Forum OpenACS Q&A: Re: Can't exec a command in tcl page

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3: Re: Can't exec a command in tcl page (response to 2)
Posted by Antonio Pisano on 07/21/14 05:42 PM
Thanks Ben, it sounded reasonable, but unfortunately it is not the case: using the full path won't help...
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4: Re: Can't exec a command in tcl page (response to 3)
Posted by Antonio Pisano on 07/21/14 05:45 PM
I've also tried issuing 'libreoffice --headless --help' as command, with just the relative path and it works on the server (shows the options properly).

I think it must be something more subtle related to execution into proxy...

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5: Re: Can't exec a command in tcl page (response to 4)
Posted by Benjamin Brink on 07/21/14 05:51 PM
Examine the server log. Does the error message provide more detail?
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6: Re: Can't exec a command in tcl page (response to 5)
Posted by Antonio Pisano on 07/21/14 09:11 PM
This is what the log says... nothing new...

child process exited abnormally
while executing
"exec libreoffice --headless --convert-to xls /tmp/filedNva4p.xls /tmp/filedNva4p"
invoked from within
"ns_proxy eval $handle "exec $call""
("uplevel" body line 2)
invoked from within
"uplevel $code"
invoked from within
"with_finally -code {
set return_string [ns_proxy eval $handle "exec $call"]
} -finally {
ns_proxy release $handle
}"
(procedure "proxy::exec" line 4)
invoked from within
"proxy::exec -call $args"
(procedure "exec" line 1)
invoked from within
"exec libreoffice --headless --convert-to xls ${tmpfile}.xls $tmpfile"
("uplevel" body line 212)
invoked from within...

Calling the very same exec command in tclsh by the command line (on the same server) works as expected.

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7: Re: Can't exec a command in tcl page (response to 6)
Posted by Antonio Pisano on 07/21/14 09:14 PM
The real command is this, took the wrong part of the log.

exec libreoffice --headless --convert-to xls /tmp/fileBXXCcF.xls /tmp/fileBXXCcF.csv

Same error though.

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8: Re: Can't exec a command in tcl page (response to 7)
Posted by Dave Bauer on 07/21/14 09:16 PM
Does the operation complete successfully?

We had this problem with many commands, where the output of the command causes Tcl exec to think the command has failed when it was fine.

We catch the exec and look for specific error responses in the output as necessary.

Many sites I have worked on used a modified exec replacement that took care of the catch automatically.

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9: Re: Can't exec a command in tcl page (response to 7)
Posted by Gustaf Neumann on 07/21/14 09:51 PM
A common cause is that the executed script outputs to stderr. This leads per-default to the same failure like a non-zero return code. I would recommend to redirect stderr to stdout (adding the the script 2>@1)

A longer discussion is e.g. here: http://wiki.tcl.tk/1039