Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!pacbell!pbhyf!rob
From: rob@pbhyf.PacBell.COM (Rob Bernardo)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.elm
Subject: Re: Handling Elm bug releases
Message-ID: <3531@pbhyf.PacBell.COM>
Date: 23 Jun 88 02:16:42 GMT
References: <1080@bellboy.UUCP> <180003@hpsrli.HP.COM> <502@altnet.ALTOS.COM>
Reply-To: rob@pbhyf.PacBell.COM (Rob Bernardo)
Organization: Pacific * Bell, San Ramon, CA
Lines: 31

In article <502@altnet.ALTOS.COM> edc@altnet.UUCP (Eric Christensen) writes:
+In article <180003@hpsrli.HP.COM> darrylo@hpsrli.HP.COM (Darryl Okahata) writes:
+>     This may be an Elm bug.  I seem to remember a patch to Elm 1.7 that fixed
+>a similar problem that occured if you exited Elm and then quickly logged out.
+>Basically, a SIGHUP signal was being sent to the process spawned by Elm, and
+>that signal was not being caught.  The fix was to change Elm to ignore the
+>signal (I think).
+
+You're right, it was an Elm bug. I got to thinking about it afterwards, and
+pulled my 1.5 sources off of tape to have a look. Sure enough, 1.5 assumed
+that the delivery agent was smart enough to finish what it's doing before it
+exits. This is fine if you have sendmail, but some USG versions of /bin/mail
+are brain damaged.
+
+I'm happy to report that 2.0 takes into account the possibility of a stupid
+delivery agent.

I wonder if this patch to Elm 1.7 (which I have been using) is causing
another problem. At times when I have been in vi under elm and 
my connection hung up, I'd log back in and see vi (and I think elm)
still running. Had a hell of a time trying to kill vi in such a way that
my letter under progress could be retrieved with vi -r.

Ignoring SIGHUP has its dangers. I don't have the elm source in front of 
me, but wouldn't it be better for SIGHUP to be ignored only in the 
/bin/mail fork, so that the parent fork will react appropriately to 
hang ups? 
-- 
Rob Bernardo	[backbone]!pacbell!rob	 -OR-	rob@PacBell.COM
business:  (415) 823-2417	Pacific Bell SRVAC Room 4E750	San Ramon, CA
residence: (415) 827-4301		R Bar JB		Concord, CA