ps: don't know which terminal to select

[P_F]

> Are you happy with the current shell and ps itself?

No, the script malfunctions only produces the error message "ps: don't know which terminal to select" then will fail entirely and terminate.

[P_F]

I have opened an HP case on this. They have responded with suggestions. I'll give those a try today, time permitting, and respond.

[P_F]

For those following this thread or have this issue in the future:

HP provided what I would call a work around. Let me provide a bit more code associated with this issue:

################################

# this function open ssh session
manage_ssh_ps $HOST &
PS_VAL=$!

....
#do some things
...
ps -f | grep $PS_VAL
########################

They recommended I use the "-e" option

When I changed
ps -f
to
ps -ef

The terminal warnings stopped.


The comment I received from HP was:

"...the issue could happen even running from a tty and the session leader process relinquishes or killed. This is the intended behavior".

So, that's pretty much it.

[P_F]

I'm going to work with this for a while and if the problem goes away I'll close this thread.

[Dennis Handly]

>ME: Are you happy with the current shell and ps itself?

I should have said, "Would you be happy ..."

>the script malfunctions only produces the

This is not what I'm asking.
First what is the output for AIX and Linux?

And if HP-UX were to change things, would you be happy with outputting lines only for the current shell and ps itself?

[P_F]

> First what is the output for AIX and Linux?

The output from the complete and successful invocation of the script is a cat command against the syslog. This works properly in AIX and Linux.

The problem in HPUX centers around dropping the ssh function in the background within the script, via cron. Then checking it with:

ps -f | grep

I would not expect ps to react with a terminal error. I don't understand why ps has a problem with the terminal.

I've read the man page on both
ps -ef ( causes the error to go away )
and
ps -f ( causes terminal error )

There's nothing in it indicating a terminal error might result.

> And if HP-UX were to change things, would you be happy with outputting lines only for the current shell and ps itself?

Why 1 type of argument creates a terminal error and the other does not seems odd. Sure, one can expect different results but not a failure, imho.

In regards to being happy... well, I've changed to using -ef and the script is working. So, I'm happy. I guess I'll
avoid using the -f option by itself when putting processes in the background

[P_F]

Closing thread.
Found a work around.

[Dennis Handly]

>The output from the complete and successful invocation of the script is a cat command

I only care about what you expect ps to produce in a cron job?
What is the EXACT output of ps for Linux or AIX? And what do you do with that output?

>I don't understand why ps has a problem with the terminal.

Because the ps default is to produce output of all processes of the controlling terminal. If none, what should it output, nothing?