Description of problem: Previous versions of cp would honour symlinks as the target of a copy. coreutils-5.97-12.5.fc6 exhibits the usual, expected behavior. The version released with F7 does not, giving an error message instead. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): coreutils-6.9-2.fc7.i386.rpm How reproducible: always Steps to Reproduce: 1. cd /var 2. ln -sf beta tmp/alpha 3. echo "blah" > tmp/alpha (this creates a file called beta with "blah" in it) 4. rm tmp/beta 5. echo "blah" > file 6. cp file tmp/alpha Actual results: cp: cannot create regular file `tmp/alpha': File exists Expected results: [root@localhost var]# dir tmp total 12 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 4 Jun 10 04:35 alpha -> beta -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 5 Jun 10 04:36 beta Additional info: Regressing to coreutils-5.97-12.5.fc6 exhibits the correct behavior
Thanks for the report. That is indeed a bug. I've just fixed it upstream: http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.gnu.core-utils.bugs/10680
This fix seems to introduce some other problems, reading further in the thread. I'm going to defer this bug-fix until F-8, or until a new stable coreutils release appears with the fix.
As of Fedora 8, coreutils-6.9-9.fc8, cp still does not properly work with the dangling symlink despite the upstream commentary suggesting that the fix had been worked out an incorporated into their code. When will this be brought down into Fedora ?
The existing patch upstream has subtle flaws, and is about to be removed. I'll post a link here over the weekend.
Here's why GNU cp will (by default) continue to fail to copy through dangling symlinks: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.gnu.coreutils.bugs/11922
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