Stupid Amiga Workbench Questions

[Monty0000]

Well, I used to be a programmer on the Amiga and knew just about everything about it ..  In 1990.  Time flies.

So, I pulled my Amiga 3000 out of the closet.  It works, but I have forgotten just about everything.  I am hopeful someone can help answer some questions:

1. How do I kill a process on the Amiga?  Either from CLI or something that is running in front of me?

2. In the S directory is where the start up file is and I can edit that, but one of the processes I have (a pop-up right mouse click add-on) keeps open a process and the CLI window never closes.  I recall there was a way I could start that in the start up file that would keep it from hanging the CLI window.

That is all I have run into today - but, I sure would be thankful for the assistance.

Oh, and one last question -- does anyone have a link to just a general tips and tricks web site out there?  Or maybe you have a book recommendation?

Thank you so much, everyone!

--Monty

[Matt_H]

Welcome back! What sort of stuff did you work on back in the day?

Assuming a process hasn't crashed, try using the "status" command from a CLI, followed by "break [process number]". Exchange (in SYS:Tools/Commodities/) can shut down some tasks as well. If it's a GUI program, the close gadget should suffice.

You can detach processes from the shell by preceding the command with "Run >NIL:". "Run" to detach it, and ">NIL:" to squash any output you don't want.

There probably hasn't been any good Amiga-related printed material since the early 90s. There's an Amiga books FAQ kicking around the web which might be useful. Denny Atkin's book might be a good reintroductory tool.

Also, pop open the machine and make sure the battery hasn't started leaking.

Feel free to ask if you need more help.

[Monty0000]

Hi, Matt!  Thank you so much!

On a worthless aside, the morning after I posted my message I had a seizure, found a tumor taking up a quarter of my brain, had it removed - and have been recovering ever since.  Lots of fun.  But, I apparently kept enough brain material around to know that I needed to check back on this message I left the night before.

I order the book - thanks for the tip, and the other info on the processes.  It all looks "familiar", but it is still simultaneously foreign.

I used to do computer bulletin board programming for the Amiga, and we actually had a number of web sites running software we wrote many years back.  It was a lot of fun, especially given the nature of the Amiga and writing software that really was on a completely different playing field than the "game machine" image that most people had of it.  I won't be doing too much bulletin board programming in the future, I don't think, but it is nice to play around on the platform again and re-learn how wonderful it is / was.

Thank you so much!

--Monty

[Voyager74]

Well, I used to be a programmer on the Amiga and knew just about everything about it .. In 1990. Time flies.
 
Oh, and one last question -- does anyone have a link to just a general tips and tricks web site out there? Or maybe you have a book recommendation?
 
Thank you so much, everyone!
 
--Monty

Time does fly indeed!
Fun to see that this platform still cuts it in several areas...
 
Regarding your first question, for times when programs actually do hang;
You can always use a systems-monitor tool, like xOpa, Scout or SnoopDOS...
They can be used to browse processes and send ctrl+c,d,e etc. commands
to interrupt them, or even remove them in a non-clean fashion.
I find DOS-Trace to be a real handy companion since I've never found
something similar for windooze, it tells you what an program looks for
among other things.
 
AmigaDOS can be immensely expanded with new commands in the c: directory
with commands like Kill or HandleCX too.
 
This website also contains pages with misc. links that you might find
interesting. (look at the top -links-)
And there's always Aminet.net, there's been a few additions since 1990
 
There's no such thing as a stupid question, only daft answers...
Welcome back, and Happy Computing!

[Matt_H]

Hi, Matt!  Thank you so much!

On a worthless aside, the morning after I posted my message I had a seizure, found a tumor taking up a quarter of my brain, had it removed - and have been recovering ever since.  Lots of fun.  But, I apparently kept enough brain material around to know that I needed to check back on this message I left the night before.

Yikes! Wishing you a speedy recovery!

[marcfrick2112]

Hi Monty, Welcome back, and I also give my sincerest wishes for a speedy recovery.

As to your original question, I use a program called PriMan. It lists all running processes and gives the option to either send a break signal, or to remove a process by brute force (nice for those progs. that 'don't play well with others' )

:afro:

[Piru]

1. How do I kill a process on the Amiga?

Unfortunately this is not possible.

Since AmigaOS doesn't have separate memory spaces for each process it is impossible to kill a process safely.

Killing some process leads to resource (memory leak, locked files etc) lossage at minimum and a total system crash at worst.

[Daedalus]

@Piru

Well, it is possible, though it's more like a bloody murder than a simple, clean "kill" It usually leaves a mess behind, but the task is definitely dead - along with any other tasks which were communicating with it or sharing its memory...

[Piru]

@Piru

Well, it is possible, though it's more like a bloody murder than a simple, clean "kill" It usually leaves a mess behind, but the task is definitely dead - along with any other tasks which were communicating with it or sharing its memory...

Well yeah. Most advanced "kill" applications just unlink the task from the exec list, rather than calling RemTask(). It's safer, but that doesn't even free the task structure memory and memory associated with tc_MemList.

In practice there is no way to kill a process in AmigaOS (as perceived by most).

[CLS2086]

The reboot is so fast ...
And you can start your programm in E-UAE...

[Monty0000]

Thank you, everyone!  Fantastic information!  Next week I should have a little extra time to kill and hope to give it all a shot.  The ">NILL:" advice worked perfectly, but I do want to explore the options for shutting down services that were all mentioned.  Great stuff!  Hopefully I will be back soon contributing and maybe (unfortunately) with more questions.  Thank you!!

[ChaosLord]

Many tasks can be safely killed.  It is up to the coder of the task to implement friendly murder.

Just give a task a ctrl-c
Many tasks kill themselves when they get a ctrl-c.

If you started the task from the current shell, just type ctrl-c in the shell window.

If the task started some other way then find its cli number, lets say it is cli 4.  Type in the shell:
break 4 c

It can't hurt to try.

[Karlos]

Many tasks can be safely killed.  It is up to the coder of the task to implement friendly murder.

Strictly speaking, any task that can respond to CTRL-C isn't generally a problem. It's the ones that are stuck in a loop or deadlocked waiting for some resource that are the problem.

[x303]

Strictly speaking, any task that can respond to CTRL-C isn't generally a problem. It's the ones that are stuck in a loop or deadlocked waiting for some resource that are the problem.

Yep, but you can try to suspend the task with sysinspector or scout.

x303

[Karlos]

Removing the task from exec's task list is about the only thing you can do in those cases. The problem is that doing so doesn't really free up all of the resources the task was using.