Re: wget claims "Success" when it failed to write to local directory

[Christian Rosentreter]

Hello Tim,

thanks for your reply.

Yes, I'm running the latest version (running on a rusty OS X "Yosemite"), also 
see the
text you quoted at the bottom (unless there are silent updates w/o version 
bump?). My copy
was build on July 25, 2023. Pretty up-to-date by my standards. :-) All used 
dependencies
are also pretty recent (maybe a day or 2 days older than wget, most was build 
for wget).
Full output of `wget --version`, see below at the end of my reply.

I only applied this required single-line patch from the bug tracker to fix FTPS 
crashes
for one of my use cases: https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?62137   I don't see how 
this should
break other things however.

I always get "(Success)" here, never "(Permission denied)". I tried `chown 
root`, or just
`chmod -w`, etc., as soon wget has no permissions it will still report 
"(Success)". I also tried
with `--no-config` just in case (I only have "local-encoding = UTF-8" in 
there), same result.


I tested an older wget (1.20.1) on my Raspberry PI under whatever Linux it runs 
("Raspbian
GNU/Linux 10 (buster)" according to "/etc/os-release") and it works as you 
describe and reports
"Permission denied" in this case. But I also build the latest 1.21.4 version 
and it fails
with "(Success)" under my Linux too:

   $ mkdir ~/Desktop/wget_tmp
   $ cd ~/Desktop/wget_tmp/
   $ wget https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/wget/wget-1.21.4.tar.gz
   $ tar -xvzf wget-1.21.4.tar.gz
   $ cd wget-1.21.4/
   $ ./configure --with-ssl=openssl  # GnuTLS not available
   $ make

   $ mkdir ~/Desktop/foobar
   $ cd ~/Desktop/foobar
   $ chmod -w .

   $ ../wget_tmp/wget-1.21.4/src/wget https://www.christianrosentreter.com/
   --2023-10-21 20:53:19--  https://www.christianrosentreter.com/
   Resolving www.christianrosentreter.com... 85.13.142.16
   Connecting to www.christianrosentreter.com|85.13.142.16|:443... connected.
   HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
   Length: unspecified [text/html]
   index.html: Permission denied

   Cannot write to ‘index.html’ (Success).


   $ ../wget_tmp/wget-1.21.4/src/wget --version
   GNU Wget 1.21.4 built on linux-gnueabihf.

   -cares +digest -gpgme +https +ipv6 -iri +large-file -metalink +nls 
   +ntlm +opie -psl +ssl/openssl 

   Wgetrc: 
       /usr/local/etc/wgetrc (system)
   Locale: 
       /usr/local/share/locale 
   Compile: 
       gcc -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -DSYSTEM_WGETRC="/usr/local/etc/wgetrc" 
       -DLOCALEDIR="/usr/local/share/locale" -I. -I../lib -I../lib 
       -DHAVE_LIBSSL -DNDEBUG -g -O2 
   Link: 
       gcc -DHAVE_LIBSSL -DNDEBUG -g -O2 -lssl -lcrypto -lz 
       ../lib/libgnu.a 

   Copyright (C) 2015 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
   License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later
   <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
   This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
   There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

   Originally written by Hrvoje Niksic <hniksic@xemacs.org>.
   Please send bug reports and questions to <bug-wget@gnu.org>.



I'm happy to investigate further, but I would need a direction where I should 
look at. I'm
not familiar with wget from a development/ code perspective. Basically I'm just 
a wget user
that's already happy when it builds w/o major hassle and works w/o crashing 
afterwards. :-)





Here's the full uncut output of `wget --version` on my OS X machine:

   $ wget --version
   GNU Wget 1.21.4 built on darwin14.5.0.

   +cares +digest -gpgme +https +ipv6 +iri +large-file +metalink -nls 
   +ntlm +opie +psl +ssl/openssl 

   Wgetrc: 
       /usr/local/etc/wget/wgetrc (system)
   Compile: 
       gcc -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -DSYSTEM_WGETRC="/usr/local/etc/wget/wgetrc" 
       -DLOCALEDIR="/usr/local/silo/wget/1.21.4/share/locale" -I. -I../lib 
       -I../lib -I/usr/local/silo/libiconv/latest/include 
       -I/usr/local/silo/libunistring/latest/include 
       -I/usr/local/silo/libmetalink/latest/include 
       -I/usr/local/silo/c-ares/latest/include 
       -I/usr/local/silo/pcre2/latest/include 
       -I/usr/local/silo/uuid-ossp/latest/include 
       -I/usr/local/silo/libidn2/latest/include 
       -I/usr/local/silo/openssl/latest@3/include -DHAVE_LIBSSL 
       -I/usr/local/silo/zlib/latest/include 
       -I/usr/local/silo/libpsl/latest/include -DNDEBUG -g -O2 
   Link: 
       gcc -I/usr/local/silo/libmetalink/latest/include 
       -I/usr/local/silo/c-ares/latest/include 
       -I/usr/local/silo/pcre2/latest/include 
       -I/usr/local/silo/uuid-ossp/latest/include 
       -I/usr/local/silo/libidn2/latest/include 
       -I/usr/local/silo/openssl/latest@3/include -DHAVE_LIBSSL 
       -I/usr/local/silo/zlib/latest/include 
       -I/usr/local/silo/libpsl/latest/include -DNDEBUG -g -O2 
       -L/usr/local/silo/libiconv/latest/lib 
       -L/usr/local/silo/libunistring/latest/lib 
       -L/usr/local/silo/libmetalink/latest/lib -lmetalink 
       -L/usr/local/silo/c-ares/latest/lib -lcares 
       -L/usr/local/silo/pcre2/latest/lib -lpcre2-8 
       -L/usr/local/silo/uuid-ossp/latest/lib -luuid 
       -L/usr/local/silo/libidn2/latest/lib -lidn2 
       -L/usr/local/silo/openssl/latest@3/lib -lssl -lcrypto 
       -L/usr/local/silo/zlib/latest/lib -lz 
       -L/usr/local/silo/libpsl/latest/lib -lpsl -liconv -lunistring 
       ../lib/libgnu.a -lunistring -liconv 

   Copyright (C) 2015 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
   License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later
   <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
   This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
   There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

   Originally written by Hrvoje Niksic <hniksic@xemacs.org>.
   Please send bug reports and questions to <bug-wget@gnu.org>.



> On 21 Oct 2023, at 7:22 PM, Tim Rühsen <tim.ruehsen@gmx.de> wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> do you run the latest wget (1.21.4)?
> 
> With that version, you get a
> 
>  Cannot write to 'index.html' (Permission denied).
> 
> Regards, Tim
> 
> On 10/21/23 17:16, Christian Rosentreter wrote:
>> Hi there,
>> There's a minor cosmetic bug in wget 1.x where it claims "Success" when it 
>> in fact entirely failed to write to the local
>> disk, e.g. because of missing permissions/ write access to the current 
>> directory. The return code is "3" however, so it's
>> basically only the message that it prints on screen that is funny in a 
>> suspicious way:
>> ### Prepare situation…
>> $ mkdir foobar
>> $ chmod -w foobar   # remove write access
>> $ cd foobar
>> ### Note: the "Permission denied" and "Cannot write to" messages, but we
>> ###       get a "(Success)" anyway:
>> $ wget https://www.christianrosentreter.com/
>> --2023-10-21 17:05:35--  https://www.christianrosentreter.com/
>> Resolving www.christianrosentreter.com (www.christianrosentreter.com)... 
>> 85.13.142.16
>> Connecting to www.christianrosentreter.com 
>> (www.christianrosentreter.com)|85.13.142.16|:443... connected.
>> HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
>> Length: unspecified [text/html]
>> index.html: Permission denied
>> Cannot write to 'index.html' (Success).
>> ### The return code seems to be reasonable though:
>> $ echo $?
>> 3
>> ### Version tested:
>> $ wget --version
>> GNU Wget 1.21.4 built on darwin14.5.0.
>> +cares +digest -gpgme +https +ipv6 +iri +large-file +metalink -nls
>> +ntlm +opie +psl +ssl/openssl
>> …cut…