Some unsafe chown(at) code can be removed by rustix #12041

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1. oech3

   changed the title [-]Some unsafe chwown(at) can be removed by rustix[/-] [+]Some unsafe chown(at) code can be removed by rustix[/+] on Apr 27, 2026
2. ksgk1 commented on Apr 30, 2026

   

   ksgk1

   on Apr 30, 2026

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   I am currently looking into this and I read on The man page that:

   chown() changes the ownership of the file specified by path,
   which is dereferenced if it is a symbolic link.

   lchown() is like chown(), but does not dereference symbolic
   links.

   Which would be from my understanding of the rustix implementation, that it does not have the follow option directly. So my idea was, to use canonicalize() to follow the symlink. Would that be a good solution?

   My other question is regarding safety, if the canonicalization fails, what kind of error should I return? Is IOError::last_os_error() the way to go in that case?
3. ksgk1 commented on May 1, 2026

   

   ksgk1

   on May 1, 2026

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   I created a PR: #12107 for those changes.
4. cakebaker

   linked a pull request that will close this issuechown: Replace unsafe calls with rustix (Issue: #12041) #12107on May 1, 2026
5. ksgk1 commented on May 1, 2026

   

   ksgk1

   on May 1, 2026

   Last edited by ksgk1

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   There are some issues in my code apparently. I had the test suit failing on main too, so I assumed my additions were not causing an issue. I will look into this.

   The test that fails is: https://github.com/ksgk1/coreutils/blob/replace-unsafe-chown-by-rustix-%2312041/tests/by-util/test_cp.rs#L3340

   I looked into it, and added some debug statements to my code, and noticed, that
   fs::exists(&final_path).is_ok() returns true meaning that the path exists. When I call rustix::fs::chown(final_path, ...) it returns with an "No such file or directory (os error 2)" error.

   I could not find an open issue on the rustix project, I would like to hear someone's opinion on this and then I can open an issue.
6. oech3 commented on Oct 18, 2026

   

   oech3

   on Oct 18, 2026

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   #15509 (comment)
7. oech3

   closed this as not plannedon Oct 18, 2026
8. oech3

   reopened this on Oct 18, 2026
9. limadog9

   added 4 commits that reference this issue on Oct 18, 2026

   perms: use rustix for ownership changes

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   This issue will close once commit 353b123 is merged into the 'main' branch.

   353b123

   perms: use rustix for ownership changes

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   This issue will close once commit 410428a is merged into the 'main' branch.

   410428a

   perms: use rustix for ownership changes

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   This issue will close once commit 7d5168d is merged into the 'main' branch.

   7d5168d

   perms: use rustix for ownership changes

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   This issue will close once commit d4c3e8e is merged into the 'main' branch.

   d4c3e8e