error while running shell in emacs

[Markus Hoenicka]

Ken Brown <kbrown@cornell.edu> was heard to say:

> On 9/30/2011 10:27 AM, Markus Hoenicka wrote:
>> CYGWIN_NT-5.1 sbhc123 1.7.9(0.237/5/3) 2011-03-29 10:10 i686 Cygwin
>>
>> I use some Emacs extensions which execute external programs using
>> (call-process). This used to work on my previous setup, but it fails on
>> my current box. The following command run in Emacs reproduces what seems
>> to be the problem:
>>
>> (call-process "bash" nil '(t t) nil "-ic" "ls -al")
>> bash: Kann die Prozessgruppe des Terminals nicht setzen (-1).:
>> Inappropriate ioctl for device
>> bash: Keine Job Steuerung in dieser Shell.
>
> Markus,
>
> Why are you calling bash with the -i option in this context?  Your  
> first `nil' causes bash's input to come from /dev/null.  Does it  
> make sense to have an interactive shell with input coming from  
> /dev/null?  If you remove -i and just run
>
> (call-process "bash" nil '(t t) nil "-c" "ls -al") ,
>
> it works fine with both cygwin 1.7.9 and the latest snapshot.
>
> Maybe there's still a Cygwin bug here; I tested your original  
> command in Linux, and it worked.  But omitting -i might at least be  
> a workaround for you.
>

You're asking the right question here. I tried to trace back where the  
"-ic" came from. I could find traces of this switch as early as 2004.  
It was part of a setup which allowed to use Cygwin bash as a shell in  
NTEmacs (the native GNU Emacs port, and back then the only way to have  
a GNU Emacs GUI on Windows). I'm pretty sure that I copied the switch  
from other sources, so I can't tell whether it was necessary back then  
or if the "-i" part of it simply didn't hurt. Well, it didn't hurt  
with Cygwin Emacs either until I set up my new box. But as you say,  
both "-c" and "-lc" work without a problem. Thus omitting the "-i" is  
probably not a workaround, but simply the proper way of doing things.

Thanks a lot for looking into this.

regards,
Markus


-- 
Markus Hoenicka
http://www.mhoenicka.de
AQ score 38



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