Provided by: fai-client_6.4.3ubuntu1_all 
NAME
fcopy - copy files using classes
SYNOPSIS
fcopy [options] SOURCE...
DESCRIPTION
Copy a file from SOURCE to its target using classes. It also sets permission modes for owner and group.
Each SOURCE argument is a directory which contains one or more template files for the source file to
copy. Depending on the list of defined classes, one file of the source directory is selected and copied
to the target. The target filename is the name of the source directory.
The exit code returned by fcopy is 0 if all files are copied successfully and >0 if an error occurs. For
every successfully copied file, a log message is printed to standard output.
OPTIONS
Options -c, -s, -t and a SOURCE are required. Usually -c, -s and -t
are set via variables in FAI.
-B Remove backup files with suffix .pre_fcopy. You can also set the environment variable
FCOPY_NOBACKUP to 1.
-b dir Don't copy files to file.pre_fcopy, but use hierarchy under "dir" instead. The same effect is
achieved by setting environment variable FAI_BACKUPDIR.
-c class[,class]
Define classes. Multiple classes must be comma separated. If not specified, use the shell
environment variable $classes (space separated). The first class has lowest priority.
-C file
Read classes from file. Lines can contain multiple classes which are space separated. Lines
starting with # are comments.
-d Delete target file if no class applies.
-D Create debugging output.
-F file
Read list of sources from file. One SOURCE per line.
-h Show help, version and summary of options.
-H If source is a symbolic link, make destination a symbolic link too.
-i Ignore warnings about no matching class and non-existing source directories. These warnings will
not set the exit code to 1.
-I dir[,dir]
Override list of ignored directories when recursing. If not given, it is taken from
$FCOPY_IGNOREDIRS and as a last chance an internal list of known revision control system's
metadata is used (CVS, .cvs, {arch}, .arch-ids).
-l Do not copy if destination is a symbolic link
-L file
Log SOURCE and used class to file. Output format is
SOURCE CLASS COMMENT
where COMMENT gives some information about why the file has been preserved. If not specified and
$LOGDIR is set, use $LOGDIR/fcopy.log.
-m user,group,mode
Set user, group and mode for all copied files (mode as octal number, user and group numeric id or
name). If not specified, use file file-modes or data of source file.
-M Use default values for user, group and mode. This is equal to -m root,root,0644
-n Print the commands, but do not execute them. This is like --dry-run in other programs. You can
enable it for all calls of fcopy by setting the environment variable $FCOPY_DRYRUN.
-r Copy recursively (traverse down the tree). Copy all files below SOURCE. These are all
subdirectory leaves in the SOURCE tree. Ignore "ignored" directories (see "-I" for details).
-s source_dir
Look for SOURCE files relative to source_dir. Use $FAI/files if not specified.
-S Enable variable substitution. Every occurrence of the pattern {%varname%} will be substituted by
the value of the shell variable $varname which is mostly set in class/CLASSNAME.var. You can
enable it for all calls of fcopy by setting the environment variable $FCOPY_SUBSTITUTE. Variable
substitution is done before the execution of the preinst script.
-t target_dir
Copy files relative to target_dir. Use $FAI_ROOT if not specified.
-U If in softupdate mode skip this entire fcopy command.
-v Create verbose output.
SCRIPTS
preinst
If a file 'preinst' exists and is executable, it is used in the following way:
1. a temporary copy of the file for the used class is created
2. preinst is called with the used class and the full pathname to this temporary copy (you can do
in-place substitutions or other modifications on this copy)
3. the copy is compared to the destination and replaces it only if there are any differences and
if the preinst scripts has a exit code zero.
postinst
If a file 'postinst' exists and is executable, it is called after successfully having copied the
file. It is called with two parameters, the class being used and the full pathname to the target
file. The variable ROOTCMD is set, so you can prepend it to commands which should be executed in
the newly installed system.
EXAMPLES
Suppose the source directory /files/etc/X11/xorg.conf consists of the following files:
CAD DEFAULT LAB MACH64 server1 ant04 postinst
Each file is an instance of a xorg.conf file for a different Xserver configuration. The command
# fcopy -s /files -t /target /etc/X11/xorg.conf
copies one of these files from the directory /files/etc/X11/xorg.conf to the file /target/etc/xorg.conf.
For all defined classes, fcopy looks if a corresponding file exists. The class with the highest priority
that matches an existing file name will be used for copying. Here are examples of defined classes for
different hosts and the file which will be copied by fcopy.
Host belongs to the classes File used for copy
DEFAULT,LAB,server3 LAB
DEFAULT,CAD,server1 server1
DEFAULT,MACH64,ant01 MACH64
DEFAULT,TFT,ant13 DEFAULT server1
In FAI the list of defined classes starts with DEFAULT and the last class is the hostname. DEFAULT is
only used when no file for another class exists. If a file is equal to the hostname, this will be used,
since hostname should always be the last class.
User, group and permissions for the files can be defined in several ways. The file file-modes in the
source directory has the highest priority, followed by modes specified by -m/-M. If neither applies, the
modes from the source file are used.
The file file-modes in the source directory can contain one line for each class. The space separated
parameters are:
owner group mode class
Where owner and group can be specified by numeric id or by name. The file permissions are defined by
mode, which must be octal. If class is missing, the data is used for all other classes, for which no
data is defined. If neither -m or file-modes data is available, the user, group and mode of the source
file will be used for the target file.
Missing subdirectories for the target file are created with mode 0755. If the destination file already
exists and is different from the source file, the suffix .pre_fcopy is appended to the old version of the
target file. If source and target files are equal, no copy is performed. A copied file gets the same
access and modification time as the source file, not the time of the copy. If the file postinst exists,
it will be executed after the file was copied.
NOTES
Do not create a file DEFAULT if no reasonable default configuration file can be used. It's better to
exit with an error than to copy a wrong configuration file.
This command can also be used to maintain your configuration files on a huge number of hosts.
SEE ALSO
ftar(8)
This program is part of FAI (Fully Automatic Installation). See the FAI manual for more information on
how to use fcopy. The FAI homepage is https://fai-project.org.
AUTHOR
Thomas Lange <lange@cs.uni-koeln.de>
Henning Glawe <glaweh@physik.fu-berlin.de>
FAI 5.8 8 February 2019 fcopy(8)