From: utzoo!decvax!duke!harpo!ihps3!ihuxl!ihuxw!larry
Newsgroups: net.news.b
Title: fork problem in inews.c?
Article-I.D.: ihuxw.28
Posted: Sat Aug  7 15:39:18 1982
Received: Sun Aug  8 00:33:29 1982


Seems that I stumbled over this once before when I first brought up a
copy of version 2.8 --  If you do not have $NAME set, or a ".name" file,
inews is supposed to ask you for your name [some versions get it from
the password file].  However, in version 2.9, after printing the prompt
for your name, inews trips over line 307 (after a fork) and exits you
back to the shell, leaving the "background" inews running.  This line
was changed in the update package --question is why??  Seems to work
much better the way it was!  Can anybody give me the insight as to why
this line changed?  Now that I think about it, I'm more confused.. why
fork and then let the child exit?  Here's the code:

out:
	/* Determine input. */
	if (mode != PROC)
		input();

	if (tty) {
		i = fork();
		if (i != 0)		/* used to be (i == 0) in 2.8 */
			exit(0);
	}

	/* Do the actual insertion. */
	insert();

Does the "if (tty)" line need something else tested?  Makes more sense,
I think.

	Thanks in advance for any light you can shed on this.


		Larry Marek
		 Bell Labs
		  Naperville