Unsolicited change of group

[jw schultz]

On Wed, Oct 08, 2003 at 07:57:07PM +1000, BlakJak wrote:
> Using rsync to copy files on the localhost, the group is being preserved 
> even though I have not used the -g or -a options.
> 
> My source files:
> $ ls -l ~/working/source/path
> -rwxr-xr-x    1 blakjak  blakjak       115 Oct  8 01:37 foo.php
> -rwxr-xr-x    1 blakjak  blakjak      6285 Oct  8 01:37 bar.php
> 
> My destination:
> $ ls -l /active/path
> -rwxr-x---    1 blakjak  wwwadmin      115 Oct  8 02:06 foo.php
> -rwxr-x---    1 blakjak  wwwadmin     6285 Oct  8 02:06 bar.php
> 
> $ touch foo.php
> $ rsync -Curv --exclude='.*' --exclude='*~' ~/working/source/path/ 
> /active/path
> $ ls -l /active/path
> -rwxr-x---    1 blakjak  blakjak       115 Oct  8 20:05 foo.php
> -rwxr-x---    1 blakjak  wwwadmin     6285 Oct  8 02:06 bar.php
> 
> ----
> 
> Note that the permissions on the destination files have been left alone, 
> but the group has been changed.
> 
> The man page indicates that group will only be preserved if you use the 
> -g option (or by extension, the -a option), which I have not.  There is 
> no option to disable the preservation of group.  Therefore the default 
> behaviour in all cases should be to _not_ preserve group unless the user 
> specifies otherwise.  I can't understand why rsync is altering the 
> destination files in this way.
> 
> If you can shed any light on this, I'd love to hear from you.

Is the user doing the rsync root or a member of the wwwadmin
group?  It is creating a new file and then chowning it and
you can't set the gid of a file to a group you aren't a
member of.

-- 
________________________________________________________________
	J.W. Schultz            Pegasystems Technologies
	email address:		jw at pegasys.ws

		Remember Cernan and Schmitt