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

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16: Re: Can't exec a command in tcl page (response to 13)
Posted by Gustaf Neumann on 07/22/14 05:38 PM
The hint with the CHILDSTATUS rings a bell. In case Neo's suggestion does not help, one more idea for debugging. Write a wrapper (e.g. named /tmp/convert.sh) like the following 
#!/bin/sh
echo xxx `/usr/bin/id`
/usr/bin/libreoffice --headless --convert-to xls SOMEFILE.csv --outdir /tmp
echo "xxx $? exit code"
fill in a .csv tile for testing and call the wrapper via 
set result [exec bash /tmp/convert.sh]
i would not be wondering, when you get on your machine now a useful result now, showing a non-zero exit code from libreoffice. Maybe there is a permission problem under the userid of the server? Handing CHILDSTATUS in Tcl requires some special, which i don't see in nsproxy. Probably nsproxy has to be improved to return better errors.
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17: Re: Can't exec a command in tcl page (response to 16)
Posted by Gustaf Neumann on 07/22/14 06:16 PM
I've compared the cases, where tcl-exec and/or nsproxy-exec calls a program with a non-zero return status. In both cases, the behavior is the same, one gets the return status via the global variable ::errorCode. The following snippet shows the result code from the called program: 
set cmd {/usr/bin/libreoffice ... --outdir /tmp}
if {[catch {set result [exec {*}$cmd]} errorMsg]} {
   lassign {*}$::errorCode code id value
   if {$code eq "CHILDSTATUS"} {set result "program exited with code $value"}
}
so, the nsproxy behavior is technically correct, just the error message from tcl could be better. What return code do you get in your installation?
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20: Re: Can't exec a command in tcl page (response to 16)
Posted by Benjamin Brink on 07/23/14 12:00 AM
Gustaf writes:

"Maybe there is a permission problem under the userid of the server."

I've had this happen before.

Antonio, what happens if you use a different directory using server's owner and group same as openacs system, such as a openacs-4/tmp/ ?