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

[Mary Haley]

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
> 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> 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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