Re: 'chown' of translator causes "Bought the Farm" error

[Roland McGrath]

There actually might be several bugs here and I can't tell exactly which
things are biting you.

> Now, if I change the ownership of the translator:
> 
> chown root.root /dev/hd0s4

Can you verify that this actually changed the behavior of who is permitted
to read the device as it should?

> And then try to list the files again:
> 
> >ls /linux
> 
> Computer Bought the Farm.

You should definitely not get that error.  If the translator could not
start up, you should get "Translator died" (EDIED).  That is what I would
expect in the case of a passive translator whose owner user is not
permitted to open the specified device.  If that is in fact the situation,
then it should be easy to reproduce that case and track down the failure of
the error handling.  (I cannot discern from your description precisely what
the conditions were in your case.)

> This persists until you remove the translator, then reattach it
> under the new ownership.

I don't know precisely what you mean by this sentence.  There are two
translators involved, and all sorts of things you might mean by "remove"
and "reattach".  Please refer to specific actions.