Error Code -36 while copying a file from XP to OS X (Snow Leopard)
cp -X is your friend
While trying to copy a large (10GB) file from a Windows XP machine today, via both the network and a FAT32 USB hard drive, I received this somewhat cryptic error: "The Finder can't complete the operation because some data in "myBigFile.avi" can't be read or written. (Error code -36)"
Error code -36? Humph. After some Googling around the Intertubes, nothing screamed "This is the problem!" as it is a somewhat common error message for OS X. So, I thought I'd try it out at the command line. Why? GUIs can be much less forthcoming about errors some times.
manoa:LACIE stu$ cp myBigFile.avi ~/Desktop/ cp: myBigFile.avi: could not copy
extended attributes to /Users/stu/Desktop/myBigFile.avi: Argument list too longmanoa:LACIE stu$
Well. That's interesting. A Google of "could not copy extended attributes" and "Argument list too long" turned up no hits, to my great surprise. What are these extend attributes on the file? Not much, apparently--just one. But a quick search of the man pages for the cp command indicated I could exclude these extended attributes from the copy with the -X switch.
manoa:LACIE stu$ xattr myBigFile.avi
TOC.WMV
manoa:LACIE stu$ cp -X myBigFile.avi ~/Desktop/
manoa:LACIE stu$ Yea! Success!