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

Tue Aug 11 12:30:07 MDT 2015

Kevin,

I understand about the VMs and security concerns.

I've been wrestling with my Cygwin/X installation on and off, trying to get
the X portion of it to work, with no luck. I installed the latest Cygwin/X
as of this morning, using version 2.89 of the setup-x86.exe script.

Even though I can't bring up a Cygwin/X window, I can bring up a Cygwin
window, and then run version 6.3.0 of NCL by making sure the graphics are
going to a PS, PDF, or PNG file, and not an X11 window.

My "uname -a" reports:

CYGWIN-NT-6.1-WOW oodsigma 2.2.0(0.289/5/3) 2015-08-03 12:49 i686 Cygwin

Note that the "2.2.0" is the version that gets echoed when I run:

cygcheck --version

Apparently there's not really a version associated with Cygwin itself, but
the above information should be enough to tell you if you are running the
latest version.

--Mary

On Tue, Aug 11, 2015 at 8:44 AM, Kevin Vermeesch <kevin.c.vermeesch at nasa.gov
> wrote:

> 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> 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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