pjr@cgdisis.ucar.edu (10/20/89)
I am having a problem with elm 2.2 patch level 7
in the following configuration:
editor: emacs version 18.53
machine: sun 4 running 4.0.3
mailing agent: sendmail
The problem occurs maybe 10 percent of the time I go through the
following scenario:
1.) enter elm from the shell script to mail TO someone
2.) it puts me in emacs, I edit for awhile, then may go edit some other files,
finally return to my mail file, write it, and exit.
3.) elm displays the message
``cannot invoke editor: /usr/local/bin/emacs''
instead of the prompt to send, edit, forget etc.
4.) elm returns me to the shell, doesn't send the message,
and the temporary file is gone.
The same problem was described by John Stephens, and Steve Freed in
earlier postings (ie. #2091) to this newsgroup. Also with Suns (but
not a sun 4), and they were using vi. I did not see a fix described in
later articles. I have written to them but did not get a response. Does
someone have a fix? Would more recent patches help?
Thanks in advance
Phil Rasch (National Center for Atmospheric Research, 303-497-1368)
internet: pjr@cgdra.ucar.edu
SPAN: AAP1::PJR or 9574::PJR
Philip Rasch
Nasd@mace.cc.purdue.edu (Kareth) (10/20/89)
In article <4770@ncar.ucar.edu> pjr@cgdisis.ucar.edu writes: >The problem occurs maybe 10 percent of the time I go through the >following scenario: >1.) enter elm from the shell script to mail TO someone Doesn't have to be from a shell script. I've had it occur when I just regularly invoked it. >2.) it puts me in emacs, I edit for awhile, then may go edit some other files, > finally return to my mail file, write it, and exit. Same here. And I've had it happen when I didn't edit anything except for the mail message. >4.) elm returns me to the shell, doesn't send the message, > and the temporary file is gone. Very very VERY annoying. I lost a few fairly lengthy mail messages this way. >The same problem was described by John Stephens, and Steve Freed in >earlier postings (ie. #2091) to this newsgroup. Also with Suns (but >not a sun 4), and they were using vi. I did not see a fix described in >later articles. I have written to them but did not get a response. Does >someone have a fix? Would more recent patches help? This was covered a few months ago. The error is occuring in editmsg.c and it's not local to Suns ither. I've been using Elm on vax8800 and it WAS crashing here also. Apparently the code to this part has not changed for a long time, so it isn't/wasn't know why all of a sudden this started happening. The offending lines are around line 100 or so. Just take out the "return_value = 1" (or whatever that variable name is), substitute an appropriate message for the error report, and compile it. I did this with the Elm we are running here, and I've had no problems since. Whatever this part of code is doing, it's not working as it was intended to. -kareth.