[ following up to this report, http://bugs.launchpad.net/+source/coreutils/+bug/908354 ]
Tuomas Heino wrote: > ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ stat -f --format %t:%T /var/log > 1021994:tmpfs Thanks. Unlike most file system types, overlayFS appears to have no magic number. Now we're seeing how using files on such a file system can cause trouble. I see no direct way to distinguish this file (for which inotify does not work) from any other on a tmpfs file system, for which inotify works just fine. Ugly work-around: tail -f could try using both inotify and polling, and, eventually, if polling spots a change for which there was no inotify event, it would give up on using inotify for that file. As soon as tail sees an inotify event for a file, however, it could not stop polling: for most remote FS types, inotify works with changes generated locally, but not with those generated remotely. So polling can still be useful when using inotify. We'll see...
