how to see if a process by name is running in tcl - process

I want to use the pidof by a process given by name in tcl. I have used [exec pidof $proc_name ], but it always returns an error: child process exited abnormally.
I read somewhere exec always treat non-zero return as error as pidof return the process id number. Does anyone know if there is a workaround? Thanks in advance!
I want to use pidof is that i want to see if that process is running if not i will restart the process.

The problem is that pidof does strange things with exit codes:
Exit Status
At least one program was found with the requested name.
No program was found with the requested name.
This interacts badly with exec which treats a non-zero exit code as indicating that it should tell the rest of Tcl that there was an error.
The simplest way of dealing with this is a little extra shell script wrapper. Let's hide it inside a procedure for convenience:
proc pidof {name} {
exec /bin/bash -c "pidof '$name'; exit \$(( \$? - 1 ))"
}
All that does is subtract 1 from the exit code before it hits back into Tcl.
(You could also fix this using the techniques described in the exec manual but I think it's simpler to fix on the bash side this time.)

I ran into this and ended up causing some issues with the old linux environment I run in (no bash and exit code handling was a bit different with busybox).
My solution that should work anywhere would be similar to what a few suggested:
proc pidof {name} {
catch {exec -ignorestderr -- pidof $name} pid
if {[string is entier -strict $pid]} {
return $pid
}
}

Related

How do I nohup a here document in the background from within a ksh script?

I have a ksh script that comes to a point where it must run a long running command. The long running command is executed via a heredoc in the script presently. I want to throw the command (represented by cat in my samples below) into the background but only after taking its input from the heredoc. Since the "nohup cat.." finishes instantaneously and I see an empty nohup.out file, I am not sure the script is doing what I need it to do, which is to spawn a nohupped version of the heredoc command and exit, leaving the command to run for however long it takes to complete.
I am using cat as the "command" since it too sits there and just waits for console input.
Working version without nohupping:
#!/bin/ksh
cat << EOF
Hello
World
HOw are you!
EOF
Trying to nohup the heredoc:
#!/bin/ksh
nohup cat <<EOF
Hello
World
HOw are you!
EOF
Seems to work, output is going into nohup.out as expected. But now, how to throw that into the background? I tried the below (and many variations of it) :
#!/bin/ksh
nohup cat & <<EOF
Hello
World
HOw are you!
EOF
but, nohup.out is empty, so I am not sure what the above is doing. There is no running "cat" in the background which tells me it ran and completed at least - or maybe didn't run at all. No other variation I can invent for trying to throw the heredoc into the background from my ksh script works.
Any suggestions on a way to achieve this using heredoc?
Here are two options.
You could try wrapping the nohup sequence inside a function, which may look cleaner, and then invoking that function with the trailing ampersand.
Using a function, like this:
#!/bin/ksh
function dostuff
{
nohup cat <<- END
Hello
World
How are you!
END
}
dostuff &
wait
You can also try wrapping the commands to be backgrounded into a grouping { } block, separating each command with a ; inside the brackets, and then backgrounding that block via:
{ nohup cat <<- EOF
...
EOF
; whatever
} &

Is it possible to enable exit on error behavior in an interactive Tcl shell?

I need to automate a huge interactive Tcl program using Tcl expect.
As I realized, this territory is really dangerous, as I need to extend the already existing mass of code, but I can't rely on errors actually causing the program to fail with a positive exit code as I could in a regular script.
This means I have to think about every possible thing that could go wrong and "expect" it.
What I currently do is use a "die" procedure instead of raising an error in my own code, that automatically exits. But this kind of error condition can not be catched, and makes it hard to detect errors especially in code not written by me, since ultimately, most library routines will be error-based.
Since I have access to the program's Tcl shell, is it possible to enable fail-on-error?
EDIT:
I am using Tcl 8.3, which is a severe limitation in terms of available tools.
Examples of errors I'd like to automatically exit on:
% puts $a(2)
can't read "a(2)": no such element in array
while evaluating {puts $a(2)}
%
% blublabla
invalid command name "blublabla"
while evaluating blublabla
%
As well as any other error that makes a normal script terminate.
These can bubble up from 10 levels deep within procedure calls.
I also tried redefining the global error command, but not all errors that can occur in Tcl use it. For instance, the above "command not found" error did not go through my custom error procedure.
Since I have access to the program's Tcl shell, is it possible to
enable fail-on-error?
Let me try to summarize in my words: You want to exit from an interactive Tcl shell upon error, rather than having the prompt offered again?
Update
I am using Tcl 8.3, which is a severe limitation in terms of available
tools [...] only source patches to the C code.
As you seem to be deep down in that rabbit hole, why not add another source patch?
--- tclMain.c 2002-03-26 03:26:58.000000000 +0100
+++ tclMain.c.mrcalvin 2019-10-23 22:49:14.000000000 +0200
## -328,6 +328,7 ##
Tcl_WriteObj(errChannel, Tcl_GetObjResult(interp));
Tcl_WriteChars(errChannel, "\n", 1);
}
+ Tcl_Exit(1);
} else if (tsdPtr->tty) {
resultPtr = Tcl_GetObjResult(interp);
Tcl_GetStringFromObj(resultPtr, &length);
This is untested, the Tcl 8.3.5 sources don't compile for me. But this section of Tcl's internal are comparable to current sources, tested using my Tcl 8.6 source installation.
For the records
With a stock shell (tclsh), this is a little fiddly, I am afraid. The following might work for you (though, I can imagine cases where this might fail you). The idea is
to intercept writes to stderr (this is to where an interactive shell redirects error messages, before returning to the prompt).
to discriminate between arbitrary writes to stderr and error cases, one can use the global variable ::errorInfo as a sentinel.
Step 1: Define a channel interceptor
oo::class create Bouncer {
method initialize {handle mode} {
if {$mode ne "write"} {error "can't handle reading"}
return {finalize initialize write}
}
method finalize {handle} {
# NOOP
}
method write {handle bytes} {
if {[info exists ::errorInfo]} {
# This is an actual error;
# 1) Print the message (as usual), but to stdout
fconfigure stdout -translation binary
puts stdout $bytes
# 2) Call on [exit] to quit the Tcl process
exit 1
} else {
# Non-error write to stderr, proceed as usual
return $bytes
}
}
}
Step 2: Register the interceptor for stderr in interactive shells
if {[info exists ::tcl_interactive]} {
chan push stderr [Bouncer new]
}
Once registered, this will make your interactive shell behave like so:
% puts stderr "Goes, as usual!"
Goes, as usual!
% error "Bye, bye"
Bye, bye
Some remarks
You need to be careful about the Bouncer's write method, the error message has already been massaged for the character encoding (therefore, the fconfigure call).
You might want to put this into a Tcl package or Tcl module, to load the bouncer using package req.
I could imagine that your program writes to stderr and the errorInfo variable happens to be set (as a left-over), this will trigger an unintended exit.

Declare bash variables inside sql EOF

how to declare variable in bash command. See "?"
I thought we could almost run any bash statement with ! or host in front of line
#!/bin/bash
sqlplus scott/tiger#orcl << EOF
! export v10="Hi" Doesn't work, why?
! echo $v10 Doesn't work, why?
! echo "Done" Works perfectly and also other bash commands
select * from dept; Works perfectly
exit
EOF
Thank you
What #jordanm says "probably" is exactly what is happening. When you specify a host command from within sqlplus, a separate shell process is spawned, the command executed by that process, then that process is terminated and control returns to sqlplus. Any environment variables that are set in that child shell process are good only within it, so when it terminates, they are gone.
As for your specific lines that "work" and "don't work" .. "export v10="Hi" does work but there is no stdout display of the 'export' command, and as explained, that variable v10 ceases to exist once the child process completes and control returns to sqlplus. The "echo $v10" also works, but since that is a new shell process, it has no value for $v10, so there is nothing to echo.
What are you trying to accomplish by setting enviornment variables from within sqlplus?
found it, all I had to do was
<< EOF
whenever sqlerror exit failure rollback
whenever oserror exit failure rollback
#scriptname.sql
EXIT
EOF

Bad spawn_id while executing expect command

I am writing a script that will copy Valgrind onto whatever shelf that we enter on the command line. The syntax is as follows:
vgrindCopy [shelf number]
For some reason, the files will copy over without any issue, but after the copy completes the follow error is observed:
bad spawn_id (process died earlier?)
while executing
"expect "#""
Here is a copy of the relevant code:
function login_shelf {
expect -c "
set timeout 15
spawn $1
expect \"password:\"
send \"$PW\r\"
expect \"#\"
sleep 1
exit
"
}
# login and make the valgrind directory at /sfs/software/shelf/current
set -- /opt/swe/tools/ext/gnu/valgrind-3.7.0/i686-linux2.6/lib/valgrind/*
login_shelf "/opt/corp/projects/shelftools/bin/app rsync -Lau $* $shelf:/shelf/valgrind"
After playing around with the code, I found that if I remove the line "expect \"#\"", then the program doesn't copy any of the files over anymore. What odd as well is that I'm seeing the issue when I run the script, but a co-worker is not.
Has anyone had a similar issue and determined the cause? Any help would be greatly appreciated as always!
Your code is spawning the rsync and at the expect \"#\" is waiting for rsync to output a #, which it never does, so it exits and expect reports the error.
When you remove the expect \"#\" the expect script exits, terminating the rsync.
Instead of expect \"#\" you should wait for rsync to exit:
expect eof
wait

127 Return code from $?

What is the meaning of return value 127 from $? in UNIX.
Value 127 is returned by /bin/sh when the given command is not found within your PATH system variable and it is not a built-in shell command. In other words, the system doesn't understand your command, because it doesn't know where to find the binary you're trying to call.
Generally it means:
127 - command not found
but it can also mean that the command is found,
but a library that is required by the command is NOT found.
127 - command not found
example: $caat
The error message will
bash:
caat: command not found
now you check using echo $?
A shell convention is that a successful executable should exit with the value 0. Anything else can be interpreted as a failure of some sort, on part of bash or the executable you that just ran. See also $PIPESTATUS and the EXIT STATUS section of the bash man page:
For the shell’s purposes, a command which exits with a zero exit status has succeeded. An exit status
of zero indicates success. A non-zero exit status indicates failure. When a command terminates on a
fatal signal N, bash uses the value of 128+N as the exit status.
If a command is not found, the child process created to execute it returns a status of 127. If a com-
mand is found but is not executable, the return status is 126.
If a command fails because of an error during expansion or redirection, the exit status is greater than
zero.
Shell builtin commands return a status of 0 (true) if successful, and non-zero (false) if an error
occurs while they execute. All builtins return an exit status of 2 to indicate incorrect usage.
Bash itself returns the exit status of the last command executed, unless a syntax error occurs, in
which case it exits with a non-zero value. See also the exit builtin command below.
It has no special meaning, other than that the last process to exit did so with an exit status of 127.
However, it is also used by bash (assuming you're using bash as a shell) to tell you that the command you tried to execute couldn't be executed (i.e. it couldn't be found). It's unfortunately not immediately deducible though, if the process exited with status 127, or if it couldn't found.
EDIT:
Not immediately deducible, except for the output on the console, but this is stack overflow, so I assume you're doing this in a script.
If you're trying to run a program using a scripting language, you may need to include the full path of the scripting language and the file to execute. For example:
exec('/usr/local/bin/node /usr/local/lib/node_modules/uglifycss/uglifycss in.css > out.css');
This error is also at times deceiving. It says file is not found even though the files is indeed present. It could be because of invalid unreadable special characters present in the files that could be caused by the editor you are using. This link might help you in such cases.
-bash: ./my_script: /bin/bash^M: bad interpreter: No such file or directory
The best way to find out if it is this issue is to simple place an echo statement in the entire file and verify if the same error is thrown.
If the IBM mainframe JCL has some extra characters or numbers at the end of the name of unix script being called then it can throw such error.
In addition to the given answers, note that running a script file with incorrect end-of-line characters could also result in 127 exit code if you use /bin/sh as your shell.
As an example, if you run a shell script with CRLF end-of-line characters in a UNIX-based system and in the /bin/sh shell, it is possible to encounter some errors like the following I've got after running my script named my_test.sh :
$ ./my_test.sh
sh: 2: ./my_test.sh: not found
$ echo $?
127
As a note, using /bin/bash, I got 126 exit code, which is in accordance with gnu.org documentation about the bash :
If a command is not found, the child process created to execute it returns a status of 127. If a command is found but is not executable, the return status is 126.
Finally, here is the result of running my script in /bin/bash :
arman#Debian-1100:~$ ./my_test.sh
-bash: ./my_test.sh: /bin/bash^M: bad interpreter: No such file or directory
arman#Debian-1100:~$ echo $?
126
go to C:\Program Files\Git\etc
open gitconfig with notepad
change
[core]
autocrlf = true
To
[core]
autocrlf = false