Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!ucsd!ucsdhub!hp-sdd!hplabs!hpda!hp-sde!hpfcdc!rml
From: rml@hpfcdc.HP.COM (Bob Lenk)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.hp
Subject: Re: bug in hp nfs (or tar)
Message-ID: <5570047@hpfcdc.HP.COM>
Date: 27 May 88 22:32:25 GMT
References: <12780@joyce.istc.sri.com>
Organization: HP Ft. Collins, Co.
Lines: 29


	a: sun hardware, file on sun via nfs.
	b: hp hardware, file on hp disk.
	c: sun hardware, file on hp via nfs.

This seems to be related to System V compatibility using chown(2).
System V permits the owner of a file to give it away, while BSD systems
(including Sun) restrict this to the superuser.  Thus on System V (and
compatible systems like HP-UX), the "p" option to tar does a chown for
any user (as documented).  On BSD systems it only overrides the umask
while restoring file permissions.  Given this capability, I think System
V tar orders the operations so the directory is written first, its time
and permissions are modified second, at it is chown'd last.  From result
(c), Sun's tar apparently assumes chown(2) will only work for superuser,
(which is not true on a heterogeneous network), and thus doesn't order
operations and assumes it will fail for mortal users.

Dropping the "p" option should give you what you want.  For a 100%
solution do a umask 0 first if that's not your default (and restore it
afterwards).

HP-UX will also let the administrator restrict chown to superuser
(equivalent to BSD and Sun) with setprivgrp(1m).  I haven't tried this,
but it would probably give you the expected behavior with (c) but
warning messages with (b).

		Bob Lenk
		{ihnp4, hplabs}!hpfcla!rml
		rml%hpfcla@hplabs.hp.com