Why wont "." folders count when I use chmod -R?

[Red Squirrel]

I'm trying to restore my profile backups after doing a clean install but Linux permissions are always a royal pain in the ass in this regard and it wont let me access lot of the files that start with . such as all the profile stuff like firefox bookmarks, filezilla settings etc...
I just want to copy these over to my machine.

Is there a way I can do this? I'm using NFS, and root. Wont work with my user since it wont give me access to half the stuff... but then as root it's also doing the same thing, which is absurd. How hard can it be to copy a folder? There's got to be an easier way.

 

[Jodell88]

Bash does not glob dot files by default. Use the following command to enable dot file globbing.

shopt -s dotglob

Disable it when you're finished by running the command again.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Hmm I'll have to write that down somewhere. I ended up only grabbing the files I need for bookmarks and email and figured I'll do the rest from scratch. I'm going to have to read up and impliment NFS/kerberos/ACLs one of these days, and hopefully stop running into these permission issues.