Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!gatech!bloom-beacon!husc6!mit-eddie!genrad!decvax!decwrl!pyramid!prls!mips!dce From: dce@mips.UUCP (David Elliott) Newsgroups: comp.bugs.4bsd Subject: Re: 4.3BSD rcp doesn't handle FIFO files nicely Message-ID: <527@quacky.UUCP> Date: Fri, 17-Jul-87 10:12:24 EDT Article-I.D.: quacky.527 Posted: Fri Jul 17 10:12:24 1987 Date-Received: Sat, 18-Jul-87 15:01:47 EDT References: <520@quacky.UUCP> Reply-To: dce@quacky.UUCP (David Elliott) Distribution: world Organization: MIPS Computer Systems, Sunnyvale, CA Lines: 26 In article <520@quacky.UUCP> dce@mips.UUCP (David Elliott) writes: >Fix: > The easiest fix is to just not allow rcp of FIFO files, even > though it's really a hard call to make. We decided that it's > better to force someone to work around the restriction than > to have a naive user get stung by a hung "rcp * machine:". I'd like to retract this statement to avoid confusion. I don't want people saying "his reasoning is wrong, so the fix is wrong". The fact is that *any* user will get *stung* without this fix. You can't copy anything but regular files with rcp (rcp -r doesn't copy the directories, it just copies the regular files in them), and a FIFO, like a character or block special device, is not a regular file. What my fix does is to stop rcp from being blocked on opening a file that can't be copied anyway. As a side note, when I fixed the System V cp (and mv) to not copy FIFO files by default, I added an option to override this. So, my thinking wasn't completely clouded, I just had marbles in my mouth. -- David Elliott {decvax,ucbvax,ihnp4}!decwrl!mips!dce