Bug 78946

Summary: Broke pipe error while piping output out STDOUT
Product: [Retired] Red Hat Linux Reporter: hongxianhe
Component: tcshAssignee: Miloslav Trmač <mitr>
Status: CLOSED WORKSFORME QA Contact:
Severity: medium Docs Contact:
Priority: medium    
Version: 8.0   
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Hardware: i686   
OS: Linux   
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Fixed In Version: Doc Type: Bug Fix
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Last Closed: 2004-08-19 18:08:08 UTC Type: ---
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oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
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Description hongxianhe 2002-12-03 20:52:09 UTC 
From Bugzilla Helper:
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Description of problem:
When I run "grep" command, and pipe the output to stdout to see part of the
returned result, I always get the following error:

cassiopeia 97% grep '>target' HG-U95A_target | head
grep: writing output: Broken pipe
grep: writing output: Broken pipe
grep: writing output: Broken pipe
grep: writing output: Broken pipe
grep: writing output: Broken pipe
grep: writing output: Broken pipe
grep: writing output: Broken pipe
grep: writing output: Broken pipe
(...repeat many many times)

If I pipe the output to a file, it works fine. Or when I switch to bach, it also
works. 

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):


How reproducible:
Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.grep a frequently appeared word from a long file and pipe it to `head` command
	

Actual Results:  grep: writing output: Broken pipe
grep: writing output: Broken pipe
grep: writing output: Broken pipe
grep: writing output: Broken pipe
grep: writing output: Broken pipe
grep: writing output: Broken pipe
grep: writing output: Broken pipe
grep: writing output: Broken pipe
grep: writing output: Broken pipe
grep: writing output: Broken pipe
grep: writing output: Broken pipe


Expected Results:  return the lines with matching pattern

Additional info:

The problem may be more rampant, for when I tried to see the man page of "tcsh",
I got the following error:

cassiopeia 98% man tcsh

gunzip: stdout: Broken pipe
gunzip: stdout: Broken pipe
grotty:<standard input>:70160:fatal error: output error

I never had this problem till I upgraded to RedHat 8.0. And my officemate who
also runs RedHat 8.0 has the same problem when I test it out on his machine.
Comment 1 nessus 2002-12-13 23:26:54 UTC 
I see this problem too, and have a bit more data on it.  It only happens in my
experience if you use tcsh, rather than bash, and only if you run tcsh directly
from /etc/passwd, and not from within a bash.  Also, you only see the problem on
an xterm or gnome-terminal -- not on a virtual console.  And you don't see the
problem on an xterm if you log into the computer via ssh, or even if you start
up an xterm from within the ssh, even if you are ssh'ing to the same computer.

You can see the problem by doing

   % man man

and then typing "q" at more or by doing 

   % cat /etc/termcap | /bin/more

and then typing "q" at more.
Comment 2 Miloslav Trmač 2004-08-19 18:08:08 UTC 
With tcsh-6.13-1 I can't reproduce this even after explicitly enabling
SIGPIPE before executing tcsh. The code in recent releases (6.12,
6.13 explicitly skips output of the SIGPIPE message for processes
whose standard output is directed in a pipe.