Subject: cp - copy files and directories, ls -Rld, chmod

From: "[email-masked]" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 22 May 2010 00:19:30 -0700 (PDT)

Hi,

1. The copy command  cp -a

-a, --archive
              same as -dpR

-p     same as --preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps

is not doing what it is supposed to do (and thats is fine, of course), because It does not preserve ownership (except if you are root) . The problem is that it doesn't tell you anything when it doesn't do it or that It shouldn't be supposed to preserve ownership.
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2. Many commands act recursively on a directory with an -R option that affects the directory and all the files it contains.

There should be a

ls -ld -R

command that lists in detail the directory and its contents to quickly check results in one step.
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3. If we have:

drwx------ 2 user2 user2  392 2010-01-11 12:04 /home/user2/directory

user1@mypc:~$ su  -c 'chmod -R 644 /home/user2/directory' user2

doesn't work. You need to change the mode of the directory first and then you can apply a recursive chmod. Is this a bug?

Many thanx for many things.
:-)