What is the command to copy the contents of "/media/sf_Shared_Folder/myfolder/" to "/var/www/myfolder"?

I'm using Ubuntu 20.04 and I have a folder full of files in /media/sf_Shared_Folder/myfolder/. I want to copy the contents of this folder to /var/www/myfolder.

I prefer to use the GUI, however I keep getting permissions problems, so I'm trying to use the terminal but I am still learning the commands.

So what is the command I should use to copy the contents of /media/sf_Shared_Folder/myfolder/ to /var/www/myfolder?

Appreciate the help.

The /var/www directory is generally owned by the web server, which is why you are seeing permission issues when you are copying from the GUI. The simple answer to your question would be this:

sudo cp -R {source} {destination}

Breaking this down:

This means that you would type the following command into your Terminal:

sudo cp -R /media/sf_Shared_Folder/myfolder/* /var/www/myfolder

If this is something you will do regularly, it may be worthwhile to look at adding your user account to the same group as the web server, or perhaps changing the source directory for the web server to the shared location

The /var folder is a somewhat special folder in Linux (and other Unix operating systems). It is used by the operating system to write stuff it needs for log purposes, administration, etc...

I am not sure you want/should move your stuff in there. As a user you can read and run files there but not write, as the owner most probably is the root super-user and, unless you have access to that user, you will not be able to either change the permissions (chmod) or copy anything to there (cp/mv).

You most probably should not. You most probably should move that somewhere else.

I assume that /var/www/myfolder is served by a web server or another web application that runs under the www-data account and that you want to publish some media files.

This will copy all the content of /media/sf_Shared_Folder/myfolder to /var/www/myfolder:

( cd /media/sf_Shared_Folder/myfolder && tar cf - . ) |
( sudo su -s /bin/sh www-data -c 'cd /var/www/myfolder && tar xf -' )

But there might be a simpler solution for you. Take ownership of /var/www/myfolder and its current content. Note that it could make your web app unhappy. I don't know. So this is a bit dangerous. Use at your own risks.

sudo chown -hR ${USER}: /var/www/myfolder

Once this is done, you can drag and drop your files with the mouse.