gnome-terminal annoyances

[Sean Middleditch <elanthis awesomeplay com>]

Hi all,

 Working on my MUD server, I ran into what I thought was a networking
bug, but actually appears to be a gnome-terminal (2.2 w/ vte) bug.  If a
gnome-terminal window has a process (say, telnet) and you close that
window, but have other gnome-terminal windows open (thus the
gnome-terminal process doesn't die), the process(es) running in the
closed window keep running, and stay attached to a pty.

 Fore-note, I'm wondering if there is a good reason/explanation for
this, or if its a bug I should be bugzilla'ing.

 Example, here is output from the command "w" when I have the mud server
running in rxvt, had a telnet session to the server open in a
gnome-terminal window, then closed the window (the w command in run in a
second gnome-terminal window that has been open):

elanthis stargrazer:~$ w
 22:54:48 up  5:50,  4 users,  load average: 0.98, 1.03, 1.07
USER     TTY      FROM              LOGIN@   IDLE   JCPU   PCPU WHAT
elanthis :0       -                17:05   ?xdm?   9:10   1.42s
gnome-session
elanthis pts/0    :0.0             22:51    3:12   2:56   2:56 
src/awemud
elanthis pts/1    :0.0             22:51    0.00s  0.00s  1.22s
gnome-terminal
elanthis pts/3    :0.0             22:51   12154days  0.00s  1.22s
gnome-terminal

the WHAT line jsut shows the two gnome-terminal processes (and the
second one looks a bit funnny... IDLE 12254 days?).  netstat shows:

tcp        0      0 stargrazer.home.a:34035 stargrazer.home.aw:4545
ESTABLISHED 5430/telnet

I tried opening another telnet connection to the MUD server in an rxvt
window.  w output of that:

elanthis pts/5    :0.0             22:54    2.00s  0.09s  0.01s telnet
localhost 4545

If I close the rxvt, the process dies - it doesn't show up in "w" output
anymore, and it doesn't show up in netstat.  The MUD server gives me the
"lost connection" message I expect it to.

The only way to close the errant telnet process (from gnome-terminal) is
to explicitly kill it, to close all gnome-terminal windows, or shut-down
the MUD server (telnet disconnects, exits).

I can't think of any reason for this behaviour other than it being a
bug, but then, I don't know a lot of things - like how to write terminal
emulators.  ;-)


On another note - what is the feasibility of a feature where, when
closing a terminal window, detecting it any app other than the user's
shell is running in the session/process-group, and popping up a dialog
"You should exit this application the normal way blah blah Usability
people think up a better message please" ?  Or if it is just the shell,
go ahead and exit silently.

-- 
Sean Middleditch <elanthis awesomeplay com>
AwesomePlay Productions, Inc.