Can't spawn "cmd.exe"

[joaotumenas]

Until last week my alphamelts 1.x was running perfectly, but since yesterday, perl cannot spawn cmd.exe, even with the file being in the directory.
I downloaded it again, but the problem persists. What could have happened?

[Paula]

Don't know, sorry...

Until last week my alphamelts 1.x was running perfectly, but since yesterday, perl cannot spawn cmd.exe, even with the file being in the directory.

Which file, and which directory is it in?

I downloaded it again, but the problem persists. What could have happened?

Do you mean you downloaded alphaMELTS again, or Perl? Which Perl are you using?

Have you installed anything else recently that may have adjusted the Path?

[joaotumenas]

"Which file, and which directory is it in?"

The CMD.exe file, it's in the directory: C:\Users\admin\Documents\alphamelts_1-9



"Do you mean you downloaded alphaMELTS again, or Perl? Which Perl are you using?"

I downloaded the alphaMELTS... when I do perl -v on cmd: This is perl 5, version 30, subversion 2 (v5.30.2) built for MSWin32-x64-multi-thread



"Have you installed anything else recently that may have adjusted the Path?"

No, I didn't... The Path seems to be ok.

[Paula]

Sorry, I misread some of your message before. For Perl, I meant is it Strawberry Perl (portable or regular?), Perl installed through Anaconda, ActivePerl or something else? Also, are you an admin user on the machine?

What happened when you ran the install.command script? Did it say that you need to set the Path? I would try running install.command again, the way you are supposed to the first time i.e. right-click, open with etc.

There's an old thread with a similar issue, but it doesn't really sound like it's the same problem: https://magmasource.caltech.edu/forum/index.php/topic,892.msg1400.html#msg1400

Google throws up quite a few reports of something like this happening suddenly, including recently: https://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl5.porters/2022/06/msg263844.html

One of the threads suggested it might a change in Malwarebytes. Do you have that, or something similar installed? I don't have time to troubleshoot that this week as we are running a pre-Goldschmidt workshop in a few days time. But if the problem doesn't resolve itself with normal updates then I'll see if I can reproduce it.

[joaotumenas]

Hello, Paula.

Sorry for taking so long to reply

I am admin on the machine. I installed perl using the automatic installer file available from the website download, without using Anaconda, ActivePerl or something else.

However I have Malwarebytes installed on my machine and the problem doesn't solved itself with normal updates.

Can you help me with this problem, please?


The message of error is:

"C:\Users\admin\Documents>C:\Users\admin\Documents\alphamelts_1-9\run_alphamelts.command -f C:\Users\admin\Documents\alphamelts_1-9\Joao\PMPLP_env.txt -p C:\Users\admin\Documents\alphamelts_1-9\output
ALPHAMELTS_DO_TRACE true
ALPHAMELTS_DO_TRACE_H2O true
ALPHAMELTS_CELSIUS_OUTPUT true
ALPHAMELTS_VERSION MELTS
ALPHAMELTS_DELTAP 0
ALPHAMELTS_MINT +850
ALPHAMELTS_MAXP +3000
ALPHAMELTS_MAXT +1500
ALPHAMELTS_MODE isobaric
ALPHAMELTS_MINP +3000
ALPHAMELTS_MINF 0.05
ALPHAMELTS_DELTAT -10


Can't spawn "cmd.exe": No such file or directory at C:\Users\admin\Documents\alphamelts_1-9\run_alphamelts.command line 447.
RUN_ALPHAMELTS.COMMAND WARNING: alphamelts may have crashed!


RUN_ALPHAMELTS.COMMAND WARNING: Cannot find output file "Phase_main_tbl.txt" (No such file or directory)
Please check that alphamelts ran properly."

[Paula]

Hi,

How are you starting run_alphamelts.command? If alphaMELTS is installed correctly, you shouldn't need to put the full path to run_alphamelts.command. You should be able to navigate to where the input files are in cmd.exe and then start alphaMELTS by typing "run_alphamelts.command -f PMPLP_env.txt -o output" etc.

I'm not that surprised it fails when called like that, though I don't understand what's changed since it was working.

Assuming you took the default settings when you ran install.command, the links will be in C:\Users\admin\Documents\bin - is this folder in the Path (type "echo %PATH%" in cmd.exe)? If it is not then you will get an error, as it will be looking for alphamelts(.bat) in the C:\Users\admin\Documents\alphamelts_1-9 folder. But again it won't be exactly the same error as you are getting.

I am at IAVCEI and only have access to Windows 11 (with Malwarebytes) and have not been able to reproduce what you see. As mentioned  before I would try running install.command again, the way you are supposed to the first time (i.e. right-click, open with...). If it still doesn't work then try copying cmd.exe into C:\Users\admin\Documents\bin - it's not an ideal solution but it might work.

Paula