I've done some debugging of tail.exe on XP (which works) and Vista Enterprise SP1 (which doesn't), and so far have found two differences when tailing output piped from another program: 1. S_ISREG (stats.st_mode) returns 0 on XP, but 1 on Vista (I haven't yet determined if this is an Enterprise-only or an SP1-only issue) 2. lseek() fails on XP, but succeeds on Vista. The SEEK_CUR below returns 0, and the SEEK_END consistently returns 4105 in my tests (for output that should be much longer, so presumably it's looking at a single buffer of data). Combines, this means that on XP the following code in tail.c results in pipe_lines being called (as expected), but on Vista file_lines is being called. Does any of this mean anything to anyone?
/* Use file_lines only if FD refers to a regular file for which lseek (... SEEK_END) works. */ if ( ! presume_input_pipe && S_ISREG (stats.st_mode) && (start_pos = lseek (fd, 0, SEEK_CUR)) != -1 && start_pos < (end_pos = lseek (fd, 0, SEEK_END))) { file_lines(...); } else { pipe_line(...); } On Mon, Apr 14, 2008 at 10:56 AM, smr xxxx <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi, I've just rebuilt my machine and done a clean install of the > latest Cygwin, and am having a problem with tail. I'm wanting to know > whether this is a known issue before digging deeper. For other > reasons, I've rebuilt my machine clean twice this weekend and have had > this problem both times -- I also sourced the Cygwin files from two > different mirrors. > > It's been a few months since I last installed Cygwin, and all I can > think of that has changed since then is: > 1. I have a newer version of Cygwin > 2. I'm now on Vista Enterprise (was Vista Ultimate) > 3. I'm now on an SP1 of Vista (was original RTM of Vista) > > When running a command such as "dir /s /a cygwin | tail -2" (from C:\) > it displays: > 03/04/2008 10:32 PM 35 7zr > 07/19/2007 02:05 PM > This last line is the 29th line of output. Redirecting to a file > shows that there are 7 spaces at the end of this last line, and the > total output is 1028 bytes, or 1000 after running dos2unix. > > Moving C:\cygwin to C:\x\cygwin (to force some extra characters into > the output of the above command, ie. the "x\") and rerunning shows > that it again stops at precisely the same place (7 spaces after the > time on the 29th line), but the output is now 1032 bytes, or 1004 > after running dos2unix, due to the extra characters. > > If I first redirect the output of the dir command to a file and tail > that then all is well. Even running "type filename | tail -2" works. > Also, if I dos2unix the stream inplace (ie. "dir /s /a cygwin | > dos2unix | tail -2") it works correctly. Note that I installed with > Unix file type (as always). > > I just tried the same on \Windows, and it stops on the 26th line at a > position that seems to amount to 1124 bytes, or 1098 when dos2unix'd. > > I'm guessing that this is a bigger problem that just tail (I could be > wrong), but "dir /s /a cygwin | wc -l" doesn't have any problems. > > Has anyone seen this before? > -- Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/