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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