Ubuntu
coreutils package

"tail -f" no longer updates in 14.04

Bug #1278940 reported by Rolf Leggewie on 2014-02-11

This bug report is a duplicate of: Bug #882147: overlayfs does not implement inotify interfaces correctly. Edit Remove

This bug affects 1 person

Affects		Status	Importance	Assigned to	Milestone
	coreutils (Ubuntu)	Incomplete	Low	Unassigned

Bug Description

"tail -f /var/log/syslog" does not follow updates to the file. It does a tail of the file and then is never updated.

That is a pretty serious regression and one that I am VERY surprised to find in a Ubuntu LTS release so late in the cycle.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 14.04
Package: coreutils 8.21-1ubuntu4
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.13.0-6.23-generic 3.13.0
Uname: Linux 3.13.0-6-generic i686
ApportVersion: 2.13.2-0ubuntu2
Architecture: i386
CasperVersion: 1.336ubuntu1
CurrentDesktop: Unity
Date: Tue Feb 11 15:46:38 2014
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/tail
LiveMediaBuild: Ubuntu 14.04 LTS "Trusty Tahr" - Alpha i386 (20140202)
SourcePackage: coreutils
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

Tags:

Revision history for this message

Rolf Leggewie (r0lf) wrote on 2014-02-11:

Dependencies.txt Edit (188 bytes, text/plain; charset="utf-8")
ProcEnviron.txt Edit (103 bytes, text/plain; charset="utf-8")
ProcMaps.txt Edit (1.1 KiB, text/plain; charset="utf-8")
ProcStatus.txt Edit (799 bytes, text/plain; charset="utf-8")

Revision history for this message

C de-Avillez (hggdh2) wrote on 2014-02-11:

thank you for opening this bug and helping make Ubuntu better. Can you give us details? I just tried it here, and I see updates being printed out by tail.

Could it be that (perhaps just by chance) the file you were tailing was renamed/recreated (by log rotation/limits), and you missed '--follow=name --retry" (or its short form, '-F'?

Changed in coreutils (Ubuntu):
importance:	Undecided → Low
status:	New → Incomplete

Revision history for this message

Rolf Leggewie (r0lf) wrote on 2014-02-12:

Thank you, hggdh2, for having a look.

There isn't so much to say in terms of details. I ran the live CD and tail'd syslog. When I saw no updates I stopped the tail and restarted it (several times). Sure enough, there were new lines (not least because I had replugged USB devices) which were shown now. But again, no updates after that.

Maybe this only affects the live CD. I don't know.

Revision history for this message

Brian Murray (brian-murray) wrote on 2014-02-12:

Yes, this only affects the live CD and is a known issue with overlayfs.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/882147