RE: SYSTEM returns -1?

[yuasa@katura.tutics.tut.ac.jp (Taiichi Yuasa)]

>	Subject: SYSTEM returns -1?
>	Date: Mon, 26 Aug 91 14:25:35 -0700
>	From: srt@aerospace.aero.org
>	
>	
>	I'm currently using KCL 1.530 on a Sun 4/160.  Sporadically, my lisp
>	begins returning -1 to all SYSTEM calls, preventing me from compiling,
>	etc.  There's nothing wrong with the underlying box in these cases - 
>	I can still do the "cc" by hand, for instance.  I took a brief look
>	at the code at unixsys.c but couldn't discern what might be going
>	on.  Has anyone else had this problem?  Or have any idea what might
>	be causing it?
>	
>						-- Soctt Turner

The same problem occurred when I was using KCL on my Toshiba laptop.
This happened because the maximum number of processes was too small.
When SYSTEM is called, KCL makes a new process to execute the command.
Since it could not create a new process any more, it just returned the
error code -1.  The KCL compiler also needs a new process to invoke the
underlying C compiler.  Thus the same error occurred also when the
compiler was invoked.

-- Taiichi