Conference hydra::amiga_v1

302.0. "Task Held Requesters" by TLE::RMEYERS (Randy Meyers) Wed Feb 04 1987 20:56

A quick point that some people don't realize:

When you get the "Task held" requester up on the screen, the system isn't
(necessarily) corrupted.  All the message says is the the task committed
an error, and that the system refuses to schedule the CPU for the task
until you select one of the options in the requester.

I you know (or suspect) that the failure is benign, you can just ignore
the requester.  Just push it to the back of the screen and go on with
your work by running other programs.

If the software failure was benign (that the task didn't scribble all
over memory with a bad pointer), the only disadvantage to ignoring the
requester is that you have the stupid requester on the screen somewhere
and you have lost any system resources that where being used by the
held task (most notably memory and file locks).

However, if the task failure was not benign, then other tasks in the system
will start to fail as well.  At that point, you should just give up:  select
cancel from one of the "Task held" requesters, get a Guru, and reset.

I have found that a Guru 3 is almost always benign.  I have found that
Guru 4 usually means you should just give up.  The only problem is that
the task held requester doesn't give you the guru number, so it's hard
to make your decision on whether to continue working or not.

Last weekend, I was working on a program that would occasionally fail.
Since I didn't want to reset just then, I ignored the "Task Held"
requester and kept working.  I let different versions of the program
bomb about three times over the course of an hour before I gave up and
reset in order to get my memory back.

    I did not realize this . It seems every time I selected the requester
    I'd get a Guru .Lately I have taken to running PopCli an when I
    get the requester I pull up cli and at least save my files. of course
    it would only work if memory has not been trashed .Now with the
    Recoverable Ram Disk it is less of a problem .
    
    bill

I am not sure if I made myself clear.  If you get the requester and you
wish to continue working, just hit the "back window" gadget.  If you
select the cancel gadget you will get the Guru.  I am not sure what
happens if you select the retry gadget; presumably the machine instruction
that caused the fault gets re-executed.

    Thats one of the more amazing (to me at least) things about the
    Amiga.  I have had one task bomb out, and by merely ignoring the
    requestor, I can struggle onward with any other tasks.  Pretty neat!

    Is there any way to get the CLI back if I didn't "RUN" the offending
    task and I don't have POPCLI running (which is always the case for
    me)?
    
    -jim

    Nope, unless you can grab another window with a cli hiding in it.
    I usually 'run' everything, just in case I need to get the machine
    back.  I especially like to 'run type >prt: "LONG_FILE"'
    
    The exception is if you were printing a text file to screen, which
    can be interrupted by a ^C.
    
    

    re: .4  I don't run POPCLI either.
    
    I use the following method to get CLIs:
      edit the s/startup-sequence so that it does two NEWCLIs, one to
      create a full screen cli, and the second to create a tiny cli.
      If the tiny one annoys you, just hit its backwindow gadget.
    
    -dave