cpio misunderstanding?

[Joe Kraft]

Pegasus Mc Cleaft wrote:

>> If I try to run it manually on one of the files that fails, I get this:
>> 
>> slug# echo "/usr/local/freesbie-fs/libexec/ld-elf.so.1" | cpio -dump -l
>> -v /usr/local/freesbie-clone
>> 
>> /usr/local/freesbie-clone/usr/local/freesbie-fs/libexec/ld-elf.so.1
>> 
>> cpio: Can't create '/usr/local/freesbie-clone/usr/local/freesbie-
>> fs/libexec/ld-elf.so.1': Operation not permitted
>> 0 blocks
>> 
>> 
>> I can use cp to copy the file, so I don't understand what's going on
>> here. Does anyone have any ideas?
> 
> I don't know if this is your problem, but whenever I see that "Operation
> not permitted" error I start to suspect file flags. You might want to
> check for extra flags put on the source file or destination directory and
> see if anything weird had been set on it.
> 
> You can look at the flags with the command "ls -lao". You may also want
> to do a "man chflags" and read the manual page there.
> 

OK, now I know what's going on.  I just don't know why.  The immutable flag 
was set on all these files, if you clear it cpio will happily copy them to 
the new directory.  I'm guessing it's a change in how the installation 
copies the files with the schg intact, I ran into a discussion about that 
from 2008.  The original FreeSBIE scripts were based on FBSD 6.2 and maybe 
never ran into this issue.

I don't quite get why this works this way though.  I understand the 
immutable flag will keep the file itself from being changed, deleted or 
moved.  But I don't see in any documentation that the immutable flag will 
not allow a file to be copied.  I did note that when using the 'cp' command 
it cleared the immutable bit on the new file instead of keeping it, but at 
least it makes the copy.

Joe.