Re: cygstart regression [Was: Re: on the road to 1.5.19 - snapshot testing needed]

[Michael Schaap <cygwin at mscha dot org>]

On 3-Oct-2005 18:56, Aaron Humphrey wrote:
> On 10/2/05, Michael Schaap wrote:
>   
>> To be able to check whether something has changed in the path handling,
>> I've uploaded a version of cygstart that prints out the exact
>> ShellExecute call it is making, at
>> <http://www.mscha.org/cygstart_dbg.zip>.  Could you perhaps download
>> that, try it out both with a snapshot and 1.5.18, and let us know
>> whether it prints out something different?
>>     
>
> With 20050930 snapshot, running 'cygstart_dbg empty.mdb':
>
> ShellExecute(
>     "(null)",
>     "(null)",
>     "empty.mdb",
>     "(null)",
>     "(null)",
>     1
> );
>
> With 1.5.18, the same command:
>
> ShellExecute(
>     "(null)",
>     "(null)",
>     "empty.mdb",
>     "(null)",
>     "(null)",
>     1
> );
>
> They look pretty similar to me.
>
>   
Indeed.
That pretty much rules out that something is broken in path conversion.

>> If that's not it, then I don't know what it could be.  Must have
>> something to do with timing, or the exact memory location, or something
>> like that, especially since the problem disappears under strace...
>> To track it down, perhaps you could try:
>>  - "cmd /c start whatever.mdb" from a Cygwin prompt
>>     
>
> Works.  So at least this gives me a better workaround than running strace,
> if I can remember it.
>
>   
That seems to rule out that something in the environment (variables) is
causing the problem.

>>  - "cygstart whatever.mdb" from a cmd.exe command prompt
>>     
>
> Works.
>
>   
This more or less rules out a cygstart bug, or for that matter, a Cygwin
bug.

>>  - save the simplest possible Access database, and see if cygstart can
>> open that
>>     
>
> Doesn't work.
>
>   
That makes it unlikely that it's really running out of memory.  Must be
that "system error", then...

>>  - make sure whatever.mdb is on a local disk, in the current directory,
>> and has a simple file name
>>     
>
> 'empty.mdb' is in 'C:\'.  Running 'cygstart empty.mdb' from /cygdrive/c doesn't
> work.
>
>   
Yeah, that's pretty much as simple as it gets.

> For all cases, "works" means that the mdb file comes up properly in Access 97,
> whereas "doesn't work" means the error message mentioned in my original
> email on the subject(http://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2005-09/msg00923.html).
>
> For another data point, cygstart works fine on my Windows 98 SE computer,
> running a recent snapshot(forget which one, sorry), but it has Access 2000.
>
>   
I'm afraid I'm fresh out of ideas.  It looks like this might be a bug in
Access 97, or perhaps something wrong on your computer, triggered by
some random change in cygwin1.dll.

Sorry I couldn't be of more help,

 - Michael

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