executeFile failing on macosx

"executeFile" is failing for me on Mac OS X 10.5.8, with ghc 6.12.1 when compiling with "-threaded". Compiling without -threaded, or running on linux is fine. When compiled with -threaded, the following snippet produces the error: testProg: /bin/echo: executeFile: failed (Operation not supported)
import System.Posix.Process main = do
forkProcess $ executeFile "/bin/echo" False ["Ok"] Nothing
Any suggestions for a work around for this would be appreciated. Cheers, -- David Powell

Hello David, Sunday, May 16, 2010, 7:18:29 PM, you wrote:
"executeFile" is failing for me on Mac OS X 10.5.8, with ghc 6.12.1 when compiling with "-threaded". Compiling without -threaded, or running on linux is fine.
forkProcess $ executeFile "/bin/echo" False ["Ok"] Nothing
afair, forkProcess and -threaded shouldn't work together on any Unix. can you try forkIO or forkOS instead? -- Best regards, Bulat mailto:Bulat.Ziganshin@gmail.com

On Mon, May 17, 2010 at 1:33 AM, Bulat Ziganshin
Hello David,
Sunday, May 16, 2010, 7:18:29 PM, you wrote:
"executeFile" is failing for me on Mac OS X 10.5.8, with ghc 6.12.1 when compiling with "-threaded". Compiling without -threaded, or running on linux is fine.
forkProcess $ executeFile "/bin/echo" False ["Ok"] Nothing
afair, forkProcess and -threaded shouldn't work together on any Unix. can you try forkIO or forkOS instead?
Hi Bulat, Both, forkIO and forkOS fail in the same way for me with -threaded. I believe this is because macosx requires the process to only have a single thread when doing an execv(), which I thought was the purpose of forkProcess? Cheers, -- David

Works fine on 10.6.3. If you run with +RTS -N2, though, you'll get
"forking not supported with +RTS -N<n> greater than 1"
The reason for this is that forking won't copy over the threads which
means that the Haskell IO manager stops working (you'd have to somehow
reinitialise the RTS while leaving heap and runtime stacks in tact --
very tricky).
I'm using http://hackage.haskell.org/package/process to run external
processes. I haven't had any problems with it.
On 17 May 2010 00:06, David Powell
On Mon, May 17, 2010 at 1:33 AM, Bulat Ziganshin
wrote: Hello David,
Sunday, May 16, 2010, 7:18:29 PM, you wrote:
"executeFile" is failing for me on Mac OS X 10.5.8, with ghc 6.12.1 when compiling with "-threaded". Compiling without -threaded, or running on linux is fine.
forkProcess $ executeFile "/bin/echo" False ["Ok"] Nothing
afair, forkProcess and -threaded shouldn't work together on any Unix. can you try forkIO or forkOS instead?
Hi Bulat,
Both, forkIO and forkOS fail in the same way for me with -threaded. I believe this is because macosx requires the process to only have a single thread when doing an execv(), which I thought was the purpose of forkProcess?
Cheers,
-- David
_______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
-- Push the envelope. Watch it bend.

Indeed System.Process does work for me. I had avoided it because it is a
little more awkward to use it when you want the actual PIDs. I don't
understand why System.Process.runProcess works for me, but executeFile does
not. I did find this issue (for python)
http://bugs.python.org/issue6800which I think is the same thing I'm
hitting and they also claim it is fixed
in macosx 10.6.
Anyway, I'll work with System.Process for now. Thanks for your help.
-- David
On Mon, May 17, 2010 at 9:41 AM, Thomas Schilling
Works fine on 10.6.3. If you run with +RTS -N2, though, you'll get "forking not supported with +RTS -N<n> greater than 1"
The reason for this is that forking won't copy over the threads which means that the Haskell IO manager stops working (you'd have to somehow reinitialise the RTS while leaving heap and runtime stacks in tact -- very tricky).
I'm using http://hackage.haskell.org/package/process to run external processes. I haven't had any problems with it.
On 17 May 2010 00:06, David Powell
wrote: On Mon, May 17, 2010 at 1:33 AM, Bulat Ziganshin <
bulat.ziganshin@gmail.com>
wrote:
Hello David,
Sunday, May 16, 2010, 7:18:29 PM, you wrote:
"executeFile" is failing for me on Mac OS X 10.5.8, with ghc 6.12.1 when compiling with "-threaded". Compiling without -threaded, or running on linux is fine.
forkProcess $ executeFile "/bin/echo" False ["Ok"] Nothing
afair, forkProcess and -threaded shouldn't work together on any Unix. can you try forkIO or forkOS instead?
Hi Bulat,
Both, forkIO and forkOS fail in the same way for me with -threaded. I believe this is because macosx requires the process to only have a single thread when doing an execv(), which I thought was the purpose of forkProcess?
Cheers,
-- David
_______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
-- Push the envelope. Watch it bend.

Quoth David Powell
Indeed System.Process does work for me. I had avoided it because it is a little more awkward to use it when you want the actual PIDs. I don't understand why System.Process.runProcess works for me, but executeFile does not. I did find this issue (for python) http://bugs.python.org/issue6800 which I think is the same thing I'm hitting and they also claim it is fixed in macosx 10.6.
Anyway, I'll work with System.Process for now. Thanks for your help.
It looks to me like the principal difference between System.Process and executeFile is that the former forks and execs in the same C function, so the GHC runtime doesn't execute in the child process. From the OS, that difference isn't significant, so I wouldn't look for a MacOS bug here. On the platform I'm using right now (Haiku), I see the same problem - -threaded and executeFile fails with `Operation not allowed', but -threaded and runProcess does not fail. I wish I understood this better myself, but the problem appears to be something that the runtime does after fork(). In a C program with multiple threads, I get this error with a direct exec or a fork/exec, but not with a fork/exec from the main thread. With a -threaded Haskell program, +RTS -N<n> actually does not make any difference, unless there's another value for <n> that I should have used. Is there a way to suppress extra GHC runtime threads, when compiled with -threaded? I see three threads running, none of them spawned by the application. Where would this be documented? thanks, Donn Cave, donn@avvanta.com
On Mon, May 17, 2010 at 9:41 AM, Thomas Schilling
wrote: Works fine on 10.6.3. If you run with +RTS -N2, though, you'll get "forking not supported with +RTS -N<n> greater than 1"
The reason for this is that forking won't copy over the threads which means that the Haskell IO manager stops working (you'd have to somehow reinitialise the RTS while leaving heap and runtime stacks in tact -- very tricky).
I'm using http://hackage.haskell.org/package/process to run external processes. I haven't had any problems with it.
participants (4)
-
Bulat Ziganshin
-
David Powell
-
Donn Cave
-
Thomas Schilling