Howdy. I just switched from Red Hat to Debian and was wondering why any invocation of `bash` or `which` caused the forking of hundreds of processes and (eventually) the complaint:
/bin/bash: fork: Resource temporarily unavailable
I investigated my .bashrc, and found that the offending line was
export CVS_RSH=`which ssh`
Because `which` is implemented as a bash script, invoking it causes
.bashrc to be read, and `which ssh` to be evaluated, which causes
`which` (a bash script) to be invoked, which causes .bashrc to be
read, which causes `which ssh` to be evaluated, ad infinitum.
On Red Hat, `which` was implemented as a binary, so I was blissfully
untouched by this problem.
Is there any way to avoid it with the Debian `which`? Enclosing the
line in a conditional doesn't work -- even when `bash` is invoked from
a shell in which CVS_RSH is defined and would (presumably) pass that
variable to its children. (As an aside, expressions in backquotes are
evaluated at variable-assignment-time, right? If not, then this code
most definitely wouldn't work.)
i.e.
if [ -n $CVS_RSH ]; then
export CVS_RSH=`which ssh`
fi
Any suggestions? Or should I just use the Red Hat `which` binary?
Thanks,
--Joe
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