Package: manpages-dev Version: 3.40-0.1 Severity: minor
The read(2) manpage (possibly others) contains this confusing paragraph in the NOTES section: Many file systems and disks were considered to be fast enough that the implementation of O_NONBLOCK was deemed unnecessary. So, O_NONBLOCK may not be available on files and/or disks. However, this can neither be true, nor is there reasonable semantics for O_NONBLOCK on files. The reason for this is that for O_NONBLOCK to make sense, you need data to arrive on its own (pipe write on other side, tcp packet received etc.). For files, there is no such source of data - while an implementatioon that indeed only returned what it currently has in the the buffer cache is theoretically feasible, no new data would arrive on its own, as the kernel would need to know how much data to read, and from where, so programs would effectively deadlock as there is no way to tell the kernel to read more data for the next read (and there is no way to wait for more data, as it would be for pipes and sockets with e.g. select). I would suggest simply deleting this paragraph, as it continues to confuse people into thinking O_NONBLOCK semantics are possible with files. -- System Information: Debian Release: wheezy/sid APT prefers stable APT policy: (990, 'stable'), (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'testing'), (1, 'experimental') Architecture: amd64 (x86_64) Kernel: Linux 3.2.0-4-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores) Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8) Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash Versions of packages manpages-dev depends on: ii manpages 3.27-1 Manual pages about using a GNU/Lin manpages-dev recommends no packages. Versions of packages manpages-dev suggests: ii konqueror [man-browser] 4:4.8.4-2 advanced file manager, web browser ii man-db [man-browser] 2.6.2-1 on-line manual pager -- no debconf information -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
