bug#80496: Unexpected "new permissions are ..." message with recursive chmod on Solaris

Jakub Kulik via GNU coreutils Bug Reports <[email protected]> Thu, 26 Feb 2026 11:50:09 +0000

Newsgroups	gmane.comp.gnu.core-utils.bugs
Message-ID	<PH0PR10MB5794946557903183DC6D29318A72A@PH0PR10MB5794.namprd10.prod.outlook.com>

Hi, I just managed to reproduce this on Linux (with coreutils 8.32) as well - not with a symlink, but with a regular file:

> mkdir test
> touch test/file
> chmod 777 test/file
> chmod -R -w test
chmod: test/file: new permissions are r-xrwxrwx, not r-xr-xr-x

So maybe it's just there to warn users that who might not expect this result being affected by the umaks? The 'diagnose_surprises' variable suggests that it might be it.

Sorry for the noise if that is the case.

Best regards,
Jakub

(and sorry for that Confidential label in the first email - that of course shouldn’t be there).