On Wed, Oct 10, 2001 at 07:51:58PM -0700, Doug wrote: > > the attached patch adds the "synchronize these files and then chown/chgrp > them to a specified user/group, no matter who owns the originals" feature. > > the relevant usage lines are now: > > -o, --owner preserve owner (root only) > -o, --owner=OWNER specify owner (root only) > -g, --group preserve group > -g, --group=GROUP specify group > > > with this patch, the feature works locally but not remotely. > in options.c:server_options(), i've added code to pass args on to the > server, but i don't think i'm doing it correctly. if anyone would > be willing to take a look and see what they think is happening, i'd > be grateful. other comments/nitpicks also welcome.
My first reaction to this is that it isn't necessary because root can just su to another user before installing, but then I remembered that cpio has a "-R id" option to assign a different user id and owner for convenience. Maybe going that route would be better, and it is handy sometimes for root, especially when copying locally. Oh, I see that GNU cpio has a long name equivalent of --owner for -R, and allows setting the group separately with the syntax of OWNER:GROUP or OWNER.GROUP. So maybe Doug's suggestion is fine. I would suggest that if the owner is specified but the group isn't then it should default to the owner's group in the password file rather than preserving the original group. - Dave Dykstra