[Catherine]

seeing this on new installs

cp: warning: behavior of -n is non-portable and may change in future; use --update=none instead

[Juan]

I think -n is for GNU, since cp was ported from POSIX. But pretty sure Ubuntu and Debian have supported that flag for many years already?

[Judith]

According to mailing lists,

https://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg33577.html

The new --update=none doesn’t even work correctly and is overwriting files so I don’t think it’s a good idea to use that flag either!

[Gregory]

weird, as cp has been around forever…

[Juan]

Some of the Debian maintainers discussed this on Reddit a few months ago. They are saying it seems to be a bug and should be fixed in future versions. I don’t know how such a verbose warning message could be a bug, but if I understand correctly that’s what they are saying:

Warning on cp when upgrading
byu/AdbekunkusMX indebian

[Jacqueline]

Some of the Debian maintainers discussed this on Reddit a few months ago. They are saying it seems to be a bug and should be fixed in future versions.

On second reading, I’m not sure they are saying it’s a bug.

But maybe just that apt using cp -n is a bug. It’s not really clear.

[Frank]

what are they asking for? cp --update=none instead of cp -n is that?

[Wayne]

DO NOT DO WHAT THIS WARNING TELLS YOU TO DO!!!

YOU MIGHT BREAK YOUR STACK OR LOSE DATA THIS WARNING IS A BUG

[Author]

Posts