differences between setfiles and restorecon? repeat of old thread?

[Tom London]

Running targeted/enforcing, latest rawhide.

I created a 'backup' of my root lvm2 partition, mounted the new partition as 
/mnt, and copied the files via 'cp -dpR / /mnt'.

The copied files were all incorrectly labeled. (same result with cp 
--preserve=all'). 

I tried 'chroot /mnt; restorcon -v -R /', but it had no effect (returned 
immediately), as did any other resorecon attempted in the chroot'ed shell.

'setfiles -v /etc/selinux/targeted/contexts/files/file_contexts /' did the 
right thing. 

[Its almost as if restorecon is using the 'real' full pathname (with leading 
/mnt), and setfiles is using the 'chroot'ed' pathname (without the leading 
/mnt).]

First, should the 'preserve' on cp have failed to copy the contexts? Second, 
why the difference in behavior between setfiles and restorecon in this 
context?

Still curious,
tom
-- 
Tom London