Hello, When you cp -a --attributes-only a file which has a more than one “hardlink”, it zeroes the file:
$ echo hello > aaa $ cp aaa foo $ chmod 777 aaa $ ls -li total 8 407584 -rwxrwxrwx 1 matt matt 6 mars 31 14:19 aaa 399313 -rw-r--r-- 1 matt matt 6 mars 31 14:19 foo $ cp -a --attributes-only aaa foo # this is fine $ ls -li total 8 407584 -rwxrwxrwx 1 matt matt 6 mars 31 14:19 aaa 399313 -rwxrwxrwx 1 matt matt 6 mars 31 14:19 foo $ ln foo foo2 $ cp -a --attributes-only aaa foo # here comes the bug $ ls -li total 8 407584 -rwxrwxrwx 1 matt matt 6 mars 31 14:19 aaa 407740 -rwxrwxrwx 1 matt matt 0 mars 31 14:19 foo 399313 -rwxrwxrwx 1 matt matt 6 mars 31 14:19 foo2 foo has a size of 0 bytes! The user thinks he's replicating timestamp and permissions, and he's actually deleting data. (Well, the data is still in foo2, but...) coreutils 8.30 Matt
