Received: with rfc822 via encapsulated-mail; Sun, 21 Jan 1996 22:37:31 GMT From chiark.chu.cam.ac.uk!ian Sun Jan 21 14:36:24 1996 Return-Path: Received: from pixar.com by mongo.pixar.com with smtp (Smail3.1.28.1 #15) id m0te8N6-00064IC; Sun, 21 Jan 96 14:36 PST Received: from artemis.chu.cam.ac.uk by pixar.com with SMTP id AA23035 (5.67b/IDA-1.5 for debian-bugs-pipe@mongo.pixar.com); Sun, 21 Jan 1996 14:36:22 -0800 Received: from chiark.chu.cam.ac.uk by artemis.chu.cam.ac.uk with smtp (Smail3.1.29.1 #33) id m0te8My-0007uLC; Sun, 21 Jan 96 22:36 GMT Received: by chiark.chu.cam.ac.uk id m0te8Mr-0002ZfC (Debian /\oo/\ Smail3.1.29.1 #29.35); Sun, 21 Jan 96 22:36 GMT Message-Id: Date: Sun, 21 Jan 96 22:36 GMT From: Ian Jackson To: Debian bugs submission address X-Debian-Cc: Daniel Luhde-Thompson , Austin Donnelly Subject: ytalk `shell' option can't run dpkg Package: ytalk Version: 3.0.2-1 See the screenshot below. As you can see, the problem is intermittent. I can't run `strace' to see what's going wrong, because ytalk breaks that too. The code in dpkg that's failing amounts to c= fork(); if (c<0) bomb_out(); if (!c) { exec(); bomb_out(); } repeatedly { rc= waitpid(c,&status); error_check(); } and it's the waitpid that's failing with ECHILD. For what it's worth I'm using dpkg 1.0.11, and running ytalk in an xterm. dpkg runs fine in Emacs shell mode, Emacs terminal-emulator mode, telnet sessions, script and rlogin sessions. It even works from rsh, which doesn't provide it with a controlling terminal. I dread to think what ytalk is doing ... Ian. ---------------------------= YTalk version 3.0 (2) =--------------------------- -chiark:~> really dpkg -i things/debian/upl/hello-1.3-4.deb (Reading database ... 17439 files and directories currently installed.) Preparing to replace hello (using things/debian/upl/hello-1.3-4.deb) ... Unpacking replacement hello ... Setting up hello ... -chiark:~> really dpkg -i things/debian/upl/hello-1.3-4.deb (Reading database ... 17439 files and directories currently installed.) Preparing to replace hello (using things/debian/upl/hello-1.3-4.deb) ... Unpacking replacement hello ... dpkg: error processing things/debian/upl/hello-1.3-4.deb (--install): wait for dpkg-deb --fsys-tarfile failed: No child processes Errors were encountered while processing: things/debian/upl/hello-1.3-4.deb Processing was halted because there were too many errors. -chiark:~> ------------------------------= ijackson@chiark =------------------------------