[ESS] Process SAS is not running

[Rodney Sparapani]

Cameron Hooper wrote:

>Today when I attempted to start up an interactive SAS session using ESS  
>(M-SAS) I received a "Process SAS is not running error". I've been  
>using ESS and SAS daily for months without trouble so something must  
>have changed at my site to break things. I need some help to find out  
>what is going wrong.
>
>Poking around I noticed the location of the SAS executable has moved. I  
>updated the soft link in ~/bin (rehash) and tried to start SAS at the  
>command line. This failed as it is trying to open the DMS. This isn't  
>the way SAS normally behaves, is it? I called the exectutable directly  
>not via a shell script. Typing:
>
>$head sas
>
>Produces the "nonsense" output that indicates the file is a executable.
>
>The only way I could get SAS to run (without starting X) was to add the  
>-nodms option.
>
>I tried replacing the soft link with a simple shell script in ~/bin:
>
># Simple script
>/usr/local/SAS/SAS_9.1/sasexe/sas -nodms
>
>Didn't work.
>
>I'm at a loss.
>
>Cameron
>
>
>  
>
Ok, I'm trying to debug this.  One thing that I do to see if it's a SAS 
problem
or an ESS problem is run M-x ess-sas-interactive
This is a minimal environment that should always work; if it doesn't, 
then it's
most likely a SAS problem.  So, that works here for both v. 8 and 9.  
However,
I'm getting the following from M-x SAS:

Signaling: (wrong-type-argument markerp nil)
  comint-output-filter(#<process "shell<2>" pid 9843 state:run> "$ ")
  dispatch-non-command-events()
  progress-feedback-dispatch-non-command-events()
  raw-append-progress-feedback("Fontifying *shell*..." 0 #<x-frame 
"emacs" 0x338d>)
  append-progress-feedback(font-lock "Fontifying *shell*..." 0 nil)
  display-progress-feedback(font-lock "Fontifying *shell*..." 0)
  progress-feedback-with-label(font-lock "Fontifying %s..." 0 "*shell*")
  font-lock-default-unfontify-region(1 19 t)
  font-lock-unfontify-region(1 19 t)
  font-lock-default-fontify-buffer()
  font-lock-fontify-buffer()
  font-lock-mode(1)
  noweb-old-turn-on-font-lock()
  turn-on-font-lock()
  run-hooks(turn-on-font-lock)
  ess-mode(((ess-local-customize-alist quote SAS-customize-alist) 
(ess-language . "SAS") (ess-dialect . "SAS") (ess-mode-editing-alist . 
SAS-editing-alist) (ess-mode-syntax-table . SAS-syntax-table) 
(inferior-ess-program . inferior-SAS-program-name) (ess-help-sec-regex . 
"^[A-Z. ---]+:$") (ess-help-sec-keys-alist . " ") 
(ess-object-name-db-file . "ess-sas-namedb.el") 
(inferior-ess-objects-command . "objects(%d)") 
(inferior-ess-help-command . "help(\"%s\",pager=\"cat\",window=F)\n") 
(inferior-ess-exit-command . "endsas;\n") (ess-loop-timeout . 500000) 
(inferior-ess-primary-prompt . "^") (inferior-ess-secondary-prompt . 
"^") (comint-use-prompt-regexp-instead-of-fields . t) 
(inferior-ess-start-file) (inferior-ess-start-args . 
inferior-SAS-args-temp) (ess-local-process-name)) nil)
  SAS-mode()
  SAS-log-mode()
  ess-SAS-pre-run-hook("SAS")
  #<compiled-function nil "...(31)" [sas-mode-local-map ess-dialect 
SAS-customize-alist temp-dialect set-default ess-customize-alist "SAS" 
ess-write-to-dribble-buffer format "(SAS): ess-dial=%s, temp-dial=%s\n" 
ess-SAS-pre-run-hook inferior-ess "*SAS*" use-local-map] 5 
("/usr/local/lib/xemacs/xemacs-packages/lisp/ess/essd-sas.elc" . 4548) 
nil>()
  call-interactively(SAS)
  command-execute(SAS t)
  execute-extended-command(nil)
  call-interactively(execute-extended-command)

Any ideas?

Rodney