Terminal emulator not spawning process

Question

C:/Program Files (x86)/emacs-24.2/bin/cmdproxy.exe (the one supplied with the copy of Emacs) isn't firing up in the terminal-emulator, no matter if I try doing it using eval or M-x. Nor is any other CLI such as C:/Program Files (x86)/Git/bin/sh.exe or D:/user_files/Downloads/plink.exe.

It returns:

apply: Spawning child process: invalid argument

when run interactively (M-x)

or

Debugger entered--Lisp error: (file-error "Spawning child process" "invalid argument")
  signal(file-error ("Spawning child process" "invalid argument"))
  byte-code("\301 \210\302@A\"\207" [err fundamental-mode signal] 3)
  terminal-emulator("*PUTTY-RUNNING-TAIL*" "D:/user_files/Downloads/plink.exe" ("10.10.0.145"))
  eval((terminal-emulator "*PUTTY-RUNNING-TAIL*" "D:/user_files/Downloads/plink.exe" (cons "192.168.10.8" nil)) nil)
  eval-expression((terminal-emulator "*PUTTY-RUNNING-TAIL*" "D:/user_files/Downloads/plink.exe" (cons "192.168.10.8" nil)) nil)
  call-interactively(eval-expression nil nil)

when run from eval ((terminal-emulator "*PUTTY-RUNNING-TAIL*" "D:/user_files/Downloads/plink.exe" (cons "192.168.10.8" nil))).

Is this a bug or am I missing something?

Answer 1

I am afraid that the root cause of your problem is a hardcoded /bin/sh in terminal-emulator code ((start-process "terminal-emulator" (current-buffer) "/bin/sh" "-c" ...). You could try changing that to a shell that is valid for you, but I am not optimistic about the outcome.

See this question about a similar problem for a different kind of terminal emulation under Emacs in a Windows based platform.