bug#6053: cp, ls, and mv bug: unknown error (252)

[Callahan, Patrick M.]

Thanks for the details.
Do you care about ACLs?
If not, then building --without-acl should be fine.

[>> Right now we don't really care about ACLs and I had already built 
[>> the tools as you suggested --without-acl support.

If you do require that ACLs be preserved in general,
then more work will be required.  The code in question is
probably part of gnulib, in copy-acl.c.  There, we already
ignore failure due to conditions that imply lack of support:

    if ((errno == ENOSYS || errno == EOPNOTSUPP)
    ...
    if ((errno == ENOSYS || errno == EINVAL || errno == ENOTSUP)

But that the errno value in question, 252, does not map
to a strerror string is ominous.  Could it be that your version
of HP-UX's C library is lacking patches that might provide that?

[>> We are behind in patching our production HP-UX machines and 
[>> yes the current C library is quite old. We are likely to go 
[>> to HP-UX 11.31 or SLES this summer. The former obsoletes 
]>> libc.1 for libc.2.

You could get in a debugger and determine where
to add "|| errno == 252" to solve what appears to be
an HP-UX-and/or-cvfs-specific problem.

However, such a change is not appropriate for others,
and I doubt it will be worthwhile to attempt an
upstream workaround.

[>> Agree. Appreciate the response. Restores my faith in humanity when
[>> I have to spend a lot of times with vendors whose only interest
[>> seems to be to separate me from as much as my budget as they can
[>> get.

Patrick M. Callahan Senior Engineer
address@hidden
General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems
10467 White Granite Drive Ste 304
Oakton VA 22124
work: 703.277.1471