Debian Bug report logs - #183086
findutils: thowing away all error messages the right thing to do?

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Message #5 received at submit@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Dan Jacobson <jidanni@dman.ddts.net>

To: Debian Bug Tracking System <submit@bugs.debian.org>

Subject: findutils: thowing away all error messages the right thing to do?

Date: Sun, 02 Mar 2003 04:22:05 +0800

Package: findutils
Version: 4.1.7-2.1
Severity: wishlist
File: /etc/cron.daily/find

we see
   if cut -f1 -d: /etc/passwd | grep -q ^$LOCALUSER$ ; then
     cd / && updatedb 2>/dev/null
   else

1. 2>/dev/null: is this good policy? what if there is something
   important in that?

2. BTW maybe say ${LOCALUSER:?} to catch null or not set.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: testing/unstable
Architecture: i386
Kernel: Linux debian 2.4.20-k7 #1 Tue Jan 14 00:29:06 EST 2003 i686
Locale: LANG=zh_TW.Big5, LC_CTYPE=zh_TW.Big5

Versions of packages findutils depends on:
ii  libc6                         2.3.1-10   GNU C Library: Shared libraries an

-- no debconf information

Message #12 received at 183086@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: James Youngman <jay@gnu.org>

To: 183086@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Throwing away error messages

Date: Sun, 31 Oct 2004 14:05:15 +0000

Maybe the 2>/dev/null is no longer so necessary now that the
-ignore_readdir_race option exists: -

-ignore_readdir_race
              Normally, find will emit an error message when it fails
              to stat a file.  If you give this option and a file is
              deleted between the time find reads the name of the file
              from the directory and the time it tries to stat the
              file, nno error message will be issued.  This also
              applies to files or directories whose names are given on
              the command line.  This option takes effect at the time
              the command line is read, which means that you cannot
              search one part of the filesystem with this option on
              and part of it with this option off (if you need to do
              that, you will need to issue two find commands instead,
              one with the option and one without it).

Message #23 received at 183086@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Andreas Metzler <ametzler@downhill.at.eu.org>

To: James Youngman <jay@gnu.org>, 183086@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Re: Bug#183086: Throwing away error messages

Date: Sun, 7 Nov 2004 14:35:15 +0100

tags 183086 - pending
thanks
On 2004-10-31 James Youngman <jay@gnu.org> wrote:
> Maybe the 2>/dev/null is no longer so necessary now that the
> -ignore_readdir_race option exists: -
[...]

I thought so too, however:
downhill:~# /etc/cron.daily/find
/usr/bin/find: /etc/ppp: Permission denied
[...]
/usr/bin/find: /home/ametzler/.gnupg: Permission denied

Any idea? It would be nice to report "real" errors, but I do not know
of real, useful criteria.
                   cu andreas
-- 
"See, I told you they'd listen to Reason," [SPOILER] Svfurlr fnlf,
fuhggvat qbja gur juveyvat tha.
Neal Stephenson in "Snow Crash"

Message #30 received at 183086@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: James Youngman <jay@gnu.org>

To: Andreas Metzler <ametzler@downhill.at.eu.org>

Cc: 183086@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Re: Bug#183086: Throwing away error messages

Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2004 00:29:31 +0000

On Sun, Nov 07, 2004 at 02:35:15PM +0100, Andreas Metzler wrote:
> tags 183086 - pending
> thanks
> On 2004-10-31 James Youngman <jay@gnu.org> wrote:
> > Maybe the 2>/dev/null is no longer so necessary now that the
> > -ignore_readdir_race option exists: -
> [...]
> 
> I thought so too, however:
> downhill:~# /etc/cron.daily/find
> /usr/bin/find: /etc/ppp: Permission denied
> [...]
> /usr/bin/find: /home/ametzler/.gnupg: Permission denied
> 
> Any idea? It would be nice to report "real" errors, but I do not know
> of real, useful criteria.


This is a difficult question.  One option would be to avoid searching
examining directories that we can't both execute and read:

find ...... \( -type d \! -perm +005 -prune \) .....


However, that will also omit the non-searchable directories
themselves, which is bad.  I can't think of a very good solution to
this question, other than to add an option which forces find to ignore
EPERM on chdir(), if-and-only-if it is moving downward.

James.

Message #35 received at 183086@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: "Kingsley G. Morse Jr." <change@nas.com>

To: 183086@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Yes

Date: Mon, 24 Oct 2005 14:32:42 -0700

First of all, thanks for maintaining debian's
findutils package. 

It's really useful.

I agree that redirecting errors to /dev/null is
questionable. It masks all sorts of errors, like
"permission denied" when LOCALUSER is "nobody".

Perhaps a commented out line with stderr
redirected to /tmp/updatedb.log could be added to
/etc/cron.daily/find for debugging purposes.

Also, it seems to me that /etc/cron.daily/find's
definition of LOCALUSER is overwritten by
subsequently sourcing /etc/updatedb.conf, which
also defines LOCALUSER.

Finally, I'd like to suggest adding a note
somewhere that changing LOCALUSER to root in
/etc/updatedb.conf allows locate to find more
files.

Thanks,
Kingsley

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