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NEWS
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NEWS
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GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
* Noteworthy changes in release 7.1 (2009-02-21) [stable]
** New features
Add extended attribute support available on certain filesystems like ext2
and XFS.
cp: Tries to copy xattrs when --preserve=xattr or --preserve=all specified
mv: Always tries to copy xattrs
install: Never copies xattrs
cp and mv accept a new option, --no-clobber (-n): silently refrain
from overwriting any existing destination file
dd accepts iflag=cio and oflag=cio to open the file in CIO (concurrent I/O)
mode where this feature is available.
install accepts a new option, --compare (-C): compare each pair of source
and destination files, and if the destination has identical content and
any specified owner, group, permissions, and possibly SELinux context, then
do not modify the destination at all.
ls --color now highlights hard linked files, too
stat -f recognizes the Lustre file system type
** Bug fixes
chgrp, chmod, chown --silent (--quiet, -f) no longer print some diagnostics
[bug introduced in coreutils-5.1]
cp uses much less memory in some situations
cp -a now correctly tries to preserve SELinux context (announced in 6.9.90),
doesn't inform about failure, unlike with --preserve=all
du --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM before
processing the first file name
seq 9223372036854775807 9223372036854775808 now prints only two numbers
on systems with extended long double support and good library support.
Even with this patch, on some systems, it still produces invalid output,
from 3 to at least 1026 lines long. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
seq -w now accounts for a decimal point added to the last number
to correctly print all numbers to the same width.
wc --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM, before
processing the first file name, unless the list of names is known
to be small enough.
** Changes in behavior
cp and mv: the --reply={yes,no,query} option has been removed.
Using it has elicited a warning for the last three years.
dd: user specified offsets that are too big are handled better.
Previously, erroneous parameters to skip and seek could result
in redundant reading of the file with no warnings or errors.
du: -H (initially equivalent to --si) is now equivalent to
--dereference-args, and thus works as POSIX requires
shred: now does 3 overwrite passes by default rather than 25.
ls -l now marks SELinux-only files with the less obtrusive '.',
rather than '+'. A file with any other combination of MAC and ACL
is still marked with a '+'.
* Noteworthy changes in release 7.0 (2008-10-05) [beta]
** New programs
timeout: Run a command with bounded time.
truncate: Set the size of a file to a specified size.
** New features
chgrp, chmod, chown, chcon, du, rm: now all display linear performance,
even when operating on million-entry directories on ext3 and ext4 file
systems. Before, they would exhibit O(N^2) performance, due to linear
per-entry seek time cost when operating on entries in readdir order.
Rm was improved directly, while the others inherit the improvement
from the newer version of fts in gnulib.
comm now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
comm accepts new option, --output-delimiter=STR, that allows specification
of an output delimiter other than the default single TAB.
cp and mv: the deprecated --reply=X option is now also undocumented.
dd accepts iflag=fullblock to make it accumulate full input blocks.
With this new option, after a short read, dd repeatedly calls read,
until it fills the incomplete block, reaches EOF, or encounters an error.
df accepts a new option --total, which produces a grand total of all
arguments after all arguments have been processed.
If the GNU MP library is available at configure time, factor and
expr support arbitrarily large numbers. Pollard's rho algorithm is
used to factor large numbers.
install accepts a new option --strip-program to specify the program used to
strip binaries.
ls now colorizes files with capabilities if libcap is available
ls -v now uses filevercmp function as sort predicate (instead of strverscmp)
md5sum now accepts the new option, --quiet, to suppress the printing of
'OK' messages. sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum accept it, too.
sort accepts a new option, --files0-from=F, that specifies a file
containing a null-separated list of files to sort. This list is used
instead of filenames passed on the command-line to avoid problems with
maximum command-line (argv) length.
sort accepts a new option --batch-size=NMERGE, where NMERGE
represents the maximum number of inputs that will be merged at once.
When processing more than NMERGE inputs, sort uses temporary files.
sort accepts a new option --version-sort (-V, --sort=version),
specifying that ordering is to be based on filevercmp.
** Bug fixes
chcon --verbose now prints a newline after each message
od no longer suffers from platform bugs in printf(3). This is
probably most noticeable when using 'od -tfL' to print long doubles.
seq -0.1 0.1 2 now prints 2,0 when locale's decimal point is ",".
Before, it would mistakenly omit the final number in that example.
shuf honors the --zero-terminated (-z) option, even with --input-range=LO-HI
shuf --head-count is now correctly documented. The documentation
previously claimed it was called --head-lines.
** Improvements
Improved support for access control lists (ACLs): On MacOS X, Solaris 7..10,
HP-UX 11, Tru64, AIX, IRIX 6.5, and Cygwin, "ls -l" now displays the presence
of an ACL on a file via a '+' sign after the mode, and "cp -p" copies ACLs.
join has significantly better performance due to better memory management
ls now uses constant memory when not sorting and using one_per_line format,
no matter how many files are in a given directory
od now aligns fields across lines when printing multiple -t
specifiers, and no longer prints fields that resulted entirely from
padding the input out to the least common multiple width.
** Changes in behavior
stat's --context (-Z) option has always been a no-op.
Now it evokes a warning that it is obsolete and will be removed.
* Noteworthy changes in release 6.12 (2008-05-31) [stable]
** Bug fixes
chcon, runcon: --help output now includes the bug-reporting address
cp -p copies permissions more portably. For example, on MacOS X 10.5,
"cp -p some-fifo some-file" no longer fails while trying to copy the
permissions from the some-fifo argument.
id with no options now prints the SELinux context only when invoked
with no USERNAME argument.
id and groups once again print the AFS-specific nameless group-ID (PAG).
Printing of such large-numbered, kernel-only (not in /etc/group) group-IDs
was suppressed in 6.11 due to ignorance that they are useful.
uniq: avoid subtle field-skipping malfunction due to isblank misuse.
In some locales on some systems, isblank(240) (aka  ) is nonzero.
On such systems, uniq --skip-fields=N would fail to skip the proper
number of fields for some inputs.
tac: avoid segfault with --regex (-r) and multiple files, e.g.,
"echo > x; tac -r x x". [bug present at least in textutils-1.8b, from 1992]
** Changes in behavior
install once again sets SELinux context, when possible
[it was deliberately disabled in 6.9.90]
* Noteworthy changes in release 6.11 (2008-04-19) [stable]
** Bug fixes
configure --enable-no-install-program=groups now works.
"cp -fR fifo E" now succeeds with an existing E. Before this fix, using
-fR to copy a fifo or "special" file onto an existing file would fail
with EEXIST. Now, it once again unlinks the destination before trying
to create the destination file. [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
dd once again works with unnecessary options like if=/dev/stdin and
of=/dev/stdout. [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0h]
id now uses getgrouplist, when possible. This results in
much better performance when there are many users and/or groups.
ls no longer segfaults on files in /proc when linked with an older version
of libselinux. E.g., ls -l /proc/sys would dereference a NULL pointer.
md5sum would segfault for invalid BSD-style input, e.g.,
echo 'MD5 (' | md5sum -c - Now, md5sum ignores that line.
sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
[bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
md5sum -c would accept a NUL-containing checksum string like "abcd\0..."
and would unnecessarily read and compute the checksum of the named file,
and then compare that checksum to the invalid one: guaranteed to fail.
Now, it recognizes that the line is not valid and skips it.
sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
[bug present in the original version, in coreutils-4.5.1, 1995]
"mkdir -Z x dir" no longer segfaults when diagnosing invalid context "x"
mkfifo and mknod would fail similarly. Now they're fixed.
mv would mistakenly unlink a destination file before calling rename,
when the destination had two or more hard links. It no longer does that.
[bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
"paste -d'\' file" no longer overruns memory (heap since coreutils-5.1.2,
stack before then) [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
"pr -e" with a mix of backspaces and TABs no longer corrupts the heap
[bug present in the original version, in 1992]
"ptx -F'\' long-file-name" would overrun a malloc'd buffer and corrupt
the heap. That was triggered by a lone backslash (or odd number of them)
at the end of the option argument to --flag-truncation=STRING (-F),
--word-regexp=REGEXP (-W), or --sentence-regexp=REGEXP (-S).
"rm -r DIR" would mistakenly declare to be "write protected" -- and
prompt about -- full DIR-relative names longer than MIN (PATH_MAX, 8192).
"rmdir --ignore-fail-on-non-empty" detects and ignores the failure
in more cases when a directory is empty.
"seq -f % 1" would issue the erroneous diagnostic "seq: memory exhausted"
rather than reporting the invalid string format.
[bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
** New features
join now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
sort accepts the new option --sort=WORD, where WORD can be one of
general-numeric, month, numeric or random. These are equivalent to the
options --general-numeric-sort/-g, --month-sort/-M, --numeric-sort/-n
and --random-sort/-R, resp.
** Improvements
id and groups work around an AFS-related bug whereby those programs
would print an invalid group number, when given no user-name argument.
ls --color no longer outputs unnecessary escape sequences
seq gives better diagnostics for invalid formats.
** Portability
rm now works properly even on systems like BeOS and Haiku,
which have negative errno values.
** Consistency
install, mkdir, rmdir and split now write --verbose output to stdout,
not to stderr.
* Noteworthy changes in release 6.10 (2008-01-22) [stable]
** Bug fixes
Fix a non-portable use of sed in configure.ac.
[bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.92]
* Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.92 (2008-01-12) [beta]
** Bug fixes
cp --parents no longer uses uninitialized memory when restoring the
permissions of a just-created destination directory.
[bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
tr's case conversion would fail in a locale with differing numbers
of lower case and upper case characters. E.g., this would fail:
env LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO-8859-1 tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]'
[bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
** Improvements
"touch -d now writable-but-owned-by-someone-else" now succeeds
whenever that same command would succeed without "-d now".
Before, it would work fine with no -d option, yet it would
fail with the ostensibly-equivalent "-d now".
* Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.91 (2007-12-15) [beta]
** Bug fixes
"ls -l" would not output "+" on SELinux hosts unless -Z was also given.
"rm" would fail to unlink a non-directory when run in an environment
in which the user running rm is capable of unlinking a directory.
[bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
* Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.90 (2007-12-01) [beta]
** New programs
arch: equivalent to uname -m, not installed by default
But don't install this program on Solaris systems.
chcon: change the SELinux security context of a file
mktemp: create a temporary file or directory (or names)
runcon: run a program in a different SELinux security context
** Programs no longer installed by default
hostname, su
** Changes in behavior
cp, by default, refuses to copy through a dangling destination symlink
Set POSIXLY_CORRECT if you require the old, risk-prone behavior.
pr -F no longer suppresses the footer or the first two blank lines in
the header. This is for compatibility with BSD and POSIX.
tr now warns about an unescaped backslash at end of string.
The tr from coreutils-5.2.1 and earlier would fail for such usage,
and Solaris' tr ignores that final byte.
** New features
Add SELinux support, based on the patch from Fedora:
* cp accepts new --preserve=context option.
* "cp -a" works with SELinux:
Now, cp -a attempts to preserve context, but failure to do so does
not change cp's exit status. However "cp --preserve=context" is
similar, but failure *does* cause cp to exit with nonzero status.
* install accepts new "-Z, --context=C" option.
* id accepts new "-Z" option.
* stat honors the new %C format directive: SELinux security context string
* ls accepts a slightly modified -Z option.
* ls: contrary to Fedora version, does not accept --lcontext and --scontext
The following commands and options now support the standard size
suffixes kB, M, MB, G, GB, and so on for T, P, Y, Z, and Y:
head -c, head -n, od -j, od -N, od -S, split -b, split -C,
tail -c, tail -n.
cp -p tries to preserve the GID of a file even if preserving the UID
is not possible.
uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
wc no longer warns about character decoding errors in multibyte locales.
This means for example that "wc /bin/sh" now produces normal output
(though the word count will have no real meaning) rather than many
error messages.
** New build options
By default, "make install" no longer attempts to install (or even build) su.
To change that, use ./configure --enable-install-program=su.
If you also want to install the new "arch" program, do this:
./configure --enable-install-program=arch,su.
You can inhibit the compilation and installation of selected programs
at configure time. For example, to avoid installing "hostname" and
"uptime", use ./configure --enable-no-install-program=hostname,uptime
Note: currently, "make check" passes, even when arch and su are not
built (that's the new default). However, if you inhibit the building
and installation of other programs, don't be surprised if some parts
of "make check" fail.
** Remove deprecated options
df no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
du no longer accepts the --kilobytes or --megabytes options.
ls no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
ptx longer accepts the --copyright option.
who no longer accepts -i or --idle.
** Improved robustness
ln -f can no longer silently clobber a just-created hard link.
In some cases, ln could be seen as being responsible for data loss.
For example, given directories a, b, c, and files a/f and b/f, we
should be able to do this safely: ln -f a/f b/f c && rm -f a/f b/f
However, before this change, ln would succeed, and thus cause the
loss of the contents of a/f.
stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
in its 35-colon command-line argument
** Bug fixes
chmod no longer ignores a dangling symlink. Now, chmod fails
with a diagnostic saying that it cannot operate on such a file.
[bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
cp attempts to read a regular file, even if stat says it is empty.
Before, "cp /proc/cpuinfo c" would create an empty file when the kernel
reports stat.st_size == 0, while "cat /proc/cpuinfo > c" would "work",
and create a nonempty one. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
cp --parents no longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file
name components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b d"
no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a destination
symlink to be the same as the referenced file when copying links
or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink to FILE,
"cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently doing
nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when the
destination is a symlink.
"cp -i --update older newer" no longer prompts; same for mv
"cp -i" now detects read errors on standard input, and no longer consumes
too much seekable input; same for ln, install, mv, and rm.
cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
"cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
date -d now accepts strings of the form e.g., 'YYYYMMDD +N days',
in addition to the usual 'YYYYMMDD N days'.
du -s now includes the size of any stat'able-but-inaccessible directory
in the total size.
du (without -s) prints whatever it knows of the size of an inaccessible
directory. Before, du would print nothing for such a directory.
ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
[introduced in coreutils-6.0]
ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
od's --skip (-j) option now works even when the kernel says that a
nonempty regular file has stat.st_size = 0. This happens at least
with files in /proc and linux-2.6.22.
"od -j L FILE" had a bug: when the number of bytes to skip, L, is exactly
the same as the length of FILE, od would skip *no* bytes. When the number
of bytes to skip is exactly the sum of the lengths of the first N files,
od would skip only the first N-1 files. [introduced in textutils-2.0.9]
./printf %.10000000f 1 could get an internal ENOMEM error and generate
no output, yet erroneously exit with status 0. Now it diagnoses the error
and exits with nonzero status. [present in initial implementation]
seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
seq would mistakenly reject some valid format strings containing %%,
and would mistakenly accept some invalid ones. e.g., %g%% and %%g, resp.
"seq .1 .1" would mistakenly generate no output on some systems
Obsolete sort usage with an invalid ordering-option character, e.g.,
"env _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 sort +1x" no longer makes sort free an
invalid pointer [introduced in coreutils-6.5]
sorting very long lines (relative to the amount of available memory)
no longer provokes unaligned memory access
split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
[this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
complement of Set1. [present in the original version, in 1992]
tr no longer rejects an unmatched [:lower:] or [:upper:] in SET1.
[present in the original version]
* Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
** Bug fixes
cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
* Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
** Bug fixes
chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
support but with insufficient /proc support.
"cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
"cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
in coreutils-5.3.0.
dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
"ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
coreutils-6.0.
A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
"mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
directory is unreadable.
rm (without -f) could prompt when it shouldn't, or fail to prompt
when it should, when operating on a full name longer than 511 bytes
and getting an ENOMEM error while trying to form the long name.
rm could mistakenly traverse into the wrong directory under unusual
conditions: when a full name longer than 511 bytes specifies a search-only
directory, and when forming that name fails with ENOMEM, rm would attempt
to open a truncated-to-511-byte name with the first five bytes replaced
with "[...]". If such a directory were to actually exist, rm would attempt
to remove it.
"rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
Before it would print nothing.
"rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
"rm -rf D" would emit an misleading diagnostic when failing to
remove a symbolic link within the unwritable directory, D.
Introduced in coreutils-6.0. Similarly, when a cross-partition
"mv" fails because the source directory is unwritable, it now gives
a reasonable diagnostic. Before, this would print
$ mkdir /tmp/x; touch /tmp/x/y; chmod -w /tmp/x;
$ test $(stat -c %d /tmp/x) -ne $(stat -c %d .) && mv /tmp/x/y .
mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Not a directory
Now it prints this:
mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Permission denied.
** New features
sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
--check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
--check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
* Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
** Bug fixes
When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
--preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
This bug affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
* Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
** Bug fixes
ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
** Improved robustness
Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
* Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
** Bug fixes
du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
"ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
** New features
rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
* Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
** Bug fixes
chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
--from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
* Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
** Improved robustness
pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
buggy native getaddrinfo function.
rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
or NFS-mounted partition.
sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
** Bug fixes
chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
or neglect to report file removal.
For the "groups" command:
"groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
"groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
"groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
** Portability
Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
* Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
** Changes in behavior
mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
a final `./' or `../' component.
tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
this only for pipes.
** Infrastructure changes
Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
** Bug fixes
cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
name is "." or "..".
"ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
no differently than regular directories on a file system with
dirent.d_type support.
"mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
* Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
** Changes in behavior
df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
** New features
printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
** Bug fixes
cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
[introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
[introduced in coreutils-6.0]
ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
[introduced in coreutils-6.0]
* Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
** Improved robustness
df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
(a negative number) rather than as garbage.
dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
and unexpand.
fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
(chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
** Changes in behavior
basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
where the two are distinct.
chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
`chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
`mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
`mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
`chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
`cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
. no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
? operators.
date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
df changes:
df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
(the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
now checks for).
install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
successful and the output is easier to parse.
ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
and sticky) with the -m option.
nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
$HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
default of using no argument still acts like -i.
rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
seq changes:
seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
silently ignoring one of them.
stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
containing this change was 5.92.
stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
automatically newline terminated.
stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
\v, \", \\).
With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
or socket.
** Scheduled for removal
ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
command to unlink a directory.
Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
-F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
** New programs
base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
** New features
chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
2.6.8 and later).
'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
list directories before files.
rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
against mistakes.
shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
list of NUL-terminated file names.
** Bug fixes
cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
usually printing nothing.
cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses