The problem happens only when we pipe the output of "tail -f" .

I am not sure how one can take the truss of "/tail -f test_file | grep 123" .

I did little debugging on the tail code. This function "check_output_alive" introduced by the commit (mentioned earlier in the thread) sents SIGPIPE after doing a select () call in AIX.
And that makes it exit immediately.

fd_set rfd;
FD_ZERO (&rfd);
FD_SET (STDOUT_FILENO, &rfd);

/* readable event on STDOUT is equivalent to POLLERR,
and implies an error condition on output like broken pipe. */
if (select (STDOUT_FILENO + 1, &rfd, NULL, NULL, &delay) == 1)
raise (SIGPIPE);
}

I didn't understand the real reason behind this commit.

Thanks
Ayappan P

Inactive hide details for Bernhard Voelker ---01/03/2019 11:53:17 PM---On 1/3/19 6:39 PM, Ayappan P2 wrote: >> On 01-Jan-2019, Bernhard Voelker ---01/03/2019 11:53:17 PM---On 1/3/19 6:39 PM, Ayappan P2 wrote: >> On 01-Jan-2019, at 10:36 PM, Ayappan P2 <ayappap2@in.ibm.com

From: Bernhard Voelker <mail@bernhard-voelker.de>
To: Ayappan P2 <ayappap2@in.ibm.com>, 33946@debbugs.gnu.org
Date: 01/03/2019 11:53 PM
Subject: bug#33946: tail -f stops abruptly in AIX when piped.
Sent by: "Bug-coreutils" <bug-coreutils-bounces+ayappap2=in.ibm.com@gnu.org>




On 1/3/19 6:39 PM, Ayappan P2 wrote:
>> On 01-Jan-2019, at 10:36 PM, Ayappan P2 <ayappap2@in.ibm.com> wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I am running coreutils 8.30 in AIX machine and it seems like "tail -f" is
>> not working as it used to be when the output is piped.
>>
>> # ./tail -f test_file | grep 123
>>
>> (1) root @ aixoss-automation-3: 6.1.0.0: /
>>
>> It stops immediately  and it seems like this commit
>>
>> https://github.com/coreutils/coreutils/commit/ce0415fda108b7ec35181118fd7a2c9ee70331ee
>>
>> has introduce this behavior.
>>
>> I checked in Linux with coreutils 8.30 where it works as like earlier
>> versions.
>>
>> Thanks
>> Ayappan P

> Anyone has any idea on this issue ?
>
> Thanks
> Ayappan P

Thanks for reporting.
It's hard (at least for me) to get hold on to an AIX system,
so would you post a trace file (from 'truss'), please?

Second, is this specific to a certain AIX version?

BTW: our tests should have caught this before the release.
Do you also get an error during 'make check'?

Have a nice day,
Berny