coreutils-5.90: problem with "mkdir -p"

[Nelson H. F. Beebe]

A colleague reports about "mkdir -p" in coreutils-5.90:

        On Solaris, the /usr/local/bin/mkdir has a problem when used with the
        -p option:

        mkdir -p ~/.mozilla/firefox
        mkdir: cannot create directory `/u/class': Read-only file system

        This is done the first time that a user runs firefox.  Unfortunately,
        this prevents firefox from starting.

        This isn't the case with /usr/bin/mkdir.

Here's a further demo:

        sunfire% mkdir -p ~/.mozilla/frobnitz
        mkdir: cannot create directory `/u/guest': Read-only file system

        sunfire% touch foo
        # proves that filesystem is writable

        sunfire% touch ~/.mozilla/foo 
        # proves that directory is writable

        sunfire% mkdir -p ~/.mozilla/frobnitz
        mkdir: cannot create directory `/u/guest': Read-only file system
        # still fails

        sunfire% mkdir  ~/.mozilla/frobnitz  
        # works without -p

In these tests, the filesystem in question is automounted from a
Sun Solaris 8 fileserver to a Sun Solaris 9 client.

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