Subject: Re: bug#21265: tail -f: inotify being used on non-regular files

From: Assaf Gordon <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2018 14:57:24 -0600

tags 21265 wontfix
close 21265
stop

(triaging old bugs)

On 26/08/15 05:19 AM, Stephane Chazelas wrote:
> 2015-08-26 03:13:59 +0100, Pádraig Brady:
> [...]
>>
>> The same argument applies that the kernel should return
>> and error when adding a watch on pseudo file systems like /proc?
>> To work around that, we'd have to get real kludgy and see
>> were the files on a "dummy" file system or something.
[...]
>> Though tail -f /proc files in either mode is not that useful,
>> so probably not worrying about that case.
> [...]
> 
> All very good points.
> 
> Many files in /proc, /sys... can only be read reliably in one read()
> operation anyway, and doing tail -f on them would give you
> garbage even if it worked.

Given the above, and no further comments in 3 years,
I'm closing this bug.

-assaf