Weird error with clearcase

Weird error with clearcase

[Seth Kurtzberg]

All,

This is clearly a clearcase problem and not a zsh problem, but I'm hoping
that the zsh gurus will be able to tell me why it might be happening.

When the default shell for a user is zsh, a the clearcase "setview"
command is invoked (clearcase version 6), zsh never starts.  Running
strace shows that an error is continuously occuring with the zsh history
file.  The error text says that an O/S call is being invoked to create a
cross device link.

In fact, no cross device link is being requested.  We moved the history
file around, our of home and onto /tmp and various other places, but the
behavior is unchanged.

Does this ring any bells for anyone?

Thanks in advance,
Seth Kurtzberg

Re: Weird error with clearcase

[Bart Schaefer]

On Mar 24, 10:22am, Seth Kurtzberg wrote:
}
} When the default shell for a user is zsh, a the clearcase "setview"
} command is invoked (clearcase version 6), zsh never starts.  Running
} strace shows that an error is continuously occuring with the zsh history
} file.  The error text says that an O/S call is being invoked to create a
} cross device link.

I suspect there's some subtlety here that strace output is not showing,
and that the history file itself is a red herring.

} Does this ring any bells for anyone?

I don't use clearcase, but I seem to recall from previous discussions here
that it presents the repository as a virtual filesystem.  My guess would
therefore be that the error really has to do with some access to that
filesystem.  Possibly the code that uses link() to create a lock file to
protect shared access to the history?

In which case it's not the location of the history file itself, but the
value of the $HISTFILE variable that would be at issue.  When you said ...

} We moved the history file around

... did you mean that you changed $HISFILE?