Received-SPF: pass (google.com: best guess record for domain of linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org designates 209.132.180.67 as permitted sender) client-ip=209.132.180.67;
Date:   Fri, 8 Feb 2019 14:15:19 -0500
From:   Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
To:     "Randall S. Becker" <rsbecker@nexbridge.com>
Cc:     'Junio C Hamano' <gitster@pobox.com>, git@vger.kernel.org,
        'Linux Kernel' <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
        git-packagers@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [Breakage] Git v2.21.0-rc0 - t5318 (NonStop)
Message-ID: <20190208191519.GF27673@sigill.intra.peff.net>
References: <000f01d4bf9e$a508eab0$ef1ac010$@nexbridge.com>
 <20190208165052.GC23461@sigill.intra.peff.net>
 <001101d4bfd6$b9430230$2bc90690$@nexbridge.com>
 <20190208180321.GB27673@sigill.intra.peff.net>
 <002501d4bfde$b26e6050$174b20f0$@nexbridge.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
Content-Disposition: inline
In-Reply-To: <002501d4bfde$b26e6050$174b20f0$@nexbridge.com>
Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org
Precedence: bulk

On Fri, Feb 08, 2019 at 01:47:04PM -0500, Randall S. Becker wrote:

> > Though I suspect we may be able to just find a solution that works
> > everywhere, without having two different implementations. If we know we
> > need $count bytes for dd, we could probably just generate a file with that
> > many NULs in it.
> 
> For this, we could use truncate -s count file instead of dd to get a
> fixed size file of nulls. This would remove the need for /dev/zero in
> t5318 (the patch below probably will wrap badly in my mailer so I can
> submit a real patch separately.

I don't think "truncate" is portable, though.

> > Other cases don't seem to actually care that they're getting NULs, and are
> > just redirecting stdin from /dev/zero to get an infinite amount of input. They
> > could probably use "yes" for that.
> 
> What about reading from /dev/null?

That would yield zero bytes, not an infinite number of them.

-Peff