OK.. This may or may not be a bug, but it certainly needs to at least be documented.. Scenario: Launch 'xemacs' and load gnuserv-start from .xession, with no TMPDIR environment variable set. So gnuserv opens /tmp/gsrvdir967/gsrv as the socket to use. Another program (exmh) then tries to launch 'gnuclient' - but exmh has set TMPDIR to /tmp/valdis. So it tries to open /tmp/valdis/gsrvdir/gsrv and promptly loses. I had to read the source for lib-src/gnuslib.c (in connect_to_unix_server() to figure out what was going on. 'info gnuclient' says this: UNIX-DOMAIN SOCKETS A Unix-domain socket is used to communicate between gnu­ client and gnuserv if the symbol UNIX_DOMAIN_SOCKETS is defined at the top of gnuserv.h. A file called /tmp/gsrvdir????/gsrv is created for communication and if deleted will cause communication between server and client to fail. Only the user running gnuserv will be able to connect to the socket. Hm.. No mention of TMPDIR as an environment variable there... So - who wants to make the call? Fix the docs to match the code, or fix the code to match the docs? I'll accept either one, as long as they agree ;) -- Valdis Kletnieks Operating Systems Analyst Virginia Tech -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Part 1.2Type: application/pgp-signature

>>>>> "Ben" == Ben Wing <ben(a)666.com&gt; writes: Ben> i think the proper behavior is to always use /tmp, provided Ben> it exists and is world-writable; only fall back on Ben> environment variables otherwise. the reason for this is Ben> precisely to avoid problems like this -- we want a Ben> "well-defined location". How about an app-specific variable like GNUSERV_SOCKETDIR? This would have higher precedence than /tmp. Then fail if neither is writable.