Question

I like to log a programs output ‘on demand’. Eg. the output is logged to the terminal, but another process can hook on the current output at any time.

The classic way would be:

myprogram 2>&1 | tee /tmp/mylog

and on demand

tail /tmp/mylog

However, this would create a ever growing log file even if not used until the drive runs out of space. So my attempt was:

mkfifo /tmp/mylog
myprogram 2>&1 | tee /tmp/mylog

and on demand

cat /tmp/mylog

Now I can read /tmp/mylog at any time. However, any output blocks the program until the /tmp/mylog is read. I like the fifo to flush any incoming data not read back. How to do that?

Answer 1

Inspired by your question I’ve written a simple program that will let you do this:

$ myprogram 2>&1 | ftee /tmp/mylog

It behaves similarly to tee but clones the stdin to stdout and to a named pipe (a requirement for now) without blocking. This means that if you want to log this way it may happen that you’re gonna lose your log data, but I guess it’s acceptable in your scenario.
The trick is to block SIGPIPE signal and to ignore error on writing to a broken fifo. This sample may be optimized in various ways of course, but so far, it does the job I guess.

/* ftee - clone stdin to stdout and to a named pipe 
(c) racic@stackoverflow
WTFPL Licence */

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <sys/stat.h>
#include <fcntl.h>
#include <errno.h>
#include <signal.h>
#include <unistd.h>

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
    int readfd, writefd;
    struct stat status;
    char *fifonam;
    char buffer[BUFSIZ];
    ssize_t bytes;
    
    signal(SIGPIPE, SIG_IGN);

    if(2!=argc)
    {
        printf("Usage:\n someprog 2>&1 | %s FIFO\n FIFO - path to a"
            " named pipe, required argument\n", argv[0]);
        exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
    }
    fifonam = argv[1];

    readfd = open(fifonam, O_RDONLY | O_NONBLOCK);
    if(-1==readfd)
    {
        perror("ftee: readfd: open()");
        exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
    }

    if(-1==fstat(readfd, &status))
    {
        perror("ftee: fstat");
        close(readfd);
        exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
    }

    if(!S_ISFIFO(status.st_mode))
    {
        printf("ftee: %s in not a fifo!\n", fifonam);
        close(readfd);
        exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
    }

    writefd = open(fifonam, O_WRONLY | O_NONBLOCK);
    if(-1==writefd)
    {
        perror("ftee: writefd: open()");
        close(readfd);
        exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
    }

    close(readfd);

    while(1)
    {
        bytes = read(STDIN_FILENO, buffer, sizeof(buffer));
        if (bytes < 0 && errno == EINTR)
            continue;
        if (bytes <= 0)
            break;

        bytes = write(STDOUT_FILENO, buffer, bytes);
        if(-1==bytes)
            perror("ftee: writing to stdout");
        bytes = write(writefd, buffer, bytes);
        if(-1==bytes);//Ignoring the errors
    }
    close(writefd); 
    return(0);
}

You can compile it with this standard command:

$ gcc ftee.c -o ftee

You can quickly verify it by running e.g.:

$ ping www.google.com | ftee /tmp/mylog

$ cat /tmp/mylog

Also note – this is no multiplexer. You can only have one process doing $ cat /tmp/mylog at a time.