If you make an atomic copy -- like something equivalent to a power failure, then it's transactionally safe. One way this can be done is with a snapshot-capable

If you make an atomic copy -- like something equivalent to a power failure, then it's transactionally safe. One way this can be done is with a snapshot-capable filesystem like ZFS, btrfs, or XFS. But a traditional `cp` will go from left to right in the file, it won't take the contents all at once. Which is explicitly documented as a thing that will break Sqlite - https://www.sqlite.org/howtocorrupt.html https://www.sqlite.org/howtocorrupt.html