Last week I crashed my 958.  The HPRC engineer who analyzed the dump image
declared that the problem had something to do with an awk script which I had
invoked as :/bin/awk "-f MYFILE" from the CI.  He said that running posix
programs direct from the CI was not supported and that no further response
would be made to that incident.

I pressed him for more information, and he stated that since some of the
hpbin.sys programs rely on certain environment settings that are initialized
upon entry to the shell, that all posix programs *must* be run from within
the shell.  I mentioned that it had become fairly common practice in some
circles to add hpbin.sys and/or /bin to the HPPATH setting, and asked if the
shell restriction he was describing was documented somewhere.  He thought
that it was, but couldn't quote chapter & verse.

I find this response to be quite disturbing.  I can understand the need for
some programs to rely on environment settings like $TERM and $MANPATH, but I
would think that at worst these programs should simply abort locally if such
setup is not found.  Surely a simple text-processing script tool like awk
shouldn't have the ability to cause a System Abort just because it wasn't
run from within the shell, right?

Could one of the CSY folks here comment on the "official" HP position about
the "supported" way to run hpbin.sys programs?
________________________________________________________
Jon Diercks * Systems Manager         Computing Services
[log in to unmask] (PGP available)     Anderson University
http://rowlf.csv.anderson.edu/        1100 East Fifth St
(317)641-4305 * FAX (317)641-3851     Anderson, IN 46012