Re: bug in chown --dereference

[Paul Eggert]

G&RV <address@hidden> writes:

> I run into the same kind of bug today trying to change the ownership
> of a directory by running "chmod" on a symlink refering to it.
> The problem is a bit different from the one reported by Müller, Folkhard
> but still very close.
>
> If the referenced file ALREADY BELONGS to USER:GROUP
> and if the symlink itself belongs to a different user or group, then
> the command
>
>   chown USER:GROUP sym -c
>
> will not change the user/group ownership of neither the symlink `sym`
> or the referenced file (which is the expected behaviour) but will
> output the diagnostic:
>
>   changed ownership of `sym' to USER:GROUP
> ...
> chown (coreutils) 5.2.1
> ext3 filesystem
> Fedora Core 3 system
> kernel 2.6.10-1.770_FC3

I don't observe this problem with coreutils 5.3.0:

# ls -l a b
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root            0 Apr 10 00:18 a
lrwxrwxrwx    1 eggert   eggert          1 Apr 10 00:18 b -> a
# chown root:root b -c
# ls -l a b
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root            0 Apr 10 00:18 a
lrwxrwxrwx    1 eggert   eggert          1 Apr 10 00:18 b -> a