Current file permissions not preserved

[jheiss]

Reported by Raymond Barbiero via email:

Say that tpkg a writes a file to /home/t/etc/a Say that tpkg b writes a file to /home/t/etc/b

Tpkg a specifies: file_defaults: posix: owner: t group: roleusers

Tpkg b specifies (or has no file_defaults): file_defaults:

Tpkg a is installed first. Ownership of the /home/t and /home/t/etc are now set to t:roleusers Tpkg b is installed second. Ownership of /home/t is now root:root and /home/t/etc is now owned by root:root

[jheiss]

My comment back:

That's a bug. There's logic in the unpack method such that existing files and directories overwritten by a package install should be left with their previous permissions and ownership, unless the new package has specific permissions and ownership for that particular file.

I.e. the precedence for deciding what permissions to apply to a file being installed are:

• Package has specific perms for that file
• File already exists, use existing perms
• Use file_defaults from package

You can look for the comment that starts with the line "Reset the permission/ownership of the conflicting files as how they were before." if you want to inspect the code that should be doing this.