portability fixes for some tests
Apparently the ls on OS X 10.3.9 exits with success even if the file
given on the command line doesn't exist
1 files updated, 0 files merged, 0 files removed, 0 files unresolved
2 files updated, 0 files merged, 0 files removed, 0 files unresolved
abort: Permission denied: test-ro-message/b/vehicle