Re: ls: write error: Broken pipe

[Dan Nicolaescu]

address@hidden (Bob Proulx) writes:

  > Dan Nicolaescu wrote:
  > > Paul Eggert writes:
  > >   > bash -c '(while echo foo; do :; done); echo status=$? >&2' | head
  > >   > 
  > >   > If it eventually outputs "write error: Broken pipe", you have SIGPIPE
  > >   > trapped, and that would explain your problem (which you need to track
  > >   > down).  If it prints "status=141" you do not have SIGPIPE trapped and
  > >   > we need to investigate the issue further.
  > > 
  > > The output is "write error: Broken pipe".
  > 
  > Then that is a pretty strong indication that your session is trapping
  > SIGPIPE.  You will have to debug that to root cause.  Something,
  > somewhere in the start path for you is trapping that and it will cause
  > endless problems until it is found and fixed.

Advice on finding that would be welcome.

  > > If I execute the same thing in a Linux console it never stops.
  > 
  > Do you mean that on the console that you do not get that error and
  > everything seems to be working properly?  That is what we would expect
  > and should be the normal behavior in your other terminals too, but
  > apparently is not.

Please ignore my statement above, I made a typo on the command line.

I run a few more experiments with the bash command above: 

- when run from an xterm it fails with the broken pipe error

- when run from in an xterm like this:
bash
tcsh
bash -c '(while echo foo; do :; done); echo status=$? >&2' | head
it prints 141.

- when run from the Linux console it fails with the broken pipe
error. In that case the pstree chain is like this: init - login - tcsh