Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!rutgers!pyrnj!pyrdc!uunet!mcvax!ukc!dcl-cs!aber-cs!pcg
From: pcg@aber-cs.UUCP (Piercarlo Grandi)
Newsgroups: comp.sources.d
Subject: Re: "monthd" doesn't terminate
Summary: The problem does not exist -- be careful
Message-ID: <255@aber-cs.UUCP>
Date: 19 Nov 88 20:55:29 GMT
References: <1252@leah.Albany.Edu> <4110001@hpsal2.HP.COM>
Reply-To: pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi)
Distribution: eunet,world
Organization: CS Dept., University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, UK
Lines: 34
X-Disclaimer: Any statement is purely personal.

In article <4110001@hpsal2.HP.COM> morrell@hpsal2.HP.COM (Michael Morrell) writes:
    / hpsal2:comp.sources.d / rds95@leah.Albany.Edu (Robert Seals) /  6:09 am  Nov 14, 1988 /
    I brought up the recently posted "month". The program itself seems to
    work quite nicely, but the daemon program that checks for appointments
    does not. Specifically, it should go away after the user logs out, and it
    doesn't.
    
    As far as the program not terminating when you log out, I'll look into that
    and post an announcement when I find out something.
    
    Thanks for all the kind words on the program.
    
      Michael Morrell

Mike, I also have kind words for the big improvement in the program. My only
gripe is that the binary format for the .month file makes it not portable
across machines, i.e. I cannot use the same file from a SUN or a VAX.

As to the logging out problem, this is because monthd MUST be the direct
offspring of the login shell, as it will attach itself to the process group of
its parent; if this parent is not the shell, it will never receive the HUP
signal on logout. In particular doing "month -d" loses badly because then
the parent of monthd is month, not the shell.

It may also be that some systems do not send a HUP signal on logging out.
For added safety, I do a "kill -HUP 0" or a "kill -TERM 0" when logging
out (either in .logout, or in its B-shell equivalent).

The suggestion (advanced in an earlier message) to see if the parent is still
around is not effective, of course.
-- 
Piercarlo "Peter" Grandi			INET: pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk
Sw.Eng. Group, Dept. of Computer Science	UUCP: ...!mcvax!ukc!aber-cs!pcg
UCW, Penglais, Aberystwyth, WALES SY23 3BX (UK)