What does this mean?

[John Oliver]

Jun 11 16:36:34 mail kernel: application bug: perl5.8.0(4468) has
SIGCHLD set to SIG_IGN but calls wait().
Jun 11 16:36:34 mail kernel: (see the NOTES section of 'man 2 wait').
Workaround activated.

Google isn't turning anything up.

 

[Ben Morrow]

Quoth (e-mail address removed) (John Oliver):

Jun 11 16:36:34 mail kernel: application bug: perl5.8.0(4468) has
SIGCHLD set to SIG_IGN but calls wait().
Jun 11 16:36:34 mail kernel: (see the NOTES section of 'man 2 wait').
Workaround activated.

Google isn't turning anything up.

Err... it means what it says. You have a perl program which does

$SIG{CHLD} = 'IGNORE';

and then calls wait or waitpid. Your OS considers this to be an error
(as any child processes will be cleaned up straight away automatically,
and the status byte will no longer be around for wait to return).

If this is a linux system then the NOTES section of wait(2) basically
says that linux doesn't do what SUSv2 says it should in this case.

Ben