Many small improvements in tagging accuracy and capability,
[bpt/emacs.git] / etc / PROBLEMS
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1This file describes various problems that have been encountered
2in compiling, installing and running GNU Emacs.
3
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4* Building Emacs with GCC 2.9x fails in the `src' directory.
5
6This may happen if you use a development version of GNU `cpp' from one
7of the GCC snapshots around Oct 2000 and later, or from a released
8version of GCC newer than 2.95.2. The preprocessor in those versions
9expands ".." into ". .", which breaks relative file names that
10reference the parent directory.
11
12The solution is to make sure the preprocessor is run with the
13`-traditional' option. (The `configure' script should do that
14automatically with Emacs 21 and later.)
15
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16* Building the Windows port with Leim fails in the `leim' directory.
17
18The error message might be something like this:
19
20 Converting d:/emacs-21.1/leim/CXTERM-DIC/4Corner.tit to quail-package...
21 Invalid ENCODE: value in TIT dictionary
22 NMAKE : fatal error U1077: '"../src/obj-spd/i386/emacs.exe"' : return code
23 '0xffffffff'
24 Stop.
25
26This can happen if the Leim distribution is unpacked with a program
27which converts the `*.tit' files to DOS-style CR-LF text format. The
28`*.tit' files in the leim/CXTERM-DIC directory require Unix-style line
29endings to compile properly, because Emacs reads them without any code
30or EOL conversions.
31
32The solution is to make sure the program used to unpack Leim does not
33change the files' line endings behind your back. The GNU FTP site has
34in the `/gnu/emacs/windows' directory a program called `djtarnt.exe'
35which can be used to unpack `.tar.gz' and `.zip' archives without
36mangling them.
37
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38* When using Xaw3d scroll bars without arrows, the very first mouse
39click in a scroll bar might be ignored by the scroll bar widget. This
40is probably a bug in Xaw3d; when Xaw3d is compiled with arrows, the
41problem disappears.
42
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43* Clicking C-mouse-2 in the scroll bar doesn't split the window.
44
45This currently doesn't work with scroll-bar widgets (and we don't know
46a good way of implementing it with widgets). If Emacs is configured
47--without-toolkit-scroll-bars, C-mouse-2 on the scroll bar does work.
48
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49* Some accented ISO-8859-1 characters or umlauts are displayed as | or _.
50
51Try other font set sizes (S-mouse-1). If the problem persists with
52other sizes as well, your text is corrupted, probably through software
53that is not 8-bit clean. If the problem goes away with another font
54size, it's probably because some fonts pretend to be ISO-8859-1 fonts
55when they are really ASCII fonts. In particular the schumacher-clean
56fonts have this bug in some versions of X.
57
58To see what glyphs are included in a font, use `xfd', like this:
59
60 xfd -fn -schumacher-clean-medium-r-normal--12-120-75-75-c-60-iso8859-1
61
62If this shows only ASCII glyphs, the font is indeed the source of the
63problem.
64
65The solution is to remove the corresponding lines from the appropriate
66`fonts.alias' file, then run `mkfontdir' in that directory, and then run
67`xset fp rehash'.
68
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69* Large file support is disabled on HP-UX. See the comments in
70src/s/hpux10.h.
71
72* Crashes when displaying uncompressed GIFs with version
73libungif-4.1.0 are resolved by using version libungif-4.1.0b1.
74
75* The W3 package (either from from the CVS sources or the last
76release) currently (2000-12-14) doesn't run properly with Emacs 21 and
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77needs work. This patch is reported to make w3-4.0pre.46 work:
78
79diff -aur --new-file w3-4.0pre.46-orig/lisp/w3-display.el w3-4.0pre.46-new/lisp/w3-display.el
80--- w3-4.0pre.46-orig/lisp/w3-display.el Sun Nov 14 22:00:12 1999
81+++ w3-4.0pre.46-new/lisp/w3-display.el Thu Dec 14 14:59:15 2000
82@@ -181,7 +181,8 @@
83 (dispatch-event (next-command-event)))
84 (error nil))))
85 (t
86- (if (and (not (sit-for 0)) (input-pending-p))
87+ ;; modified for GNU Emacs 21 by bob@rattlesnake.com on 2000 Dec 14
88+ (if (and (not (sit-for 0)) nil)
89 (condition-case ()
90 (progn
91 (setq w3-pause-keystroke
92diff -aur --new-file w3-4.0pre.46-orig/lisp/w3-e21.el w3-4.0pre.46-new/lisp/w3-e21.el
93--- w3-4.0pre.46-orig/lisp/w3-e21.el Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970
94+++ w3-4.0pre.46-new/lisp/w3-e21.el Thu Dec 14 14:54:58 2000
95@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
96+;;; w3-e21.el --- ** required for GNU Emacs 21 **
97+;; Added by bob@rattlesnake.com on 2000 Dec 14
98+
99+(require 'w3-e19)
100+(provide 'w3-e21)
101
eccd9c9b 102
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103* On AIX, if linking fails because libXbsd isn't found, check if you
104are compiling with the system's `cc' and CFLAGS containing `-O5'. If
105so, you have hit a compiler bug. Please make sure to re-configure
106Emacs so that it isn't compiled with `-O5'.
107
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108* The PSGML package uses the obsolete variables
109`before-change-function' and `after-change-function', which are no
110longer used by Emacs. These changes to PSGML 1.2.1 fix that.
111
112--- psgml-edit.el 1999/12/17 10:55:07 1.1
113+++ psgml-edit.el 1999/12/17 11:36:37
114@@ -263,4 +263,4 @@
115 ; inhibit-read-only
116- (before-change-function nil)
117- (after-change-function nil))
118+ (before-change-functions nil)
119+ (after-change-functions nil))
120 (setq selective-display t)
121@@ -1474,3 +1474,3 @@
122 (buffer-read-only nil)
123- (before-change-function nil)
124+ (before-change-functions nil)
125 (markup-index ; match-data index in tag regexp
126@@ -1526,3 +1526,3 @@
127 (defun sgml-expand-shortref-to-text (name)
128- (let (before-change-function
129+ (let (before-change-functions
130 (entity (sgml-lookup-entity name (sgml-dtd-entities sgml-dtd-info))))
131@@ -1543,3 +1543,3 @@
132 (re-found nil)
133- before-change-function)
134+ before-change-functions)
135 (goto-char sgml-markup-start)
136@@ -1576,3 +1576,3 @@
137 (goto-char (sgml-element-end element))
138- (let ((before-change-function nil))
139+ (let ((before-change-functions nil))
140 (sgml-normalize-content element only-one)))
141--- psgml-other.el 1999/12/17 10:40:02 1.1
142+++ psgml-other.el 1999/12/17 11:30:43
143@@ -32,2 +32,3 @@
144 (require 'easymenu)
145+(eval-when-compile (require 'cl))
146
147@@ -61,4 +62,9 @@
148 (let ((submenu
149- (subseq entries 0 (min (length entries)
150- sgml-max-menu-size))))
151+;;; (subseq entries 0 (min (length entries)
152+;;; sgml-max-menu-size))
153+ (let ((new (copy-sequence entries)))
154+ (setcdr (nthcdr (1- (min (length entries)
155+ sgml-max-menu-size))
156+ new) nil)
157+ new)))
158 (setq entries (nthcdr sgml-max-menu-size entries))
159@@ -113,7 +119,10 @@
160 (let ((inhibit-read-only t)
161- (after-change-function nil) ; obsolete variable
162- (before-change-function nil) ; obsolete variable
163 (after-change-functions nil)
164- (before-change-functions nil))
165- (put-text-property start end 'face face)))
166+ (before-change-functions nil)
167+ (modified (buffer-modified-p))
168+ (buffer-undo-list t)
169+ deactivate-mark)
170+ (put-text-property start end 'face face)
171+ (when (and (not modified) (buffer-modified-p))
172+ (set-buffer-modified-p nil))))
173 (t
174--- psgml-parse.el 1999/12/17 10:32:45 1.1
175+++ psgml-parse.el 2000/12/05 17:12:34
176@@ -40,2 +40,4 @@
177
178+(eval-when-compile (require 'cl))
179+
180 \f
181@@ -2474,8 +2476,8 @@
182 (setq sgml-scratch-buffer nil))
183- (when after-change-function ;***
184- (message "OOPS: after-change-function not NIL in scratch buffer %s: %s"
185+ (when after-change-functions ;***
186+ (message "OOPS: after-change-functions not NIL in scratch buffer %s: %S"
187 (current-buffer)
188- after-change-function)
189- (setq before-change-function nil
190- after-change-function nil))
191+ after-change-functions)
192+ (setq before-change-functions nil
193+ after-change-functions nil))
194 (setq sgml-last-entity-buffer (current-buffer))
195@@ -2846,6 +2848,5 @@
196 "Set initial state of parsing"
197- (make-local-variable 'before-change-function)
198- (setq before-change-function 'sgml-note-change-at)
199- (make-local-variable 'after-change-function)
200- (setq after-change-function 'sgml-set-face-after-change)
201+ (set (make-local-variable 'before-change-functions) '(sgml-note-change-at))
202+ (set (make-local-variable 'after-change-functions)
203+ '(sgml-set-face-after-change))
204 (sgml-set-active-dtd-indicator (sgml-dtd-doctype dtd))
205@@ -3887,7 +3888,7 @@
206
207- (unless before-change-function
208- (message "WARN: before-change-function has been lost, restoring (%s)"
209+ (unless before-change-functions
210+ (message "WARN: before-change-functions has been lost, restoring (%s)"
211 (current-buffer))
212- (setq before-change-function 'sgml-note-change-at)
213- (setq after-change-function 'sgml-set-face-after-change)
214+ (setq before-change-functions '(sgml-note-change-at))
215+ (setq after-change-functions '(sgml-set-face-after-change))
216 )
217
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218* On systems with shared libraries you might encounter run-time errors
219from the dynamic linker telling you that it is unable to find some
220shared libraries, for instance those for Xaw3d or image support.
221These errors mean Emacs has been linked with a library whose shared
222library is not in the default search path of the dynamic linker.
223
224On many systems, it is possible to set LD_LIBRARY_PATH in your
225environment to specify additional directories where shared libraries
226can be found.
227
228Other systems allow to set LD_RUN_PATH in a similar way, but before
229Emacs is linked. With LD_RUN_PATH set, the linker will include a
230specified run-time search path in the executable.
231
232Please refer to the documentation of your dynamic linker for details.
233
0c6456ad 234* On Solaris 2.7, building Emacs with WorkShop Compilers 5.0 98/12/15
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235C 5.0 failed, apparently with non-default CFLAGS, most probably due to
236compiler bugs. Using Sun Solaris 2.7 Sun WorkShop 6 update 1 C
237release was reported to work without problems. It worked OK on
238another system with Solaris 8 using apparently the same 5.0 compiler
239and the default CFLAGS.
0c6456ad 240
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241* On Windows 95/98/ME, subprocesses do not terminate properly.
242
243This is a limitation of the Operating System, and can cause problems
244when shutting down Windows. Ensure that all subprocesses are exited
245cleanly before exiting Emacs. For more details, see the FAQ at
246ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/windows/emacs/doc/index.html
247
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248* Mail sent through Microsoft Exchange in some encodings appears to be
249mangled and is not seen correctly in Rmail or Gnus. We don't know
250exactly what happens, but it isn't an Emacs problem in cases we've
251seen.
252
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253* On OSF/Dec Unix/Tru64/<whatever it is this year> under X locally or
254remotely, M-SPC acts as a `compose' key with strange results. See
255keyboard(5).
256
257Changing Alt_L to Meta_L fixes it:
258% xmodmap -e 'keysym Alt_L = Meta_L Alt_L'
259% xmodmap -e 'keysym Alt_R = Meta_R Alt_R'
260
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261* Error "conflicting types for `initstate'" compiling with GCC on Irix 6.
262
263Install GCC 2.95 or a newer version, and this problem should go away.
264It is possible that this problem results from upgrading the operating
265system without reinstalling GCC; so you could also try reinstalling
266the same version of GCC, and telling us whether that fixes the problem.
267
268* On Solaris 7, Emacs gets a segmentation fault when starting up using X.
269
270This results from Sun patch 107058-01 (SunOS 5.7: Patch for
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271assembler) if you use GCC version 2.7 or later.
272To work around it, either install patch 106950-03 or later,
273or uninstall patch 107058-01, or install the GNU Binutils.
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274Then recompile Emacs, and it should work.
275
276* With X11R6.4, public-patch-3, Emacs crashes at startup.
277
278Reportedly this patch in X fixes the problem.
279
280 --- xc/lib/X11/imInt.c~ Wed Jun 30 13:31:56 1999
281 +++ xc/lib/X11/imInt.c Thu Jul 1 15:10:27 1999
282 @@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
283 -/* $TOG: imInt.c /main/5 1998/05/30 21:11:16 kaleb $ */
284 +/* $TOG: imInt.c /main/5 1998/05/30 21:11:16 kaleb $ */
285 /******************************************************************
286
287 Copyright 1992, 1993, 1994 by FUJITSU LIMITED
288 @@ -166,8 +166,8 @@
289 _XimMakeImName(lcd)
290 XLCd lcd;
291 {
292 - char* begin;
293 - char* end;
294 + char* begin = NULL;
295 + char* end = NULL;
296 char* ret;
297 int i = 0;
298 char* ximmodifier = XIMMODIFIER;
299 @@ -182,7 +182,11 @@
300 }
301 ret = Xmalloc(end - begin + 2);
302 if (ret != NULL) {
303 - (void)strncpy(ret, begin, end - begin + 1);
304 + if (begin != NULL) {
305 + (void)strncpy(ret, begin, end - begin + 1);
306 + } else {
307 + ret[0] = '\0';
308 + }
309 ret[end - begin + 1] = '\0';
310 }
311 return ret;
312
313
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314* Emacs crashes on Irix 6.5 on the SGI R10K, when compiled with GCC.
315
316This seems to be fixed in GCC 2.95.
317
318* Emacs crashes in utmpname on Irix 5.3.
319
320This problem is fixed in Patch 3175 for Irix 5.3.
321It is also fixed in Irix versions 6.2 and up.
322
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323* The S-C-t key combination doesn't get passed to Emacs on X.
324
325This happens because some X configurations assign the Ctrl-Shift-t
326combination the same meaning as the Multi_key. The offending
327definition is in the file `...lib/X11/locale/iso8859-1/Compose'; there
328might be other similar combinations which are grabbed by X for similar
329purposes.
330
331We think that this can be countermanded with the `xmodmap' utility, if
332you want to be able to bind one of these key sequences within Emacs.
333
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334* On Solaris, CTRL-t is ignored by Emacs when you use
335the fr.ISO-8859-15 locale (and maybe other related locales).
336
337You can fix this by editing the file:
338
339 /usr/openwin/lib/locale/iso8859-15/Compose
340
341Near the bottom there is a line that reads:
342
343 Ctrl<t> <quotedbl> <Y> : "\276" threequarters
344
345that should read:
346
347 Ctrl<T> <quotedbl> <Y> : "\276" threequarters
348
349Note the lower case <t>. Changing this line should make C-t work.
350
351* Emacs on Digital Unix 4.0 fails to build, giving error message
352 Invalid dimension for the charset-ID 160
353
354This is due to a bug or an installation problem in GCC 2.8.0.
355Installing a more recent version of GCC fixes the problem.
356
357* Buffers from `with-output-to-temp-buffer' get set up in Help mode.
358
359Changes in Emacs 20.4 to the hooks used by that function cause
360problems for some packages, specifically BBDB. See the function's
361documentation for the hooks involved. BBDB 2.00.06 fixes the problem.
362
363* Under X, C-v and/or other keys don't work.
364
365These may have been intercepted by your window manager. In
366particular, AfterStep 1.6 is reported to steal C-v in its default
367configuration. Various Meta keys are also likely to be taken by the
368configuration of the `feel'. See the WM's documentation for how to
369change this.
370
371* When using Exceed, fonts sometimes appear too tall.
372
373When the display is set to an Exceed X-server and fonts are specified
374(either explicitly with the -fn option or implicitly with X resources)
375then the fonts may appear "too tall". The actual character sizes are
376correct but there is too much vertical spacing between rows, which
377gives the appearance of "double spacing".
378
379To prevent this, turn off the Exceed's "automatic font substitution"
380feature (in the font part of the configuration window).
381
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382* Failure in unexec while dumping emacs on Digital Unix 4.0
383
384This problem manifests itself as an error message
385
386 unexec: Bad address, writing data section to ...
387
388The user suspects that this happened because his X libraries
389were built for an older system version,
390
391 ./configure --x-includes=/usr/include --x-libraries=/usr/shlib
392
393made the problem go away.
394
395* No visible display on mips-sgi-irix6.2 when compiling with GCC 2.8.1.
396
397This problem went away after installing the latest IRIX patches
398as of 8 Dec 1998.
399
400The same problem has been reported on Irix 6.3.
401
402* As of version 20.4, Emacs doesn't work properly if configured for
403the Motif toolkit and linked against the free LessTif library. The
404next Emacs release is expected to work with LessTif.
405
406* Emacs gives the error, Couldn't find per display information.
407
408This can result if the X server runs out of memory because Emacs uses
409a large number of fonts. On systems where this happens, C-h h is
410likely to cause it.
411
412We do not know of a way to prevent the problem.
413
414* Emacs makes HPUX 11.0 crash.
415
416This is a bug in HPUX; HPUX patch PHKL_16260 is said to fix it.
417
418* Emacs crashes during dumping on the HPPA machine (HPUX 10.20).
419
420This seems to be due to a GCC bug; it is fixed in GCC 2.8.1.
421
422* The Hyperbole package causes *Help* buffers not to be displayed in
423Help mode due to setting `temp-buffer-show-hook' rather than using
424`add-hook'. Using `(add-hook 'temp-buffer-show-hook
425'help-mode-maybe)' after loading Hyperbole should fix this.
426
427* Versions of the PSGML package earlier than 1.0.3 (stable) or 1.1.2
428(alpha) fail to parse DTD files correctly in Emacs 20.3 and later.
429Here is a patch for psgml-parse.el from PSGML 1.0.1 and, probably,
430earlier versions.
431
432--- psgml-parse.el 1998/08/21 19:18:18 1.1
433+++ psgml-parse.el 1998/08/21 19:20:00
434@@ -2383,7 +2383,7 @@ (defun sgml-push-to-entity (entity &opti
435 (setq sgml-buffer-parse-state nil))
436 (cond
437 ((stringp entity) ; a file name
438- (save-excursion (insert-file-contents entity))
439+ (insert-file-contents entity)
440 (setq default-directory (file-name-directory entity)))
441 ((consp (sgml-entity-text entity)) ; external id?
442 (let* ((extid (sgml-entity-text entity))
443
444* Running TeX from AUXTeX package with Emacs 20.3 gives a Lisp error
445about a read-only tex output buffer.
446
447This problem appeared for AUC TeX version 9.9j and some earlier
448versions. Here is a patch for the file tex-buf.el in the AUC TeX
449package.
450
451diff -c auctex/tex-buf.el~ auctex/tex-buf.el
452*** auctex/tex-buf.el~ Wed Jul 29 18:35:32 1998
453--- auctex/tex-buf.el Sat Sep 5 15:20:38 1998
454***************
455*** 545,551 ****
456 (dir (TeX-master-directory)))
457 (TeX-process-check file) ; Check that no process is running
458 (setq TeX-command-buffer (current-buffer))
459! (with-output-to-temp-buffer buffer)
460 (set-buffer buffer)
461 (if dir (cd dir))
462 (insert "Running `" name "' on `" file "' with ``" command "''\n")
463- --- 545,552 ----
464 (dir (TeX-master-directory)))
465 (TeX-process-check file) ; Check that no process is running
466 (setq TeX-command-buffer (current-buffer))
467! (let (temp-buffer-show-function temp-buffer-show-hook)
468! (with-output-to-temp-buffer buffer))
469 (set-buffer buffer)
470 (if dir (cd dir))
471 (insert "Running `" name "' on `" file "' with ``" command "''\n")
472
473* On Irix 6.3, substituting environment variables in file names
474in the minibuffer gives peculiar error messages such as
475
476 Substituting nonexistent environment variable ""
477
478This is not an Emacs bug; it is caused by something in SGI patch
479003082 August 11, 1998.
480
481* After a while, Emacs slips into unibyte mode.
482
483The VM mail package, which is not part of Emacs, sometimes does
484 (standard-display-european t)
485That should be changed to
486 (standard-display-european 1 t)
487
488* Installing Emacs gets an error running `install-info'.
489
490You need to install a recent version of Texinfo; that package
491supplies the `install-info' command.
492
493* Emacs does not recognize the AltGr key, on HPUX.
494
495To fix this, set up a file ~/.dt/sessions/sessionetc with executable
496rights, containing this text:
497
498--------------------------------
499xmodmap 2> /dev/null - << EOF
500keysym Alt_L = Meta_L
501keysym Alt_R = Meta_R
502EOF
503
504xmodmap - << EOF
505clear mod1
506keysym Mode_switch = NoSymbol
507add mod1 = Meta_L
508keysym Meta_R = Mode_switch
509add mod2 = Mode_switch
510EOF
511--------------------------------
512
513* Emacs compiled with DJGPP for MS-DOS/MS-Windows cannot access files
514in the directory with the special name `dev' under the root of any
515drive, e.g. `c:/dev'.
516
517This is an unfortunate side-effect of the support for Unix-style
518device names such as /dev/null in the DJGPP runtime library. A
519work-around is to rename the problem directory to another name.
520
521* M-SPC seems to be ignored as input.
522
523See if your X server is set up to use this as a command
524for character composition.
525
526* Emacs startup on GNU/Linux systems (and possibly other systems) is slow.
527
528This can happen if the system is misconfigured and Emacs can't get the
529full qualified domain name, FQDN. You should have your FQDN in the
530/etc/hosts file, something like this:
531
532127.0.0.1 localhost
533129.187.137.82 nuc04.t30.physik.tu-muenchen.de nuc04
534
535The way to set this up may vary on non-GNU systems.
536
537* Garbled display on non-X terminals when Emacs runs on Digital Unix 4.0.
538
539So far it appears that running `tset' triggers this problem (when TERM
540is vt100, at least). If you do not run `tset', then Emacs displays
541properly. If someone can tell us precisely which effect of running
542`tset' actually causes the problem, we may be able to implement a fix
543in Emacs.
544
545* When you run Ispell from Emacs, it reports a "misalignment" error.
546
547This can happen if you compiled Ispell to use ASCII characters only
548and then try to use it from Emacs with non-ASCII characters,
549specifically Latin-1. The solution is to recompile Ispell with
550Latin-1 support.
551
552This can also happen if the version of Ispell installed on your
553machine is old.
554
555* On Linux-based GNU systems using libc versions 5.4.19 through
5565.4.22, Emacs crashes at startup with a segmentation fault.
557
558This problem happens if libc defines the symbol __malloc_initialized.
559One known solution is to upgrade to a newer libc version. 5.4.33 is
560known to work.
561
562* On Windows, you cannot use the right-hand ALT key and the left-hand
563CTRL key together to type a Control-Meta character.
564
565This is a consequence of a misfeature beyond Emacs's control.
566
567Under Windows, the AltGr key on international keyboards generates key
568events with the modifiers Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl. Since Emacs cannot
569distinguish AltGr from an explicit Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl
570combination, whenever it sees Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl it assumes that
571AltGr has been pressed.
572
573* Under some Windows X-servers, Emacs' display is incorrect
574
575The symptoms are that Emacs does not completely erase blank areas of the
576screen during scrolling or some other screen operations (e.g., selective
577display or when killing a region). M-x recenter will cause the screen
578to be completely redisplayed and the "extra" characters will disappear.
579
580This is known to occur under Exceed 6, and possibly earlier versions as
581well. The problem lies in the X-server settings.
582
583There are reports that you can solve the problem with Exceed by
584running `Xconfig' from within NT, choosing "X selection", then
585un-checking the boxes "auto-copy X selection" and "auto-paste to X
586selection".
587
588Of this does not work, please inform bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org. Then
589please call support for your X-server and see if you can get a fix.
590If you do, please send it to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org so we can list it
591here.
592
593* On Solaris 2, Emacs dumps core when built with Motif.
594
595The Solaris Motif libraries are buggy, at least up through Solaris 2.5.1.
596Install the current Motif runtime library patch appropriate for your host.
597(Make sure the patch is current; some older patch versions still have the bug.)
598You should install the other patches recommended by Sun for your host, too.
599You can obtain Sun patches from ftp://sunsolve.sun.com/pub/patches/;
600look for files with names ending in `.PatchReport' to see which patches
601are currently recommended for your host.
602
603On Solaris 2.6, Emacs is said to work with Motif when Solaris patch
604105284-12 is installed, but fail when 105284-15 is installed.
605105284-18 might fix it again.
606
3156909f
PE
607* On Solaris 2.6 and 7, the Compose key does not work.
608
609This is a bug in Motif in Solaris. Supposedly it has been fixed for
610the next major release of Solaris. However, if someone with Sun
611support complains to Sun about the bug, they may release a patch.
612If you do this, mention Sun bug #4188711.
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613
614One workaround is to use a locale that allows non-ASCII characters.
615For example, before invoking emacs, set the LC_ALL environment
616variable to "en_US" (American English). The directory /usr/lib/locale
617lists the supported locales; any locale other than "C" or "POSIX"
618should do.
619
3156909f
PE
620pen@lysator.liu.se says (Feb 1998) that the Compose key does work
621if you link with the MIT X11 libraries instead of the Solaris X11
622libraries.
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DL
623
624* Emacs does not know your host's fully-qualified domain name.
625
626You need to configure your machine with a fully qualified domain name,
627either in /etc/hosts, /etc/hostname, the NIS, or wherever your system
628calls for specifying this.
629
630If you cannot fix the configuration, you can set the Lisp variable
631mail-host-address to the value you want.
632
633* Error 12 (virtual memory exceeded) when dumping Emacs, on UnixWare 2.1
634
635Paul Abrahams (abrahams@acm.org) reports that with the installed
636virtual memory settings for UnixWare 2.1.2, an Error 12 occurs during
637the "make" that builds Emacs, when running temacs to dump emacs. That
638error indicates that the per-process virtual memory limit has been
639exceeded. The default limit is probably 32MB. Raising the virtual
640memory limit to 40MB should make it possible to finish building Emacs.
641
642You can do this with the command `ulimit' (sh) or `limit' (csh).
643But you have to be root to do it.
644
645According to Martin Sohnius, you can also retune this in the kernel:
646
647 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune SDATLIM 33554432 ## soft data size limit
648 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune HDATLIM 33554432 ## hard "
649 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune SVMMSIZE unlimited ## soft process size limit
650 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune HVMMSIZE unlimited ## hard "
651 # /etc/conf/bin/idbuild -B
652
653(He recommends you not change the stack limit, though.)
654These changes take effect when you reboot.
655
656* Redisplay using X11 is much slower than previous Emacs versions.
657
658We've noticed that certain X servers draw the text much slower when
659scroll bars are on the left. We don't know why this happens. If this
660happens to you, you can work around it by putting the scroll bars
661on the right (as they were in Emacs 19).
662
663Here's how to do this:
664
665 (set-scroll-bar-mode 'right)
666
667If you're not sure whether (or how much) this problem affects you,
668try that and see how much difference it makes. To set things back
669to normal, do
670
671 (set-scroll-bar-mode 'left)
672
673* Under X11, some characters appear as hollow boxes.
674
675Each X11 font covers just a fraction of the characters that Emacs
676supports. To display the whole range of Emacs characters requires
677many different fonts, collected into a fontset.
678
679If some of the fonts called for in your fontset do not exist on your X
680server, then the characters that have no font appear as hollow boxes.
681You can remedy the problem by installing additional fonts.
682
683The intlfonts distribution includes a full spectrum of fonts that can
684display all the characters Emacs supports.
685
4c635a29
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686Another cause of this for specific characters is fonts which have a
687missing glyph and no default character. This is known ot occur for
688character number 160 (no-break space) in some fonts, such as Lucida
689but Emacs sets the display table for the unibyte and Latin-1 version
690of this character to display a space.
691
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DL
692* Under X11, some characters appear improperly aligned in their lines.
693
694You may have bad X11 fonts; try installing the intlfonts distribution.
695
696* Certain fonts make each line take one pixel more than it "should".
697
698This is because these fonts contain characters a little taller
699than the font's nominal height. Emacs needs to make sure that
700lines do not overlap.
701
702* You request inverse video, and the first Emacs frame is in inverse
703video, but later frames are not in inverse video.
704
705This can happen if you have an old version of the custom library in
706your search path for Lisp packages. Use M-x list-load-path-shadows to
707check whether this is true. If it is, delete the old custom library.
708
709* In FreeBSD 2.1.5, useless symbolic links remain in /tmp or other
710directories that have the +t bit.
711
712This is because of a kernel bug in FreeBSD 2.1.5 (fixed in 2.2).
713Emacs uses symbolic links to implement file locks. In a directory
714with +t bit, the directory owner becomes the owner of the symbolic
715link, so that it cannot be removed by anyone else.
716
717If you don't like those useless links, you can let Emacs not to using
718file lock by adding #undef CLASH_DETECTION to config.h.
719
720* When using M-x dbx with the SparcWorks debugger, the `up' and `down'
721commands do not move the arrow in Emacs.
722
723You can fix this by adding the following line to `~/.dbxinit':
724
725 dbxenv output_short_file_name off
726
727* Emacs says it has saved a file, but the file does not actually
728appear on disk.
729
730This can happen on certain systems when you are using NFS, if the
731remote disk is full. It is due to a bug in NFS (or certain NFS
732implementations), and there is apparently nothing Emacs can do to
733detect the problem. Emacs checks the failure codes of all the system
734calls involved in writing a file, including `close'; but in the case
735where the problem occurs, none of those system calls fails.
736
737* "Compose Character" key does strange things when used as a Meta key.
738
739If you define one key to serve as both Meta and Compose Character, you
740will get strange results. In previous Emacs versions, this "worked"
741in that the key acted as Meta--that's because the older Emacs versions
742did not try to support Compose Character. Now Emacs tries to do
743character composition in the standard X way. This means that you
744must pick one meaning or the other for any given key.
745
746You can use both functions (Meta, and Compose Character) if you assign
747them to two different keys.
748
749* Emacs gets a segmentation fault at startup, on AIX4.2.
750
751If you are using IBM's xlc compiler, compile emacs.c
752without optimization; that should avoid the problem.
753
754* movemail compiled with POP support can't connect to the POP server.
755
756Make sure that the `pop' entry in /etc/services, or in the services
757NIS map if your machine uses NIS, has the same port number as the
758entry on the POP server. A common error is for the POP server to be
759listening on port 110, the assigned port for the POP3 protocol, while
760the client is trying to connect on port 109, the assigned port for the
761old POP protocol.
762
763* Emacs crashes in x-popup-dialog.
764
765This can happen if the dialog widget cannot find the font it wants to
766use. You can work around the problem by specifying another font with
767an X resource--for example, `Emacs.dialog*.font: 9x15' (or any font that
768happens to exist on your X server).
769
770* Emacs crashes when you use Bibtex mode.
771
772This happens if your system puts a small limit on stack size. You can
773prevent the problem by using a suitable shell command (often `ulimit')
774to raise the stack size limit before you run Emacs.
775
776Patches to raise the stack size limit automatically in `main'
777(src/emacs.c) on various systems would be greatly appreciated.
778
779* Emacs crashes with SIGBUS or SIGSEGV on HPUX 9 after you delete a frame.
780
781We think this is due to a bug in the X libraries provided by HP. With
782the alternative X libraries in /usr/contrib/mitX11R5/lib, the problem
783does not happen.
784
785* Emacs crashes with SIGBUS or SIGSEGV on Solaris after you delete a frame.
786
787We suspect that this is a similar bug in the X libraries provided by
788Sun. There is a report that one of these patches fixes the bug and
789makes the problem stop:
790
791105216-01 105393-01 105518-01 105621-01 105665-01 105615-02 105216-02
792105667-01 105401-08 105615-03 105621-02 105686-02 105736-01 105755-03
793106033-01 105379-01 105786-01 105181-04 105379-03 105786-04 105845-01
794105284-05 105669-02 105837-01 105837-02 105558-01 106125-02 105407-01
795
796Another person using a newer system (kernel patch level Generic_105181-06)
797suspects that the bug was fixed by one of these more recent patches:
798
799106040-07 SunOS 5.6: X Input & Output Method patch
800106222-01 OpenWindows 3.6: filemgr (ff.core) fixes
801105284-12 Motif 1.2.7: sparc Runtime library patch
802
803* Problems running Perl under Emacs on Windows NT/95.
804
805`perl -de 0' just hangs when executed in an Emacs subshell.
806The fault lies with Perl (indirectly with Windows NT/95).
807
808The problem is that the Perl debugger explicitly opens a connection to
809"CON", which is the DOS/NT equivalent of "/dev/tty", for interacting
810with the user.
811
812On Unix, this is okay, because Emacs (or the shell?) creates a
813pseudo-tty so that /dev/tty is really the pipe Emacs is using to
814communicate with the subprocess.
815
816On NT, this fails because CON always refers to the handle for the
817relevant console (approximately equivalent to a tty), and cannot be
818redirected to refer to the pipe Emacs assigned to the subprocess as
819stdin.
820
821A workaround is to modify perldb.pl to use STDIN/STDOUT instead of CON.
822
823For Perl 4:
824
825 *** PERL/LIB/PERLDB.PL.orig Wed May 26 08:24:18 1993
826 --- PERL/LIB/PERLDB.PL Mon Jul 01 15:28:16 1996
827 ***************
828 *** 68,74 ****
829 $rcfile=".perldb";
830 }
831 else {
832 ! $console = "con";
833 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
834 }
835
836 --- 68,74 ----
837 $rcfile=".perldb";
838 }
839 else {
840 ! $console = "";
841 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
842 }
843
844
845 For Perl 5:
846 *** perl/5.001/lib/perl5db.pl.orig Sun Jun 04 21:13:40 1995
847 --- perl/5.001/lib/perl5db.pl Mon Jul 01 17:00:08 1996
848 ***************
849 *** 22,28 ****
850 $rcfile=".perldb";
851 }
852 elsif (-e "con") {
853 ! $console = "con";
854 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
855 }
856 else {
857 --- 22,28 ----
858 $rcfile=".perldb";
859 }
860 elsif (-e "con") {
861 ! $console = "";
862 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
863 }
864 else {
865
866* Problems running DOS programs on Windows NT versions earlier than 3.51.
867
868Some DOS programs, such as pkzip/pkunzip will not work at all, while
869others will only work if their stdin is redirected from a file or NUL.
870
871When a DOS program does not work, a new process is actually created, but
872hangs. It cannot be interrupted from Emacs, and might need to be killed
873by an external program if Emacs is hung waiting for the process to
874finish. If Emacs is not waiting for it, you should be able to kill the
875instance of ntvdm that is running the hung process from Emacs, if you
876can find out the process id.
877
878It is safe to run most DOS programs using call-process (eg. M-! and
879M-|) since stdin is then redirected from a file, but not with
880start-process since that redirects stdin to a pipe. Also, running DOS
881programs in a shell buffer prompt without redirecting stdin does not
882work.
883
884* Problems on MS-DOG if DJGPP v2.0 is used to compile Emacs:
885
886There are two DJGPP library bugs which cause problems:
887
888 * Running `shell-command' (or `compile', or `grep') you get
889 `Searching for program: permission denied (EACCES), c:/command.com';
890 * After you shell to DOS, Ctrl-Break kills Emacs.
891
892To work around these bugs, you can use two files in the msdos
893subdirectory: `is_exec.c' and `sigaction.c'. Compile them and link
894them into the Emacs executable `temacs'; then they will replace the
895incorrect library functions.
896
897* When compiling with DJGPP on Windows 95, Make fails for some targets
898like make-docfile.
899
900This can happen if long file name support (the setting of environment
901variable LFN) when Emacs distribution was unpacked and during
902compilation are not the same. See the MSDOG section of INSTALL for
903the explanation of how to avoid this problem.
904
905* Emacs compiled for MSDOS cannot find some Lisp files, or other
906run-time support files, when long filename support is enabled.
907(Usually, this problem will manifest itself when Emacs exits
908immediately after flashing the startup screen, because it cannot find
909the Lisp files it needs to load at startup. Redirect Emacs stdout
910and stderr to a file to see the error message printed by Emacs.)
911
912This can happen if the Emacs distribution was unzipped without LFN
913support, thus causing long filenames to be truncated to the first 6
914characters and a numeric tail that Windows 95 normally attaches to it.
915You should unzip the files again with a utility that supports long
916filenames (such as djtar from DJGPP or InfoZip's UnZip program
917compiled with DJGPP v2). The MSDOG section of the file INSTALL
918explains this issue in more detail.
919
920* Emacs compiled with DJGPP complains at startup:
921
922 "Wrong type of argument: internal-facep, msdos-menu-active-face"
923
924This can happen if you define an environment variable `TERM'. Emacs
925on MSDOS uses an internal terminal emulator which is disabled if the
926value of `TERM' is anything but the string "internal". Emacs then
927works as if its terminal were a dumb glass teletype that doesn't
928support faces. To work around this, arrange for `TERM' to be
929undefined when Emacs runs. The best way to do that is to add an
930[emacs] section to the DJGPP.ENV file which defines an empty value for
931`TERM'; this way, only Emacs gets the empty value, while the rest of
932your system works as before.
933
934* On Windows 95, Alt-f6 does not get through to Emacs.
935
936This character seems to be trapped by the kernel in Windows 95.
937You can enter M-f6 by typing ESC f6.
938
939* Typing Alt-Shift has strange effects on Windows 95.
940
941This combination of keys is a command to change keyboard layout. If
942you proceed to type another non-modifier key before you let go of Alt
943and Shift, the Alt and Shift act as modifiers in the usual way.
944
945* `tparam' reported as a multiply-defined symbol when linking with ncurses.
946
947This problem results from an incompatible change in ncurses, in
948version 1.9.9e approximately. This version is unable to provide a
949definition of tparm without also defining tparam. This is also
950incompatible with Terminfo; as a result, the Emacs Terminfo support
951does not work with this version of ncurses.
952
953The fix is to install a newer version of ncurses, such as version 4.2.
954
955* Strange results from format %d in a few cases, on a Sun.
956
957Sun compiler version SC3.0 has been found to miscompile part of
958editfns.c. The workaround is to compile with some other compiler such
959as GCC.
960
961* Output from subprocess (such as man or diff) is randomly truncated
962on GNU/Linux systems.
963
964This is due to a kernel bug which seems to be fixed in Linux version
9651.3.75.
966
967* Error messages `internal facep []' happen on GNU/Linux systems.
968
969There is a report that replacing libc.so.5.0.9 with libc.so.5.2.16
970caused this to start happening. People are not sure why, but the
971problem seems unlikely to be in Emacs itself. Some suspect that it
972is actually Xlib which won't work with libc.so.5.2.16.
973
974Using the old library version is a workaround.
975
976* On Solaris, Emacs crashes if you use (display-time).
977
978This can happen if you configure Emacs without specifying the precise
979version of Solaris that you are using.
980
981* Emacs dumps core on startup, on Solaris.
982
983Bill Sebok says that the cause of this is Solaris 2.4 vendor patch
984102303-05, which extends the Solaris linker to deal with the Solaris
985Common Desktop Environment's linking needs. You can fix the problem
986by removing this patch and installing patch 102049-02 instead.
987However, that linker version won't work with CDE.
988
989Solaris 2.5 comes with a linker that has this bug. It is reported that if
990you install all the latest patches (as of June 1996), the bug is fixed.
991We suspect the crucial patch is one of these, but we don't know
992for certain.
993
994 103093-03: [README] SunOS 5.5: kernel patch (2140557 bytes)
995 102832-01: [README] OpenWindows 3.5: Xview Jumbo Patch (4181613 bytes)
996 103242-04: [README] SunOS 5.5: linker patch (595363 bytes)
997
998(One user reports that the bug was fixed by those patches together
999with patches 102980-04, 103279-01, 103300-02, and 103468-01.)
1000
1001If you can determine which patch does fix the bug, please tell
1002bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
1003
1004Meanwhile, the GNU linker links Emacs properly on both Solaris 2.4 and
1005Solaris 2.5.
1006
1007* Emacs dumps core if lisp-complete-symbol is called, on Solaris.
1008
1009If you compile Emacs with the -fast or -xO4 option with version 3.0.2
1010of the Sun C compiler, Emacs dumps core when lisp-complete-symbol is
1011called. The problem does not happen if you compile with GCC.
1012
1013* "Cannot find callback list" messages from dialog boxes on HPUX, in
1014Emacs built with Motif.
1015
1016This problem resulted from a bug in GCC 2.4.5. Newer GCC versions
1017such as 2.7.0 fix the problem.
1018
1019* On Irix 6.0, make tries (and fails) to build a program named unexelfsgi
1020
1021A compiler bug inserts spaces into the string "unexelfsgi . o"
1022in src/Makefile. Edit src/Makefile, after configure is run,
1023find that string, and take out the spaces.
1024
1025Compiler fixes in Irix 6.0.1 should eliminate this problem.
1026
1027* "out of virtual swap space" on Irix 5.3
1028
1029This message occurs when the system runs out of swap space due to too
1030many large programs running. The solution is either to provide more
1031swap space or to reduce the number of large programs being run. You
1032can check the current status of the swap space by executing the
1033command `swap -l'.
1034
1035You can increase swap space by changing the file /etc/fstab. Adding a
1036line like this:
1037
1038/usr/swap/swap.more swap swap pri=3 0 0
1039
1040where /usr/swap/swap.more is a file previously created (for instance
1041by using /etc/mkfile), will increase the swap space by the size of
1042that file. Execute `swap -m' or reboot the machine to activate the
1043new swap area. See the manpages for `swap' and `fstab' for further
1044information.
1045
1046The objectserver daemon can use up lots of memory because it can be
1047swamped with NIS information. It collects information about all users
1048on the network that can log on to the host.
1049
1050If you want to disable the objectserver completely, you can execute
1051the command `chkconfig objectserver off' and reboot. That may disable
1052some of the window system functionality, such as responding CDROM
1053icons.
1054
1055You can also remove NIS support from the objectserver. The SGI `admin'
1056FAQ has a detailed description on how to do that; see question 35
1057("Why isn't the objectserver working?"). The admin FAQ can be found at
1058ftp://viz.tamu.edu/pub/sgi/faq/.
1059
1060* With certain fonts, when the cursor appears on a character, the
1061character doesn't appear--you get a solid box instead.
1062
1063One user on a Linux-based GNU system reported that this problem went
1064away with installation of a new X server. The failing server was
1065XFree86 3.1.1. XFree86 3.1.2 works.
1066
1067* On SunOS 4.1.3, Emacs unpredictably crashes in _yp_dobind_soft.
1068
1069This happens if you configure Emacs specifying just `sparc-sun-sunos4'
1070on a system that is version 4.1.3. You must specify the precise
1071version number (or let configure figure out the configuration, which
1072it can do perfectly well for SunOS).
1073
1074* On SunOS 4, Emacs processes keep going after you kill the X server
1075(or log out, if you logged in using X).
1076
1077Someone reported that recompiling with GCC 2.7.0 fixed this problem.
1078
1079* On AIX 4, some programs fail when run in a Shell buffer
1080with an error message like No terminfo entry for "unknown".
1081
1082On AIX, many terminal type definitions are not installed by default.
1083`unknown' is one of them. Install the "Special Generic Terminal
1084Definitions" to make them defined.
1085
1086* On SunOS, you get linker errors
1087 ld: Undefined symbol
1088 _get_wmShellWidgetClass
1089 _get_applicationShellWidgetClass
1090
1091The fix to this is to install patch 100573 for OpenWindows 3.0
1092or link libXmu statically.
1093
1094* On AIX 4.1.2, linker error messages such as
1095 ld: 0711-212 SEVERE ERROR: Symbol .__quous, found in the global symbol table
1096 of archive /usr/lib/libIM.a, was not defined in archive member shr.o.
1097
1098This is a problem in libIM.a. You can work around it by executing
1099these shell commands in the src subdirectory of the directory where
1100you build Emacs:
1101
1102 cp /usr/lib/libIM.a .
1103 chmod 664 libIM.a
1104 ranlib libIM.a
1105
1106Then change -lIM to ./libIM.a in the command to link temacs (in
1107Makefile).
1108
1109* Unpredictable segmentation faults on Solaris 2.3 and 2.4.
1110
1111A user reported that this happened in 19.29 when it was compiled with
1112the Sun compiler, but not when he recompiled with GCC 2.7.0.
1113
1114We do not know whether something in Emacs is partly to blame for this.
1115
1116* Emacs exits with "X protocol error" when run with an X server for
1117Windows.
1118
1119A certain X server for Windows had a bug which caused this.
1120Supposedly the newer 32-bit version of this server doesn't have the
1121problem.
1122
1123* Emacs crashes at startup on MSDOS.
1124
1125Some users report that Emacs 19.29 requires dpmi memory management,
1126and crashes on startup if the system does not have it. We don't yet
1127know why this happens--perhaps these machines don't have enough real
1128memory, or perhaps something is wrong in Emacs or the compiler.
1129However, arranging to use dpmi support is a workaround.
1130
1131You can find out if you have a dpmi host by running go32 without
1132arguments; it will tell you if it uses dpmi memory. For more
1133information about dpmi memory, consult the djgpp FAQ. (djgpp
1134is the GNU C compiler as packaged for MSDOS.)
1135
1136Compiling Emacs under MSDOS is extremely sensitive for proper memory
1137configuration. If you experience problems during compilation, consider
1138removing some or all memory resident programs (notably disk caches)
1139and make sure that your memory managers are properly configured. See
1140the djgpp faq for configuration hints.
1141
1142* A position you specified in .Xdefaults is ignored, using twm.
1143
1144twm normally ignores "program-specified" positions.
1145You can tell it to obey them with this command in your `.twmrc' file:
1146
1147 UsePPosition "on" #allow clients to request a position
1148
1149* Compiling lib-src says there is no rule to make test-distrib.c.
1150
1151This results from a bug in a VERY old version of GNU Sed. To solve
1152the problem, install the current version of GNU Sed, then rerun
1153Emacs's configure script.
1154
1155* Compiling wakeup, in lib-src, says it can't make wakeup.c.
1156
1157This results from a bug in GNU Sed version 2.03. To solve the
1158problem, install the current version of GNU Sed, then rerun Emacs's
1159configure script.
1160
1161* On Sunos 4.1.1, there are errors compiling sysdep.c.
1162
1163If you get errors such as
1164
1165 "sysdep.c", line 2017: undefined structure or union
1166 "sysdep.c", line 2017: undefined structure or union
1167 "sysdep.c", line 2019: nodename undefined
1168
1169This can result from defining LD_LIBRARY_PATH. It is very tricky
1170to use that environment variable with Emacs. The Emacs configure
1171script links many test programs with the system libraries; you must
1172make sure that the libraries available to configure are the same
1173ones available when you build Emacs.
1174
1175* The right Alt key works wrong on German HP keyboards (and perhaps
1176other non-English HP keyboards too).
1177
1178This is because HPUX defines the modifiers wrong in X. Here is a
1179shell script to fix the problem; be sure that it is run after VUE
1180configures the X server.
1181
1182 xmodmap 2> /dev/null - << EOF
1183 keysym Alt_L = Meta_L
1184 keysym Alt_R = Meta_R
1185 EOF
1186
1187 xmodmap - << EOF
1188 clear mod1
1189 keysym Mode_switch = NoSymbol
1190 add mod1 = Meta_L
1191 keysym Meta_R = Mode_switch
1192 add mod2 = Mode_switch
1193 EOF
1194
1195* The Emacs window disappears when you type M-q.
1196
1197Some versions of the Open Look window manager interpret M-q as a quit
1198command for whatever window you are typing at. If you want to use
1199Emacs with that window manager, you should try to configure the window
1200manager to use some other command. You can disable the
1201shortcut keys entirely by adding this line to ~/.OWdefaults:
1202
1203 OpenWindows.WindowMenuAccelerators: False
1204
1205* Emacs does not notice when you release the mouse.
1206
1207There are reports that this happened with (some) Microsoft mice and
1208that replacing the mouse made it stop.
1209
1210* Trouble using ptys on IRIX, or running out of ptys.
1211
1212The program mkpts (which may be in `/usr/adm' or `/usr/sbin') needs to
1213be set-UID to root, or non-root programs like Emacs will not be able
1214to allocate ptys reliably.
1215
1216* On Irix 5.2, unexelfsgi.c can't find cmplrs/stsupport.h.
1217
1218The file cmplrs/stsupport.h was included in the wrong file set in the
1219Irix 5.2 distribution. You can find it in the optional fileset
1220compiler_dev, or copy it from some other Irix 5.2 system. A kludgy
1221workaround is to change unexelfsgi.c to include sym.h instead of
1222syms.h.
1223
1224* Slow startup on Linux-based GNU systems.
1225
1226People using systems based on the Linux kernel sometimes report that
1227startup takes 10 to 15 seconds longer than `usual'.
1228
1229This is because Emacs looks up the host name when it starts.
1230Normally, this takes negligible time; the extra delay is due to
1231improper system configuration. This problem can occur for both
1232networked and non-networked machines.
1233
1234Here is how to fix the configuration. It requires being root.
1235
1236** Networked Case
1237
1238First, make sure the files `/etc/hosts' and `/etc/host.conf' both
1239exist. The first line in the `/etc/hosts' file should look like this
1240(replace HOSTNAME with your host name):
1241
1242 127.0.0.1 HOSTNAME
1243
1244Also make sure that the `/etc/host.conf' files contains the following
1245lines:
1246
1247 order hosts, bind
1248 multi on
1249
1250Any changes, permanent and temporary, to the host name should be
1251indicated in the `/etc/hosts' file, since it acts a limited local
1252database of addresses and names (e.g., some SLIP connections
1253dynamically allocate ip addresses).
1254
1255** Non-Networked Case
1256
1257The solution described in the networked case applies here as well.
1258However, if you never intend to network your machine, you can use a
1259simpler solution: create an empty `/etc/host.conf' file. The command
1260`touch /etc/host.conf' suffices to create the file. The `/etc/hosts'
1261file is not necessary with this approach.
1262
1263* On Solaris 2.4, Dired hangs and C-g does not work. Or Emacs hangs
1264forever waiting for termination of a subprocess that is a zombie.
1265
1266casper@fwi.uva.nl says the problem is in X11R6. Rebuild libX11.so
1267after changing the file xc/config/cf/sunLib.tmpl. Change the lines
1268
1269 #if ThreadedX
1270 #define SharedX11Reqs -lthread
1271 #endif
1272
1273to:
1274
1275 #if OSMinorVersion < 4
1276 #if ThreadedX
1277 #define SharedX11Reqs -lthread
1278 #endif
1279 #endif
1280
1281Be sure also to edit x/config/cf/sun.cf so that OSMinorVersion is 4
1282(as it should be for Solaris 2.4). The file has three definitions for
1283OSMinorVersion: the first is for x86, the second for SPARC under
1284Solaris, and the third for SunOS 4. Make sure to update the
1285definition for your type of machine and system.
1286
1287Then do `make Everything' in the top directory of X11R6, to rebuild
1288the makefiles and rebuild X. The X built this way work only on
1289Solaris 2.4, not on 2.3.
1290
1291For multithreaded X to work it is necessary to install patch
1292101925-02 to fix problems in header files [2.4]. You need
1293to reinstall gcc or re-run just-fixinc after installing that
1294patch.
1295
1296However, Frank Rust <frust@iti.cs.tu-bs.de> used a simpler solution:
1297he changed
1298 #define ThreadedX YES
1299to
1300 #define ThreadedX NO
1301in sun.cf and did `make World' to rebuild X11R6. Removing all
1302`-DXTHREAD*' flags and `-lthread' entries from lib/X11/Makefile and
1303typing 'make install' in that directory also seemed to work.
1304
1305* With M-x enable-flow-control, you need to type C-\ twice
1306 to do incremental search--a single C-\ gets no response.
1307
1308This has been traced to communicating with your machine via kermit,
1309with C-\ as the kermit escape character. One solution is to use
1310another escape character in kermit. One user did
1311
1312 set escape-character 17
1313
1314in his .kermrc file, to make C-q the kermit escape character.
1315
1316* The Motif version of Emacs paints the screen a solid color.
1317
1318This has been observed to result from the following X resource:
1319
1320 Emacs*default.attributeFont: -*-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-140-*-*-*-*-iso8859-*
1321
1322That the resource has this effect indicates a bug in something, but we
1323do not yet know what. If it is an Emacs bug, we hope someone can
1324explain what the bug is so we can fix it. In the mean time, removing
1325the resource prevents the problem.
1326
1327* Emacs gets hung shortly after startup, on Sunos 4.1.3.
1328
1329We think this is due to a bug in Sunos. The word is that
1330one of these Sunos patches fixes the bug:
1331
1332100075-11 100224-06 100347-03 100482-05 100557-02 100623-03 100804-03 101080-01
1333100103-12 100249-09 100496-02 100564-07 100630-02 100891-10 101134-01
1334100170-09 100296-04 100377-09 100507-04 100567-04 100650-02 101070-01 101145-01
1335100173-10 100305-15 100383-06 100513-04 100570-05 100689-01 101071-03 101200-02
1336100178-09 100338-05 100421-03 100536-02 100584-05 100784-01 101072-01 101207-01
1337
1338We don't know which of these patches really matter. If you find out
1339which ones, please inform bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
1340
1341* Emacs aborts while starting up, only when run without X.
1342
1343This problem often results from compiling Emacs with GCC when GCC was
1344installed incorrectly. The usual error in installing GCC is to
1345specify --includedir=/usr/include. Installation of GCC makes
1346corrected copies of the system header files. GCC is supposed to use
1347the corrected copies in preference to the original system headers.
1348Specifying --includedir=/usr/include causes the original system header
1349files to be used. On some systems, the definition of ioctl in the
1350original system header files is invalid for ANSI C and causes Emacs
1351not to work.
1352
1353The fix is to reinstall GCC, and this time do not specify --includedir
1354when you configure it. Then recompile Emacs. Specifying --includedir
1355is appropriate only in very special cases and it should *never* be the
1356same directory where system header files are kept.
1357
1358* On Solaris 2.x, GCC complains "64 bit integer types not supported"
1359
1360This suggests that GCC is not installed correctly. Most likely you
1361are using GCC 2.7.2.3 (or earlier) on Solaris 2.6 (or later); this
1362does not work without patching. To run GCC 2.7.2.3 on Solaris 2.6 or
1363later, you must patch fixinc.svr4 and reinstall GCC from scratch as
1364described in the Solaris FAQ
1365<http://www.wins.uva.nl/pub/solaris/solaris2.html>. A better fix is
1366to upgrade to GCC 2.8.1 or later.
1367
1368* The Compose key on a DEC keyboard does not work as Meta key.
1369
1370This shell command should fix it:
1371
1372 xmodmap -e 'keycode 0xb1 = Meta_L'
1373
1374* Regular expressions matching bugs on SCO systems.
1375
1376On SCO, there are problems in regexp matching when Emacs is compiled
1377with the system compiler. The compiler version is "Microsoft C
1378version 6", SCO 4.2.0h Dev Sys Maintenance Supplement 01/06/93; Quick
1379C Compiler Version 1.00.46 (Beta). The solution is to compile with
1380GCC.
1381
1382* On Sunos 4, you get the error ld: Undefined symbol __lib_version.
1383
1384This is the result of using cc or gcc with the shared library meant
1385for acc (the Sunpro compiler). Check your LD_LIBRARY_PATH and delete
1386/usr/lang/SC2.0.1 or some similar directory.
1387
1388* You can't select from submenus (in the X toolkit version).
1389
1390On certain systems, mouse-tracking and selection in top-level menus
1391works properly with the X toolkit, but neither of them works when you
1392bring up a submenu (such as Bookmarks or Compare or Apply Patch, in
1393the Files menu).
1394
1395This works on most systems. There is speculation that the failure is
1396due to bugs in old versions of X toolkit libraries, but no one really
1397knows. If someone debugs this and finds the precise cause, perhaps a
1398workaround can be found.
1399
1400* Unusable default font on SCO 3.2v4.
1401
1402The Open Desktop environment comes with default X resource settings
1403that tell Emacs to use a variable-width font. Emacs cannot use such
1404fonts, so it does not work.
1405
1406This is caused by the file /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/ScoTerm, which is
1407the application-specific resource file for the `scoterm' terminal
1408emulator program. It contains several extremely general X resources
1409that affect other programs besides `scoterm'. In particular, these
1410resources affect Emacs also:
1411
1412 *Font: -*-helvetica-medium-r-*--12-*-p-*
1413 *Background: scoBackground
1414 *Foreground: scoForeground
1415
1416The best solution is to create an application-specific resource file for
1417Emacs, /usr/lib/X11/sco/startup/Emacs, with the following contents:
1418
1419 Emacs*Font: -*-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-120-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1
1420 Emacs*Background: white
1421 Emacs*Foreground: black
1422
1423(These settings mimic the Emacs defaults, but you can change them to
1424suit your needs.) This resource file is only read when the X server
1425starts up, so you should restart it by logging out of the Open Desktop
1426environment or by running `scologin stop; scologin start` from the shell
1427as root. Alternatively, you can put these settings in the
1428/usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/Emacs resource file and simply restart Emacs,
1429but then they will not affect remote invocations of Emacs that use the
1430Open Desktop display.
1431
1432These resource files are not normally shared across a network of SCO
1433machines; you must create the file on each machine individually.
1434
1435* rcs2log gives you the awk error message "too many fields".
1436
1437This is due to an arbitrary limit in certain versions of awk.
1438The solution is to use gawk (GNU awk).
1439
1440* Emacs is slow using X11R5 on HP/UX.
1441
1442This happens if you use the MIT versions of the X libraries--it
1443doesn't run as fast as HP's version. People sometimes use the version
1444because they see the HP version doesn't have the libraries libXaw.a,
1445libXmu.a, libXext.a and others. HP/UX normally doesn't come with
1446those libraries installed. To get good performance, you need to
1447install them and rebuild Emacs.
1448
1449* Loading fonts is very slow.
1450
1451You might be getting scalable fonts instead of precomputed bitmaps.
1452Known scalable font directories are "Type1" and "Speedo". A font
1453directory contains scalable fonts if it contains the file
1454"fonts.scale".
1455
1456If this is so, re-order your X windows font path to put the scalable
1457font directories last. See the documentation of `xset' for details.
1458
1459With some X servers, it may be necessary to take the scalable font
1460directories out of your path entirely, at least for Emacs 19.26.
1461Changes in the future may make this unnecessary.
1462
1463* On AIX 3.2.4, releasing Ctrl/Act key has no effect, if Shift is down.
1464
1465Due to a feature of AIX, pressing or releasing the Ctrl/Act key is
1466ignored when the Shift, Alt or AltGr keys are held down. This can
1467lead to the keyboard being "control-locked"--ordinary letters are
1468treated as control characters.
1469
1470You can get out of this "control-locked" state by pressing and
1471releasing Ctrl/Act while not pressing or holding any other keys.
1472
1473* display-time causes kernel problems on ISC systems.
1474
1475Under Interactive Unix versions 3.0.1 and 4.0 (and probably other
1476versions), display-time causes the loss of large numbers of STREVENT
1477cells. Eventually the kernel's supply of these cells is exhausted.
1478This makes emacs and the whole system run slow, and can make other
1479processes die, in particular pcnfsd.
1480
1481Other emacs functions that communicate with remote processes may have
1482the same problem. Display-time seems to be far the worst.
1483
1484The only known fix: Don't run display-time.
1485
1486* On Solaris, C-x doesn't get through to Emacs when you use the console.
1487
1488This is a Solaris feature (at least on Intel x86 cpus). Type C-r
1489C-r C-t, to toggle whether C-x gets through to Emacs.
1490
1491* Error message `Symbol's value as variable is void: x', followed by
1492 segmentation fault and core dump.
1493
1494This has been tracked to a bug in tar! People report that tar erroneously
1495added a line like this at the beginning of files of Lisp code:
1496
1497 x FILENAME, N bytes, B tape blocks
1498
1499If your tar has this problem, install GNU tar--if you can manage to
1500untar it :-).
1501
1502* Link failure when using acc on a Sun.
1503
1504To use acc, you need additional options just before the libraries, such as
1505
1506 /usr/lang/SC2.0.1/values-Xt.o -L/usr/lang/SC2.0.1/cg87 -L/usr/lang/SC2.0.1
1507
1508and you need to add -lansi just before -lc.
1509
1510The precise file names depend on the compiler version, so we
1511cannot easily arrange to supply them.
1512
1513* Link failure on IBM AIX 1.3 ptf 0013.
1514
1515There is a real duplicate definition of the function `_slibc_free' in
1516the library /lib/libc_s.a (just do nm on it to verify). The
1517workaround/fix is:
1518
1519 cd /lib
1520 ar xv libc_s.a NLtmtime.o
1521 ar dv libc_s.a NLtmtime.o
1522
1523* Undefined symbols _dlopen, _dlsym and/or _dlclose on a Sun.
1524
1525If you see undefined symbols _dlopen, _dlsym, or _dlclose when linking
1526with -lX11, compile and link against the file mit/util/misc/dlsym.c in
1527the MIT X11R5 distribution. Alternatively, link temacs using shared
1528libraries with s/sunos4shr.h. (This doesn't work if you use the X
1529toolkit.)
1530
1531If you get the additional error that the linker could not find
1532lib_version.o, try extracting it from X11/usr/lib/X11/libvim.a in
1533X11R4, then use it in the link.
1534
1535* Error messages `Wrong number of arguments: #<subr where-is-internal>, 5'
1536
1537This typically results from having the powerkey library loaded.
1538Powerkey was designed for Emacs 19.22. It is obsolete now because
1539Emacs 19 now has this feature built in; and powerkey also calls
1540where-is-internal in an obsolete way.
1541
1542So the fix is to arrange not to load powerkey.
1543
1544* In Shell mode, you get a ^M at the end of every line.
1545
1546This happens to people who use tcsh, because it is trying to be too
1547smart. It sees that the Shell uses terminal type `unknown' and turns
1548on the flag to output ^M at the end of each line. You can fix the
1549problem by adding this to your .cshrc file:
1550
1551 if ($?EMACS) then
1552 if ($EMACS == "t") then
1553 unset edit
1554 stty -icrnl -onlcr -echo susp ^Z
1555 endif
1556 endif
1557
1558* An error message such as `X protocol error: BadMatch (invalid
1559parameter attributes) on protocol request 93'.
1560
1561This comes from having an invalid X resource, such as
1562 emacs*Cursor: black
1563(which is invalid because it specifies a color name for something
1564that isn't a color.)
1565
1566The fix is to correct your X resources.
1567
1568* Undefined symbols when linking on Sunos 4.1 using --with-x-toolkit.
1569
1570If you get the undefined symbols _atowc _wcslen, _iswprint, _iswspace,
1571_iswcntrl, _wcscpy, and _wcsncpy, then you need to add -lXwchar after
1572-lXaw in the command that links temacs.
1573
1574This problem seems to arise only when the international language
1575extensions to X11R5 are installed.
1576
1577* Typing C-c C-c in Shell mode kills your X server.
1578
1579This happens with Linux kernel 1.0 thru 1.04, approximately. The workaround is
1580to define SIGNALS_VIA_CHARACTERS in config.h and recompile Emacs.
1581Newer Linux kernel versions don't have this problem.
1582
1583* src/Makefile and lib-src/Makefile are truncated--most of the file missing.
1584
1585This can happen if configure uses GNU sed version 2.03. That version
1586had a bug. GNU sed version 2.05 works properly.
1587
1588* Slow startup on X11R6 with X windows.
1589
1590If Emacs takes two minutes to start up on X11R6, see if your X
1591resources specify any Adobe fonts. That causes the type-1 font
1592renderer to start up, even if the font you asked for is not a type-1
1593font.
1594
1595One way to avoid this problem is to eliminate the type-1 fonts from
1596your font path, like this:
1597
1598 xset -fp /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/
1599
1600* Pull-down menus appear in the wrong place, in the toolkit version of Emacs.
1601
1602An X resource of this form can cause the problem:
1603
1604 Emacs*geometry: 80x55+0+0
1605
1606This resource is supposed to apply, and does apply, to the menus
1607individually as well as to Emacs frames. If that is not what you
1608want, rewrite the resource.
1609
1610To check thoroughly for such resource specifications, use `xrdb
1611-query' to see what resources the X server records, and also look at
1612the user's ~/.Xdefaults and ~/.Xdefaults-* files.
1613
1614* --with-x-toolkit version crashes when used with shared libraries.
1615
1616On some systems, including Sunos 4 and DGUX 5.4.2 and perhaps others,
1617unexec doesn't work properly with the shared library for the X
1618toolkit. You might be able to work around this by using a nonshared
1619libXt.a library. The real fix is to upgrade the various versions of
1620unexec and/or ralloc. We think this has been fixed on Sunos 4
1621and Solaris in version 19.29.
1622
1623* `make install' fails on install-doc with `Error 141'.
1624
1625This happens on Ultrix 4.2 due to failure of a pipeline of tar
1626commands. We don't know why they fail, but the bug seems not to be in
1627Emacs. The workaround is to run the shell command in install-doc by
1628hand.
1629
1630* --with-x-toolkit option configures wrong on BSD/386.
1631
1632This problem is due to bugs in the shell in version 1.0 of BSD/386.
1633The workaround is to edit the configure file to use some other shell,
1634such as bash.
1635
1636* Subprocesses remain, hanging but not zombies, on Sunos 5.3.
1637
1638A bug in Sunos 5.3 causes Emacs subprocesses to remain after Emacs
1639exits. Sun patch # 101415-02 is part of the fix for this, but it only
1640applies to ptys, and doesn't fix the problem with subprocesses
1641communicating through pipes.
1642
1643* Mail is lost when sent to local aliases.
1644
1645Many emacs mail user agents (VM and rmail, for instance) use the
1646sendmail.el library. This library can arrange for mail to be
1647delivered by passing messages to the /usr/lib/sendmail (usually)
1648program . In doing so, it passes the '-t' flag to sendmail, which
1649means that the name of the recipient of the message is not on the
1650command line and, therefore, that sendmail must parse the message to
1651obtain the destination address.
1652
1653There is a bug in the SunOS4.1.1 and SunOS4.1.3 versions of sendmail.
1654In short, when given the -t flag, the SunOS sendmail won't recognize
1655non-local (i.e. NIS) aliases. It has been reported that the Solaris
16562.x versions of sendmail do not have this bug. For those using SunOS
16574.1, the best fix is to install sendmail V8 or IDA sendmail (which
1658have other advantages over the regular sendmail as well). At the time
1659of this writing, these official versions are available:
1660
1661 Sendmail V8 on ftp.cs.berkeley.edu in /ucb/sendmail:
1662 sendmail.8.6.9.base.tar.Z (the base system source & documentation)
1663 sendmail.8.6.9.cf.tar.Z (configuration files)
1664 sendmail.8.6.9.misc.tar.Z (miscellaneous support programs)
1665 sendmail.8.6.9.xdoc.tar.Z (extended documentation, with postscript)
1666
1667 IDA sendmail on vixen.cso.uiuc.edu in /pub:
1668 sendmail-5.67b+IDA-1.5.tar.gz
1669
1670* On AIX, you get this message when running Emacs:
1671
1672 Could not load program emacs
1673 Symbol smtcheckinit in csh is undefined
1674 Error was: Exec format error
1675
1676or this one:
1677
1678 Could not load program .emacs
1679 Symbol _system_con in csh is undefined
1680 Symbol _fp_trapsta in csh is undefined
1681 Error was: Exec format error
1682
1683These can happen when you try to run on AIX 3.2.5 a program that was
1684compiled with 3.2.4. The fix is to recompile.
1685
1686* On AIX, you get this compiler error message:
1687
1688 Processing include file ./XMenuInt.h
1689 1501-106: (S) Include file X11/Xlib.h not found.
1690
1691This means your system was installed with only the X11 runtime i.d
1692libraries. You have to find your sipo (bootable tape) and install
1693X11Dev... with smit.
1694
1695* You "lose characters" after typing Compose Character key.
1696
1697This is because the Compose Character key is defined as the keysym
1698Multi_key, and Emacs (seeing that) does the proper X11
1699character-composition processing. If you don't want your Compose key
1700to do that, you can redefine it with xmodmap.
1701
1702For example, here's one way to turn it into a Meta key:
1703
1704 xmodmap -e "keysym Multi_key = Meta_L"
1705
1706If all users at your site of a particular keyboard prefer Meta to
1707Compose, you can make the remapping happen automatically by adding the
1708xmodmap command to the xdm setup script for that display.
1709
1710* C-z just refreshes the screen instead of suspending Emacs.
1711
1712You are probably using a shell that doesn't support job control, even
1713though the system itself is capable of it. Either use a different shell,
1714or set the variable `cannot-suspend' to a non-nil value.
1715
1716* Watch out for .emacs files and EMACSLOADPATH environment vars
1717
1718These control the actions of Emacs.
1719~/.emacs is your Emacs init file.
1720EMACSLOADPATH overrides which directories the function
1721"load" will search.
1722
1723If you observe strange problems, check for these and get rid
1724of them, then try again.
1725
1726* After running emacs once, subsequent invocations crash.
1727
1728Some versions of SVR4 have a serious bug in the implementation of the
1729mmap () system call in the kernel; this causes emacs to run correctly
1730the first time, and then crash when run a second time.
1731
1732Contact your vendor and ask for the mmap bug fix; in the mean time,
1733you may be able to work around the problem by adding a line to your
1734operating system description file (whose name is reported by the
1735configure script) that reads:
1736#define SYSTEM_MALLOC
1737This makes Emacs use memory less efficiently, but seems to work around
1738the kernel bug.
1739
1740* Inability to send an Alt-modified key, when Emacs is communicating
1741directly with an X server.
1742
1743If you have tried to bind an Alt-modified key as a command, and it
1744does not work to type the command, the first thing you should check is
1745whether the key is getting through to Emacs. To do this, type C-h c
1746followed by the Alt-modified key. C-h c should say what kind of event
1747it read. If it says it read an Alt-modified key, then make sure you
1748have made the key binding correctly.
1749
1750If C-h c reports an event that doesn't have the Alt modifier, it may
1751be because your X server has no key for the Alt modifier. The X
1752server that comes from MIT does not set up the Alt modifier by
1753default.
1754
1755If your keyboard has keys named Alt, you can enable them as follows:
1756
1757 xmodmap -e 'add mod2 = Alt_L'
1758 xmodmap -e 'add mod2 = Alt_R'
1759
1760If the keyboard has just one key named Alt, then only one of those
1761commands is needed. The modifier `mod2' is a reasonable choice if you
1762are using an unmodified MIT version of X. Otherwise, choose any
1763modifier bit not otherwise used.
1764
1765If your keyboard does not have keys named Alt, you can use some other
1766keys. Use the keysym command in xmodmap to turn a function key (or
1767some other 'spare' key) into Alt_L or into Alt_R, and then use the
1768commands show above to make them modifier keys.
1769
1770Note that if you have Alt keys but no Meta keys, Emacs translates Alt
1771into Meta. This is because of the great importance of Meta in Emacs.
1772
1773* `Pid xxx killed due to text modification or page I/O error'
1774
1775On HP/UX, you can get that error when the Emacs executable is on an NFS
1776file system. HP/UX responds this way if it tries to swap in a page and
1777does not get a response from the server within a timeout whose default
1778value is just ten seconds.
1779
1780If this happens to you, extend the timeout period.
1781
1782* `expand-file-name' fails to work on any but the machine you dumped Emacs on.
1783
1784On Ultrix, if you use any of the functions which look up information
1785in the passwd database before dumping Emacs (say, by using
1786expand-file-name in site-init.el), then those functions will not work
1787in the dumped Emacs on any host but the one Emacs was dumped on.
1788
1789The solution? Don't use expand-file-name in site-init.el, or in
1790anything it loads. Yuck - some solution.
1791
1792I'm not sure why this happens; if you can find out exactly what is
1793going on, and perhaps find a fix or a workaround, please let us know.
1794Perhaps the YP functions cache some information, the cache is included
1795in the dumped Emacs, and is then inaccurate on any other host.
1796
1797* On some variants of SVR4, Emacs does not work at all with X.
1798
1799Try defining BROKEN_FIONREAD in your config.h file. If this solves
1800the problem, please send a bug report to tell us this is needed; be
1801sure to say exactly what type of machine and system you are using.
1802
1803* Linking says that the functions insque and remque are undefined.
1804
1805Change oldXMenu/Makefile by adding insque.o to the variable OBJS.
1806
1807* Emacs fails to understand most Internet host names, even though
1808the names work properly with other programs on the same system.
1809* Emacs won't work with X-windows if the value of DISPLAY is HOSTNAME:0.
1810* GNUs can't make contact with the specified host for nntp.
1811
1812This typically happens on Suns and other systems that use shared
1813libraries. The cause is that the site has installed a version of the
1814shared library which uses a name server--but has not installed a
1815similar version of the unshared library which Emacs uses.
1816
1817The result is that most programs, using the shared library, work with
1818the nameserver, but Emacs does not.
1819
1820The fix is to install an unshared library that corresponds to what you
1821installed in the shared library, and then relink Emacs.
1822
1823On SunOS 4.1, simply define HAVE_RES_INIT.
1824
1825If you have already installed the name resolver in the file libresolv.a,
1826then you need to compile Emacs to use that library. The easiest way to
1827do this is to add to config.h a definition of LIBS_SYSTEM, LIBS_MACHINE
1828or LIB_STANDARD which uses -lresolv. Watch out! If you redefine a macro
1829that is already in use in your configuration to supply some other libraries,
1830be careful not to lose the others.
1831
1832Thus, you could start by adding this to config.h:
1833
1834#define LIBS_SYSTEM -lresolv
1835
1836Then if this gives you an error for redefining a macro, and you see that
1837the s- file defines LIBS_SYSTEM as -lfoo -lbar, you could change config.h
1838again to say this:
1839
1840#define LIBS_SYSTEM -lresolv -lfoo -lbar
1841
1842* On a Sun running SunOS 4.1.1, you get this error message from GNU ld:
1843
1844 /lib/libc.a(_Q_sub.o): Undefined symbol __Q_get_rp_rd referenced from text segment
1845
1846The problem is in the Sun shared C library, not in GNU ld.
1847
1848The solution is to install Patch-ID# 100267-03 from Sun.
1849
1850* Self documentation messages are garbled.
1851
1852This means that the file `etc/DOC-...' doesn't properly correspond
1853with the Emacs executable. Redumping Emacs and then installing the
1854corresponding pair of files should fix the problem.
1855
1856* Trouble using ptys on AIX.
1857
1858People often install the pty devices on AIX incorrectly.
1859Use `smit pty' to reinstall them properly.
1860
1861* Shell mode on HP/UX gives the message, "`tty`: Ambiguous".
1862
1863christos@theory.tn.cornell.edu says:
1864
1865The problem is that in your .cshrc you have something that tries to
1866execute `tty`. If you are not running the shell on a real tty then
1867tty will print "not a tty". Csh expects one word in some places,
1868but tty is giving it back 3.
1869
1870The solution is to add a pair of quotes around `tty` to make it a single
1871word:
1872
1873if (`tty` == "/dev/console")
1874
1875should be changed to:
1876
1877if ("`tty`" == "/dev/console")
1878
1879Even better, move things that set up terminal sections out of .cshrc
1880and into .login.
1881
1882* Using X Windows, control-shift-leftbutton makes Emacs hang.
1883
1884Use the shell command `xset bc' to make the old X Menu package work.
1885
1886* Emacs running under X Windows does not handle mouse clicks.
1887* `emacs -geometry 80x20' finds a file named `80x20'.
1888
1889One cause of such problems is having (setq term-file-prefix nil) in
1890your .emacs file. Another cause is a bad value of EMACSLOADPATH in
1891the environment.
1892
1893* Emacs gets error message from linker on Sun.
1894
1895If the error message says that a symbol such as `f68881_used' or
1896`ffpa_used' or `start_float' is undefined, this probably indicates
1897that you have compiled some libraries, such as the X libraries,
1898with a floating point option other than the default.
1899
1900It's not terribly hard to make this work with small changes in
1901crt0.c together with linking with Fcrt1.o, Wcrt1.o or Mcrt1.o.
1902However, the easiest approach is to build Xlib with the default
1903floating point option: -fsoft.
1904
1905* Emacs fails to get default settings from X Windows server.
1906
1907The X library in X11R4 has a bug; it interchanges the 2nd and 3rd
1908arguments to XGetDefaults. Define the macro XBACKWARDS in config.h to
1909tell Emacs to compensate for this.
1910
1911I don't believe there is any way Emacs can determine for itself
1912whether this problem is present on a given system.
1913
1914* Keyboard input gets confused after a beep when using a DECserver
1915 as a concentrator.
1916
1917This problem seems to be a matter of configuring the DECserver to use
19187 bit characters rather than 8 bit characters.
1919
1920* M-x shell persistently reports "Process shell exited abnormally with code 1".
1921
1922This happened on Suns as a result of what is said to be a bug in Sunos
1923version 4.0.x. The only fix was to reboot the machine.
1924
1925* Programs running under terminal emulator do not recognize `emacs'
1926 terminal type.
1927
1928The cause of this is a shell startup file that sets the TERMCAP
1929environment variable. The terminal emulator uses that variable to
1930provide the information on the special terminal type that Emacs
1931emulates.
1932
1933Rewrite your shell startup file so that it does not change TERMCAP
1934in such a case. You could use the following conditional which sets
1935it only if it is undefined.
1936
1937 if ( ! ${?TERMCAP} ) setenv TERMCAP ~/my-termcap-file
1938
1939Or you could set TERMCAP only when you set TERM--which should not
1940happen in a non-login shell.
1941
1942* X Windows doesn't work if DISPLAY uses a hostname.
1943
1944People have reported kernel bugs in certain systems that cause Emacs
1945not to work with X Windows if DISPLAY is set using a host name. But
1946the problem does not occur if DISPLAY is set to `unix:0.0'. I think
1947the bug has to do with SIGIO or FIONREAD.
1948
1949You may be able to compensate for the bug by doing (set-input-mode nil nil).
1950However, that has the disadvantage of turning off interrupts, so that
1951you are unable to quit out of a Lisp program by typing C-g.
1952
1953The easy way to do this is to put
1954
1955 (setq x-sigio-bug t)
1956
1957in your site-init.el file.
1958
1959* Problem with remote X server on Suns.
1960
1961On a Sun, running Emacs on one machine with the X server on another
1962may not work if you have used the unshared system libraries. This
1963is because the unshared libraries fail to use YP for host name lookup.
1964As a result, the host name you specify may not be recognized.
1965
1966* Shell mode ignores interrupts on Apollo Domain
1967
1968You may find that M-x shell prints the following message:
1969
1970 Warning: no access to tty; thus no job control in this shell...
1971
1972This can happen if there are not enough ptys on your system.
1973Here is how to make more of them.
1974
1975 % cd /dev
1976 % ls pty*
1977 # shows how many pty's you have. I had 8, named pty0 to pty7)
1978 % /etc/crpty 8
1979 # creates eight new pty's
1980
1981* Fatal signal in the command temacs -l loadup inc dump
1982
1983This command is the final stage of building Emacs. It is run by the
1984Makefile in the src subdirectory, or by build.com on VMS.
1985
1986It has been known to get fatal errors due to insufficient swapping
1987space available on the machine.
1988
1989On 68000's, it has also happened because of bugs in the
1990subroutine `alloca'. Verify that `alloca' works right, even
1991for large blocks (many pages).
1992
1993* test-distrib says that the distribution has been clobbered
1994* or, temacs prints "Command key out of range 0-127"
1995* or, temacs runs and dumps emacs, but emacs totally fails to work.
1996* or, temacs gets errors dumping emacs
1997
1998This can be because the .elc files have been garbled. Do not be
1999fooled by the fact that most of a .elc file is text: these are
2000binary files and can contain all 256 byte values.
2001
2002In particular `shar' cannot be used for transmitting GNU Emacs.
2003It typically truncates "lines". What appear to be "lines" in
2004a binary file can of course be of any length. Even once `shar'
2005itself is made to work correctly, `sh' discards null characters
2006when unpacking the shell archive.
2007
2008I have also seen character \177 changed into \377. I do not know
2009what transfer means caused this problem. Various network
2010file transfer programs are suspected of clobbering the high bit.
2011
2012If you have a copy of Emacs that has been damaged in its
2013nonprinting characters, you can fix them:
2014
2015 1) Record the names of all the .elc files.
2016 2) Delete all the .elc files.
2017 3) Recompile alloc.c with a value of PURESIZE twice as large.
2018 (See puresize.h.) You might as well save the old alloc.o.
2019 4) Remake emacs. It should work now.
2020 5) Running emacs, do Meta-x byte-compile-file repeatedly
2021 to recreate all the .elc files that used to exist.
2022 You may need to increase the value of the variable
2023 max-lisp-eval-depth to succeed in running the compiler interpreted
2024 on certain .el files. 400 was sufficient as of last report.
2025 6) Reinstall the old alloc.o (undoing changes to alloc.c if any)
2026 and remake temacs.
2027 7) Remake emacs. It should work now, with valid .elc files.
2028
2029* temacs prints "Pure Lisp storage exhausted"
2030
2031This means that the Lisp code loaded from the .elc and .el
2032files during temacs -l loadup inc dump took up more
2033space than was allocated.
2034
2035This could be caused by
2036 1) adding code to the preloaded Lisp files
2037 2) adding more preloaded files in loadup.el
2038 3) having a site-init.el or site-load.el which loads files.
2039 Note that ANY site-init.el or site-load.el is nonstandard;
2040 if you have received Emacs from some other site
2041 and it contains a site-init.el or site-load.el file, consider
2042 deleting that file.
2043 4) getting the wrong .el or .elc files
2044 (not from the directory you expected).
2045 5) deleting some .elc files that are supposed to exist.
2046 This would cause the source files (.el files) to be
2047 loaded instead. They take up more room, so you lose.
2048 6) a bug in the Emacs distribution which underestimates
2049 the space required.
2050
2051If the need for more space is legitimate, change the definition
2052of PURESIZE in puresize.h.
2053
2054But in some of the cases listed above, this problem is a consequence
2055of something else that is wrong. Be sure to check and fix the real
2056problem.
2057
2058* Changes made to .el files do not take effect.
2059
2060You may have forgotten to recompile them into .elc files.
2061Then the old .elc files will be loaded, and your changes
2062will not be seen. To fix this, do M-x byte-recompile-directory
2063and specify the directory that contains the Lisp files.
2064
2065Emacs should print a warning when loading a .elc file which is older
2066than the corresponding .el file.
2067
2068* The dumped Emacs crashes when run, trying to write pure data.
2069
2070Two causes have been seen for such problems.
2071
20721) On a system where getpagesize is not a system call, it is defined
2073as a macro. If the definition (in both unexec.c and malloc.c) is wrong,
2074it can cause problems like this. You might be able to find the correct
2075value in the man page for a.out (5).
2076
20772) Some systems allocate variables declared static among the
2078initialized variables. Emacs makes all initialized variables in most
2079of its files pure after dumping, but the variables declared static and
2080not initialized are not supposed to be pure. On these systems you
2081may need to add "#define static" to the m- or the s- file.
2082
2083* Compilation errors on VMS.
2084
2085You will get warnings when compiling on VMS because there are
2086variable names longer than 32 (or whatever it is) characters.
2087This is not an error. Ignore it.
2088
2089VAX C does not support #if defined(foo). Uses of this construct
2090were removed, but some may have crept back in. They must be rewritten.
2091
2092There is a bug in the C compiler which fails to sign extend characters
2093in conditional expressions. The bug is:
2094 char c = -1, d = 1;
2095 int i;
2096
2097 i = d ? c : d;
2098The result is i == 255; the fix is to typecast the char in the
2099conditional expression as an (int). Known occurrences of such
2100constructs in Emacs have been fixed.
2101
2102* rmail gets error getting new mail
2103
2104rmail gets new mail from /usr/spool/mail/$USER using a program
2105called `movemail'. This program interlocks with /bin/mail using
2106the protocol defined by /bin/mail.
2107
2108There are two different protocols in general use. One of them uses
2109the `flock' system call. The other involves creating a lock file;
2110`movemail' must be able to write in /usr/spool/mail in order to do
2111this. You control which one is used by defining, or not defining,
2112the macro MAIL_USE_FLOCK in config.h or the m- or s- file it includes.
2113IF YOU DON'T USE THE FORM OF INTERLOCKING THAT IS NORMAL ON YOUR
2114SYSTEM, YOU CAN LOSE MAIL!
2115
2116If your system uses the lock file protocol, and fascist restrictions
2117prevent ordinary users from writing the lock files in /usr/spool/mail,
2118you may need to make `movemail' setgid to a suitable group such as
2119`mail'. You can use these commands (as root):
2120
2121 chgrp mail movemail
2122 chmod 2755 movemail
2123
2124If your system uses the lock file protocol, and fascist restrictions
2125prevent ordinary users from writing the lock files in /usr/spool/mail,
2126you may need to make `movemail' setgid to a suitable group such as
2127`mail'. To do this, use the following commands (as root) after doing the
2128make install.
2129
2130 chgrp mail movemail
2131 chmod 2755 movemail
2132
2133Installation normally copies movemail from the build directory to an
2134installation directory which is usually under /usr/local/lib. The
2135installed copy of movemail is usually in the directory
2136/usr/local/lib/emacs/VERSION/TARGET. You must change the group and
2137mode of the installed copy; changing the group and mode of the build
2138directory copy is ineffective.
2139
2140* Emacs spontaneously displays "I-search: " at the bottom of the screen.
2141
2142This means that Control-S/Control-Q (XON/XOFF) "flow control" is being
2143used. C-s/C-q flow control is bad for Emacs editors because it takes
2144away C-s and C-q as user commands. Since editors do not output long
2145streams of text without user commands, there is no need for a
2146user-issuable "stop output" command in an editor; therefore, a
2147properly designed flow control mechanism would transmit all possible
2148input characters without interference. Designing such a mechanism is
2149easy, for a person with at least half a brain.
2150
2151There are three possible reasons why flow control could be taking place:
2152
2153 1) Terminal has not been told to disable flow control
2154 2) Insufficient padding for the terminal in use
2155 3) Some sort of terminal concentrator or line switch is responsible
2156
2157First of all, many terminals have a set-up mode which controls whether
2158they generate XON/XOFF flow control characters. This must be set to
2159"no XON/XOFF" in order for Emacs to work. Sometimes there is an
2160escape sequence that the computer can send to turn flow control off
2161and on. If so, perhaps the termcap `ti' string should turn flow
2162control off, and the `te' string should turn it on.
2163
2164Once the terminal has been told "no flow control", you may find it
2165needs more padding. The amount of padding Emacs sends is controlled
2166by the termcap entry for the terminal in use, and by the output baud
2167rate as known by the kernel. The shell command `stty' will print
2168your output baud rate; `stty' with suitable arguments will set it if
2169it is wrong. Setting to a higher speed causes increased padding. If
2170the results are wrong for the correct speed, there is probably a
2171problem in the termcap entry. You must speak to a local Unix wizard
2172to fix this. Perhaps you are just using the wrong terminal type.
2173
2174For terminals that lack a "no flow control" mode, sometimes just
2175giving lots of padding will prevent actual generation of flow control
2176codes. You might as well try it.
2177
2178If you are really unlucky, your terminal is connected to the computer
2179through a concentrator which sends XON/XOFF flow control to the
2180computer, or it insists on sending flow control itself no matter how
2181much padding you give it. Unless you can figure out how to turn flow
2182control off on this concentrator (again, refer to your local wizard),
2183you are screwed! You should have the terminal or concentrator
2184replaced with a properly designed one. In the mean time, some drastic
2185measures can make Emacs semi-work.
2186
2187You can make Emacs ignore C-s and C-q and let the operating system
2188handle them. To do this on a per-session basis, just type M-x
2189enable-flow-control RET. You will see a message that C-\ and C-^ are
2190now translated to C-s and C-q. (Use the same command M-x
2191enable-flow-control to turn *off* this special mode. It toggles flow
2192control handling.)
2193
2194If C-\ and C-^ are inconvenient for you (for example, if one of them
2195is the escape character of your terminal concentrator), you can choose
2196other characters by setting the variables flow-control-c-s-replacement
2197and flow-control-c-q-replacement. But choose carefully, since all
2198other control characters are already used by emacs.
2199
2200IMPORTANT: if you type C-s by accident while flow control is enabled,
2201Emacs output will freeze, and you will have to remember to type C-q in
2202order to continue.
2203
2204If you work in an environment where a majority of terminals of a
2205certain type are flow control hobbled, you can use the function
2206`enable-flow-control-on' to turn on this flow control avoidance scheme
2207automatically. Here is an example:
2208
2209(enable-flow-control-on "vt200" "vt300" "vt101" "vt131")
2210
2211If this isn't quite correct (e.g. you have a mixture of flow-control hobbled
2212and good vt200 terminals), you can still run enable-flow-control
2213manually.
2214
2215I have no intention of ever redesigning the Emacs command set for the
2216assumption that terminals use C-s/C-q flow control. XON/XOFF flow
2217control technique is a bad design, and terminals that need it are bad
2218merchandise and should not be purchased. Now that X is becoming
2219widespread, XON/XOFF seems to be on the way out. If you can get some
2220use out of GNU Emacs on inferior terminals, more power to you, but I
2221will not make Emacs worse for properly designed systems for the sake
2222of inferior systems.
2223
2224* Control-S and Control-Q commands are ignored completely.
2225
2226For some reason, your system is using brain-damaged C-s/C-q flow
2227control despite Emacs's attempts to turn it off. Perhaps your
2228terminal is connected to the computer through a concentrator
2229that wants to use flow control.
2230
2231You should first try to tell the concentrator not to use flow control.
2232If you succeed in this, try making the terminal work without
2233flow control, as described in the preceding section.
2234
2235If that line of approach is not successful, map some other characters
2236into C-s and C-q using keyboard-translate-table. The example above
2237shows how to do this with C-^ and C-\.
2238
2239* Control-S and Control-Q commands are ignored completely on a net connection.
2240
2241Some versions of rlogin (and possibly telnet) do not pass flow
2242control characters to the remote system to which they connect.
2243On such systems, emacs on the remote system cannot disable flow
2244control on the local system.
2245
2246One way to cure this is to disable flow control on the local host
2247(the one running rlogin, not the one running rlogind) using the
2248stty command, before starting the rlogin process. On many systems,
2249"stty start u stop u" will do this.
2250
2251Some versions of tcsh will prevent even this from working. One way
2252around this is to start another shell before starting rlogin, and
2253issue the stty command to disable flow control from that shell.
2254
2255If none of these methods work, the best solution is to type
2256M-x enable-flow-control at the beginning of your emacs session, or
2257if you expect the problem to continue, add a line such as the
2258following to your .emacs (on the host running rlogind):
2259
2260(enable-flow-control-on "vt200" "vt300" "vt101" "vt131")
2261
2262See the entry about spontaneous display of I-search (above) for more
2263info.
2264
2265* Screen is updated wrong, but only on one kind of terminal.
2266
2267This could mean that the termcap entry you are using for that
2268terminal is wrong, or it could mean that Emacs has a bug handing
2269the combination of features specified for that terminal.
2270
2271The first step in tracking this down is to record what characters
2272Emacs is sending to the terminal. Execute the Lisp expression
2273(open-termscript "./emacs-script") to make Emacs write all
2274terminal output into the file ~/emacs-script as well; then do
2275what makes the screen update wrong, and look at the file
2276and decode the characters using the manual for the terminal.
2277There are several possibilities:
2278
22791) The characters sent are correct, according to the terminal manual.
2280
2281In this case, there is no obvious bug in Emacs, and most likely you
2282need more padding, or possibly the terminal manual is wrong.
2283
22842) The characters sent are incorrect, due to an obscure aspect
2285 of the terminal behavior not described in an obvious way
2286 by termcap.
2287
2288This case is hard. It will be necessary to think of a way for
2289Emacs to distinguish between terminals with this kind of behavior
2290and other terminals that behave subtly differently but are
2291classified the same by termcap; or else find an algorithm for
2292Emacs to use that avoids the difference. Such changes must be
2293tested on many kinds of terminals.
2294
22953) The termcap entry is wrong.
2296
2297See the file etc/TERMS for information on changes
2298that are known to be needed in commonly used termcap entries
2299for certain terminals.
2300
23014) The characters sent are incorrect, and clearly cannot be
2302 right for any terminal with the termcap entry you were using.
2303
2304This is unambiguously an Emacs bug, and can probably be fixed
2305in termcap.c, tparam.c, term.c, scroll.c, cm.c or dispnew.c.
2306
2307* Output from Control-V is slow.
2308
2309On many bit-map terminals, scrolling operations are fairly slow.
2310Often the termcap entry for the type of terminal in use fails
2311to inform Emacs of this. The two lines at the bottom of the screen
2312before a Control-V command are supposed to appear at the top after
2313the Control-V command. If Emacs thinks scrolling the lines is fast,
2314it will scroll them to the top of the screen.
2315
2316If scrolling is slow but Emacs thinks it is fast, the usual reason is
2317that the termcap entry for the terminal you are using does not
2318specify any padding time for the `al' and `dl' strings. Emacs
2319concludes that these operations take only as much time as it takes to
2320send the commands at whatever line speed you are using. You must
2321fix the termcap entry to specify, for the `al' and `dl', as much
2322time as the operations really take.
2323
2324Currently Emacs thinks in terms of serial lines which send characters
2325at a fixed rate, so that any operation which takes time for the
2326terminal to execute must also be padded. With bit-map terminals
2327operated across networks, often the network provides some sort of
2328flow control so that padding is never needed no matter how slow
2329an operation is. You must still specify a padding time if you want
2330Emacs to realize that the operation takes a long time. This will
2331cause padding characters to be sent unnecessarily, but they do
2332not really cost much. They will be transmitted while the scrolling
2333is happening and then discarded quickly by the terminal.
2334
2335Most bit-map terminals provide commands for inserting or deleting
2336multiple lines at once. Define the `AL' and `DL' strings in the
2337termcap entry to say how to do these things, and you will have
2338fast output without wasted padding characters. These strings should
2339each contain a single %-spec saying how to send the number of lines
2340to be scrolled. These %-specs are like those in the termcap
2341`cm' string.
2342
2343You should also define the `IC' and `DC' strings if your terminal
2344has a command to insert or delete multiple characters. These
2345take the number of positions to insert or delete as an argument.
2346
2347A `cs' string to set the scrolling region will reduce the amount
2348of motion you see on the screen when part of the screen is scrolled.
2349
2350* Your Delete key sends a Backspace to the terminal, using an AIXterm.
2351
2352The solution is to include in your .Xdefaults the lines:
2353
2354 *aixterm.Translations: #override <Key>BackSpace: string(0x7f)
2355 aixterm*ttyModes: erase ^?
2356
2357This makes your Backspace key send DEL (ASCII 127).
2358
2359* You type Control-H (Backspace) expecting to delete characters.
2360
2361Put `stty dec' in your .login file and your problems will disappear
2362after a day or two.
2363
2364The choice of Backspace for erasure was based on confusion, caused by
2365the fact that backspacing causes erasure (later, when you type another
2366character) on most display terminals. But it is a mistake. Deletion
2367of text is not the same thing as backspacing followed by failure to
2368overprint. I do not wish to propagate this confusion by conforming
2369to it.
2370
2371For this reason, I believe `stty dec' is the right mode to use,
2372and I have designed Emacs to go with that. If there were a thousand
2373other control characters, I would define Control-h to delete as well;
2374but there are not very many other control characters, and I think
2375that providing the most mnemonic possible Help character is more
2376important than adapting to people who don't use `stty dec'.
2377
2378If you are obstinate about confusing buggy overprinting with deletion,
2379you can redefine Backspace in your .emacs file:
2380 (global-set-key "\b" 'delete-backward-char)
2381You can probably access help-command via f1.
2382
2383* Editing files through RFS gives spurious "file has changed" warnings.
2384It is possible that a change in Emacs 18.37 gets around this problem,
2385but in case not, here is a description of how to fix the RFS bug that
2386causes it.
2387
2388 There was a serious pair of bugs in the handling of the fsync() system
2389 call in the RFS server.
2390
2391 The first is that the fsync() call is handled as another name for the
2392 close() system call (!!). It appears that fsync() is not used by very
2393 many programs; Emacs version 18 does an fsync() before closing files
2394 to make sure that the bits are on the disk.
2395
2396 This is fixed by the enclosed patch to the RFS server.
2397
2398 The second, more serious problem, is that fsync() is treated as a
2399 non-blocking system call (i.e., it's implemented as a message that
2400 gets sent to the remote system without waiting for a reply). Fsync is
2401 a useful tool for building atomic file transactions. Implementing it
2402 as a non-blocking RPC call (when the local call blocks until the sync
2403 is done) is a bad idea; unfortunately, changing it will break the RFS
2404 protocol. No fix was supplied for this problem.
2405
2406 (as always, your line numbers may vary)
2407
2408 % rcsdiff -c -r1.2 serversyscall.c
2409 RCS file: RCS/serversyscall.c,v
2410 retrieving revision 1.2
2411 diff -c -r1.2 serversyscall.c
2412 *** /tmp/,RCSt1003677 Wed Jan 28 15:15:02 1987
2413 --- serversyscall.c Wed Jan 28 15:14:48 1987
2414 ***************
2415 *** 163,169 ****
2416 /*
2417 * No return sent for close or fsync!
2418 */
2419 ! if (syscall == RSYS_close || syscall == RSYS_fsync)
2420 proc->p_returnval = deallocate_fd(proc, msg->m_args[0]);
2421 else
2422 {
2423 --- 166,172 ----
2424 /*
2425 * No return sent for close or fsync!
2426 */
2427 ! if (syscall == RSYS_close)
2428 proc->p_returnval = deallocate_fd(proc, msg->m_args[0]);
2429 else
2430 {
2431
2432* Vax C compiler bugs affecting Emacs.
2433
2434You may get one of these problems compiling Emacs:
2435
2436 foo.c line nnn: compiler error: no table entry for op STASG
2437 foo.c: fatal error in /lib/ccom
2438
2439These are due to bugs in the C compiler; the code is valid C.
2440Unfortunately, the bugs are unpredictable: the same construct
2441may compile properly or trigger one of these bugs, depending
2442on what else is in the source file being compiled. Even changes
2443in header files that should not affect the file being compiled
2444can affect whether the bug happens. In addition, sometimes files
2445that compile correctly on one machine get this bug on another machine.
2446
2447As a result, it is hard for me to make sure this bug will not affect
2448you. I have attempted to find and alter these constructs, but more
2449can always appear. However, I can tell you how to deal with it if it
2450should happen. The bug comes from having an indexed reference to an
2451array of Lisp_Objects, as an argument in a function call:
2452 Lisp_Object *args;
2453 ...
2454 ... foo (5, args[i], ...)...
2455putting the argument into a temporary variable first, as in
2456 Lisp_Object *args;
2457 Lisp_Object tem;
2458 ...
2459 tem = args[i];
2460 ... foo (r, tem, ...)...
2461causes the problem to go away.
2462The `contents' field of a Lisp vector is an array of Lisp_Objects,
2463so you may see the problem happening with indexed references to that.
2464
2465* 68000 C compiler problems
2466
2467Various 68000 compilers have different problems.
2468These are some that have been observed.
2469
2470** Using value of assignment expression on union type loses.
2471This means that x = y = z; or foo (x = z); does not work
2472if x is of type Lisp_Object.
2473
2474** "cannot reclaim" error.
2475
2476This means that an expression is too complicated. You get the correct
2477line number in the error message. The code must be rewritten with
2478simpler expressions.
2479
2480** XCONS, XSTRING, etc macros produce incorrect code.
2481
2482If temacs fails to run at all, this may be the cause.
2483Compile this test program and look at the assembler code:
2484
2485struct foo { char x; unsigned int y : 24; };
2486
2487lose (arg)
2488 struct foo arg;
2489{
2490 test ((int *) arg.y);
2491}
2492
2493If the code is incorrect, your compiler has this problem.
2494In the XCONS, etc., macros in lisp.h you must replace (a).u.val with
2495((a).u.val + coercedummy) where coercedummy is declared as int.
2496
2497This problem will not happen if the m-...h file for your type
2498of machine defines NO_UNION_TYPE. That is the recommended setting now.
2499
2500* C compilers lose on returning unions
2501
2502I hear that some C compilers cannot handle returning a union type.
2503Most of the functions in GNU Emacs return type Lisp_Object, which is
2504defined as a union on some rare architectures.
2505
2506This problem will not happen if the m-...h file for your type
2507of machine defines NO_UNION_TYPE.
2508