As the following is contradicting the "Subject:" line, I'm assuming you
meant the "--retry not re-attempting to open" variant.
On 04/02/2013 08:55 PM, Noel Morrison wrote:
> tail --retry -f {FILE} or tail -f --retry {FILE} does continue to try to open
> the file.
> I just compiled 8.21 CoreUtils and found that the problem is still present.
Thank you for the report. However, I believe it is a result of
a misinterpretation of tail's options.
As you can read from the --help output and - more thoroughly - in
the texinfo documentation, `tail -f --retry FILE` is following the
content of FILE by file descriptor:
-f, --follow[={name|descriptor}]
output appended data as the file grows;
-f, --follow, and --follow=descriptor are
equivalent
-F same as --follow=name --retry
[...]
--retry keep trying to open a file even when it is or
becomes inaccessible; useful when following by
name, i.e., with --follow=name
Once "tail -f" holds a handle to the open file descriptor, it will
not try to reopen the file again. Instead, it uses polling or inotify
(depending on the underlying file system) to follow the content of
the file.
Furthermore, you get the following warning when --retry is used
together with -f (or --follow=descriptor):
$ tail -f --retry /dev/null
tail: warning: --retry is useful mainly when following by name
^C
Does that answer your question?
> My 1st official report of any bugs.
BTW: the address [email protected] is the main discussion list which is
used for general questions and discussions, while real bug reports would
go to [email protected]. An email to the latter opens a new bug report
in our bug tracking system and therefore makes it easier to follow bugs;
OTOH this induces some overhead regarding status tracking which is not
suitable for general discussions.
Have a nice day,
Berny
