Bug#88340: Use "chown user:group", not "chown user.group"
Package: general
Version: N/A; reported 2001-03-03
Severity: normal
I think too many packages are affected to submit bug reports on each
one (and still not catch all of them, only the ones I have installed).
About half of "chown" commands in various scripts use the wrong syntax
"chown user.group" instead of the correct "chown user:group".
Quote from the fileutils manual:
# You may use `.' in place of the `:' separator. This is a GNU
# extension for compatibility with older scripts. New scripts should
# avoid the use of `.' because GNU `chown' may fail if OWNER contains `.'
# characters.
The use of "chown user:group" also conforms to the Single UNIX Spec.
Perhaps a good way to get all these packages fixed could be to hack
the "chown" command to print a warning if '.' is used instead of ':'.
Or (crazy idea, for unstable only!) temporarily make that warning an
error, and wait for lots of bug reports to come ;). Comments?
Marek
-- System Information
Debian Release: testing/unstable
Architecture: i386
Kernel: Linux mm 2.2.19pre7 #1 Sat Jan 27 15:26:41 CET 2001 i686
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