[comp.sys.sgi] Brain-dead jobs hangin' around, and other grusome subjects...

shenkin@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu (Peter S. Shenkin) (11/12/90)

Occasional invocations of "ps -ef" on a Personal Iris (25TG) running
3.2.1 have revealed dead jobs haunting the system.  Most of these
seem to be residues of running the "man" command, often several days/
logins ago.  Since man sets up a pipe, each invocation that hangs around
keeps three or four jobs on the list;  however, this does not happen for
every invocation of "man".  Does anyone out there have an idea how this 
can be prevented?

A related question.  A text excerpt grabbed from a wsh using the "copy"
menu-selection remains attached to the middle mouse button across
login sessions.  Is there any way to avoid this?

Finally, someone posted a query a few months ago about how to save the
screen layout -- I think he proposed something like Sun's "Save Screen
Layout" menu selection.  It seems to me that there was some reply to
this that gave a mechanism for figuring out where things are on the
screen, once you've got it the way you like it.  Could some kind soul
who archived this reply please forward it to me?  I'd appreciate any
other remarks that might help, as well.

	-P.
************************f*u*cn*rd*ths*u*cn*gt*a*gd*jb**************************
Peter S. Shenkin, Department of Chemistry, Barnard College, New York, NY  10027
(212)854-1418  shenkin@cunixc.cc.columbia.edu(Internet)  shenkin@cunixc(Bitnet)
***"In scenic New York... where the third world is only a subway ride away."***

dik@cwi.nl (Dik T. Winter) (11/13/90)

In article <1990Nov12.145601.23556@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu> shenkin@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu (Peter S. Shenkin) writes:
 > A related question.  A text excerpt grabbed from a wsh using the "copy"
 > menu-selection remains attached to the middle mouse button across
 > login sessions.  Is there any way to avoid this?
Yes, 'rm -f /tmp/.cutbuffer' in your .logout, .finish or whatever you are
using.  You had better not do this if you are logged in through rlogin or
telnet.
--
dik t. winter, cwi, amsterdam, nederland
dik@cwi.nl

ciemo@bananapc.wpd.sgi.com (Dave Ciemiewicz) (11/14/90)

In article <1990Nov12.145601.23556@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu>, shenkin@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu (Peter S. Shenkin) writes:
|> 
|> Occasional invocations of "ps -ef" on a Personal Iris (25TG) running
|> 3.2.1 have revealed dead jobs haunting the system.  Most of these
|> seem to be residues of running the "man" command, often several days/
|> logins ago.  Since man sets up a pipe, each invocation that hangs around
|> keeps three or four jobs on the list;  however, this does not happen for
|> every invocation of "man".  Does anyone out there have an idea how this 
|> can be prevented?
|> 

There was a race condition in the 3.2 man command itself with respect to the
shell.  When 3.2 man is interrupted using ^C aka ctrl-C (or whatever your
interrupt character is set to), 3.2 man does not properly wait on its
children thus the orphans.

This bug is fixed in the 3.3 software release.  The solution is to upgrade
your release.  The interrim solution is to train yourself not to quit viewing
a man page by typing ^C but instead to press "q" to quit more(1) from paging
anymore of your man page.  As you noted, interrupting 3.2 man with ^C won't
always cause this, only sometimes which made the race condition elusive to
find.

						--- Ciemo