Linux vs. AIX Behavioral Difference

[koschate]

I've run into an interesting little difference between the behaviors of the Linux and AIX binaries that causing me some grief. In Linux, the abt script (actually the /usr/local/VASmalltalk/x.x/bin/es binary) waits until the image is exited before continuing. This is consistent with any other UNIX program I've used.

In AIX, /usr/local/VASmalltalk/x.x/bin/es ends up forking off, and control returns to the caller immediately. Among other things, this means that there's no effective way of using a script to look at the return code from a Smalltalk image when running under AIX. However, my immediate concern is that I have no good way of telling if an image build is finished unless I start setting flags from within Smalltalk.

Is there a command line flag, or some environment variable, that can be set in AIX to get the same blocking behavior as Linux?

Later: Just as a follow-up, I have two AIX boxes. One is blocking, and one isn't. The difference is not in the abt script.

[wembley]

Thomas -

Is it possible that you are starting VA Smalltalk using

Code: Select all

abt &

on the AIX box that isn't blocking?

[koschate]

Is it possible that you are starting VA Smalltalk using

Code: Select all

abt &

on the AIX box that isn't blocking?

No, that would be far too simple.

[koschate]

I still don't know what's causing the difference, but I've got a workaround. I modified my abt script like this:

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if [ "${0##*/}" = "abt" ]
  then
        $VASTROOT_75/bin/es -mcd $IMAGE "$@" | tee
  else
        $VASTROOT_75/bin/es -no_break $IMAGE "$@" | tee
fi


The pipe holds the script until the es process finally terminates. I'd still like to know why I'm seeing this behavior however!