Re: [PATCH] mv: do not produce diagnostics for xattr/selinux preserving failures

[Jim Meyering]

Ondřej Vašík wrote:
> as reported in rhbz #496142 by Eric Sandeen, mv produces a lot of
> unwanted messages when moving files to filesystem without xattr support.
> I guess mv selinux/xattr diagnostic error messages should be reduced as
> is done for cp -a, attached patch should do that.
...
> +  mv: do not produce diagnostic errors for preserving xattr's to
> +  prevent message spam on file systems without xattr support.

Thanks for the patch, but mv's charter is stricter than that of cp -a.
I.e., people expect mv to preserve all attributes when the source
and destination are on the same file system, so IMHO, failure to
preserve any attribute (e.g., for an inter-device mv) requires
_some_ diagnosis.

However, when there are many files, and mv is failing to preserve some
attribute repeatedly, it would make sense to print only the first N
such diagnostics, and then for the N+1st, print one more saying that
there have been additional attribute-preservation failures, but mv will
not display any more.