Re: FYI: incorrect error message from 'mv', coreutils 6.4 & 6.9

[Jim Meyering]

Linda Walsh <address@hidden> wrote:

> I noticed this incorrect error message in both,
>
>       "coreutils 6.4-10 from opensuse10.2"
> and
>       "coreutils-6.9-43 from opensuse10.3"
>
>> sudo touch /boot/test           #note, "/boot" is separate partition 
>> (important)
>> mv /boot/test /tmp
> mv: cannot remove `/boot/test': Not a directory

Thanks for the report.
There are at least two internal bugs that led to symptoms like
that.  I don't know about opensuse, but at least in upstream sources,
the one fixed recently (2007-10-05, for 6.9.90) involved
a source directory with the restricted-deletion flag.
But I doubt your /boot partition is world writable.
The other bug was fixed in coreutils-6.8.

  $ mv /boot/memtest86.bin /tmp
  mv: cannot remove `/boot/memtest86.bin': Permission denied
  [Exit 1]

  $ stat --format %d /boot /tmp
  2055
  2053

So if you can confirm one way or the other with upstream coreutils-6.9
or 6.9.90, it might help diagnose the problem for the opensuse.

The latest release upstream is 6.9.91, a bug-fix-only one:

  ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/coreutils/coreutils-6.9.91.tar.gz
  ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/coreutils/coreutils-6.9.91.tar.lzma