Bug 196427 – Portage tries to change owner of a file when invoked by non-root

• Status: RESOLVED FIXED
• Product: Portage Development

[Description Arfrever Frehtes Taifersar Arahesis (RETIRED) 2007-10-19 16:11:53 UTC]

$ emerge -p portage

These are the packages that would be merged, in order:

Calculating dependencies... done!
[ebuild   R   ] sys-apps/portage-9999
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/emerge", line 18, in <module>
    retval = _emerge.emerge_main()
  File "/usr/lib/portage/pym/_emerge/__init__.py", line 6783, in emerge_main
    display_news_notification(trees)
  File "/usr/lib/portage/pym/_emerge/__init__.py", line 4613, in display_news_notification
    portdb, vardb, NEWS_PATH, UNREAD_PATH, repo)
  File "/usr/lib/portage/pym/_emerge/__init__.py", line 4781, in checkUpdatedNewsItems
    return manager.getUnreadItems( repo_id, update=True )
  File "/usr/lib/portage/pym/portage/news.py", line 115, in getUnreadItems
    self.updateItems(repoid)
  File "/usr/lib/portage/pym/portage/news.py", line 104, in updateItems
    uid=int(self.config["PORTAGE_INST_UID"]), gid=portage_gid, mode=0664)
  File "/usr/lib/portage/pym/portage/util.py", line 594, in apply_permissions
    raise OperationNotPermitted(func_call)
portage.exception.OperationNotPermitted: chown('/var/lib/gentoo/news/news-gentoo.skip', 0, 250)
$ 

It has happened since r8148.
This bug isn't reproducible when `emerge` is invoked by root.

[Comment 1 Zac Medico 2007-10-19 16:41:53 UTC]

Do you have the same problem with a user that is in the "portage" group or not? Maybe that entire code path should only be running as root or as someone in the portage group...

[Comment 2 Arfrever Frehtes Taifersar Arahesis (RETIRED) 2007-10-19 16:45:55 UTC]

(In reply to comment #1)
> Do you have the same problem with a user that is in the "portage" group or
> not? Maybe that entire code path should only be running as root or as
> someone in the portage group...

I'm in the "portage" group.

[Comment 3 Zac Medico 2007-10-19 16:53:44 UTC]

I think this is fixed in r8179.

[Comment 4 Arfrever Frehtes Taifersar Arahesis (RETIRED) 2007-10-19 17:20:05 UTC]

(In reply to comment #3)
> I think this is fixed in r8179.

I'm confirming it.