Re: install seems to be doing things needlessly (fwd)

[Dag Wieers]

On Mon, 7 Apr 2003, Jim Meyering wrote:

> Dag Wieers <address@hidden> wrote:
> > This mail was sent to address@hidden about a month ago.
> >
> > I noticed the following 'strange' behaviour and I was wondering if it was
> > a bug or just not important to change.
> >
> >    address@hidden soapbox-0.1.0]# soapbox -p /var/tmp/soapbox make install
> >    install -d -m0755 /lib /usr/bin
> >    soapbox: Attempt to chmod("/lib", 0755).
> >    soapbox: Attempt to chmod("/lib", 0755).
> ...
> >
> > You'll notice double chmod's (probably the default first and then the
> > requested one).
>
> Thanks for reporting that.
> Are you sure you're using the install binary from the coreutils package?
> I tried to reproduce it like this (from a build directory, hence the
> spelling of ginstall, not install):
>
>   $ mkdir src /tmp/dest
>   $ strace -e chmod ./ginstall -d -m0755 src /tmp/dest
>   chmod("src", 0755)                      = 0
>   chmod("/tmp/dest", 0755)                = 0
>
> and didn't see the double chmod.
> Can you provide a small example like the above that shows the problem?

I'm afraid that what I'm seeing isn't exactly the systemcalls, rather the 
glibc 'wrapper-functions'. And since install probably relies on the 
wrapper's logic to see whether the system call is actually needed, I see 
too many things I'd rather not see.

I guess what I should do is either put the glibc logic into Soapbox or try 
to find some way to trap system-calls (in userspace).

If you would know how to do this, I'd be grateful ;)

This however means that there are still some unnecessary glibc 
function-calls that don't translate into a systemcall. ;)

--   dag wieers,  address@hidden,  http://dag.wieers.com/   --
«Any errors in spelling, tact or fact are transmission errors»