[nycbug-talk] anyone know why install functions this way?

[Matthew Story]

Some additional information, install seems to fail when you specify a non-existant user on lookup, not chmod, if you specify a non-existant UID it succeeds again:

[matt at matt0 ~/install-showcase]$ install -o 999 -d test.dir.7; echo $? # see, success
install: chown 999:4294967295 test.dir.7: Operation not permitted
0
[matt at matt0 ~/install-showcase]$ ls -ld test.dir.7
drwxr-xr-x  2 matt  matt  2 Dec 12 09:28 test.dir.7
[matt at matt0 ~/install-showcase]$ id 999
id: 999: no such user

A couple of work-arounds I'm using for now below (if anyone is interested) ...

# assume success until failure method ...
shout() { echo "$0: $*" >&2; }
barf() { shout "$*"; exit 111; }
cleanup() {
    rc="$?"
    [ ! -z "$working" -a -e "$working" ] && rm -r "$working"
    exit "$rc"
}
dir_install() {
    eval working=\"\$$#\"
    trap cleanup INT TERM EXIT
    "$@" 2>&1 | { 
        read err 
        [ -z "$err" ] || barf "cannot install dir: $working"
    } || exit $?
    trap "" INT TERM EXIT
}
dir_install -o foo -d "some.dir"

# test for failure up front, with a file
test_file="test_install-d.$$.`hostname`.`date +%s`"
install -o "user" -g "group" "$test_file"|| rc=$?
[ -e "$test_file" ] && rm "$test_file"
[ 0 -ne "$rc" ] && exit "$rc"
install -o "user" -g "group" -d "$dir" || exit $?


On Dec 9, 2011, at 8:08 PM, Matthew Story wrote:

> Know this isn't a bug list or anything like that, but figured I'd throw this out there ... the only thing I found on the interweb was regarding RPMs on CentOS ... so this is apparently not even a BSDism, but it makes writing my installer scripts vastly less reliable.  Lots more below, but the gist is this:
> 
> install -o root -d foo/
> 
> Will create the directory with my user and effective group id, and my umask ... and yield an error message ... but still exit 0 (success).  At the very least I would expect the directory to linger with these permissions and exit non-zero (failure) ... this is also not consistant with the behavior of files.
> 
> Anyway ... anyone know a historical reason for this, or have a good hack around this ... getting patches into section 1 to trickle down into my world takes a while, assuming the behavior is even a bug ...
> 
> ------------------------lots of copy-paste below----------------------------------
> 
> [matt ~]$ mkdir install-showcase
> [matt ~]$ cd install-showcase/
> [matt ~/install-showcase]$ who am i
> matt             14       Dec  9 19:52 
> [matt ~/install-showcase]$ install -d ./test.dir; echo $? # install a directory as me, success!
> 0
> [matt ~/install-showcase]$ ls -d ./test.dir; echo $? # see, success!
> ./test.dir
> 0
> [matt ~/install-showcase]$ install -o root -d ./test.dir.1; echo $? # install a directory as root, success?!                                                                   
> install: chown 0:4294967295 ./test.dir.1: Operation not permitted
> 0
> [matt ~/install-showcase]$ ls -d ./test.dir.1 # see, success!
> ./test.dir.1
> [matt ~/install-showcase]$ ls -d ./test.dir.1; echo $? # see, success!                                                                                                         
> ./test.dir.1
> 0
> [matt ~/install-showcase]$ install -o doesnotexist -d ./test.dir.2; echo $? # install directory as a user that doesn't exist, failure!
> install: doesnotexist: Invalid argument
> 67
> [matt ~/install-showcase]$ touch filetobeinstalled; ls filetobeinstalled; echo $? # but does it work with files?                                                               
> filetobeinstalled
> 0
> [matt ~/install-showcase]$ install filetobeinstalled test.file; echo $? # install a file as me, success!                                                                       
> 0
> [matt ~/install-showcase]$ ls filetobeinstalled; echo $?
> filetobeinstalled
> 0
> [matt ~/install-showcase]$ install -o root filetobeinstalled test.file.1; echo $? # install a file as root, success?                                                           
> install: test.file.1: chown/chgrp: Operation not permitted
> 71
> [matt ~/install-showcase]$ ls test.file.1; echo $? # not even a lingering file                                                                                                 
> ls: test.file.1: No such file or directory
> 1
> [matt ~/install-showcase]$ install -S -o root -d test.dir.2; echo $? # how about a directory in safe mode?                                                                     
> install: chown 0:4294967295 test.dir.2: Operation not permitted
> 0
> [matt ~/install-showcase]$ ls -d test.dir.2; echo $? # yup ... safe mode too ... :(
> test.dir.2
> 0
> [matt ~/install-showcase]$ install -S -o root -d test.dir.2; echo $? # how about a directory in safe mode ... with an existing target
> install: chown 0:4294967295 test.dir.2: Operation not permitted
> 0
> [matt ~/install-showcase]$ ls -ld test.dir.2; echo $? # yup ... safe mode too ... :(
> drwxr-xr-x  2 matt  matt  2 Dec  9 20:00 test.dir.2
> 0
> [matt ~/install-showcase]$ install -S -o root -d test.dir.2; echo $? # how about a directory in safe mode ... with an existing target
> install: chown 0:4294967295 test.dir.2: Operation not permitted
> 0
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