David's response led me back to my debugging roots. while comparing the 'env' output between the two systems. There were some surprising differences. I don't know all the technical aspects of SHLVL (shell level?) - but they did not match. After some Bing AI research that started to lead me down some deep technical details, I decided to fall back on the old tried and true system programmer games. The most productive game is from Sesame Street -- "One of these things is not like the Other"
The shortest path was to merge the /etc/profile from my good system to the failing one. I discovered much. First, it's comments implied that it had not been touched since OS/390 and the 1990s Other things were The if $STEPLIB logic that 'forces a respawn?' was different Two new environment exports were needed (_BPX_SHAREAS=YES and _BPX_SPAWN_SCRIPT=YES) There were a few other minor things that I will leave out to avoid further embarrassment to myself. Thanks to all that chipped in and led me back to my core debugging skills. I had gone looking for Zebras when I head the sounds of hoofbeats. I would also like to take this opportunity to apologize if I in any way caused this thread to spawn in the ugly directions that it has done. Behave yourselves people.... It's all just ones and zeroes not life and death. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
