Debian Bug report logs - #497514
coreutils: chmod, chown, and chgrp change ctime even when no change was necessary

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Package: coreutils; Maintainer for coreutils is Michael Stone <[email protected]>; Source for coreutils is src:coreutils (PTS, buildd, popcon).

Reported by: Erik Rossen <[email protected]>

Date: Tue, 2 Sep 2008 09:33:07 UTC

Severity: wishlist

Found in version coreutils/5.97-5.3

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Subject: Bug#497514: coreutils: chmod, chown, and chgrp change ctime even  when no change was necessary
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To: Erik Rossen <[email protected]>
Cc: Jim Meyering <[email protected]>, [email protected],
        [email protected], Michael Stone <[email protected]>
References: <[email protected]>
	<[email protected]> <[email protected]>
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From: Paul Eggert <[email protected]>
Date: Thu, 11 Sep 2008 10:56:34 -0700
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Erik Rossen <[email protected]> writes:

> And, if one wants to be REALLY pedantic, it looks like the file node is
> supposed to be changed each time.  For example, here is an extract:

As I read the spec, chown and chgrp are explicitly required to make
the equivalent of a chown() call, which in turn is required to change
the ctime.  However, chmod is not required to make the equivalent of a
chmod() call, and there is no requirement in the 'chmod' spec that it
change the ctime.  So POSIX allows the optimization for the 'chmod'
command, but not for the 'chown' and 'chgrp' commands.




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