Shell Programming and Scripting

I have created a shell script that spawns multiple background processes (spawns sqlplus application). I use an array to capture the process id of those background processes. I then loop through the array and issue a 'wait' command to wait on the process id that was captured in the array. I am getting sporadic results where some of the background processes return an exit code of 127.

It seems possible that it may be related to the OS because I get different results on different machines. Sun OS 5.6 I get sporadic results. Sun OS 5.8 seems to be OK.

Output results to show inconsitency:
--Run 1
Process: 0 PID: 13718 Return Value of: 0
Process: 1 PID: 13721 Return Value of: 0
Process: 2 PID: 13724 Return Value of: 0
Process: 3 PID: 13727 Return Value of: 127
Process: 4 PID: 13730 Return Value of: 0
--Run 1
Process: 0 PID: 20849 Return Value of: 0
Process: 1 PID: 20852 Return Value of: 127
Process: 2 PID: 20855 Return Value of: 127
Process: 3 PID: 20858 Return Value of: 127
Process: 4 PID: 20861 Return Value of: 0
--Run 1
Process: 0 PID: 21688 Return Value of: 0
Process: 1 PID: 21691 Return Value of: 0
Process: 2 PID: 21694 Return Value of: 127
Process: 3 PID: 21697 Return Value of: 0
Process: 4 PID: 21700 Return Value of: 0
--Run 1
Process: 0 PID: 23945 Return Value of: 0
Process: 1 PID: 23948 Return Value of: 0
Process: 2 PID: 23951 Return Value of: 0
Process: 3 PID: 23954 Return Value of: 0
Process: 4 PID: 23957 Return Value of: 0

Any ideas?????

I'd guess the processes with those PIDs that returned a value of 127 are finishing before your wait command executes.. the sql applications you're spawning sometimes run faster and sometimes run slower..

Code:

0
Successful completion.

1-126
An error occurred.

127
A specified pid or job-id has terminated or is unknown by the invoking shell.

> 128
If a signal terminated the process abnormally, the exit status is a value
greater than 128 unique to that signal.

Tested your theory. Interesting results.

Created this script
#!/bin/ksh
echo 'Start'
sleep 6 &
RETVAL1=$!
sleep 4 &
RETVAL2=$!
sleep 2 &
RETVAL3=$!
wait $RETVAL1
echo $?
wait $RETVAL2
echo $?
wait $RETVAL3
echo $?
echo 'Finish'

Solaris 2.6 returned
Start
0
127
127
Finish

Solaris 2.8 returned
Start
0
0
0
Finish.

Looks like I have OS issues.

Thanks.