SABTI Riad

Backend & systems engineering — mostly Linux internals, the parts under the syscall.

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Who uses the CPU when you type `tail -f`?

31 May, 2026

This post started with running tail -f in one terminal and echo >> in another, and finding a red anon_inode:inotify entry in /proc. It unpacks that discovery and answers the question: who actually does the work when you run tail -f?