GNU bug report logs - #9266
tail -F does not follow through symlinks

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From: Bart Vanhaute <bart.vanhaute <at> gmail.com>
To: 9266 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: bug#9266: tail -F does not follow through symlinks
Date: Tue, 9 Aug 2011 10:14:40 +0200

When I use tail -F to follow a file that is a symlink to another file,
and that second file gets replaced, tail no longer follows the new
file. I am not sure if this scenario is actually supported, but the
current behaviour is unexpected to me.

Detailed scenario to reproduce:

in one terminal:
$ ln -s f a
$ touch f
$ tail -F a

in another terminal:
$ mv f f.0
$ echo 'hello' > f

The output in terminal one will show
tail: `a' has become inaccessible: No such file or directory
but it will not show the 'hello' message.

I am using coreutils version 8.5 on debian sid (linux kernel version
3.0.0), but I noticed the same behaviour in coreutils version 8.9 on
opensuse (linux kernel version 2.6.37).

greetings,
Bart.

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