id	summary	reporter	owner	description	type	status	priority	milestone	component	version	resolution	keywords	cc	blockedby	blocking	branch_state	votes
2806	mc-4.8.3 - Install error with fish, fork bomb and system hang on OSX	2bits		"mc-4.8.3 and 4.8.1.3 have been reported by a half-dozen users on OSX to fail during `make -j1 install` during the installation of the FISH files in a strange endless series of forks where `ps` shows many instances of `grep` and `sh` being spawned.  These failure were reported to [http://mxcl.github.com/homebrew Homebrew], a package installer, over the last few months.  I am reporting here and authoring the current workaround, which is to `--disable-vfs-fish` for those users.  The entire discussion including exhaustive terminal output can be found [https://github.com/mxcl/homebrew/issues/8587 in issue 8587] on the Homebrew website.

The error in short looks like this

{{{
Making install in fish
Making install in helpers
make[5]: Nothing to be done for `install-exec-am'.
test -z ""/usr/local/Cellar/midnight-commander/4.8.3/libexec/mc/fish"" || ../../../../config/install-sh -c -d ""/usr/local/Cellar/midnight-commander/4.8.3/libexec/mc/fish""
### 500
### 500
### 000
### 500
### 000
### 000
### 000
 /usr/bin/install -c -m 644 README.fish '/usr/local/Cellar/midnight-commander/4.8.3/libexec/mc/fish'
test -z ""/usr/local/Cellar/midnight-commander/4.8.3/libexec/mc/fish"" || ../../../../config/install-sh -c -d ""/usr/local/Cellar/midnight-commander/4.8.3/libexec/mc/fish""
==> Exit Status: 2
}}}

Before I asked the affected users to use `j1` during install, the error message also included the reference to fork:
{{{
### 000
../../../../config/install-sh: fork: Resource temporarily unavailable
make[5]: *** [install-fishDATA] Error 128
make[5]: *** Waiting for unfinished jobs....
### 500
}}}

We made an educated guess that something odd was happening with an older `install-sh`, and recently asked an affected user to `autoreconf -ivf` using the latest autoconf-2.69, automake-1.12, and libtool-2.4.2, but this did not succeed in fixing the problem.

Our current workaround is to `--disable-vfs-fish` but another workaround found on Google was said to be, 'create that directory in advance of make install.'  Google found at least one instance of this going back many revisions of mc on a different OS, and you can read that bug report [http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=18399 here on FreeBSD's site].

I'm hoping to get the affected users to give me their `LC_MESSAGES=C mc -V` and the other two requested outputs. I'll updated this when I have that info."	defect	closed	minor		mc-core	4.8.3	worksforme					no branch