What's a system call ( Was: 'what' doesn't use perror...)

[Leslie Mikesell]

In article <225 at jetson.UPMA.MD.US> john at jetson.UPMA.MD.US (John Owens) writes:

>> ]	alarm(n);
>> ]	pause();
>> ](the guts of sleep) and what happens if the process doesn't run for n

>If the process doesn't run for 'n' seconds *after* the alarm() is
>posted and *before* pause() is called, it'll get a SIGALRM (which is,
>I think, set to SIG_IGN at that point), not do anything, then call
>pause() too late....

Hmmm...  Could this perhaps be why uugetty (SysVr3.1 on a 3b2) sometimes
leaves a port dead and killing it lets a new one start properly.  Maybe
when it sees a uucp lockfile it tries to sleep awhile and check again.
An idle  uugetty would be a likely thing to be swapped out and not
run during the time the time the signal is delivered.


Les Mikesell