bug#33946: tail -f stops abruptly in AIX when piped.

[Pádraig Brady]

On 03/01/19 23:01, Ayappan P2 wrote:
> 
> 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 <address@hidden>
> To:   Ayappan P2 <address@hidden>, address@hidden
> 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
>             address@hidden>
> 
> 
> 
> On 1/3/19 6:39 PM, Ayappan P2 wrote:
>>> On 01-Jan-2019, at 10:36 PM, Ayappan P2 <address@hidden> 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'?

Our tests were incorrect :/

Note the need for this extra check was discussed at:
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/coreutils/2017-06/msg00010.html

Note the initial implementation there was with poll()
rather than select(). That may work better on AIX.
Could you try the poll() solution at the above link,
on your system?

Attached is a fixup for the test and an avoidance
of the issue on AIX.

cheers,
Pádraig.

tail-aix.patch
Description: Text Data