permissions are easypeasy on that too.

<gulp>