Pádraig Brady wrote: > I noticed myself that `cp --preserve=owner` does not give an > error when running as non root. A pertinent comment from the source: > > /* If non-root uses -p, it's ok if we can't preserve ownership. > But root probably wants to know, e.g. if NFS disallows it, > or if the target system doesn't support file ownership. */ > > Perhaps if "owner" is explicitly specified they we should warn? > I'm not sure it's worth diverging the warning characteristics > for this though.
I don't know. I am not sure I am either for it or against it. It seems defensible that --preserve=owner should produce a diagnostic if it can't actually set the owner. I couldn't oppose it. And some traditional systems such as SysV do allow giving away file ownership. I know you are not talking about cp -a but I wanted to say that I often use cp -a to copy files not owned by me into my directory to make a working copy that I can change. If it started to produce errors or warnings that would be bad. I certainly think that behavior shouldn't change or it would create a large problem for users. Bob
