How does the IO manager handle reading regular files?

[Niklas Hambüchen]

Hey Ben, thanks for your quick reply.

I think there's a problem.

On 14/05/2018 15.36, Ben Gamari wrote:
> I believe the relevant implementation is the RawIO instance defined in
> GHC.IO.FD. The read implementation in particular is
> GHC.IO.FD.readRawBufferPtr. There is a useful Note directly above
> this function.

Reading through the code at

  http://hackage.haskell.org/package/base-4.11.1.0/docs/src/GHC.IO.FD.html#readRawBufferPtr

The first line jumped to my eye:

  | isNonBlocking fd = unsafe_read -- unsafe is ok, it can't block

This looks suspicious.
And indeed, the following program does NOT keep printing things in the printing thread, and instead blocks for 30 seconds:

```
module Main where

import           Control.Concurrent
import           Control.Monad
import qualified Data.ByteString as BS
import           System.Environment

main :: IO ()
main = do
  args <- getArgs
  case args of
    [file] -> do

      forkIO $ forever $ do
        putStrLn "still running"
        threadDelay 100000 -- 0.1 s
      bs <- BS.readFile file
      putStrLn $ "Read " ++ show (BS.length bs) ++ " bytes"

    _ -> error "Pass 1 argument (a file)"
```

when compiled with

  ~/.stack/programs/x86_64-linux/ghc-8.2.2/bin/ghc --make -O -threaded blocking-regular-file-read-test.hs

on my Ubuntu 16.04 and on a 2GB file like

  ./blocking-regular-file-read-test /mnt/images/ubuntu-18.04-desktop-amd64.iso

And `strace -f -e open,read` on it shows:

  open("/mnt/images/ubuntu-18.04-desktop-amd64.iso", O_RDONLY|O_NOCTTY|O_NONBLOCK) = 11
  read(11,  <unfinished ...>

So GHC is trying to use `O_NONBLOCK` on regular files, which cannot work and will block when used through unsafe foreign calls like that.

Is this a known problem?

Otherwise I'll go ahead and file a ticket.