Re: problem with cp-command

[Bob Proulx]

Peter Landgren wrote:
> I have done some more tests. It seems that the problem only appears when I 
> copy from one specific user.

A specified user?  Or a specific file?  (I am thinking about something
particular here...)

> I created a new user copied sip-4.6.tar.gz, unpacked it and run
> pytgon configure.py, make did a su and "make install" and now
> everything worked just fine. So there is some problem with the "old"
> user, but I cant' figure out what it is.

Which seems to show that there is nothing intrically wrong with the
programs or file permissions.  Is the filesystem full?

> However, I tried to install PyQt-X11-4.2 from this new user, and at the end 
> of the install process I got the same error again, when there were just two 
> files left to copy! There were hundreds of cp-commands in this install.
> 
> What's going on? Is it a problem with cp or is it a problem with the
> Mandriva Spring distro?

Do any errors show up in your system's syslog file?  (Usually
/var/log/syslog or /var/log/messages but I am not familiar with
Mandriva and you may have to find the right file.)  Are there any disk
I/O errors being reported there?

This is beginning to sound like hardware failure.  It would be
plausible to me that when certain disk sectors are accessed that it
would generate errors and cp would fail.  But access other disk
sections and everything succeeds.

> > > As I do this as root, cp should not complain?

The root superuser will have permission and therefore all permission
errors should be avoided.  But even root will fail when the filesystem
is full.  And root has no permission over NFS.  While being root
avoids permission problems locally it does not guarantee that there
won't be other problems.

Bob