[comp.emacs] `tty`: Ambiguous. -- what does this mean?

NDAVIS@INTELLICORP.COM (Nils Davis) (05/07/91)

I get this "`tty`: Ambiguous" error now and then, like when I try to use
Kyle Jones' crypt.el to read in compressed files. What does this mean, and
how can I stop it? I'm using Emacs both in its own X window, and under
SunTools with the emacstool program -- I get the same error with each. The 
error has also shown up with other shell-related things, like 
"shell-command-on-region" and whatnot, which makes me think the spawned shells
are having trouble. My default shell is csh, and my shell-file-name variable
is set to /bin/csh. 

Late-breaking news:

As I wrote this, I tried an experiment, and set shell-file-name to
/bin/sh. Now things work. Is this just a normal brokenness of csh, or
is there something else I can do to make it work with csh?

Thanks for any info,

Nils Davis
ndavis@intellicorp.com


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TRANLE@INTELLICORP.COM (Minh Tran-Le) (05/10/91)

| From: fido!jackr@fido.wpd.sgi.com (John "Jack" Repenning)
| 
| In article <9105070133.AA01943@life.ai.mit.edu> NDAVIS@INTELLICORP.COM (Nils Davis) writes:
| 
|    I get this "`tty`: Ambiguous" error now and then, ...
| 
|    As I wrote this, I tried an experiment, and set shell-file-name to
|    /bin/sh. Now things work. Is this just a normal brokenness of csh, or
|    is there something else I can do to make it work with csh?
| 
| Those two together suggest that the problem is somewhere in your
| ~/.cshrc, perhaps a call to tty or stty.  But I don't recognize the
| "Ambiguous" message, so I don't know quite what the actual problem is.
| 

I have seen that strange message  "`tty`: Ambiguous" when you try to use
`rsh' on an hp machine.  The `rsh' is the restricted shell program and
not the remote shell.  The remote shell is `remsh'.

Minh Tran-Le.
-------

jackr@dblues.wpd.sgi.com (Jack Repenning) (05/10/91)

Recently, Minh Tran-Le wrote:

	I have seen that strange message "`tty`: Ambiguous" when you
	try to use `rsh' on an hp machine.  The `rsh' is the
	restricted shell program and not the remote shell.  The remote
	shell is `remsh'.

But I assume you never figured out what was causing it?

An interesting aspect of this comment is that rsh is a restricted form
of the Bourne shell, or of the Korn shell if you have that installed:
these shells don't necessarily read any set-up files, whereas csh
always reads ~/.cshrc, and so a "tty: Ambiguous" message from them is
less likely to be related to set-up files.

Hmmmmmm....



Jack Repenning			9U-530	     jackr@wpd.sgi.com
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