Asri-unix.373 net.unix-wizards utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!menlo70!sri-unix!ihnss!warren@Berkeley Wed Dec 30 23:19:25 1981 run on shells If you are running a version of unix that implements the SIGCLD signal (#18), the problem may be that the daemon invoking the shell explicitly ignores it. This causes sub-processes that terminate to vanish without a trace, never returning their process id as a result of a wait() in their parent. The bourne shell, unfortunately, expects to see its children terminate and will go into a loop calling wait with no outstanding descendants if this does not happen. I suspect that SIGCLD and its strange effect on wait were not foreseen when the shell was written, and as a result the signal is not initialized properly by it. Warren Montgomery ihnss!warren IH x2494 ----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/ This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided: 1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles. 2. The following notice remains appended to each copy: The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.