Hi, For some reason I just don't get the cp command.  Maybe it is the deep rooted MS DOS from the 80's and 90's.  I spent about a decade using MS DOS. Here is what is going on.  I am in a CentOS box and do not ever become root.  I use sudo. I want to copy one MySql DB to another so I can use the data for testing. 1) I cd to /var/lib/mysql 2) I can see both DB's 3) I issue any number of commands that do not work. Lets say DB1 is the source directory & DB2 is the destination directory mysql]$ sudo cp DB1/*.* DB2/  Results: cp: cannot stat `DB1/*.*': No such file or directory mysql]$ sudo cp DB1/* DB2/  Results: cp: cannot stat `DB1/*': No such file or directory mysql]$ sudo cp DB1/ DB2/  Results: creates the directory DB1 under DB2 and copies all the files into DB2/DB1 mysql]$ sudo cp DB1 DB2/  Results: does not seem to do anything. http://www.computerhope.com/unix/ucp.htm shows this example: cp -r /home/hope/files/* /home/hope/backup mysql]$ sudo cp -r /var/lib/mysql/DB1/* /var/lib/mysql/DB2 - cp: cannot stat `/var/lib/mysql/baseline/*': No such file or directory This is driving me crazy.  Any help much appreciated!   ------------------------ Keith Smith