Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!usc!apple!agate!shelby!portia.stanford.edu!news
From: dhinds@portia.Stanford.EDU (David Hinds)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi
Subject: Strange pmake behavior
Message-ID: <1990Nov2.223533.8694@portia.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 2 Nov 90 22:35:33 GMT
Sender: news@portia.Stanford.EDU (USENET News System)
Organization: Stanford University - AIR
Lines: 16

Something bad just happened to me, but I can't tell exactly how bad it is.
I was rebuilding a large program after making a minor modification, with
pmake.  When it got to the point of trying to link the executable, I realized
that it was going to fail because the text file was busy - I was running
the previous version of the program in the background.  So, I interrupted
the make with control-C.  Pmake then proceeded to delete the file it was
last trying to make - the busy executable!  This seems to me to be a poor
way of dealing with the signal, to put it mildly.  Now, the job seems to
still be running.  What is going on?  Does the OS still have a link to the
deleted file somewhere?  Will the program crash if the OS has to fetch a
page from the executable at some point?  This is a LONG job - I expect it
to run for two weeks - so I don't want to get a core dump when this is
all over.  Any ideas?

 -David Hinds
  dhinds@cb-iris.stanford.edu