tail: unrecognized file system type 0x53464846 for ‘xxx’. please report this to bug-coreutils@gnu.org. reverting to polling

[fceledon]

Self explanatory. Even that this is a warning, not sure if this is 'tail' or file system related.
In my sample, xxx is a regular file.

[pixelb]

It did say to report this to the coreutils project :)
Anyway it already has been reported, and will be fixed in the next coreutils release,
so the issue can be closed here

[fpqc]

Already reported here by me a month ago, and was actually reported to the coreutils team even before that, if you search their listserv.

[ianychoi]

Just FYI (listserv, as fpqc mentioned): https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-coreutils/2016-06/msg00019.html

[sba923]

I'm running WSL with Ubuntu 14.04 on Windows 10 version 1607, and the coreutils package is coreutils_8.21-1ubuntu5.4_amd64.deb, which still has the bug. How do I get a version of coreutils where this is fixed?

[WSLUser]

I suggest upgrading to 16299 (do a winver to find your version) and doing an lxrun uninstall and reinstalling via the Windows Store. It'll come with 16.04 and an updated coreutils. It's more buggy to keep the existing Ubuntu installation and perform a do-release-upgrade.

[therealkenc]

Didn't realise this one was still open. This was WSL by-design and addressed in upstream coreutils. If someone invented a new filesystem on Real Linux that wasn't in the whitelist tail uses, it would spew the same warning.

@sba923, if you don't want to upgrade Ubuntu just download coreutils from here, build, and install into /usr/local.

[sba923]

This is a corporate machine under IT control that has just been upgraded from TH2/1511 to RS2/1703, and policy disallows upgrading to RS3/1709.

I was able to run lxrun uninstall but it seems I can't install WSL from the Store (RS3 needed?)

Where do I go from here?

[benhillis]

@sba923 - You'll need rs3 to install from the store, the legacy distro is your only option:

lxrun.exe /install

[WSLUser]

@sba923 If necessary, tell your IT security you need an exemption to policy to upgrade to RS3. This will allow you to download from the Store. Also WSL has significant improvements compared to RS2. See the Release Notes for detail. Of course at this point, you might want to just wait until the next stable release is out but if that's too far forward for them, at least you'll have the multi-distro capability and ability to download from the Store with the current stable version.

[sba923]

That's not possible, 'cos all machines have to be aligned for IT management reasons. I don't have enough justification to request such an exemption.

I'll stick with the lxrun /install option for now.

[neoadventist]

Anyone has any specific instructions on how to fix this?

[therealkenc]

Seems like this is still a problem.
Using ---disable-inotify does the trick

On 9p (aka /mnt/c since circa 18917) that is variation #4739. But looking at coreutils stat.c, V9FS_MAGIC (type 0x01021997) is labeled as 'local' not 'remote'. You'll find that tail(1) doesn't work on native Linux with a 9p filesystem as well (though I didn't actually set up a native Linux 9p to confirm). Unless/until 9p on native Linux gets inotify(7) support (imho unlikely) GNU coreutils could use another patch submission. Like the OP (which was wslfs type 0x53464846) the 9p scenario is Linux behavior.