From IRC channel: <StenaviN> Can someone confirm cat/test-virt-tail.sh works in 'master'? <StenaviN> I get https://pastebin.com/GBkg7Vtw <rwmjones> StenaviN: yes it works for me; the error is not very helpful, you'll need to set LIBGUESTFS_DEBUG=1 LIBGUESTFS_TRACE=1 <StenaviN> https://pastebin.com/yABgCHwV <rwmjones> I think the error is: <rwmjones> libguestfs: trace: statns "/tail" <rwmjones> guestfsd: => mount_options (0x4a) took 0.00 secs <rwmjones> guestfsd: <= statns (0x1a5) request length 52 bytes <rwmjones> [ 0.930738] EXT2-fs (sda1): error: ext2_lookup: deleted inode referenced: 12 <rwmjones> guestfsd: error: /tail: Input/output error <rwmjones> but I don't know exactly why <StenaviN> Yes, I see. Trying to figure out... <rwmjones> actually no, that's not the problem <rwmjones> for some reason two instances of ‘guestfish --remote exit’ run at the same time, but according to the test script only one should run <rwmjones> notice how the cleanup() function is called twice <rwmjones> afaik that should never happen <StenaviN> and I saw two qemu/guestfish processes running. Continue investigating... And here is what I found: Second copy of 'guestfish --listen' process is a child "recovery process" ( https://github.com/libguestfs/libguestfs/blob/master/lib/launch-direct.c# L777) and that is OK. 'cleanup' was called twice because: 1. call to virt-tail returns non-zero exit code (due to Input/Output error. About this later.) and we trap ERR signal which cause to run 'cleanup' once 2. in 'cleanup' we do 'exit $statuscode' and we trap EXIT and 'cleanup' is called once again It might look confusing but not end of the life. At least there is an explanation if I didn't miss something. Now about failing test case with virt-tail. Jumping ahead, adding extra 'guestfish --remote sync' after 'guestfish --remote rm /tail' in 'cat/test-virt-tail.sh' fixes the test case. virt-tail re-creates overlay image each time it trying to access the file and calls guestfs_statns for the file(s) it watching. guestfs_statns in turn returns NULL indicating an error with exit code EIO instead of ENOENT: 'EXT2-fs (sda1): error: ext2_lookup: deleted inode referenced: 12'. (see pastebin posted in discussion above). So I suspect that changes on original disk made through 'guestfish --remote rm /tail' call were not fully flushed which confirms by proposed patch. It is hard to explain why it works on your system but it might be because of number of factors: 1. Different QEMU caching policy 2. Different caching policy of underlying OS/filesytem 3. etc. -- Nikolay Ivanets Mobile: +380979184774 <097%20918%204774> Skype: n_ivanets