Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!killer!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!CITHEX.CALTECH.EDU!carl From: carl@CITHEX.CALTECH.EDU (Carl J Lydick) Newsgroups: comp.os.vms Subject: Re: Error message of the day Message-ID: <880710122929.2e68@CitHex.Caltech.Edu> Date: 10 Jul 88 19:37:41 GMT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Organization: The Internet Lines: 21 > Here's a charming error message that VMS game me the other day. > > %SET-E-NOTSET, process NAMSRV, PID=20600236, not suspended > -SYSTEM-W-NONEXPR, nonexistent process > > "Hi. You see this process? Well it doesn't exist. . ." > > Perhaps it's time for another line of work. Process deletion is a fairly lengthy task under VMS (it can sometimes be VERY lengthy [i.e., it can take DAYS], if the process is stuck in a resource wait state). Not all utilities (nor, apparently, all parts of the SET utility) look at the same information about a process to decide whether it's still there or not. What's happened here is that the process structures necessary to SUSPEND the process have been deleted but those necessary to uniquely identify the process are still around. SET could have been written to simply tell you there was no such process without telling you its name and pid, but then you'd have to go back and make sure you specified the right name or pid. Though it IS somewhat confusing the first time you run into this sort of error message, I think the way it's done is the right way to do it.