#92 PAC won't start - 'can't kill a non-numeric process' error

[jrussell88]

I opened an SSH tab from PAC, but it hung. No error message and no response from anything. I killed and restarted PAC which brought up the same three tabs, with the still-cycling hourglass. So I rebooted the machine.

PAC terminates immediately after starting - the icon appears but not the application. If I start PAC from a command terminal I get the following:

john@Vivid01:~$ pac
PAC started (pac) with PID 2778
INFO: Used config file '/home/john/.pac/pac.nfreeze'
Can't kill a non-numeric process ID at /usr/share/pac/lib/PACUtils.pm line 2399.
john@Vivid01:~$

I'm reporting this as a bug since it seems badly-behaved. Can you suggest how to resolve the problem?

Thanks.

[David Torrejón Vaquerizas]

Hi, John.
First of all, sorry for the inconvenience. I found the problematic code lines.
Please, substitute line 2399 of '/usr/share/pac/lib/PACUtils.pm' with these two other, and let me know it solved your problem.

defined $pid or return 0;
return ( ( $pid =~ /\d+/go ) && kill( 1, $pid ) ) ? $pid : 0;

Btw, you will need 'root' authentication to modify that file.
Once again, sorry for the inconvenience. Please, give me some feedback on this problem.

- David.

[jrussell88]

Thanks for the quick reply David.

That amended code has resolved the problem.

Thanks again :)

[David Torrejón Vaquerizas]

Thanks to you for trying PAC!
- David.