xterm: Can't execvp ulimit

Question

I setup my suse to work with xterm so it could pop up gdb when my tests crash. The test launching .exe file runs the specified test and opens up gdb when crash occurs. This works just fine. There is a python wrapper around this .exe file to implement parallelism. When I try to use this python wrapper, I see a xterm window popped up with this message: xterm: Can't execvp ulimit: No such file or directory

The python script pauses until I close this window. It then continues normally without issues and opens up gdb as expected.

I couldn't find enough resources to understand what the error message is about. I need this error gone so I can automate this process. Can someone help me with this?

Answer 1

The error is caused by the fact that ulimit is always a shell built-in command, never a separate executable file. But something – maybe your script – is expecting to run it using exec.