OK, I must have finally hit the right search string on Google. I found a page that offers a command for copying the site's files from one directory to another while retaining permissions:

    cp -rp drupal_source drupal_destination

But then the instructions continue with the sort of stuff that scares me to try because I don't know what most of this stuff means:

• Update references to Drupal url, path, and database details (name, user, pass, and host). Sample commands below using grep:
  find /path/to/drupal -type f -exec perl -pi -e "s/example.com/example2.com/g" {} \;
find /path/to/drupal -type f -exec perl -pi -e "s/public_html\/example/public_html\/example2/g" {} \;
find /path/to/drupal -type f -exec perl -pi -e "s/db_name/db_name2/g" {} \;
find /path/to/drupal -type f -exec perl -pi -e "s/db_user/db_user2/g" {} \;
find /path/to/drupal -type f -exec perl -pi -e "s/db_pass/db_pass2/g" {} \;
• 
  

I know enough to understand that this is some sort of grepping/perl script (pardon me if my vocabulary here is laughable) to fix any absolute path references.

BUT ... I don't understand why there would be any. When I link from one page to another on my site I only use the relative path. I would hope that images inserted into node content would also have internal references in the database.

Am I wrong? Is it really necessary to do anything other than to keep the settings.php files distinct for the public domain and the protected subdomain that serves as my sandbox?

btw, i also use two separate databases. So I do understand that both the baseURL and databasename in settings.php will be different for production vs. sandbox

I have noticed that everyone out on the World Wide Web seems to have a different "truth" when it comes to how best to move a Drupal site

Yet I appreciate any input from this list!!

kazar