mc (Midnight Commander) failing at launch

[willbprog127]

Greetings all.

After a recent update, I've seen that mc no longer works correctly when launched from a non-root account. I get this error:

$ mc
No protocol specified
common.c: unimplemented subshell type 1
read (subshell_pty...): No error: 0 (0)

When I use mc --nosubshell it does starts up without the error.

This is on a system that's been running fine for months, and also on a fresh install just to confirm this issue.

Any guidance on this recent issue before I file a PR?

 

[willbprog127]

Never mind. I didn't see it before, but PR 208391 already addresses this, and it appears upstream is stalled. I'll just use --nosubshell when necessary.

 

[ShelLuser]

Quite frankly I have my doubts that this PR is involved, check it's date: it's a bit old.

Thing is: I'm also a vivid mc user and I can't reproduce this issue so far. I'm running FreeBSD 10.3 with the latest mc and even if I switch my shell from my normal ksh to sh then things continue to work.

How did you install mc? Using the ports or using binary packages?

 

[blackhaz]

Just installed mc binary on FreeBSD 10.3-RELEASE-p11. Getting the same issue.

 

[MarcoB]

Looks like misc/mc doesn't support /bin/sh (yet). You can build the port with the SUBSHELL option turned off.