topic Re: Backgrounding emacs in Operating System - HP-UX

Backgrounding emacs

Neil O'Brien — Fri, 16 Nov 2001 14:23:22 GMT

Hi,

I know that HP-UX console grabs the foreground process, so how do I background a job, for example emacs or xemacs so I can call it something like xemacs -i& and get an iconifiable window?

Re: Backgrounding emacs

harry d brown jr — Fri, 16 Nov 2001 14:27:31 GMT

What kind of server and what kind of console - serial or graphic? if graphic, then maybe you want to start a cde session?

live free or die
harry

Re: Backgrounding emacs

Roger Baptiste — Fri, 16 Nov 2001 14:30:10 GMT

hi,

if you are able to use CDE on the console(graphical), then you should be able to
background emacs, like any other process.

Some more info on what sort of console, the type of system (workstation? or servertype)
would help in suggesting solutions.

-raj

Re: Backgrounding emacs

Neil O'Brien — Fri, 16 Nov 2001 14:51:35 GMT

oops, sorry. Actually, it's a CDE via exceed. The box is a rackmount. HP-UX 11.00, in a korn shell.

Re: Backgrounding emacs

Wodisch — Sat, 17 Nov 2001 22:42:11 GMT

Hello,

make sure your $DISPLAY is set where you start the "emacs".
If you start your session with the CDE-login screen it is set automatically, but if you use the (silly - my private opinion) way of the "TELNET" client startup, then it is NOT set properly, so the programs try to start using the STDIN, and when they try to read from there, they are frozen until they are move to the "foreground" - which can never happen that way...

Just my ???0.02,
Wodisch

Re: Backgrounding emacs

Roger Baptiste — Sun, 18 Nov 2001 12:11:47 GMT

Neil,

do #echo $DISPLAY

to check your display settings from the window you are trying to run emacs. If the DISPLAY is set to the system hostname , it should work fine, otherwise you can set it as:
HOSTNAME='hostname'
DISPLAY=$HOSTNAME:0.0
export HOSTNAME DISPLAY

If your exceed session is running from a PC on the network, then you would need to set the DISPLAY to the IP address of the PC.

HTH
raj

Re: Backgrounding emacs

Neil O'Brien — Mon, 19 Nov 2001 10:52:23 GMT

thanks, but this is not the answer. I already have the HOSTNAME and DISPLAY env vars set to the HP and my PC names respectively (the name of the PC is defined in /etc/hosts in order to use the XDMCP broadcast so it resolves by name).

Re: Backgrounding emacs

Wodisch — Mon, 19 Nov 2001 16:20:54 GMT

Hello again,

it seems we do not understand what your problem is... So, please tell us what you mean with "grab" and "console".
Perhaps by listing the steps/commands you tried, and their output/behaviour.

Curious,
Wodisch

Re: Backgrounding emacs

Alex Glennie — Mon, 19 Nov 2001 16:34:38 GMT

He's trying to provide a better editing environment than vi, and as there are
extensions to emacs for languages etc that's why I was trying. It's not a
big deal, if there is another editor you do support for provides text
highlighting, colouring, syntax checking etc that includes Java support then
I can try that.

This is a general kind of question however, because I ran into equal
problems running dynamo, with that though, as there is command line output,
by using nohup I can avoid the problem.

As a general question though, I have tried cshell, bourne shell and no joy
but I just worked out where the problem is, although not specifically why.

I enabled the dt logging, and see this:

Stty: : Not a typewriter (repeats 3 times)
/usr/bin/ksh: a: unknown test operator

and the .profile has 3 lines

stty erase '^h'
stty intr '^c'
stty kill '^u'

which cause the first error, (yes the ticks are right, it's just outlook
trying to be clever), and the next line that the test fails on (my guess
anyway) is:

if [ ! "$DT" -a 'tty' !- "/dev/console" ]

this shell was copied from Solaris, as it appears to work I assumed it was
fine, but now I guess it does have some problem. I can send the
.kshrc/.profile and .dtprofile to avoid outlook weirdness.

ps I know because it's landed at my door :( any help appreciated still by both Kevin or I ... I'm still looking into it ....

Re: Backgrounding emacs

Roger Baptiste — Mon, 19 Nov 2001 16:44:23 GMT

<>

*LOL* That's a seamless merging of ITRC forum posts and the support centre functions ;-)

-raj

Re: Backgrounding emacs

Alex Glennie — Mon, 19 Nov 2001 16:53:21 GMT

Tell me about it I get several of these per week .... you just can't escape :(

Re: Backgrounding emacs

Wodisch — Mon, 19 Nov 2001 20:00:23 GMT

Hello Neil and Alex,

who's "Kevin"??? :-)

Well, first, you still haven't answered my questions :-( but I'll give it another shot, anyway:
1) that line is wrong:
*** if [ ! "$DT" -a 'tty' !- "/dev/console" ]
as there is no operator "!-" - I guess it should read "!=", right?
2) since that would not freeze good ol' emacs ("Escape Meta Alternate Control Shift" or "Eight Megabytes And Constantly Swapping" as we called in the dark ages of UN*X), there must be some shell command-line started, which in turn tries to start the X-client, and, of course, is frozen when trying to read from SDTIN...
So, please tell us ALL the scripts/commands used to start that emacs, from the X-Windows startup scripts of the session, over the profile-scripts, to the Window-Manager scripts, which may be involved.

Just my ???0.02,
Wodisch
PS: Kevin - home alone??

Re: Backgrounding emacs

Neil O'Brien — Tue, 20 Nov 2001 12:03:45 GMT

Hi,

OK, I've been in contact with Alex, he was having a bad hair day, must have confused me with some other Kevin! There is no Kevin, just Neil.

Anyway, the problem occurs with ksh, csh, bash and sh, but but csh/sh and bash are just defaults I don't have any extra scripts for those. The !- is !=. it was a typo on my behalf.

The only command used to start emacs is "emacs -i&" or just emacs& I tried xemacs on another HP, but the same problem. I think there is something simple in my configuration which is stopping the command line. I've included my .kshrc and .profile, the .dtprofile is unchanged except uncommenting DTSOURCEPROFILE to enable the shell initialisation. I've also attached the .dt/errorlog, it definitely does not like the stty erase '^H' lines, and the first test (if [ ! "$DT" ....), it's just called kshrc but all three are attached.

The X-Windows, exceed parts are just standard as far as I know. I'm using v6.2.0.0 of exceed, use the XDMCP to connect as a user to the HP, login as a regular user with CDE. I can give other versions etc as needed. The machine is running HP-UX 11.00. Emacs is v20.7

I'm going to create another user and see if I have a problem with that without the extra korn shell stuff.

Re: Backgrounding emacs

Alex Glennie — Tue, 20 Nov 2001 16:31:12 GMT

il,

OK here's what I've found : hpux 11.00 / H/W B180L

installed emacs 20.7, created new user with ksh as login shell
cd /opt/emacs/bin and run either emacs -i& or emacs-20.7 -i & works, I get an iconifiable
window with a gnu's head in it, running emacs without the -i option with or without an & also
works ie I still get an iconifiable window but it has no gnu's head.

Conclusion : patch levels, exceed or user customisation are playing a part here.

Advise : I can when I get time check the behaviour of the Exceed client out for you tomorrow.
I can use your .profile and kshrc files too but suggest you try creating a new user
with minimum customisation to their kshrc and .profiles and also detail the patch level
of this system as previously requested and any new results which occur from these actions.

More tomorrow.

Regards,

Alex

Re: Backgrounding emacs

Neil O'Brien — Wed, 21 Nov 2001 08:41:36 GMT

Ah ha! So I found a reply Alex made yesterday to someone else where he suggests running dr_dt to analyse the system. So I tried it, no errors, but 5 warnings, some are just permissions things which are probably not a big deal, however, I don't have /var/adm/inetd.sec which I suspect may be a bigger deal.

Alex suggested that the file should contain:

dtspc allow
spc allow
mserve allow

Is this all the file should contain? I searched 4 HP's here and none have this file.

Re: Backgrounding emacs

Alex Glennie — Wed, 21 Nov 2001 09:08:28 GMT

try in /usr/newconfig/etc ?

Re: Backgrounding emacs

Alex Glennie — Wed, 21 Nov 2001 09:12:16 GMT

I've yet to look at your patch levels .... but Exceed vers 6.2 works fine
with a ksh user logged into CDE using your .profile and kshrc file .... not much
left other than patches or something you haven't told me ;)

Re: Backgrounding emacs

Neil O'Brien — Wed, 21 Nov 2001 09:21:37 GMT

no. can't find that file either. I'm also wondering about /usr/dt/config/Xconfig which has
the Dtlogin*Grabserver commented out. Should I create a copy in /etc/dt/config and uncomment this line?

Re: Backgrounding emacs

Neil O'Brien — Wed, 21 Nov 2001 09:24:40 GMT

ahem, sorry, made a typo, I really do have an inetd.conf. I'll try using that!

Re: Backgrounding emacs

Neil O'Brien — Wed, 21 Nov 2001 10:10:37 GMT

OK, no joy there, now to ensure I have all the patches needed. Grrr, this is frustrating, it's not a big deal if I use emacs or not, it's just the concept of backgrounding processes!