Re: --from option for chown doesn't work

[Matthew Schalit]

Andrew Pham wrote:
> 
> Hi ,
> 
> I found that chown --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP does not work.  It
> gave back a success status but did not actually change a file's user and/or
> group.    I had tried this on RedHat 7.0 and SuSe 7.1.
> 
> Regards,
> Andy




Hi Andy,

Thanks for the heads up on chown.
I can confirm your report.  
Here's what I did:




------------------------------------------------------------------
Script started on Mon May  7 12:55:12 2001
$
$ uname -a
UnixWare yoda 5 7.1.1 i386 x86at SCO UNIX_SVR5
$
$ id
uid=101(matthew) gid=200(family) groups=1(other),300(friends)
$
$ /usr/local/bin/chown --version
chown (fileutils) 4.1
Written by David MacKenzie.

Copyright (C) 2001 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.  There is NO
warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
$
$ pwd
/tmp/test
$
$ ls -ld /tmp/test
drwxrwxrwx    2 matthew  family           74 May  7 12:36 /tmp/test
$
$ ls -l /tmp/test
total 8
-rw-rw-rw-    1 matthew  friends         134 May  7 12:13 doink
$
$ /usr/local/bin/chown -v --from=matthew:friends matthew:family doink
$ /usr/local/bin/chown -v --from=101:300 101:200 doink
$ /usr/local/bin/chown -v 101:200 doink
changed ownership of `doink' to 101:200
$ ls -l /tmp/test
total 8
-rw-rw-rw-    1 matthew  family          134 May  7 12:13 doink
$
$

script done on Mon May  7 12:57:43 2001
-----------------------------------------------------------------------



Because I was using -v for verbose, if any of the --from= examples had
worked, they would have said so with the "changed ownership of `doink'
to xxxx:yyyy."

It didn't say so until I did it without the --from, so you've found
something that's broken.

I'm sure Jim et. al. will appreciate it and work to fix it.
Matthew