grep: operation not supported on socket

Question

I get this error on cygwin 1.7.5-1 under zsh and rxvt when I try to run

grep "getDirectories" *

It seems to happen once per directory.

I successfully ran this operation many times under cygwin 1.7.1 just a few days ago before I had to get a new laptop. Anyone know what is causing this error?

Answer 1

What is your current directory when you execute your grep command?

If it is / or /tmp then may be you are trying to perform grep command on some unix-type socket file, hence the error.

Answer 2

Problem went away after a reboot, but it existed consistently for a few days with some versions of cygwin. This error seemed to happen once per directory, on a regular NTFS file system, under Windows XP + Cygwin (i.e. no real unix sockets available).

No answer because problem vanished.