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

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.

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.