Subject: Re: bash hangs win95
From: [email-masked] (Dr. G. Scott Lett)

12 Sep 1998 21:27:39 -0700
Message-ID: <000a01bdde86$919b4d20$a9177fd1.cygnus.gnu-win32@green>
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To: <[email-masked]>

Thanks for the reply.

There have been many posts on the topic, with many suggestions for changes.
Many of them had no effect on the problem, but one suggestion did help.
Because this problem is so pervasive and most of the suggestions seem to
have nothing to do with the problem, I am reporting my experiences.

First, the problem statement.  I experienced system hangs in the bash shell
under a variety of conditions.  (When I entered an unrecognized command,
typed control-C, or somehow broke a pipe.) I found no way to get out of the
hang other than rebooting.

I looked at a number of suggestions, but only number 6  below has made a
difference.

1. I am using version 19 beta of gnu-win32.  I have also installed egcs 1.1
for cygwin.  The
    bash-hang problem occurs with and without the egcs upgrade.

2. I am using version 4.00.950a of win95.  If you need more details about my
system or the version
    numbers of various components, please write me.

3. I have spaces in my path.  Since the bash-hang problem has gone away and
I don't have other
    problems, I don't think this is a problem either.  I DID have to modify
cygnus.bat to enclose
    %PATH% in double quotes:

   SET PATH=C:\CYGNUS\B19\H-I386~1\bin;"%PATH%"

    After this change, spaces in PATH caused me no further problems.  The
directory containing
    bash.exe is in my path.

4. Using ash instead of bash as a replacement for sh has made no difference.
Changing didn't
    fix the bash-hang problem, and now that I have fixed it, changing
doesn't create the problem,
    either.

5. I invoke bash by running cygnus.bat.  I invoke this with a shortcut from
the desktop.  I had
    to increase the initial environment memory size to 4096 to get
cygnus.bat to run. Starting
    bash manually from the command line has no effect on the bash-hang
problem.

5. The one suggestion that made the bash-hang problem disappear is to add
SET CYGWIN32=tty
    to cygnus.bat before invoking bash.  I haven't been able to cause the
hang since making this
    change.

I hope this helps others with this problem.  I hope this also gives clues to
developers.

Regards and thanks,
Scott

-----Original Message-----
From: Stephen L Arnold <[email-masked]>
To: Dr. G. Scott Lett <[email-masked]>; [email-masked]
<[email-masked]>
Date: Saturday, September 12, 1998 1:55 PM
Subject: Re: bash hangs win95

On 11 Sep 98,,  Dr. G. Scott Lett had questions about bash hangs
win95:

> Has there been any resolution to the problem of bash hanging the system on
> win95? I've seen reports about this problem occurring after the user 1)
> types an unrecognized command or 2) Types control-C.  There are reports at
> the Argonne National Lab web sites that the latter problem makes bash
> unusable in gnu-win32. I must agree, as I've fallen victim a couple of
> times.

It doesn't hang on my OSR2 install (Cyrix 200L, 75 MHz bus).  It
did initially, but I installed the coolview .DLL and Mumit's EGCS
replacement.  I also created a HOME environment variable, and
borrowed someone's .bashrc (and modified it).  Everything seems to
work fine now (if windoze can ever be called "fine").  At least, it
works great for my cheesy little homework problems (but we haven't
had to code anything substantial yet either :-)

Have you done all of the above?  If memory serves me, it *did* hang
right after I first installed it, but if you just wait (rather than
trying to kill the task) it should come back after a minute or two.

Hope this helps, Steve

*************************************************************
Steve Arnold                            [email-masked]
This message composed of 100% recycled electrons.  You should
also recycle yourself.  Become an organ donor (8-)@

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