[dba-Tech] Security measures

Stuart McLachlan stuart at lexacorp.com.pg
Thu Aug 28 08:32:05 CDT 2003


On 28 Aug 2003 at 13:37, Jon Tydda wrote:

> John
> 
> That's inspired... What do all the individual switches mean? I've only got a
> vague memory of DOS I'm afraid :-)
> 

RTFM :-)
>From  W2K Help:

Xcopy
Copies files and directories, including subdirectories. 

xcopy source [destination] [/w] [/p] [/c] [/v] [/q] [/f] [/l] 
[/d[:date]] [/u] [/i] [/s [/e]] [/t] [/k] [/r] [/h] [/a|/m] [/n] 
[/exclude:filename] [/y | /-y] [/z]

Parameters 

source 

Specifies the location and names of the files you want to copy. This 
parameter must include either a drive or a path. 

destination 

Specifies the destination of the files you want to copy. This 
parameter can include a drive letter and colon, a directory name, a 
file name, or a combination. 

/w 

Displays the following message and waits for your response before 
starting to copy files:

Press any key to begin copying file(s) 

/p 

Prompts you to confirm whether you want to create each destination 
file. 

/c

Ignores errors.

/v 

Verifies each file as it is written to the destination file to make 
sure that the destination files are identical to the source files. 
This switch is ignored because the functionality is inherent to the 
Windows 2000 operating system. The switch is accepted only for 
compatibility with previous versions of MS-DOS.

/q

Suppresses display of xcopy messages.

/f

Displays source and destination file names while copying.

/l

Does not copy files, only displays (lists) files that would be 
copied.

/d[:date]

Copies only source files changed on or after the specified date. If 
the date value is missing, xcopy copies all source files that are 
newer than the time of existing destination files. This option allows 
you to update only files that have changed. If you specify a date, 
use a hyphen (-) as the separator rather than a forward slash (/) so 
that the date is not interpreted as another parameter.

/u

Copies (updates) only files from source that exist on destination.

/i

If source is a directory or contains wildcards, and destination does 
not exist, xcopy assumes destination specifies a directory name and 
creates a new directory then copies all specified files into the new 
directory. By default, xcopy will prompt you to specify whether 
destination is a file or directory.

/s 

Copies directories and subdirectories, unless they are empty. If you 
omit this switch, xcopy works within a single directory. 

/e 

Copies all subdirectories, even if they are empty. Used with the /s 
and /t switches.

/t

Copies only subdirectory structure (tree), not files. To copy empty 
directories, you must include the /e switch.

/k

Copies files and retains the read-only attribute on destination files 
if present on the source files. By default, the read-only attribute 
is removed.

/r

Copies over read-only files.

/h

Copies files with the hidden and system file attributes. The xcopy 
command does not copy hidden or system files by default.

/a 

Copies only source files that have their archive file attributes set. 
This switch does not modify the archive file attribute of the source 
file. For information about how to set the archive file attribute, 
see the attrib command. 

/m 

Copies source files that have their archive file attributes set. 
Unlike the /a switch, the /m switch turns off archive file attributes 
in the files specified in source. For information about how to set 
the archive file attribute, click attrib in the Related Topics 
list[JG1]. 

/n 

Copies using NTFS short file or directory names. This switch is 
required when copying files or directories from an NTFS volume to a 
FAT volume or when the FAT file system naming convention (8.3) is 
required on the destination volume. The destination file system may 
be FAT or NTFS.

/exclude:filename

Excludes the files listed in the specified file from the copy 
operation. The exclusion file can have a list of exclusion patterns 
(one per line, no wildcard characters are supported). If any 
exclusion pattern in the file matches any part of the path of a 
subject file, that file is not copied.

/y

Suppresses prompting to confirm you want to overwrite an existing 
destination file.

The /y switch may be preset in the COPYCMD environment variable. This 
may be overridden with /-y on the command line. The default is to 
prompt on overwrites unless the copy command is being executed from 
within a batch script.

To append files, specify a single file for destination, but multiple 
files for source (using wildcards or file1+file2+file3 format).

/-y

Causes prompting to confirm you want to overwrite an existing 
destination file.

/z

Copies over a network in restartable mode. If the connection is lost 
during the copy phase (for example, if the server going offline 
severs the connection), it will resume after the connection has been 
re-established. Using this command switch also displays the 
percentage of the copy operation completed for each file.

 
-- 
Lexacorp Ltd
http://www.lexacorp.com.pg
Information Technology Consultancy, Software Development,System 
Support.





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