Re: Deleting owned files...

[Andreas Schwab <schwab@issan.informatik.uni-dortmund.de>]

Michael Smith <miff@apanix.apana.org.au> writes:

|> Greetings :
|> I'm currently being bitten by the "can't delete lockfile" bug, and it's 
|> being a bit of a pain - programs that create lockfiles but can't 
|> delete them.

|> I suspect this is also the reason why tar 1.11.2 (I rebuilt this with the
|> pl44 mintlibs if anyone is interested) can't set ownership/permissions
|> on files it extracts sometimes (that's annoying!).

No, this has nothing to do with it.  Only the superuser can change the
ownership of a file, and you can only change the mode if you own the
file (or you are effectively root).  I never had problems extracting a
tarfile if tar is running as root.  Unter SysV, everyone can give away
files, but that is too risky, and GNU tar will never do that as a
non-privileged process.

Andreas.

+------------------------------------------------------------------------+
Andreas Schwab                                      "And now for something
schwab@ls5.informatik.uni-dortmund.de                completely different"
* Linux/Atari is coming soon, stay tuned * But don't hold your breath... *