Nautilus reports file ownership incorrectly on sftp:// files

[Mary Gardiner]

If I open a sftp:// directory in the Nautilus viewer, and right click on a file
and select "Properties" and the "Permissions" table, the "File owner:" value
will be incorrectly set to my local user ("mary") and the "File group" drop-down
box will be set to "mary" (my local default group).

This is true of *any* file on the remote host, including, say, /bin or /dev

It still might be confusing to have them marked "root" or whatever, because
they're owned by the remote root account -- perhaps root@remote-name ?

http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=155866: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=155866

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

I've forwarded this bug here:
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=155866

[Phil Housley (undeconstructed)]

Is this likely to be the same issue as that you can't change the owner/group of
a file over sftp? I don't even know if it's possible actually... but nautilus
makes it look as though it is, and then silently always resets the listbox back
to the original owner (ie. you, a la this bug.)

[Mary Gardiner (puzzlement)]

(In reply to comment #2)

It sounds sort of similar and probably having the same root causes (Nautilus
doesn't really have a way of representing remote ownership), but it's not
exactly the same bug: this one is about misrepresenting the ownership in the
first place (user "mary" does not own /dev or /bin on the remote host!), not
about being unable to change it.

[spliffster (spliffster)]

sftp (OpenSSH actually) offers the possibility to chown/chgrp/chmod remote files:

sftp> help chgrp
Available commands:
...
chgrp grp path Change group of file 'path' to 'grp'
chmod mode path Change permissions of file 'path' to 'mode'
chown own path Change owner of file 'path' to 'own'
...

on a second thought this is (however) tricky. on an NFS share it works fine in gnome, because local and remote uid's and gid's must be in sync for NFS to work properly. for scp/sftp this requirement is often not met (imagine sftp-ing to your web hosting provider).

I could see a solution for this problem only, if there would be a way to white/blacklist hosts/networks for gnome. the user of the client would have to tell gnome which hosts/networks are in sync (uid wise). or gnome could try to probe if information of a remote host are available via yp/nis or ldap.

the current behavour is "save" for unknown networks, but it's quiet a PITA if nis/ldap is in use.

[Philipp Schlesinger (philipp-sadleder)]

With Ubuntu feisty, gnomevfs 2.18.0.1 and nautilus 2.18.0.1, that probleam seems to be dealt with in same way:
Owner and group of a file a reportet as "unknown" and it is possible to change permissions on that remote file.

[Ken (ken-waggies)]

I have a compact flash card on my PC. Running Fiesty, Nautilus 2.18.1. The card is automatically mounted as a drive (not in any tables/files).
From Nautilus or a command line, I can't set files on the card to be readable or executable by group or others.
In the Nautilus Properties window, it can appear to do it, but on exiting Properties then looking again, it is unchanged.
I don't know if this is the same bug or not, but it sure is frustrating.

(The CF card is formatted FAT32.)

[spliffster (spliffster)]

you must use another file system, unix permissions cannot be set on fat/ntfs.

Cheers,
-S

--
My God, it's full of source!

[Yann Rouillard (yann-pleiades)]

As said in comment 5, ownership are not anymore incorrectly reported, they are not reported at all for sftp://, Unknown is always displayed.
See http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-vfs-list/2006-July/msg00029.html for details.

[Jim Robert (jim-jim-robert)]

For me it reports the permissions as unknown, and doesn't allow me to change them (even though I'm looking at files owned by my current user)

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

Is this reproducible with Hardy ?

[Rick Gabriel (klaxian1)]

The permissions seem to be displayed correctly in Hardy.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

great, closing the task then, thanks you.