Merge from emacs--rel--22
[bpt/emacs.git] / etc / PROBLEMS
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1Copyright (C) 1987, 1988, 1989, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999,
2 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007
3 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
4See the end of the file for license conditions.
5
6
a933dad1 7This file describes various problems that have been encountered
0a4dd4e4 8in compiling, installing and running GNU Emacs. Try doing Ctl-C Ctl-t
9dc15871 9and browsing through the outline headers.
a933dad1 10
9dc15871 11* Emacs startup failures
32364f49 12
9dc15871 13** Emacs fails to start, complaining about missing fonts.
32364f49 14
9dc15871 15A typical error message might be something like
32364f49 16
9dc15871 17 No fonts match `-*-fixed-medium-r-*--6-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1'
984002eb 18
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19This happens because some X resource specifies a bad font family for
20Emacs to use. The possible places where this specification might be
21are:
984002eb 22
9dc15871 23 - in your ~/.Xdefaults file
984002eb 24
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25 - client-side X resource file, such as ~/Emacs or
26 /usr/X11R6/lib/app-defaults/Emacs or
27 /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/app-defaults/Emacs
984002eb 28
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29One of these files might have bad or malformed specification of a
30fontset that Emacs should use. To fix the problem, you need to find
31the problematic line(s) and correct them.
984002eb 32
9dc15871 33** Emacs aborts while starting up, only when run without X.
984002eb 34
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35This problem often results from compiling Emacs with GCC when GCC was
36installed incorrectly. The usual error in installing GCC is to
37specify --includedir=/usr/include. Installation of GCC makes
38corrected copies of the system header files. GCC is supposed to use
39the corrected copies in preference to the original system headers.
40Specifying --includedir=/usr/include causes the original system header
41files to be used. On some systems, the definition of ioctl in the
42original system header files is invalid for ANSI C and causes Emacs
43not to work.
984002eb 44
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45The fix is to reinstall GCC, and this time do not specify --includedir
46when you configure it. Then recompile Emacs. Specifying --includedir
47is appropriate only in very special cases and it should *never* be the
48same directory where system header files are kept.
984002eb 49
9dc15871 50** Emacs does not start, complaining that it cannot open termcap database file.
984002eb 51
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52If your system uses Terminfo rather than termcap (most modern
53systems do), this could happen if the proper version of
54ncurses is not visible to the Emacs configure script (i.e. it
55cannot be found along the usual path the linker looks for
56libraries). It can happen because your version of ncurses is
57obsolete, or is available only in form of binaries.
f16a1bf6 58
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59The solution is to install an up-to-date version of ncurses in
60the developer's form (header files, static libraries and
61symbolic links); in some GNU/Linux distributions (e.g. Debian)
62it constitutes a separate package.
f16a1bf6 63
9dc15871 64** Emacs 20 and later fails to load Lisp files at startup.
5b4ffca2 65
9dc15871 66The typical error message might be like this:
5b4ffca2 67
9dc15871 68 "Cannot open load file: fontset"
24efe898 69
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70This could happen if you compress the file lisp/subdirs.el. That file
71tells Emacs what are the directories where it should look for Lisp
72files. Emacs cannot work with subdirs.el compressed, since the
73Auto-compress mode it needs for this will not be loaded until later,
74when your .emacs file is processed. (The package `fontset.el' is
75required to set up fonts used to display text on window systems, and
76it's loaded very early in the startup procedure.)
24efe898 77
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78Similarly, any other .el file for which there's no corresponding .elc
79file could fail to load if it is compressed.
24efe898 80
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81The solution is to uncompress all .el files which don't have a .elc
82file.
f0f62f71 83
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84Another possible reason for such failures is stale *.elc files
85lurking somewhere on your load-path. The following command will
86print any duplicate Lisp files that are present in load-path:
f0f62f71 87
9dc15871 88 emacs -q -batch -f list-load-path-shadows
f0f62f71 89
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90If this command prints any file names, some of these files are stale,
91and should be deleted or their directories removed from your
92load-path.
fc1bfc2a 93
9dc15871 94** Emacs prints an error at startup after upgrading from an earlier version.
fc1bfc2a 95
9dc15871 96An example of such an error is:
fc1bfc2a 97
9dc15871 98 x-complement-fontset-spec: "Wrong type argument: stringp, nil"
60f553d2 99
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100This can be another symptom of stale *.elc files in your load-path.
101The following command will print any duplicate Lisp files that are
102present in load-path:
3f82efb4 103
9dc15871 104 emacs -q -batch -f list-load-path-shadows
3f82efb4 105
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106If this command prints any file names, some of these files are stale,
107and should be deleted or their directories removed from your
108load-path.
3f82efb4 109
9dc15871 110** With X11R6.4, public-patch-3, Emacs crashes at startup.
3f82efb4 111
9dc15871 112Reportedly this patch in X fixes the problem.
cc305a60 113
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114 --- xc/lib/X11/imInt.c~ Wed Jun 30 13:31:56 1999
115 +++ xc/lib/X11/imInt.c Thu Jul 1 15:10:27 1999
116 @@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
117 -/* $TOG: imInt.c /main/5 1998/05/30 21:11:16 kaleb $ */
118 +/* $TOG: imInt.c /main/5 1998/05/30 21:11:16 kaleb $ */
119 /******************************************************************
cc305a60 120
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121 Copyright 1992, 1993, 1994 by FUJITSU LIMITED
122 @@ -166,8 +166,8 @@
123 _XimMakeImName(lcd)
124 XLCd lcd;
125 {
126 - char* begin;
127 - char* end;
128 + char* begin = NULL;
129 + char* end = NULL;
130 char* ret;
131 int i = 0;
132 char* ximmodifier = XIMMODIFIER;
133 @@ -182,7 +182,11 @@
134 }
135 ret = Xmalloc(end - begin + 2);
136 if (ret != NULL) {
137 - (void)strncpy(ret, begin, end - begin + 1);
138 + if (begin != NULL) {
139 + (void)strncpy(ret, begin, end - begin + 1);
140 + } else {
141 + ret[0] = '\0';
142 + }
143 ret[end - begin + 1] = '\0';
144 }
145 return ret;
fc2938d1 146
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147** Emacs crashes on startup after a glibc upgrade.
148
149This is caused by a binary incompatible change to the malloc
150implementation in glibc 2.5.90-22. As a result, Emacs binaries built
151using prior versions of glibc crash when run under 2.5.90-22.
152
0a7aab83 153This problem was first seen in pre-release versions of Fedora 7, and
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154may be fixed in the final Fedora 7 release. To stop the crash from
155happening, first try upgrading to the newest version of glibc; if this
156does not work, rebuild Emacs with the same version of glibc that you
157will run it under. For details, see
158
159https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=239344
160
9dc15871 161* Crash bugs
fc2938d1 162
9dc15871 163** Emacs crashes in x-popup-dialog.
177c0ea7 164
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165This can happen if the dialog widget cannot find the font it wants to
166use. You can work around the problem by specifying another font with
167an X resource--for example, `Emacs.dialog*.font: 9x15' (or any font that
168happens to exist on your X server).
fc2938d1 169
9dc15871 170** Emacs crashes when you use Bibtex mode.
fc2938d1 171
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172This happens if your system puts a small limit on stack size. You can
173prevent the problem by using a suitable shell command (often `ulimit')
174to raise the stack size limit before you run Emacs.
2aa82bcf 175
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176Patches to raise the stack size limit automatically in `main'
177(src/emacs.c) on various systems would be greatly appreciated.
2aa82bcf 178
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179** Error message `Symbol's value as variable is void: x', followed by
180a segmentation fault and core dump.
c93bdf05 181
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182This has been tracked to a bug in tar! People report that tar erroneously
183added a line like this at the beginning of files of Lisp code:
4593687f 184
9dc15871 185 x FILENAME, N bytes, B tape blocks
9272ccfc 186
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187If your tar has this problem, install GNU tar--if you can manage to
188untar it :-).
9272ccfc 189
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190** Crashes when displaying GIF images in Emacs built with version
191libungif-4.1.0 are resolved by using version libungif-4.1.0b1.
192Configure checks for the correct version, but this problem could occur
193if a binary built against a shared libungif is run on a system with an
194older version.
9272ccfc 195
9dc15871 196** Emacs aborts inside the function `tparam1'.
7aa70236 197
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198This can happen if Emacs was built without terminfo support, but the
199terminal's capabilities use format that is only supported by terminfo.
200If your system has ncurses installed, this might happen if your
201version of ncurses is broken; upgrading to a newer version of ncurses
202and reconfiguring and rebuilding Emacs should solve this.
7aa70236 203
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204All modern systems support terminfo, so even if ncurses is not the
205problem, you should look for a way to configure Emacs so that it uses
206terminfo when built.
7c22dc9d 207
9dc15871 208** Emacs crashes when using the Exceed 6.0 X server.
7c22dc9d 209
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210If you are using Exceed 6.1, upgrade to a later version. This was
211reported to prevent the crashes.
7c22dc9d 212
9dc15871 213** Emacs crashes with SIGSEGV in XtInitializeWidgetClass.
7c22dc9d 214
9dc15871 215It crashes on X, but runs fine when called with option "-nw".
7c22dc9d 216
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217This has been observed when Emacs is linked with GNU ld but without passing
218the -z nocombreloc flag. Emacs normally knows to pass the -z nocombreloc
219flag when needed, so if you come across a situation where the flag is
220necessary but missing, please report it via M-x report-emacs-bug.
677e7496 221
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222On platforms such as Solaris, you can also work around this problem by
223configuring your compiler to use the native linker instead of GNU ld.
677e7496 224
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225** Emacs compiled with Gtk+ crashes when closing a display (x-close-connection).
226
227This happens because of bugs in Gtk+. Gtk+ 2.10 seems to be OK. See bug
228http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=85715.
229
1020d879 230** Emacs compiled with Gtk+ crashes on startup on Cygwin.
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231
232A typical error message is
dc13f3f5 233 ***MEMORY-ERROR***: emacs[5172]: GSlice: failed to allocate 504 bytes
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234 (alignment: 512): Function not implemented
235
236Emacs supplies its own malloc, but glib (part of Gtk+) calls memalign and on
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237Cygwin, that becomes the Cygwin supplied memalign. As malloc is not the
238Cygwin malloc, the Cygwin memalign always returns ENOSYS. A fix for this
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239problem would be welcome.
240
9dc15871 241* General runtime problems
677e7496 242
9dc15871 243** Lisp problems
677e7496 244
9dc15871 245*** Changes made to .el files do not take effect.
677e7496 246
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247You may have forgotten to recompile them into .elc files.
248Then the old .elc files will be loaded, and your changes
249will not be seen. To fix this, do M-x byte-recompile-directory
250and specify the directory that contains the Lisp files.
677e7496 251
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252Emacs should print a warning when loading a .elc file which is older
253than the corresponding .el file.
9ed04369 254
9dc15871 255*** Watch out for .emacs files and EMACSLOADPATH environment vars.
9ed04369 256
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257These control the actions of Emacs.
258~/.emacs is your Emacs init file.
259EMACSLOADPATH overrides which directories the function
260"load" will search.
b87207a0 261
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262If you observe strange problems, check for these and get rid
263of them, then try again.
b87207a0 264
9dc15871 265*** Using epop3.el package causes Emacs to signal an error.
177c0ea7 266
9dc15871 267The error message might be something like this:
177c0ea7 268
9dc15871 269 "Lisp nesting exceeds max-lisp-eval-depth"
177c0ea7 270
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271This happens because epop3 redefines the function gethash, which is a
272built-in primitive beginning with Emacs 21.1. We don't have a patch
273for epop3 that fixes this, but perhaps a newer version of epop3
274corrects that.
177c0ea7 275
9dc15871 276*** Buffers from `with-output-to-temp-buffer' get set up in Help mode.
b87207a0 277
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278Changes in Emacs 20.4 to the hooks used by that function cause
279problems for some packages, specifically BBDB. See the function's
280documentation for the hooks involved. BBDB 2.00.06 fixes the problem.
61638355 281
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282*** The Hyperbole package causes *Help* buffers not to be displayed in
283Help mode due to setting `temp-buffer-show-hook' rather than using
284`add-hook'. Using `(add-hook 'temp-buffer-show-hook
285'help-mode-maybe)' after loading Hyperbole should fix this.
61638355 286
9dc15871 287** Keyboard problems
a47a639f 288
9dc15871 289*** "Compose Character" key does strange things when used as a Meta key.
a47a639f 290
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291If you define one key to serve as both Meta and Compose Character, you
292will get strange results. In previous Emacs versions, this "worked"
293in that the key acted as Meta--that's because the older Emacs versions
294did not try to support Compose Character. Now Emacs tries to do
295character composition in the standard X way. This means that you
296must pick one meaning or the other for any given key.
a47a639f 297
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298You can use both functions (Meta, and Compose Character) if you assign
299them to two different keys.
a47a639f 300
9dc15871 301*** C-z just refreshes the screen instead of suspending Emacs.
61638355 302
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303You are probably using a shell that doesn't support job control, even
304though the system itself is capable of it. Either use a different shell,
305or set the variable `cannot-suspend' to a non-nil value.
61638355 306
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307*** With M-x enable-flow-control, you need to type C-\ twice
308to do incremental search--a single C-\ gets no response.
61638355 309
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310This has been traced to communicating with your machine via kermit,
311with C-\ as the kermit escape character. One solution is to use
312another escape character in kermit. One user did
61638355 313
9dc15871 314 set escape-character 17
61638355 315
9dc15871 316in his .kermrc file, to make C-q the kermit escape character.
61638355 317
9dc15871 318** Mailers and other helper programs
61638355 319
9dc15871 320*** movemail compiled with POP support can't connect to the POP server.
61638355 321
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322Make sure that the `pop' entry in /etc/services, or in the services
323NIS map if your machine uses NIS, has the same port number as the
324entry on the POP server. A common error is for the POP server to be
325listening on port 110, the assigned port for the POP3 protocol, while
326the client is trying to connect on port 109, the assigned port for the
327old POP protocol.
61638355 328
9dc15871 329*** RMAIL gets error getting new mail.
61638355 330
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331RMAIL gets new mail from /usr/spool/mail/$USER using a program
332called `movemail'. This program interlocks with /bin/mail using
333the protocol defined by /bin/mail.
61638355 334
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335There are two different protocols in general use. One of them uses
336the `flock' system call. The other involves creating a lock file;
337`movemail' must be able to write in /usr/spool/mail in order to do
338this. You control which one is used by defining, or not defining,
339the macro MAIL_USE_FLOCK in config.h or the m- or s- file it includes.
340IF YOU DON'T USE THE FORM OF INTERLOCKING THAT IS NORMAL ON YOUR
341SYSTEM, YOU CAN LOSE MAIL!
61638355 342
9dc15871 343If your system uses the lock file protocol, and fascist restrictions
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344prevent ordinary users from writing the lock files in /usr/spool/mail,
345you may need to make `movemail' setgid to a suitable group such as
346`mail'. To do this, use the following commands (as root) after doing the
347make install.
61638355 348
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349 chgrp mail movemail
350 chmod 2755 movemail
61638355 351
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352Installation normally copies movemail from the build directory to an
353installation directory which is usually under /usr/local/lib. The
354installed copy of movemail is usually in the directory
355/usr/local/lib/emacs/VERSION/TARGET. You must change the group and
356mode of the installed copy; changing the group and mode of the build
357directory copy is ineffective.
61638355 358
9dc15871 359*** rcs2log gives you the awk error message "too many fields".
61638355 360
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361This is due to an arbitrary limit in certain versions of awk.
362The solution is to use gawk (GNU awk).
556a9fad 363
9dc15871 364** Problems with hostname resolution
61638355 365
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366*** Emacs fails to understand most Internet host names, even though
367the names work properly with other programs on the same system.
368*** Emacs won't work with X-windows if the value of DISPLAY is HOSTNAME:0.
20dc2215 369*** Gnus can't make contact with the specified host for nntp.
49172314 370
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371This typically happens on Suns and other systems that use shared
372libraries. The cause is that the site has installed a version of the
373shared library which uses a name server--but has not installed a
374similar version of the unshared library which Emacs uses.
96bde66b 375
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376The result is that most programs, using the shared library, work with
377the nameserver, but Emacs does not.
ed0d1d91 378
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379The fix is to install an unshared library that corresponds to what you
380installed in the shared library, and then relink Emacs.
6e1a66dc 381
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382On SunOS 4.1, simply define HAVE_RES_INIT.
383
384If you have already installed the name resolver in the file libresolv.a,
385then you need to compile Emacs to use that library. The easiest way to
386do this is to add to config.h a definition of LIBS_SYSTEM, LIBS_MACHINE
387or LIB_STANDARD which uses -lresolv. Watch out! If you redefine a macro
388that is already in use in your configuration to supply some other libraries,
389be careful not to lose the others.
6e1a66dc 390
9dc15871 391Thus, you could start by adding this to config.h:
3c418e54 392
9dc15871 393#define LIBS_SYSTEM -lresolv
3c418e54 394
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395Then if this gives you an error for redefining a macro, and you see that
396the s- file defines LIBS_SYSTEM as -lfoo -lbar, you could change config.h
397again to say this:
3c418e54 398
9dc15871 399#define LIBS_SYSTEM -lresolv -lfoo -lbar
f9130829 400
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401*** Emacs does not know your host's fully-qualified domain name.
402
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403For example, (system-name) returns some variation on
404"localhost.localdomain", rather the name you were expecting.
405
9dc15871 406You need to configure your machine with a fully qualified domain name,
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407(i.e. a name with at least one ".") either in /etc/hosts,
408/etc/hostname, the NIS, or wherever your system calls for specifying
409this.
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410
411If you cannot fix the configuration, you can set the Lisp variable
412mail-host-address to the value you want.
413
414** NFS and RFS
415
416*** Emacs says it has saved a file, but the file does not actually
417appear on disk.
418
419This can happen on certain systems when you are using NFS, if the
420remote disk is full. It is due to a bug in NFS (or certain NFS
421implementations), and there is apparently nothing Emacs can do to
422detect the problem. Emacs checks the failure codes of all the system
423calls involved in writing a file, including `close'; but in the case
424where the problem occurs, none of those system calls fails.
425
426*** Editing files through RFS gives spurious "file has changed" warnings.
427It is possible that a change in Emacs 18.37 gets around this problem,
428but in case not, here is a description of how to fix the RFS bug that
429causes it.
430
431 There was a serious pair of bugs in the handling of the fsync() system
432 call in the RFS server.
433
434 The first is that the fsync() call is handled as another name for the
435 close() system call (!!). It appears that fsync() is not used by very
436 many programs; Emacs version 18 does an fsync() before closing files
437 to make sure that the bits are on the disk.
438
439 This is fixed by the enclosed patch to the RFS server.
440
441 The second, more serious problem, is that fsync() is treated as a
442 non-blocking system call (i.e., it's implemented as a message that
443 gets sent to the remote system without waiting for a reply). Fsync is
444 a useful tool for building atomic file transactions. Implementing it
445 as a non-blocking RPC call (when the local call blocks until the sync
446 is done) is a bad idea; unfortunately, changing it will break the RFS
447 protocol. No fix was supplied for this problem.
448
449 (as always, your line numbers may vary)
450
451 % rcsdiff -c -r1.2 serversyscall.c
452 RCS file: RCS/serversyscall.c,v
453 retrieving revision 1.2
454 diff -c -r1.2 serversyscall.c
455 *** /tmp/,RCSt1003677 Wed Jan 28 15:15:02 1987
456 --- serversyscall.c Wed Jan 28 15:14:48 1987
457 ***************
458 *** 163,169 ****
459 /*
460 * No return sent for close or fsync!
461 */
462 ! if (syscall == RSYS_close || syscall == RSYS_fsync)
463 proc->p_returnval = deallocate_fd(proc, msg->m_args[0]);
464 else
465 {
466 --- 166,172 ----
467 /*
468 * No return sent for close or fsync!
469 */
470 ! if (syscall == RSYS_close)
471 proc->p_returnval = deallocate_fd(proc, msg->m_args[0]);
472 else
473 {
474
475** PSGML
476
477*** Old versions of the PSGML package use the obsolete variables
478`before-change-function' and `after-change-function', which are no
479longer used by Emacs. Please use PSGML 1.2.3 or later.
480
481*** PSGML conflicts with sgml-mode.
482
483PSGML package uses the same names of some variables (like keymap)
484as built-in sgml-mode.el because it was created as a replacement
485of that package. The conflict will be shown if you load
486sgml-mode.el before psgml.el. E.g. this could happen if you edit
487HTML page and then start to work with SGML or XML file. html-mode
488(from sgml-mode.el) is used for HTML file and loading of psgml.el
489(for sgml-mode or xml-mode) will cause an error.
490
491*** Versions of the PSGML package earlier than 1.0.3 (stable) or 1.1.2
492(alpha) fail to parse DTD files correctly in Emacs 20.3 and later.
493Here is a patch for psgml-parse.el from PSGML 1.0.1 and, probably,
494earlier versions.
495
496--- psgml-parse.el 1998/08/21 19:18:18 1.1
497+++ psgml-parse.el 1998/08/21 19:20:00
498@@ -2383,7 +2383,7 @@ (defun sgml-push-to-entity (entity &opti
499 (setq sgml-buffer-parse-state nil))
500 (cond
501 ((stringp entity) ; a file name
502- (save-excursion (insert-file-contents entity))
503+ (insert-file-contents entity)
504 (setq default-directory (file-name-directory entity)))
505 ((consp (sgml-entity-text entity)) ; external id?
506 (let* ((extid (sgml-entity-text entity))
507
90a02640 508** AUCTeX
9dc15871 509
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510You should not be using a version older than 11.52 if you can avoid
511it.
9dc15871 512
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513*** Emacs 21 freezes when visiting a TeX file with AUCTeX installed.
514
515Emacs 21 needs version 10 or later of AUCTeX; upgrading should solve
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516these problems.
517
90a02640 518*** No colors in AUCTeX with Emacs 21.
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519
520Upgrade to AUC TeX version 10 or later, and make sure it is
521byte-compiled with Emacs 21.
522
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523** PCL-CVS
524
525*** Lines are not updated or new lines are added in the buffer upon commit.
526
527When committing files located higher in the hierarchy than the examined
528directory, some versions of the CVS program return an ambiguous message
529from which PCL-CVS cannot extract the full location of the committed
530files. As a result, the corresponding lines in the PCL-CVS buffer are
531not updated with the new revision of these files, and new lines are
532added to the top-level directory.
533
534This can happen with CVS versions 1.12.8 and 1.12.9. Upgrade to CVS
5351.12.10 or newer to fix this problem.
536
9dc15871
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537** Miscellaneous problems
538
f5578c7f
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539*** Emacs uses 100% of CPU time
540
541This is a known problem with some versions of the Semantic package.
3f37e604
GM
542The solution is to upgrade Semantic to version 2.0pre4 (distributed
543with CEDET 1.0pre4) or later.
f5578c7f 544
9dc15871
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545*** Self-documentation messages are garbled.
546
547This means that the file `etc/DOC-...' doesn't properly correspond
548with the Emacs executable. Redumping Emacs and then installing the
549corresponding pair of files should fix the problem.
550
551*** Programs running under terminal emulator do not recognize `emacs'
552terminal type.
553
554The cause of this is a shell startup file that sets the TERMCAP
555environment variable. The terminal emulator uses that variable to
556provide the information on the special terminal type that Emacs
557emulates.
558
559Rewrite your shell startup file so that it does not change TERMCAP
560in such a case. You could use the following conditional which sets
561it only if it is undefined.
562
563 if ( ! ${?TERMCAP} ) setenv TERMCAP ~/my-termcap-file
564
565Or you could set TERMCAP only when you set TERM--which should not
566happen in a non-login shell.
567
568*** In Shell mode, you get a ^M at the end of every line.
569
570This happens to people who use tcsh, because it is trying to be too
571smart. It sees that the Shell uses terminal type `unknown' and turns
572on the flag to output ^M at the end of each line. You can fix the
573problem by adding this to your .cshrc file:
574
575 if ($?EMACS) then
4b1aaa8b 576 if ("$EMACS" =~ /*) then
9dc15871
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577 unset edit
578 stty -icrnl -onlcr -echo susp ^Z
579 endif
580 endif
581
582*** Emacs startup on GNU/Linux systems (and possibly other systems) is slow.
583
584This can happen if the system is misconfigured and Emacs can't get the
585full qualified domain name, FQDN. You should have your FQDN in the
586/etc/hosts file, something like this:
587
588127.0.0.1 localhost
589129.187.137.82 nuc04.t30.physik.tu-muenchen.de nuc04
590
591The way to set this up may vary on non-GNU systems.
592
593*** Attempting to visit remote files via ange-ftp fails.
594
595If the error message is "ange-ftp-file-modtime: Specified time is not
596representable", then this could happen when `lukemftp' is used as the
597ftp client. This was reported to happen on Debian GNU/Linux, kernel
598version 2.4.3, with `lukemftp' 1.5-5, but might happen on other
599systems as well. To avoid this problem, switch to using the standard
600ftp client. On a Debian system, type
601
602 update-alternatives --config ftp
603
604and then choose /usr/bin/netkit-ftp.
605
606*** JPEG images aren't displayed.
607
608This has been reported when Emacs is built with jpeg-6a library.
609Upgrading to jpeg-6b solves the problem. Configure checks for the
610correct version, but this problem could occur if a binary built
611against a shared libjpeg is run on a system with an older version.
612
613*** Dired is very slow.
614
615This could happen if invocation of the `df' program takes a long
616time. Possible reasons for this include:
617
618 - ClearCase mounted filesystems (VOBs) that sometimes make `df'
619 response time extremely slow (dozens of seconds);
620
621 - slow automounters on some old versions of Unix;
622
623 - slow operation of some versions of `df'.
624
625To work around the problem, you could either (a) set the variable
626`directory-free-space-program' to nil, and thus prevent Emacs from
627invoking `df'; (b) use `df' from the GNU Fileutils package; or
628(c) use CVS, which is Free Software, instead of ClearCase.
629
630*** Versions of the W3 package released before Emacs 21.1 don't run
631under Emacs 21. This fixed in W3 version 4.0pre.47.
632
633*** The LDAP support rely on ldapsearch program from OpenLDAP version 2.
634
635It can fail to work with ldapsearch program from OpenLDAP version 1.
636Version 1 of OpenLDAP is now deprecated. If you are still using it,
637please upgrade to version 2. As a temporary workaround, remove
638argument "-x" from the variable `ldap-ldapsearch-args'.
639
640*** ps-print commands fail to find prologue files ps-prin*.ps.
641
642This can happen if you use an old version of X-Symbol package: it
643defines compatibility functions which trick ps-print into thinking it
644runs in XEmacs, and look for the prologue files in a wrong directory.
645
646The solution is to upgrade X-Symbol to a later version.
647
648*** On systems with shared libraries you might encounter run-time errors
649from the dynamic linker telling you that it is unable to find some
650shared libraries, for instance those for Xaw3d or image support.
651These errors mean Emacs has been linked with a library whose shared
652library is not in the default search path of the dynamic linker.
653
654Similar problems could prevent Emacs from building, since the build
655process invokes Emacs several times.
656
657On many systems, it is possible to set LD_LIBRARY_PATH in your
658environment to specify additional directories where shared libraries
659can be found.
660
661Other systems allow to set LD_RUN_PATH in a similar way, but before
662Emacs is linked. With LD_RUN_PATH set, the linker will include a
663specified run-time search path in the executable.
664
665On some systems, Emacs can crash due to problems with dynamic
666linking. Specifically, on SGI Irix 6.5, crashes were reported with
667backtraces like this:
668
669 (dbx) where
670 0 strcmp(0xf49239d, 0x4031184, 0x40302b4, 0x12, 0xf0000000, 0xf4923aa, 0x0, 0x492ddb2) ["/xlv22/ficus-jan23/work/irix/lib/libc/libc_n32_M3_ns/strings/strcmp.s":35, 0xfb7e480]
671 1 general_find_symbol(0xf49239d, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0xf0000000, 0xf4923aa, 0x0, 0x492ddb2)
672 ["/comp2/mtibuild/v73/workarea/v7.3/rld/rld.c":2140, 0xfb65a98]
673 2 resolve_symbol(0xf49239d, 0x4031184, 0x0, 0xfbdd438, 0x0, 0xf4923aa, 0x0, 0x492ddb2)
674 ["/comp2/mtibuild/v73/workarea/v7.3/rld/rld.c":1947, 0xfb657e4]
675 3 lazy_text_resolve(0xd18, 0x1a3, 0x40302b4, 0x12, 0xf0000000, 0xf4923aa, 0x0, 0x492ddb2)
676 ["/comp2/mtibuild/v73/workarea/v7.3/rld/rld.c":997, 0xfb64d44]
677 4 _rld_text_resolve(0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0)
678 ["/comp2/mtibuild/v73/workarea/v7.3/rld/rld_bridge.s":175, 0xfb6032c]
679
680(`rld' is the dynamic linker.) We don't know yet why this
681happens, but setting the environment variable LD_BIND_NOW to 1 (which
682forces the dynamic linker to bind all shared objects early on) seems
683to work around the problem.
684
685Please refer to the documentation of your dynamic linker for details.
686
687*** You request inverse video, and the first Emacs frame is in inverse
688video, but later frames are not in inverse video.
689
690This can happen if you have an old version of the custom library in
691your search path for Lisp packages. Use M-x list-load-path-shadows to
692check whether this is true. If it is, delete the old custom library.
693
694*** When you run Ispell from Emacs, it reports a "misalignment" error.
695
696This can happen if you compiled the Ispell program to use ASCII
697characters only and then try to use it from Emacs with non-ASCII
698characters, like Latin-1. The solution is to recompile Ispell with
699support for 8-bit characters.
700
701To see whether your Ispell program supports 8-bit characters, type
702this at your shell's prompt:
703
704 ispell -vv
705
706and look in the output for the string "NO8BIT". If Ispell says
707"!NO8BIT (8BIT)", your speller supports 8-bit characters; otherwise it
708does not.
709
710To rebuild Ispell with 8-bit character support, edit the local.h file
711in the Ispell distribution and make sure it does _not_ define NO8BIT.
712Then rebuild the speller.
713
714Another possible cause for "misalignment" error messages is that the
715version of Ispell installed on your machine is old. Upgrade.
716
717Yet another possibility is that you are trying to spell-check a word
718in a language that doesn't fit the dictionary you choose for use by
719Ispell. (Ispell can only spell-check one language at a time, because
720it uses a single dictionary.) Make sure that the text you are
721spelling and the dictionary used by Ispell conform to each other.
722
723If your spell-checking program is Aspell, it has been reported that if
724you have a personal configuration file (normally ~/.aspell.conf), it
725can cause this error. Remove that file, execute `ispell-kill-ispell'
726in Emacs, and then try spell-checking again.
727
728* Runtime problems related to font handling
729
730** Under X11, some characters appear as hollow boxes.
731
732Each X11 font covers just a fraction of the characters that Emacs
733supports. To display the whole range of Emacs characters requires
734many different fonts, collected into a fontset.
735
736If some of the fonts called for in your fontset do not exist on your X
737server, then the characters that have no font appear as hollow boxes.
738You can remedy the problem by installing additional fonts.
f9130829 739
9dc15871 740The intlfonts distribution includes a full spectrum of fonts that can
9222ba5e
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741display all the characters Emacs supports. The etl-unicode collection
742of fonts (available from <URL:ftp://ftp.x.org/contrib/fonts/> and
743<URL:ftp://ftp.xfree86.org/pub/mirror/X.Org/contrib/fonts/>) includes
744fonts that can display many Unicode characters; they can also be used
745by ps-print and ps-mule to print Unicode characters.
f9130829 746
9dc15871
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747Another cause of this for specific characters is fonts which have a
748missing glyph and no default character. This is known to occur for
749character number 160 (no-break space) in some fonts, such as Lucida
750but Emacs sets the display table for the unibyte and Latin-1 version
751of this character to display a space.
f9130829 752
9dc15871 753** Under X11, some characters appear improperly aligned in their lines.
f9130829 754
9222ba5e
EZ
755You may have bad X11 fonts; try installing the intlfonts distribution
756or the etl-unicode collection (see the previous entry).
f9130829 757
9dc15871 758** Certain fonts make each line take one pixel more than it "should".
f9130829 759
9dc15871
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760This is because these fonts contain characters a little taller
761than the font's nominal height. Emacs needs to make sure that
762lines do not overlap.
ed85f61d 763
9dc15871 764** Loading fonts is very slow.
b300fd77 765
9dc15871
EZ
766You might be getting scalable fonts instead of precomputed bitmaps.
767Known scalable font directories are "Type1" and "Speedo". A font
768directory contains scalable fonts if it contains the file
769"fonts.scale".
b300fd77 770
9dc15871
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771If this is so, re-order your X windows font path to put the scalable
772font directories last. See the documentation of `xset' for details.
ed85f61d 773
9dc15871
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774With some X servers, it may be necessary to take the scalable font
775directories out of your path entirely, at least for Emacs 19.26.
776Changes in the future may make this unnecessary.
ed85f61d 777
9dc15871 778** Font Lock displays portions of the buffer in incorrect faces.
fa2301bf 779
9dc15871
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780By far the most frequent cause of this is a parenthesis `(' or a brace
781`{' in column zero. Font Lock assumes that such a paren is outside of
782any comment or string. This is of course not true in general, but the
783vast majority of well-formatted program source files don't have such
784parens, and therefore this assumption is used to allow optimizations
785in Font Lock's syntactical analysis. These optimizations avoid some
786pathological cases where jit-lock, the Just-in-Time fontification
787introduced with Emacs 21.1, could significantly slow down scrolling
788through the buffer, especially scrolling backwards, and also jumping
789to the end of a very large buffer.
ed85f61d 790
bf247b6e 791Beginning with version 22.1, a parenthesis or a brace in column zero
9dc15871
EZ
792is highlighted in bold-red face if it is inside a string or a comment,
793to indicate that it could interfere with Font Lock (and also with
794indentation) and should be moved or escaped with a backslash.
d0cf6c7d 795
9dc15871
EZ
796If you don't use large buffers, or have a very fast machine which
797makes the delays insignificant, you can avoid the incorrect
798fontification by setting the variable
799`font-lock-beginning-of-syntax-function' to a nil value. (This must
800be done _after_ turning on Font Lock.)
d0cf6c7d 801
9dc15871
EZ
802Another alternative is to avoid a paren in column zero. For example,
803in a Lisp string you could precede the paren with a backslash.
d0cf6c7d 804
9dc15871
EZ
805** With certain fonts, when the cursor appears on a character, the
806character doesn't appear--you get a solid box instead.
d0cf6c7d 807
9dc15871
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808One user on a Linux-based GNU system reported that this problem went
809away with installation of a new X server. The failing server was
810XFree86 3.1.1. XFree86 3.1.2 works.
c289e7f0 811
9dc15871 812** Characters are displayed as empty boxes or with wrong font under X.
339b95d5 813
9dc15871
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814This can occur when two different versions of FontConfig are used.
815For example, XFree86 4.3.0 has one version and Gnome usually comes
816with a newer version. Emacs compiled with --with-gtk will then use
817the newer version. In most cases the problem can be temporarily
818fixed by stopping the application that has the error (it can be
819Emacs or any other application), removing ~/.fonts.cache-1,
820and then start the application again.
821If removing ~/.fonts.cache-1 and restarting doesn't help, the
822application with problem must be recompiled with the same version
823of FontConfig as the rest of the system uses. For KDE, it is
824sufficient to recompile Qt.
339b95d5 825
9dc15871 826** Emacs pauses for several seconds when changing the default font.
339b95d5 827
9dc15871
EZ
828This has been reported for fvwm 2.2.5 and the window manager of KDE
8292.1. The reason for the pause is Xt waiting for a ConfigureNotify
830event from the window manager, which the window manager doesn't send.
831Xt stops waiting after a default timeout of usually 5 seconds.
339b95d5 832
9dc15871 833A workaround for this is to add something like
b87207a0 834
9dc15871 835emacs.waitForWM: false
f936978f 836
9dc15871
EZ
837to your X resources. Alternatively, add `(wait-for-wm . nil)' to a
838frame's parameter list, like this:
6fb6f3ac 839
9dc15871 840 (modify-frame-parameters nil '((wait-for-wm . nil)))
b87207a0 841
9dc15871 842(this should go into your `.emacs' file).
b87207a0 843
9dc15871 844** Underlines appear at the wrong position.
b87207a0 845
9dc15871
EZ
846This is caused by fonts having a wrong UNDERLINE_POSITION property.
847Examples are the font 7x13 on XFree prior to version 4.1, or the jmk
848neep font from the Debian xfonts-jmk package. To circumvent this
849problem, set x-use-underline-position-properties to nil in your
850`.emacs'.
b87207a0 851
9dc15871
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852To see what is the value of UNDERLINE_POSITION defined by the font,
853type `xlsfonts -lll FONT' and look at the font's UNDERLINE_POSITION
854property.
e085efdb 855
9dc15871 856** When using Exceed, fonts sometimes appear too tall.
fa99e2a4 857
9dc15871
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858When the display is set to an Exceed X-server and fonts are specified
859(either explicitly with the -fn option or implicitly with X resources)
860then the fonts may appear "too tall". The actual character sizes are
861correct but there is too much vertical spacing between rows, which
862gives the appearance of "double spacing".
c8d9b4ee 863
9dc15871
EZ
864To prevent this, turn off the Exceed's "automatic font substitution"
865feature (in the font part of the configuration window).
fe445893 866
405b495f
GM
867** Subscript/superscript text in TeX is hard to read.
868
869If `tex-fontify-script' is non-nil, tex-mode displays
870subscript/superscript text in the faces subscript/superscript, which
871are smaller than the normal font and lowered/raised. With some fonts,
872nested superscripts (say) can be hard to read. Switching to a
873different font, or changing your antialiasing setting (on an LCD
874screen), can both make the problem disappear. Alternatively, customize
875the following variables: tex-font-script-display (how much to
876lower/raise); tex-suscript-height-ratio (how much smaller than
877normal); tex-suscript-height-minimum (minimum height).
878
9dc15871 879* Internationalization problems
c8d9b4ee 880
de25ebb8
RS
881** M-{ does not work on a Spanish PC keyboard.
882
883Many Spanish keyboards seem to ignore that combination. Emacs can't
884do anything about it.
885
9dc15871 886** Characters from the mule-unicode charsets aren't displayed under X.
d9810886 887
9dc15871
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888XFree86 4 contains many fonts in iso10646-1 encoding which have
889minimal character repertoires (whereas the encoding part of the font
890name is meant to be a reasonable indication of the repertoire
891according to the XLFD spec). Emacs may choose one of these to display
892characters from the mule-unicode charsets and then typically won't be
893able to find the glyphs to display many characters. (Check with C-u
894C-x = .) To avoid this, you may need to use a fontset which sets the
895font for the mule-unicode sets explicitly. E.g. to use GNU unifont,
896include in the fontset spec:
d9810886 897
9dc15871
EZ
898mule-unicode-2500-33ff:-gnu-unifont-*-iso10646-1,\
899mule-unicode-e000-ffff:-gnu-unifont-*-iso10646-1,\
900mule-unicode-0100-24ff:-gnu-unifont-*-iso10646-1
d04b2e49 901
9dc15871 902** The UTF-8/16/7 coding systems don't encode CJK (Far Eastern) characters.
d9810886 903
ce9b56fe
KH
904Emacs directly supports the Unicode BMP whose code points are in the
905ranges 0000-33ff and e000-ffff, and indirectly supports the parts of
906CJK characters belonging to these legacy charsets:
907
908 GB2312, Big5, JISX0208, JISX0212, JISX0213-1, JISX0213-2, KSC5601
909
910The latter support is done in Utf-Translate-Cjk mode (turned on by
911default). Which Unicode CJK characters are decoded into which Emacs
912charset is decided by the current language environment. For instance,
913in Chinese-GB, most of them are decoded into chinese-gb2312.
d9810886 914
9dc15871
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915If you read UTF-8 data with code points outside these ranges, the
916characters appear in the buffer as raw bytes of the original UTF-8
917(composed into a single quasi-character) and they will be written back
918correctly as UTF-8, assuming you don't break the composed sequences.
919If you read such characters from UTF-16 or UTF-7 data, they are
920substituted with the Unicode `replacement character', and you lose
921information.
aa99760e 922
9dc15871 923** Mule-UCS loads very slowly.
aa99760e 924
9dc15871
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925Changes to Emacs internals interact badly with Mule-UCS's `un-define'
926library, which is the usual interface to Mule-UCS. Apply the
927following patch to Mule-UCS 0.84 and rebuild it. That will help,
928though loading will still be slower than in Emacs 20. (Some
929distributions, such as Debian, may already have applied such a patch.)
086b25d3 930
9dc15871
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931--- lisp/un-define.el 6 Mar 2001 22:41:38 -0000 1.30
932+++ lisp/un-define.el 19 Apr 2002 18:34:26 -0000
933@@ -610,13 +624,21 @@ by calling post-read-conversion and pre-
086b25d3 934
9dc15871
EZ
935 (mapcar
936 (lambda (x)
937- (mapcar
938- (lambda (y)
939- (mucs-define-coding-system
940- (nth 0 y) (nth 1 y) (nth 2 y)
941- (nth 3 y) (nth 4 y) (nth 5 y) (nth 6 y))
942- (coding-system-put (car y) 'alias-coding-systems (list (car x))))
943- (cdr x)))
944+ (if (fboundp 'register-char-codings)
945+ ;; Mule 5, where we don't need the eol-type specified and
946+ ;; register-char-codings may be very slow for these coding
947+ ;; system definitions.
948+ (let ((y (cadr x)))
949+ (mucs-define-coding-system
950+ (car x) (nth 1 y) (nth 2 y)
951+ (nth 3 y) (nth 4 y) (nth 5 y)))
952+ (mapcar
953+ (lambda (y)
954+ (mucs-define-coding-system
955+ (nth 0 y) (nth 1 y) (nth 2 y)
956+ (nth 3 y) (nth 4 y) (nth 5 y) (nth 6 y))
957+ (coding-system-put (car y) 'alias-coding-systems (list (car x)))))
958+ (cdr x)))
959 `((utf-8
960 (utf-8-unix
961 ?u "UTF-8 coding system"
086b25d3 962
9dc15871
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963Note that Emacs has native support for Unicode, roughly equivalent to
964Mule-UCS's, so you may not need it.
086b25d3 965
d87ceee0
KH
966** Mule-UCS compilation problem.
967
968Emacs of old versions and XEmacs byte-compile the form `(progn progn
969...)' the same way as `(progn ...)', but Emacs of version 21.3 and the
970later process that form just as interpreter does, that is, as `progn'
971variable reference. Apply the following patch to Mule-UCS 0.84 to
972make it compiled by the latest Emacs.
973
974--- mucs-ccl.el 2 Sep 2005 00:42:23 -0000 1.1.1.1
975+++ mucs-ccl.el 2 Sep 2005 01:31:51 -0000 1.3
976@@ -639,10 +639,14 @@
977 (mucs-notify-embedment 'mucs-ccl-required name)
978 (setq ccl-pgm-list (cdr ccl-pgm-list)))
979 ; (message "MCCLREGFIN:%S" result)
980- `(progn
981- (setq mucs-ccl-facility-alist
982- (quote ,mucs-ccl-facility-alist))
983- ,@result)))
984+ ;; The only way the function is used in this package is included
985+ ;; in `mucs-package-definition-end-hook' value, where it must
986+ ;; return (possibly empty) *list* of forms. Do this. Do not rely
ade79051 987+ ;; on byte compiler to remove extra `progn's in `(progn ...)'
d87ceee0
KH
988+ ;; form.
989+ `((setq mucs-ccl-facility-alist
990+ (quote ,mucs-ccl-facility-alist))
991+ ,@result)))
ade79051 992
d87ceee0
KH
993 ;;; Add hook for embedding translation informations to a package.
994 (add-hook 'mucs-package-definition-end-hook
995
9dc15871 996** Accented ISO-8859-1 characters are displayed as | or _.
d6b7de9b
EZ
997
998Try other font set sizes (S-mouse-1). If the problem persists with
999other sizes as well, your text is corrupted, probably through software
1000that is not 8-bit clean. If the problem goes away with another font
1001size, it's probably because some fonts pretend to be ISO-8859-1 fonts
1002when they are really ASCII fonts. In particular the schumacher-clean
1003fonts have this bug in some versions of X.
1004
1005To see what glyphs are included in a font, use `xfd', like this:
1006
1007 xfd -fn -schumacher-clean-medium-r-normal--12-120-75-75-c-60-iso8859-1
1008
1009If this shows only ASCII glyphs, the font is indeed the source of the
1010problem.
1011
1012The solution is to remove the corresponding lines from the appropriate
1013`fonts.alias' file, then run `mkfontdir' in that directory, and then run
1014`xset fp rehash'.
1015
9dc15871 1016** The `oc-unicode' package doesn't work with Emacs 21.
b87207a0 1017
9dc15871
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1018This package tries to define more private charsets than there are free
1019slots now. The current built-in Unicode support is actually more
1020flexible. (Use option `utf-translate-cjk-mode' if you need CJK
1021support.) Files encoded as emacs-mule using oc-unicode aren't
1022generally read correctly by Emacs 21.
b87207a0 1023
9dc15871 1024** After a while, Emacs slips into unibyte mode.
4e0bd469 1025
9dc15871
EZ
1026The VM mail package, which is not part of Emacs, sometimes does
1027 (standard-display-european t)
1028That should be changed to
1029 (standard-display-european 1 t)
4e0bd469 1030
9dc15871 1031* X runtime problems
4e0bd469 1032
9dc15871 1033** X keyboard problems
4e0bd469 1034
9dc15871 1035*** You "lose characters" after typing Compose Character key.
4e0bd469 1036
9dc15871
EZ
1037This is because the Compose Character key is defined as the keysym
1038Multi_key, and Emacs (seeing that) does the proper X11
1039character-composition processing. If you don't want your Compose key
1040to do that, you can redefine it with xmodmap.
4e0bd469 1041
9dc15871 1042For example, here's one way to turn it into a Meta key:
61638355 1043
9dc15871 1044 xmodmap -e "keysym Multi_key = Meta_L"
61638355 1045
9dc15871
EZ
1046If all users at your site of a particular keyboard prefer Meta to
1047Compose, you can make the remapping happen automatically by adding the
1048xmodmap command to the xdm setup script for that display.
61638355 1049
9dc15871 1050*** Using X Windows, control-shift-leftbutton makes Emacs hang.
61638355 1051
9dc15871 1052Use the shell command `xset bc' to make the old X Menu package work.
61638355 1053
9f4f9273 1054*** C-SPC fails to work on Fedora GNU/Linux (or with fcitx input method).
09352e8f
RS
1055
1056Fedora Core 4 steals the C-SPC key by default for the `iiimx' program
1057which is the input method for some languages. It blocks Emacs users
1058from using the C-SPC key for `set-mark-command'.
1059
1060One solutions is to remove the `<Ctrl>space' from the `Iiimx' file
1061which can be found in the `/usr/lib/X11/app-defaults' directory.
1062However, that requires root access.
1063
1064Another is to specify `Emacs*useXIM: false' in your X resources.
1065
1066Another is to build Emacs with the `--without-xim' configure option.
1067
2fb18d13
KH
1068The same problem happens on any other system if you are using fcitx
1069(Chinese input method) which by default use C-SPC for toggling. If
1070you want to use fcitx with Emacs, you have two choices. Toggle fcitx
1071by another key (e.g. C-\) by modifying ~/.fcitx/config, or be
1072accustomed to use C-@ for `set-mark-command'.
1073
9dc15871 1074*** M-SPC seems to be ignored as input.
61638355 1075
9dc15871
EZ
1076See if your X server is set up to use this as a command
1077for character composition.
a953a8d3 1078
9dc15871 1079*** The S-C-t key combination doesn't get passed to Emacs on X.
2ebf6139 1080
9dc15871
EZ
1081This happens because some X configurations assign the Ctrl-Shift-t
1082combination the same meaning as the Multi_key. The offending
1083definition is in the file `...lib/X11/locale/iso8859-1/Compose'; there
1084might be other similar combinations which are grabbed by X for similar
1085purposes.
ec383c7d 1086
9dc15871
EZ
1087We think that this can be countermanded with the `xmodmap' utility, if
1088you want to be able to bind one of these key sequences within Emacs.
cc2f2825 1089
9dc15871 1090*** Under X, C-v and/or other keys don't work.
1d297d9b 1091
9dc15871
EZ
1092These may have been intercepted by your window manager. In
1093particular, AfterStep 1.6 is reported to steal C-v in its default
1094configuration. Various Meta keys are also likely to be taken by the
1095configuration of the `feel'. See the WM's documentation for how to
1096change this.
8bd90f0a 1097
9dc15871 1098*** Clicking C-mouse-2 in the scroll bar doesn't split the window.
8bd90f0a 1099
9dc15871
EZ
1100This currently doesn't work with scroll-bar widgets (and we don't know
1101a good way of implementing it with widgets). If Emacs is configured
1102--without-toolkit-scroll-bars, C-mouse-2 on the scroll bar does work.
8f4df059 1103
9dc15871
EZ
1104*** Inability to send an Alt-modified key, when Emacs is communicating
1105directly with an X server.
8f4df059 1106
9dc15871
EZ
1107If you have tried to bind an Alt-modified key as a command, and it
1108does not work to type the command, the first thing you should check is
1109whether the key is getting through to Emacs. To do this, type C-h c
1110followed by the Alt-modified key. C-h c should say what kind of event
1111it read. If it says it read an Alt-modified key, then make sure you
1112have made the key binding correctly.
b098c23c 1113
9dc15871
EZ
1114If C-h c reports an event that doesn't have the Alt modifier, it may
1115be because your X server has no key for the Alt modifier. The X
1116server that comes from MIT does not set up the Alt modifier by
1117default.
224a0b4d 1118
9dc15871 1119If your keyboard has keys named Alt, you can enable them as follows:
6343352f 1120
9dc15871
EZ
1121 xmodmap -e 'add mod2 = Alt_L'
1122 xmodmap -e 'add mod2 = Alt_R'
6343352f 1123
9dc15871
EZ
1124If the keyboard has just one key named Alt, then only one of those
1125commands is needed. The modifier `mod2' is a reasonable choice if you
1126are using an unmodified MIT version of X. Otherwise, choose any
1127modifier bit not otherwise used.
6343352f 1128
9dc15871
EZ
1129If your keyboard does not have keys named Alt, you can use some other
1130keys. Use the keysym command in xmodmap to turn a function key (or
1131some other 'spare' key) into Alt_L or into Alt_R, and then use the
1132commands show above to make them modifier keys.
6343352f 1133
9dc15871
EZ
1134Note that if you have Alt keys but no Meta keys, Emacs translates Alt
1135into Meta. This is because of the great importance of Meta in Emacs.
cc2f2825 1136
9dc15871 1137** Window-manager and toolkit-related problems
cc2f2825 1138
0e71e4a8
CY
1139*** Gnome: Emacs receives input directly from the keyboard, bypassing XIM.
1140
1141This seems to happen when gnome-settings-daemon version 2.12 or later
1142is running. If gnome-settings-daemon is not running, Emacs receives
1143input through XIM without any problem. Furthermore, this seems only
1144to happen in *.UTF-8 locales; zh_CN.GB2312 and zh_CN.GBK locales, for
1145example, work fine. A bug report has been filed in the Gnome
1146bugzilla: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=357032
1147
9dc15871 1148*** Gnome: Emacs' xterm-mouse-mode doesn't work on the Gnome terminal.
cc2f2825 1149
9dc15871
EZ
1150A symptom of this bug is that double-clicks insert a control sequence
1151into the buffer. The reason this happens is an apparent
1152incompatibility of the Gnome terminal with Xterm, which also affects
1153other programs using the Xterm mouse interface. A problem report has
1154been filed.
1f42cc71 1155
9dc15871
EZ
1156*** KDE: When running on KDE, colors or fonts are not as specified for Emacs,
1157or messed up.
1f42cc71 1158
9dc15871
EZ
1159For example, you could see background you set for Emacs only in the
1160empty portions of the Emacs display, while characters have some other
1161background.
1f42cc71 1162
9dc15871
EZ
1163This happens because KDE's defaults apply its color and font
1164definitions even to applications that weren't compiled for KDE. The
1165solution is to uncheck the "Apply fonts and colors to non-KDE apps"
1166option in Preferences->Look&Feel->Style (KDE 2). In KDE 3, this option
1167is in the "Colors" section, rather than "Style".
1f42cc71 1168
9dc15871
EZ
1169Alternatively, if you do want the KDE defaults to apply to other
1170applications, but not to Emacs, you could modify the file `Emacs.ad'
1171(should be in the `/usr/share/apps/kdisplay/app-defaults/' directory)
1172so that it doesn't set the default background and foreground only for
1173Emacs. For example, make sure the following resources are either not
1174present or commented out:
f4f4ee4d 1175
9dc15871
EZ
1176 Emacs.default.attributeForeground
1177 Emacs.default.attributeBackground
1178 Emacs*Foreground
1179 Emacs*Background
0cb26e21 1180
f6021509
JD
1181It is also reported that a bug in the gtk-engines-qt engine can cause this if
1182Emacs is compiled with Gtk+.
1183The bug is fixed in version 0.7 or newer of gtk-engines-qt.
1184
9dc15871 1185*** KDE: Emacs hangs on KDE when a large portion of text is killed.
f4f4ee4d 1186
9dc15871
EZ
1187This is caused by a bug in the KDE applet `klipper' which periodically
1188requests the X clipboard contents from applications. Early versions
8576f724 1189of klipper don't implement the ICCCM protocol for large selections,
9dc15871 1190which leads to Emacs being flooded with selection requests. After a
b11e8823 1191while, Emacs may print a message:
f4f4ee4d 1192
9dc15871 1193 Timed out waiting for property-notify event
c31138a1 1194
b11e8823
JD
1195A workaround is to not use `klipper'. An upgrade to the `klipper' that
1196comes with KDE 3.3 or later also solves the problem.
c31138a1 1197
9dc15871 1198*** CDE: Frames may cover dialogs they created when using CDE.
c31138a1 1199
9dc15871
EZ
1200This can happen if you have "Allow Primary Windows On Top" enabled which
1201seems to be the default in the Common Desktop Environment.
1202To change, go in to "Desktop Controls" -> "Window Style Manager"
1203and uncheck "Allow Primary Windows On Top".
f4f4ee4d 1204
9dc15871
EZ
1205*** Xaw3d : When using Xaw3d scroll bars without arrows, the very first mouse
1206click in a scroll bar might be ignored by the scroll bar widget. This
1207is probably a bug in Xaw3d; when Xaw3d is compiled with arrows, the
1208problem disappears.
0c6456ad 1209
9dc15871
EZ
1210*** Xaw: There are known binary incompatibilities between Xaw, Xaw3d, neXtaw,
1211XawM and the few other derivatives of Xaw. So when you compile with
1212one of these, it may not work to dynamically link with another one.
1213For example, strange problems, such as Emacs exiting when you type
1214"C-x 1", were reported when Emacs compiled with Xaw3d and libXaw was
1215used with neXtaw at run time.
b1739b51 1216
9dc15871
EZ
1217The solution is to rebuild Emacs with the toolkit version you actually
1218want to use, or set LD_PRELOAD to preload the same toolkit version you
1219built Emacs with.
b1739b51 1220
9dc15871 1221*** Open Motif: Problems with file dialogs in Emacs built with Open Motif.
b1739b51 1222
9dc15871
EZ
1223When Emacs 21 is built with Open Motif 2.1, it can happen that the
1224graphical file dialog boxes do not work properly. The "OK", "Filter"
1225and "Cancel" buttons do not respond to mouse clicks. Dragging the
1226file dialog window usually causes the buttons to work again.
b1739b51 1227
9dc15871
EZ
1228The solution is to use LessTif instead. LessTif is a free replacement
1229for Motif. See the file INSTALL for information on how to do this.
b1739b51 1230
9dc15871
EZ
1231Another workaround is not to use the mouse to trigger file prompts,
1232but to use the keyboard. This way, you will be prompted for a file in
1233the minibuffer instead of a graphical file dialog.
b1739b51 1234
9dc15871 1235*** LessTif: Problems in Emacs built with LessTif.
e9a52cfe 1236
9dc15871
EZ
1237The problems seem to depend on the version of LessTif and the Motif
1238emulation for which it is set up.
e9a52cfe 1239
9dc15871 1240Only the Motif 1.2 emulation seems to be stable enough in LessTif.
880ea925 1241LessTif 0.92-17's Motif 1.2 emulation seems to work okay on FreeBSD.
9dc15871
EZ
1242On GNU/Linux systems, lesstif-0.92.6 configured with "./configure
1243--enable-build-12 --enable-default-12" is reported to be the most
1244successful. The binary GNU/Linux package
1245lesstif-devel-0.92.0-1.i386.rpm was reported to have problems with
1246menu placement.
e9a52cfe 1247
9dc15871
EZ
1248On some systems, even with Motif 1.2 emulation, Emacs occasionally
1249locks up, grabbing all mouse and keyboard events. We still don't know
1250what causes these problems; they are not reproducible by Emacs
1251developers.
e9a52cfe 1252
9dc15871 1253*** Motif: The Motif version of Emacs paints the screen a solid color.
e9a52cfe 1254
9dc15871 1255This has been observed to result from the following X resource:
e9a52cfe 1256
9dc15871 1257 Emacs*default.attributeFont: -*-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-140-*-*-*-*-iso8859-*
e9a52cfe 1258
9dc15871
EZ
1259That the resource has this effect indicates a bug in something, but we
1260do not yet know what. If it is an Emacs bug, we hope someone can
1261explain what the bug is so we can fix it. In the mean time, removing
1262the resource prevents the problem.
f25eb4f7 1263
9dc15871 1264** General X problems
f25eb4f7 1265
9dc15871 1266*** Redisplay using X11 is much slower than previous Emacs versions.
f25eb4f7 1267
9dc15871
EZ
1268We've noticed that certain X servers draw the text much slower when
1269scroll bars are on the left. We don't know why this happens. If this
1270happens to you, you can work around it by putting the scroll bars
1271on the right (as they were in Emacs 19).
f25eb4f7 1272
9dc15871 1273Here's how to do this:
f25eb4f7 1274
9dc15871 1275 (set-scroll-bar-mode 'right)
f25eb4f7 1276
9dc15871
EZ
1277If you're not sure whether (or how much) this problem affects you,
1278try that and see how much difference it makes. To set things back
1279to normal, do
edd7d3be 1280
9dc15871 1281 (set-scroll-bar-mode 'left)
edd7d3be 1282
9dc15871 1283*** Error messages about undefined colors on X.
edd7d3be 1284
9dc15871 1285The messages might say something like this:
42303132 1286
9dc15871 1287 Unable to load color "grey95"
42303132 1288
9dc15871 1289(typically, in the `*Messages*' buffer), or something like this:
42303132 1290
9dc15871 1291 Error while displaying tooltip: (error Undefined color lightyellow)
42303132 1292
9dc15871
EZ
1293These problems could happen if some other X program has used up too
1294many colors of the X palette, leaving Emacs with insufficient system
1295resources to load all the colors it needs.
42303132 1296
9dc15871 1297A solution is to exit the offending X programs before starting Emacs.
42303132 1298
9257b627
EZ
1299"undefined color" messages can also occur if the RgbPath entry in the
1300X configuration file is incorrect, or the rgb.txt file is not where
1301X expects to find it.
1302
9dc15871 1303*** Improving performance with slow X connections.
f3d6f4ee 1304
9dc15871
EZ
1305There are several ways to improve this performance, any subset of which can
1306be carried out at the same time:
f3d6f4ee 1307
9dc15871
EZ
13081) If you don't need X Input Methods (XIM) for entering text in some
1309 language you use, you can improve performance on WAN links by using
1310 the X resource useXIM to turn off use of XIM. This does not affect
1311 the use of Emacs' own input methods, which are part of the Leim
1312 package.
f3d6f4ee 1313
9dc15871 13142) If the connection is very slow, you might also want to consider
634e516b
EZ
1315 switching off scroll bars, menu bar, and tool bar. Adding the
1316 following forms to your .emacs file will accomplish that, but only
1317 after the the initial frame is displayed:
1318
1319 (scroll-bar-mode -1)
1320 (menu-bar-mode -1)
1321 (tool-bar-mode -1)
1322
1323 For still quicker startup, put these X resources in your .Xdefaults
1324 file:
1325
1326 Emacs.verticalScrollBars: off
1327 Emacs.menuBar: off
1328 Emacs.toolBar: off
f3d6f4ee 1329
9dc15871
EZ
13303) Use ssh to forward the X connection, and enable compression on this
1331 forwarded X connection (ssh -XC remotehostname emacs ...).
9f83d8b3 1332
9dc15871
EZ
13334) Use lbxproxy on the remote end of the connection. This is an interface
1334 to the low bandwidth X extension in most modern X servers, which
1335 improves performance dramatically, at the slight expense of correctness
1336 of the X protocol. lbxproxy acheives the performance gain by grouping
1337 several X requests in one TCP packet and sending them off together,
880ea925 1338 instead of requiring a round-trip for each X request in a separate
9dc15871
EZ
1339 packet. The switches that seem to work best for emacs are:
1340 -noatomsfile -nowinattr -cheaterrors -cheatevents
1341 Note that the -nograbcmap option is known to cause problems.
1342 For more about lbxproxy, see:
1343 http://www.xfree86.org/4.3.0/lbxproxy.1.html
9f83d8b3 1344
34431988
KS
13455) If copying and killing is slow, try to disable the interaction with the
1346 native system's clipboard by adding these lines to your .emacs file:
1347 (setq interprogram-cut-function nil)
1348 (setq interprogram-paste-function nil)
1349
9dc15871 1350*** Emacs gives the error, Couldn't find per display information.
9f83d8b3 1351
9dc15871
EZ
1352This can result if the X server runs out of memory because Emacs uses
1353a large number of fonts. On systems where this happens, C-h h is
1354likely to cause it.
f29d1e75 1355
9dc15871 1356We do not know of a way to prevent the problem.
f29d1e75 1357
9dc15871 1358*** Emacs does not notice when you release the mouse.
c24be289 1359
9dc15871
EZ
1360There are reports that this happened with (some) Microsoft mice and
1361that replacing the mouse made it stop.
c24be289 1362
9dc15871 1363*** You can't select from submenus (in the X toolkit version).
b35319bf 1364
9dc15871
EZ
1365On certain systems, mouse-tracking and selection in top-level menus
1366works properly with the X toolkit, but neither of them works when you
1367bring up a submenu (such as Bookmarks or Compare or Apply Patch, in
1368the Files menu).
b35319bf 1369
9dc15871
EZ
1370This works on most systems. There is speculation that the failure is
1371due to bugs in old versions of X toolkit libraries, but no one really
1372knows. If someone debugs this and finds the precise cause, perhaps a
1373workaround can be found.
b35319bf 1374
9dc15871
EZ
1375*** An error message such as `X protocol error: BadMatch (invalid
1376parameter attributes) on protocol request 93'.
b35319bf 1377
9dc15871
EZ
1378This comes from having an invalid X resource, such as
1379 emacs*Cursor: black
1380(which is invalid because it specifies a color name for something
1381that isn't a color.)
787994b7 1382
9dc15871 1383The fix is to correct your X resources.
0a2eeca1 1384
9dc15871 1385*** Slow startup on X11R6 with X windows.
0a2eeca1 1386
9dc15871
EZ
1387If Emacs takes two minutes to start up on X11R6, see if your X
1388resources specify any Adobe fonts. That causes the type-1 font
1389renderer to start up, even if the font you asked for is not a type-1
1390font.
0a2eeca1 1391
9dc15871
EZ
1392One way to avoid this problem is to eliminate the type-1 fonts from
1393your font path, like this:
0a2eeca1 1394
9dc15871 1395 xset -fp /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/
0a2eeca1 1396
9dc15871 1397*** Pull-down menus appear in the wrong place, in the toolkit version of Emacs.
0a2eeca1 1398
9dc15871 1399An X resource of this form can cause the problem:
0a2eeca1 1400
9dc15871 1401 Emacs*geometry: 80x55+0+0
0a2eeca1 1402
9dc15871
EZ
1403This resource is supposed to apply, and does apply, to the menus
1404individually as well as to Emacs frames. If that is not what you
1405want, rewrite the resource.
119d3665 1406
9dc15871
EZ
1407To check thoroughly for such resource specifications, use `xrdb
1408-query' to see what resources the X server records, and also look at
1409the user's ~/.Xdefaults and ~/.Xdefaults-* files.
119d3665 1410
9dc15871
EZ
1411*** Emacs running under X Windows does not handle mouse clicks.
1412*** `emacs -geometry 80x20' finds a file named `80x20'.
0de9f9a8 1413
9dc15871
EZ
1414One cause of such problems is having (setq term-file-prefix nil) in
1415your .emacs file. Another cause is a bad value of EMACSLOADPATH in
1416the environment.
0de9f9a8 1417
9dc15871 1418*** Emacs fails to get default settings from X Windows server.
0de9f9a8 1419
9dc15871
EZ
1420The X library in X11R4 has a bug; it interchanges the 2nd and 3rd
1421arguments to XGetDefaults. Define the macro XBACKWARDS in config.h to
1422tell Emacs to compensate for this.
0de9f9a8 1423
9dc15871
EZ
1424I don't believe there is any way Emacs can determine for itself
1425whether this problem is present on a given system.
0de9f9a8 1426
9dc15871 1427*** X Windows doesn't work if DISPLAY uses a hostname.
0de9f9a8 1428
9dc15871
EZ
1429People have reported kernel bugs in certain systems that cause Emacs
1430not to work with X Windows if DISPLAY is set using a host name. But
1431the problem does not occur if DISPLAY is set to `unix:0.0'. I think
1432the bug has to do with SIGIO or FIONREAD.
a933dad1 1433
9dc15871
EZ
1434You may be able to compensate for the bug by doing (set-input-mode nil nil).
1435However, that has the disadvantage of turning off interrupts, so that
1436you are unable to quit out of a Lisp program by typing C-g.
a933dad1 1437
9dc15871 1438The easy way to do this is to put
a933dad1 1439
9dc15871 1440 (setq x-sigio-bug t)
a933dad1 1441
9dc15871 1442in your site-init.el file.
a933dad1 1443
880ea925 1444* Runtime problems on character terminals
a933dad1 1445
9dc15871 1446** Emacs spontaneously displays "I-search: " at the bottom of the screen.
a933dad1 1447
9dc15871
EZ
1448This means that Control-S/Control-Q (XON/XOFF) "flow control" is being
1449used. C-s/C-q flow control is bad for Emacs editors because it takes
1450away C-s and C-q as user commands. Since editors do not output long
1451streams of text without user commands, there is no need for a
1452user-issuable "stop output" command in an editor; therefore, a
1453properly designed flow control mechanism would transmit all possible
1454input characters without interference. Designing such a mechanism is
1455easy, for a person with at least half a brain.
177c0ea7 1456
9dc15871 1457There are three possible reasons why flow control could be taking place:
a933dad1 1458
9dc15871
EZ
1459 1) Terminal has not been told to disable flow control
1460 2) Insufficient padding for the terminal in use
1461 3) Some sort of terminal concentrator or line switch is responsible
a933dad1 1462
9dc15871
EZ
1463First of all, many terminals have a set-up mode which controls whether
1464they generate XON/XOFF flow control characters. This must be set to
1465"no XON/XOFF" in order for Emacs to work. Sometimes there is an
1466escape sequence that the computer can send to turn flow control off
1467and on. If so, perhaps the termcap `ti' string should turn flow
1468control off, and the `te' string should turn it on.
a933dad1 1469
9dc15871
EZ
1470Once the terminal has been told "no flow control", you may find it
1471needs more padding. The amount of padding Emacs sends is controlled
1472by the termcap entry for the terminal in use, and by the output baud
1473rate as known by the kernel. The shell command `stty' will print
1474your output baud rate; `stty' with suitable arguments will set it if
1475it is wrong. Setting to a higher speed causes increased padding. If
1476the results are wrong for the correct speed, there is probably a
1477problem in the termcap entry. You must speak to a local Unix wizard
1478to fix this. Perhaps you are just using the wrong terminal type.
de121241 1479
9dc15871
EZ
1480For terminals that lack a "no flow control" mode, sometimes just
1481giving lots of padding will prevent actual generation of flow control
1482codes. You might as well try it.
de121241 1483
9dc15871
EZ
1484If you are really unlucky, your terminal is connected to the computer
1485through a concentrator which sends XON/XOFF flow control to the
1486computer, or it insists on sending flow control itself no matter how
1487much padding you give it. Unless you can figure out how to turn flow
1488control off on this concentrator (again, refer to your local wizard),
1489you are screwed! You should have the terminal or concentrator
1490replaced with a properly designed one. In the mean time, some drastic
1491measures can make Emacs semi-work.
de121241 1492
9dc15871
EZ
1493You can make Emacs ignore C-s and C-q and let the operating system
1494handle them. To do this on a per-session basis, just type M-x
1495enable-flow-control RET. You will see a message that C-\ and C-^ are
1496now translated to C-s and C-q. (Use the same command M-x
1497enable-flow-control to turn *off* this special mode. It toggles flow
1498control handling.)
a933dad1 1499
9dc15871
EZ
1500If C-\ and C-^ are inconvenient for you (for example, if one of them
1501is the escape character of your terminal concentrator), you can choose
1502other characters by setting the variables flow-control-c-s-replacement
1503and flow-control-c-q-replacement. But choose carefully, since all
1504other control characters are already used by emacs.
a933dad1 1505
9dc15871
EZ
1506IMPORTANT: if you type C-s by accident while flow control is enabled,
1507Emacs output will freeze, and you will have to remember to type C-q in
1508order to continue.
177c0ea7 1509
9dc15871
EZ
1510If you work in an environment where a majority of terminals of a
1511certain type are flow control hobbled, you can use the function
1512`enable-flow-control-on' to turn on this flow control avoidance scheme
1513automatically. Here is an example:
a933dad1 1514
9dc15871 1515(enable-flow-control-on "vt200" "vt300" "vt101" "vt131")
a933dad1 1516
9dc15871
EZ
1517If this isn't quite correct (e.g. you have a mixture of flow-control hobbled
1518and good vt200 terminals), you can still run enable-flow-control
1519manually.
a933dad1 1520
9dc15871
EZ
1521I have no intention of ever redesigning the Emacs command set for the
1522assumption that terminals use C-s/C-q flow control. XON/XOFF flow
1523control technique is a bad design, and terminals that need it are bad
1524merchandise and should not be purchased. Now that X is becoming
1525widespread, XON/XOFF seems to be on the way out. If you can get some
1526use out of GNU Emacs on inferior terminals, more power to you, but I
1527will not make Emacs worse for properly designed systems for the sake
1528of inferior systems.
a933dad1 1529
9dc15871 1530** Control-S and Control-Q commands are ignored completely.
a933dad1 1531
9dc15871
EZ
1532For some reason, your system is using brain-damaged C-s/C-q flow
1533control despite Emacs's attempts to turn it off. Perhaps your
1534terminal is connected to the computer through a concentrator
1535that wants to use flow control.
a933dad1 1536
9dc15871
EZ
1537You should first try to tell the concentrator not to use flow control.
1538If you succeed in this, try making the terminal work without
1539flow control, as described in the preceding section.
a933dad1 1540
9dc15871
EZ
1541If that line of approach is not successful, map some other characters
1542into C-s and C-q using keyboard-translate-table. The example above
1543shows how to do this with C-^ and C-\.
a933dad1 1544
9dc15871 1545** Screen is updated wrong, but only on one kind of terminal.
a933dad1 1546
9dc15871
EZ
1547This could mean that the termcap entry you are using for that
1548terminal is wrong, or it could mean that Emacs has a bug handing
1549the combination of features specified for that terminal.
a933dad1 1550
9dc15871
EZ
1551The first step in tracking this down is to record what characters
1552Emacs is sending to the terminal. Execute the Lisp expression
1553(open-termscript "./emacs-script") to make Emacs write all
1554terminal output into the file ~/emacs-script as well; then do
1555what makes the screen update wrong, and look at the file
1556and decode the characters using the manual for the terminal.
1557There are several possibilities:
a933dad1 1558
9dc15871 15591) The characters sent are correct, according to the terminal manual.
a933dad1 1560
9dc15871
EZ
1561In this case, there is no obvious bug in Emacs, and most likely you
1562need more padding, or possibly the terminal manual is wrong.
a933dad1 1563
9dc15871
EZ
15642) The characters sent are incorrect, due to an obscure aspect
1565 of the terminal behavior not described in an obvious way
1566 by termcap.
a933dad1 1567
9dc15871
EZ
1568This case is hard. It will be necessary to think of a way for
1569Emacs to distinguish between terminals with this kind of behavior
1570and other terminals that behave subtly differently but are
1571classified the same by termcap; or else find an algorithm for
1572Emacs to use that avoids the difference. Such changes must be
1573tested on many kinds of terminals.
a933dad1 1574
9dc15871 15753) The termcap entry is wrong.
a933dad1 1576
9dc15871
EZ
1577See the file etc/TERMS for information on changes
1578that are known to be needed in commonly used termcap entries
1579for certain terminals.
a933dad1 1580
9dc15871
EZ
15814) The characters sent are incorrect, and clearly cannot be
1582 right for any terminal with the termcap entry you were using.
a933dad1 1583
9dc15871
EZ
1584This is unambiguously an Emacs bug, and can probably be fixed
1585in termcap.c, tparam.c, term.c, scroll.c, cm.c or dispnew.c.
a933dad1 1586
9dc15871 1587** Control-S and Control-Q commands are ignored completely on a net connection.
a933dad1 1588
9dc15871
EZ
1589Some versions of rlogin (and possibly telnet) do not pass flow
1590control characters to the remote system to which they connect.
1591On such systems, emacs on the remote system cannot disable flow
1592control on the local system.
a933dad1 1593
9dc15871
EZ
1594One way to cure this is to disable flow control on the local host
1595(the one running rlogin, not the one running rlogind) using the
1596stty command, before starting the rlogin process. On many systems,
1597"stty start u stop u" will do this.
a933dad1 1598
9dc15871
EZ
1599Some versions of tcsh will prevent even this from working. One way
1600around this is to start another shell before starting rlogin, and
1601issue the stty command to disable flow control from that shell.
a933dad1 1602
9dc15871
EZ
1603If none of these methods work, the best solution is to type
1604M-x enable-flow-control at the beginning of your emacs session, or
1605if you expect the problem to continue, add a line such as the
1606following to your .emacs (on the host running rlogind):
a933dad1 1607
9dc15871 1608(enable-flow-control-on "vt200" "vt300" "vt101" "vt131")
a933dad1 1609
9dc15871
EZ
1610See the entry about spontaneous display of I-search (above) for more
1611info.
a933dad1 1612
9dc15871 1613** Output from Control-V is slow.
a933dad1 1614
9dc15871
EZ
1615On many bit-map terminals, scrolling operations are fairly slow.
1616Often the termcap entry for the type of terminal in use fails
1617to inform Emacs of this. The two lines at the bottom of the screen
1618before a Control-V command are supposed to appear at the top after
1619the Control-V command. If Emacs thinks scrolling the lines is fast,
1620it will scroll them to the top of the screen.
a933dad1 1621
9dc15871
EZ
1622If scrolling is slow but Emacs thinks it is fast, the usual reason is
1623that the termcap entry for the terminal you are using does not
1624specify any padding time for the `al' and `dl' strings. Emacs
1625concludes that these operations take only as much time as it takes to
1626send the commands at whatever line speed you are using. You must
1627fix the termcap entry to specify, for the `al' and `dl', as much
1628time as the operations really take.
a933dad1 1629
9dc15871
EZ
1630Currently Emacs thinks in terms of serial lines which send characters
1631at a fixed rate, so that any operation which takes time for the
1632terminal to execute must also be padded. With bit-map terminals
1633operated across networks, often the network provides some sort of
1634flow control so that padding is never needed no matter how slow
1635an operation is. You must still specify a padding time if you want
1636Emacs to realize that the operation takes a long time. This will
1637cause padding characters to be sent unnecessarily, but they do
1638not really cost much. They will be transmitted while the scrolling
1639is happening and then discarded quickly by the terminal.
a933dad1 1640
9dc15871
EZ
1641Most bit-map terminals provide commands for inserting or deleting
1642multiple lines at once. Define the `AL' and `DL' strings in the
1643termcap entry to say how to do these things, and you will have
1644fast output without wasted padding characters. These strings should
1645each contain a single %-spec saying how to send the number of lines
1646to be scrolled. These %-specs are like those in the termcap
1647`cm' string.
a933dad1 1648
9dc15871
EZ
1649You should also define the `IC' and `DC' strings if your terminal
1650has a command to insert or delete multiple characters. These
1651take the number of positions to insert or delete as an argument.
a933dad1 1652
9dc15871
EZ
1653A `cs' string to set the scrolling region will reduce the amount
1654of motion you see on the screen when part of the screen is scrolled.
a933dad1 1655
9dc15871 1656** You type Control-H (Backspace) expecting to delete characters.
a933dad1 1657
9dc15871
EZ
1658Put `stty dec' in your .login file and your problems will disappear
1659after a day or two.
d238f982 1660
9dc15871
EZ
1661The choice of Backspace for erasure was based on confusion, caused by
1662the fact that backspacing causes erasure (later, when you type another
1663character) on most display terminals. But it is a mistake. Deletion
1664of text is not the same thing as backspacing followed by failure to
1665overprint. I do not wish to propagate this confusion by conforming
1666to it.
d238f982 1667
9dc15871
EZ
1668For this reason, I believe `stty dec' is the right mode to use,
1669and I have designed Emacs to go with that. If there were a thousand
1670other control characters, I would define Control-h to delete as well;
1671but there are not very many other control characters, and I think
1672that providing the most mnemonic possible Help character is more
1673important than adapting to people who don't use `stty dec'.
d7185f9d 1674
9dc15871
EZ
1675If you are obstinate about confusing buggy overprinting with deletion,
1676you can redefine Backspace in your .emacs file:
1677 (global-set-key "\b" 'delete-backward-char)
1678You can probably access help-command via f1.
d7185f9d 1679
9dc15871 1680** Colors are not available on a tty or in xterm.
a933dad1 1681
9dc15871
EZ
1682Emacs 21 supports colors on character terminals and terminal
1683emulators, but this support relies on the terminfo or termcap database
1684entry to specify that the display supports color. Emacs looks at the
1685"Co" capability for the terminal to find out how many colors are
1686supported; it should be non-zero to activate the color support within
1687Emacs. (Most color terminals support 8 or 16 colors.) If your system
1688uses terminfo, the name of the capability equivalent to "Co" is
1689"colors".
a933dad1 1690
9dc15871
EZ
1691In addition to the "Co" capability, Emacs needs the "op" (for
1692``original pair'') capability, which tells how to switch the terminal
1693back to the default foreground and background colors. Emacs will not
1694use colors if this capability is not defined. If your terminal entry
1695doesn't provide such a capability, try using the ANSI standard escape
1696sequence \E[00m (that is, define a new termcap/terminfo entry and make
1697it use your current terminal's entry plus \E[00m for the "op"
1698capability).
a933dad1 1699
9dc15871
EZ
1700Finally, the "NC" capability (terminfo name: "ncv") tells Emacs which
1701attributes cannot be used with colors. Setting this capability
1702incorrectly might have the effect of disabling colors; try setting
1703this capability to `0' (zero) and see if that helps.
a933dad1 1704
9dc15871
EZ
1705Emacs uses the database entry for the terminal whose name is the value
1706of the environment variable TERM. With `xterm', a common terminal
1707entry that supports color is `xterm-color', so setting TERM's value to
1708`xterm-color' might activate the color support on an xterm-compatible
1709emulator.
a933dad1 1710
bf247b6e 1711Beginning with version 22.1, Emacs supports the --color command-line
9dc15871
EZ
1712option which may be used to force Emacs to use one of a few popular
1713modes for getting colors on a tty. For example, --color=ansi8 sets up
1714for using the ANSI-standard escape sequences that support 8 colors.
a933dad1 1715
9dc15871
EZ
1716Some modes do not use colors unless you turn on the Font-lock mode.
1717Some people have long ago set their `~/.emacs' files to turn on
1718Font-lock on X only, so they won't see colors on a tty. The
1719recommended way of turning on Font-lock is by typing "M-x
1720global-font-lock-mode RET" or by customizing the variable
1721`global-font-lock-mode'.
a933dad1 1722
9dc15871 1723* Runtime problems specific to individual Unix variants
a933dad1 1724
9dc15871 1725** GNU/Linux
a933dad1 1726
f77e4514
KS
1727*** GNU/Linux: Process output is corrupted.
1728
1729There is a bug in Linux kernel 2.6.10 PTYs that can cause emacs to
1730read corrupted process output.
1731
1732*** GNU/Linux: Remote access to CVS with SSH causes file corruption.
1733
1734If you access a remote CVS repository via SSH, files may be corrupted
1735due to bad interaction between CVS, SSH, and libc.
1736
1737To fix the problem, save the following script into a file, make it
1738executable, and set CVS_RSH environment variable to the file name of
1739the script:
1740
1741#!/bin/bash
1742exec 2> >(exec cat >&2 2>/dev/null)
1743exec ssh "$@"
1744
9dc15871
EZ
1745*** GNU/Linux: On Linux-based GNU systems using libc versions 5.4.19 through
17465.4.22, Emacs crashes at startup with a segmentation fault.
a933dad1 1747
9dc15871
EZ
1748This problem happens if libc defines the symbol __malloc_initialized.
1749One known solution is to upgrade to a newer libc version. 5.4.33 is
1750known to work.
a933dad1 1751
9dc15871
EZ
1752*** GNU/Linux: After upgrading to a newer version of Emacs,
1753the Meta key stops working.
a933dad1 1754
9dc15871
EZ
1755This was reported to happen on a GNU/Linux system distributed by
1756Mandrake. The reason is that the previous version of Emacs was
1757modified by Mandrake to make the Alt key act as the Meta key, on a
1758keyboard where the Windows key is the one which produces the Meta
1759modifier. A user who started using a newer version of Emacs, which
1760was not hacked by Mandrake, expected the Alt key to continue to act as
1761Meta, and was astonished when that didn't happen.
a933dad1 1762
9dc15871
EZ
1763The solution is to find out what key on your keyboard produces the Meta
1764modifier, and use that key instead. Try all of the keys to the left
1765and to the right of the space bar, together with the `x' key, and see
1766which combination produces "M-x" in the echo area. You can also use
1767the `xmodmap' utility to show all the keys which produce a Meta
1768modifier:
a933dad1 1769
9dc15871 1770 xmodmap -pk | egrep -i "meta|alt"
17a37d87 1771
9dc15871
EZ
1772A more convenient way of finding out which keys produce a Meta modifier
1773is to use the `xkbprint' utility, if it's available on your system:
17a37d87 1774
9dc15871 1775 xkbprint 0:0 /tmp/k.ps
17a37d87 1776
9dc15871
EZ
1777This produces a PostScript file `/tmp/k.ps' with a picture of your
1778keyboard; printing that file on a PostScript printer will show what
1779keys can serve as Meta.
17a37d87 1780
9dc15871
EZ
1781The `xkeycaps' also shows a visual representation of the current
1782keyboard settings. It also allows to modify them.
a933dad1 1783
ff3e9dbc 1784*** GNU/Linux: slow startup on Linux-based GNU systems.
a933dad1 1785
9dc15871
EZ
1786People using systems based on the Linux kernel sometimes report that
1787startup takes 10 to 15 seconds longer than `usual'.
a933dad1 1788
9dc15871
EZ
1789This is because Emacs looks up the host name when it starts.
1790Normally, this takes negligible time; the extra delay is due to
1791improper system configuration. This problem can occur for both
1792networked and non-networked machines.
a933dad1 1793
9dc15871 1794Here is how to fix the configuration. It requires being root.
a933dad1 1795
9dc15871 1796**** Networked Case.
a933dad1 1797
9dc15871
EZ
1798First, make sure the files `/etc/hosts' and `/etc/host.conf' both
1799exist. The first line in the `/etc/hosts' file should look like this
1800(replace HOSTNAME with your host name):
a933dad1 1801
9dc15871 1802 127.0.0.1 HOSTNAME
a933dad1 1803
9dc15871
EZ
1804Also make sure that the `/etc/host.conf' files contains the following
1805lines:
a933dad1 1806
9dc15871
EZ
1807 order hosts, bind
1808 multi on
a933dad1 1809
9dc15871
EZ
1810Any changes, permanent and temporary, to the host name should be
1811indicated in the `/etc/hosts' file, since it acts a limited local
1812database of addresses and names (e.g., some SLIP connections
1813dynamically allocate ip addresses).
a933dad1 1814
9dc15871 1815**** Non-Networked Case.
a933dad1 1816
9dc15871
EZ
1817The solution described in the networked case applies here as well.
1818However, if you never intend to network your machine, you can use a
1819simpler solution: create an empty `/etc/host.conf' file. The command
1820`touch /etc/host.conf' suffices to create the file. The `/etc/hosts'
1821file is not necessary with this approach.
3d00585e 1822
9dc15871 1823*** GNU/Linux: Emacs on a tty switches the cursor to large blinking block.
3d00585e 1824
9dc15871
EZ
1825This was reported to happen on some GNU/Linux systems which use
1826ncurses version 5.0, but could be relevant for other versions as well.
1827These versions of ncurses come with a `linux' terminfo entry, where
1828the "cvvis" capability (termcap "vs") is defined as "\E[?25h\E[?8c"
1829(show cursor, change size). This escape sequence switches on a
1830blinking hardware text-mode cursor whose size is a full character
1831cell. This blinking cannot be stopped, since a hardware cursor
1832always blinks.
3d00585e 1833
9dc15871
EZ
1834A work-around is to redefine the "cvvis" capability so that it
1835enables a *software* cursor. The software cursor works by inverting
1836the colors of the character at point, so what you see is a block
1837cursor that doesn't blink. For this to work, you need to redefine
1838the "cnorm" capability as well, so that it operates on the software
1839cursor instead of the hardware cursor.
3d00585e 1840
9dc15871
EZ
1841To this end, run "infocmp linux > linux-term", edit the file
1842`linux-term' to make both the "cnorm" and "cvvis" capabilities send
1843the sequence "\E[?25h\E[?17;0;64c", and then run "tic linux-term" to
1844produce a modified terminfo entry.
3d00585e 1845
9dc15871
EZ
1846Alternatively, if you want a blinking underscore as your Emacs cursor,
1847change the "cvvis" capability to send the "\E[?25h\E[?0c" command.
a933dad1 1848
9dc15871 1849*** GNU/Linux: Error messages `internal facep []' happen on GNU/Linux systems.
7838ea1b 1850
9dc15871
EZ
1851There is a report that replacing libc.so.5.0.9 with libc.so.5.2.16
1852caused this to start happening. People are not sure why, but the
1853problem seems unlikely to be in Emacs itself. Some suspect that it
1854is actually Xlib which won't work with libc.so.5.2.16.
a933dad1 1855
9dc15871 1856Using the old library version is a workaround.
a933dad1 1857
9dc15871 1858** Mac OS X
a933dad1 1859
9dc15871 1860*** Mac OS X (Carbon): Environment Variables from dotfiles are ignored.
a933dad1 1861
9dc15871
EZ
1862When starting Emacs from the Dock or the Finder on Mac OS X, the
1863environment variables that are set up in dotfiles, such as .cshrc or
1864.profile, are ignored. This is because the Finder and Dock are not
1865started from a shell, but instead from the Window Manager itself.
a933dad1 1866
9dc15871
EZ
1867The workaround for this is to create a .MacOSX/environment.plist file to
1868setup these environment variables. These environment variables will
1869apply to all processes regardless of where they are started.
1870For me information, see http://developer.apple.com/qa/qa2001/qa1067.html.
b5cb4652 1871
9dc15871 1872*** Mac OS X (Carbon): Process output truncated when using ptys.
b5cb4652 1873
9dc15871
EZ
1874There appears to be a problem with the implementation of pty's on the
1875Mac OS X that causes process output to be truncated. To avoid this,
1876leave process-connection-type set to its default value of nil.
a933dad1 1877
4b340319
YM
1878*** Mac OS X 10.3.9 (Carbon): QuickTime updater breaks build.
1879
1880Some QuickTime updaters such as 7.0.4 and 7.2.0 are known to break
1881build at the link stage with the message like "Undefined symbols:
1882_HICopyAccessibilityActionDescription referenced from QuickTime
1883expected to be defined in Carbon". A workaround is to use a QuickTime
1884reinstaller. Alternatively, you can link with the frameworks in the
1885corresponding SDK by specifying LDFLAGS as
1886"-Wl,-F/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.3.0.sdk/System/Library/Frameworks".
e9452469 1887
9dc15871 1888** FreeBSD
a933dad1 1889
9dc15871
EZ
1890*** FreeBSD 2.1.5: useless symbolic links remain in /tmp or other
1891directories that have the +t bit.
a933dad1 1892
9dc15871
EZ
1893This is because of a kernel bug in FreeBSD 2.1.5 (fixed in 2.2).
1894Emacs uses symbolic links to implement file locks. In a directory
1895with +t bit, the directory owner becomes the owner of the symbolic
1896link, so that it cannot be removed by anyone else.
a933dad1 1897
9dc15871
EZ
1898If you don't like those useless links, you can let Emacs not to using
1899file lock by adding #undef CLASH_DETECTION to config.h.
a933dad1 1900
9dc15871 1901*** FreeBSD: Getting a Meta key on the console.
a933dad1 1902
9dc15871
EZ
1903By default, neither Alt nor any other key acts as a Meta key on
1904FreeBSD, but this can be changed using kbdcontrol(1). Dump the
1905current keymap to a file with the command
a933dad1 1906
9dc15871 1907 $ kbdcontrol -d >emacs.kbd
a933dad1 1908
9dc15871
EZ
1909Edit emacs.kbd, and give the key you want to be the Meta key the
1910definition `meta'. For instance, if your keyboard has a ``Windows''
1911key with scan code 105, change the line for scan code 105 in emacs.kbd
1912to look like this
3156909f 1913
9dc15871 1914 105 meta meta meta meta meta meta meta meta O
a933dad1 1915
9dc15871 1916to make the Windows key the Meta key. Load the new keymap with
a933dad1 1917
9dc15871 1918 $ kbdcontrol -l emacs.kbd
a933dad1 1919
9dc15871 1920** HP-UX
e96c5c69 1921
9dc15871 1922*** HP/UX : Shell mode gives the message, "`tty`: Ambiguous".
e96c5c69 1923
9dc15871 1924christos@theory.tn.cornell.edu says:
a933dad1 1925
9dc15871
EZ
1926The problem is that in your .cshrc you have something that tries to
1927execute `tty`. If you are not running the shell on a real tty then
1928tty will print "not a tty". Csh expects one word in some places,
1929but tty is giving it back 3.
a933dad1 1930
9dc15871
EZ
1931The solution is to add a pair of quotes around `tty` to make it a single
1932word:
a933dad1 1933
9dc15871 1934if (`tty` == "/dev/console")
a933dad1 1935
9dc15871 1936should be changed to:
a933dad1 1937
9dc15871 1938if ("`tty`" == "/dev/console")
a933dad1 1939
9dc15871
EZ
1940Even better, move things that set up terminal sections out of .cshrc
1941and into .login.
a933dad1 1942
9dc15871 1943*** HP/UX: `Pid xxx killed due to text modification or page I/O error'.
a933dad1 1944
9dc15871
EZ
1945On HP/UX, you can get that error when the Emacs executable is on an NFS
1946file system. HP/UX responds this way if it tries to swap in a page and
1947does not get a response from the server within a timeout whose default
1948value is just ten seconds.
a933dad1 1949
9dc15871 1950If this happens to you, extend the timeout period.
a933dad1 1951
9dc15871
EZ
1952*** HP/UX: The right Alt key works wrong on German HP keyboards (and perhaps
1953other non-English HP keyboards too).
a933dad1 1954
9dc15871
EZ
1955This is because HP-UX defines the modifiers wrong in X. Here is a
1956shell script to fix the problem; be sure that it is run after VUE
1957configures the X server.
a933dad1 1958
9dc15871
EZ
1959 xmodmap 2> /dev/null - << EOF
1960 keysym Alt_L = Meta_L
1961 keysym Alt_R = Meta_R
1962 EOF
a933dad1 1963
9dc15871
EZ
1964 xmodmap - << EOF
1965 clear mod1
1966 keysym Mode_switch = NoSymbol
1967 add mod1 = Meta_L
1968 keysym Meta_R = Mode_switch
1969 add mod2 = Mode_switch
1970 EOF
a933dad1 1971
9dc15871
EZ
1972*** HP/UX: "Cannot find callback list" messages from dialog boxes in
1973Emacs built with Motif.
a933dad1 1974
9dc15871
EZ
1975This problem resulted from a bug in GCC 2.4.5. Newer GCC versions
1976such as 2.7.0 fix the problem.
a933dad1 1977
9dc15871 1978*** HP/UX: Emacs does not recognize the AltGr key.
a933dad1 1979
9dc15871
EZ
1980To fix this, set up a file ~/.dt/sessions/sessionetc with executable
1981rights, containing this text:
4c635a29 1982
9dc15871
EZ
1983--------------------------------
1984xmodmap 2> /dev/null - << EOF
1985keysym Alt_L = Meta_L
1986keysym Alt_R = Meta_R
1987EOF
a933dad1 1988
9dc15871
EZ
1989xmodmap - << EOF
1990clear mod1
1991keysym Mode_switch = NoSymbol
1992add mod1 = Meta_L
1993keysym Meta_R = Mode_switch
1994add mod2 = Mode_switch
1995EOF
1996--------------------------------
a933dad1 1997
9dc15871 1998*** HP/UX 11.0: Emacs makes HP/UX 11.0 crash.
a933dad1 1999
9dc15871 2000This is a bug in HPUX; HPUX patch PHKL_16260 is said to fix it.
a933dad1 2001
9dc15871 2002** AIX
a933dad1 2003
9dc15871 2004*** AIX: Trouble using ptys.
a933dad1 2005
9dc15871
EZ
2006People often install the pty devices on AIX incorrectly.
2007Use `smit pty' to reinstall them properly.
a933dad1 2008
9dc15871 2009*** AIXterm: Your Delete key sends a Backspace to the terminal.
a933dad1 2010
9dc15871 2011The solution is to include in your .Xdefaults the lines:
a933dad1 2012
9dc15871
EZ
2013 *aixterm.Translations: #override <Key>BackSpace: string(0x7f)
2014 aixterm*ttyModes: erase ^?
a933dad1 2015
9dc15871 2016This makes your Backspace key send DEL (ASCII 127).
a933dad1 2017
9dc15871
EZ
2018*** AIX: If linking fails because libXbsd isn't found, check if you
2019are compiling with the system's `cc' and CFLAGS containing `-O5'. If
2020so, you have hit a compiler bug. Please make sure to re-configure
2021Emacs so that it isn't compiled with `-O5'.
a933dad1 2022
9dc15871 2023*** AIX 4.3.x or 4.4: Compiling fails.
a933dad1 2024
9dc15871
EZ
2025This could happen if you use /bin/c89 as your compiler, instead of
2026the default `cc'. /bin/c89 treats certain warnings, such as benign
2027redefinitions of macros, as errors, and fails the build. A solution
2028is to use the default compiler `cc'.
a933dad1 2029
9dc15871
EZ
2030*** AIX 4: Some programs fail when run in a Shell buffer
2031with an error message like No terminfo entry for "unknown".
a933dad1 2032
9dc15871
EZ
2033On AIX, many terminal type definitions are not installed by default.
2034`unknown' is one of them. Install the "Special Generic Terminal
2035Definitions" to make them defined.
a933dad1 2036
9dc15871 2037** Solaris
a933dad1 2038
9dc15871
EZ
2039We list bugs in current versions here. Solaris 2.x and 4.x are covered in the
2040section on legacy systems.
a933dad1 2041
9dc15871 2042*** On Solaris, C-x doesn't get through to Emacs when you use the console.
a933dad1 2043
9dc15871
EZ
2044This is a Solaris feature (at least on Intel x86 cpus). Type C-r
2045C-r C-t, to toggle whether C-x gets through to Emacs.
a933dad1 2046
9dc15871 2047*** Problem with remote X server on Suns.
a933dad1 2048
9dc15871
EZ
2049On a Sun, running Emacs on one machine with the X server on another
2050may not work if you have used the unshared system libraries. This
2051is because the unshared libraries fail to use YP for host name lookup.
2052As a result, the host name you specify may not be recognized.
a933dad1 2053
0a4dd4e4 2054*** Solaris 2,6: Emacs crashes with SIGBUS or SIGSEGV on Solaris after you delete a frame.
a933dad1 2055
0a4dd4e4
EZ
2056We suspect that this is a bug in the X libraries provided by
2057Sun. There is a report that one of these patches fixes the bug and
2058makes the problem stop:
a933dad1 2059
0a4dd4e4
EZ
2060105216-01 105393-01 105518-01 105621-01 105665-01 105615-02 105216-02
2061105667-01 105401-08 105615-03 105621-02 105686-02 105736-01 105755-03
2062106033-01 105379-01 105786-01 105181-04 105379-03 105786-04 105845-01
2063105284-05 105669-02 105837-01 105837-02 105558-01 106125-02 105407-01
a933dad1 2064
0a4dd4e4
EZ
2065Another person using a newer system (kernel patch level Generic_105181-06)
2066suspects that the bug was fixed by one of these more recent patches:
a933dad1 2067
0a4dd4e4
EZ
2068106040-07 SunOS 5.6: X Input & Output Method patch
2069106222-01 OpenWindows 3.6: filemgr (ff.core) fixes
2070105284-12 Motif 1.2.7: sparc Runtime library patch
a933dad1 2071
0a4dd4e4 2072*** Solaris 7 or 8: Emacs reports a BadAtom error (from X)
a933dad1 2073
0a4dd4e4
EZ
2074This happens when Emacs was built on some other version of Solaris.
2075Rebuild it on Solaris 8.
a933dad1 2076
9dc15871
EZ
2077*** When using M-x dbx with the SparcWorks debugger, the `up' and `down'
2078commands do not move the arrow in Emacs.
a933dad1 2079
9dc15871 2080You can fix this by adding the following line to `~/.dbxinit':
a933dad1 2081
9dc15871 2082 dbxenv output_short_file_name off
a933dad1 2083
0a4dd4e4
EZ
2084*** On Solaris, CTRL-t is ignored by Emacs when you use
2085the fr.ISO-8859-15 locale (and maybe other related locales).
a933dad1 2086
0a4dd4e4 2087You can fix this by editing the file:
a933dad1 2088
0a4dd4e4 2089 /usr/openwin/lib/locale/iso8859-15/Compose
a01325b8 2090
0a4dd4e4 2091Near the bottom there is a line that reads:
a933dad1 2092
0a4dd4e4 2093 Ctrl<t> <quotedbl> <Y> : "\276" threequarters
a933dad1 2094
0a4dd4e4 2095that should read:
a933dad1 2096
0a4dd4e4 2097 Ctrl<T> <quotedbl> <Y> : "\276" threequarters
a933dad1 2098
0a4dd4e4 2099Note the lower case <t>. Changing this line should make C-t work.
a933dad1 2100
0a4dd4e4 2101** Irix
a933dad1 2102
9dc15871 2103*** Irix 6.5: Emacs crashes on the SGI R10K, when compiled with GCC.
a933dad1 2104
9dc15871 2105This seems to be fixed in GCC 2.95.
a933dad1 2106
0a4dd4e4 2107*** Irix: Trouble using ptys, or running out of ptys.
a933dad1 2108
9dc15871
EZ
2109The program mkpts (which may be in `/usr/adm' or `/usr/sbin') needs to
2110be set-UID to root, or non-root programs like Emacs will not be able
2111to allocate ptys reliably.
a933dad1 2112
9dc15871 2113* Runtime problems specific to MS-Windows
a933dad1 2114
ade79051
KS
2115** Windows 95 and networking.
2116
2117To support server sockets, Emacs 22.1 loads ws2_32.dll. If this file
2118is missing, all Emacs networking features are disabled.
2119
2120Old versions of Windows 95 may not have the required DLL. To use
2121Emacs' networking features on Windows 95, you must install the
2122"Windows Socket 2" update available from MicroSoft's support Web.
2123
9dc15871 2124** Emacs exits with "X protocol error" when run with an X server for MS-Windows.
a933dad1 2125
9dc15871
EZ
2126A certain X server for Windows had a bug which caused this.
2127Supposedly the newer 32-bit version of this server doesn't have the
2128problem.
a933dad1 2129
de66e883
JR
2130** Known problems with the MS-Windows port of Emacs 22.1
2131
2132Using create-fontset-from-ascii-font or the --font startup parameter
2133with a Chinese, Japanese or Korean font leads to display problems.
2134Use a Latin-only font as your default font. If you want control over
2135which font is used to display Chinese, Japanese or Korean character,
2136use create-fontset-from-fontset-spec to define a fontset.
a933dad1 2137
9dc15871
EZ
2138Frames are not refreshed while the File or Font dialog or a pop-up menu
2139is displayed. This also means help text for pop-up menus is not
2140displayed at all. This is because message handling under Windows is
2141synchronous, so we cannot handle repaint (or any other) messages while
2142waiting for a system function to return the result of the dialog or
2143pop-up menu interaction.
a933dad1 2144
9dc15871
EZ
2145Windows 95 and Windows NT up to version 4.0 do not support help text
2146for menus. Help text is only available in later versions of Windows.
a933dad1 2147
af71f3ce
EZ
2148When "ClearType" method is selected as the "method to smooth edges of
2149screen fonts" (in Display Properties, Appearance tab, under
2150"Effects"), there are various problems related to display of
2151characters: 2-pixel trace is left behind when moving overlays, bold
2152fonts can be hard to read, small portions of some characters could
2153appear chopped, etc. This happens because, under ClearType,
2154characters are drawn outside their advertised bounding box. Emacs 21
2155disabled the use of ClearType, whereas Emacs 22 allows it and has some
2156code to enlarge the width of the bounding box. Apparently, this
2157display feature needs more changes to get it 100% right. A workaround
2158is to disable ClearType.
2159
9dc15871
EZ
2160There are problems with display if mouse-tracking is enabled and the
2161mouse is moved off a frame, over another frame then back over the first
2162frame. A workaround is to click the left mouse button inside the frame
2163after moving back into it.
a933dad1 2164
9dc15871
EZ
2165Some minor flickering still persists during mouse-tracking, although
2166not as severely as in 21.1.
a933dad1 2167
9dc15871
EZ
2168An inactive cursor remains in an active window after the Windows
2169Manager driven switch of the focus, until a key is pressed.
a933dad1 2170
4ed1bce5 2171Windows input methods are not recognized by Emacs. However, some
9dc15871
EZ
2172of these input methods cause the keyboard to send characters encoded
2173in the appropriate coding system (e.g., ISO 8859-1 for Latin-1
4ed1bce5
EZ
2174characters, ISO 8859-8 for Hebrew characters, etc.). To make these
2175input methods work with Emacs, set the keyboard coding system to the
2176appropriate value after you activate the Windows input method. For
2177example, if you activate the Hebrew input method, type this:
2178
2179 C-x RET k hebrew-iso-8bit RET
2180
2181(Emacs ought to recognize the Windows language-change event and set up
2182the appropriate keyboard encoding automatically, but it doesn't do
2183that yet.) In addition, to use these Windows input methods, you
2184should set your "Language for non-Unicode programs" (on Windows XP,
2185this is on the Advanced tab of Regional Settings) to the language of
2186the input method.
a933dad1 2187
868c31fe
EZ
2188To bind keys that produce non-ASCII characters with modifiers, you
2189must specify raw byte codes. For instance, if you want to bind
2190META-a-grave to a command, you need to specify this in your `~/.emacs':
2191
2192 (global-set-key [?\M-\340] ...)
2193
2194The above example is for the Latin-1 environment where the byte code
2195of the encoded a-grave is 340 octal. For other environments, use the
2196encoding appropriate to that environment.
2197
9dc15871
EZ
2198The %b specifier for format-time-string does not produce abbreviated
2199month names with consistent widths for some locales on some versions
2200of Windows. This is caused by a deficiency in the underlying system
2201library function.
a933dad1 2202
9f1bc31f
JR
2203The functions set-time-zone-rule, and display-time-world (which uses it)
2204do not work on Windows. Fixing this is difficult, since Windows uses
2205localtime for the system clock, and any attempt to change the timezone
2206would have to be accompanied by a clock change for the results to remain
2207consistent. The way in which these functions are used is not intended to
2208cause such system-wide disruption.
2209
ae51f2bc
EZ
2210Files larger than 4GB cause overflow in the size (represented as a
221132-bit integer) reported by `file-attributes'. This affects Dired as
2212well, since the Windows port uses a Lisp emulation of `ls' that relies
2213on `file-attributes'.
2214
d6ff8a30
EZ
2215Sound playing is not supported with the `:data DATA' key-value pair.
2216You _must_ use the `:file FILE' method.
2217
0a4dd4e4 2218** Typing Alt-Shift has strange effects on MS-Windows.
a933dad1 2219
0a4dd4e4
EZ
2220This combination of keys is a command to change keyboard layout. If
2221you proceed to type another non-modifier key before you let go of Alt
2222and Shift, the Alt and Shift act as modifiers in the usual way. A
2223more permanent work around is to change it to another key combination,
2224or disable it in the keyboard control panel.
a933dad1 2225
651f8172
EZ
2226** Cygwin build of Emacs hangs after rebasing Cygwin DLLs
2227
2228Usually, on Cygwin, one needs to rebase the DLLs if an application
2229aborts with a message like this:
2230
2231 C:\cygwin\bin\python.exe: *** unable to remap C:\cygwin\bin\cygssl.dll to
2232 same address as parent(0xDF0000) != 0xE00000
2233
2234However, since Cygwin DLL 1.5.17 was released, after such rebasing,
2235Emacs hangs.
2236
2237This was reported to happen for Emacs 21.2 and also for the pretest of
2238Emacs 22.1 on Cygwin.
2239
2240To work around this, build Emacs like this:
2241
2242 LDFLAGS='-Wl,--enable-auto-import -Wl,--enable-auto-image-base' ./configure
2243 make LD='$(CC)'
2244 make LD='$(CC)' install
2245
2246This produces an Emacs binary that is independent of rebasing.
2247
2248Note that you _must_ use LD='$(CC)' in the last two commands above, to
2249prevent GCC from passing the "--image-base 0x20000000" option to the
2250linker, which is what it does by default. That option produces an
2251Emacs binary with the base address 0x20000000, which will cause Emacs
2252to hang after Cygwin DLLs are rebased.
2253
0a4dd4e4 2254** Interrupting Cygwin port of Bash from Emacs doesn't work.
a933dad1 2255
0a4dd4e4
EZ
2256Cygwin 1.x builds of the ported Bash cannot be interrupted from the
2257MS-Windows version of Emacs. This is due to some change in the Bash
2258port or in the Cygwin library which apparently make Bash ignore the
2259keyboard interrupt event sent by Emacs to Bash. (Older Cygwin ports
2260of Bash, up to b20.1, did receive SIGINT from Emacs.)
a933dad1 2261
0a4dd4e4 2262** Accessing remote files with ange-ftp hangs the MS-Windows version of Emacs.
a933dad1 2263
0a4dd4e4
EZ
2264If the FTP client is the Cygwin port of GNU `ftp', this appears to be
2265due to some bug in the Cygwin DLL or some incompatibility between it
2266and the implementation of asynchronous subprocesses in the Windows
2267port of Emacs. Specifically, some parts of the FTP server responses
2268are not flushed out, apparently due to buffering issues, which
2269confuses ange-ftp.
a933dad1 2270
0a4dd4e4
EZ
2271The solution is to downgrade to an older version of the Cygwin DLL
2272(version 1.3.2 was reported to solve the problem), or use the stock
2273Windows FTP client, usually found in the `C:\WINDOWS' or 'C:\WINNT'
2274directory. To force ange-ftp use the stock Windows client, set the
2275variable `ange-ftp-ftp-program-name' to the absolute file name of the
2276client's executable. For example:
a933dad1 2277
9dc15871 2278 (setq ange-ftp-ftp-program-name "c:/windows/ftp.exe")
a933dad1 2279
9dc15871
EZ
2280If you want to stick with the Cygwin FTP client, you can work around
2281this problem by putting this in your `.emacs' file:
a933dad1 2282
9dc15871 2283 (setq ange-ftp-ftp-program-args '("-i" "-n" "-g" "-v" "--prompt" "")
a933dad1 2284
9dc15871 2285** lpr commands don't work on MS-Windows with some cheap printers.
a933dad1 2286
9dc15871
EZ
2287This problem may also strike other platforms, but the solution is
2288likely to be a global one, and not Emacs specific.
a933dad1 2289
9dc15871
EZ
2290Many cheap inkjet, and even some cheap laser printers, do not
2291print plain text anymore, they will only print through graphical
2292printer drivers. A workaround on MS-Windows is to use Windows' basic
2293built in editor to print (this is possibly the only useful purpose it
2294has):
a933dad1 2295
9dc15871
EZ
2296(setq printer-name "") ;; notepad takes the default
2297(setq lpr-command "notepad") ;; notepad
2298(setq lpr-switches nil) ;; not needed
2299(setq lpr-printer-switch "/P") ;; run notepad as batch printer
a933dad1 2300
9dc15871 2301** Antivirus software interacts badly with the MS-Windows version of Emacs.
a933dad1 2302
9dc15871
EZ
2303The usual manifestation of these problems is that subprocesses don't
2304work or even wedge the entire system. In particular, "M-x shell RET"
2305was reported to fail to work. But other commands also sometimes don't
2306work when an antivirus package is installed.
a933dad1 2307
9dc15871
EZ
2308The solution is to switch the antivirus software to a less aggressive
2309mode (e.g., disable the ``auto-protect'' feature), or even uninstall
2310or disable it entirely.
a933dad1 2311
9dc15871 2312** Pressing the mouse button on MS-Windows does not give a mouse-2 event.
a933dad1 2313
9dc15871
EZ
2314This is usually a problem with the mouse driver. Because most Windows
2315programs do not do anything useful with the middle mouse button, many
2316mouse drivers allow you to define the wheel press to do something
2317different. Some drivers do not even have the option to generate a
2318middle button press. In such cases, setting the wheel press to
2319"scroll" sometimes works if you press the button twice. Trying a
2320generic mouse driver might help.
a933dad1 2321
9dc15871 2322** Scrolling the mouse wheel on MS-Windows always scrolls the top window.
a933dad1 2323
9dc15871
EZ
2324This is another common problem with mouse drivers. Instead of
2325generating scroll events, some mouse drivers try to fake scroll bar
2326movement. But they are not intelligent enough to handle multiple
2327scroll bars within a frame. Trying a generic mouse driver might help.
a933dad1 2328
9dc15871
EZ
2329** Mail sent through Microsoft Exchange in some encodings appears to be
2330mangled and is not seen correctly in Rmail or Gnus. We don't know
2331exactly what happens, but it isn't an Emacs problem in cases we've
2332seen.
a933dad1 2333
9dc15871
EZ
2334** On MS-Windows, you cannot use the right-hand ALT key and the left-hand
2335CTRL key together to type a Control-Meta character.
a933dad1 2336
9dc15871 2337This is a consequence of a misfeature beyond Emacs's control.
a933dad1 2338
9dc15871
EZ
2339Under Windows, the AltGr key on international keyboards generates key
2340events with the modifiers Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl. Since Emacs cannot
2341distinguish AltGr from an explicit Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl
2342combination, whenever it sees Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl it assumes that
2343AltGr has been pressed. The variable `w32-recognize-altgr' can be set
2344to nil to tell Emacs that AltGr is really Ctrl and Alt.
a933dad1 2345
9dc15871 2346** Under some X-servers running on MS-Windows, Emacs' display is incorrect.
a933dad1 2347
9dc15871
EZ
2348The symptoms are that Emacs does not completely erase blank areas of the
2349screen during scrolling or some other screen operations (e.g., selective
2350display or when killing a region). M-x recenter will cause the screen
2351to be completely redisplayed and the "extra" characters will disappear.
a933dad1 2352
9dc15871
EZ
2353This is known to occur under Exceed 6, and possibly earlier versions
2354as well; it is reportedly solved in version 6.2.0.16 and later. The
2355problem lies in the X-server settings.
a933dad1 2356
9dc15871
EZ
2357There are reports that you can solve the problem with Exceed by
2358running `Xconfig' from within NT, choosing "X selection", then
2359un-checking the boxes "auto-copy X selection" and "auto-paste to X
2360selection".
a933dad1 2361
9dc15871
EZ
2362Of this does not work, please inform bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org. Then
2363please call support for your X-server and see if you can get a fix.
2364If you do, please send it to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org so we can list it
2365here.
a933dad1 2366
9dc15871 2367* Build-time problems
a933dad1 2368
9dc15871 2369** Configuration
a933dad1 2370
9dc15871 2371*** The `configure' script doesn't find the jpeg library.
a933dad1 2372
9dc15871
EZ
2373There are reports that this happens on some systems because the linker
2374by default only looks for shared libraries, but jpeg distribution by
2375default only installs a nonshared version of the library, `libjpeg.a'.
a933dad1 2376
9dc15871
EZ
2377If this is the problem, you can configure the jpeg library with the
2378`--enable-shared' option and then rebuild libjpeg. This produces a
2379shared version of libjpeg, which you need to install. Finally, rerun
2380the Emacs configure script, which should now find the jpeg library.
2381Alternatively, modify the generated src/Makefile to link the .a file
2382explicitly, and edit src/config.h to define HAVE_JPEG.
a933dad1 2383
f4b84ef4
GM
2384*** `configure' warns ``accepted by the compiler, rejected by the preprocessor''.
2385
2386This indicates a mismatch between the C compiler and preprocessor that
2387configure is using. For example, on Solaris 10 trying to use
2388CC=/opt/SUNWspro/bin/cc (the Sun Studio compiler) together with
2389CPP=/usr/ccs/lib/cpp can result in errors of this form (you may also
2390see the error ``"/usr/include/sys/isa_defs.h", line 500: undefined control'').
2391
2392The solution is to tell configure to use the correct C preprocessor
2393for your C compiler (CPP="/opt/SUNWspro/bin/cc -E" in the above
2394example).
2395
2396*** `configure' fails with ``"junk.c", line 660: invalid input token: 8.elc''
2397
2398The final stage of the Emacs configure process uses the C preprocessor
2399to generate the Makefiles. Errors of this form can occur if the C
2400preprocessor inserts extra whitespace into its output. The solution
2401is to find the switches that stop your preprocessor from inserting extra
2402whitespace, add them to CPPFLAGS, and re-run configure. For example,
2403this error can occur on Solaris 10 when using the Sun Studio compiler
2404``Sun C 5.8'' with its preprocessor CPP="/opt/SUNWspro/bin/cc -E".
2405The relevant switch in this case is "-Xs" (``compile assuming
2406(pre-ANSI) K & R C style code'').
2407
9dc15871 2408** Compilation
a933dad1 2409
9dc15871 2410*** Building Emacs over NFS fails with ``Text file busy''.
a933dad1 2411
9dc15871 2412This was reported to happen when building Emacs on a GNU/Linux system
880ea925 2413(Red Hat Linux 6.2) using a build directory automounted from Solaris
9dc15871
EZ
2414(SunOS 5.6) file server, but it might not be limited to that
2415configuration alone. Presumably, the NFS server doesn't commit the
2416files' data to disk quickly enough, and the Emacs executable file is
2417left ``busy'' for several seconds after Emacs has finished dumping
2418itself. This causes the subsequent commands which invoke the dumped
2419Emacs executable to fail with the above message.
a933dad1 2420
9dc15871
EZ
2421In some of these cases, a time skew between the NFS server and the
2422machine where Emacs is built is detected and reported by GNU Make
2423(it says that some of the files have modification time in the future).
2424This might be a symptom of NFS-related problems.
a933dad1 2425
9dc15871
EZ
2426If the NFS server runs on Solaris, apply the Solaris patch 105379-05
2427(Sunos 5.6: /kernel/misc/nfssrv patch). If that doesn't work, or if
2428you have a different version of the OS or the NFS server, you can
2429force the NFS server to use 1KB blocks, which was reported to fix the
2430problem albeit at a price of slowing down file I/O. You can force 1KB
2431blocks by specifying the "-o rsize=1024,wsize=1024" options to the
2432`mount' command, or by adding ",rsize=1024,wsize=1024" to the mount
2433options in the appropriate system configuration file, such as
2434`/etc/auto.home'.
a933dad1 2435
9dc15871
EZ
2436Alternatively, when Make fails due to this problem, you could wait for
2437a few seconds and then invoke Make again. In one particular case,
2438waiting for 10 or more seconds between the two Make invocations seemed
2439to work around the problem.
a933dad1 2440
9dc15871
EZ
2441Similar problems can happen if your machine NFS-mounts a directory
2442onto itself. Suppose the Emacs sources live in `/usr/local/src' and
2443you are working on the host called `marvin'. Then an entry in the
2444`/etc/fstab' file like the following is asking for trouble:
a933dad1 2445
9dc15871 2446 marvin:/usr/local/src /usr/local/src ...options.omitted...
a933dad1 2447
9dc15871 2448The solution is to remove this line from `etc/fstab'.
a933dad1 2449
9dc15871 2450*** Building Emacs with GCC 2.9x fails in the `src' directory.
a933dad1 2451
9dc15871
EZ
2452This may happen if you use a development version of GNU `cpp' from one
2453of the GCC snapshots between Oct 2000 and Feb 2001, or from a released
2454version of GCC newer than 2.95.2 which was prepared around those
2455dates; similar problems were reported with some snapshots of GCC 3.1
2456around Sep 30 2001. The preprocessor in those versions is
2457incompatible with a traditional Unix cpp (e.g., it expands ".." into
2458". .", which breaks relative file names that reference the parent
2459directory; or inserts TAB characters before lines that set Make
2460variables).
a933dad1 2461
9dc15871
EZ
2462The solution is to make sure the preprocessor is run with the
2463`-traditional' option. The `configure' script does that automatically
2464when it detects the known problems in your cpp, but you might hit some
2465unknown ones. To force the `configure' script to use `-traditional',
2466run the script like this:
a933dad1 2467
9dc15871 2468 CPP='gcc -E -traditional' ./configure ...
a933dad1 2469
9dc15871
EZ
2470(replace the ellipsis "..." with any additional arguments you pass to
2471the script).
a933dad1 2472
9dc15871
EZ
2473Note that this problem does not pertain to the MS-Windows port of
2474Emacs, since it doesn't use the preprocessor to generate Makefiles.
a933dad1 2475
9dc15871
EZ
2476*** src/Makefile and lib-src/Makefile are truncated--most of the file missing.
2477*** Compiling wakeup, in lib-src, says it can't make wakeup.c.
a933dad1 2478
9dc15871
EZ
2479This can happen if configure uses GNU sed version 2.03. That version
2480had a bug. GNU sed version 2.05 works properly.To solve the
2481problem, install the current version of GNU Sed, then rerun Emacs's
2482configure script.
a933dad1 2483
9dc15871 2484*** Compiling lib-src says there is no rule to make test-distrib.c.
a933dad1 2485
9dc15871
EZ
2486This results from a bug in a VERY old version of GNU Sed. To solve
2487the problem, install the current version of GNU Sed, then rerun
2488Emacs's configure script.
a933dad1 2489
745377e8
GM
2490*** Building a 32-bit executable on a 64-bit GNU/Linux architecture.
2491
2492First ensure that the necessary 32-bit system libraries and include
2493files are installed. Then use:
2494
2495 env CC="gcc -m32" ./configure --build=i386-linux-gnu \
2496 --x-libraries=/usr/X11R6/lib
2497
2498(using the location of the 32-bit X libraries on your system).
2499
1020d879 2500*** Building the Cygwin port for MS-Windows can fail with some GCC versions
9c9f0081
EZ
2501
2502Building Emacs 22 with Cygwin builds of GCC 3.4.4-1 and 3.4.4-2 is
2503reported to either fail or cause Emacs to segfault at run time. In
2504addition, the Cygwin GCC 3.4.4-2 has problems with generating debug
2505info. Cygwin users are advised not to use these versions of GCC for
485a6c18
EZ
2506compiling Emacs. GCC versions 4.0.3, 4.0.4, 4.1.1, and 4.1.2
2507reportedly build a working Cygwin binary of Emacs, so we recommend
2508these GCC versions. Note that these versions of GCC, 4.0.3, 4.0.4,
25094.1.1, and 4.1.2, are currently the _only_ versions known to succeed
2510in building Emacs (as of v22.1).
9c9f0081
EZ
2511
2512*** Building the native MS-Windows port with Cygwin GCC can fail.
a933dad1 2513
9dc15871
EZ
2514Emacs may not build using recent Cygwin builds of GCC, such as Cygwin
2515version 1.1.8, using the default configure settings. It appears to be
2516necessary to specify the -mwin32 flag when compiling, and define
2517__MSVCRT__, like so:
a933dad1 2518
9dc15871 2519 configure --with-gcc --cflags -mwin32 --cflags -D__MSVCRT__
a933dad1 2520
9dc15871 2521*** Building the MS-Windows port fails with a CreateProcess failure.
a933dad1 2522
9dc15871
EZ
2523Some versions of mingw32 make on some versions of Windows do not seem
2524to detect the shell correctly. Try "make SHELL=cmd.exe", or if that
2525fails, try running make from Cygwin bash instead.
a933dad1 2526
9dc15871 2527*** Building the MS-Windows port with Leim fails in the `leim' directory.
a933dad1 2528
9dc15871 2529The error message might be something like this:
a933dad1 2530
9dc15871
EZ
2531 Converting d:/emacs-21.3/leim/CXTERM-DIC/4Corner.tit to quail-package...
2532 Invalid ENCODE: value in TIT dictionary
2533 NMAKE : fatal error U1077: '"../src/obj-spd/i386/emacs.exe"' : return code
2534 '0xffffffff'
2535 Stop.
a933dad1 2536
9dc15871
EZ
2537This can happen if the Leim distribution is unpacked with a program
2538which converts the `*.tit' files to DOS-style CR-LF text format. The
2539`*.tit' files in the leim/CXTERM-DIC directory require Unix-style line
2540endings to compile properly, because Emacs reads them without any code
2541or EOL conversions.
a933dad1 2542
9dc15871
EZ
2543The solution is to make sure the program used to unpack Leim does not
2544change the files' line endings behind your back. The GNU FTP site has
2545in the `/gnu/emacs/windows' directory a program called `djtarnt.exe'
2546which can be used to unpack `.tar.gz' and `.zip' archives without
2547mangling them.
a933dad1 2548
9dc15871 2549*** Building `ctags' for MS-Windows with the MinGW port of GCC fails.
a933dad1 2550
9dc15871
EZ
2551This might happen due to a bug in the MinGW header assert.h, which
2552defines the `assert' macro with a trailing semi-colon. The following
2553patch to assert.h should solve this:
a933dad1 2554
0cc69e7d
EZ
2555 *** include/assert.h.orig Sun Nov 7 02:41:36 1999
2556 --- include/assert.h Mon Jan 29 11:49:10 2001
2557 ***************
2558 *** 41,47 ****
2559 /*
2560 * If not debugging, assert does nothing.
2561 */
2562 ! #define assert(x) ((void)0);
2563
2564 #else /* debugging enabled */
2565
2566 --- 41,47 ----
2567 /*
2568 * If not debugging, assert does nothing.
2569 */
2570 ! #define assert(x) ((void)0)
2571
2572 #else /* debugging enabled */
2573
2574
3e7c244e
JR
2575*** Building the MS-Windows port with Visual Studio 2005 fails.
2576
2577Microsoft no longer ships the single threaded version of the C library
2578with their compiler, and the multithreaded static library is missing
0cc69e7d 2579some functions that Microsoft have deemed non-threadsafe. The
3e7c244e
JR
2580dynamically linked C library has all the functions, but there is a
2581conflict between the versions of malloc in the DLL and in Emacs, which
2582is not resolvable due to the way Windows does dynamic linking.
2583
2584We recommend the use of the MingW port of GCC for compiling Emacs, as
2585not only does it not suffer these problems, but it is also Free
2586software like Emacs.
2587
9dc15871 2588** Linking
a933dad1 2589
9dc15871
EZ
2590*** Building Emacs with a system compiler fails to link because of an
2591undefined symbol such as __eprintf which does not appear in Emacs.
a933dad1 2592
9dc15871
EZ
2593This can happen if some of the libraries linked into Emacs were built
2594with GCC, but Emacs itself is being linked with a compiler other than
2595GCC. Object files compiled with GCC might need some helper functions
2596from libgcc.a, the library which comes with GCC, but the system
2597compiler does not instruct the linker to search libgcc.a during the
2598link stage.
a933dad1 2599
9dc15871 2600A solution is to link with GCC, like this:
a933dad1 2601
9dc15871 2602 make CC=gcc
a933dad1 2603
9dc15871
EZ
2604Since the .o object files already exist, this will not recompile Emacs
2605with GCC, but just restart by trying again to link temacs.
a933dad1 2606
9dc15871 2607*** AIX 1.3 ptf 0013: Link failure.
a933dad1 2608
9dc15871
EZ
2609There is a real duplicate definition of the function `_slibc_free' in
2610the library /lib/libc_s.a (just do nm on it to verify). The
2611workaround/fix is:
a933dad1 2612
9dc15871
EZ
2613 cd /lib
2614 ar xv libc_s.a NLtmtime.o
2615 ar dv libc_s.a NLtmtime.o
a933dad1 2616
9dc15871
EZ
2617*** AIX 4.1.2: Linker error messages such as
2618 ld: 0711-212 SEVERE ERROR: Symbol .__quous, found in the global symbol table
2619 of archive /usr/lib/libIM.a, was not defined in archive member shr.o.
a933dad1 2620
9dc15871
EZ
2621This is a problem in libIM.a. You can work around it by executing
2622these shell commands in the src subdirectory of the directory where
2623you build Emacs:
a933dad1 2624
9dc15871
EZ
2625 cp /usr/lib/libIM.a .
2626 chmod 664 libIM.a
2627 ranlib libIM.a
a933dad1 2628
9dc15871
EZ
2629Then change -lIM to ./libIM.a in the command to link temacs (in
2630Makefile).
a933dad1 2631
9dc15871 2632*** Sun with acc: Link failure when using acc on a Sun.
a933dad1 2633
9dc15871 2634To use acc, you need additional options just before the libraries, such as
a933dad1 2635
9dc15871 2636 /usr/lang/SC2.0.1/values-Xt.o -L/usr/lang/SC2.0.1/cg87 -L/usr/lang/SC2.0.1
a933dad1 2637
9dc15871 2638and you need to add -lansi just before -lc.
a933dad1 2639
9dc15871
EZ
2640The precise file names depend on the compiler version, so we
2641cannot easily arrange to supply them.
a933dad1 2642
9dc15871 2643*** Linking says that the functions insque and remque are undefined.
a933dad1 2644
9dc15871 2645Change oldXMenu/Makefile by adding insque.o to the variable OBJS.
a933dad1 2646
9dc15871 2647*** `tparam' reported as a multiply-defined symbol when linking with ncurses.
a933dad1 2648
9dc15871
EZ
2649This problem results from an incompatible change in ncurses, in
2650version 1.9.9e approximately. This version is unable to provide a
2651definition of tparm without also defining tparam. This is also
2652incompatible with Terminfo; as a result, the Emacs Terminfo support
2653does not work with this version of ncurses.
a933dad1 2654
9dc15871 2655The fix is to install a newer version of ncurses, such as version 4.2.
a933dad1 2656
9dc15871 2657** Dumping
a933dad1 2658
9dc15871 2659*** Linux: Segfault during `make bootstrap' under certain recent versions of the Linux kernel.
a933dad1 2660
880ea925 2661With certain recent Linux kernels (like the one of Red Hat Fedora Core
cf14a51c 26621 and newer), the new "Exec-shield" functionality is enabled by default, which
ed214edf
JD
2663creates a different memory layout that breaks the emacs dumper. Emacs tries
2664to handle this at build time, but if the workaround used fails, these
2665instructions can be useful.
cf14a51c
JD
2666The work-around explained here is not enough on Fedora Core 4 (and possible
2667newer). Read the next item.
a933dad1 2668
1f02a4ba
JD
2669Configure can overcome the problem of exec-shield if the architecture is
2670x86 and the program setarch is present. On other architectures no
2671workaround is known.
2672
9dc15871 2673You can check the Exec-shield state like this:
a933dad1 2674
9dc15871 2675 cat /proc/sys/kernel/exec-shield
a933dad1 2676
1f02a4ba 2677It returns non-zero when Exec-shield is enabled, 0 otherwise. Please
9dc15871 2678read your system documentation for more details on Exec-shield and
1f02a4ba
JD
2679associated commands. Exec-shield can be turned off with this command:
2680
2681 echo "0" > /proc/sys/kernel/exec-shield
a933dad1 2682
9dc15871
EZ
2683When Exec-shield is enabled, building Emacs will segfault during the
2684execution of this command:
a933dad1 2685
1f02a4ba 2686 ./temacs --batch --load loadup [dump|bootstrap]
177c0ea7 2687
9dc15871 2688To work around this problem, it is necessary to temporarily disable
1f02a4ba
JD
2689Exec-shield while building Emacs, or, on x86, by using the `setarch'
2690command when running temacs like this:
2691
2692 setarch i386 ./temacs --batch --load loadup [dump|bootstrap]
a933dad1 2693
ade79051 2694
cf14a51c
JD
2695*** Fedora Core 4 GNU/Linux: Segfault during dumping.
2696
2697In addition to exec-shield explained above "Linux: Segfault during
2698`make bootstrap' under certain recent versions of the Linux kernel"
2699item, Linux kernel shipped with Fedora Core 4 randomizes the virtual
2700address space of a process. As the result dumping may fail even if
2701you turn off exec-shield. In this case, use the -R option to the setarch
2702command:
2703
25fd144d 2704 setarch i386 -R ./temacs --batch --load loadup [dump|bootstrap]
cf14a51c
JD
2705
2706or
2707
ade79051 2708 setarch i386 -R make bootstrap
cf14a51c 2709
9dc15871 2710*** Fatal signal in the command temacs -l loadup inc dump.
a933dad1 2711
9dc15871
EZ
2712This command is the final stage of building Emacs. It is run by the
2713Makefile in the src subdirectory, or by build.com on VMS.
a933dad1 2714
9dc15871
EZ
2715It has been known to get fatal errors due to insufficient swapping
2716space available on the machine.
a933dad1 2717
9dc15871
EZ
2718On 68000s, it has also happened because of bugs in the
2719subroutine `alloca'. Verify that `alloca' works right, even
2720for large blocks (many pages).
a933dad1 2721
9dc15871
EZ
2722*** test-distrib says that the distribution has been clobbered.
2723*** or, temacs prints "Command key out of range 0-127".
2724*** or, temacs runs and dumps emacs, but emacs totally fails to work.
2725*** or, temacs gets errors dumping emacs.
a933dad1 2726
9dc15871
EZ
2727This can be because the .elc files have been garbled. Do not be
2728fooled by the fact that most of a .elc file is text: these are
2729binary files and can contain all 256 byte values.
a933dad1 2730
9dc15871
EZ
2731In particular `shar' cannot be used for transmitting GNU Emacs.
2732It typically truncates "lines". What appear to be "lines" in
2733a binary file can of course be of any length. Even once `shar'
2734itself is made to work correctly, `sh' discards null characters
2735when unpacking the shell archive.
a933dad1 2736
9dc15871
EZ
2737I have also seen character \177 changed into \377. I do not know
2738what transfer means caused this problem. Various network
2739file transfer programs are suspected of clobbering the high bit.
a933dad1 2740
9dc15871
EZ
2741If you have a copy of Emacs that has been damaged in its
2742nonprinting characters, you can fix them:
a933dad1 2743
9dc15871
EZ
2744 1) Record the names of all the .elc files.
2745 2) Delete all the .elc files.
2746 3) Recompile alloc.c with a value of PURESIZE twice as large.
2747 (See puresize.h.) You might as well save the old alloc.o.
2748 4) Remake emacs. It should work now.
2749 5) Running emacs, do Meta-x byte-compile-file repeatedly
2750 to recreate all the .elc files that used to exist.
2751 You may need to increase the value of the variable
2752 max-lisp-eval-depth to succeed in running the compiler interpreted
2753 on certain .el files. 400 was sufficient as of last report.
2754 6) Reinstall the old alloc.o (undoing changes to alloc.c if any)
2755 and remake temacs.
2756 7) Remake emacs. It should work now, with valid .elc files.
a933dad1 2757
9dc15871 2758*** temacs prints "Pure Lisp storage exhausted".
a933dad1 2759
9dc15871
EZ
2760This means that the Lisp code loaded from the .elc and .el
2761files during temacs -l loadup inc dump took up more
2762space than was allocated.
a933dad1 2763
9dc15871
EZ
2764This could be caused by
2765 1) adding code to the preloaded Lisp files
2766 2) adding more preloaded files in loadup.el
2767 3) having a site-init.el or site-load.el which loads files.
2768 Note that ANY site-init.el or site-load.el is nonstandard;
2769 if you have received Emacs from some other site
2770 and it contains a site-init.el or site-load.el file, consider
2771 deleting that file.
2772 4) getting the wrong .el or .elc files
2773 (not from the directory you expected).
2774 5) deleting some .elc files that are supposed to exist.
2775 This would cause the source files (.el files) to be
2776 loaded instead. They take up more room, so you lose.
2777 6) a bug in the Emacs distribution which underestimates
2778 the space required.
a933dad1 2779
9dc15871
EZ
2780If the need for more space is legitimate, change the definition
2781of PURESIZE in puresize.h.
a933dad1 2782
9dc15871
EZ
2783But in some of the cases listed above, this problem is a consequence
2784of something else that is wrong. Be sure to check and fix the real
2785problem.
a933dad1 2786
9dc15871 2787*** Linux: Emacs crashes when dumping itself on Mac PPC running Yellow Dog GNU/Linux.
a933dad1 2788
9dc15871
EZ
2789The crashes happen inside the function Fmake_symbol; here's a typical
2790C backtrace printed by GDB:
a933dad1 2791
9dc15871
EZ
2792 0x190c0c0 in Fmake_symbol ()
2793 (gdb) where
2794 #0 0x190c0c0 in Fmake_symbol ()
2795 #1 0x1942ca4 in init_obarray ()
2796 #2 0x18b3500 in main ()
2797 #3 0x114371c in __libc_start_main (argc=5, argv=0x7ffff5b4, envp=0x7ffff5cc,
a933dad1 2798
9dc15871
EZ
2799This could happen because GCC version 2.95 and later changed the base
2800of the load address to 0x10000000. Emacs needs to be told about this,
2801but we currently cannot do that automatically, because that breaks
2802other versions of GNU/Linux on the MacPPC. Until we find a way to
2803distinguish between the Yellow Dog and the other varieties of
2804GNU/Linux systems on the PPC, you will have to manually uncomment the
2805following section near the end of the file src/m/macppc.h in the Emacs
2806distribution:
a933dad1 2807
9dc15871
EZ
2808 #if 0 /* This breaks things on PPC GNU/Linux except for Yellowdog,
2809 even with identical GCC, as, ld. Let's take it out until we
2810 know what's really going on here. */
2811 /* GCC 2.95 and newer on GNU/Linux PPC changed the load address to
2812 0x10000000. */
2813 #if defined __linux__
2814 #if __GNUC__ > 2 || (__GNUC__ == 2 && __GNUC_MINOR__ >= 95)
2815 #define DATA_SEG_BITS 0x10000000
2816 #endif
2817 #endif
2818 #endif /* 0 */
a933dad1 2819
9dc15871
EZ
2820Remove the "#if 0" and "#endif" directives which surround this, save
2821the file, and then reconfigure and rebuild Emacs. The dumping process
2822should now succeed.
a933dad1 2823
0bce976c
GM
2824*** OpenBSD 4.0 macppc: Segfault during dumping.
2825
2826The build aborts with signal 11 when the command `./temacs --batch
14395431 2827--load loadup bootstrap' tries to load files.el. A workaround seems
464df798 2828to be to reduce the level of compiler optimization used during the
14395431
GM
2829build (from -O2 to -O1). It is possible this is an OpenBSD
2830GCC problem specific to the macppc architecture, possibly only
2831occurring with older versions of GCC (e.g. 3.3.5).
0bce976c 2832
ce46543c
GM
2833*** openSUSE 10.3: Segfault in bcopy during dumping.
2834
2835This is due to a bug in the bcopy implementation in openSUSE 10.3.
2836It is/will be fixed in an openSUSE update.
2837
9dc15871 2838** Installation
a933dad1 2839
9dc15871 2840*** Installing Emacs gets an error running `install-info'.
a933dad1 2841
9dc15871
EZ
2842You need to install a recent version of Texinfo; that package
2843supplies the `install-info' command.
a933dad1 2844
6afdff63
GM
2845*** Installing to a directory with spaces in the name fails.
2846
2847For example, if you call configure with a directory-related option
2848with spaces in the value, eg --enable-locallisppath='/path/with\ spaces'.
2849Using directory paths with spaces is not supported at this time: you
2850must re-configure without using spaces.
2851
6c06422c
CY
2852*** Installing to a directory with non-ASCII characters in the name fails.
2853
2854Installation may fail, or the Emacs executable may not start
2855correctly, if a directory name containing non-ASCII characters is used
2856as a `configure' argument (e.g. `--prefix'). The problem can also
2857occur if a non-ASCII directory is specified in the EMACSLOADPATH
2858envvar.
2859
89eaca5d
GM
2860*** On Solaris, use GNU Make when installing an out-of-tree build
2861
2862The Emacs configuration process allows you to configure the
2863build environment so that you can build emacs in a directory
2864outside of the distribution tree. When installing Emacs from an
2865out-of-tree build directory on Solaris, you may need to use GNU
2866make. The make programs bundled with Solaris support the VPATH
2867macro but use it differently from the way the VPATH macro is
2868used by GNU make. The differences will cause the "make install"
2869step to fail, leaving you with an incomplete emacs
2870installation. GNU make is available in /usr/sfw/bin on Solaris
287110 and can be installed as /opt/sfw/bin/gmake from the Solaris 9
2872Software Companion CDROM.
2873
2874The problems due to the VPATH processing differences affect only
2875out of tree builds so, if you are on a Solaris installation
2876without GNU make, you can install Emacs completely by installing
2877from a build environment using the original emacs distribution tree.
2878
9dc15871 2879** First execution
a933dad1 2880
9dc15871 2881*** Emacs binary is not in executable format, and cannot be run.
a933dad1 2882
9dc15871
EZ
2883This was reported to happen when Emacs is built in a directory mounted
2884via NFS, for some combinations of NFS client and NFS server.
2885Usually, the file `emacs' produced in these cases is full of
2886binary null characters, and the `file' utility says:
a933dad1 2887
9dc15871 2888 emacs: ASCII text, with no line terminators
a933dad1 2889
9dc15871
EZ
2890We don't know what exactly causes this failure. A work-around is to
2891build Emacs in a directory on a local disk.
a933dad1 2892
9dc15871 2893*** The dumped Emacs crashes when run, trying to write pure data.
a933dad1 2894
9dc15871 2895Two causes have been seen for such problems.
a933dad1 2896
9dc15871
EZ
28971) On a system where getpagesize is not a system call, it is defined
2898as a macro. If the definition (in both unexec.c and malloc.c) is wrong,
2899it can cause problems like this. You might be able to find the correct
2900value in the man page for a.out (5).
a933dad1 2901
9dc15871
EZ
29022) Some systems allocate variables declared static among the
2903initialized variables. Emacs makes all initialized variables in most
2904of its files pure after dumping, but the variables declared static and
2905not initialized are not supposed to be pure. On these systems you
2906may need to add "#define static" to the m- or the s- file.
a933dad1 2907
9dc15871 2908* Emacs 19 problems
a933dad1 2909
9dc15871 2910** Error messages `Wrong number of arguments: #<subr where-is-internal>, 5'.
a933dad1 2911
9dc15871
EZ
2912This typically results from having the powerkey library loaded.
2913Powerkey was designed for Emacs 19.22. It is obsolete now because
2914Emacs 19 now has this feature built in; and powerkey also calls
2915where-is-internal in an obsolete way.
a933dad1 2916
9dc15871 2917So the fix is to arrange not to load powerkey.
a933dad1 2918
9dc15871 2919* Runtime problems on legacy systems
a933dad1 2920
9dc15871
EZ
2921This section covers bugs reported on very old hardware or software.
2922If you are using hardware and an operating system shipped after 2000,
2923it is unlikely you will see any of these.
a933dad1 2924
9dc15871 2925** Ancient operating systems
a933dad1 2926
0a4dd4e4
EZ
2927AIX 4.2 was end-of-lifed on Dec 31st, 1999.
2928
2929*** AIX: You get this compiler error message:
2930
2931 Processing include file ./XMenuInt.h
2932 1501-106: (S) Include file X11/Xlib.h not found.
2933
2934This means your system was installed with only the X11 runtime i.d
2935libraries. You have to find your sipo (bootable tape) and install
2936X11Dev... with smit.
2937
2938(This report must be ancient. Bootable tapes are long dead.)
2939
2940*** AIX 3.2.4: Releasing Ctrl/Act key has no effect, if Shift is down.
2941
2942Due to a feature of AIX, pressing or releasing the Ctrl/Act key is
2943ignored when the Shift, Alt or AltGr keys are held down. This can
2944lead to the keyboard being "control-locked"--ordinary letters are
2945treated as control characters.
2946
2947You can get out of this "control-locked" state by pressing and
2948releasing Ctrl/Act while not pressing or holding any other keys.
2949
2950*** AIX 3.2.5: You get this message when running Emacs:
2951
2952 Could not load program emacs
2953 Symbol smtcheckinit in csh is undefined
2954 Error was: Exec format error
2955
2956or this one:
2957
2958 Could not load program .emacs
2959 Symbol _system_con in csh is undefined
2960 Symbol _fp_trapsta in csh is undefined
2961 Error was: Exec format error
2962
2963These can happen when you try to run on AIX 3.2.5 a program that was
2964compiled with 3.2.4. The fix is to recompile.
2965
2966*** AIX 4.2: Emacs gets a segmentation fault at startup.
2967
2968If you are using IBM's xlc compiler, compile emacs.c
2969without optimization; that should avoid the problem.
2970
9dc15871 2971*** ISC Unix
a933dad1 2972
9dc15871 2973**** ISC: display-time causes kernel problems on ISC systems.
a933dad1 2974
9dc15871
EZ
2975Under Interactive Unix versions 3.0.1 and 4.0 (and probably other
2976versions), display-time causes the loss of large numbers of STREVENT
2977cells. Eventually the kernel's supply of these cells is exhausted.
2978This makes emacs and the whole system run slow, and can make other
2979processes die, in particular pcnfsd.
a933dad1 2980
9dc15871
EZ
2981Other emacs functions that communicate with remote processes may have
2982the same problem. Display-time seems to be far the worst.
a933dad1 2983
9dc15871 2984The only known fix: Don't run display-time.
a933dad1 2985
9dc15871 2986*** SunOS
a933dad1 2987
0a4dd4e4
EZ
2988SunOS 4.1.4 stopped shipping on Sep 30 1998.
2989
2990**** SunOS: You get linker errors
2991 ld: Undefined symbol
2992 _get_wmShellWidgetClass
2993 _get_applicationShellWidgetClass
2994
9dc15871 2995**** Sun 4.0.x: M-x shell persistently reports "Process shell exited abnormally with code 1".
a933dad1 2996
9dc15871
EZ
2997This happened on Suns as a result of what is said to be a bug in Sunos
2998version 4.0.x. The only fix was to reboot the machine.
a933dad1 2999
9dc15871 3000**** SunOS4.1.1 and SunOS4.1.3: Mail is lost when sent to local aliases.
a933dad1
DL
3001
3002Many emacs mail user agents (VM and rmail, for instance) use the
3003sendmail.el library. This library can arrange for mail to be
3004delivered by passing messages to the /usr/lib/sendmail (usually)
3005program . In doing so, it passes the '-t' flag to sendmail, which
3006means that the name of the recipient of the message is not on the
3007command line and, therefore, that sendmail must parse the message to
3008obtain the destination address.
3009
3010There is a bug in the SunOS4.1.1 and SunOS4.1.3 versions of sendmail.
3011In short, when given the -t flag, the SunOS sendmail won't recognize
3012non-local (i.e. NIS) aliases. It has been reported that the Solaris
30132.x versions of sendmail do not have this bug. For those using SunOS
30144.1, the best fix is to install sendmail V8 or IDA sendmail (which
3015have other advantages over the regular sendmail as well). At the time
3016of this writing, these official versions are available:
3017
3018 Sendmail V8 on ftp.cs.berkeley.edu in /ucb/sendmail:
3019 sendmail.8.6.9.base.tar.Z (the base system source & documentation)
3020 sendmail.8.6.9.cf.tar.Z (configuration files)
3021 sendmail.8.6.9.misc.tar.Z (miscellaneous support programs)
3022 sendmail.8.6.9.xdoc.tar.Z (extended documentation, with postscript)
3023
3024 IDA sendmail on vixen.cso.uiuc.edu in /pub:
3025 sendmail-5.67b+IDA-1.5.tar.gz
3026
9dc15871 3027**** Sunos 4: You get the error ld: Undefined symbol __lib_version.
a933dad1 3028
9dc15871
EZ
3029This is the result of using cc or gcc with the shared library meant
3030for acc (the Sunpro compiler). Check your LD_LIBRARY_PATH and delete
3031/usr/lang/SC2.0.1 or some similar directory.
a933dad1 3032
9dc15871 3033**** SunOS 4.1.3: Emacs unpredictably crashes in _yp_dobind_soft.
a933dad1 3034
9dc15871
EZ
3035This happens if you configure Emacs specifying just `sparc-sun-sunos4'
3036on a system that is version 4.1.3. You must specify the precise
3037version number (or let configure figure out the configuration, which
3038it can do perfectly well for SunOS).
a933dad1 3039
9dc15871 3040**** Sunos 4.1.3: Emacs gets hung shortly after startup.
a933dad1 3041
9dc15871
EZ
3042We think this is due to a bug in Sunos. The word is that
3043one of these Sunos patches fixes the bug:
a933dad1 3044
9dc15871
EZ
3045100075-11 100224-06 100347-03 100482-05 100557-02 100623-03 100804-03 101080-01
3046100103-12 100249-09 100496-02 100564-07 100630-02 100891-10 101134-01
3047100170-09 100296-04 100377-09 100507-04 100567-04 100650-02 101070-01 101145-01
3048100173-10 100305-15 100383-06 100513-04 100570-05 100689-01 101071-03 101200-02
3049100178-09 100338-05 100421-03 100536-02 100584-05 100784-01 101072-01 101207-01
a933dad1 3050
9dc15871
EZ
3051We don't know which of these patches really matter. If you find out
3052which ones, please inform bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
a933dad1 3053
9dc15871
EZ
3054**** SunOS 4: Emacs processes keep going after you kill the X server
3055(or log out, if you logged in using X).
a933dad1 3056
9dc15871 3057Someone reported that recompiling with GCC 2.7.0 fixed this problem.
a933dad1 3058
9dc15871
EZ
3059The fix to this is to install patch 100573 for OpenWindows 3.0
3060or link libXmu statically.
a933dad1 3061
0a4dd4e4
EZ
3062**** Sunos 5.3: Subprocesses remain, hanging but not zombies.
3063
3064A bug in Sunos 5.3 causes Emacs subprocesses to remain after Emacs
3065exits. Sun patch # 101415-02 is part of the fix for this, but it only
3066applies to ptys, and doesn't fix the problem with subprocesses
3067communicating through pipes.
3068
9dc15871 3069*** Apollo Domain
a933dad1 3070
9dc15871 3071**** Shell mode ignores interrupts on Apollo Domain.
a933dad1 3072
9dc15871 3073You may find that M-x shell prints the following message:
a933dad1 3074
9dc15871 3075 Warning: no access to tty; thus no job control in this shell...
a933dad1 3076
9dc15871
EZ
3077This can happen if there are not enough ptys on your system.
3078Here is how to make more of them.
a933dad1 3079
9dc15871
EZ
3080 % cd /dev
3081 % ls pty*
3082 # shows how many pty's you have. I had 8, named pty0 to pty7)
3083 % /etc/crpty 8
3084 # creates eight new pty's
a933dad1 3085
9dc15871 3086*** Irix
a933dad1 3087
9dc15871 3088*** Irix 6.2: No visible display on mips-sgi-irix6.2 when compiling with GCC 2.8.1.
a933dad1 3089
9dc15871
EZ
3090This problem went away after installing the latest IRIX patches
3091as of 8 Dec 1998.
a933dad1 3092
9dc15871 3093The same problem has been reported on Irix 6.3.
a933dad1 3094
9dc15871
EZ
3095*** Irix 6.3: substituting environment variables in file names
3096in the minibuffer gives peculiar error messages such as
a933dad1 3097
9dc15871 3098 Substituting nonexistent environment variable ""
a933dad1 3099
9dc15871
EZ
3100This is not an Emacs bug; it is caused by something in SGI patch
3101003082 August 11, 1998.
a933dad1 3102
9dc15871 3103*** OPENSTEP
a933dad1 3104
9dc15871 3105**** OPENSTEP 4.2: Compiling syntax.c with gcc 2.7.2.1 fails.
a933dad1 3106
9dc15871
EZ
3107The compiler was reported to crash while compiling syntax.c with the
3108following message:
a933dad1 3109
9dc15871 3110 cc: Internal compiler error: program cc1obj got fatal signal 11
a933dad1 3111
9dc15871
EZ
3112To work around this, replace the macros UPDATE_SYNTAX_TABLE_FORWARD,
3113INC_BOTH, and INC_FROM with functions. To this end, first define 3
3114functions, one each for every macro. Here's an example:
a933dad1 3115
9dc15871
EZ
3116 static int update_syntax_table_forward(int from)
3117 {
3118 return(UPDATE_SYNTAX_TABLE_FORWARD(from));
3119 }/*update_syntax_table_forward*/
a933dad1 3120
9dc15871
EZ
3121Then replace all references to UPDATE_SYNTAX_TABLE_FORWARD in syntax.c
3122with a call to the function update_syntax_table_forward.
a933dad1 3123
9dc15871 3124*** Solaris 2.x
a933dad1 3125
9dc15871 3126**** Strange results from format %d in a few cases, on a Sun.
a933dad1 3127
9dc15871
EZ
3128Sun compiler version SC3.0 has been found to miscompile part of
3129editfns.c. The workaround is to compile with some other compiler such
3130as GCC.
a933dad1 3131
9dc15871 3132**** On Solaris, Emacs dumps core if lisp-complete-symbol is called.
a933dad1 3133
9dc15871
EZ
3134If you compile Emacs with the -fast or -xO4 option with version 3.0.2
3135of the Sun C compiler, Emacs dumps core when lisp-complete-symbol is
3136called. The problem does not happen if you compile with GCC.
a933dad1 3137
9dc15871 3138**** On Solaris, Emacs crashes if you use (display-time).
a933dad1 3139
9dc15871
EZ
3140This can happen if you configure Emacs without specifying the precise
3141version of Solaris that you are using.
a933dad1 3142
9dc15871 3143**** Solaris 2.3 and 2.4: Unpredictable segmentation faults.
a933dad1 3144
9dc15871
EZ
3145A user reported that this happened in 19.29 when it was compiled with
3146the Sun compiler, but not when he recompiled with GCC 2.7.0.
a933dad1 3147
9dc15871 3148We do not know whether something in Emacs is partly to blame for this.
a933dad1 3149
9dc15871 3150**** Solaris 2.4: Emacs dumps core on startup.
a933dad1 3151
9dc15871
EZ
3152Bill Sebok says that the cause of this is Solaris 2.4 vendor patch
3153102303-05, which extends the Solaris linker to deal with the Solaris
3154Common Desktop Environment's linking needs. You can fix the problem
3155by removing this patch and installing patch 102049-02 instead.
3156However, that linker version won't work with CDE.
a933dad1 3157
9dc15871
EZ
3158Solaris 2.5 comes with a linker that has this bug. It is reported that if
3159you install all the latest patches (as of June 1996), the bug is fixed.
3160We suspect the crucial patch is one of these, but we don't know
3161for certain.
a933dad1 3162
9dc15871
EZ
3163 103093-03: [README] SunOS 5.5: kernel patch (2140557 bytes)
3164 102832-01: [README] OpenWindows 3.5: Xview Jumbo Patch (4181613 bytes)
3165 103242-04: [README] SunOS 5.5: linker patch (595363 bytes)
a933dad1 3166
9dc15871
EZ
3167(One user reports that the bug was fixed by those patches together
3168with patches 102980-04, 103279-01, 103300-02, and 103468-01.)
a933dad1 3169
9dc15871
EZ
3170If you can determine which patch does fix the bug, please tell
3171bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
a933dad1 3172
9dc15871
EZ
3173Meanwhile, the GNU linker links Emacs properly on both Solaris 2.4 and
3174Solaris 2.5.
a933dad1 3175
9dc15871
EZ
3176**** Solaris 2.4: Dired hangs and C-g does not work. Or Emacs hangs
3177forever waiting for termination of a subprocess that is a zombie.
a933dad1 3178
9dc15871
EZ
3179casper@fwi.uva.nl says the problem is in X11R6. Rebuild libX11.so
3180after changing the file xc/config/cf/sunLib.tmpl. Change the lines
a933dad1 3181
9dc15871
EZ
3182 #if ThreadedX
3183 #define SharedX11Reqs -lthread
3184 #endif
a933dad1 3185
9dc15871 3186to:
a933dad1 3187
9dc15871
EZ
3188 #if OSMinorVersion < 4
3189 #if ThreadedX
3190 #define SharedX11Reqs -lthread
3191 #endif
3192 #endif
3193
3194Be sure also to edit x/config/cf/sun.cf so that OSMinorVersion is 4
3195(as it should be for Solaris 2.4). The file has three definitions for
3196OSMinorVersion: the first is for x86, the second for SPARC under
3197Solaris, and the third for SunOS 4. Make sure to update the
3198definition for your type of machine and system.
a933dad1 3199
9dc15871
EZ
3200Then do `make Everything' in the top directory of X11R6, to rebuild
3201the makefiles and rebuild X. The X built this way work only on
3202Solaris 2.4, not on 2.3.
a933dad1 3203
9dc15871
EZ
3204For multithreaded X to work it is necessary to install patch
3205101925-02 to fix problems in header files [2.4]. You need
3206to reinstall gcc or re-run just-fixinc after installing that
3207patch.
a933dad1 3208
9dc15871
EZ
3209However, Frank Rust <frust@iti.cs.tu-bs.de> used a simpler solution:
3210he changed
3211 #define ThreadedX YES
3212to
3213 #define ThreadedX NO
3214in sun.cf and did `make World' to rebuild X11R6. Removing all
3215`-DXTHREAD*' flags and `-lthread' entries from lib/X11/Makefile and
3216typing 'make install' in that directory also seemed to work.
a933dad1 3217
9dc15871 3218**** Solaris 2.x: GCC complains "64 bit integer types not supported".
a933dad1 3219
9dc15871
EZ
3220This suggests that GCC is not installed correctly. Most likely you
3221are using GCC 2.7.2.3 (or earlier) on Solaris 2.6 (or later); this
3222does not work without patching. To run GCC 2.7.2.3 on Solaris 2.6 or
3223later, you must patch fixinc.svr4 and reinstall GCC from scratch as
3224described in the Solaris FAQ
3225<http://www.wins.uva.nl/pub/solaris/solaris2.html>. A better fix is
3226to upgrade to GCC 2.8.1 or later.
a933dad1 3227
9dc15871
EZ
3228**** Solaris 2.7: Building Emacs with WorkShop Compilers 5.0 98/12/15
3229C 5.0 failed, apparently with non-default CFLAGS, most probably due to
3230compiler bugs. Using Sun Solaris 2.7 Sun WorkShop 6 update 1 C
3231release was reported to work without problems. It worked OK on
3232another system with Solaris 8 using apparently the same 5.0 compiler
3233and the default CFLAGS.
a933dad1 3234
9dc15871 3235**** Solaris 2.x: Emacs dumps core when built with Motif.
a933dad1 3236
9dc15871
EZ
3237The Solaris Motif libraries are buggy, at least up through Solaris 2.5.1.
3238Install the current Motif runtime library patch appropriate for your host.
3239(Make sure the patch is current; some older patch versions still have the bug.)
3240You should install the other patches recommended by Sun for your host, too.
3241You can obtain Sun patches from ftp://sunsolve.sun.com/pub/patches/;
3242look for files with names ending in `.PatchReport' to see which patches
3243are currently recommended for your host.
a933dad1 3244
9dc15871
EZ
3245On Solaris 2.6, Emacs is said to work with Motif when Solaris patch
3246105284-12 is installed, but fail when 105284-15 is installed.
3247105284-18 might fix it again.
a933dad1 3248
0a4dd4e4 3249**** Solaris 2.6 and 7: the Compose key does not work.
a933dad1 3250
9dc15871
EZ
3251This is a bug in Motif in Solaris. Supposedly it has been fixed for
3252the next major release of Solaris. However, if someone with Sun
3253support complains to Sun about the bug, they may release a patch.
3254If you do this, mention Sun bug #4188711.
a933dad1 3255
9dc15871
EZ
3256One workaround is to use a locale that allows non-ASCII characters.
3257For example, before invoking emacs, set the LC_ALL environment
3258variable to "en_US" (American English). The directory /usr/lib/locale
3259lists the supported locales; any locale other than "C" or "POSIX"
3260should do.
a933dad1 3261
9dc15871
EZ
3262pen@lysator.liu.se says (Feb 1998) that the Compose key does work
3263if you link with the MIT X11 libraries instead of the Solaris X11
3264libraries.
a933dad1 3265
0a4dd4e4
EZ
3266*** HP/UX versions before 11.0
3267
bf247b6e 3268HP/UX 9 was end-of-lifed in December 1998.
0a4dd4e4
EZ
3269HP/UX 10 was end-of-lifed in May 1999.
3270
3271**** HP/UX 9: Emacs crashes with SIGBUS or SIGSEGV after you delete a frame.
3272
3273We think this is due to a bug in the X libraries provided by HP. With
3274the alternative X libraries in /usr/contrib/mitX11R5/lib, the problem
3275does not happen.
3276
3277*** HP/UX 10: Large file support is disabled.
3278
3279See the comments in src/s/hpux10.h.
3280
3281*** HP/UX: Emacs is slow using X11R5.
3282
3283This happens if you use the MIT versions of the X libraries--it
3284doesn't run as fast as HP's version. People sometimes use the version
3285because they see the HP version doesn't have the libraries libXaw.a,
3286libXmu.a, libXext.a and others. HP/UX normally doesn't come with
3287those libraries installed. To get good performance, you need to
3288install them and rebuild Emacs.
3289
9dc15871 3290*** Ultrix and Digital Unix
a933dad1 3291
9dc15871 3292**** Ultrix 4.2: `make install' fails on install-doc with `Error 141'.
a933dad1 3293
9dc15871
EZ
3294This happens on Ultrix 4.2 due to failure of a pipeline of tar
3295commands. We don't know why they fail, but the bug seems not to be in
3296Emacs. The workaround is to run the shell command in install-doc by
3297hand.
a933dad1 3298
9dc15871 3299**** Digital Unix 4.0: Garbled display on non-X terminals when Emacs runs.
a933dad1 3300
9dc15871
EZ
3301So far it appears that running `tset' triggers this problem (when TERM
3302is vt100, at least). If you do not run `tset', then Emacs displays
3303properly. If someone can tell us precisely which effect of running
3304`tset' actually causes the problem, we may be able to implement a fix
3305in Emacs.
a933dad1 3306
9dc15871 3307**** Ultrix: `expand-file-name' fails to work on any but the machine you dumped Emacs on.
a933dad1 3308
9dc15871
EZ
3309On Ultrix, if you use any of the functions which look up information
3310in the passwd database before dumping Emacs (say, by using
3311expand-file-name in site-init.el), then those functions will not work
3312in the dumped Emacs on any host but the one Emacs was dumped on.
a933dad1 3313
9dc15871
EZ
3314The solution? Don't use expand-file-name in site-init.el, or in
3315anything it loads. Yuck - some solution.
a933dad1 3316
9dc15871
EZ
3317I'm not sure why this happens; if you can find out exactly what is
3318going on, and perhaps find a fix or a workaround, please let us know.
3319Perhaps the YP functions cache some information, the cache is included
3320in the dumped Emacs, and is then inaccurate on any other host.
a933dad1 3321
9dc15871 3322*** SVr4
a933dad1 3323
9dc15871 3324**** SVr4: On some variants of SVR4, Emacs does not work at all with X.
a933dad1 3325
9dc15871
EZ
3326Try defining BROKEN_FIONREAD in your config.h file. If this solves
3327the problem, please send a bug report to tell us this is needed; be
3328sure to say exactly what type of machine and system you are using.
a933dad1 3329
9dc15871 3330**** SVr4: After running emacs once, subsequent invocations crash.
a933dad1 3331
9dc15871
EZ
3332Some versions of SVR4 have a serious bug in the implementation of the
3333mmap () system call in the kernel; this causes emacs to run correctly
3334the first time, and then crash when run a second time.
a933dad1 3335
9dc15871
EZ
3336Contact your vendor and ask for the mmap bug fix; in the mean time,
3337you may be able to work around the problem by adding a line to your
3338operating system description file (whose name is reported by the
3339configure script) that reads:
3340#define SYSTEM_MALLOC
3341This makes Emacs use memory less efficiently, but seems to work around
3342the kernel bug.
a933dad1 3343
0a4dd4e4
EZ
3344*** Irix 5 and earlier
3345
bf247b6e 3346Exactly when Irix-5 end-of-lifed is obscure. But since Irix 6.0
0a4dd4e4
EZ
3347shipped in 1994, it has been some years.
3348
3349**** Irix 5.2: unexelfsgi.c can't find cmplrs/stsupport.h.
3350
3351The file cmplrs/stsupport.h was included in the wrong file set in the
3352Irix 5.2 distribution. You can find it in the optional fileset
3353compiler_dev, or copy it from some other Irix 5.2 system. A kludgy
3354workaround is to change unexelfsgi.c to include sym.h instead of
3355syms.h.
3356
3357**** Irix 5.3: "out of virtual swap space".
3358
3359This message occurs when the system runs out of swap space due to too
3360many large programs running. The solution is either to provide more
3361swap space or to reduce the number of large programs being run. You
3362can check the current status of the swap space by executing the
3363command `swap -l'.
3364
3365You can increase swap space by changing the file /etc/fstab. Adding a
3366line like this:
3367
3368/usr/swap/swap.more swap swap pri=3 0 0
3369
3370where /usr/swap/swap.more is a file previously created (for instance
3371by using /etc/mkfile), will increase the swap space by the size of
3372that file. Execute `swap -m' or reboot the machine to activate the
3373new swap area. See the manpages for `swap' and `fstab' for further
3374information.
3375
3376The objectserver daemon can use up lots of memory because it can be
3377swamped with NIS information. It collects information about all users
3378on the network that can log on to the host.
3379
3380If you want to disable the objectserver completely, you can execute
3381the command `chkconfig objectserver off' and reboot. That may disable
3382some of the window system functionality, such as responding CDROM
3383icons.
3384
3385You can also remove NIS support from the objectserver. The SGI `admin'
3386FAQ has a detailed description on how to do that; see question 35
3387("Why isn't the objectserver working?"). The admin FAQ can be found at
3388ftp://viz.tamu.edu/pub/sgi/faq/.
3389
3390**** Irix 5.3: Emacs crashes in utmpname.
3391
3392This problem is fixed in Patch 3175 for Irix 5.3.
3393It is also fixed in Irix versions 6.2 and up.
3394
3395**** Irix 6.0: Make tries (and fails) to build a program named unexelfsgi.
3396
3397A compiler bug inserts spaces into the string "unexelfsgi . o"
3398in src/Makefile. Edit src/Makefile, after configure is run,
3399find that string, and take out the spaces.
3400
3401Compiler fixes in Irix 6.0.1 should eliminate this problem.
3402
3403*** SCO Unix and UnixWare
3404
3405**** SCO 3.2v4: Unusable default font.
3406
3407The Open Desktop environment comes with default X resource settings
3408that tell Emacs to use a variable-width font. Emacs cannot use such
3409fonts, so it does not work.
3410
3411This is caused by the file /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/ScoTerm, which is
3412the application-specific resource file for the `scoterm' terminal
3413emulator program. It contains several extremely general X resources
3414that affect other programs besides `scoterm'. In particular, these
3415resources affect Emacs also:
3416
3417 *Font: -*-helvetica-medium-r-*--12-*-p-*
3418 *Background: scoBackground
3419 *Foreground: scoForeground
3420
3421The best solution is to create an application-specific resource file for
3422Emacs, /usr/lib/X11/sco/startup/Emacs, with the following contents:
3423
3424 Emacs*Font: -*-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-120-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1
3425 Emacs*Background: white
3426 Emacs*Foreground: black
3427
3428(These settings mimic the Emacs defaults, but you can change them to
3429suit your needs.) This resource file is only read when the X server
3430starts up, so you should restart it by logging out of the Open Desktop
3431environment or by running `scologin stop; scologin start` from the shell
3432as root. Alternatively, you can put these settings in the
3433/usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/Emacs resource file and simply restart Emacs,
3434but then they will not affect remote invocations of Emacs that use the
3435Open Desktop display.
3436
3437These resource files are not normally shared across a network of SCO
3438machines; you must create the file on each machine individually.
3439
3440**** SCO 4.2.0: Regular expressions matching bugs on SCO systems.
3441
3442On SCO, there are problems in regexp matching when Emacs is compiled
3443with the system compiler. The compiler version is "Microsoft C
3444version 6", SCO 4.2.0h Dev Sys Maintenance Supplement 01/06/93; Quick
3445C Compiler Version 1.00.46 (Beta). The solution is to compile with
3446GCC.
3447
3448**** UnixWare 2.1: Error 12 (virtual memory exceeded) when dumping Emacs.
3449
3450Paul Abrahams (abrahams@acm.org) reports that with the installed
3451virtual memory settings for UnixWare 2.1.2, an Error 12 occurs during
3452the "make" that builds Emacs, when running temacs to dump emacs. That
3453error indicates that the per-process virtual memory limit has been
3454exceeded. The default limit is probably 32MB. Raising the virtual
3455memory limit to 40MB should make it possible to finish building Emacs.
3456
3457You can do this with the command `ulimit' (sh) or `limit' (csh).
3458But you have to be root to do it.
3459
3460According to Martin Sohnius, you can also retune this in the kernel:
3461
3462 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune SDATLIM 33554432 ## soft data size limit
3463 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune HDATLIM 33554432 ## hard "
3464 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune SVMMSIZE unlimited ## soft process size limit
3465 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune HVMMSIZE unlimited ## hard "
3466 # /etc/conf/bin/idbuild -B
3467
3468(He recommends you not change the stack limit, though.)
3469These changes take effect when you reboot.
3470
9dc15871 3471*** Linux 1.x
a933dad1 3472
9dc15871 3473**** Linux 1.0-1.04: Typing C-c C-c in Shell mode kills your X server.
a933dad1 3474
9dc15871
EZ
3475This happens with Linux kernel 1.0 thru 1.04, approximately. The workaround is
3476to define SIGNALS_VIA_CHARACTERS in config.h and recompile Emacs.
3477Newer Linux kernel versions don't have this problem.
a933dad1 3478
9dc15871
EZ
3479**** Linux 1.3: Output from subprocess (such as man or diff) is randomly
3480truncated on GNU/Linux systems.
a933dad1 3481
9dc15871
EZ
3482This is due to a kernel bug which seems to be fixed in Linux version
34831.3.75.
a933dad1 3484
0a4dd4e4
EZ
3485** Windows 3.1, 95, 98, and ME
3486
3487*** MS-Windows NT/95: Problems running Perl under Emacs
3488
3489`perl -de 0' just hangs when executed in an Emacs subshell.
3490The fault lies with Perl (indirectly with Windows NT/95).
3491
3492The problem is that the Perl debugger explicitly opens a connection to
3493"CON", which is the DOS/NT equivalent of "/dev/tty", for interacting
3494with the user.
3495
3496On Unix, this is okay, because Emacs (or the shell?) creates a
3497pseudo-tty so that /dev/tty is really the pipe Emacs is using to
3498communicate with the subprocess.
3499
3500On NT, this fails because CON always refers to the handle for the
3501relevant console (approximately equivalent to a tty), and cannot be
3502redirected to refer to the pipe Emacs assigned to the subprocess as
3503stdin.
3504
3505A workaround is to modify perldb.pl to use STDIN/STDOUT instead of CON.
3506
3507For Perl 4:
3508
3509 *** PERL/LIB/PERLDB.PL.orig Wed May 26 08:24:18 1993
3510 --- PERL/LIB/PERLDB.PL Mon Jul 01 15:28:16 1996
3511 ***************
3512 *** 68,74 ****
3513 $rcfile=".perldb";
3514 }
3515 else {
3516 ! $console = "con";
3517 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
3518 }
3519
3520 --- 68,74 ----
3521 $rcfile=".perldb";
3522 }
3523 else {
3524 ! $console = "";
3525 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
3526 }
3527
3528
3529 For Perl 5:
3530 *** perl/5.001/lib/perl5db.pl.orig Sun Jun 04 21:13:40 1995
3531 --- perl/5.001/lib/perl5db.pl Mon Jul 01 17:00:08 1996
3532 ***************
3533 *** 22,28 ****
3534 $rcfile=".perldb";
3535 }
3536 elsif (-e "con") {
3537 ! $console = "con";
3538 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
3539 }
3540 else {
3541 --- 22,28 ----
3542 $rcfile=".perldb";
3543 }
3544 elsif (-e "con") {
3545 ! $console = "";
3546 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
3547 }
3548 else {
3549
3550*** MS-Windows 95: Alt-f6 does not get through to Emacs.
3551
3552This character seems to be trapped by the kernel in Windows 95.
3553You can enter M-f6 by typing ESC f6.
3554
3555*** MS-Windows 95/98/ME: subprocesses do not terminate properly.
3556
3557This is a limitation of the Operating System, and can cause problems
3558when shutting down Windows. Ensure that all subprocesses are exited
3559cleanly before exiting Emacs. For more details, see the FAQ at
3560http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/windows/.
3561
3562*** MS-Windows 95/98/ME: crashes when Emacs invokes non-existent programs.
3563
3564When a program you are trying to run is not found on the PATH,
3565Windows might respond by crashing or locking up your system. In
3566particular, this has been reported when trying to compile a Java
3567program in JDEE when javac.exe is installed, but not on the system
3568PATH.
3569
9dc15871 3570** MS-DOS
a933dad1 3571
9dc15871 3572*** When compiling with DJGPP on MS-Windows NT, "config msdos" fails.
a933dad1 3573
9dc15871
EZ
3574If the error message is "VDM has been already loaded", this is because
3575Windows has a program called `redir.exe' that is incompatible with a
3576program by the same name supplied with DJGPP, which is used by
3577config.bat. To resolve this, move the DJGPP's `bin' subdirectory to
3578the front of your PATH environment variable.
a933dad1 3579
9dc15871
EZ
3580*** When compiling with DJGPP on MS-Windows 95, Make fails for some targets
3581like make-docfile.
a933dad1 3582
9dc15871
EZ
3583This can happen if long file name support (the setting of environment
3584variable LFN) when Emacs distribution was unpacked and during
3585compilation are not the same. See the MSDOG section of INSTALL for
3586the explanation of how to avoid this problem.
a933dad1 3587
9dc15871 3588*** Emacs compiled with DJGPP complains at startup:
a933dad1 3589
9dc15871 3590 "Wrong type of argument: internal-facep, msdos-menu-active-face"
a933dad1 3591
9dc15871
EZ
3592This can happen if you define an environment variable `TERM'. Emacs
3593on MSDOS uses an internal terminal emulator which is disabled if the
3594value of `TERM' is anything but the string "internal". Emacs then
3595works as if its terminal were a dumb glass teletype that doesn't
3596support faces. To work around this, arrange for `TERM' to be
3597undefined when Emacs runs. The best way to do that is to add an
3598[emacs] section to the DJGPP.ENV file which defines an empty value for
3599`TERM'; this way, only Emacs gets the empty value, while the rest of
3600your system works as before.
a933dad1 3601
9dc15871 3602*** MS-DOS: Emacs crashes at startup.
a933dad1 3603
9dc15871
EZ
3604Some users report that Emacs 19.29 requires dpmi memory management,
3605and crashes on startup if the system does not have it. We don't yet
3606know why this happens--perhaps these machines don't have enough real
3607memory, or perhaps something is wrong in Emacs or the compiler.
3608However, arranging to use dpmi support is a workaround.
a933dad1 3609
9dc15871
EZ
3610You can find out if you have a dpmi host by running go32 without
3611arguments; it will tell you if it uses dpmi memory. For more
3612information about dpmi memory, consult the djgpp FAQ. (djgpp
3613is the GNU C compiler as packaged for MSDOS.)
a933dad1 3614
9dc15871
EZ
3615Compiling Emacs under MSDOS is extremely sensitive for proper memory
3616configuration. If you experience problems during compilation, consider
3617removing some or all memory resident programs (notably disk caches)
3618and make sure that your memory managers are properly configured. See
3619the djgpp faq for configuration hints.
a933dad1 3620
9dc15871
EZ
3621*** Emacs compiled with DJGPP for MS-DOS/MS-Windows cannot access files
3622in the directory with the special name `dev' under the root of any
3623drive, e.g. `c:/dev'.
a933dad1 3624
9dc15871
EZ
3625This is an unfortunate side-effect of the support for Unix-style
3626device names such as /dev/null in the DJGPP runtime library. A
3627work-around is to rename the problem directory to another name.
a933dad1 3628
9dc15871 3629*** MS-DOS+DJGPP: Problems on MS-DOG if DJGPP v2.0 is used to compile Emacs.
a933dad1 3630
9dc15871 3631There are two DJGPP library bugs which cause problems:
a933dad1 3632
9dc15871
EZ
3633 * Running `shell-command' (or `compile', or `grep') you get
3634 `Searching for program: permission denied (EACCES), c:/command.com';
3635 * After you shell to DOS, Ctrl-Break kills Emacs.
a933dad1 3636
9dc15871
EZ
3637To work around these bugs, you can use two files in the msdos
3638subdirectory: `is_exec.c' and `sigaction.c'. Compile them and link
3639them into the Emacs executable `temacs'; then they will replace the
3640incorrect library functions.
a933dad1 3641
9dc15871
EZ
3642*** MS-DOS: Emacs compiled for MSDOS cannot find some Lisp files, or other
3643run-time support files, when long filename support is enabled.
a933dad1 3644
9dc15871
EZ
3645Usually, this problem will manifest itself when Emacs exits
3646immediately after flashing the startup screen, because it cannot find
3647the Lisp files it needs to load at startup. Redirect Emacs stdout
3648and stderr to a file to see the error message printed by Emacs.
a933dad1 3649
9dc15871
EZ
3650Another manifestation of this problem is that Emacs is unable to load
3651the support for editing program sources in languages such as C and
3652Lisp.
a933dad1 3653
9dc15871
EZ
3654This can happen if the Emacs distribution was unzipped without LFN
3655support, thus causing long filenames to be truncated to the first 6
3656characters and a numeric tail that Windows 95 normally attaches to it.
3657You should unzip the files again with a utility that supports long
3658filenames (such as djtar from DJGPP or InfoZip's UnZip program
3659compiled with DJGPP v2). The MSDOG section of the file INSTALL
3660explains this issue in more detail.
a933dad1 3661
9dc15871
EZ
3662Another possible reason for such failures is that Emacs compiled for
3663MSDOS is used on Windows NT, where long file names are not supported
3664by this version of Emacs, but the distribution was unpacked by an
3665unzip program that preserved the long file names instead of truncating
3666them to DOS 8+3 limits. To be useful on NT, the MSDOS port of Emacs
3667must be unzipped by a DOS utility, so that long file names are
3668properly truncated.
a933dad1 3669
9dc15871 3670** Archaic window managers and toolkits
a933dad1 3671
9dc15871 3672*** OpenLook: Under OpenLook, the Emacs window disappears when you type M-q.
a933dad1 3673
9dc15871
EZ
3674Some versions of the Open Look window manager interpret M-q as a quit
3675command for whatever window you are typing at. If you want to use
3676Emacs with that window manager, you should try to configure the window
3677manager to use some other command. You can disable the
3678shortcut keys entirely by adding this line to ~/.OWdefaults:
a933dad1 3679
9dc15871 3680 OpenWindows.WindowMenuAccelerators: False
a933dad1 3681
9dc15871 3682**** twm: A position you specified in .Xdefaults is ignored, using twm.
a933dad1 3683
9dc15871
EZ
3684twm normally ignores "program-specified" positions.
3685You can tell it to obey them with this command in your `.twmrc' file:
a933dad1 3686
9dc15871 3687 UsePPosition "on" #allow clients to request a position
a933dad1 3688
9dc15871 3689** Bugs related to old DEC hardware
a933dad1 3690
9dc15871 3691*** The Compose key on a DEC keyboard does not work as Meta key.
a933dad1 3692
9dc15871 3693This shell command should fix it:
a933dad1 3694
9dc15871 3695 xmodmap -e 'keycode 0xb1 = Meta_L'
a933dad1 3696
9dc15871
EZ
3697*** Keyboard input gets confused after a beep when using a DECserver
3698as a concentrator.
a933dad1 3699
9dc15871
EZ
3700This problem seems to be a matter of configuring the DECserver to use
37017 bit characters rather than 8 bit characters.
a933dad1 3702
9dc15871 3703* Build problems on legacy systems
a933dad1 3704
9dc15871 3705** BSD/386 1.0: --with-x-toolkit option configures wrong.
a933dad1 3706
9dc15871
EZ
3707This problem is due to bugs in the shell in version 1.0 of BSD/386.
3708The workaround is to edit the configure file to use some other shell,
3709such as bash.
a933dad1 3710
9dc15871
EZ
3711** Digital Unix 4.0: Emacs fails to build, giving error message
3712 Invalid dimension for the charset-ID 160
a933dad1 3713
9dc15871
EZ
3714This is due to a bug or an installation problem in GCC 2.8.0.
3715Installing a more recent version of GCC fixes the problem.
a933dad1 3716
9dc15871 3717** Digital Unix 4.0: Failure in unexec while dumping emacs.
a933dad1 3718
9dc15871 3719This problem manifests itself as an error message
a933dad1 3720
9dc15871 3721 unexec: Bad address, writing data section to ...
a933dad1 3722
9dc15871
EZ
3723The user suspects that this happened because his X libraries
3724were built for an older system version,
a933dad1 3725
9dc15871 3726 ./configure --x-includes=/usr/include --x-libraries=/usr/shlib
a933dad1 3727
9dc15871 3728made the problem go away.
a933dad1 3729
9dc15871 3730** Sunos 4.1.1: there are errors compiling sysdep.c.
a933dad1 3731
9dc15871 3732If you get errors such as
a933dad1 3733
9dc15871
EZ
3734 "sysdep.c", line 2017: undefined structure or union
3735 "sysdep.c", line 2017: undefined structure or union
3736 "sysdep.c", line 2019: nodename undefined
a933dad1 3737
9dc15871
EZ
3738This can result from defining LD_LIBRARY_PATH. It is very tricky
3739to use that environment variable with Emacs. The Emacs configure
3740script links many test programs with the system libraries; you must
3741make sure that the libraries available to configure are the same
3742ones available when you build Emacs.
a933dad1 3743
9dc15871 3744** SunOS 4.1.1: You get this error message from GNU ld:
a933dad1 3745
9dc15871 3746 /lib/libc.a(_Q_sub.o): Undefined symbol __Q_get_rp_rd referenced from text segment
a933dad1 3747
9dc15871 3748The problem is in the Sun shared C library, not in GNU ld.
a933dad1 3749
9dc15871 3750The solution is to install Patch-ID# 100267-03 from Sun.
a933dad1 3751
9dc15871 3752** Sunos 4.1: Undefined symbols when linking using --with-x-toolkit.
a933dad1 3753
9dc15871
EZ
3754If you get the undefined symbols _atowc _wcslen, _iswprint, _iswspace,
3755_iswcntrl, _wcscpy, and _wcsncpy, then you need to add -lXwchar after
3756-lXaw in the command that links temacs.
a933dad1 3757
9dc15871
EZ
3758This problem seems to arise only when the international language
3759extensions to X11R5 are installed.
a933dad1 3760
9dc15871 3761** SunOS: Emacs gets error message from linker on Sun.
a933dad1 3762
9dc15871
EZ
3763If the error message says that a symbol such as `f68881_used' or
3764`ffpa_used' or `start_float' is undefined, this probably indicates
3765that you have compiled some libraries, such as the X libraries,
3766with a floating point option other than the default.
a933dad1 3767
9dc15871
EZ
3768It's not terribly hard to make this work with small changes in
3769crt0.c together with linking with Fcrt1.o, Wcrt1.o or Mcrt1.o.
3770However, the easiest approach is to build Xlib with the default
3771floating point option: -fsoft.
a933dad1 3772
9dc15871 3773** SunOS: Undefined symbols _dlopen, _dlsym and/or _dlclose.
a933dad1 3774
9dc15871
EZ
3775If you see undefined symbols _dlopen, _dlsym, or _dlclose when linking
3776with -lX11, compile and link against the file mit/util/misc/dlsym.c in
3777the MIT X11R5 distribution. Alternatively, link temacs using shared
3778libraries with s/sunos4shr.h. (This doesn't work if you use the X
3779toolkit.)
a933dad1 3780
9dc15871
EZ
3781If you get the additional error that the linker could not find
3782lib_version.o, try extracting it from X11/usr/lib/X11/libvim.a in
3783X11R4, then use it in the link.
a933dad1 3784
0a4dd4e4
EZ
3785** SunOS4, DGUX 5.4.2: --with-x-toolkit version crashes when used with shared libraries.
3786
3787On some systems, including Sunos 4 and DGUX 5.4.2 and perhaps others,
3788unexec doesn't work properly with the shared library for the X
3789toolkit. You might be able to work around this by using a nonshared
3790libXt.a library. The real fix is to upgrade the various versions of
3791unexec and/or ralloc. We think this has been fixed on Sunos 4
3792and Solaris in version 19.29.
3793
3794** HPUX 10.20: Emacs crashes during dumping on the HPPA machine.
3795
3796This seems to be due to a GCC bug; it is fixed in GCC 2.8.1.
3797
9dc15871 3798** VMS: Compilation errors on VMS.
a933dad1 3799
9dc15871
EZ
3800You will get warnings when compiling on VMS because there are
3801variable names longer than 32 (or whatever it is) characters.
3802This is not an error. Ignore it.
a933dad1 3803
9dc15871
EZ
3804VAX C does not support #if defined(foo). Uses of this construct
3805were removed, but some may have crept back in. They must be rewritten.
a933dad1 3806
9dc15871
EZ
3807There is a bug in the C compiler which fails to sign extend characters
3808in conditional expressions. The bug is:
3809 char c = -1, d = 1;
3810 int i;
a933dad1 3811
9dc15871
EZ
3812 i = d ? c : d;
3813The result is i == 255; the fix is to typecast the char in the
3814conditional expression as an (int). Known occurrences of such
3815constructs in Emacs have been fixed.
a933dad1 3816
9dc15871 3817** Vax C compiler bugs affecting Emacs.
a933dad1
DL
3818
3819You may get one of these problems compiling Emacs:
3820
3821 foo.c line nnn: compiler error: no table entry for op STASG
3822 foo.c: fatal error in /lib/ccom
3823
3824These are due to bugs in the C compiler; the code is valid C.
3825Unfortunately, the bugs are unpredictable: the same construct
3826may compile properly or trigger one of these bugs, depending
3827on what else is in the source file being compiled. Even changes
3828in header files that should not affect the file being compiled
3829can affect whether the bug happens. In addition, sometimes files
3830that compile correctly on one machine get this bug on another machine.
3831
3832As a result, it is hard for me to make sure this bug will not affect
3833you. I have attempted to find and alter these constructs, but more
3834can always appear. However, I can tell you how to deal with it if it
3835should happen. The bug comes from having an indexed reference to an
3836array of Lisp_Objects, as an argument in a function call:
3837 Lisp_Object *args;
3838 ...
3839 ... foo (5, args[i], ...)...
3840putting the argument into a temporary variable first, as in
3841 Lisp_Object *args;
3842 Lisp_Object tem;
3843 ...
3844 tem = args[i];
3845 ... foo (r, tem, ...)...
3846causes the problem to go away.
3847The `contents' field of a Lisp vector is an array of Lisp_Objects,
3848so you may see the problem happening with indexed references to that.
3849
9dc15871 3850** 68000 C compiler problems
a933dad1
DL
3851
3852Various 68000 compilers have different problems.
3853These are some that have been observed.
3854
9dc15871 3855*** Using value of assignment expression on union type loses.
a933dad1
DL
3856This means that x = y = z; or foo (x = z); does not work
3857if x is of type Lisp_Object.
3858
9dc15871 3859*** "cannot reclaim" error.
a933dad1
DL
3860
3861This means that an expression is too complicated. You get the correct
3862line number in the error message. The code must be rewritten with
3863simpler expressions.
3864
9dc15871 3865*** XCONS, XSTRING, etc macros produce incorrect code.
a933dad1
DL
3866
3867If temacs fails to run at all, this may be the cause.
3868Compile this test program and look at the assembler code:
3869
3870struct foo { char x; unsigned int y : 24; };
3871
3872lose (arg)
3873 struct foo arg;
3874{
3875 test ((int *) arg.y);
3876}
3877
3878If the code is incorrect, your compiler has this problem.
3879In the XCONS, etc., macros in lisp.h you must replace (a).u.val with
3880((a).u.val + coercedummy) where coercedummy is declared as int.
3881
3882This problem will not happen if the m-...h file for your type
3883of machine defines NO_UNION_TYPE. That is the recommended setting now.
3884
9dc15871 3885*** C compilers lose on returning unions.
a933dad1
DL
3886
3887I hear that some C compilers cannot handle returning a union type.
3888Most of the functions in GNU Emacs return type Lisp_Object, which is
3889defined as a union on some rare architectures.
3890
3891This problem will not happen if the m-...h file for your type
3892of machine defines NO_UNION_TYPE.
3893
53854552 3894\f
5b87ad55 3895This file is part of GNU Emacs.
fe6b4873 3896
5b87ad55
GM
3897GNU Emacs is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
3898it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
fca4a5de 3899the Free Software Foundation; either version 3, or (at your option)
5b87ad55 3900any later version.
fe6b4873 3901
5b87ad55
GM
3902GNU Emacs is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
3903but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
3904MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
3905GNU General Public License for more details.
3906
3907You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
3908along with GNU Emacs; see the file COPYING. If not, write to the
3909Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor,
3910Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.
3911
3912\f
53854552
EZ
3913Local variables:
3914mode: outline
3915paragraph-separate: "[ \f]*$"
3916end:
ab5796a9
MB
3917
3918arch-tag: 49fc0d95-88cb-4715-b21c-f27fb5a4764a