bug#8767: cp: --preserve=all doesn't work for the parents when --parent is used

[Ondrej Vasik]

On Mon, 2011-05-30 at 22:43 +0000, Christoph Anton Mitterer wrote:
> Hi.
> 
> When doing something like:
> cp --no-dereference --preserve=all --parents --no-clobber "${pathname}"
> "${destination}"
> 
> Then the file (if it's not a directory) will be copied to
> ${destination}/${pathname} including all the directories within ${pathname}
> (e.g. ./foo/bar/file).
> While the owner (user/group) and file permission bits of foo and bar seem
> to be preserved, the XATTRs are not (maybe the other preserve-classes are
> also not preserved).
> 
> 
> Doubt that this is desired, so I guess it's a bug.

Could you please specify coreutils version where you experience the
issue?

--preserve=all tries to preserve all possible things which could be
preserved with --preserve , but in the case of extended attributes and
SELinux context possible failure of preserving these attributes doesn't
change exit status. This is described in info documentation. If it
doesn't show any error message, please try if using --preserve=xattr
shows an error. Additionally, strace of the failed preservation and
information about destination filesystem might help too.

Greetings,
         Ondrej Vasik