Subject: bug#15945: closed (Re: bug#15945: chown: Does now allow setting user and users login group with numerical user ID)

From: Tormen <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2013 17:14:44 +0100

Dear GNU team,

But why is not possible for "chown 1001: /tmp/bla"
to resolve 1001 to "me"
and then do the same than "chown me: /tmp/bla" ?

(I guess internally chown will do the reverse lookup (me -> 1001), when
performing a "chown me: /tmp/bla")

Could you please be so kind to explain the "why not" ?

==============================================

Wording in "man chown":

DESCRIPTION
       This manual page documents the GNU version of chown.  chown
changes the
       user and/or group ownership of each given file.  If only  an 
owner  (a
       user  name or numeric user ID) is given, that user is made the
owner of
       each given file, and the files' group is not changed.  [1] If the
owner  is
       followed  by  a  colon  and a group name (or numeric group ID),
with no
       spaces between them, the group ownership of the  files  is 
changed  as
       well.  [2] If a colon but no group name follows the user name,
that user is
       made the owner of the files and the group of the files  is 
changed  to
       that  user's  login  group.   If the colon and group are given,
but the
       owner is omitted, only the group of the files is changed; in this
case,
       chown  performs  the same function as chgrp.  If only a colon is
given,
       or if the entire operand is empty, neither the owner nor the 
group  is
       changed.

[1] At this point "owner" is referenced as "name or numeric ID".

[2] At this point you do not reprecise "owner" but only state about the
additional colon ":" -- so one must expect "owner" still to be "name or
numeric ID".

Best,

Tormen

On 21/11/13 16:54, GNU bug Tracking System wrote:
> Your bug report
>
> #15945: chown: Does now allow setting user and users login group with numerical user ID
>
> which was filed against the coreutils package, has been closed.
>
> The explanation is attached below, along with your original report.
> If you require more details, please reply to [email-masked].
>