3.0.0: job table full causes fg to fail?

3.0.0: job table full causes fg to fail?

[Janos Farkas]

Howdy people!

I've just run into a problem, and can't imagine how it could be fixed.
It's probably present in earlier versions too.

I've been trying to stress my home-net with some concurrent pings, and
suddenly..

[iceq] /usr/src 514> ping ancient >/dev/null &
[47] 24995
[iceq] /usr/src 514> ping ancient >/dev/null &
[48] 24996
[iceq] /usr/src 514> ping ancient >/dev/null &
zsh: job table full
[iceq] /usr/src 514> ping ancient >/dev/null &
zsh: job table full

   Heh, cool, limits?  Hmm.. it's right, I shouldn't have been doing
   this...  So let's get rid of them...  I used to fg, and ctrl-c
   out of it, but:

[iceq] /usr/src 514> fg
fg: no current job

   What?  Now, how am I supposed to kill 'em?

[iceq] /usr/src 515> killall ping
zsh: job table full

   WHAT?  :)  Hmm... Okay, I don't have a free slot to run killall,
   but fg shouldn't have been tricking me?

[iceq] /usr/src 516> _

Re: 3.0.0: job table full causes fg to fail?

[Bart Schaefer]

On Aug 24,  6:41pm, Janos Farkas wrote:
} Subject: 3.0.0: job table full causes fg to fail?
}
} I've just run into a problem, and can't imagine how it could be fixed.
} 
} [iceq] /usr/src 514> ping ancient >/dev/null &
} zsh: job table full
} [iceq] /usr/src 514> fg
} fg: no current job
} 
}    What?  Now, how am I supposed to kill 'em?

There isn't any "current" job, because the most recent job you tried to
start failed to run.  But if you do "jobs" you'll see the numbered list
as usual, and you can `kill %1` to kill the oldest job (kill being a
shell builtin, and thus not needing a job slot), or `kill %-` to kill
the most recent job, or whatever.

I suppose the job code could be smarter about restoring the current job
when one fails to run, as happens when the current job exits, but there's
no real bug here.

-- 
Bart Schaefer                             Brass Lantern Enterprises
http://www.well.com/user/barts            http://www.nbn.com/people/lantern

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