Subject: bug#12494: 0 exit status even when chmod fails

From: Paul Eggert <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 23 Sep 2012 23:29:13 -0700

On 09/22/2012 10:59 PM, Georgiy Treyvus wrote:
> it shouldn't be returning a 0 exit code for failure

Unless I'm missing something, I'd guess that
the chmod command is just executing the chmod
system call, which means that if it is reporting
success that one should be looking at how the
system call is implemented, not at how the
chmod command is implemented.

You can test this theory by running it under
strace.  E.g.:

  strace -o chmod.tr chmod 755 file

and look at what 'chmod.tr' says about when the
chmod system call is being executed.