[3898] in Athena Bugs
Re: exit xterm from mwm menu, get broken pipe message
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (probe@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Thu Jan 4 20:59:38 1990
From: probe@ATHENA.MIT.EDU
Date: Thu, 4 Jan 90 20:59:21 -0500
To: kevles@ATHENA.MIT.EDU
Cc: bugs@ATHENA.MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: Beth Kevles's message of Thu, 4 Jan 90 19:20:37 -0500,
Reply-To: Richard Basch <probe@ATHENA.MIT.EDU>
From: kevles@ATHENA.MIT.EDU
Date: Thu, 4 Jan 90 19:20:37 -0500
6.4R from pVax
What happened: I exited an xterm from the mwm menu option "kill program".
It successfully killed the xterm, but sent the following message to my console
window:
xterm: Broken pipe
When I exited an xterm by typing "exit" at my unix prompt, no such message
appeared in my console window.
I would not have expected to get a message in my console window because I
exited my xterm via an mwm menu, rather than exiting the process with a
unix command.
I'm not sure that this is a "bug", but perhaps (to my mind) a mis-feature.
What should have happened: My console window should not be disturbed because
I decide to exit an xterm, provided I exit it on purpose.
--Beth
What is happening is that the windowmanager is sending an XKillClient to
the xterm window-id. The process that is managing the window catches
the signal and reports that some stray XKillClient has been received
before dying, since the xterm wasn't responsible for its own death and
reports that message to the tty in which it was started (the console
window). In essence, it is trying to behave in the best manner possible
given that "something strange" just happened to its window (and there is
*NO* way to really figure out who is responsible), and it is now in an
irrecoverable state.
-Richard
