cp -a behavior change, 4.0p -> 4.1

[Tim Metz]

Greetings:

I hope address@hidden is the proper place to report this; if it
is not, perhaps you could point me to the proper contact.

The behavior of "cp -a" seems to have changed from version 4.0p to
version 4.1. With version 4.0p, "cp -a" would change the ownership of
the file(s) copied to the user performing the copy.  With version 4.1,
the ownership change portion of the copy now fails, though the time stamps
seem to be preserved.  

Steps to replicate the problem are show below.

System is RedHat Linux 7.2
Copy is from NFS mounted HPUX vxfs filesystem with standard mount options
(rw,suid,delaylog,datainlog) to to local ext3 filesystem with default
mount options.

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address@hidden >/tmp/cp_4.0p --version
cp (GNU fileutils) 4.0p
Written by Torbjorn Granlund, David MacKenzie, and Jim Meyering.

Copyright (C) 1999 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.  There is NO
warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

address@hidden >/tmp/cp_4.0p -a ~jamals/isscc/slides/talk/* .
address@hidden >ls -l
-rw-r--r--   1 tmetz    users        2204 Aug 15  2001 inttalk.aux
-rw-r--r--   1 tmetz    users       37096 Aug 15  2001 inttalk.dvi
-rw-r--r--   1 tmetz    users      129232 Aug 15  2001 inttalk.ps
-rw-r--r--   1 tmetz    users         384 May 10  2001 inttalk.tex

address@hidden >rm -f *
address@hidden >/bin/cp --version
cp (fileutils) 4.1
Written by Torbjorn Granlund, David MacKenzie, and Jim Meyering.

Copyright (C) 2001 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.  There is NO
warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

address@hidden >/bin/cp -a ~jamals/isscc/slides/talk/* .
/bin/cp: setting permissions for `./inttalk.aux': Operation not permitted
/bin/cp: setting permissions for `./inttalk.dvi': Operation not permitted
/bin/cp: setting permissions for `./inttalk.ps': Operation not permitted
/bin/cp: setting permissions for `./inttalk.tex': Operation not permitted

address@hidden >ls -l
-rw-r--r--   1 jamals   users        2204 Aug 15  2001 inttalk.aux
-rw-r--r--   1 jamals   users       37096 Aug 15  2001 inttalk.dvi
-rw-r--r--   1 jamals   users      129232 Aug 15  2001 inttalk.ps
-rw-r--r--   1 jamals   users         384 May 10  2001 inttalk.tex
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Tim Metz, Computer Systems/Network Administrator 
Electrical and Computer Engineering, The University of California, Davis
address@hidden
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