[comp.os.vms] LIB$SPAWN screws up

pstevens@pioneer.arpa (Paul Stevens RCE Sterling) (03/23/88)

I've run into what I believe to be SPR material against LIB$SPAWN.
I can't duplicate this error on every machine (for example it will
not fail often on our 8650) but on slower CPU's (like our 785) it
will fail very consistently.

I have a program which uses LIB$SPAWN to do COPY commands.  If a user
who has only a subpocess quota of 2 first does a DCL SPAWN before
running this program, they will then have only 1 subprocess left
(no more no less than what is needed).  However, sometimes when the
program has waited for the subprocess to complete and then issues another
LIB$SPAWN the error, exceeded quota occurs.  I can verify that the quota
in question is the subprocess quota by both bumping the subproc quota
or logging out of the spawned subprocess and noticing that the error 
dissapears in either case.

LIB$SPAWN allows three ways to synchronize execution with the completion
of the spawned process.  The FLGS argument, an Event Flag and an AST routine.
All three methods cause the same problem.

I thought I'd ask the net for feedback before I send in the SPR.

BTW my test COPY is simply to copy the source of the program to NL:

Paul Stevens:  PSTEVENS%EAR@ames-io.ARPA  and PSTEVENS%EAR@io.arc.nasa.gov
	       pstevens@ames-pioneer.ARPA