Re: Bad cp -a behaviour

[Philip Rowlands]

On Tue, 10 Aug 2004, Tim Waugh wrote:

>How odd.  Is that a patched 5.2.1?

Possibly; it's from an unadulterated Fedora Core 2.

>Here's what I get with unpatched 5.2.1, straight from the tarball:
>
>address@hidden ~/coreutils-5.2.1/src]$ ./cp --version
>cp (coreutils) 5.2.1
>Written by Torbjorn Granlund, David MacKenzie, and Jim Meyering.
>
>Copyright (C) 2004 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.
>address@hidden ~/coreutils-5.2.1/src]$ rm -fr 1 2
>address@hidden ~/coreutils-5.2.1/src]$ mkdir -p 1/d 2/d
>address@hidden ~/coreutils-5.2.1/src]$ echo foo > 1/d/1
>address@hidden ~/coreutils-5.2.1/src]$ ln 1/d/1 1/d/2
>address@hidden ~/coreutils-5.2.1/src]$ ln 1/d/1 1/d/3
>address@hidden ~/coreutils-5.2.1/src]$ echo foo > 2/d/1
>address@hidden ~/coreutils-5.2.1/src]$ echo bar > 2/d/2
>address@hidden ~/coreutils-5.2.1/src]$ ln 2/d/2 2/d/3
>address@hidden ~/coreutils-5.2.1/src]$ ln 2/d/2 2/d/4
>address@hidden ~/coreutils-5.2.1/src]$ ./cp -af 2/d 1
>address@hidden ~/coreutils-5.2.1/src]$ diff -upr 2 1
>diff -upr 2/d/1 1/d/1
>--- 2/d/1       2004-08-10 13:19:02.695163241 +0100
>+++ 1/d/1       2004-08-10 13:19:02.703161000 +0100
>@@ -1 +1 @@
>-foo
>+bar

I tried building from source, but I get the same as before (i.e. no
problem, no output from diff). Bizarre. Let's keep digging:

$ src/cp -afv 2/d 1
`2/d/4' -> `1/d/4'
`2/d/2' -> `1/d/2'
`2/d/1' -> `1/d/1'
`2/d/3' -> `1/d/3'
$ ls -U1 2/d
4
2
1
3
[ this is running on an ext3 filesystem ]

The bug might be order-specific; does your test produce the same output
as the above with "-v"?


Cheers,
Phil