Re: update: chown fails to ignore symbolic links during recursive directory traversals

[Mark Brand]

> Yesterday I reported that chown fails to ignore symbolic links during
> recursive directory traversals.
>
> ...
>
> I have filed a bug about this with Suse, but I'm posting this update
> here as well since this issue means that running chown can have very
> serious unintended consequences.
>
>
In case anybody was following this issuse (original subject line "chown
fails to ignore symbolic links during recursive directory
transversals[sic]"), SuSE has released a fix for their coreutils RPM:

Name        : coreutils                    Relocations: (not relocatable)
Version     : 5.2.1                             Vendor: SUSE LINUX AG,
Nuernberg, Germany
Release     : 32.2                          Build Date: Wed Apr 20
16:33:07 2005
Install date: Fri Apr 22 09:41:41 2005      Build Host: salieri.suse.de
Group       : System/Base                   Source RPM:
coreutils-5.2.1-32.2.src.rpm
Size        : 7298071                          License: GPL
Signature   : DSA/SHA1, Wed Apr 20 16:38:17 2005, Key ID a84edae89c800aca
Packager    : http://www.suse.de/feedback
URL         : http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/
Summary     : GNU Core Utilities
Description :


The patch info, unfortunately, misdescribes the problem that it fixes:
"A bug in coreutils could lead to a recursive 'chown' incorrectly
traversing symbolic links despite of the '-h' option. "

The problem had nothing to do with '-h'.

Regards,
Mark