Topic: What does "zcat: stdout: Broken pipe" mean?

[jdarrough]

Hi folks.

   I installed a fresh copy of SME 6.0 for a friend, and CRON is sending him the below message. Can someone tell me what I did wrong?

Thanks, Jim Darrough

>Delivered-To: root@e-smith-server.xxxxx.home
>Delivered-To: alias-localdelivery-root@xxxxx.home
>Date: 14 Mar 2004 12:02:06 -0000
>From: root@xxxxx.home (Cron Daemon)
>To: root@xxxxx.home
>Subject: Cron <root@e-smith-server> run-parts /etc/cron.daily
>X-Cron-Env: <SHELL=/bin/bash>
>X-Cron-Env: <PATH=/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin>
>X-Cron-Env: <MAILTO=root>
>X-Cron-Env: <HOME=/root>
>X-Cron-Env: <LOGNAME=root>
>
>/etc/cron.daily/makewhatis.cron:
>
>
>zcat: stdout: Broken pipe
>
>zcat: stdout: Broken pipe

[Reinhold]

Hi Jim

Use putty to log into your sme and try:
man zcat
man makewhatis

so you get an error while updating your manpages
...seems your database is corrupted...

If this is a fresh install check your ISO
On SME starting with: man md5sum    
(On windows with md5.exe from http://www.toast442.org)

Good luck

[raem]

If you also learn to search these forums on that error message you will also find the answer. It has been answered a number of times before, go back to last year and earlier.
Regs
Ray

[kozel]

I've tried a search and only find this reference. Can any one else find them?

[Reinhold]

kozel,

Enter your search into the "Search Site"
magnifying-glass-box on the top left...
Clicking you get the list you found...
Now BELOW that first (small) list of hits
there is a little blue hyperlink saying:
"Show all results"
... this usually gives the useful stuff

Ever so often I miss(ed) that one too  

...I checked just now and it does indeed
give quite a few links (haven't noticed them before
and not going to check them now though .-)

What I have learned in my "quest to linux" is to use "online help"
called "man"-pages in Linuxien.
That does give immediate&approved information unlike a bulletinboard  

JIM: let us know you are (still) there and did something  [/i]

[raem]

To all posters
If you are going to do a search, you should ALWAYS click on the "Show all results" link.
Without doing that you miss most of the postings in a search.
I found this on my first search for
zcat: stdout: Broken pipe

http://forums.contribs.org/index.php?topic=10281.msg38748#msg38748

Regs
Ray

[Reinhold]

LOL

Getting rid of "man" in Linux is called solution A ??
Downloading the "man" rpm for rh 7.1 is called solution B ???

Ray ... did you really read that link  
<d&r>

Seriously: One could even more easily delete the offending line itself (or comment it, or ignore it for a while .-).
And that would at least keep the old man's... man

If this is a fresh install something went horribly wrong. I'd wonder what comes next ...

Regards

[Anonymous]

Reinhold

I just posted that link to show how far back the issue goes, 27 Feb 2001.
man was removed on one or more of the e-smith releases but it was put back more recently, so the "zdcat" error seems to have been an ongoing issue.
I think if you are researching a problem then all related posts should be read.

Regs
Ray

[whistler]

Now I got it too on a fresh 6.0 that was updated (with rpms) to 6.0.1-01 and to MySQL 4.0.18-0.
I do not know, why it happened.
From the commandline makewhatis -w works fine.

Is this only a cosmetic error?
http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/long_list.cgi?buglist=64836#c6

[ldavies]

For what it's worth I got an email from root@myserver with:

******************
/etc/cron.weekly/makewhatis.cron:
zcat: stdout: Broken pipe
zcat: stdout: Broken pipe
zcat: stdout: Broken pipe
zcat: stdout: Broken pipe
zcat: stdout: Broken pipe
zcat: stdout: Broken pipe
zcat: stdout: Broken pipe
zcat: stdout: Broken pipe
and continuing for hundreds more
*******************

[Garfield]

I got the error too on two freshly installed 6.01 systems. MD5 checksum of the ISO was fine.
So apparently this issue still isn't fixed, in contrast to what the bug list says ...

[lee]

I might be talking rubbish but the error message reported isn't the message that zcat sends when it can't find or can't decompress a file but it seems to be saying that the pipe reader has disappeared.  Looking at the makewhatis code the other end of the pipe is an awk script.  Whistler reports that the same script works fine if run by root from the command line. Now awk is sensitive to various environment variables for locatisation (LANG, LC_ALL, etc).  These variables will be set for someone logging in as root by the profile scripts but these are not executed but cron jobs (which is why the root path varible isn't the same for cron job as for someone running from command line).     Could try adding export LC_ALL=C LANG=en_US  somewhere near the top of the makewhatis script and see if that makes any difference.  

As I can't seem to duplicate the error, this is total guesswork!

Lee

[NickR]

I have had this error periodically from some of the SME servers I admin.  There is no detectable pattern; some do it once and never again, some several times at random & others never.  It doesn't break anything so I've never worried about it too much.

[jdarrough]

Hello and thanks for the comments. I want to mention that I am on a dialup system at home and 4 of us share the miniscule bandwidth. We average about 24k connect rates, but since we live in "Rural America", the telephone provider (Qwest) has run out of bandwidth such that they have added multiplexers all over our area. This of course results in even slower BAUD rates. So unless I can find time at work to peruse the Forums (like now), it is unacceptable to do searches which may take a long time and be fruitless.

One reason I like Linux and this community is that there are still people who don't mind helping me even though there may be other responses on the Forum.

I am getting ready to do a complete reinstall since the system bogs down terribly when it is "getting mail". I am planning to offload email services and have family members direct-connect to the ISP through the SME.
I am still not familiar with how to read the logs and which ones to look at to find the problem. I suspect that there are improperly addressed messages being sent, resent, etc. and that the dyndns program I no longer use is also continuously trying to update my IP address.

So, I will build a new one, leaving off all the extra stuff, and try to learn more.

Regards, Jim