Issue 86 in xar: car can clobber parent folder ownership

[codesite...@google.com]

Status: New
Owner: ----
Labels: Type-Defect Priority-Medium

New issue 86 by ba...@math.columbia.edu: car can clobber parent folder
ownership
http://code.google.com/p/xar/issues/detail?id=86

What steps will reproduce the problem?

Using sudo, if I create and then extract an archive, attempting to -k
preserve existing, and -P preserve ownerships, xar can clobber the
ownership of a parent directory for which it didn't record ownership data,
simply because it needs to write to that directory. Is it chown'ing and
forgetting to chown back?

Specifically, using sudo and absolute paths, xar doesn't record ownership
data for directories above the target directory. This can be seen by a
verbose -tvf listing. Now, delete the target directory and restore using -C
/ -xkvPf flags. While xar claims "already exists, not overwriting" for the
parent directory, it nevertheless changes ownership to root for the
immediate parent directory. (Directories further up are left untouched.)

What is the expected output? What do you see instead?

I expect all file ownerships as before. Instead, other programs such as
ExpanDrive, my Dock, or SIlverlight stop working, and I spend many hours
debugging these other programs before realizing that xar has hosed my
ownerships.

What version of the product are you using? On what operating system?

xar 1.6dev on Mac OS X Version 10.7.4

Please provide any additional information below.

Sample script and output attached.

Attachments:
bug.sh 341 bytes
output.txt 2.7 KB