# Cross-device link error

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/cross-device-link-error/92503>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [April 20, 2007, 2:46am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/cross-device-link-error/92503 "2007-04-20T02:46:21Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![greg](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/g/71c47a/32.png) [@greg](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/greg)\
**Post date:** [April 20, 2007, 2:46am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/cross-device-link-error/92503/1 "2007-04-20T02:46:21Z")

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Working through Pine’s Programming book and got this error (complete at  
bottom):

Cross-device link -…(Errno::EXDEV)

Trying to read photos from a memory card to hard drive and rename them.  
Someone posted the same error on the book’s errata page and I didn’t  
see a response so though I better look elsewhere

gscar-computer:~ gscar$ ruby “/Users/gscar/Documents/Ruby/Pine-Learning  
to Script/RenamingYourPhotos\302\24711.5.y.rb”  
What would you like to call this batch?  
Testing

# Downloading 3 files: /Users/gscar/Documents/Ruby/Pine-Learning to Script/RenamingYourPhotos§11.5.y.rb:38:in `rename': Cross-device link - /Volumes/CANON_DC/DCIM/100CANON/IMG_2324.JPG or Testing01.jpg (Errno::EXDEV) from /Users/gscar/Documents/Ruby/Pine-Learning to Script/RenamingYourPhotos§11.5.y.rb:38 from /Users/gscar/Documents/Ruby/Pine-Learning to Script/RenamingYourPhotos§11.5.y.rb:28:in`each’ from /Users/gscar/Documents/Ruby/Pine-Learning to Script/RenamingYourPhotos§11.5.y.rb:28

Line 28 is: picNames.each do |name| 
Line 38 is: File.rename name,  
newName

Thanks for any help

Newbie

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![greg](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/g/71c47a/32.png) [@greg](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/greg)\
**Post date:** [April 20, 2007, 8:04am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/cross-device-link-error/92503/2 "2007-04-20T08:04:42Z")

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Greg wrote:

> to Script/RenamingYourPhotos\302\24711.5.y.rb"  
> from /Users/gscar/Documents/Ruby/Pine-Learning to

You’ve gotta give us some more information. It would be better to  
include the whole method than just one line.

Dan

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![greg](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/g/71c47a/32.png) [@greg](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/greg)\
**Post date:** [April 20, 2007, 8:23am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/cross-device-link-error/92503/3 "2007-04-20T08:23:44Z")

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Hi,

At Fri, 20 Apr 2007 09:45:06 +0900,  
Greg wrote in [ruby-talk:248510]:

> Working through Pine’s Programming book and got this error (complete at  
> bottom):
> 
> Cross-device link -…(Errno::EXDEV)
> 
> Trying to read photos from a memory card to hard drive and rename them.

File.rename doesn’t copy file content, just change the name.  
So it can’t move a file across devices. You may want to use  
FileUtils.cp method.