[ncl-talk] Cygwin issue (forked process died unexpectedly)

Kevin Vermeesch kevin.c.vermeesch at nasa.gov
Tue Aug 11 08:44:53 MDT 2015


Hi Mary,
Thank you for your continued work on this (I was on vacation last week). 
Unfortunately, I probably can't test the VM solution. After consulting 
with my IT security person I learned that NASA is extremely anal about 
VMs and it would not be wise for me to attempt running that software on 
my work computer. My Windows Vista computer at home is an older computer 
and may not have enough memory to run a VM. I will definitely keep this 
solution (using a VM) in mind as it seems like NCL may not work well 
with current and future versions of Cygwin.
thanks,
Kevin


On 8/3/2015 10:38 AM, Mary Haley wrote:
> I forgot to mention that I need to provide an NCL/LINUX VM, which I'm 
> working on.  Once this is done, I'll provide a link to anybody who 
> wants to download it and give it a try.
>
> The RHEL link I mentioned earlier is not going to be helpful, unless 
> you already have RedHat installed under VirtualBox.
>
> --Mary
>
>
> On Mon, Aug 3, 2015 at 7:29 AM, Mary Haley <haley at ucar.edu 
> <mailto:haley at ucar.edu>> wrote:
>
>     Hi Kevin,
>
>     Sorry I didn't get back to you sooner. I wanted to investigate
>     this before I responded, but I haven't had much luck reproducing
>     the problem.
>
>     It's possible that your version of Cygwin is too new, but I've
>     never encountered this before, so I can't say for certain if there
>     are compatibility issues.
>
>     I installed the latest version of Cygwin (2.871), and now I can't
>     bring up an X/Cygwin window. I *can* bring up a Cygwin window, I
>     was able to type "ncl -V" and get the version number.
>
>     I'm still working on the X/Cygwin problem and hope to have an
>     answer soon.
>
>     I have read that Cygwin runs into "fork"issues on occasion, and
>     this can be due to other software running on your machine
>     *outside* the Cygwin environment. There's a Cygwin FAQ on it, but
>     I don't know how helpful it will be:
>
>     https://www.cygwin.com/faq.html#faq.using.fixing-fork-failures
>
>     By the way, I do think the "uname" version you see is associated
>     with the version of setup-x86.exe that you ran. It just displays
>     it as "0.287" instead of "2.871".
>
>     At some point I may give up on Cygwin and suggest that Windows
>     users try a virtual machine (VM) running Linux, and then you can
>     install a LINUX binary, instead of hassling with Cygwin. Instead
>     of running Cygwin, then, to use NCL, you would run a Linux VM.
>     Going this route also allows you to run other programs that may
>     not have Windows or Cygwin versions.
>
>     If you want to try the VM routine, then you can install the free
>     Oracle VirtualBox, which installs pretty easily, and gives you VM
>     choices.
>
>     To install VirtualBox, and then a Linux VM:
>
>       * Go to https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads
>       * Click on "VirtualBox for Windows hosts" (x86/amd64)
>       * Run the ".exe" file that gets downloaded and accept all the
>         defaults if possible.
>       * If this is successful, the VirtualBox program should be
>         started for you.
>       * From here you should be able to start a VM, which basically
>         gives you a LINUX window similar to a X/Cygwin window, only
>         it's a better UNIX system than Cygwin.
>
>     From this VM, you can then install the ncl_​ncarg-​6.​3.​0.​Linux_
>     ​RHEL6.​ 4_​x86_​64_​gcc472.​tar.​gz
>     <https://www.earthsystemgrid.org/download/fileDownload.htm?logicalFileId=e0866847-cd9a-11e4-bb80-00c0f03d5b7c> binary,
>     and follow the instructions as per usual.
>
>     Let me know if you want to go this route, and if you have issues
>     with it.  I did this about 4 months ago and it worked fine, but I
>     didn't test it heavily, because I hardly ever use my Windows box.
>
>     --Mary
>
>
>
>
>     On Tue, Jul 28, 2015 at 7:54 AM, Kevin Vermeesch
>     <kevin.c.vermeesch at nasa.gov <mailto:kevin.c.vermeesch at nasa.gov>>
>     wrote:
>
>         Thanks for the response. Is there a difference between the
>         Cygwin version and Cygwin's setup.exe version? The output of
>         uname -a on Cygwin's command line is:
>         CYGWIN_NT-6.1-WOW GS612-KCV1WL 2.1.0(0.287/5/3) 2015-07-14
>         21:26 i686 Cygwin
>         but the 2.738 you mentioned is a version of the setup.exe file.
>
>         The system above is Windows 7 64-bit. For what it's worth, I
>         installed NCL on my personal computer (Windows Vista 32-bit)
>         and NCL 6.3.0 works fine on there. That computer is running a
>         slightly older version of Cygwin. The output of uname -a on
>         that system is:
>         CYGWIN_NT-6.0 Kevin-PC 1.7.35(0.287/5/3) 2015-03-04 12:07 i686
>         Cygwin
>
>         It must be something with the new/latest Cygwin version that
>         is causing the problem(?). Before the last Cygwin upgrade on
>         the Windows 7 computer it was working fine on there too.
>         thanks,
>         Kevin
>
>
>
>         On 7/27/2015 2:20 PM, Mary Haley wrote:
>>         Hi Kevin,
>>
>>         I didn't see any responses to this question, so I'll take a
>>         stab at it.
>>
>>         You are running an older version of Cygwin (2.1.0) than what
>>         we built NCL V6.3.0 with (2.738).  If you can, I suggest
>>         upgrading your version of Cygwin by downloading a new
>>         setup-x86.exe program from http://x.cygwin.com and running it.
>>
>>         --Mary
>>
>>         On Tue, Jul 21, 2015 at 12:15 PM, Kevin Vermeesch
>>         <kevin.c.vermeesch at nasa.gov
>>         <mailto:kevin.c.vermeesch at nasa.gov>> wrote:
>>
>>             Hi,
>>             This is probably a Cygwin issue and not a NCL issue, but
>>             I am curious to
>>             see if anyone else has seen this error and found a
>>             workaround for it. I
>>             am using NCL 6.3.0 on Cygwin 2.1.0 on Windows 7. Whenever
>>             I use the
>>             "print" or "systemfunc" NCL commands I get the respective
>>             errors:
>>
>>             0 [main] ncl 6820 fork: child -1 - forked process 7360 died
>>             unexpectedly, retry 0, exit code 0x0000135, errno 11
>>             fatal:Pager failed1
>>
>>             and
>>
>>             52 [main] ncl 7576 fork: child -1 - forked process died
>>             unexpectedly,
>>             retry 0, exit code 0x0000135, errno 11
>>             fatal:systemfunc: cannot create child process:[errno=11]
>>
>>             The "gsn_open_wks" function also produces a similar
>>             error. NCL was
>>             working fine under an older version of Cygwin, but I
>>             recently upgraded
>>             my Cygwin version and always get the above errors when
>>             using NCL. I
>>             tried the ash /usr/bin/rebaseall command
>>             (http://www.ncl.ucar.edu/Support/talk_archives/2011/1525.html),
>>             but that
>>             did not fix the issue (it did on the old Cygwin version).
>>             Any tips are
>>             appreciated because with this issue, NCL has very limited
>>             functionality
>>             on my Windows computer.
>>             thank you,
>>             Kevin
>>
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>>
>
>
>         -- 
>         * * * * * * * * * * * *
>         Kevin Vermeesch
>         University of Maryland Baltimore County
>         Joint Center for Earth Systems Technology
>         NASA/GSFC Code 612
>
>
>

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