Bug#607267: /usr/bin/scp: fails to notice close() errors

[Michal Suchanek <michal.suchanek@ruk.cuni.cz>]

Excerpts from Helmut Grohne's message of Mon Dec 05 15:54:19 +0100 2011:
> Hi Michal,
> 
> On Mon, Dec 05, 2011 at 12:41:21AM +0100, Michal Suchanek wrote:
> > Excerpts from Helmut Grohne's message of Sat Dec 03 17:33:04 +0100 2011:
> is not clear what "this issue" is.
> 
> > Please read the analysis in the latter message.
> 
> I think we should split this up in two issues:
> 
> 1) Not checking the return value of close().
> 
> This is a very real bug in openssh, but not in coreutils (seem my
> analysis).
> 
> 2) Not fsyncing the files before closeing them.
> 
> It is not the job of cp nor scp to guarantee that any file has reached
> the disk. So this "bug" will not be fixed. If it was their job, tools
> like sync(1) would not exist in the first place. If it was, you could
> file this bug report against every single package handling files in the
> archive (except for a handful). Since that would be insane, I simply
> dropped this request in my previous reply. I should have made this more
> explicit.
> 
> Can we now ignore 2) and concentrate on 1)?

No. If I wanted this semantics I could use shred(1).

I want my files saved.

Note that this same issue has been found and fixed in dpkg.

Thanks

Michal