[Newbies] Running Squeak in a Unix shell

Thu Oct 24 10:05:12 UTC 2019

Hi Dave, 

i will need to fight a bit. I am running Squeak most of the time in FreeBSD through the Linux emulation layer.  Ive got it working with the GUI, but i tweaked the startup script, now it bites back ;)

bye 
nicola

Sent from my iPad

> On Oct 23, 2019, at 5:55 PM, David T. Lewis <lewis at mail.msen.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi Nicola,
> 
> Based on the error message you are seeing, I would guess that you are
> running a Cog/Spur VM with heartbeat thread. That VM requires some specific
> installation configurations on a unix system in order to work properly.
> 
> The error message is trying to let you know what to do, and in this case
> it is saying that you need to use sudo (root privilege access) to add a
> file called /etc/security/limits.d/squeak.conf, and that the file needs
> to contain two lines that specify allowing rtprio privilege when running
> the "squeak" program (i.e. the Squeak VM).
> 
> This is a specific Linux security setup that is required for certain
> versions of the Squeak VM. I would suggest that you add the file to your
> system, so that if you run a VM that requires the heartbeat thread, it
> will work as expected.
> 
> As far as the test.st script that you are using, I would suggest changing
> it slightly to make sure that it produces the console output that you
> expect. First, have it write <lf> to make sure that you can see the
> output on a separate line on the console. Second, add a #flush to make
> sure that the output is fully written to the console before #quitPrimitive
> causes the VM exit.
> 
> With those two small changes, your script might look like this:
> 
>  OSProcess thisOSProcess stdOut nextPutAll: 'Hello World'; lf ; flush.
>  Smalltalk quitPrimitive.
> 
> Dave
> 
> 
>> On Wed, Oct 23, 2019 at 03:52:21PM -0700, Nicola Mingotti wrote:
>> Hi David,
>> 
>> thank you for your detailed mail. I was trying your procedure and I have 
>> a question.
>> 
>> I wrote this into file '~/download/test.st'
>> ----------------
>> OSProcess thisOSProcess stdOut nextPutAll: 'Hello World'.
>> Smalltalk quitPrimitive.
>> ----------------
>> 
>> Then tried to run the script with:
>> ----------------
>> $> cd [squeak bin directory]
>> $> ./squeak -vm-display-null ../Squeak5.2-18229-64bit.image 
>> ~/download/test.st
>> ==== OUTOUT ======================
>> pthread_setschedparam failed: Operation not permitted
>> This VM uses a separate heartbeat thread to update its internal clock
>> and handle events.?? For best operation, this thread should run at a
>> higher priority, however the VM was unable to change the priority. The
>> effect is that heavily loaded systems may experience some latency
>> issues.?? If this occurs, please create the appropriate configuration
>> file in /etc/security/limits.d/ as shown below:
>> 
>> cat <<END | sudo tee /etc/security/limits.d/squeak.conf
>> *?????????? hard?????? rtprio?? 2
>> *?????????? soft?????? rtprio?? 2
>> END
>> 
>> and report to the squeak mailing list whether this improves behaviour.
>> 
>> You will need to log out and log back in for the limits to take effect.
>> For more information please see
>> https://github.com/OpenSmalltalk/opensmalltalk-vm/releases/tag/r3732#linux
>> ===============================================
>> ----------------
>> 
>> But I get nothing back except from info messages, the script does not 
>> end, it seems Squeak is ignoring the "quitPrimitive".
>> 
>> What is the simplest test script you recommend to start with ?
>> 
>> bye
>> Nicola
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> On 10/22/19 6:11 PM, David T. Lewis wrote:
>>> Hi Christoph,
>>> 
>>>> On Tue, Oct 22, 2019 at 10:41:16PM +0000, Thiede, Christoph wrote:
>>>> Hi,
>>>> 
>>>> this a question by a shell noob: How can I use Squeak in a unix shell to 
>>>> run a command such as:
>>>> 
>>>> ./squeak foo.image bar.st
>>>> 
>>>> I would like to do this in my WSL shell (Windows Subsystem for Linux) as 
>>>> well as on Travis.
>>>> 
>>>> WSL says:
>>>> 
>>>> squeak: cannot execute binary file: Exec format error
>>>> 
>>> The command line that you gave ("./squeak foo.image bar.st") would be
>>> appropriate on a Unix system (Linux, OS X, or whatever) if you have
>>> a file called "squeak" in your current directory, and if that file
>>> is an executable file such as a shell script or a compiled executable.
>>> 
>>> I am not familiar with WSL, but assuming that it is trying to behave
>>> like a Unix shell, I would interpret the error message as follows:
>>> 
>>> - The shell tried to execute the file "./squeak", where the "./"
>>> portion of the file path means "in the current directory", and "squeak"
>>> is the name of the file to be executed.
>>> 
>>> - It found the file, and tried to open it. You did not see a "file
>>> not found" error, so there actually must be a file called "squeak" in
>>> your local directory, and the file has execute permissions, so all
>>> good so far.
>>> 
>>> - The shell then tried to execute the "squeak" program. This means
>>> that the shell saw that the file was marked executable, and it asked
>>> the operating system to "exec" the file (on a Unix system, this will
>>> fork the shell process and overlay the executable in the new process,
>>> see http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man3/exec.3.html).
>>> 
>>> - For some reason, the file could not be executed ("Exec format error").
>>> 
>>> This suggest to me that the WSL environment did not know how to
>>> execute the "squeak" file. Maybe it was a compiled binary (such as
>>> a compiled VM) that the WSL system did not recognize, or maybe WSL
>>> was not smart enough to figure out how to evaluate a shell script,
>>> I don't know.
>>> 
>>>> Travis (without explicit OS setting, so I'm assuming unix as well) says:
>>>> 
>>>> squeak: could not find any display driver
>>> Travis is probably running on a real Unix system (or Linux, which
>>> is very similar). Whatever it is, you can safely bet that it does
>>> not provide a graphical display system such as X11, because a CI
>>> system such as Travis is intended to run things remotely on a
>>> server with no graphical user interface. So most likely, you are
>>> trying to run a VM with graphical display on an operating system
>>> that does not provide display services.
>>> 
>>> A Squeak VM will normally try to find a graphical display driver
>>> unless you explicitly tell it (with a command line option) not to
>>> do so. If you just run Squeak on a server with no X11 (or similar)
>>> installed, the VM will try to open a display module, and when it
>>> fails, it will give you an error message:
>>> 
>>>    platforms/unix/vm/sqUnixMain.c:      fprintf(stderr, "squeak: could 
>>>    not find any display driver\n");
>>> 
>>> The solution for this problem is specific to the Unix VM (in other
>>> words, don't try this on your Windows VM). You can run the VM without
>>> using an active display by using the '-vm-display-null' command
>>> line parameter. On a Unix system, run "squeak -help" to see the
>>> available options.
>>> 
>>> Thus, if you had a command such as this for running Squeak:
>>> 
>>>    ./squeak foo.image bar.st
>>> 
>>> Then you can run it in "headless" mode like this:
>>> 
>>>    ./squeak -vm-display-null foo.image bar.st
>>> 
>>> The Unix Squeak VM has loadable VM modules for things like soound
>>> and the display, so -vm-display-null tells the VM to load the null
>>> display driver instead of the vm-display-X11 or vm-display-Quartz
>>> modules.
>>> 
>>> HTH,
>>> Dave
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> To run a script in headless mode, I should not need any graphical output? 
>>>> How can I achieve this? I would greatly appreciate your help!
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> Best,
>>>> 
>>>> Christoph
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>> 