Attempting to install SSHTerm Pro from http://www.sshtools.com/products/applications/sshterm-pro/sshterm-pro.jsp I get the following errors: tail: cannot open `+260' for reading: No such file or directory gunzip: sfx_archive.tar.gz: not in gzip format tar: sfx_archive.tar: Cannot open: No such file or directory tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now System Details: Linux Dufous 2.6.10-gentoo-r4 #1 Wed Jan 19 17:07:30 EST 2005 i686 AMD Athlon(tm) processor AuthenticAMD GNU/Linux bash-2.05b$ tail --version tail (coreutils) 5.2.1 Written by Paul Rubin, David MacKenzie, Ian Lance Taylor, and Jim Meyering. Copyright (C) 2004 Free Software Foundation, Inc. This is free software; see the source for copying conditions. There is NO warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1.pick a text file (longer than 12 lines :-), it works with any file text or otherwise 2.issue the command tail +12 > filename.txt 3. Actual Results: tail: cannot open `+12' for reading: No such file or directory Expected Results: a new file created that is missing the first 11 lines from the original This only happens when output is redirected using ">" Not sure if this is a problem with tail or the shell. I've tried it on SuSE 9.2 (AMD64) with the same version of Tail, but with BASH 3.00.0(1) and that works as expected. I was going to characterize this as a Blocker because it is preventing me from testing both the SSHTerm Pro app listed above, and the "auto-installer" for SSL-Explorer SSL VPN on Gentoo for a project I am working on. http://sourceforge.net/projects/sslexplorer/ But I discovered they have a tarball that I can play with. None-the-less, tail, or perhaps bash seems broken I am not a programmer, but I have been using Linux for a long time and I am capable of testing and following instructions for gathering more info. Please let me know what I need to do to help fix this.
Hi, The usage of some tools in the coreutils package (the package that provides head, tail, etc.) has changed to be more POSIX compliant. "tail -n +260 foo/bar" will work, but "tail -10", or "tail +2" will either give off an depreciation error or die (like it did above). The manual pages might be of help, but basically prior usage of "tail [-|+]N" needs to be converted to "tail -n [-|+]N". Hope this helps :)
This behavior is correct. If you need the old behavior for broken applications that can't be fixed to use 'tail -n [-+]N', there is a workaround. Run this for the workaround documentation: info coreutils Standards conformance
*** Bug 159226 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Even if the accepted usage is `tail -n +N file`, the man page is confusing, if not contradictory.
