Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!swrinde!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!zephyr.ens.tek.com!tektronix!reed!brahma!trost From: trost@reed.edu Newsgroups: comp.unix.ultrix Subject: Re: /dev/xcons Message-ID: Date: 25 Jun 91 01:16:37 GMT References: <22637@cbmvax.commodore.com> Sender: nobody@reed.UUCP Distribution: comp Organization: Reed College Lines: 17 In-reply-to: grr@cbmvax.commodore.com's message of 22 Jun 91 12:09:30 GMT > # Direct console output to /usr/adm/messages > tail -f /dev/xcons >>/usr/adm/messages & I think tail depends on seeing the file size change or some other clue that data has been appended to a file. I don't know that it can be expected to do anything meaningful on a character device. (Probably) untrue -- the sources for 4.3 BSD indicate that tail just sleeps a second and then read(2)s BUFSIZ bytes from stdin. Of course, it only does that if the lseek(2) above doesn't return an EISPIPE -- which may or may not occur on the xcons pseudo-device. A more compelling argument is that we use "xterm -e tail -f /dev/xcons" to redirect our console output, and it works fine. This is Ultrix 4.1, though -- maybe somebody "fixed" something (somehow, getting, EISPIPE *does* make sense...).