GNU bug report logs - #24495
tail -F does not terminate when running out of names to watch

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From: Bernhard Voelker <mail <at> bernhard-voelker.de>
To: Pádraig Brady <P <at> draigBrady.com>, Julian Büning <julian.buening <at> rwth-aachen.de>, 24495 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Cc: Oscar Soria Dustmann <Oscar.SoriaDustmann <at> comsys.rwth-aachen.de>, Daniel Schemmel <daniel.schemmel <at> comsys.rwth-aachen.de>
Subject: bug#24495: tail -F does not terminate when running out of names to watch
Date: Tue, 27 Sep 2016 22:16:56 +0200

On 09/21/2016 08:15 PM, Pádraig Brady wrote:
> We can get expected behavior option 1 with the attached patch.
> Note that's inconsistent with current inotify behavior which does
> _not_ actually give up on the name, as can be seen when starting
> with a (non existent) file:
> 
> $ touch foo
> $ tail -F foo&
> [1] 13624
> $ rm foo; mkdir foo
> tail: ‘foo’ has become inaccessible: No such file or directory
> tail: ‘foo’ has been replaced with an untailable file; giving up on this name
> $ rmdir foo; echo foo > foo
> tail: ‘foo’ has become inaccessible: No such file or directory
> tail: ‘foo’ has appeared;  following new file
> foo
> 
> The attached patch also removes the "; giving up on this name"
> message in the inotify case as that's not the case.
> 
> Ideally we'd have expected behavior option 2
> both with and without inotify.
> I'll need to look a bit more as to why we have that
> limitation without inotify.

The new behavior is nice, but it would really be better to have
consistent behavior in inotify and polling mode.

Thanks & have a nice day,
Berny

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