Subject: bug#29788: chown: recursive operation with "-H" flag does not work as documented

From: Bernhard Voelker <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 21 Dec 2017 00:19:41 +0100

On 12/20/2017 10:26 PM, Michael Orlitzky wrote:
>    $ chown --recursive --dereference root foo
> 
> which emits an error:
> 
>    chown: -R --dereference requires either -H or -L

Hmm, this looks inconsistent as well: --dereference is the
default if neither --dereference nor -h|--no-dereference are
specified, but 'chown -R user dir' does not require -H or
-L.

chown(1) hasn't been changed regarding this behavior since
2006 (coreutils-6.8), so this is obviously a rare edge case.

FWIW, the test-suite for chown lacks exactly that case.

Have a nice day,
Berny