NFS question

[Richard Murphy]

This problem is puzzling and perhaps some of the UNIX experts can
quickly tell me what I am doing wrong====>>>

scenario-

I have two machines, A & B that share a file system via NFS. The file
system is exported from A and mounted by B. On machine B I start a
process to display the last line written to a file that is on this
file system. On machine A I start a program to write to this same file.
What happens is this: if the file has non-zero length when the display
program opens it, all goes well. However, it is initially empty, the
display program never sees anything that the writing program puts into
it. Why does this happen? Since NFS is stateless, should not prior
knowledge of the length of the file be discarded at some point?

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Richard Murphy                             Division 15
richard at pemrac.space.swri.edu              Southwest Research Institute
...convex!pemrac!richard                   6220 Culebra Rd.
swri::richard (SPAN)                       San Antonio, TX 78228-0510

"It's not what you know, it's what you think you know."
                                          -- Steve Martin
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