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