Re: chown --no-dereference broken in coreutils 6.3 ?

[Jim Meyering]

"Theodoros V. Kalamatianos" <address@hidden> wrote:
> I just downloaded coreutils-6.3 and the testsuite fails in chown/basic:
>
...
> make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/RPM/BUILD/coreutils-6.3/tests/chown'
...
> ++ ls -n slink
> + set _ lrwxrwxrwx 1 0 0 1 Oct 3 12:08 slink '->' f
> + shift
> + test 0:0 = 0:1
> + fail=1

Thank you for reporting that.
This is not a bug in the coreutils.
Rather, you may be using a buggy version of glibc.
I reported a month ago that the underlying problem
affects Ubuntu/edgy's version of glibc 2.4:

  Subject: fchownat ignores AT_SYMLINK_NOFOLLOW flag
    https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-users/2006-September/093218.html
    https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/glibc/+bug/59083
      Status: Unconfirmed
      Importance: Undecided(!)

> I verified by hand that chown --no-dereference 6.3 does not work, while
> the one from coreutils-5.97 is fine. My system is a linux-2.6.17 system
> with glibc-2.4.

Please specify _which_ glibc-2.4 and linux-2.6.17, if you didn't
build them from pristine sources.

FYI, this doesn't affect upstream glibc, since the tests have passed
on rawhide with both 2.6.17 and 2.6.18.