Ok, I emailed bug-fileutils@gnu.org and got this response from Jim Meyering
<jim@meyering.net>:
Thanks for the report.
That's fixed in the latest test release.
ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/fetish/fileutils-4.0.35.tar.gz
It's fixed in 4.0.33, too.
viro@math.psu.edu (Alexander Viro) writes:
> On Tue, 9 Jan 2001, Alan Cox wrote:
>
> > > dd bug. It tries to ftruncate() the output file and gets all upset when
> > > kernel refuses to truncate a block device (surprise, surprise).
> >
> > Standards compliant but unexpected.
>
> dd is supposed to be portable. On Solaris:
> % man ftruncate
> [snip]
> EINVAL The fildes argument does not correspond to an
> ordinary file.
>
> > Actually its explicitly mentioned by the spec that truncate _may_ extend
> > a file but need not do so.
>
> However, it also explicitly mentions that truncate can fail for non-regular
> file.
>
> > > Try to build GNU dd on other Unices and you will be able to trigger that
> > > bug on quite a few of them.
> >
> > I think not
>
> Solaris, for one thing. OK, let's ask folks to test it on different systems
> and see what it gives.
>
> > > ftruncate(2) is _not_ supposed to succeed on anything other than regular
> > > files. I.e. dd(1) should not call it and expect success if file is not
> > > regular. Plain and simple...
> >
> > 2.2 is least suprise 2.4 is most information, but misleading errno IMHO
>
> Agreed. It should be -EINVAL, not -EPERM.
>
> IMO there are two issues:
> * dd(1) portability bug. Obviously there - ftruncate(2) is allowed
> to fail on non-regular ones. Fix is trivial and it (or something equivalent)
> should go into the fileutils.
> * What should 2.4 do here? I would prefer -EINVAL - it is true
> (requested action is invalid for the arguments we got), it is consistent
> with other systems and it doesn't hide the failure. Data that used to
> be in the file we were trying to truncate is still there. -EPERM is
> arguably wrong here - it's not like the problem was in the lack of
> permissions.
>
> -
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
>
--
Mathieu CHOUQUET-STRINGER E-Mail : mchouque@e-steel.com
Learning French is trivial: the word for horse is cheval, and
everything else follows in the same way.
-- Alan J. Perlis
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Jan 15 2001 - 21:00:23 EST