Archive old files only AND re-construct folder tree in archive - linux

Question

I want to move all my files older than 1000 days, which are distributed over various subfolders, from /home/user/documents into /home/user/archive. The command I tried was
find /home/user/documents -type f -mtime +1000 -exec rsync -a --progress --remove-source-files {} /home/user/archive \;
The problem is, that (understandably) all files end up being moved into the single folder /home/user/archive. However, what I want is to re-construct the file tree below /home/user/documents inside /home/user/archive. I figure this should be possible by simply replacing a string with another somehow, but how? What is the command that serves this purpose?
Thank you!

Answer 1

I would take this route instead of rsync:
Change directories so we can deal with relative path names instead of absolute ones:
cd /home/user/documents
Run your find command and feed the output to cpio, requesting it to make hard-links (-l) to the files, creating the leading directories (-d) and preserve attributes (-m). The -print0 and -0 options use nulls as record terminators to correctly handle file names with whitespace in them. The -l option to cpio uses links instead of actually copying the files, so very little additional space is used (just what is needed for the new directories).
find . -type f -mtime +1000 -print0 | cpio -dumpl0 /home/user/archives
Re-run your find command and feed the output to xargs rm to remove the originals:
find . -type f -mtime +1000 -print0 | xargs -0 rm

Answer 2

Here's a script too.
#!/bin/bash
[ -n "$BASH_VERSION" ] && [[ BASH_VERSINFO -ge 4 ]] || {
echo "You need Bash version 4.0 to run this script."
exit 1
}
# SOURCE=/home/user/documents/
# DEST=/home/user/archive/
SOURCE=$1
DEST=$2
declare -i DAYSOLD=10
declare -a DIRS=()
declare -A DIRS_HASH=()
declare -a FILES=()
declare -i E=0
# Check directories.
[[ -n $SOURCE && -d $SOURCE && -n $DEST && -d $DEST ]] || {
echo "Source or destination directory may be invalid."
exit 1
}
# Format source and dest variables properly:
SOURCE=${SOURCE%/}
DEST=${DEST%/}
SOURCE_LENGTH=${#SOURCE}
# Copy directories first.
echo "Creating directories."
while read -r FILE; do
DIR=${FILE%/*}
if [[ -z ${DIRS_HASH[$DIR]} ]]; then
PARTIAL=${DIR:SOURCE_LENGTH}
if [[ -n $PARTIAL ]]; then
TARGET=${DEST}${PARTIAL}
echo "'$TARGET'"
mkdir -p "$TARGET" || (( E += $? ))
chmod --reference="$DIR" "$TARGET" || (( E += $? ))
chown --reference="$DIR" "$TARGET" || (( E += $? ))
touch --reference="$DIR" "$TARGET" || (( E += $? ))
DIRS+=("$DIR")
fi
DIRS_HASH[$DIR]=.
fi
done < <(exec find "$SOURCE" -mindepth 1 -type f -mtime +"$DAYSOLD")
# Copy files.
echo "Copying files."
while read -r FILE; do
PARTIAL=${FILE:SOURCE_LENGTH}
cp -av "$FILE" "${DEST}${PARTIAL}" || (( E += $? ))
FILES+=("$FILE")
done < <(exec find "$SOURCE" -mindepth 1 -type f -mtime +"$DAYSOLD")
# Remove old files.
if [[ E -eq 0 ]]; then
echo "Removing old files."
rm -fr "${DIRS[#]}" "${FILES[#]}"
else
echo "An error occurred during copy. Not removing old files."
exit 1
fi