Preserve timestamps during server migration

Keep date last modified while migrating to a different virtual server

[Lucas]

I’ve had a website for a long time and am finally adding SSL, which my hosting company provides only by moving to a different virtual LAMPy server (and apologies if I’m posting in the wrong place).

How do I keep the dates last modified untouched during the migration?

[bakedjake]

Try:

$ touch -m --date="1984-04-01" file.txt

[graeme_p]

When file transfer is the problem, rsync is usually the solution.

Transfer the files with rsync, using the -a option (to also preserve permissions and a lot of other things) or -t

[Lucas]

Thank you!

@bakedjake: Using “Send Raw Command…” on MacOS’s Transmit.app returns a blank response and no changes

@graeme_p: I’m trying rsync using MacOS’s Terminal.app with a VPN:

rsync -av rsync://[e-mail]/test /Users/me/test

and I receive an error “failed to connect to example.com: Operation timed out”.

Because it never asked for my FTP password, my next step was going to be to try

rsync -av rsync://me:[e-mail]/test /Users/me/test

but sending a password like that would look like a bad idea. Thoughts?