On Sun, 25 Jan 1998, Bill Studenmund wrote:

: The problem we've seen w/ AIX & pine is that the process will chew up lots
: of CPU. It seems the program is trying to write to the old output, and is
: getting stuck. It's like the scheduler pulls it up, then it decides it
: can't run, then it pulls it up, then it decides it can't run. We can end
: up with such processes taking 70 % of the CPU, when all the other uses of
: the CPU add up to about 50%.
: 
: Could this be our problem too?

This isn't "our" problem.  Our problem is that ptys don't get freed when the
master side of a pty closes, if the process hangs on for dear life
afterwards.  I've reproduces it on NetBSD/sparc with Pine, emacs, elm and
gnu-mc (the command line subshell stays open), and have reports of
reproducability on many other platforms.

The question here is:  why, and how can this be fixed>

=====
===== Todd Vierling (Personal tv@pobox.com) =====
== "There's a myth that there is a scarcity of justice to go around, so
== that if we extend justice to 'those people,' it will somehow erode the
== quality of justice everyone else receives."  -- Maria Price