Copying Directory Structures Between Linux or UNIX Systems

As I build or rebuild servers that need a particular directory structure, I wanted a fast way to replicate or reproduce the empty directory structure with the appropriate owners and permissions.  Historically, I would have used the tar command for this and only selected directories.  There is another, and in my opinion more efficient, way to do this using the cpio command.

I wanted to recreate the following two directory structures (including all sub-directories, which there are many of):
/u02/prn/app
/u02/prn/oradata

On the server you want to model the directory structure(s) after you would run the following commands.
# find /u02/prn/app -type d | cpio -ov >/tmp/appdirs.cpio
# find /u02/prn/oradata -type d | cpio -ov >/tmp/oradatadirs.cpio

Now using "scp" I can copy these files to the server I want to recreate the directory structure on.
# scp /tmp/*.cpio destination_server_here:/tmp/.

Now I will extract the archive which will create the directory structures I want (with the appropriate owners and permissions).  Note:  run this command from the "/" filesystem.  If you run it from /tmp, it will look for u02 in tmp.  It obviously doesn't live there.  So, do it from /
# cpio -iv </tmp/appdirs.cpio
# cpio -iv </tmp/oradatadirs.cpio

Done!  Not quite magic, but almost.

Assumptions:  You have the same users and groups created on the destination server as you do on the source server.

Hope this helps someone out there.