GNU bug report logs - #33946
tail -f stops abruptly in AIX when piped.

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Package: coreutils;

Reported by: "Ayappan P2" <ayappap2 <at> in.ibm.com>

Date: Tue, 1 Jan 2019 17:06:02 UTC

Severity: normal

Done: Pádraig Brady <P <at> draigBrady.com>

Bug is archived. No further changes may be made.

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Message #14 received at 33946 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: "Ayappan P2" <ayappap2 <at> in.ibm.com>
To: Bernhard Voelker <mail <at> bernhard-voelker.de>
Cc: 33946 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#33946: tail -f stops abruptly in AIX when piped.
Date: Fri, 4 Jan 2019 12:31:06 +0530
[Message part 1 (text/plain, inline)]
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



From:	Bernhard Voelker <mail <at> bernhard-voelker.de>
To:	Ayappan P2 <ayappap2 <at> in.ibm.com>, 33946 <at> 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 <at> gnu.org>



On 1/3/19 6:39 PM, Ayappan P2 wrote:
>> On 01-Jan-2019, at 10:36 PM, Ayappan P2 <ayappap2 <at> 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






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This bug report was last modified 6 years and 176 days ago.

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