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

[Mary Haley]

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> 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> 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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