nushell / nushell/reedline

Nushell locks the history file

Open
#502 0 comments 1 reaction 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

A-History bug P-high
Dominant language
Rust
Stars
818
Forks
249
Avg merge
4d 14h
Merged PRs (30d)
30

Description

Basic Info

Platform
Linux, Ubuntu 20.04

Terminal software
Windows Terminal

Nushell attempts to lock the history file. This means that nushell doesn't work when your home directory is mounted via a remote filesystem that doesn't support file locking, like NFSv3. I would think this could potentially cause issue with multiple instances of nushell via the same user as well.

Steps to reproduce

  1. Ensure your history file is on a non-locking filesystem, like NFSv3. Either by remotely mounting your home directory, or changing the file location
  2. run nushell. It will freeze while attempting to lock the file before exiting with an error.

strace

open("/home/net/$user/.config/nushell/history.txt", O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_CLOEXEC, 0666) = 5
fcntl(5, F_SETFD, FD_CLOEXEC)           = 0
flock(5, LOCK_EX)                       = -1 EIO (Input/output error)
close(5)                                = 0
ioctl(1, TIOCGWINSZ, {ws_row=30, ws_col=120, ws_xpixel=0, ws_ypixel=0}) = 0
ioctl(1, TIOCGWINSZ, {ws_row=30, ws_col=120, ws_xpixel=0, ws_ypixel=0}) = 0
ioctl(2, TIOCGWINSZ, {ws_row=30, ws_col=120, ws_xpixel=0, ws_ypixel=0}) = 0
ioctl(2, TIOCGWINSZ, {ws_row=30, ws_col=120, ws_xpixel=0, ws_ypixel=0}) = 0
ioctl(2, TIOCGWINSZ, {ws_row=30, ws_col=120, ws_xpixel=0, ws_ypixel=0}) = 0
ioctl(1, TIOCGWINSZ, {ws_row=30, ws_col=120, ws_xpixel=0, ws_ypixel=0}) = 0
ioctl(2, TIOCGWINSZ, {ws_row=30, ws_col=120, ws_xpixel=0, ws_ypixel=0}) = 0
write(2, "Error: ", 7Error: )                  = 7
write(2, "\n", 1
)                       = 1
write(2, "  \33[31m\303\227\33[0m I/O error (os erro"..., 36  × I/O error (os error 5)) = 36
write(2, "\n", 1
)                       = 1
write(2, "\n", 1
)                       = 1
sigaltstack({ss_sp=NULL, ss_flags=SS_DISABLE, ss_size=8192}, NULL) = 0
munmap(0x7f4376073000, 12288)           = 0
exit_group(1)                           = ?
+++ exited with 1 +++

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by tracing reedline's history-file handling from the reported startup path and reproduce the failure on an NFSv3-like non-locking filesystem. Done means Nushell no longer exits with an I/O error when the history file cannot be locked, while the reported history behavior remains clear.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
rust
Domain
cli
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
38/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.