ts to set O_NONBLOCK even on regular files... unfortunately if you try this on an append-only log file the result is this: fcntl64(3, F_GETFL) = 0x8000 (flags O_RDONLY|O_LARGEFILE) fcntl64(3, F_SETFL, O_RDONLY|O_NONBLOCK|O_LARGEFILE) = -1 EPERM (Operation not permitted) I offer up the patch below as one way of fixing the problem... i've tested it fixes the problem with tail -f but haven't really tested beyond that. (I also reported the coreutils bug upstream... it shouldn't fail imho... ) Signed-off-by: dean gaudet Cc: Al Viro Acked-by: Christoph Hellwig Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds ˜«†”-x