Xref: utzoo unix-pc.general:2724 comp.sys.att:6181
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!bbn!gatech!rayssd!icus!lenny
From: lenny@icus.islp.ny.us (Lenny Tropiano)
Newsgroups: unix-pc.general,comp.sys.att
Subject: pathalias error (was Re: Error message on 3b1 w/ 3.0 os)
Message-ID: <679@icus.islp.ny.us>
Date: 21 Apr 89 22:55:45 GMT
References: <547@flatline.UUCP>
Reply-To: lenny@icus.islp.ny.us (Lenny Tropiano)
Organization: ICUS Software Systems, Islip, New York
Lines: 32

In article <547@flatline.UUCP> erict@flatline.UUCP (J. Eric Townsend) writes:
|>
|>
|>Here's the situation.  I'm running pathalias from crontab, and
|>I get an error in the Error Window (the little [!!] window near the
|>Mail Icon).  I hit [Msg] and all it says is "/proc/{process id}".
|>
|>I'm working on getting a log of all the processes and their id numbers
|>so I can get an idea of what it is that's crashing, but til then,
|>anyone having any suggestions on how to get more information on the
|>error window stuff?
|>

Actually I got this myself, and I have to admit it had me going for a while.
I thought it was something wrong with my kernel.  I woke up each morning
with a /proc/#### [once with a /proc/0666 - guess the devil was taking
over my machine ;-)].  Finally I turned on process accounting "acct(2)" and
found out it was pathalias ... ahh.  Well you've already figured out it
was pathalias, as it turns out pathalias writes to stderr.  Just so happens 
when jobs are run from /etc/smgr stderr is dup(2)'d to /dev/error, which 
will be the [!!] icon.

There's the answer to your mystery.  It's not a bug, all you have to do
redirect stderr "2>" to something /dev/null or a file...

-Lenny

-- 
Lenny Tropiano             ICUS Software Systems         [w] +1 (516) 582-5525
lenny@icus.islp.ny.us      Telex; 154232428 ICUS         [h] +1 (516) 968-8576
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        ICUS Software Systems -- PO Box 1; Islip Terrace, NY  11752