Last week i recompiled my gentoo from scratch and installed coreutils 5.0.91. A few time while ebuilding i saw lines like the following line: chown: `florian.users': invalid user The coreutils NEWS files says: * Major changes in release 5.0.1: [...] ** New features [...] - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment. [New features... HAH!] Doing a search on the installed ebuild, i found the following: bash-2.05b$ egrep --include *.ebuild -r "chown.*[a-z0-9]+\.[a-z0-9]+" * app-misc/screen-3.9.15-r1/screen-3.9.15-r1.ebuild: chown root.utmp ${D}/ {usr/bin,var/run}/screen app-text/acroread-5.08/acroread-5.08.ebuild: chown -R --dereference root.root ${i} app-text/tetex-2.0.2-r1/tetex-2.0.2-r1.ebuild: chown -R root.root ${D}/usr/ share/texmf dev-db/postgresql-7.3.4/postgresql-7.3.4.ebuild: chown -Rf postgres.postgres ${PG_DIR} dev-db/mysql-4.0.15/mysql-4.0.15.ebuild: chown -R mysql.mysql ${DATADIR} dev-db/mysql-4.0.15/mysql-4.0.15.ebuild: chown mysql.mysql ${ROOT}/var/ log/mysql/mysql.{log,err} dev-libs/cyrus-sasl-2.1.15/cyrus-sasl-2.1.15.ebuild: chown root.mail ${D}etc/sasl2/sasldb2 net-fs/samba-3.0.0-r1/samba-3.0.0-r1.ebuild: chown -R root.root ${D}/usr/ share/doc/${PF} net-mail/cyrus-imapd-2.1.15-r1/cyrus-imapd-2.1.15-r1.ebuild: chown -R cyrus.mail ${D}var/imap net-mail/cyrus-imapd-2.1.15-r1/cyrus-imapd-2.1.15-r1.ebuild: chown -R cyrus.mail ${D}var/imap/db net-mail/cyrus-imapd-2.1.15-r1/cyrus-imapd-2.1.15-r1.ebuild: chown -R cyrus.mail ${D}var/imap/log net-mail/cyrus-imapd-2.1.15-r1/cyrus-imapd-2.1.15-r1.ebuild: chown -R cyrus.mail ${D}var/imap/msg net-mail/cyrus-imapd-2.1.15-r1/cyrus-imapd-2.1.15-r1.ebuild: chown -R cyrus.mail ${D}var/imap/user net-mail/cyrus-imapd-2.1.15-r1/cyrus-imapd-2.1.15-r1.ebuild: chown -R cyrus.mail ${D}var/imap/user/$i net-mail/cyrus-imapd-2.1.15-r1/cyrus-imapd-2.1.15-r1.ebuild: chown -R cyrus.mail ${D}var/imap/proc net-mail/cyrus-imapd-2.1.15-r1/cyrus-imapd-2.1.15-r1.ebuild: chown -R cyrus.mail ${D}var/imap/quota/$i net-mail/cyrus-imapd-2.1.15-r1/cyrus-imapd-2.1.15-r1.ebuild: chown -R cyrus.mail ${D}var/imap/sieve net-mail/cyrus-imapd-2.1.15-r1/cyrus-imapd-2.1.15-r1.ebuild: chown -R cyrus.mail ${D}var/imap/sieve/$i net-mail/cyrus-imapd-2.1.15-r1/cyrus-imapd-2.1.15-r1.ebuild: chown -R cyrus.mail ${D}var/imap/socket net-mail/cyrus-imapd-2.1.15-r1/cyrus-imapd-2.1.15-r1.ebuild: chown -R cyrus.mail ${D}var/spool/imap net-mail/cyrus-imapd-2.1.15-r1/cyrus-imapd-2.1.15-r1.ebuild: chown -R cyrus.mail ${D}var/spool/imap/stage. net-mail/cyrus-imapd-2.1.15-r1/cyrus-imapd-2.1.15-r1.ebuild: chown -R cyrus.mail ${D}var/spool/imap/$i net-mail/cyrus-imapd-2.1.15-r1/cyrus-imapd-2.1.15-r1.ebuild: chown cyrus.root ${D}etc/cyrusimapd/server.crt ${D}etc/cyrusimapd/server.key net-mail/qmail-1.03-r12/qmail-1.03-r12.ebuild: chown -R alias.qmail ${ROOT}/ var/qmail/alias/.maildir 2>/dev/null net-mail/qmail-1.03-r12/qmail-1.03-r12.ebuild: chown qmaild.qmail ${ROOT}/var/qmail/control/servercert.pem net-mail/mailbase-0.00-r6/mailbase-0.00-r6.ebuild: chown root.mail ${ROOT}/var/spool/mail sys-apps/man-1.5m/man-1.5m.ebuild: chown root.man ${D}/usr/bin/man sys-apps/portage-2.0.49-r9/portage-2.0.49-r9.ebuild: chown -R root.wheel ${ROOT}var/cache/edb/dep sys-apps/baselayout-1.8.6.10-r1/baselayout-1.8.6.10-r1.ebuild: chown root.uucp ${D}/var/lock sys-apps/slocate-2.7-r2/slocate-2.7-r2.ebuild: chown root.slocate /usr/bin/ slocate sys-apps/slocate-2.7-r2/slocate-2.7-r2.ebuild: chown -R root.slocate /var/lib/ slocate sys-kernel/linux-headers-2.4.19-r1/linux-headers-2.4.19-r1.ebuild: chown -R 0.0 * x11-themes/xmms-themes-0.0.3/xmms-themes-0.0.3.ebuild: chown -R root.root ${D}/usr/share/xmms/Skins/ IMHO these (and loads of other ebuilds) are now incorrect in terms of chown usage. There is on workaround: setting the environment variable according to the NEWS file. Alternatively the dot version of the chown commands should be changed to colons. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. install a fresh gentoo system with up-to-date packages (here ~x86) Actual Results: see above Expected Results: see above bash-2.05b$ emerge info Portage 2.0.49-r9 (default-x86-1.4, gcc-3.3.1, glibc-2.3.2-r5, 2.6.0-test5-love3) ================================================================= System uname: 2.6.0-test5-love3 i686 AMD Duron(tm) Processor Gentoo Base System version 1.4.3.10p1 ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86 ~x86" AUTOCLEAN="yes" CFLAGS="-march=athlon -Os -pipe" CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu" COMPILER="gcc3" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/kde/2/share/config /usr/kde/3/share/config /usr/ X11R6/lib/X11/xkb /usr/kde/3.1/share/config /usr/share/texmf/tex/generic/ config/ /usr/share/texmf/tex/platex/config/ /usr/share/config /var/qmail/ control /var/qmail/alias" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/gconf /etc/env.d" CXXFLAGS="-march=athlon -Os -pipe" DISTDIR="/var/distfiles" FEATURES="sandbox ccache autoaddcvs" GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://gentoo.oregonstate.edu http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/ Linux/distributions/gentoo" MAKEOPTS="-j2" PKGDIR="/var/packages" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp" PORTDIR="/var/portage" PORTDIR_OVERLAY="/var/overportage" SYNC="rsync://rsync.europe.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage" USE="x86 apm avi crypt cups encode foomaticdb gif jpeg libg++ mad mikmod mmx mpeg ncurses nls pdflib png quicktime spell truetype xml2 xmms xv zlib gdbm berkdb slang readline arts java X sdl gpm tcpd pam libwww ssl python imlib oggvorbis gtk qt kde motif opengl acl acpi alsa apache2 cdr curl dga doc dvd gd gphoto2 imap innodb ipv6 jikes junit lcms lirc maildir mcal mozilla mysql oss perl plotutils samba sasl xinerama scanner tcltk tetex tiff -fbcon -ggi -directfb usb wmf -gnome postgres 3dnow nptl -esd artswrappersuid -svga offensive xchattext parse-clocks"
I actually covered this a few weeks/days ago in #gentoo-dev I will assign this to myself for now and try take a look at it soon.
*** Bug 31926 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Im am closing this bug to have it singly addressed within bug 23116
