extended attributes
Russell Strong
russell at strong.id.au
Tue May 9 09:09:41 UTC 2006
Les Mikesell wrote:
> On Thu, 2006-05-04 at 06:25, Aaron Konstam wrote:
>
>>> I've found that when I edit a file with vi or gedit I lose all of the
>>> user extended attributes associated with that file. A stat reveals that
>>> the inode number has changed. Is this the reason why I'm losing the
>>> extended attributes? Is vi and gedit creating a new file? Is it easy
>>> to change this behaviour?
>>>
>>>
>> I don't know for sure but that makes sense to me. When vi is used, at
>> least, a temporary copy of the file is created to be edited. It would
>> not surprise me that when you save the file a new file with a new inode
>> is created.
>>
>
> If it did that, you would not be able to edit files where you
> have write permission on the file but not the directory
> containing them and hardlinked files would no longer be
> linked. It should be copying the temp file contents back
> over the original at least in cases where it can't duplicate
> all the attributes and links.
>
>
I tried editing a file where I didn't have write permission on the
directory, only have write permission on the file. That worked as I
expected, the EAs were preserved and the inode did not change. Anyone
know why vim behaves differently when it has write permissions for the
directory? Is this a vim "bug" ( not behaving the way ?most? users
expect ) or is there a reason?
More information about the users
mailing list