Subject: Bug#421491: Possible fileutils regression in debian 4

From: [email-masked] (Bob Proulx)
Date: Sun, 29 Apr 2007 13:33:56 -0600

G.P. Walker BEng (Hons) MIET EngTech wrote:
> I don't know where the core issue lies.

Please try using 'strace' to trace the system calls and show the
results of them.

  strace -o cp-a.strace.out cp -a SRC DST

I believe the output of that should be sufficiently small and should
contain the information needed to determine where the problem exists.

> If the files are copied using ssh with switches to preserve dates,
> the files do preserve the dates.  This leads me to believe the issue
> lies within the cp application or the fileutils/coreutils package.

Interesting.  Given your present information I would agree.  But
because the libc and the kernel are both involved and both are also
different between the systems and because I have seen related issues
there I am suspicious of them.  There are multiple different ways to
obtain and set file timestamp information.  It is possible that scp is
using a different system call than cp and therefore different behavior
results.

Bob