FIFOs break tar, others

[Stephen J. Friedl]

In article <7478 at brl-smoke.ARPA>, gwyn at brl-smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn ) writes:
> In article <3776 at chinet.UUCP> les at chinet.UUCP (Leslie Mikesell) writes:
> >Don't forget that reading from a FIFO deletes the data.  Thus if you let
> >tar or cpio read them, some other process is going to lose its input.
> 
> Such archive programs should treat FIFOs the same way as symbolic links
> or device special files, namely record information about them but not
> attempt to archive their contents.

Sys V fsck(1M) complains about some FIFOs -- is their any good
reason for this?  The bummer is that it causes a laxness about
POSSIBLE FILE SIZE ERRORS ("Oh, that's just a FIFO, don't worry
about it") and real problems are missed.

-- 
Steve Friedl      friedl at vsi.com       *Hi Mom*
{uunet, attmail, ihnp4!amdcad!uport}!vsi!friedl