Problems with Runtime.exec() and certain Unix processes

Question

Certain Unix processes don't behave correctly when run from Java using Runtime.exec(). This can be seen by running /bin/sh and trying to interact with it interactively. The issue appears to be that /bin/sh (and many other Unix tools) are checking the file handles on the spawned process to see if they are associated with a TTY.
Is there any way to associate a process spawned by Runtime.exec() with a terminal or alternatively, is there a JNI library available that would setup the process correctly and still provide access to the input and output streams?
Our objective is to have the flexibility of expect in being able to run and interact with spawned processes. A bug was opened at one point but closed back in 1997 as being a fault in the spawned process, not Java.
Bug ID: http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=4058689

Answer 1

#include <stdio.h>
void doit() {
int c;
        while((c=getc(stdin)) != EOF) {
                printf("%c",c);
int main() {
        freopen("/dev/tty", "r", stdin);
        doit();
}This program reopens its standard input against /dev/tty and catenates it to stdout. And voila, it takes its standard input from the terminal, even though it was started with stdin against /dev/null..
$ gcc b.c -o b
$./b < /dev/null
buon giorno
buon giorno