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

[Matthew Story]

one correction below ...

On Dec 12, 2011, at 9:41 AM, Matthew Story wrote:

> [snip...]
> 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
     install "$@" 2>&1 | {
>        read err 
>        [ -z "$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
>> _______________________________________________
>> talk mailing list
>> talk at lists.nycbug.org
>> http://lists.nycbug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
>> 
> 
>