Re: Huge bug in mv 4.1.11 (i386)

[Jim Meyering]

SteŽphane Asco‘et <address@hidden> wrote:
> Hello, I've lost data with this bug: When moving a complete tree from
> one volume to another, if the process can't continue(eg because the
> volume is full), the files that mv started to move are left as they
> are, meaning that lots of them are incomplete! There is a big risk

Sorry you lost data, but unless "mv" failed to report the failure it's
not a bug;  mv leaving behind incomplete destination files in that case
is the usual (and permitted by standards) behavior.

Even though you're using such an old version of mv (fileutils-1.1.11
is *old*) I doubt it is misbehaving. In any case, you're long-overdue
for an upgrade.

> that the user trust the files without seeing that they are
> incomplete. Same problem for folders, often they are created, but
> without all their files and subdirectories. Thus, a solution MUST be
> found. Why not checking the space left before starting to move
> something?

That is not mv's job.  You can certainly write a wrapper script
to attempt to avoid such problems by predicting whether there will
be enough space while copying, but even with a pre-copy space-available
check, there'd be no guarantee.