Consolidating? files

I have an issue that I'm sure has a fairly simple resolution but I am
too inexperienced to figure it out. Basically I have a number of
files spread across several folders and subfolders in my home
directory. Some of these files are duplicates of each other and some
files have completely different content but share the same filename.
What I am trying to do is consolidate all the files in a single folder
with no duplicates and no overwriting files that have the same name.
Does anyone have any ideas how I might go about this?

BTW I am running FC5.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

v/r


Rob

rob wrote:

> I have an issue that I'm sure has a fairly simple resolution but I am
> too inexperienced to figure it out. Basically I have a number of
> files spread across several folders and subfolders in my home
> directory. Some of these files are duplicates of each other and some
> files have completely different content but share the same filename.
> What I am trying to do is consolidate all the files in a single folder
> with no duplicates and no overwriting files that have the same name.
> Does anyone have any ideas how I might go about this?
>
> BTW I am running FC5.
>
> Any help would be greatly appreciated.
>
> v/r
>
>
> Rob

fslint will find the content-duplicates which may be a start for you.

HTH

Tim

Tim S wrote:
> rob wrote:
>
>> I have an issue that I'm sure has a fairly simple resolution but I am
>> too inexperienced to figure it out. Basically I have a number of
>> files spread across several folders and subfolders in my home
>> directory. Some of these files are duplicates of each other and some
>> files have completely different content but share the same filename.
>> What I am trying to do is consolidate all the files in a single folder
>> with no duplicates and no overwriting files that have the same name.
>> Does anyone have any ideas how I might go about this?
>>
>> BTW I am running FC5.
>>
>> Any help would be greatly appreciated.
>>
>> v/r
>>
>>
>> Rob
>
> fslint will find the content-duplicates which may be a start for you.
>
> HTH
>
> Tim

Thanks for that pointer - I was looking for a utility like that myself.
I use dirvish for backups, which normally makes hardlinks to files
that have not been changed, but if a backup fails for some reason (like
networking problems), the next backup will end up with new copies of the
old files. findup from fslint looks like the tool I need to merge these
identical files into a single hard-linked file. Of course, it's going
to take forever to go through all these files, but the backup machine is
not doing anything else over the weekend...

mvh.,

David

On 2007-06-13, rob <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
> I have an issue that I'm sure has a fairly simple resolution but I am
> too inexperienced to figure it out. Basically I have a number of
> files spread across several folders and subfolders in my home
> directory. Some of these files are duplicates of each other and some
> files have completely different content but share the same filename.
> What I am trying to do is consolidate all the files in a single folder
> with no duplicates and no overwriting files that have the same name.
> Does anyone have any ideas how I might go about this?

Can you answer a few question for me?

1. How many files are you talking about ?
2. Same name, but different content: what do you want to do ?
3. Different names, same content: what do you want to do ?


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On Jun 13, 7:43 pm, rob <picodrea...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I have an issue that I'm sure has a fairly simple resolution but I am
> too inexperienced to figure it out. Basically I have a number of
> files spread across several folders and subfolders in my home
> directory. Some of these files are duplicates of each other and some
> files have completely different content but share the same filename.
> What I am trying to do is consolidate all the files in a single folder
> with no duplicates and no overwriting files that have the same name.
> Does anyone have any ideas how I might go about this?
>
> BTW I am running FC5.
>
> Any help would be greatly appreciated.
>
> v/r
>
> Rob

You have to see the big picture first. It is not only the files
themselves
but also versions of the files. The reason people end up with files
duplicates
is because they want to keep information relevant at a given time,
and then
they open a file with the same name later only because they have new
information
on the same subject. They still want to keep the old version. What you
need
is software they keeps all versions of the same file. The professional
software like that is Clearcase, it may be too expensive but there
could
be free copy-cats, so start looking for something that resembles
Clearcase.
It will manage all versions, merge, keep backups etc