Commit | Line | Data |
---|---|---|
a933dad1 DL |
1 | This file describes various problems that have been encountered |
2 | in compiling, installing and running GNU Emacs. | |
3 | ||
4 | * Error "conflicting types for `initstate'" compiling with GCC on Irix 6. | |
5 | ||
6 | Install GCC 2.95 or a newer version, and this problem should go away. | |
7 | It is possible that this problem results from upgrading the operating | |
8 | system without reinstalling GCC; so you could also try reinstalling | |
9 | the same version of GCC, and telling us whether that fixes the problem. | |
10 | ||
11 | * On Solaris 7, Emacs gets a segmentation fault when starting up using X. | |
12 | ||
13 | This results from Sun patch 107058-01 (SunOS 5.7: Patch for | |
14 | assembler), if you use GCC (version 2.7 or 2.8, at least). To work | |
15 | around it, either uninstall the patch, or install the GNU Binutils. | |
16 | Then recompile Emacs, and it should work. | |
17 | ||
18 | * With X11R6.4, public-patch-3, Emacs crashes at startup. | |
19 | ||
20 | Reportedly this patch in X fixes the problem. | |
21 | ||
22 | --- xc/lib/X11/imInt.c~ Wed Jun 30 13:31:56 1999 | |
23 | +++ xc/lib/X11/imInt.c Thu Jul 1 15:10:27 1999 | |
24 | @@ -1,4 +1,4 @@ | |
25 | -/* $TOG: imInt.c /main/5 1998/05/30 21:11:16 kaleb $ */ | |
26 | +/* $TOG: imInt.c /main/5 1998/05/30 21:11:16 kaleb $ */ | |
27 | /****************************************************************** | |
28 | ||
29 | Copyright 1992, 1993, 1994 by FUJITSU LIMITED | |
30 | @@ -166,8 +166,8 @@ | |
31 | _XimMakeImName(lcd) | |
32 | XLCd lcd; | |
33 | { | |
34 | - char* begin; | |
35 | - char* end; | |
36 | + char* begin = NULL; | |
37 | + char* end = NULL; | |
38 | char* ret; | |
39 | int i = 0; | |
40 | char* ximmodifier = XIMMODIFIER; | |
41 | @@ -182,7 +182,11 @@ | |
42 | } | |
43 | ret = Xmalloc(end - begin + 2); | |
44 | if (ret != NULL) { | |
45 | - (void)strncpy(ret, begin, end - begin + 1); | |
46 | + if (begin != NULL) { | |
47 | + (void)strncpy(ret, begin, end - begin + 1); | |
48 | + } else { | |
49 | + ret[0] = '\0'; | |
50 | + } | |
51 | ret[end - begin + 1] = '\0'; | |
52 | } | |
53 | return ret; | |
54 | ||
55 | ||
56 | * On Solaris 2.7, the Compose key does not work *except* when the | |
57 | system is quite heavily loaded. | |
58 | ||
59 | This is a bug in Motif in Solaris. Supposedly it has been fixed for | |
60 | the next major release of Solaris. However, if someone with Sun | |
61 | support complains to Sun about the bug, they may release a patch for | |
62 | Solaris 2.7. If you do this, mention Sun bug #4188711. | |
63 | ||
64 | * Emacs crashes on Irix 6.5 on the SGI R10K, when compiled with GCC. | |
65 | ||
66 | This seems to be fixed in GCC 2.95. | |
67 | ||
68 | * Emacs crashes in utmpname on Irix 5.3. | |
69 | ||
70 | This problem is fixed in Patch 3175 for Irix 5.3. | |
71 | It is also fixed in Irix versions 6.2 and up. | |
72 | ||
73 | * On Solaris, CTRL-t is ignored by Emacs when you use | |
74 | the fr.ISO-8859-15 locale (and maybe other related locales). | |
75 | ||
76 | You can fix this by editing the file: | |
77 | ||
78 | /usr/openwin/lib/locale/iso8859-15/Compose | |
79 | ||
80 | Near the bottom there is a line that reads: | |
81 | ||
82 | Ctrl<t> <quotedbl> <Y> : "\276" threequarters | |
83 | ||
84 | that should read: | |
85 | ||
86 | Ctrl<T> <quotedbl> <Y> : "\276" threequarters | |
87 | ||
88 | Note the lower case <t>. Changing this line should make C-t work. | |
89 | ||
90 | * Emacs on Digital Unix 4.0 fails to build, giving error message | |
91 | Invalid dimension for the charset-ID 160 | |
92 | ||
93 | This is due to a bug or an installation problem in GCC 2.8.0. | |
94 | Installing a more recent version of GCC fixes the problem. | |
95 | ||
96 | * Buffers from `with-output-to-temp-buffer' get set up in Help mode. | |
97 | ||
98 | Changes in Emacs 20.4 to the hooks used by that function cause | |
99 | problems for some packages, specifically BBDB. See the function's | |
100 | documentation for the hooks involved. BBDB 2.00.06 fixes the problem. | |
101 | ||
102 | * Under X, C-v and/or other keys don't work. | |
103 | ||
104 | These may have been intercepted by your window manager. In | |
105 | particular, AfterStep 1.6 is reported to steal C-v in its default | |
106 | configuration. Various Meta keys are also likely to be taken by the | |
107 | configuration of the `feel'. See the WM's documentation for how to | |
108 | change this. | |
109 | ||
110 | * When using Exceed, fonts sometimes appear too tall. | |
111 | ||
112 | When the display is set to an Exceed X-server and fonts are specified | |
113 | (either explicitly with the -fn option or implicitly with X resources) | |
114 | then the fonts may appear "too tall". The actual character sizes are | |
115 | correct but there is too much vertical spacing between rows, which | |
116 | gives the appearance of "double spacing". | |
117 | ||
118 | To prevent this, turn off the Exceed's "automatic font substitution" | |
119 | feature (in the font part of the configuration window). | |
120 | ||
121 | * On Solaris 7 or later, the compiler complains about the struct member `_ptr'. | |
122 | ||
123 | This suggests that you are trying to build Emacs in 64 bit mode | |
124 | (e.g. with cc -xarch=v9). Emacs does not yet support this on Solaris. | |
125 | Build Emacs in the default 32 bit mode instead. | |
126 | ||
127 | * Failure in unexec while dumping emacs on Digital Unix 4.0 | |
128 | ||
129 | This problem manifests itself as an error message | |
130 | ||
131 | unexec: Bad address, writing data section to ... | |
132 | ||
133 | The user suspects that this happened because his X libraries | |
134 | were built for an older system version, | |
135 | ||
136 | ./configure --x-includes=/usr/include --x-libraries=/usr/shlib | |
137 | ||
138 | made the problem go away. | |
139 | ||
140 | * No visible display on mips-sgi-irix6.2 when compiling with GCC 2.8.1. | |
141 | ||
142 | This problem went away after installing the latest IRIX patches | |
143 | as of 8 Dec 1998. | |
144 | ||
145 | The same problem has been reported on Irix 6.3. | |
146 | ||
147 | * As of version 20.4, Emacs doesn't work properly if configured for | |
148 | the Motif toolkit and linked against the free LessTif library. The | |
149 | next Emacs release is expected to work with LessTif. | |
150 | ||
151 | * Emacs gives the error, Couldn't find per display information. | |
152 | ||
153 | This can result if the X server runs out of memory because Emacs uses | |
154 | a large number of fonts. On systems where this happens, C-h h is | |
155 | likely to cause it. | |
156 | ||
157 | We do not know of a way to prevent the problem. | |
158 | ||
159 | * Emacs makes HPUX 11.0 crash. | |
160 | ||
161 | This is a bug in HPUX; HPUX patch PHKL_16260 is said to fix it. | |
162 | ||
163 | * Emacs crashes during dumping on the HPPA machine (HPUX 10.20). | |
164 | ||
165 | This seems to be due to a GCC bug; it is fixed in GCC 2.8.1. | |
166 | ||
167 | * The Hyperbole package causes *Help* buffers not to be displayed in | |
168 | Help mode due to setting `temp-buffer-show-hook' rather than using | |
169 | `add-hook'. Using `(add-hook 'temp-buffer-show-hook | |
170 | 'help-mode-maybe)' after loading Hyperbole should fix this. | |
171 | ||
172 | * Versions of the PSGML package earlier than 1.0.3 (stable) or 1.1.2 | |
173 | (alpha) fail to parse DTD files correctly in Emacs 20.3 and later. | |
174 | Here is a patch for psgml-parse.el from PSGML 1.0.1 and, probably, | |
175 | earlier versions. | |
176 | ||
177 | --- psgml-parse.el 1998/08/21 19:18:18 1.1 | |
178 | +++ psgml-parse.el 1998/08/21 19:20:00 | |
179 | @@ -2383,7 +2383,7 @@ (defun sgml-push-to-entity (entity &opti | |
180 | (setq sgml-buffer-parse-state nil)) | |
181 | (cond | |
182 | ((stringp entity) ; a file name | |
183 | - (save-excursion (insert-file-contents entity)) | |
184 | + (insert-file-contents entity) | |
185 | (setq default-directory (file-name-directory entity))) | |
186 | ((consp (sgml-entity-text entity)) ; external id? | |
187 | (let* ((extid (sgml-entity-text entity)) | |
188 | ||
189 | * Running TeX from AUXTeX package with Emacs 20.3 gives a Lisp error | |
190 | about a read-only tex output buffer. | |
191 | ||
192 | This problem appeared for AUC TeX version 9.9j and some earlier | |
193 | versions. Here is a patch for the file tex-buf.el in the AUC TeX | |
194 | package. | |
195 | ||
196 | diff -c auctex/tex-buf.el~ auctex/tex-buf.el | |
197 | *** auctex/tex-buf.el~ Wed Jul 29 18:35:32 1998 | |
198 | --- auctex/tex-buf.el Sat Sep 5 15:20:38 1998 | |
199 | *************** | |
200 | *** 545,551 **** | |
201 | (dir (TeX-master-directory))) | |
202 | (TeX-process-check file) ; Check that no process is running | |
203 | (setq TeX-command-buffer (current-buffer)) | |
204 | ! (with-output-to-temp-buffer buffer) | |
205 | (set-buffer buffer) | |
206 | (if dir (cd dir)) | |
207 | (insert "Running `" name "' on `" file "' with ``" command "''\n") | |
208 | - --- 545,552 ---- | |
209 | (dir (TeX-master-directory))) | |
210 | (TeX-process-check file) ; Check that no process is running | |
211 | (setq TeX-command-buffer (current-buffer)) | |
212 | ! (let (temp-buffer-show-function temp-buffer-show-hook) | |
213 | ! (with-output-to-temp-buffer buffer)) | |
214 | (set-buffer buffer) | |
215 | (if dir (cd dir)) | |
216 | (insert "Running `" name "' on `" file "' with ``" command "''\n") | |
217 | ||
218 | * On Irix 6.3, substituting environment variables in file names | |
219 | in the minibuffer gives peculiar error messages such as | |
220 | ||
221 | Substituting nonexistent environment variable "" | |
222 | ||
223 | This is not an Emacs bug; it is caused by something in SGI patch | |
224 | 003082 August 11, 1998. | |
225 | ||
226 | * After a while, Emacs slips into unibyte mode. | |
227 | ||
228 | The VM mail package, which is not part of Emacs, sometimes does | |
229 | (standard-display-european t) | |
230 | That should be changed to | |
231 | (standard-display-european 1 t) | |
232 | ||
233 | * Installing Emacs gets an error running `install-info'. | |
234 | ||
235 | You need to install a recent version of Texinfo; that package | |
236 | supplies the `install-info' command. | |
237 | ||
238 | * Emacs does not recognize the AltGr key, on HPUX. | |
239 | ||
240 | To fix this, set up a file ~/.dt/sessions/sessionetc with executable | |
241 | rights, containing this text: | |
242 | ||
243 | -------------------------------- | |
244 | xmodmap 2> /dev/null - << EOF | |
245 | keysym Alt_L = Meta_L | |
246 | keysym Alt_R = Meta_R | |
247 | EOF | |
248 | ||
249 | xmodmap - << EOF | |
250 | clear mod1 | |
251 | keysym Mode_switch = NoSymbol | |
252 | add mod1 = Meta_L | |
253 | keysym Meta_R = Mode_switch | |
254 | add mod2 = Mode_switch | |
255 | EOF | |
256 | -------------------------------- | |
257 | ||
258 | * Emacs compiled with DJGPP for MS-DOS/MS-Windows cannot access files | |
259 | in the directory with the special name `dev' under the root of any | |
260 | drive, e.g. `c:/dev'. | |
261 | ||
262 | This is an unfortunate side-effect of the support for Unix-style | |
263 | device names such as /dev/null in the DJGPP runtime library. A | |
264 | work-around is to rename the problem directory to another name. | |
265 | ||
266 | * M-SPC seems to be ignored as input. | |
267 | ||
268 | See if your X server is set up to use this as a command | |
269 | for character composition. | |
270 | ||
271 | * Emacs startup on GNU/Linux systems (and possibly other systems) is slow. | |
272 | ||
273 | This can happen if the system is misconfigured and Emacs can't get the | |
274 | full qualified domain name, FQDN. You should have your FQDN in the | |
275 | /etc/hosts file, something like this: | |
276 | ||
277 | 127.0.0.1 localhost | |
278 | 129.187.137.82 nuc04.t30.physik.tu-muenchen.de nuc04 | |
279 | ||
280 | The way to set this up may vary on non-GNU systems. | |
281 | ||
282 | * Garbled display on non-X terminals when Emacs runs on Digital Unix 4.0. | |
283 | ||
284 | So far it appears that running `tset' triggers this problem (when TERM | |
285 | is vt100, at least). If you do not run `tset', then Emacs displays | |
286 | properly. If someone can tell us precisely which effect of running | |
287 | `tset' actually causes the problem, we may be able to implement a fix | |
288 | in Emacs. | |
289 | ||
290 | * When you run Ispell from Emacs, it reports a "misalignment" error. | |
291 | ||
292 | This can happen if you compiled Ispell to use ASCII characters only | |
293 | and then try to use it from Emacs with non-ASCII characters, | |
294 | specifically Latin-1. The solution is to recompile Ispell with | |
295 | Latin-1 support. | |
296 | ||
297 | This can also happen if the version of Ispell installed on your | |
298 | machine is old. | |
299 | ||
300 | * On Linux-based GNU systems using libc versions 5.4.19 through | |
301 | 5.4.22, Emacs crashes at startup with a segmentation fault. | |
302 | ||
303 | This problem happens if libc defines the symbol __malloc_initialized. | |
304 | One known solution is to upgrade to a newer libc version. 5.4.33 is | |
305 | known to work. | |
306 | ||
307 | * On Windows, you cannot use the right-hand ALT key and the left-hand | |
308 | CTRL key together to type a Control-Meta character. | |
309 | ||
310 | This is a consequence of a misfeature beyond Emacs's control. | |
311 | ||
312 | Under Windows, the AltGr key on international keyboards generates key | |
313 | events with the modifiers Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl. Since Emacs cannot | |
314 | distinguish AltGr from an explicit Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl | |
315 | combination, whenever it sees Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl it assumes that | |
316 | AltGr has been pressed. | |
317 | ||
318 | * Under some Windows X-servers, Emacs' display is incorrect | |
319 | ||
320 | The symptoms are that Emacs does not completely erase blank areas of the | |
321 | screen during scrolling or some other screen operations (e.g., selective | |
322 | display or when killing a region). M-x recenter will cause the screen | |
323 | to be completely redisplayed and the "extra" characters will disappear. | |
324 | ||
325 | This is known to occur under Exceed 6, and possibly earlier versions as | |
326 | well. The problem lies in the X-server settings. | |
327 | ||
328 | There are reports that you can solve the problem with Exceed by | |
329 | running `Xconfig' from within NT, choosing "X selection", then | |
330 | un-checking the boxes "auto-copy X selection" and "auto-paste to X | |
331 | selection". | |
332 | ||
333 | Of this does not work, please inform bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org. Then | |
334 | please call support for your X-server and see if you can get a fix. | |
335 | If you do, please send it to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org so we can list it | |
336 | here. | |
337 | ||
338 | * On Solaris 2, Emacs dumps core when built with Motif. | |
339 | ||
340 | The Solaris Motif libraries are buggy, at least up through Solaris 2.5.1. | |
341 | Install the current Motif runtime library patch appropriate for your host. | |
342 | (Make sure the patch is current; some older patch versions still have the bug.) | |
343 | You should install the other patches recommended by Sun for your host, too. | |
344 | You can obtain Sun patches from ftp://sunsolve.sun.com/pub/patches/; | |
345 | look for files with names ending in `.PatchReport' to see which patches | |
346 | are currently recommended for your host. | |
347 | ||
348 | On Solaris 2.6, Emacs is said to work with Motif when Solaris patch | |
349 | 105284-12 is installed, but fail when 105284-15 is installed. | |
350 | 105284-18 might fix it again. | |
351 | ||
352 | * On Solaris 2.6, the Compose key does not work. | |
353 | ||
354 | One workaround is to use a locale that allows non-ASCII characters. | |
355 | For example, before invoking emacs, set the LC_ALL environment | |
356 | variable to "en_US" (American English). The directory /usr/lib/locale | |
357 | lists the supported locales; any locale other than "C" or "POSIX" | |
358 | should do. | |
359 | ||
360 | pen@lysator.liu.se says (Feb 1998) that this is a bug in the Solaris | |
361 | 2.6 X libraries, and that the Compose key does work if you link with | |
362 | the MIT X11 libraries instead. | |
363 | ||
364 | Sun has accepted this as a bug; see Sun bug 4188711. | |
365 | ||
366 | * Emacs does not know your host's fully-qualified domain name. | |
367 | ||
368 | You need to configure your machine with a fully qualified domain name, | |
369 | either in /etc/hosts, /etc/hostname, the NIS, or wherever your system | |
370 | calls for specifying this. | |
371 | ||
372 | If you cannot fix the configuration, you can set the Lisp variable | |
373 | mail-host-address to the value you want. | |
374 | ||
375 | * Error 12 (virtual memory exceeded) when dumping Emacs, on UnixWare 2.1 | |
376 | ||
377 | Paul Abrahams (abrahams@acm.org) reports that with the installed | |
378 | virtual memory settings for UnixWare 2.1.2, an Error 12 occurs during | |
379 | the "make" that builds Emacs, when running temacs to dump emacs. That | |
380 | error indicates that the per-process virtual memory limit has been | |
381 | exceeded. The default limit is probably 32MB. Raising the virtual | |
382 | memory limit to 40MB should make it possible to finish building Emacs. | |
383 | ||
384 | You can do this with the command `ulimit' (sh) or `limit' (csh). | |
385 | But you have to be root to do it. | |
386 | ||
387 | According to Martin Sohnius, you can also retune this in the kernel: | |
388 | ||
389 | # /etc/conf/bin/idtune SDATLIM 33554432 ## soft data size limit | |
390 | # /etc/conf/bin/idtune HDATLIM 33554432 ## hard " | |
391 | # /etc/conf/bin/idtune SVMMSIZE unlimited ## soft process size limit | |
392 | # /etc/conf/bin/idtune HVMMSIZE unlimited ## hard " | |
393 | # /etc/conf/bin/idbuild -B | |
394 | ||
395 | (He recommends you not change the stack limit, though.) | |
396 | These changes take effect when you reboot. | |
397 | ||
398 | * Redisplay using X11 is much slower than previous Emacs versions. | |
399 | ||
400 | We've noticed that certain X servers draw the text much slower when | |
401 | scroll bars are on the left. We don't know why this happens. If this | |
402 | happens to you, you can work around it by putting the scroll bars | |
403 | on the right (as they were in Emacs 19). | |
404 | ||
405 | Here's how to do this: | |
406 | ||
407 | (set-scroll-bar-mode 'right) | |
408 | ||
409 | If you're not sure whether (or how much) this problem affects you, | |
410 | try that and see how much difference it makes. To set things back | |
411 | to normal, do | |
412 | ||
413 | (set-scroll-bar-mode 'left) | |
414 | ||
415 | * Under X11, some characters appear as hollow boxes. | |
416 | ||
417 | Each X11 font covers just a fraction of the characters that Emacs | |
418 | supports. To display the whole range of Emacs characters requires | |
419 | many different fonts, collected into a fontset. | |
420 | ||
421 | If some of the fonts called for in your fontset do not exist on your X | |
422 | server, then the characters that have no font appear as hollow boxes. | |
423 | You can remedy the problem by installing additional fonts. | |
424 | ||
425 | The intlfonts distribution includes a full spectrum of fonts that can | |
426 | display all the characters Emacs supports. | |
427 | ||
428 | * Under X11, some characters appear improperly aligned in their lines. | |
429 | ||
430 | You may have bad X11 fonts; try installing the intlfonts distribution. | |
431 | ||
432 | * Certain fonts make each line take one pixel more than it "should". | |
433 | ||
434 | This is because these fonts contain characters a little taller | |
435 | than the font's nominal height. Emacs needs to make sure that | |
436 | lines do not overlap. | |
437 | ||
438 | * You request inverse video, and the first Emacs frame is in inverse | |
439 | video, but later frames are not in inverse video. | |
440 | ||
441 | This can happen if you have an old version of the custom library in | |
442 | your search path for Lisp packages. Use M-x list-load-path-shadows to | |
443 | check whether this is true. If it is, delete the old custom library. | |
444 | ||
445 | * In FreeBSD 2.1.5, useless symbolic links remain in /tmp or other | |
446 | directories that have the +t bit. | |
447 | ||
448 | This is because of a kernel bug in FreeBSD 2.1.5 (fixed in 2.2). | |
449 | Emacs uses symbolic links to implement file locks. In a directory | |
450 | with +t bit, the directory owner becomes the owner of the symbolic | |
451 | link, so that it cannot be removed by anyone else. | |
452 | ||
453 | If you don't like those useless links, you can let Emacs not to using | |
454 | file lock by adding #undef CLASH_DETECTION to config.h. | |
455 | ||
456 | * When using M-x dbx with the SparcWorks debugger, the `up' and `down' | |
457 | commands do not move the arrow in Emacs. | |
458 | ||
459 | You can fix this by adding the following line to `~/.dbxinit': | |
460 | ||
461 | dbxenv output_short_file_name off | |
462 | ||
463 | * Emacs says it has saved a file, but the file does not actually | |
464 | appear on disk. | |
465 | ||
466 | This can happen on certain systems when you are using NFS, if the | |
467 | remote disk is full. It is due to a bug in NFS (or certain NFS | |
468 | implementations), and there is apparently nothing Emacs can do to | |
469 | detect the problem. Emacs checks the failure codes of all the system | |
470 | calls involved in writing a file, including `close'; but in the case | |
471 | where the problem occurs, none of those system calls fails. | |
472 | ||
473 | * "Compose Character" key does strange things when used as a Meta key. | |
474 | ||
475 | If you define one key to serve as both Meta and Compose Character, you | |
476 | will get strange results. In previous Emacs versions, this "worked" | |
477 | in that the key acted as Meta--that's because the older Emacs versions | |
478 | did not try to support Compose Character. Now Emacs tries to do | |
479 | character composition in the standard X way. This means that you | |
480 | must pick one meaning or the other for any given key. | |
481 | ||
482 | You can use both functions (Meta, and Compose Character) if you assign | |
483 | them to two different keys. | |
484 | ||
485 | * Emacs gets a segmentation fault at startup, on AIX4.2. | |
486 | ||
487 | If you are using IBM's xlc compiler, compile emacs.c | |
488 | without optimization; that should avoid the problem. | |
489 | ||
490 | * movemail compiled with POP support can't connect to the POP server. | |
491 | ||
492 | Make sure that the `pop' entry in /etc/services, or in the services | |
493 | NIS map if your machine uses NIS, has the same port number as the | |
494 | entry on the POP server. A common error is for the POP server to be | |
495 | listening on port 110, the assigned port for the POP3 protocol, while | |
496 | the client is trying to connect on port 109, the assigned port for the | |
497 | old POP protocol. | |
498 | ||
499 | * Emacs crashes in x-popup-dialog. | |
500 | ||
501 | This can happen if the dialog widget cannot find the font it wants to | |
502 | use. You can work around the problem by specifying another font with | |
503 | an X resource--for example, `Emacs.dialog*.font: 9x15' (or any font that | |
504 | happens to exist on your X server). | |
505 | ||
506 | * Emacs crashes when you use Bibtex mode. | |
507 | ||
508 | This happens if your system puts a small limit on stack size. You can | |
509 | prevent the problem by using a suitable shell command (often `ulimit') | |
510 | to raise the stack size limit before you run Emacs. | |
511 | ||
512 | Patches to raise the stack size limit automatically in `main' | |
513 | (src/emacs.c) on various systems would be greatly appreciated. | |
514 | ||
515 | * Emacs crashes with SIGBUS or SIGSEGV on HPUX 9 after you delete a frame. | |
516 | ||
517 | We think this is due to a bug in the X libraries provided by HP. With | |
518 | the alternative X libraries in /usr/contrib/mitX11R5/lib, the problem | |
519 | does not happen. | |
520 | ||
521 | * Emacs crashes with SIGBUS or SIGSEGV on Solaris after you delete a frame. | |
522 | ||
523 | We suspect that this is a similar bug in the X libraries provided by | |
524 | Sun. There is a report that one of these patches fixes the bug and | |
525 | makes the problem stop: | |
526 | ||
527 | 105216-01 105393-01 105518-01 105621-01 105665-01 105615-02 105216-02 | |
528 | 105667-01 105401-08 105615-03 105621-02 105686-02 105736-01 105755-03 | |
529 | 106033-01 105379-01 105786-01 105181-04 105379-03 105786-04 105845-01 | |
530 | 105284-05 105669-02 105837-01 105837-02 105558-01 106125-02 105407-01 | |
531 | ||
532 | Another person using a newer system (kernel patch level Generic_105181-06) | |
533 | suspects that the bug was fixed by one of these more recent patches: | |
534 | ||
535 | 106040-07 SunOS 5.6: X Input & Output Method patch | |
536 | 106222-01 OpenWindows 3.6: filemgr (ff.core) fixes | |
537 | 105284-12 Motif 1.2.7: sparc Runtime library patch | |
538 | ||
539 | * Problems running Perl under Emacs on Windows NT/95. | |
540 | ||
541 | `perl -de 0' just hangs when executed in an Emacs subshell. | |
542 | The fault lies with Perl (indirectly with Windows NT/95). | |
543 | ||
544 | The problem is that the Perl debugger explicitly opens a connection to | |
545 | "CON", which is the DOS/NT equivalent of "/dev/tty", for interacting | |
546 | with the user. | |
547 | ||
548 | On Unix, this is okay, because Emacs (or the shell?) creates a | |
549 | pseudo-tty so that /dev/tty is really the pipe Emacs is using to | |
550 | communicate with the subprocess. | |
551 | ||
552 | On NT, this fails because CON always refers to the handle for the | |
553 | relevant console (approximately equivalent to a tty), and cannot be | |
554 | redirected to refer to the pipe Emacs assigned to the subprocess as | |
555 | stdin. | |
556 | ||
557 | A workaround is to modify perldb.pl to use STDIN/STDOUT instead of CON. | |
558 | ||
559 | For Perl 4: | |
560 | ||
561 | *** PERL/LIB/PERLDB.PL.orig Wed May 26 08:24:18 1993 | |
562 | --- PERL/LIB/PERLDB.PL Mon Jul 01 15:28:16 1996 | |
563 | *************** | |
564 | *** 68,74 **** | |
565 | $rcfile=".perldb"; | |
566 | } | |
567 | else { | |
568 | ! $console = "con"; | |
569 | $rcfile="perldb.ini"; | |
570 | } | |
571 | ||
572 | --- 68,74 ---- | |
573 | $rcfile=".perldb"; | |
574 | } | |
575 | else { | |
576 | ! $console = ""; | |
577 | $rcfile="perldb.ini"; | |
578 | } | |
579 | ||
580 | ||
581 | For Perl 5: | |
582 | *** perl/5.001/lib/perl5db.pl.orig Sun Jun 04 21:13:40 1995 | |
583 | --- perl/5.001/lib/perl5db.pl Mon Jul 01 17:00:08 1996 | |
584 | *************** | |
585 | *** 22,28 **** | |
586 | $rcfile=".perldb"; | |
587 | } | |
588 | elsif (-e "con") { | |
589 | ! $console = "con"; | |
590 | $rcfile="perldb.ini"; | |
591 | } | |
592 | else { | |
593 | --- 22,28 ---- | |
594 | $rcfile=".perldb"; | |
595 | } | |
596 | elsif (-e "con") { | |
597 | ! $console = ""; | |
598 | $rcfile="perldb.ini"; | |
599 | } | |
600 | else { | |
601 | ||
602 | * Problems running DOS programs on Windows NT versions earlier than 3.51. | |
603 | ||
604 | Some DOS programs, such as pkzip/pkunzip will not work at all, while | |
605 | others will only work if their stdin is redirected from a file or NUL. | |
606 | ||
607 | When a DOS program does not work, a new process is actually created, but | |
608 | hangs. It cannot be interrupted from Emacs, and might need to be killed | |
609 | by an external program if Emacs is hung waiting for the process to | |
610 | finish. If Emacs is not waiting for it, you should be able to kill the | |
611 | instance of ntvdm that is running the hung process from Emacs, if you | |
612 | can find out the process id. | |
613 | ||
614 | It is safe to run most DOS programs using call-process (eg. M-! and | |
615 | M-|) since stdin is then redirected from a file, but not with | |
616 | start-process since that redirects stdin to a pipe. Also, running DOS | |
617 | programs in a shell buffer prompt without redirecting stdin does not | |
618 | work. | |
619 | ||
620 | * Problems on MS-DOG if DJGPP v2.0 is used to compile Emacs: | |
621 | ||
622 | There are two DJGPP library bugs which cause problems: | |
623 | ||
624 | * Running `shell-command' (or `compile', or `grep') you get | |
625 | `Searching for program: permission denied (EACCES), c:/command.com'; | |
626 | * After you shell to DOS, Ctrl-Break kills Emacs. | |
627 | ||
628 | To work around these bugs, you can use two files in the msdos | |
629 | subdirectory: `is_exec.c' and `sigaction.c'. Compile them and link | |
630 | them into the Emacs executable `temacs'; then they will replace the | |
631 | incorrect library functions. | |
632 | ||
633 | * When compiling with DJGPP on Windows 95, Make fails for some targets | |
634 | like make-docfile. | |
635 | ||
636 | This can happen if long file name support (the setting of environment | |
637 | variable LFN) when Emacs distribution was unpacked and during | |
638 | compilation are not the same. See the MSDOG section of INSTALL for | |
639 | the explanation of how to avoid this problem. | |
640 | ||
641 | * Emacs compiled for MSDOS cannot find some Lisp files, or other | |
642 | run-time support files, when long filename support is enabled. | |
643 | (Usually, this problem will manifest itself when Emacs exits | |
644 | immediately after flashing the startup screen, because it cannot find | |
645 | the Lisp files it needs to load at startup. Redirect Emacs stdout | |
646 | and stderr to a file to see the error message printed by Emacs.) | |
647 | ||
648 | This can happen if the Emacs distribution was unzipped without LFN | |
649 | support, thus causing long filenames to be truncated to the first 6 | |
650 | characters and a numeric tail that Windows 95 normally attaches to it. | |
651 | You should unzip the files again with a utility that supports long | |
652 | filenames (such as djtar from DJGPP or InfoZip's UnZip program | |
653 | compiled with DJGPP v2). The MSDOG section of the file INSTALL | |
654 | explains this issue in more detail. | |
655 | ||
656 | * Emacs compiled with DJGPP complains at startup: | |
657 | ||
658 | "Wrong type of argument: internal-facep, msdos-menu-active-face" | |
659 | ||
660 | This can happen if you define an environment variable `TERM'. Emacs | |
661 | on MSDOS uses an internal terminal emulator which is disabled if the | |
662 | value of `TERM' is anything but the string "internal". Emacs then | |
663 | works as if its terminal were a dumb glass teletype that doesn't | |
664 | support faces. To work around this, arrange for `TERM' to be | |
665 | undefined when Emacs runs. The best way to do that is to add an | |
666 | [emacs] section to the DJGPP.ENV file which defines an empty value for | |
667 | `TERM'; this way, only Emacs gets the empty value, while the rest of | |
668 | your system works as before. | |
669 | ||
670 | * On Windows 95, Alt-f6 does not get through to Emacs. | |
671 | ||
672 | This character seems to be trapped by the kernel in Windows 95. | |
673 | You can enter M-f6 by typing ESC f6. | |
674 | ||
675 | * Typing Alt-Shift has strange effects on Windows 95. | |
676 | ||
677 | This combination of keys is a command to change keyboard layout. If | |
678 | you proceed to type another non-modifier key before you let go of Alt | |
679 | and Shift, the Alt and Shift act as modifiers in the usual way. | |
680 | ||
681 | * `tparam' reported as a multiply-defined symbol when linking with ncurses. | |
682 | ||
683 | This problem results from an incompatible change in ncurses, in | |
684 | version 1.9.9e approximately. This version is unable to provide a | |
685 | definition of tparm without also defining tparam. This is also | |
686 | incompatible with Terminfo; as a result, the Emacs Terminfo support | |
687 | does not work with this version of ncurses. | |
688 | ||
689 | The fix is to install a newer version of ncurses, such as version 4.2. | |
690 | ||
691 | * Strange results from format %d in a few cases, on a Sun. | |
692 | ||
693 | Sun compiler version SC3.0 has been found to miscompile part of | |
694 | editfns.c. The workaround is to compile with some other compiler such | |
695 | as GCC. | |
696 | ||
697 | * Output from subprocess (such as man or diff) is randomly truncated | |
698 | on GNU/Linux systems. | |
699 | ||
700 | This is due to a kernel bug which seems to be fixed in Linux version | |
701 | 1.3.75. | |
702 | ||
703 | * Error messages `internal facep []' happen on GNU/Linux systems. | |
704 | ||
705 | There is a report that replacing libc.so.5.0.9 with libc.so.5.2.16 | |
706 | caused this to start happening. People are not sure why, but the | |
707 | problem seems unlikely to be in Emacs itself. Some suspect that it | |
708 | is actually Xlib which won't work with libc.so.5.2.16. | |
709 | ||
710 | Using the old library version is a workaround. | |
711 | ||
712 | * On Solaris, Emacs crashes if you use (display-time). | |
713 | ||
714 | This can happen if you configure Emacs without specifying the precise | |
715 | version of Solaris that you are using. | |
716 | ||
717 | * Emacs dumps core on startup, on Solaris. | |
718 | ||
719 | Bill Sebok says that the cause of this is Solaris 2.4 vendor patch | |
720 | 102303-05, which extends the Solaris linker to deal with the Solaris | |
721 | Common Desktop Environment's linking needs. You can fix the problem | |
722 | by removing this patch and installing patch 102049-02 instead. | |
723 | However, that linker version won't work with CDE. | |
724 | ||
725 | Solaris 2.5 comes with a linker that has this bug. It is reported that if | |
726 | you install all the latest patches (as of June 1996), the bug is fixed. | |
727 | We suspect the crucial patch is one of these, but we don't know | |
728 | for certain. | |
729 | ||
730 | 103093-03: [README] SunOS 5.5: kernel patch (2140557 bytes) | |
731 | 102832-01: [README] OpenWindows 3.5: Xview Jumbo Patch (4181613 bytes) | |
732 | 103242-04: [README] SunOS 5.5: linker patch (595363 bytes) | |
733 | ||
734 | (One user reports that the bug was fixed by those patches together | |
735 | with patches 102980-04, 103279-01, 103300-02, and 103468-01.) | |
736 | ||
737 | If you can determine which patch does fix the bug, please tell | |
738 | bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org. | |
739 | ||
740 | Meanwhile, the GNU linker links Emacs properly on both Solaris 2.4 and | |
741 | Solaris 2.5. | |
742 | ||
743 | * Emacs dumps core if lisp-complete-symbol is called, on Solaris. | |
744 | ||
745 | If you compile Emacs with the -fast or -xO4 option with version 3.0.2 | |
746 | of the Sun C compiler, Emacs dumps core when lisp-complete-symbol is | |
747 | called. The problem does not happen if you compile with GCC. | |
748 | ||
749 | * "Cannot find callback list" messages from dialog boxes on HPUX, in | |
750 | Emacs built with Motif. | |
751 | ||
752 | This problem resulted from a bug in GCC 2.4.5. Newer GCC versions | |
753 | such as 2.7.0 fix the problem. | |
754 | ||
755 | * On Irix 6.0, make tries (and fails) to build a program named unexelfsgi | |
756 | ||
757 | A compiler bug inserts spaces into the string "unexelfsgi . o" | |
758 | in src/Makefile. Edit src/Makefile, after configure is run, | |
759 | find that string, and take out the spaces. | |
760 | ||
761 | Compiler fixes in Irix 6.0.1 should eliminate this problem. | |
762 | ||
763 | * "out of virtual swap space" on Irix 5.3 | |
764 | ||
765 | This message occurs when the system runs out of swap space due to too | |
766 | many large programs running. The solution is either to provide more | |
767 | swap space or to reduce the number of large programs being run. You | |
768 | can check the current status of the swap space by executing the | |
769 | command `swap -l'. | |
770 | ||
771 | You can increase swap space by changing the file /etc/fstab. Adding a | |
772 | line like this: | |
773 | ||
774 | /usr/swap/swap.more swap swap pri=3 0 0 | |
775 | ||
776 | where /usr/swap/swap.more is a file previously created (for instance | |
777 | by using /etc/mkfile), will increase the swap space by the size of | |
778 | that file. Execute `swap -m' or reboot the machine to activate the | |
779 | new swap area. See the manpages for `swap' and `fstab' for further | |
780 | information. | |
781 | ||
782 | The objectserver daemon can use up lots of memory because it can be | |
783 | swamped with NIS information. It collects information about all users | |
784 | on the network that can log on to the host. | |
785 | ||
786 | If you want to disable the objectserver completely, you can execute | |
787 | the command `chkconfig objectserver off' and reboot. That may disable | |
788 | some of the window system functionality, such as responding CDROM | |
789 | icons. | |
790 | ||
791 | You can also remove NIS support from the objectserver. The SGI `admin' | |
792 | FAQ has a detailed description on how to do that; see question 35 | |
793 | ("Why isn't the objectserver working?"). The admin FAQ can be found at | |
794 | ftp://viz.tamu.edu/pub/sgi/faq/. | |
795 | ||
796 | * With certain fonts, when the cursor appears on a character, the | |
797 | character doesn't appear--you get a solid box instead. | |
798 | ||
799 | One user on a Linux-based GNU system reported that this problem went | |
800 | away with installation of a new X server. The failing server was | |
801 | XFree86 3.1.1. XFree86 3.1.2 works. | |
802 | ||
803 | * On SunOS 4.1.3, Emacs unpredictably crashes in _yp_dobind_soft. | |
804 | ||
805 | This happens if you configure Emacs specifying just `sparc-sun-sunos4' | |
806 | on a system that is version 4.1.3. You must specify the precise | |
807 | version number (or let configure figure out the configuration, which | |
808 | it can do perfectly well for SunOS). | |
809 | ||
810 | * On SunOS 4, Emacs processes keep going after you kill the X server | |
811 | (or log out, if you logged in using X). | |
812 | ||
813 | Someone reported that recompiling with GCC 2.7.0 fixed this problem. | |
814 | ||
815 | * On AIX 4, some programs fail when run in a Shell buffer | |
816 | with an error message like No terminfo entry for "unknown". | |
817 | ||
818 | On AIX, many terminal type definitions are not installed by default. | |
819 | `unknown' is one of them. Install the "Special Generic Terminal | |
820 | Definitions" to make them defined. | |
821 | ||
822 | * On SunOS, you get linker errors | |
823 | ld: Undefined symbol | |
824 | _get_wmShellWidgetClass | |
825 | _get_applicationShellWidgetClass | |
826 | ||
827 | The fix to this is to install patch 100573 for OpenWindows 3.0 | |
828 | or link libXmu statically. | |
829 | ||
830 | * On AIX 4.1.2, linker error messages such as | |
831 | ld: 0711-212 SEVERE ERROR: Symbol .__quous, found in the global symbol table | |
832 | of archive /usr/lib/libIM.a, was not defined in archive member shr.o. | |
833 | ||
834 | This is a problem in libIM.a. You can work around it by executing | |
835 | these shell commands in the src subdirectory of the directory where | |
836 | you build Emacs: | |
837 | ||
838 | cp /usr/lib/libIM.a . | |
839 | chmod 664 libIM.a | |
840 | ranlib libIM.a | |
841 | ||
842 | Then change -lIM to ./libIM.a in the command to link temacs (in | |
843 | Makefile). | |
844 | ||
845 | * Unpredictable segmentation faults on Solaris 2.3 and 2.4. | |
846 | ||
847 | A user reported that this happened in 19.29 when it was compiled with | |
848 | the Sun compiler, but not when he recompiled with GCC 2.7.0. | |
849 | ||
850 | We do not know whether something in Emacs is partly to blame for this. | |
851 | ||
852 | * Emacs exits with "X protocol error" when run with an X server for | |
853 | Windows. | |
854 | ||
855 | A certain X server for Windows had a bug which caused this. | |
856 | Supposedly the newer 32-bit version of this server doesn't have the | |
857 | problem. | |
858 | ||
859 | * Emacs crashes at startup on MSDOS. | |
860 | ||
861 | Some users report that Emacs 19.29 requires dpmi memory management, | |
862 | and crashes on startup if the system does not have it. We don't yet | |
863 | know why this happens--perhaps these machines don't have enough real | |
864 | memory, or perhaps something is wrong in Emacs or the compiler. | |
865 | However, arranging to use dpmi support is a workaround. | |
866 | ||
867 | You can find out if you have a dpmi host by running go32 without | |
868 | arguments; it will tell you if it uses dpmi memory. For more | |
869 | information about dpmi memory, consult the djgpp FAQ. (djgpp | |
870 | is the GNU C compiler as packaged for MSDOS.) | |
871 | ||
872 | Compiling Emacs under MSDOS is extremely sensitive for proper memory | |
873 | configuration. If you experience problems during compilation, consider | |
874 | removing some or all memory resident programs (notably disk caches) | |
875 | and make sure that your memory managers are properly configured. See | |
876 | the djgpp faq for configuration hints. | |
877 | ||
878 | * A position you specified in .Xdefaults is ignored, using twm. | |
879 | ||
880 | twm normally ignores "program-specified" positions. | |
881 | You can tell it to obey them with this command in your `.twmrc' file: | |
882 | ||
883 | UsePPosition "on" #allow clients to request a position | |
884 | ||
885 | * Compiling lib-src says there is no rule to make test-distrib.c. | |
886 | ||
887 | This results from a bug in a VERY old version of GNU Sed. To solve | |
888 | the problem, install the current version of GNU Sed, then rerun | |
889 | Emacs's configure script. | |
890 | ||
891 | * Compiling wakeup, in lib-src, says it can't make wakeup.c. | |
892 | ||
893 | This results from a bug in GNU Sed version 2.03. To solve the | |
894 | problem, install the current version of GNU Sed, then rerun Emacs's | |
895 | configure script. | |
896 | ||
897 | * On Sunos 4.1.1, there are errors compiling sysdep.c. | |
898 | ||
899 | If you get errors such as | |
900 | ||
901 | "sysdep.c", line 2017: undefined structure or union | |
902 | "sysdep.c", line 2017: undefined structure or union | |
903 | "sysdep.c", line 2019: nodename undefined | |
904 | ||
905 | This can result from defining LD_LIBRARY_PATH. It is very tricky | |
906 | to use that environment variable with Emacs. The Emacs configure | |
907 | script links many test programs with the system libraries; you must | |
908 | make sure that the libraries available to configure are the same | |
909 | ones available when you build Emacs. | |
910 | ||
911 | * The right Alt key works wrong on German HP keyboards (and perhaps | |
912 | other non-English HP keyboards too). | |
913 | ||
914 | This is because HPUX defines the modifiers wrong in X. Here is a | |
915 | shell script to fix the problem; be sure that it is run after VUE | |
916 | configures the X server. | |
917 | ||
918 | xmodmap 2> /dev/null - << EOF | |
919 | keysym Alt_L = Meta_L | |
920 | keysym Alt_R = Meta_R | |
921 | EOF | |
922 | ||
923 | xmodmap - << EOF | |
924 | clear mod1 | |
925 | keysym Mode_switch = NoSymbol | |
926 | add mod1 = Meta_L | |
927 | keysym Meta_R = Mode_switch | |
928 | add mod2 = Mode_switch | |
929 | EOF | |
930 | ||
931 | * The Emacs window disappears when you type M-q. | |
932 | ||
933 | Some versions of the Open Look window manager interpret M-q as a quit | |
934 | command for whatever window you are typing at. If you want to use | |
935 | Emacs with that window manager, you should try to configure the window | |
936 | manager to use some other command. You can disable the | |
937 | shortcut keys entirely by adding this line to ~/.OWdefaults: | |
938 | ||
939 | OpenWindows.WindowMenuAccelerators: False | |
940 | ||
941 | * Emacs does not notice when you release the mouse. | |
942 | ||
943 | There are reports that this happened with (some) Microsoft mice and | |
944 | that replacing the mouse made it stop. | |
945 | ||
946 | * Trouble using ptys on IRIX, or running out of ptys. | |
947 | ||
948 | The program mkpts (which may be in `/usr/adm' or `/usr/sbin') needs to | |
949 | be set-UID to root, or non-root programs like Emacs will not be able | |
950 | to allocate ptys reliably. | |
951 | ||
952 | * On Irix 5.2, unexelfsgi.c can't find cmplrs/stsupport.h. | |
953 | ||
954 | The file cmplrs/stsupport.h was included in the wrong file set in the | |
955 | Irix 5.2 distribution. You can find it in the optional fileset | |
956 | compiler_dev, or copy it from some other Irix 5.2 system. A kludgy | |
957 | workaround is to change unexelfsgi.c to include sym.h instead of | |
958 | syms.h. | |
959 | ||
960 | * Slow startup on Linux-based GNU systems. | |
961 | ||
962 | People using systems based on the Linux kernel sometimes report that | |
963 | startup takes 10 to 15 seconds longer than `usual'. | |
964 | ||
965 | This is because Emacs looks up the host name when it starts. | |
966 | Normally, this takes negligible time; the extra delay is due to | |
967 | improper system configuration. This problem can occur for both | |
968 | networked and non-networked machines. | |
969 | ||
970 | Here is how to fix the configuration. It requires being root. | |
971 | ||
972 | ** Networked Case | |
973 | ||
974 | First, make sure the files `/etc/hosts' and `/etc/host.conf' both | |
975 | exist. The first line in the `/etc/hosts' file should look like this | |
976 | (replace HOSTNAME with your host name): | |
977 | ||
978 | 127.0.0.1 HOSTNAME | |
979 | ||
980 | Also make sure that the `/etc/host.conf' files contains the following | |
981 | lines: | |
982 | ||
983 | order hosts, bind | |
984 | multi on | |
985 | ||
986 | Any changes, permanent and temporary, to the host name should be | |
987 | indicated in the `/etc/hosts' file, since it acts a limited local | |
988 | database of addresses and names (e.g., some SLIP connections | |
989 | dynamically allocate ip addresses). | |
990 | ||
991 | ** Non-Networked Case | |
992 | ||
993 | The solution described in the networked case applies here as well. | |
994 | However, if you never intend to network your machine, you can use a | |
995 | simpler solution: create an empty `/etc/host.conf' file. The command | |
996 | `touch /etc/host.conf' suffices to create the file. The `/etc/hosts' | |
997 | file is not necessary with this approach. | |
998 | ||
999 | * On Solaris 2.4, Dired hangs and C-g does not work. Or Emacs hangs | |
1000 | forever waiting for termination of a subprocess that is a zombie. | |
1001 | ||
1002 | casper@fwi.uva.nl says the problem is in X11R6. Rebuild libX11.so | |
1003 | after changing the file xc/config/cf/sunLib.tmpl. Change the lines | |
1004 | ||
1005 | #if ThreadedX | |
1006 | #define SharedX11Reqs -lthread | |
1007 | #endif | |
1008 | ||
1009 | to: | |
1010 | ||
1011 | #if OSMinorVersion < 4 | |
1012 | #if ThreadedX | |
1013 | #define SharedX11Reqs -lthread | |
1014 | #endif | |
1015 | #endif | |
1016 | ||
1017 | Be sure also to edit x/config/cf/sun.cf so that OSMinorVersion is 4 | |
1018 | (as it should be for Solaris 2.4). The file has three definitions for | |
1019 | OSMinorVersion: the first is for x86, the second for SPARC under | |
1020 | Solaris, and the third for SunOS 4. Make sure to update the | |
1021 | definition for your type of machine and system. | |
1022 | ||
1023 | Then do `make Everything' in the top directory of X11R6, to rebuild | |
1024 | the makefiles and rebuild X. The X built this way work only on | |
1025 | Solaris 2.4, not on 2.3. | |
1026 | ||
1027 | For multithreaded X to work it is necessary to install patch | |
1028 | 101925-02 to fix problems in header files [2.4]. You need | |
1029 | to reinstall gcc or re-run just-fixinc after installing that | |
1030 | patch. | |
1031 | ||
1032 | However, Frank Rust <frust@iti.cs.tu-bs.de> used a simpler solution: | |
1033 | he changed | |
1034 | #define ThreadedX YES | |
1035 | to | |
1036 | #define ThreadedX NO | |
1037 | in sun.cf and did `make World' to rebuild X11R6. Removing all | |
1038 | `-DXTHREAD*' flags and `-lthread' entries from lib/X11/Makefile and | |
1039 | typing 'make install' in that directory also seemed to work. | |
1040 | ||
1041 | * With M-x enable-flow-control, you need to type C-\ twice | |
1042 | to do incremental search--a single C-\ gets no response. | |
1043 | ||
1044 | This has been traced to communicating with your machine via kermit, | |
1045 | with C-\ as the kermit escape character. One solution is to use | |
1046 | another escape character in kermit. One user did | |
1047 | ||
1048 | set escape-character 17 | |
1049 | ||
1050 | in his .kermrc file, to make C-q the kermit escape character. | |
1051 | ||
1052 | * The Motif version of Emacs paints the screen a solid color. | |
1053 | ||
1054 | This has been observed to result from the following X resource: | |
1055 | ||
1056 | Emacs*default.attributeFont: -*-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-140-*-*-*-*-iso8859-* | |
1057 | ||
1058 | That the resource has this effect indicates a bug in something, but we | |
1059 | do not yet know what. If it is an Emacs bug, we hope someone can | |
1060 | explain what the bug is so we can fix it. In the mean time, removing | |
1061 | the resource prevents the problem. | |
1062 | ||
1063 | * Emacs gets hung shortly after startup, on Sunos 4.1.3. | |
1064 | ||
1065 | We think this is due to a bug in Sunos. The word is that | |
1066 | one of these Sunos patches fixes the bug: | |
1067 | ||
1068 | 100075-11 100224-06 100347-03 100482-05 100557-02 100623-03 100804-03 101080-01 | |
1069 | 100103-12 100249-09 100496-02 100564-07 100630-02 100891-10 101134-01 | |
1070 | 100170-09 100296-04 100377-09 100507-04 100567-04 100650-02 101070-01 101145-01 | |
1071 | 100173-10 100305-15 100383-06 100513-04 100570-05 100689-01 101071-03 101200-02 | |
1072 | 100178-09 100338-05 100421-03 100536-02 100584-05 100784-01 101072-01 101207-01 | |
1073 | ||
1074 | We don't know which of these patches really matter. If you find out | |
1075 | which ones, please inform bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org. | |
1076 | ||
1077 | * Emacs aborts while starting up, only when run without X. | |
1078 | ||
1079 | This problem often results from compiling Emacs with GCC when GCC was | |
1080 | installed incorrectly. The usual error in installing GCC is to | |
1081 | specify --includedir=/usr/include. Installation of GCC makes | |
1082 | corrected copies of the system header files. GCC is supposed to use | |
1083 | the corrected copies in preference to the original system headers. | |
1084 | Specifying --includedir=/usr/include causes the original system header | |
1085 | files to be used. On some systems, the definition of ioctl in the | |
1086 | original system header files is invalid for ANSI C and causes Emacs | |
1087 | not to work. | |
1088 | ||
1089 | The fix is to reinstall GCC, and this time do not specify --includedir | |
1090 | when you configure it. Then recompile Emacs. Specifying --includedir | |
1091 | is appropriate only in very special cases and it should *never* be the | |
1092 | same directory where system header files are kept. | |
1093 | ||
1094 | * On Solaris 2.x, GCC complains "64 bit integer types not supported" | |
1095 | ||
1096 | This suggests that GCC is not installed correctly. Most likely you | |
1097 | are using GCC 2.7.2.3 (or earlier) on Solaris 2.6 (or later); this | |
1098 | does not work without patching. To run GCC 2.7.2.3 on Solaris 2.6 or | |
1099 | later, you must patch fixinc.svr4 and reinstall GCC from scratch as | |
1100 | described in the Solaris FAQ | |
1101 | <http://www.wins.uva.nl/pub/solaris/solaris2.html>. A better fix is | |
1102 | to upgrade to GCC 2.8.1 or later. | |
1103 | ||
1104 | * The Compose key on a DEC keyboard does not work as Meta key. | |
1105 | ||
1106 | This shell command should fix it: | |
1107 | ||
1108 | xmodmap -e 'keycode 0xb1 = Meta_L' | |
1109 | ||
1110 | * Regular expressions matching bugs on SCO systems. | |
1111 | ||
1112 | On SCO, there are problems in regexp matching when Emacs is compiled | |
1113 | with the system compiler. The compiler version is "Microsoft C | |
1114 | version 6", SCO 4.2.0h Dev Sys Maintenance Supplement 01/06/93; Quick | |
1115 | C Compiler Version 1.00.46 (Beta). The solution is to compile with | |
1116 | GCC. | |
1117 | ||
1118 | * On Sunos 4, you get the error ld: Undefined symbol __lib_version. | |
1119 | ||
1120 | This is the result of using cc or gcc with the shared library meant | |
1121 | for acc (the Sunpro compiler). Check your LD_LIBRARY_PATH and delete | |
1122 | /usr/lang/SC2.0.1 or some similar directory. | |
1123 | ||
1124 | * You can't select from submenus (in the X toolkit version). | |
1125 | ||
1126 | On certain systems, mouse-tracking and selection in top-level menus | |
1127 | works properly with the X toolkit, but neither of them works when you | |
1128 | bring up a submenu (such as Bookmarks or Compare or Apply Patch, in | |
1129 | the Files menu). | |
1130 | ||
1131 | This works on most systems. There is speculation that the failure is | |
1132 | due to bugs in old versions of X toolkit libraries, but no one really | |
1133 | knows. If someone debugs this and finds the precise cause, perhaps a | |
1134 | workaround can be found. | |
1135 | ||
1136 | * Unusable default font on SCO 3.2v4. | |
1137 | ||
1138 | The Open Desktop environment comes with default X resource settings | |
1139 | that tell Emacs to use a variable-width font. Emacs cannot use such | |
1140 | fonts, so it does not work. | |
1141 | ||
1142 | This is caused by the file /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/ScoTerm, which is | |
1143 | the application-specific resource file for the `scoterm' terminal | |
1144 | emulator program. It contains several extremely general X resources | |
1145 | that affect other programs besides `scoterm'. In particular, these | |
1146 | resources affect Emacs also: | |
1147 | ||
1148 | *Font: -*-helvetica-medium-r-*--12-*-p-* | |
1149 | *Background: scoBackground | |
1150 | *Foreground: scoForeground | |
1151 | ||
1152 | The best solution is to create an application-specific resource file for | |
1153 | Emacs, /usr/lib/X11/sco/startup/Emacs, with the following contents: | |
1154 | ||
1155 | Emacs*Font: -*-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-120-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1 | |
1156 | Emacs*Background: white | |
1157 | Emacs*Foreground: black | |
1158 | ||
1159 | (These settings mimic the Emacs defaults, but you can change them to | |
1160 | suit your needs.) This resource file is only read when the X server | |
1161 | starts up, so you should restart it by logging out of the Open Desktop | |
1162 | environment or by running `scologin stop; scologin start` from the shell | |
1163 | as root. Alternatively, you can put these settings in the | |
1164 | /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/Emacs resource file and simply restart Emacs, | |
1165 | but then they will not affect remote invocations of Emacs that use the | |
1166 | Open Desktop display. | |
1167 | ||
1168 | These resource files are not normally shared across a network of SCO | |
1169 | machines; you must create the file on each machine individually. | |
1170 | ||
1171 | * rcs2log gives you the awk error message "too many fields". | |
1172 | ||
1173 | This is due to an arbitrary limit in certain versions of awk. | |
1174 | The solution is to use gawk (GNU awk). | |
1175 | ||
1176 | * Emacs is slow using X11R5 on HP/UX. | |
1177 | ||
1178 | This happens if you use the MIT versions of the X libraries--it | |
1179 | doesn't run as fast as HP's version. People sometimes use the version | |
1180 | because they see the HP version doesn't have the libraries libXaw.a, | |
1181 | libXmu.a, libXext.a and others. HP/UX normally doesn't come with | |
1182 | those libraries installed. To get good performance, you need to | |
1183 | install them and rebuild Emacs. | |
1184 | ||
1185 | * Loading fonts is very slow. | |
1186 | ||
1187 | You might be getting scalable fonts instead of precomputed bitmaps. | |
1188 | Known scalable font directories are "Type1" and "Speedo". A font | |
1189 | directory contains scalable fonts if it contains the file | |
1190 | "fonts.scale". | |
1191 | ||
1192 | If this is so, re-order your X windows font path to put the scalable | |
1193 | font directories last. See the documentation of `xset' for details. | |
1194 | ||
1195 | With some X servers, it may be necessary to take the scalable font | |
1196 | directories out of your path entirely, at least for Emacs 19.26. | |
1197 | Changes in the future may make this unnecessary. | |
1198 | ||
1199 | * On AIX 3.2.4, releasing Ctrl/Act key has no effect, if Shift is down. | |
1200 | ||
1201 | Due to a feature of AIX, pressing or releasing the Ctrl/Act key is | |
1202 | ignored when the Shift, Alt or AltGr keys are held down. This can | |
1203 | lead to the keyboard being "control-locked"--ordinary letters are | |
1204 | treated as control characters. | |
1205 | ||
1206 | You can get out of this "control-locked" state by pressing and | |
1207 | releasing Ctrl/Act while not pressing or holding any other keys. | |
1208 | ||
1209 | * display-time causes kernel problems on ISC systems. | |
1210 | ||
1211 | Under Interactive Unix versions 3.0.1 and 4.0 (and probably other | |
1212 | versions), display-time causes the loss of large numbers of STREVENT | |
1213 | cells. Eventually the kernel's supply of these cells is exhausted. | |
1214 | This makes emacs and the whole system run slow, and can make other | |
1215 | processes die, in particular pcnfsd. | |
1216 | ||
1217 | Other emacs functions that communicate with remote processes may have | |
1218 | the same problem. Display-time seems to be far the worst. | |
1219 | ||
1220 | The only known fix: Don't run display-time. | |
1221 | ||
1222 | * On Solaris, C-x doesn't get through to Emacs when you use the console. | |
1223 | ||
1224 | This is a Solaris feature (at least on Intel x86 cpus). Type C-r | |
1225 | C-r C-t, to toggle whether C-x gets through to Emacs. | |
1226 | ||
1227 | * Error message `Symbol's value as variable is void: x', followed by | |
1228 | segmentation fault and core dump. | |
1229 | ||
1230 | This has been tracked to a bug in tar! People report that tar erroneously | |
1231 | added a line like this at the beginning of files of Lisp code: | |
1232 | ||
1233 | x FILENAME, N bytes, B tape blocks | |
1234 | ||
1235 | If your tar has this problem, install GNU tar--if you can manage to | |
1236 | untar it :-). | |
1237 | ||
1238 | * Link failure when using acc on a Sun. | |
1239 | ||
1240 | To use acc, you need additional options just before the libraries, such as | |
1241 | ||
1242 | /usr/lang/SC2.0.1/values-Xt.o -L/usr/lang/SC2.0.1/cg87 -L/usr/lang/SC2.0.1 | |
1243 | ||
1244 | and you need to add -lansi just before -lc. | |
1245 | ||
1246 | The precise file names depend on the compiler version, so we | |
1247 | cannot easily arrange to supply them. | |
1248 | ||
1249 | * Link failure on IBM AIX 1.3 ptf 0013. | |
1250 | ||
1251 | There is a real duplicate definition of the function `_slibc_free' in | |
1252 | the library /lib/libc_s.a (just do nm on it to verify). The | |
1253 | workaround/fix is: | |
1254 | ||
1255 | cd /lib | |
1256 | ar xv libc_s.a NLtmtime.o | |
1257 | ar dv libc_s.a NLtmtime.o | |
1258 | ||
1259 | * Undefined symbols _dlopen, _dlsym and/or _dlclose on a Sun. | |
1260 | ||
1261 | If you see undefined symbols _dlopen, _dlsym, or _dlclose when linking | |
1262 | with -lX11, compile and link against the file mit/util/misc/dlsym.c in | |
1263 | the MIT X11R5 distribution. Alternatively, link temacs using shared | |
1264 | libraries with s/sunos4shr.h. (This doesn't work if you use the X | |
1265 | toolkit.) | |
1266 | ||
1267 | If you get the additional error that the linker could not find | |
1268 | lib_version.o, try extracting it from X11/usr/lib/X11/libvim.a in | |
1269 | X11R4, then use it in the link. | |
1270 | ||
1271 | * Error messages `Wrong number of arguments: #<subr where-is-internal>, 5' | |
1272 | ||
1273 | This typically results from having the powerkey library loaded. | |
1274 | Powerkey was designed for Emacs 19.22. It is obsolete now because | |
1275 | Emacs 19 now has this feature built in; and powerkey also calls | |
1276 | where-is-internal in an obsolete way. | |
1277 | ||
1278 | So the fix is to arrange not to load powerkey. | |
1279 | ||
1280 | * In Shell mode, you get a ^M at the end of every line. | |
1281 | ||
1282 | This happens to people who use tcsh, because it is trying to be too | |
1283 | smart. It sees that the Shell uses terminal type `unknown' and turns | |
1284 | on the flag to output ^M at the end of each line. You can fix the | |
1285 | problem by adding this to your .cshrc file: | |
1286 | ||
1287 | if ($?EMACS) then | |
1288 | if ($EMACS == "t") then | |
1289 | unset edit | |
1290 | stty -icrnl -onlcr -echo susp ^Z | |
1291 | endif | |
1292 | endif | |
1293 | ||
1294 | * An error message such as `X protocol error: BadMatch (invalid | |
1295 | parameter attributes) on protocol request 93'. | |
1296 | ||
1297 | This comes from having an invalid X resource, such as | |
1298 | emacs*Cursor: black | |
1299 | (which is invalid because it specifies a color name for something | |
1300 | that isn't a color.) | |
1301 | ||
1302 | The fix is to correct your X resources. | |
1303 | ||
1304 | * Undefined symbols when linking on Sunos 4.1 using --with-x-toolkit. | |
1305 | ||
1306 | If you get the undefined symbols _atowc _wcslen, _iswprint, _iswspace, | |
1307 | _iswcntrl, _wcscpy, and _wcsncpy, then you need to add -lXwchar after | |
1308 | -lXaw in the command that links temacs. | |
1309 | ||
1310 | This problem seems to arise only when the international language | |
1311 | extensions to X11R5 are installed. | |
1312 | ||
1313 | * Typing C-c C-c in Shell mode kills your X server. | |
1314 | ||
1315 | This happens with Linux kernel 1.0 thru 1.04, approximately. The workaround is | |
1316 | to define SIGNALS_VIA_CHARACTERS in config.h and recompile Emacs. | |
1317 | Newer Linux kernel versions don't have this problem. | |
1318 | ||
1319 | * src/Makefile and lib-src/Makefile are truncated--most of the file missing. | |
1320 | ||
1321 | This can happen if configure uses GNU sed version 2.03. That version | |
1322 | had a bug. GNU sed version 2.05 works properly. | |
1323 | ||
1324 | * Slow startup on X11R6 with X windows. | |
1325 | ||
1326 | If Emacs takes two minutes to start up on X11R6, see if your X | |
1327 | resources specify any Adobe fonts. That causes the type-1 font | |
1328 | renderer to start up, even if the font you asked for is not a type-1 | |
1329 | font. | |
1330 | ||
1331 | One way to avoid this problem is to eliminate the type-1 fonts from | |
1332 | your font path, like this: | |
1333 | ||
1334 | xset -fp /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/ | |
1335 | ||
1336 | * Pull-down menus appear in the wrong place, in the toolkit version of Emacs. | |
1337 | ||
1338 | An X resource of this form can cause the problem: | |
1339 | ||
1340 | Emacs*geometry: 80x55+0+0 | |
1341 | ||
1342 | This resource is supposed to apply, and does apply, to the menus | |
1343 | individually as well as to Emacs frames. If that is not what you | |
1344 | want, rewrite the resource. | |
1345 | ||
1346 | To check thoroughly for such resource specifications, use `xrdb | |
1347 | -query' to see what resources the X server records, and also look at | |
1348 | the user's ~/.Xdefaults and ~/.Xdefaults-* files. | |
1349 | ||
1350 | * --with-x-toolkit version crashes when used with shared libraries. | |
1351 | ||
1352 | On some systems, including Sunos 4 and DGUX 5.4.2 and perhaps others, | |
1353 | unexec doesn't work properly with the shared library for the X | |
1354 | toolkit. You might be able to work around this by using a nonshared | |
1355 | libXt.a library. The real fix is to upgrade the various versions of | |
1356 | unexec and/or ralloc. We think this has been fixed on Sunos 4 | |
1357 | and Solaris in version 19.29. | |
1358 | ||
1359 | * `make install' fails on install-doc with `Error 141'. | |
1360 | ||
1361 | This happens on Ultrix 4.2 due to failure of a pipeline of tar | |
1362 | commands. We don't know why they fail, but the bug seems not to be in | |
1363 | Emacs. The workaround is to run the shell command in install-doc by | |
1364 | hand. | |
1365 | ||
1366 | * --with-x-toolkit option configures wrong on BSD/386. | |
1367 | ||
1368 | This problem is due to bugs in the shell in version 1.0 of BSD/386. | |
1369 | The workaround is to edit the configure file to use some other shell, | |
1370 | such as bash. | |
1371 | ||
1372 | * Subprocesses remain, hanging but not zombies, on Sunos 5.3. | |
1373 | ||
1374 | A bug in Sunos 5.3 causes Emacs subprocesses to remain after Emacs | |
1375 | exits. Sun patch # 101415-02 is part of the fix for this, but it only | |
1376 | applies to ptys, and doesn't fix the problem with subprocesses | |
1377 | communicating through pipes. | |
1378 | ||
1379 | * Mail is lost when sent to local aliases. | |
1380 | ||
1381 | Many emacs mail user agents (VM and rmail, for instance) use the | |
1382 | sendmail.el library. This library can arrange for mail to be | |
1383 | delivered by passing messages to the /usr/lib/sendmail (usually) | |
1384 | program . In doing so, it passes the '-t' flag to sendmail, which | |
1385 | means that the name of the recipient of the message is not on the | |
1386 | command line and, therefore, that sendmail must parse the message to | |
1387 | obtain the destination address. | |
1388 | ||
1389 | There is a bug in the SunOS4.1.1 and SunOS4.1.3 versions of sendmail. | |
1390 | In short, when given the -t flag, the SunOS sendmail won't recognize | |
1391 | non-local (i.e. NIS) aliases. It has been reported that the Solaris | |
1392 | 2.x versions of sendmail do not have this bug. For those using SunOS | |
1393 | 4.1, the best fix is to install sendmail V8 or IDA sendmail (which | |
1394 | have other advantages over the regular sendmail as well). At the time | |
1395 | of this writing, these official versions are available: | |
1396 | ||
1397 | Sendmail V8 on ftp.cs.berkeley.edu in /ucb/sendmail: | |
1398 | sendmail.8.6.9.base.tar.Z (the base system source & documentation) | |
1399 | sendmail.8.6.9.cf.tar.Z (configuration files) | |
1400 | sendmail.8.6.9.misc.tar.Z (miscellaneous support programs) | |
1401 | sendmail.8.6.9.xdoc.tar.Z (extended documentation, with postscript) | |
1402 | ||
1403 | IDA sendmail on vixen.cso.uiuc.edu in /pub: | |
1404 | sendmail-5.67b+IDA-1.5.tar.gz | |
1405 | ||
1406 | * On AIX, you get this message when running Emacs: | |
1407 | ||
1408 | Could not load program emacs | |
1409 | Symbol smtcheckinit in csh is undefined | |
1410 | Error was: Exec format error | |
1411 | ||
1412 | or this one: | |
1413 | ||
1414 | Could not load program .emacs | |
1415 | Symbol _system_con in csh is undefined | |
1416 | Symbol _fp_trapsta in csh is undefined | |
1417 | Error was: Exec format error | |
1418 | ||
1419 | These can happen when you try to run on AIX 3.2.5 a program that was | |
1420 | compiled with 3.2.4. The fix is to recompile. | |
1421 | ||
1422 | * On AIX, you get this compiler error message: | |
1423 | ||
1424 | Processing include file ./XMenuInt.h | |
1425 | 1501-106: (S) Include file X11/Xlib.h not found. | |
1426 | ||
1427 | This means your system was installed with only the X11 runtime i.d | |
1428 | libraries. You have to find your sipo (bootable tape) and install | |
1429 | X11Dev... with smit. | |
1430 | ||
1431 | * You "lose characters" after typing Compose Character key. | |
1432 | ||
1433 | This is because the Compose Character key is defined as the keysym | |
1434 | Multi_key, and Emacs (seeing that) does the proper X11 | |
1435 | character-composition processing. If you don't want your Compose key | |
1436 | to do that, you can redefine it with xmodmap. | |
1437 | ||
1438 | For example, here's one way to turn it into a Meta key: | |
1439 | ||
1440 | xmodmap -e "keysym Multi_key = Meta_L" | |
1441 | ||
1442 | If all users at your site of a particular keyboard prefer Meta to | |
1443 | Compose, you can make the remapping happen automatically by adding the | |
1444 | xmodmap command to the xdm setup script for that display. | |
1445 | ||
1446 | * C-z just refreshes the screen instead of suspending Emacs. | |
1447 | ||
1448 | You are probably using a shell that doesn't support job control, even | |
1449 | though the system itself is capable of it. Either use a different shell, | |
1450 | or set the variable `cannot-suspend' to a non-nil value. | |
1451 | ||
1452 | * Watch out for .emacs files and EMACSLOADPATH environment vars | |
1453 | ||
1454 | These control the actions of Emacs. | |
1455 | ~/.emacs is your Emacs init file. | |
1456 | EMACSLOADPATH overrides which directories the function | |
1457 | "load" will search. | |
1458 | ||
1459 | If you observe strange problems, check for these and get rid | |
1460 | of them, then try again. | |
1461 | ||
1462 | * After running emacs once, subsequent invocations crash. | |
1463 | ||
1464 | Some versions of SVR4 have a serious bug in the implementation of the | |
1465 | mmap () system call in the kernel; this causes emacs to run correctly | |
1466 | the first time, and then crash when run a second time. | |
1467 | ||
1468 | Contact your vendor and ask for the mmap bug fix; in the mean time, | |
1469 | you may be able to work around the problem by adding a line to your | |
1470 | operating system description file (whose name is reported by the | |
1471 | configure script) that reads: | |
1472 | #define SYSTEM_MALLOC | |
1473 | This makes Emacs use memory less efficiently, but seems to work around | |
1474 | the kernel bug. | |
1475 | ||
1476 | * Inability to send an Alt-modified key, when Emacs is communicating | |
1477 | directly with an X server. | |
1478 | ||
1479 | If you have tried to bind an Alt-modified key as a command, and it | |
1480 | does not work to type the command, the first thing you should check is | |
1481 | whether the key is getting through to Emacs. To do this, type C-h c | |
1482 | followed by the Alt-modified key. C-h c should say what kind of event | |
1483 | it read. If it says it read an Alt-modified key, then make sure you | |
1484 | have made the key binding correctly. | |
1485 | ||
1486 | If C-h c reports an event that doesn't have the Alt modifier, it may | |
1487 | be because your X server has no key for the Alt modifier. The X | |
1488 | server that comes from MIT does not set up the Alt modifier by | |
1489 | default. | |
1490 | ||
1491 | If your keyboard has keys named Alt, you can enable them as follows: | |
1492 | ||
1493 | xmodmap -e 'add mod2 = Alt_L' | |
1494 | xmodmap -e 'add mod2 = Alt_R' | |
1495 | ||
1496 | If the keyboard has just one key named Alt, then only one of those | |
1497 | commands is needed. The modifier `mod2' is a reasonable choice if you | |
1498 | are using an unmodified MIT version of X. Otherwise, choose any | |
1499 | modifier bit not otherwise used. | |
1500 | ||
1501 | If your keyboard does not have keys named Alt, you can use some other | |
1502 | keys. Use the keysym command in xmodmap to turn a function key (or | |
1503 | some other 'spare' key) into Alt_L or into Alt_R, and then use the | |
1504 | commands show above to make them modifier keys. | |
1505 | ||
1506 | Note that if you have Alt keys but no Meta keys, Emacs translates Alt | |
1507 | into Meta. This is because of the great importance of Meta in Emacs. | |
1508 | ||
1509 | * `Pid xxx killed due to text modification or page I/O error' | |
1510 | ||
1511 | On HP/UX, you can get that error when the Emacs executable is on an NFS | |
1512 | file system. HP/UX responds this way if it tries to swap in a page and | |
1513 | does not get a response from the server within a timeout whose default | |
1514 | value is just ten seconds. | |
1515 | ||
1516 | If this happens to you, extend the timeout period. | |
1517 | ||
1518 | * `expand-file-name' fails to work on any but the machine you dumped Emacs on. | |
1519 | ||
1520 | On Ultrix, if you use any of the functions which look up information | |
1521 | in the passwd database before dumping Emacs (say, by using | |
1522 | expand-file-name in site-init.el), then those functions will not work | |
1523 | in the dumped Emacs on any host but the one Emacs was dumped on. | |
1524 | ||
1525 | The solution? Don't use expand-file-name in site-init.el, or in | |
1526 | anything it loads. Yuck - some solution. | |
1527 | ||
1528 | I'm not sure why this happens; if you can find out exactly what is | |
1529 | going on, and perhaps find a fix or a workaround, please let us know. | |
1530 | Perhaps the YP functions cache some information, the cache is included | |
1531 | in the dumped Emacs, and is then inaccurate on any other host. | |
1532 | ||
1533 | * On some variants of SVR4, Emacs does not work at all with X. | |
1534 | ||
1535 | Try defining BROKEN_FIONREAD in your config.h file. If this solves | |
1536 | the problem, please send a bug report to tell us this is needed; be | |
1537 | sure to say exactly what type of machine and system you are using. | |
1538 | ||
1539 | * Linking says that the functions insque and remque are undefined. | |
1540 | ||
1541 | Change oldXMenu/Makefile by adding insque.o to the variable OBJS. | |
1542 | ||
1543 | * Emacs fails to understand most Internet host names, even though | |
1544 | the names work properly with other programs on the same system. | |
1545 | * Emacs won't work with X-windows if the value of DISPLAY is HOSTNAME:0. | |
1546 | * GNUs can't make contact with the specified host for nntp. | |
1547 | ||
1548 | This typically happens on Suns and other systems that use shared | |
1549 | libraries. The cause is that the site has installed a version of the | |
1550 | shared library which uses a name server--but has not installed a | |
1551 | similar version of the unshared library which Emacs uses. | |
1552 | ||
1553 | The result is that most programs, using the shared library, work with | |
1554 | the nameserver, but Emacs does not. | |
1555 | ||
1556 | The fix is to install an unshared library that corresponds to what you | |
1557 | installed in the shared library, and then relink Emacs. | |
1558 | ||
1559 | On SunOS 4.1, simply define HAVE_RES_INIT. | |
1560 | ||
1561 | If you have already installed the name resolver in the file libresolv.a, | |
1562 | then you need to compile Emacs to use that library. The easiest way to | |
1563 | do this is to add to config.h a definition of LIBS_SYSTEM, LIBS_MACHINE | |
1564 | or LIB_STANDARD which uses -lresolv. Watch out! If you redefine a macro | |
1565 | that is already in use in your configuration to supply some other libraries, | |
1566 | be careful not to lose the others. | |
1567 | ||
1568 | Thus, you could start by adding this to config.h: | |
1569 | ||
1570 | #define LIBS_SYSTEM -lresolv | |
1571 | ||
1572 | Then if this gives you an error for redefining a macro, and you see that | |
1573 | the s- file defines LIBS_SYSTEM as -lfoo -lbar, you could change config.h | |
1574 | again to say this: | |
1575 | ||
1576 | #define LIBS_SYSTEM -lresolv -lfoo -lbar | |
1577 | ||
1578 | * On a Sun running SunOS 4.1.1, you get this error message from GNU ld: | |
1579 | ||
1580 | /lib/libc.a(_Q_sub.o): Undefined symbol __Q_get_rp_rd referenced from text segment | |
1581 | ||
1582 | The problem is in the Sun shared C library, not in GNU ld. | |
1583 | ||
1584 | The solution is to install Patch-ID# 100267-03 from Sun. | |
1585 | ||
1586 | * Self documentation messages are garbled. | |
1587 | ||
1588 | This means that the file `etc/DOC-...' doesn't properly correspond | |
1589 | with the Emacs executable. Redumping Emacs and then installing the | |
1590 | corresponding pair of files should fix the problem. | |
1591 | ||
1592 | * Trouble using ptys on AIX. | |
1593 | ||
1594 | People often install the pty devices on AIX incorrectly. | |
1595 | Use `smit pty' to reinstall them properly. | |
1596 | ||
1597 | * Shell mode on HP/UX gives the message, "`tty`: Ambiguous". | |
1598 | ||
1599 | christos@theory.tn.cornell.edu says: | |
1600 | ||
1601 | The problem is that in your .cshrc you have something that tries to | |
1602 | execute `tty`. If you are not running the shell on a real tty then | |
1603 | tty will print "not a tty". Csh expects one word in some places, | |
1604 | but tty is giving it back 3. | |
1605 | ||
1606 | The solution is to add a pair of quotes around `tty` to make it a single | |
1607 | word: | |
1608 | ||
1609 | if (`tty` == "/dev/console") | |
1610 | ||
1611 | should be changed to: | |
1612 | ||
1613 | if ("`tty`" == "/dev/console") | |
1614 | ||
1615 | Even better, move things that set up terminal sections out of .cshrc | |
1616 | and into .login. | |
1617 | ||
1618 | * Using X Windows, control-shift-leftbutton makes Emacs hang. | |
1619 | ||
1620 | Use the shell command `xset bc' to make the old X Menu package work. | |
1621 | ||
1622 | * Emacs running under X Windows does not handle mouse clicks. | |
1623 | * `emacs -geometry 80x20' finds a file named `80x20'. | |
1624 | ||
1625 | One cause of such problems is having (setq term-file-prefix nil) in | |
1626 | your .emacs file. Another cause is a bad value of EMACSLOADPATH in | |
1627 | the environment. | |
1628 | ||
1629 | * Emacs gets error message from linker on Sun. | |
1630 | ||
1631 | If the error message says that a symbol such as `f68881_used' or | |
1632 | `ffpa_used' or `start_float' is undefined, this probably indicates | |
1633 | that you have compiled some libraries, such as the X libraries, | |
1634 | with a floating point option other than the default. | |
1635 | ||
1636 | It's not terribly hard to make this work with small changes in | |
1637 | crt0.c together with linking with Fcrt1.o, Wcrt1.o or Mcrt1.o. | |
1638 | However, the easiest approach is to build Xlib with the default | |
1639 | floating point option: -fsoft. | |
1640 | ||
1641 | * Emacs fails to get default settings from X Windows server. | |
1642 | ||
1643 | The X library in X11R4 has a bug; it interchanges the 2nd and 3rd | |
1644 | arguments to XGetDefaults. Define the macro XBACKWARDS in config.h to | |
1645 | tell Emacs to compensate for this. | |
1646 | ||
1647 | I don't believe there is any way Emacs can determine for itself | |
1648 | whether this problem is present on a given system. | |
1649 | ||
1650 | * Keyboard input gets confused after a beep when using a DECserver | |
1651 | as a concentrator. | |
1652 | ||
1653 | This problem seems to be a matter of configuring the DECserver to use | |
1654 | 7 bit characters rather than 8 bit characters. | |
1655 | ||
1656 | * M-x shell persistently reports "Process shell exited abnormally with code 1". | |
1657 | ||
1658 | This happened on Suns as a result of what is said to be a bug in Sunos | |
1659 | version 4.0.x. The only fix was to reboot the machine. | |
1660 | ||
1661 | * Programs running under terminal emulator do not recognize `emacs' | |
1662 | terminal type. | |
1663 | ||
1664 | The cause of this is a shell startup file that sets the TERMCAP | |
1665 | environment variable. The terminal emulator uses that variable to | |
1666 | provide the information on the special terminal type that Emacs | |
1667 | emulates. | |
1668 | ||
1669 | Rewrite your shell startup file so that it does not change TERMCAP | |
1670 | in such a case. You could use the following conditional which sets | |
1671 | it only if it is undefined. | |
1672 | ||
1673 | if ( ! ${?TERMCAP} ) setenv TERMCAP ~/my-termcap-file | |
1674 | ||
1675 | Or you could set TERMCAP only when you set TERM--which should not | |
1676 | happen in a non-login shell. | |
1677 | ||
1678 | * X Windows doesn't work if DISPLAY uses a hostname. | |
1679 | ||
1680 | People have reported kernel bugs in certain systems that cause Emacs | |
1681 | not to work with X Windows if DISPLAY is set using a host name. But | |
1682 | the problem does not occur if DISPLAY is set to `unix:0.0'. I think | |
1683 | the bug has to do with SIGIO or FIONREAD. | |
1684 | ||
1685 | You may be able to compensate for the bug by doing (set-input-mode nil nil). | |
1686 | However, that has the disadvantage of turning off interrupts, so that | |
1687 | you are unable to quit out of a Lisp program by typing C-g. | |
1688 | ||
1689 | The easy way to do this is to put | |
1690 | ||
1691 | (setq x-sigio-bug t) | |
1692 | ||
1693 | in your site-init.el file. | |
1694 | ||
1695 | * Problem with remote X server on Suns. | |
1696 | ||
1697 | On a Sun, running Emacs on one machine with the X server on another | |
1698 | may not work if you have used the unshared system libraries. This | |
1699 | is because the unshared libraries fail to use YP for host name lookup. | |
1700 | As a result, the host name you specify may not be recognized. | |
1701 | ||
1702 | * Shell mode ignores interrupts on Apollo Domain | |
1703 | ||
1704 | You may find that M-x shell prints the following message: | |
1705 | ||
1706 | Warning: no access to tty; thus no job control in this shell... | |
1707 | ||
1708 | This can happen if there are not enough ptys on your system. | |
1709 | Here is how to make more of them. | |
1710 | ||
1711 | % cd /dev | |
1712 | % ls pty* | |
1713 | # shows how many pty's you have. I had 8, named pty0 to pty7) | |
1714 | % /etc/crpty 8 | |
1715 | # creates eight new pty's | |
1716 | ||
1717 | * Fatal signal in the command temacs -l loadup inc dump | |
1718 | ||
1719 | This command is the final stage of building Emacs. It is run by the | |
1720 | Makefile in the src subdirectory, or by build.com on VMS. | |
1721 | ||
1722 | It has been known to get fatal errors due to insufficient swapping | |
1723 | space available on the machine. | |
1724 | ||
1725 | On 68000's, it has also happened because of bugs in the | |
1726 | subroutine `alloca'. Verify that `alloca' works right, even | |
1727 | for large blocks (many pages). | |
1728 | ||
1729 | * test-distrib says that the distribution has been clobbered | |
1730 | * or, temacs prints "Command key out of range 0-127" | |
1731 | * or, temacs runs and dumps emacs, but emacs totally fails to work. | |
1732 | * or, temacs gets errors dumping emacs | |
1733 | ||
1734 | This can be because the .elc files have been garbled. Do not be | |
1735 | fooled by the fact that most of a .elc file is text: these are | |
1736 | binary files and can contain all 256 byte values. | |
1737 | ||
1738 | In particular `shar' cannot be used for transmitting GNU Emacs. | |
1739 | It typically truncates "lines". What appear to be "lines" in | |
1740 | a binary file can of course be of any length. Even once `shar' | |
1741 | itself is made to work correctly, `sh' discards null characters | |
1742 | when unpacking the shell archive. | |
1743 | ||
1744 | I have also seen character \177 changed into \377. I do not know | |
1745 | what transfer means caused this problem. Various network | |
1746 | file transfer programs are suspected of clobbering the high bit. | |
1747 | ||
1748 | If you have a copy of Emacs that has been damaged in its | |
1749 | nonprinting characters, you can fix them: | |
1750 | ||
1751 | 1) Record the names of all the .elc files. | |
1752 | 2) Delete all the .elc files. | |
1753 | 3) Recompile alloc.c with a value of PURESIZE twice as large. | |
1754 | (See puresize.h.) You might as well save the old alloc.o. | |
1755 | 4) Remake emacs. It should work now. | |
1756 | 5) Running emacs, do Meta-x byte-compile-file repeatedly | |
1757 | to recreate all the .elc files that used to exist. | |
1758 | You may need to increase the value of the variable | |
1759 | max-lisp-eval-depth to succeed in running the compiler interpreted | |
1760 | on certain .el files. 400 was sufficient as of last report. | |
1761 | 6) Reinstall the old alloc.o (undoing changes to alloc.c if any) | |
1762 | and remake temacs. | |
1763 | 7) Remake emacs. It should work now, with valid .elc files. | |
1764 | ||
1765 | * temacs prints "Pure Lisp storage exhausted" | |
1766 | ||
1767 | This means that the Lisp code loaded from the .elc and .el | |
1768 | files during temacs -l loadup inc dump took up more | |
1769 | space than was allocated. | |
1770 | ||
1771 | This could be caused by | |
1772 | 1) adding code to the preloaded Lisp files | |
1773 | 2) adding more preloaded files in loadup.el | |
1774 | 3) having a site-init.el or site-load.el which loads files. | |
1775 | Note that ANY site-init.el or site-load.el is nonstandard; | |
1776 | if you have received Emacs from some other site | |
1777 | and it contains a site-init.el or site-load.el file, consider | |
1778 | deleting that file. | |
1779 | 4) getting the wrong .el or .elc files | |
1780 | (not from the directory you expected). | |
1781 | 5) deleting some .elc files that are supposed to exist. | |
1782 | This would cause the source files (.el files) to be | |
1783 | loaded instead. They take up more room, so you lose. | |
1784 | 6) a bug in the Emacs distribution which underestimates | |
1785 | the space required. | |
1786 | ||
1787 | If the need for more space is legitimate, change the definition | |
1788 | of PURESIZE in puresize.h. | |
1789 | ||
1790 | But in some of the cases listed above, this problem is a consequence | |
1791 | of something else that is wrong. Be sure to check and fix the real | |
1792 | problem. | |
1793 | ||
1794 | * Changes made to .el files do not take effect. | |
1795 | ||
1796 | You may have forgotten to recompile them into .elc files. | |
1797 | Then the old .elc files will be loaded, and your changes | |
1798 | will not be seen. To fix this, do M-x byte-recompile-directory | |
1799 | and specify the directory that contains the Lisp files. | |
1800 | ||
1801 | Emacs should print a warning when loading a .elc file which is older | |
1802 | than the corresponding .el file. | |
1803 | ||
1804 | * The dumped Emacs crashes when run, trying to write pure data. | |
1805 | ||
1806 | Two causes have been seen for such problems. | |
1807 | ||
1808 | 1) On a system where getpagesize is not a system call, it is defined | |
1809 | as a macro. If the definition (in both unexec.c and malloc.c) is wrong, | |
1810 | it can cause problems like this. You might be able to find the correct | |
1811 | value in the man page for a.out (5). | |
1812 | ||
1813 | 2) Some systems allocate variables declared static among the | |
1814 | initialized variables. Emacs makes all initialized variables in most | |
1815 | of its files pure after dumping, but the variables declared static and | |
1816 | not initialized are not supposed to be pure. On these systems you | |
1817 | may need to add "#define static" to the m- or the s- file. | |
1818 | ||
1819 | * Compilation errors on VMS. | |
1820 | ||
1821 | You will get warnings when compiling on VMS because there are | |
1822 | variable names longer than 32 (or whatever it is) characters. | |
1823 | This is not an error. Ignore it. | |
1824 | ||
1825 | VAX C does not support #if defined(foo). Uses of this construct | |
1826 | were removed, but some may have crept back in. They must be rewritten. | |
1827 | ||
1828 | There is a bug in the C compiler which fails to sign extend characters | |
1829 | in conditional expressions. The bug is: | |
1830 | char c = -1, d = 1; | |
1831 | int i; | |
1832 | ||
1833 | i = d ? c : d; | |
1834 | The result is i == 255; the fix is to typecast the char in the | |
1835 | conditional expression as an (int). Known occurrences of such | |
1836 | constructs in Emacs have been fixed. | |
1837 | ||
1838 | * rmail gets error getting new mail | |
1839 | ||
1840 | rmail gets new mail from /usr/spool/mail/$USER using a program | |
1841 | called `movemail'. This program interlocks with /bin/mail using | |
1842 | the protocol defined by /bin/mail. | |
1843 | ||
1844 | There are two different protocols in general use. One of them uses | |
1845 | the `flock' system call. The other involves creating a lock file; | |
1846 | `movemail' must be able to write in /usr/spool/mail in order to do | |
1847 | this. You control which one is used by defining, or not defining, | |
1848 | the macro MAIL_USE_FLOCK in config.h or the m- or s- file it includes. | |
1849 | IF YOU DON'T USE THE FORM OF INTERLOCKING THAT IS NORMAL ON YOUR | |
1850 | SYSTEM, YOU CAN LOSE MAIL! | |
1851 | ||
1852 | If your system uses the lock file protocol, and fascist restrictions | |
1853 | prevent ordinary users from writing the lock files in /usr/spool/mail, | |
1854 | you may need to make `movemail' setgid to a suitable group such as | |
1855 | `mail'. You can use these commands (as root): | |
1856 | ||
1857 | chgrp mail movemail | |
1858 | chmod 2755 movemail | |
1859 | ||
1860 | If your system uses the lock file protocol, and fascist restrictions | |
1861 | prevent ordinary users from writing the lock files in /usr/spool/mail, | |
1862 | you may need to make `movemail' setgid to a suitable group such as | |
1863 | `mail'. To do this, use the following commands (as root) after doing the | |
1864 | make install. | |
1865 | ||
1866 | chgrp mail movemail | |
1867 | chmod 2755 movemail | |
1868 | ||
1869 | Installation normally copies movemail from the build directory to an | |
1870 | installation directory which is usually under /usr/local/lib. The | |
1871 | installed copy of movemail is usually in the directory | |
1872 | /usr/local/lib/emacs/VERSION/TARGET. You must change the group and | |
1873 | mode of the installed copy; changing the group and mode of the build | |
1874 | directory copy is ineffective. | |
1875 | ||
1876 | * Emacs spontaneously displays "I-search: " at the bottom of the screen. | |
1877 | ||
1878 | This means that Control-S/Control-Q (XON/XOFF) "flow control" is being | |
1879 | used. C-s/C-q flow control is bad for Emacs editors because it takes | |
1880 | away C-s and C-q as user commands. Since editors do not output long | |
1881 | streams of text without user commands, there is no need for a | |
1882 | user-issuable "stop output" command in an editor; therefore, a | |
1883 | properly designed flow control mechanism would transmit all possible | |
1884 | input characters without interference. Designing such a mechanism is | |
1885 | easy, for a person with at least half a brain. | |
1886 | ||
1887 | There are three possible reasons why flow control could be taking place: | |
1888 | ||
1889 | 1) Terminal has not been told to disable flow control | |
1890 | 2) Insufficient padding for the terminal in use | |
1891 | 3) Some sort of terminal concentrator or line switch is responsible | |
1892 | ||
1893 | First of all, many terminals have a set-up mode which controls whether | |
1894 | they generate XON/XOFF flow control characters. This must be set to | |
1895 | "no XON/XOFF" in order for Emacs to work. Sometimes there is an | |
1896 | escape sequence that the computer can send to turn flow control off | |
1897 | and on. If so, perhaps the termcap `ti' string should turn flow | |
1898 | control off, and the `te' string should turn it on. | |
1899 | ||
1900 | Once the terminal has been told "no flow control", you may find it | |
1901 | needs more padding. The amount of padding Emacs sends is controlled | |
1902 | by the termcap entry for the terminal in use, and by the output baud | |
1903 | rate as known by the kernel. The shell command `stty' will print | |
1904 | your output baud rate; `stty' with suitable arguments will set it if | |
1905 | it is wrong. Setting to a higher speed causes increased padding. If | |
1906 | the results are wrong for the correct speed, there is probably a | |
1907 | problem in the termcap entry. You must speak to a local Unix wizard | |
1908 | to fix this. Perhaps you are just using the wrong terminal type. | |
1909 | ||
1910 | For terminals that lack a "no flow control" mode, sometimes just | |
1911 | giving lots of padding will prevent actual generation of flow control | |
1912 | codes. You might as well try it. | |
1913 | ||
1914 | If you are really unlucky, your terminal is connected to the computer | |
1915 | through a concentrator which sends XON/XOFF flow control to the | |
1916 | computer, or it insists on sending flow control itself no matter how | |
1917 | much padding you give it. Unless you can figure out how to turn flow | |
1918 | control off on this concentrator (again, refer to your local wizard), | |
1919 | you are screwed! You should have the terminal or concentrator | |
1920 | replaced with a properly designed one. In the mean time, some drastic | |
1921 | measures can make Emacs semi-work. | |
1922 | ||
1923 | You can make Emacs ignore C-s and C-q and let the operating system | |
1924 | handle them. To do this on a per-session basis, just type M-x | |
1925 | enable-flow-control RET. You will see a message that C-\ and C-^ are | |
1926 | now translated to C-s and C-q. (Use the same command M-x | |
1927 | enable-flow-control to turn *off* this special mode. It toggles flow | |
1928 | control handling.) | |
1929 | ||
1930 | If C-\ and C-^ are inconvenient for you (for example, if one of them | |
1931 | is the escape character of your terminal concentrator), you can choose | |
1932 | other characters by setting the variables flow-control-c-s-replacement | |
1933 | and flow-control-c-q-replacement. But choose carefully, since all | |
1934 | other control characters are already used by emacs. | |
1935 | ||
1936 | IMPORTANT: if you type C-s by accident while flow control is enabled, | |
1937 | Emacs output will freeze, and you will have to remember to type C-q in | |
1938 | order to continue. | |
1939 | ||
1940 | If you work in an environment where a majority of terminals of a | |
1941 | certain type are flow control hobbled, you can use the function | |
1942 | `enable-flow-control-on' to turn on this flow control avoidance scheme | |
1943 | automatically. Here is an example: | |
1944 | ||
1945 | (enable-flow-control-on "vt200" "vt300" "vt101" "vt131") | |
1946 | ||
1947 | If this isn't quite correct (e.g. you have a mixture of flow-control hobbled | |
1948 | and good vt200 terminals), you can still run enable-flow-control | |
1949 | manually. | |
1950 | ||
1951 | I have no intention of ever redesigning the Emacs command set for the | |
1952 | assumption that terminals use C-s/C-q flow control. XON/XOFF flow | |
1953 | control technique is a bad design, and terminals that need it are bad | |
1954 | merchandise and should not be purchased. Now that X is becoming | |
1955 | widespread, XON/XOFF seems to be on the way out. If you can get some | |
1956 | use out of GNU Emacs on inferior terminals, more power to you, but I | |
1957 | will not make Emacs worse for properly designed systems for the sake | |
1958 | of inferior systems. | |
1959 | ||
1960 | * Control-S and Control-Q commands are ignored completely. | |
1961 | ||
1962 | For some reason, your system is using brain-damaged C-s/C-q flow | |
1963 | control despite Emacs's attempts to turn it off. Perhaps your | |
1964 | terminal is connected to the computer through a concentrator | |
1965 | that wants to use flow control. | |
1966 | ||
1967 | You should first try to tell the concentrator not to use flow control. | |
1968 | If you succeed in this, try making the terminal work without | |
1969 | flow control, as described in the preceding section. | |
1970 | ||
1971 | If that line of approach is not successful, map some other characters | |
1972 | into C-s and C-q using keyboard-translate-table. The example above | |
1973 | shows how to do this with C-^ and C-\. | |
1974 | ||
1975 | * Control-S and Control-Q commands are ignored completely on a net connection. | |
1976 | ||
1977 | Some versions of rlogin (and possibly telnet) do not pass flow | |
1978 | control characters to the remote system to which they connect. | |
1979 | On such systems, emacs on the remote system cannot disable flow | |
1980 | control on the local system. | |
1981 | ||
1982 | One way to cure this is to disable flow control on the local host | |
1983 | (the one running rlogin, not the one running rlogind) using the | |
1984 | stty command, before starting the rlogin process. On many systems, | |
1985 | "stty start u stop u" will do this. | |
1986 | ||
1987 | Some versions of tcsh will prevent even this from working. One way | |
1988 | around this is to start another shell before starting rlogin, and | |
1989 | issue the stty command to disable flow control from that shell. | |
1990 | ||
1991 | If none of these methods work, the best solution is to type | |
1992 | M-x enable-flow-control at the beginning of your emacs session, or | |
1993 | if you expect the problem to continue, add a line such as the | |
1994 | following to your .emacs (on the host running rlogind): | |
1995 | ||
1996 | (enable-flow-control-on "vt200" "vt300" "vt101" "vt131") | |
1997 | ||
1998 | See the entry about spontaneous display of I-search (above) for more | |
1999 | info. | |
2000 | ||
2001 | * Screen is updated wrong, but only on one kind of terminal. | |
2002 | ||
2003 | This could mean that the termcap entry you are using for that | |
2004 | terminal is wrong, or it could mean that Emacs has a bug handing | |
2005 | the combination of features specified for that terminal. | |
2006 | ||
2007 | The first step in tracking this down is to record what characters | |
2008 | Emacs is sending to the terminal. Execute the Lisp expression | |
2009 | (open-termscript "./emacs-script") to make Emacs write all | |
2010 | terminal output into the file ~/emacs-script as well; then do | |
2011 | what makes the screen update wrong, and look at the file | |
2012 | and decode the characters using the manual for the terminal. | |
2013 | There are several possibilities: | |
2014 | ||
2015 | 1) The characters sent are correct, according to the terminal manual. | |
2016 | ||
2017 | In this case, there is no obvious bug in Emacs, and most likely you | |
2018 | need more padding, or possibly the terminal manual is wrong. | |
2019 | ||
2020 | 2) The characters sent are incorrect, due to an obscure aspect | |
2021 | of the terminal behavior not described in an obvious way | |
2022 | by termcap. | |
2023 | ||
2024 | This case is hard. It will be necessary to think of a way for | |
2025 | Emacs to distinguish between terminals with this kind of behavior | |
2026 | and other terminals that behave subtly differently but are | |
2027 | classified the same by termcap; or else find an algorithm for | |
2028 | Emacs to use that avoids the difference. Such changes must be | |
2029 | tested on many kinds of terminals. | |
2030 | ||
2031 | 3) The termcap entry is wrong. | |
2032 | ||
2033 | See the file etc/TERMS for information on changes | |
2034 | that are known to be needed in commonly used termcap entries | |
2035 | for certain terminals. | |
2036 | ||
2037 | 4) The characters sent are incorrect, and clearly cannot be | |
2038 | right for any terminal with the termcap entry you were using. | |
2039 | ||
2040 | This is unambiguously an Emacs bug, and can probably be fixed | |
2041 | in termcap.c, tparam.c, term.c, scroll.c, cm.c or dispnew.c. | |
2042 | ||
2043 | * Output from Control-V is slow. | |
2044 | ||
2045 | On many bit-map terminals, scrolling operations are fairly slow. | |
2046 | Often the termcap entry for the type of terminal in use fails | |
2047 | to inform Emacs of this. The two lines at the bottom of the screen | |
2048 | before a Control-V command are supposed to appear at the top after | |
2049 | the Control-V command. If Emacs thinks scrolling the lines is fast, | |
2050 | it will scroll them to the top of the screen. | |
2051 | ||
2052 | If scrolling is slow but Emacs thinks it is fast, the usual reason is | |
2053 | that the termcap entry for the terminal you are using does not | |
2054 | specify any padding time for the `al' and `dl' strings. Emacs | |
2055 | concludes that these operations take only as much time as it takes to | |
2056 | send the commands at whatever line speed you are using. You must | |
2057 | fix the termcap entry to specify, for the `al' and `dl', as much | |
2058 | time as the operations really take. | |
2059 | ||
2060 | Currently Emacs thinks in terms of serial lines which send characters | |
2061 | at a fixed rate, so that any operation which takes time for the | |
2062 | terminal to execute must also be padded. With bit-map terminals | |
2063 | operated across networks, often the network provides some sort of | |
2064 | flow control so that padding is never needed no matter how slow | |
2065 | an operation is. You must still specify a padding time if you want | |
2066 | Emacs to realize that the operation takes a long time. This will | |
2067 | cause padding characters to be sent unnecessarily, but they do | |
2068 | not really cost much. They will be transmitted while the scrolling | |
2069 | is happening and then discarded quickly by the terminal. | |
2070 | ||
2071 | Most bit-map terminals provide commands for inserting or deleting | |
2072 | multiple lines at once. Define the `AL' and `DL' strings in the | |
2073 | termcap entry to say how to do these things, and you will have | |
2074 | fast output without wasted padding characters. These strings should | |
2075 | each contain a single %-spec saying how to send the number of lines | |
2076 | to be scrolled. These %-specs are like those in the termcap | |
2077 | `cm' string. | |
2078 | ||
2079 | You should also define the `IC' and `DC' strings if your terminal | |
2080 | has a command to insert or delete multiple characters. These | |
2081 | take the number of positions to insert or delete as an argument. | |
2082 | ||
2083 | A `cs' string to set the scrolling region will reduce the amount | |
2084 | of motion you see on the screen when part of the screen is scrolled. | |
2085 | ||
2086 | * Your Delete key sends a Backspace to the terminal, using an AIXterm. | |
2087 | ||
2088 | The solution is to include in your .Xdefaults the lines: | |
2089 | ||
2090 | *aixterm.Translations: #override <Key>BackSpace: string(0x7f) | |
2091 | aixterm*ttyModes: erase ^? | |
2092 | ||
2093 | This makes your Backspace key send DEL (ASCII 127). | |
2094 | ||
2095 | * You type Control-H (Backspace) expecting to delete characters. | |
2096 | ||
2097 | Put `stty dec' in your .login file and your problems will disappear | |
2098 | after a day or two. | |
2099 | ||
2100 | The choice of Backspace for erasure was based on confusion, caused by | |
2101 | the fact that backspacing causes erasure (later, when you type another | |
2102 | character) on most display terminals. But it is a mistake. Deletion | |
2103 | of text is not the same thing as backspacing followed by failure to | |
2104 | overprint. I do not wish to propagate this confusion by conforming | |
2105 | to it. | |
2106 | ||
2107 | For this reason, I believe `stty dec' is the right mode to use, | |
2108 | and I have designed Emacs to go with that. If there were a thousand | |
2109 | other control characters, I would define Control-h to delete as well; | |
2110 | but there are not very many other control characters, and I think | |
2111 | that providing the most mnemonic possible Help character is more | |
2112 | important than adapting to people who don't use `stty dec'. | |
2113 | ||
2114 | If you are obstinate about confusing buggy overprinting with deletion, | |
2115 | you can redefine Backspace in your .emacs file: | |
2116 | (global-set-key "\b" 'delete-backward-char) | |
2117 | You can probably access help-command via f1. | |
2118 | ||
2119 | * Editing files through RFS gives spurious "file has changed" warnings. | |
2120 | It is possible that a change in Emacs 18.37 gets around this problem, | |
2121 | but in case not, here is a description of how to fix the RFS bug that | |
2122 | causes it. | |
2123 | ||
2124 | There was a serious pair of bugs in the handling of the fsync() system | |
2125 | call in the RFS server. | |
2126 | ||
2127 | The first is that the fsync() call is handled as another name for the | |
2128 | close() system call (!!). It appears that fsync() is not used by very | |
2129 | many programs; Emacs version 18 does an fsync() before closing files | |
2130 | to make sure that the bits are on the disk. | |
2131 | ||
2132 | This is fixed by the enclosed patch to the RFS server. | |
2133 | ||
2134 | The second, more serious problem, is that fsync() is treated as a | |
2135 | non-blocking system call (i.e., it's implemented as a message that | |
2136 | gets sent to the remote system without waiting for a reply). Fsync is | |
2137 | a useful tool for building atomic file transactions. Implementing it | |
2138 | as a non-blocking RPC call (when the local call blocks until the sync | |
2139 | is done) is a bad idea; unfortunately, changing it will break the RFS | |
2140 | protocol. No fix was supplied for this problem. | |
2141 | ||
2142 | (as always, your line numbers may vary) | |
2143 | ||
2144 | % rcsdiff -c -r1.2 serversyscall.c | |
2145 | RCS file: RCS/serversyscall.c,v | |
2146 | retrieving revision 1.2 | |
2147 | diff -c -r1.2 serversyscall.c | |
2148 | *** /tmp/,RCSt1003677 Wed Jan 28 15:15:02 1987 | |
2149 | --- serversyscall.c Wed Jan 28 15:14:48 1987 | |
2150 | *************** | |
2151 | *** 163,169 **** | |
2152 | /* | |
2153 | * No return sent for close or fsync! | |
2154 | */ | |
2155 | ! if (syscall == RSYS_close || syscall == RSYS_fsync) | |
2156 | proc->p_returnval = deallocate_fd(proc, msg->m_args[0]); | |
2157 | else | |
2158 | { | |
2159 | --- 166,172 ---- | |
2160 | /* | |
2161 | * No return sent for close or fsync! | |
2162 | */ | |
2163 | ! if (syscall == RSYS_close) | |
2164 | proc->p_returnval = deallocate_fd(proc, msg->m_args[0]); | |
2165 | else | |
2166 | { | |
2167 | ||
2168 | * Vax C compiler bugs affecting Emacs. | |
2169 | ||
2170 | You may get one of these problems compiling Emacs: | |
2171 | ||
2172 | foo.c line nnn: compiler error: no table entry for op STASG | |
2173 | foo.c: fatal error in /lib/ccom | |
2174 | ||
2175 | These are due to bugs in the C compiler; the code is valid C. | |
2176 | Unfortunately, the bugs are unpredictable: the same construct | |
2177 | may compile properly or trigger one of these bugs, depending | |
2178 | on what else is in the source file being compiled. Even changes | |
2179 | in header files that should not affect the file being compiled | |
2180 | can affect whether the bug happens. In addition, sometimes files | |
2181 | that compile correctly on one machine get this bug on another machine. | |
2182 | ||
2183 | As a result, it is hard for me to make sure this bug will not affect | |
2184 | you. I have attempted to find and alter these constructs, but more | |
2185 | can always appear. However, I can tell you how to deal with it if it | |
2186 | should happen. The bug comes from having an indexed reference to an | |
2187 | array of Lisp_Objects, as an argument in a function call: | |
2188 | Lisp_Object *args; | |
2189 | ... | |
2190 | ... foo (5, args[i], ...)... | |
2191 | putting the argument into a temporary variable first, as in | |
2192 | Lisp_Object *args; | |
2193 | Lisp_Object tem; | |
2194 | ... | |
2195 | tem = args[i]; | |
2196 | ... foo (r, tem, ...)... | |
2197 | causes the problem to go away. | |
2198 | The `contents' field of a Lisp vector is an array of Lisp_Objects, | |
2199 | so you may see the problem happening with indexed references to that. | |
2200 | ||
2201 | * 68000 C compiler problems | |
2202 | ||
2203 | Various 68000 compilers have different problems. | |
2204 | These are some that have been observed. | |
2205 | ||
2206 | ** Using value of assignment expression on union type loses. | |
2207 | This means that x = y = z; or foo (x = z); does not work | |
2208 | if x is of type Lisp_Object. | |
2209 | ||
2210 | ** "cannot reclaim" error. | |
2211 | ||
2212 | This means that an expression is too complicated. You get the correct | |
2213 | line number in the error message. The code must be rewritten with | |
2214 | simpler expressions. | |
2215 | ||
2216 | ** XCONS, XSTRING, etc macros produce incorrect code. | |
2217 | ||
2218 | If temacs fails to run at all, this may be the cause. | |
2219 | Compile this test program and look at the assembler code: | |
2220 | ||
2221 | struct foo { char x; unsigned int y : 24; }; | |
2222 | ||
2223 | lose (arg) | |
2224 | struct foo arg; | |
2225 | { | |
2226 | test ((int *) arg.y); | |
2227 | } | |
2228 | ||
2229 | If the code is incorrect, your compiler has this problem. | |
2230 | In the XCONS, etc., macros in lisp.h you must replace (a).u.val with | |
2231 | ((a).u.val + coercedummy) where coercedummy is declared as int. | |
2232 | ||
2233 | This problem will not happen if the m-...h file for your type | |
2234 | of machine defines NO_UNION_TYPE. That is the recommended setting now. | |
2235 | ||
2236 | * C compilers lose on returning unions | |
2237 | ||
2238 | I hear that some C compilers cannot handle returning a union type. | |
2239 | Most of the functions in GNU Emacs return type Lisp_Object, which is | |
2240 | defined as a union on some rare architectures. | |
2241 | ||
2242 | This problem will not happen if the m-...h file for your type | |
2243 | of machine defines NO_UNION_TYPE. | |
2244 |