Thanks for your report. But what you are seeing is not a bug. It is normal behavior of the linux kernel. On different kernels you will see different behavior.
Wilco de Vries wrote: > as a new user to linux, but well-know with UNIX-systems, I found it > rather strange to see what happens whenever I use the chown command. I am sure you have been using SysV derived systems and not BSD systems. If you had been a long time user of BSD instead of SysV then you would fine the reverse situation just as strange. > I (userone) create a file in /tmp and want to make usertwo owner of it: > userone and usertwo both are normal users of the system. > [...] > chown: changing ownership of `aa': Operation not permitted This is a restriction of the operating system and not of GNU chown. The GNU chown program will change the ownership if the operating system it is running upon allows it. If you can't change file ownership then it is the operating system which is restricting you and not the chown program. Here is one manifestation of the problem that the kernel is solving with this behavior. On a SysV-like system the following sets up the problem. This often happens when a user untars a file with restricted permissions on the contents. I will assume that $HOME is on the local disk and is not NFS or otherwise network mounted. mkdir $HOME/trouble touch $HOME/trouble/foo chmod a-w $HOME/trouble/foo $HOME/trouble chown root:root $HOME/trouble/foo $HOME/trouble Now try to clean up and remove those files. You will find that you cannot clean up after yourself. You have created a situation that only the superuser can fix. The FAQ has a more lengthy explanation. Look for the section, "Why can only root chown files?" for more details. http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/faq/ Hope that helps, Bob _______________________________________________ Bug-fileutils mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-fileutils
