I am creating a service that opens a specialized shell and keeps track of that process by entering it into a hashtable. The initialization uses a checkForPrompt function that searches the InputStreams for a special character, ie '$' or ']'. However when I start the process on Linux, no prompt appears. (Ironically this works on Windows.) A snippet of my code:

Process ps = null;


InputStream in, err;


exec = "bash";







try


{


ps = m_runtime.exec(exec);



in = ps.getInputStream();


err = ps.getErrorStream();


while(!timeout){


tmpIn = readFromStream( in, "in" );


if(checkForPrompt(tmpIn))


return true;


}


else


timeout++;





}


.


.


.

Will the process ever return a prompt? Is there a better way to do this or check to see if the shell has been entered?

Thanks!
Cecilia