Re[2]: Mc Digest, Vol 43, Issue 9

[Pavel Tsekov <ptsekov gmx net>]

Hello chris,

Friday, November 23, 2007, 6:54:44 AM, you wrote:

> previous posters wrote:
|>>> Do you refer to the notorious "The shell is already running a
> command" issue ?

|>> Yes, this one exactly.

> |Ok. Yes - it is really hard to fix. You've been around for many years
> |now so I'd expect you to know more about this issue. Anyway...
> .... snip ..
> | It really is not
> |that simple to fix it. And it really isn't and error.
> ==================
> It's not an error, but it's very annoying.
> I.e. it doesn't have a technical solution, but it does
> have a 'socio-managment' solution: just make it known up-front
> and suggest a work around.

> The problem which is as annoying as "getting a mesg to first
> complete some other task, when you want to apply breaks on
> your vehicle", and should not be trivialised.

> Only after much frustration did I find a work-around:
> * Ctrl O to get 'behind the current ?shell?',
> * Ctrl C to stop/attend to the 'problematic proccess',
> * ls : just to select some task to confirm that some thing
>     can be done,
> * Ctrl O to get back to select what was intended to be done.

> It happens to me often after I've gone on-line [dialup] and
> a system generated mesg has come to my mail: I can't execute
> my intended inet-fetch-script until I acknowledge the damned
> mail-mesg by the steps above.

> Many linux users hate mc. Perhaps this quirk is the reason ?

Do you have any evidence which points towards that ?

> If a work-around is made known up-front, this avoids
> frustration ?

A workaround such as what ? A possible workaround depends
very much on why the messages is displayed. You could
have started an interactive program in the shell and
forgotton about it, next you type a command in the
prompt widget and the error box is displayed ... what should
you do about that ? There are different scenarios which
my trigger the error message.