Cannot transfer file due to "Filesystem does not support symbolic links" error

Solution 1:

If the copying is done in some shell terminal (i.e. bash), then cp can be explicitly told to copy the file that a link points to with --dereference, instead of the link itself. The default behavior of cp is to copy files by following their links, but many graphical file browsers seem to have a default behavior of attempting to copy links and generally perserving most attributes.

man cp

-a, --archive
       same as -dR --preserve=all

-d     same as --no-dereference --preserve=links

-L, --dereference
       always follow symbolic links in SOURCE  

Example

touch SomeFile.txt
echo "some content" > someFile.txt
ln -s -T someFile.txt someLink
echo "Some content for the test file." > someLink
mkdir someDirectory
ln -s -T someDirectory someDirLink

The fact that someLink is a link, is shown by the l flag in the first position of the listing output (and `d' designates a directory).

ls -l

drwxrwxr-x. 2 user group 4096 Aug 17 17:17 someDirectory
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 user group 13 Aug 17 17:17 someDirLink -> someDirectory
-rw-rw-r--. 1 user group 32 Aug 17 17:01 someFile.txt
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 user group 12 Aug 17 17:12 someLink -> someFile.txt

The file contains the content, and the link points to the file, but can be used in nearly any manner the file could be. (Note the link file size vs the text file size: 32 Bytes vs 12 Bytes.)

cat someFile.txt

Some content for the test file.

cat someLink

Some content for the test file.

First, copying the link to a directory. Then copying the file to the directory, through the link. (The below also shows that directory links work in a similar manner to file links.):

cp -a someLink someDirLink/newCopy
cp -L someLink someDirectory/newCopy.txt
ll -l someDirLink/

lrwxrwxrwx. 1 user group 12 Aug 17 17:12 newCopy -> someFile.txt
-rw-rw-r--. 1 user group 32 Aug 17 17:36 newCopy.txt

Caution

Links can be made to point to a full path or a relative path. Since this example used a linking based on the relative path of the target being in the same directory as the link being created, the link was broken when it was copied to a new directory.

cat someDirLink/newCopy

cat: someDirLink/newCopy: No such file or directory

cat someDirLink/newCopy.txt

Some content for the test file.

Solution 2:

you can simply compress the folder and then copy it as you like