[balug-talk] updatedb: can not change group of file

[Michael Paoli]

Quoting David Alban:

> Do other folks get this in fc5?[1]
> $ updatedb --database-root $HOME --output foo.db
> updatedb: can not change group of file `/home/alban/foo.db.3XCWjd':
> Operation not permitted
> A run with strace shows the following w/r/to the temp file:
> chown32("/home/alban/foo.db.B2cYDj", -1, 21) = -1 EPERM (Operation not
> permitted)

Looks like things probably go okay until that chown32(2).
Appears it attempts to change the group ownership to GID 21,
and if you're neither superuser (euid==0) nor a member of group
having GID 21, it would at least generally fail with EPERM, and that
would appear to likely be what's happening here (but perhaps you
already knew all that).

I haven't attempted a significant search, but I did stumble across
this:
"The updatedb command is not compatible, and custom scripts that use
updatedb may have to be updated"
which at least hints that things may be significantly different.
I found that in:
http://fedora.redhat.com/docs/release-notes/fc5/#id2948673
via:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=updatedb+%22fedora+core+5%22&btnG=Search
Perhaps comparing the source between the older and newer versions
would be useful ... but there may be lots of changes beyond just
that/those which are causing the particular difficulty you're
encountering.