* etc/PROBLEMS: Remove old information no longer of relevance.
[bpt/emacs.git] / etc / PROBLEMS
1 Known Problems with GNU Emacs
2
3 Copyright (C) 1987, 1988, 1989, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999,
4 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010
5 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
6 See the end of the file for license conditions.
7
8
9 This file describes various problems that have been encountered
10 in compiling, installing and running GNU Emacs. Try doing C-c C-t
11 and browsing through the outline headers. (See C-h m for help on
12 Outline mode.) Information about systems that are no longer supported,
13 and old Emacs releases, has been removed. Consult older versions of
14 this file if you are interested in that information.
15
16 * Mule-UCS doesn't work in Emacs 23.
17
18 It's completely redundant now, as far as we know.
19
20 * Emacs startup failures
21
22 ** Emacs fails to start, complaining about missing fonts.
23
24 A typical error message might be something like
25
26 No fonts match `-*-fixed-medium-r-*--6-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1'
27
28 This happens because some X resource specifies a bad font family for
29 Emacs to use. The possible places where this specification might be
30 are:
31
32 - in your ~/.Xdefaults file
33
34 - client-side X resource file, such as ~/Emacs or
35 /usr/X11R6/lib/app-defaults/Emacs or
36 /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/app-defaults/Emacs
37
38 One of these files might have bad or malformed specification of a
39 fontset that Emacs should use. To fix the problem, you need to find
40 the problematic line(s) and correct them.
41
42 ** Emacs aborts while starting up, only when run without X.
43
44 This problem often results from compiling Emacs with GCC when GCC was
45 installed incorrectly. The usual error in installing GCC is to
46 specify --includedir=/usr/include. Installation of GCC makes
47 corrected copies of the system header files. GCC is supposed to use
48 the corrected copies in preference to the original system headers.
49 Specifying --includedir=/usr/include causes the original system header
50 files to be used. On some systems, the definition of ioctl in the
51 original system header files is invalid for ANSI C and causes Emacs
52 not to work.
53
54 The fix is to reinstall GCC, and this time do not specify --includedir
55 when you configure it. Then recompile Emacs. Specifying --includedir
56 is appropriate only in very special cases and it should *never* be the
57 same directory where system header files are kept.
58
59 ** Emacs does not start, complaining that it cannot open termcap database file.
60
61 If your system uses Terminfo rather than termcap (most modern
62 systems do), this could happen if the proper version of
63 ncurses is not visible to the Emacs configure script (i.e. it
64 cannot be found along the usual path the linker looks for
65 libraries). It can happen because your version of ncurses is
66 obsolete, or is available only in form of binaries.
67
68 The solution is to install an up-to-date version of ncurses in
69 the developer's form (header files, static libraries and
70 symbolic links); in some GNU/Linux distributions (e.g. Debian)
71 it constitutes a separate package.
72
73 ** Emacs 20 and later fails to load Lisp files at startup.
74
75 The typical error message might be like this:
76
77 "Cannot open load file: fontset"
78
79 This could happen if you compress the file lisp/subdirs.el. That file
80 tells Emacs what are the directories where it should look for Lisp
81 files. Emacs cannot work with subdirs.el compressed, since the
82 Auto-compress mode it needs for this will not be loaded until later,
83 when your .emacs file is processed. (The package `fontset.el' is
84 required to set up fonts used to display text on window systems, and
85 it's loaded very early in the startup procedure.)
86
87 Similarly, any other .el file for which there's no corresponding .elc
88 file could fail to load if it is compressed.
89
90 The solution is to uncompress all .el files which don't have a .elc
91 file.
92
93 Another possible reason for such failures is stale *.elc files
94 lurking somewhere on your load-path. The following command will
95 print any duplicate Lisp files that are present in load-path:
96
97 emacs -q -batch -f list-load-path-shadows
98
99 If this command prints any file names, some of these files are stale,
100 and should be deleted or their directories removed from your
101 load-path.
102
103 ** Emacs prints an error at startup after upgrading from an earlier version.
104
105 An example of such an error is:
106
107 x-complement-fontset-spec: "Wrong type argument: stringp, nil"
108
109 This can be another symptom of stale *.elc files in your load-path.
110 The following command will print any duplicate Lisp files that are
111 present in load-path:
112
113 emacs -q -batch -f list-load-path-shadows
114
115 If this command prints any file names, some of these files are stale,
116 and should be deleted or their directories removed from your
117 load-path.
118
119 ** With X11R6.4, public-patch-3, Emacs crashes at startup.
120
121 Reportedly this patch in X fixes the problem.
122
123 --- xc/lib/X11/imInt.c~ Wed Jun 30 13:31:56 1999
124 +++ xc/lib/X11/imInt.c Thu Jul 1 15:10:27 1999
125 @@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
126 -/* $TOG: imInt.c /main/5 1998/05/30 21:11:16 kaleb $ */
127 +/* $TOG: imInt.c /main/5 1998/05/30 21:11:16 kaleb $ */
128 /******************************************************************
129
130 Copyright 1992, 1993, 1994 by FUJITSU LIMITED
131 @@ -166,8 +166,8 @@
132 _XimMakeImName(lcd)
133 XLCd lcd;
134 {
135 - char* begin;
136 - char* end;
137 + char* begin = NULL;
138 + char* end = NULL;
139 char* ret;
140 int i = 0;
141 char* ximmodifier = XIMMODIFIER;
142 @@ -182,7 +182,11 @@
143 }
144 ret = Xmalloc(end - begin + 2);
145 if (ret != NULL) {
146 - (void)strncpy(ret, begin, end - begin + 1);
147 + if (begin != NULL) {
148 + (void)strncpy(ret, begin, end - begin + 1);
149 + } else {
150 + ret[0] = '\0';
151 + }
152 ret[end - begin + 1] = '\0';
153 }
154 return ret;
155
156 ** Emacs crashes on startup after a glibc upgrade.
157
158 This is caused by a binary incompatible change to the malloc
159 implementation in glibc 2.5.90-22. As a result, Emacs binaries built
160 using prior versions of glibc crash when run under 2.5.90-22.
161
162 This problem was first seen in pre-release versions of Fedora 7, and
163 may be fixed in the final Fedora 7 release. To stop the crash from
164 happening, first try upgrading to the newest version of glibc; if this
165 does not work, rebuild Emacs with the same version of glibc that you
166 will run it under. For details, see
167
168 https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=239344
169
170 * Crash bugs
171
172 ** Emacs crashes when running in a terminal, if compiled with GCC 4.5.0
173 This version of GCC is buggy: see
174
175 http://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=6031
176 http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=43904
177
178 You can work around this error in gcc-4.5 by omitting sibling call
179 optimization. To do this, configure Emacs with
180
181 CFLAGS="-g -O2 -fno-optimize-sibling-calls" ./configure
182
183 ** Emacs crashes in x-popup-dialog.
184
185 This can happen if the dialog widget cannot find the font it wants to
186 use. You can work around the problem by specifying another font with
187 an X resource--for example, `Emacs.dialog*.font: 9x15' (or any font that
188 happens to exist on your X server).
189
190 ** Emacs crashes when you use Bibtex mode.
191
192 This happens if your system puts a small limit on stack size. You can
193 prevent the problem by using a suitable shell command (often `ulimit')
194 to raise the stack size limit before you run Emacs.
195
196 Patches to raise the stack size limit automatically in `main'
197 (src/emacs.c) on various systems would be greatly appreciated.
198
199 ** Error message `Symbol's value as variable is void: x', followed by
200 a segmentation fault and core dump.
201
202 This has been tracked to a bug in tar! People report that tar erroneously
203 added a line like this at the beginning of files of Lisp code:
204
205 x FILENAME, N bytes, B tape blocks
206
207 If your tar has this problem, install GNU tar--if you can manage to
208 untar it :-).
209
210 ** Crashes when displaying GIF images in Emacs built with version
211 libungif-4.1.0 are resolved by using version libungif-4.1.0b1.
212 Configure checks for the correct version, but this problem could occur
213 if a binary built against a shared libungif is run on a system with an
214 older version.
215
216 ** Emacs aborts inside the function `tparam1'.
217
218 This can happen if Emacs was built without terminfo support, but the
219 terminal's capabilities use format that is only supported by terminfo.
220 If your system has ncurses installed, this might happen if your
221 version of ncurses is broken; upgrading to a newer version of ncurses
222 and reconfiguring and rebuilding Emacs should solve this.
223
224 All modern systems support terminfo, so even if ncurses is not the
225 problem, you should look for a way to configure Emacs so that it uses
226 terminfo when built.
227
228 ** Emacs crashes when using some version of the Exceed X server.
229
230 Upgrading to a newer version of Exceed has been reported to prevent
231 these crashes. You should consider switching to a free X server, such
232 as Xming or Cygwin/X.
233
234 ** Emacs crashes with SIGSEGV in XtInitializeWidgetClass.
235
236 It crashes on X, but runs fine when called with option "-nw".
237
238 This has been observed when Emacs is linked with GNU ld but without passing
239 the -z nocombreloc flag. Emacs normally knows to pass the -z nocombreloc
240 flag when needed, so if you come across a situation where the flag is
241 necessary but missing, please report it via M-x report-emacs-bug.
242
243 On platforms such as Solaris, you can also work around this problem by
244 configuring your compiler to use the native linker instead of GNU ld.
245
246 ** Emacs compiled with Gtk+ crashes when closing a display (x-close-connection).
247
248 This happens because of bugs in Gtk+. Gtk+ 2.10 seems to be OK. See bug
249 http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=85715.
250
251 ** Emacs compiled with Gtk+ may loop forever if a display crashes.
252
253 This is related to the bug above. A scenario for this is when emacs is run
254 as a server, and an X frame is created. If the X server for the frame
255 crashes or exits unexpectedly and an attempt is made to create a new
256 frame on another X display, then a Gtk+ error happens in the emacs
257 server that results in an endless loop. This is not fixed in any known
258 Gtk+ version (2.14.4 being current).
259
260 * General runtime problems
261
262 ** Lisp problems
263
264 *** Changes made to .el files do not take effect.
265
266 You may have forgotten to recompile them into .elc files.
267 Then the old .elc files will be loaded, and your changes
268 will not be seen. To fix this, do M-x byte-recompile-directory
269 and specify the directory that contains the Lisp files.
270
271 Emacs should print a warning when loading a .elc file which is older
272 than the corresponding .el file.
273
274 *** Watch out for .emacs files and EMACSLOADPATH environment vars.
275
276 These control the actions of Emacs.
277 ~/.emacs is your Emacs init file.
278 EMACSLOADPATH overrides which directories the function
279 "load" will search.
280
281 If you observe strange problems, check for these and get rid
282 of them, then try again.
283
284 *** Using epop3.el package causes Emacs to signal an error.
285
286 The error message might be something like this:
287
288 "Lisp nesting exceeds max-lisp-eval-depth"
289
290 This happens because epop3 redefines the function gethash, which is a
291 built-in primitive beginning with Emacs 21.1. We don't have a patch
292 for epop3 that fixes this, but perhaps a newer version of epop3
293 corrects that.
294
295 *** Buffers from `with-output-to-temp-buffer' get set up in Help mode.
296
297 Changes in Emacs 20.4 to the hooks used by that function cause
298 problems for some packages, specifically BBDB. See the function's
299 documentation for the hooks involved. BBDB 2.00.06 fixes the problem.
300
301 *** The Hyperbole package causes *Help* buffers not to be displayed in
302 Help mode due to setting `temp-buffer-show-hook' rather than using
303 `add-hook'. Using `(add-hook 'temp-buffer-show-hook
304 'help-mode-maybe)' after loading Hyperbole should fix this.
305
306 ** Keyboard problems
307
308 *** "Compose Character" key does strange things when used as a Meta key.
309
310 If you define one key to serve as both Meta and Compose Character, you
311 will get strange results. In previous Emacs versions, this "worked"
312 in that the key acted as Meta--that's because the older Emacs versions
313 did not try to support Compose Character. Now Emacs tries to do
314 character composition in the standard X way. This means that you
315 must pick one meaning or the other for any given key.
316
317 You can use both functions (Meta, and Compose Character) if you assign
318 them to two different keys.
319
320 *** C-z just refreshes the screen instead of suspending Emacs.
321
322 You are probably using a shell that doesn't support job control, even
323 though the system itself is capable of it. Either use a different shell,
324 or set the variable `cannot-suspend' to a non-nil value.
325
326 *** With M-x enable-flow-control, you need to type C-\ twice
327 to do incremental search--a single C-\ gets no response.
328
329 This has been traced to communicating with your machine via kermit,
330 with C-\ as the kermit escape character. One solution is to use
331 another escape character in kermit. One user did
332
333 set escape-character 17
334
335 in his .kermrc file, to make C-q the kermit escape character.
336
337 ** Mailers and other helper programs
338
339 *** movemail compiled with POP support can't connect to the POP server.
340
341 Make sure that the `pop' entry in /etc/services, or in the services
342 NIS map if your machine uses NIS, has the same port number as the
343 entry on the POP server. A common error is for the POP server to be
344 listening on port 110, the assigned port for the POP3 protocol, while
345 the client is trying to connect on port 109, the assigned port for the
346 old POP protocol.
347
348 *** RMAIL gets error getting new mail.
349
350 RMAIL gets new mail from /usr/spool/mail/$USER using a program
351 called `movemail'. This program interlocks with /bin/mail using
352 the protocol defined by /bin/mail.
353
354 There are two different protocols in general use. One of them uses
355 the `flock' system call. The other involves creating a lock file;
356 `movemail' must be able to write in /usr/spool/mail in order to do
357 this. You control which one is used by defining, or not defining,
358 the macro MAIL_USE_FLOCK in config.h or the m- or s- file it includes.
359 IF YOU DON'T USE THE FORM OF INTERLOCKING THAT IS NORMAL ON YOUR
360 SYSTEM, YOU CAN LOSE MAIL!
361
362 If your system uses the lock file protocol, and fascist restrictions
363 prevent ordinary users from writing the lock files in /usr/spool/mail,
364 you may need to make `movemail' setgid to a suitable group such as
365 `mail'. To do this, use the following commands (as root) after doing the
366 make install.
367
368 chgrp mail movemail
369 chmod 2755 movemail
370
371 Installation normally copies movemail from the build directory to an
372 installation directory which is usually under /usr/local/lib. The
373 installed copy of movemail is usually in the directory
374 /usr/local/lib/emacs/VERSION/TARGET. You must change the group and
375 mode of the installed copy; changing the group and mode of the build
376 directory copy is ineffective.
377
378 *** rcs2log gives you the awk error message "too many fields".
379
380 This is due to an arbitrary limit in certain versions of awk.
381 The solution is to use gawk (GNU awk).
382
383 ** Problems with hostname resolution
384
385 *** Emacs fails to understand most Internet host names, even though
386 the names work properly with other programs on the same system.
387 *** Emacs won't work with X-windows if the value of DISPLAY is HOSTNAME:0.
388 *** Gnus can't make contact with the specified host for nntp.
389
390 This typically happens on Suns and other systems that use shared
391 libraries. The cause is that the site has installed a version of the
392 shared library which uses a name server--but has not installed a
393 similar version of the unshared library which Emacs uses.
394
395 The result is that most programs, using the shared library, work with
396 the nameserver, but Emacs does not.
397
398 The fix is to install an unshared library that corresponds to what you
399 installed in the shared library, and then relink Emacs.
400
401 If you have already installed the name resolver in the file libresolv.a,
402 then you need to compile Emacs to use that library. The easiest way to
403 do this is to add to config.h a definition of LIBS_SYSTEM, LIBS_MACHINE
404 or LIB_STANDARD which uses -lresolv. Watch out! If you redefine a macro
405 that is already in use in your configuration to supply some other libraries,
406 be careful not to lose the others.
407
408 Thus, you could start by adding this to config.h:
409
410 #define LIBS_SYSTEM -lresolv
411
412 Then if this gives you an error for redefining a macro, and you see that
413 the s- file defines LIBS_SYSTEM as -lfoo -lbar, you could change config.h
414 again to say this:
415
416 #define LIBS_SYSTEM -lresolv -lfoo -lbar
417
418 *** Emacs does not know your host's fully-qualified domain name.
419
420 For example, (system-name) returns some variation on
421 "localhost.localdomain", rather the name you were expecting.
422
423 You need to configure your machine with a fully qualified domain name,
424 (i.e. a name with at least one ".") either in /etc/hosts,
425 /etc/hostname, the NIS, or wherever your system calls for specifying
426 this.
427
428 If you cannot fix the configuration, you can set the Lisp variable
429 mail-host-address to the value you want.
430
431 ** NFS and RFS
432
433 *** Emacs says it has saved a file, but the file does not actually
434 appear on disk.
435
436 This can happen on certain systems when you are using NFS, if the
437 remote disk is full. It is due to a bug in NFS (or certain NFS
438 implementations), and there is apparently nothing Emacs can do to
439 detect the problem. Emacs checks the failure codes of all the system
440 calls involved in writing a file, including `close'; but in the case
441 where the problem occurs, none of those system calls fails.
442
443 *** Editing files through RFS gives spurious "file has changed" warnings.
444 It is possible that a change in Emacs 18.37 gets around this problem,
445 but in case not, here is a description of how to fix the RFS bug that
446 causes it.
447
448 There was a serious pair of bugs in the handling of the fsync() system
449 call in the RFS server.
450
451 The first is that the fsync() call is handled as another name for the
452 close() system call (!!). It appears that fsync() is not used by very
453 many programs; Emacs version 18 does an fsync() before closing files
454 to make sure that the bits are on the disk.
455
456 This is fixed by the enclosed patch to the RFS server.
457
458 The second, more serious problem, is that fsync() is treated as a
459 non-blocking system call (i.e., it's implemented as a message that
460 gets sent to the remote system without waiting for a reply). Fsync is
461 a useful tool for building atomic file transactions. Implementing it
462 as a non-blocking RPC call (when the local call blocks until the sync
463 is done) is a bad idea; unfortunately, changing it will break the RFS
464 protocol. No fix was supplied for this problem.
465
466 (as always, your line numbers may vary)
467
468 % rcsdiff -c -r1.2 serversyscall.c
469 RCS file: RCS/serversyscall.c,v
470 retrieving revision 1.2
471 diff -c -r1.2 serversyscall.c
472 *** /tmp/,RCSt1003677 Wed Jan 28 15:15:02 1987
473 --- serversyscall.c Wed Jan 28 15:14:48 1987
474 ***************
475 *** 163,169 ****
476 /*
477 * No return sent for close or fsync!
478 */
479 ! if (syscall == RSYS_close || syscall == RSYS_fsync)
480 proc->p_returnval = deallocate_fd(proc, msg->m_args[0]);
481 else
482 {
483 --- 166,172 ----
484 /*
485 * No return sent for close or fsync!
486 */
487 ! if (syscall == RSYS_close)
488 proc->p_returnval = deallocate_fd(proc, msg->m_args[0]);
489 else
490 {
491
492 ** PSGML
493
494 *** Old versions of the PSGML package use the obsolete variables
495 `before-change-function' and `after-change-function', which are no
496 longer used by Emacs. Please use PSGML 1.2.3 or later.
497
498 *** PSGML conflicts with sgml-mode.
499
500 PSGML package uses the same names of some variables (like keymap)
501 as built-in sgml-mode.el because it was created as a replacement
502 of that package. The conflict will be shown if you load
503 sgml-mode.el before psgml.el. E.g. this could happen if you edit
504 HTML page and then start to work with SGML or XML file. html-mode
505 (from sgml-mode.el) is used for HTML file and loading of psgml.el
506 (for sgml-mode or xml-mode) will cause an error.
507
508 *** Versions of the PSGML package earlier than 1.0.3 (stable) or 1.1.2
509 (alpha) fail to parse DTD files correctly in Emacs 20.3 and later.
510 Here is a patch for psgml-parse.el from PSGML 1.0.1 and, probably,
511 earlier versions.
512
513 --- psgml-parse.el 1998/08/21 19:18:18 1.1
514 +++ psgml-parse.el 1998/08/21 19:20:00
515 @@ -2383,7 +2383,7 @@ (defun sgml-push-to-entity (entity &opti
516 (setq sgml-buffer-parse-state nil))
517 (cond
518 ((stringp entity) ; a file name
519 - (save-excursion (insert-file-contents entity))
520 + (insert-file-contents entity)
521 (setq default-directory (file-name-directory entity)))
522 ((consp (sgml-entity-text entity)) ; external id?
523 (let* ((extid (sgml-entity-text entity))
524
525 ** PCL-CVS
526
527 *** Lines are not updated or new lines are added in the buffer upon commit.
528
529 When committing files located higher in the hierarchy than the examined
530 directory, some versions of the CVS program return an ambiguous message
531 from which PCL-CVS cannot extract the full location of the committed
532 files. As a result, the corresponding lines in the PCL-CVS buffer are
533 not updated with the new revision of these files, and new lines are
534 added to the top-level directory.
535
536 This can happen with CVS versions 1.12.8 and 1.12.9. Upgrade to CVS
537 1.12.10 or newer to fix this problem.
538
539 ** Miscellaneous problems
540
541 *** Emacs uses 100% of CPU time
542
543 This is a known problem with some versions of the Semantic package.
544 The solution is to upgrade Semantic to version 2.0pre4 (distributed
545 with CEDET 1.0pre4) or later.
546
547 *** Self-documentation messages are garbled.
548
549 This means that the file `etc/DOC-...' doesn't properly correspond
550 with the Emacs executable. Redumping Emacs and then installing the
551 corresponding pair of files should fix the problem.
552
553 *** Programs running under terminal emulator do not recognize `emacs'
554 terminal type.
555
556 The cause of this is a shell startup file that sets the TERMCAP
557 environment variable. The terminal emulator uses that variable to
558 provide the information on the special terminal type that Emacs
559 emulates.
560
561 Rewrite your shell startup file so that it does not change TERMCAP
562 in such a case. You could use the following conditional which sets
563 it only if it is undefined.
564
565 if ( ! ${?TERMCAP} ) setenv TERMCAP ~/my-termcap-file
566
567 Or you could set TERMCAP only when you set TERM--which should not
568 happen in a non-login shell.
569
570 *** In Shell mode, you get a ^M at the end of every line.
571
572 This happens to people who use tcsh, because it is trying to be too
573 smart. It sees that the Shell uses terminal type `unknown' and turns
574 on the flag to output ^M at the end of each line. You can fix the
575 problem by adding this to your .cshrc file:
576
577 if ($?EMACS) then
578 if ("$EMACS" =~ /*) then
579 unset edit
580 stty -icrnl -onlcr -echo susp ^Z
581 endif
582 endif
583
584 *** Emacs startup on GNU/Linux systems (and possibly other systems) is slow.
585
586 This can happen if the system is misconfigured and Emacs can't get the
587 full qualified domain name, FQDN. You should have your FQDN in the
588 /etc/hosts file, something like this:
589
590 127.0.0.1 localhost
591 129.187.137.82 nuc04.t30.physik.tu-muenchen.de nuc04
592
593 The way to set this up may vary on non-GNU systems.
594
595 *** Attempting to visit remote files via ange-ftp fails.
596
597 If the error message is "ange-ftp-file-modtime: Specified time is not
598 representable", then this could happen when `lukemftp' is used as the
599 ftp client. This was reported to happen on Debian GNU/Linux, kernel
600 version 2.4.3, with `lukemftp' 1.5-5, but might happen on other
601 systems as well. To avoid this problem, switch to using the standard
602 ftp client. On a Debian system, type
603
604 update-alternatives --config ftp
605
606 and then choose /usr/bin/netkit-ftp.
607
608 *** JPEG images aren't displayed.
609
610 This has been reported when Emacs is built with jpeg-6a library.
611 Upgrading to jpeg-6b solves the problem. Configure checks for the
612 correct version, but this problem could occur if a binary built
613 against a shared libjpeg is run on a system with an older version.
614
615 *** Dired is very slow.
616
617 This could happen if invocation of the `df' program takes a long
618 time. Possible reasons for this include:
619
620 - ClearCase mounted filesystems (VOBs) that sometimes make `df'
621 response time extremely slow (dozens of seconds);
622
623 - slow automounters on some old versions of Unix;
624
625 - slow operation of some versions of `df'.
626
627 To work around the problem, you could either (a) set the variable
628 `directory-free-space-program' to nil, and thus prevent Emacs from
629 invoking `df'; (b) use `df' from the GNU Fileutils package; or
630 (c) use CVS, which is Free Software, instead of ClearCase.
631
632 *** The LDAP support rely on ldapsearch program from OpenLDAP version 2.
633
634 It can fail to work with ldapsearch program from OpenLDAP version 1.
635 Version 1 of OpenLDAP is now deprecated. If you are still using it,
636 please upgrade to version 2. As a temporary workaround, remove
637 argument "-x" from the variable `ldap-ldapsearch-args'.
638
639 *** ps-print commands fail to find prologue files ps-prin*.ps.
640
641 This can happen if you use an old version of X-Symbol package: it
642 defines compatibility functions which trick ps-print into thinking it
643 runs in XEmacs, and look for the prologue files in a wrong directory.
644
645 The solution is to upgrade X-Symbol to a later version.
646
647 *** On systems with shared libraries you might encounter run-time errors
648 from the dynamic linker telling you that it is unable to find some
649 shared libraries, for instance those for Xaw3d or image support.
650 These errors mean Emacs has been linked with a library whose shared
651 library is not in the default search path of the dynamic linker.
652
653 Similar problems could prevent Emacs from building, since the build
654 process invokes Emacs several times.
655
656 On many systems, it is possible to set LD_LIBRARY_PATH in your
657 environment to specify additional directories where shared libraries
658 can be found.
659
660 Other systems allow to set LD_RUN_PATH in a similar way, but before
661 Emacs is linked. With LD_RUN_PATH set, the linker will include a
662 specified run-time search path in the executable.
663
664 On some systems, Emacs can crash due to problems with dynamic
665 linking. Specifically, on SGI Irix 6.5, crashes were reported with
666 backtraces like this:
667
668 (dbx) where
669 0 strcmp(0xf49239d, 0x4031184, 0x40302b4, 0x12, 0xf0000000, 0xf4923aa, 0x0, 0x492ddb2) ["/xlv22/ficus-jan23/work/irix/lib/libc/libc_n32_M3_ns/strings/strcmp.s":35, 0xfb7e480]
670 1 general_find_symbol(0xf49239d, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0xf0000000, 0xf4923aa, 0x0, 0x492ddb2)
671 ["/comp2/mtibuild/v73/workarea/v7.3/rld/rld.c":2140, 0xfb65a98]
672 2 resolve_symbol(0xf49239d, 0x4031184, 0x0, 0xfbdd438, 0x0, 0xf4923aa, 0x0, 0x492ddb2)
673 ["/comp2/mtibuild/v73/workarea/v7.3/rld/rld.c":1947, 0xfb657e4]
674 3 lazy_text_resolve(0xd18, 0x1a3, 0x40302b4, 0x12, 0xf0000000, 0xf4923aa, 0x0, 0x492ddb2)
675 ["/comp2/mtibuild/v73/workarea/v7.3/rld/rld.c":997, 0xfb64d44]
676 4 _rld_text_resolve(0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0)
677 ["/comp2/mtibuild/v73/workarea/v7.3/rld/rld_bridge.s":175, 0xfb6032c]
678
679 (`rld' is the dynamic linker.) We don't know yet why this
680 happens, but setting the environment variable LD_BIND_NOW to 1 (which
681 forces the dynamic linker to bind all shared objects early on) seems
682 to work around the problem.
683
684 Please refer to the documentation of your dynamic linker for details.
685
686 *** You request inverse video, and the first Emacs frame is in inverse
687 video, but later frames are not in inverse video.
688
689 This can happen if you have an old version of the custom library in
690 your search path for Lisp packages. Use M-x list-load-path-shadows to
691 check whether this is true. If it is, delete the old custom library.
692
693 *** When you run Ispell from Emacs, it reports a "misalignment" error.
694
695 This can happen if you compiled the Ispell program to use ASCII
696 characters only and then try to use it from Emacs with non-ASCII
697 characters, like Latin-1. The solution is to recompile Ispell with
698 support for 8-bit characters.
699
700 To see whether your Ispell program supports 8-bit characters, type
701 this at your shell's prompt:
702
703 ispell -vv
704
705 and look in the output for the string "NO8BIT". If Ispell says
706 "!NO8BIT (8BIT)", your speller supports 8-bit characters; otherwise it
707 does not.
708
709 To rebuild Ispell with 8-bit character support, edit the local.h file
710 in the Ispell distribution and make sure it does _not_ define NO8BIT.
711 Then rebuild the speller.
712
713 Another possible cause for "misalignment" error messages is that the
714 version of Ispell installed on your machine is old. Upgrade.
715
716 Yet another possibility is that you are trying to spell-check a word
717 in a language that doesn't fit the dictionary you choose for use by
718 Ispell. (Ispell can only spell-check one language at a time, because
719 it uses a single dictionary.) Make sure that the text you are
720 spelling and the dictionary used by Ispell conform to each other.
721
722 If your spell-checking program is Aspell, it has been reported that if
723 you have a personal configuration file (normally ~/.aspell.conf), it
724 can cause this error. Remove that file, execute `ispell-kill-ispell'
725 in Emacs, and then try spell-checking again.
726
727 * Runtime problems related to font handling
728
729 ** Characters are displayed as empty boxes or with wrong font under X.
730
731 *** This can occur when two different versions of FontConfig are used.
732 For example, XFree86 4.3.0 has one version and Gnome usually comes
733 with a newer version. Emacs compiled with Gtk+ will then use the
734 newer version. In most cases the problem can be temporarily fixed by
735 stopping the application that has the error (it can be Emacs or any
736 other application), removing ~/.fonts.cache-1, and then start the
737 application again. If removing ~/.fonts.cache-1 and restarting
738 doesn't help, the application with problem must be recompiled with the
739 same version of FontConfig as the rest of the system uses. For KDE,
740 it is sufficient to recompile Qt.
741
742 *** Some fonts have a missing glyph and no default character. This is
743 known to occur for character number 160 (no-break space) in some
744 fonts, such as Lucida but Emacs sets the display table for the unibyte
745 and Latin-1 version of this character to display a space.
746
747 *** Some of the fonts called for in your fontset may not exist on your
748 X server.
749
750 Each X11 font covers just a fraction of the characters that Emacs
751 supports. To display the whole range of Emacs characters requires
752 many different fonts, collected into a fontset. You can remedy the
753 problem by installing additional fonts.
754
755 The intlfonts distribution includes a full spectrum of fonts that can
756 display all the characters Emacs supports. The etl-unicode collection
757 of fonts (available from <URL:ftp://ftp.x.org/contrib/fonts/> and
758 <URL:ftp://ftp.xfree86.org/pub/mirror/X.Org/contrib/fonts/>) includes
759 fonts that can display many Unicode characters; they can also be used
760 by ps-print and ps-mule to print Unicode characters.
761
762 ** Under X11, some characters appear improperly aligned in their lines.
763
764 You may have bad X11 fonts; try installing the intlfonts distribution
765 or the etl-unicode collection (see above).
766
767 ** Under X, an unexpected monospace font is used as the default font.
768
769 When compiled with XFT, Emacs tries to use a default font named
770 "monospace". This is a "virtual font", which the operating system
771 (Fontconfig) redirects to a suitable font such as DejaVu Sans Mono.
772 On some systems, there exists a font that is actually named Monospace,
773 which takes over the virtual font. This is considered an operating
774 system bug; see
775
776 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2008-10/msg00696.html
777
778 If you encounter this problem, set the default font to a specific font
779 in your .Xresources or initialization file. For instance, you can put
780 the following in your .Xresources:
781
782 Emacs.font: DejaVu Sans Mono 12
783
784 ** Certain fonts make each line take one pixel more than it should.
785
786 This is because these fonts contain characters a little taller than
787 the font's nominal height. Emacs needs to make sure that lines do not
788 overlap.
789
790 ** Loading fonts is very slow.
791
792 You might be getting scalable fonts instead of precomputed bitmaps.
793 Known scalable font directories are "Type1" and "Speedo". A font
794 directory contains scalable fonts if it contains the file
795 "fonts.scale".
796
797 If this is so, re-order your X windows font path to put the scalable
798 font directories last. See the documentation of `xset' for details.
799
800 With some X servers, it may be necessary to take the scalable font
801 directories out of your path entirely, at least for Emacs 19.26.
802 Changes in the future may make this unnecessary.
803
804 ** Font Lock displays portions of the buffer in incorrect faces.
805
806 By far the most frequent cause of this is a parenthesis `(' or a brace
807 `{' in column zero. Font Lock assumes that such a paren is outside of
808 any comment or string. This is of course not true in general, but the
809 vast majority of well-formatted program source files don't have such
810 parens, and therefore this assumption is used to allow optimizations
811 in Font Lock's syntactical analysis. These optimizations avoid some
812 pathological cases where jit-lock, the Just-in-Time fontification
813 introduced with Emacs 21.1, could significantly slow down scrolling
814 through the buffer, especially scrolling backwards, and also jumping
815 to the end of a very large buffer.
816
817 Beginning with version 22.1, a parenthesis or a brace in column zero
818 is highlighted in bold-red face if it is inside a string or a comment,
819 to indicate that it could interfere with Font Lock (and also with
820 indentation) and should be moved or escaped with a backslash.
821
822 If you don't use large buffers, or have a very fast machine which
823 makes the delays insignificant, you can avoid the incorrect
824 fontification by setting the variable
825 `font-lock-beginning-of-syntax-function' to a nil value. (This must
826 be done _after_ turning on Font Lock.)
827
828 Another alternative is to avoid a paren in column zero. For example,
829 in a Lisp string you could precede the paren with a backslash.
830
831 ** With certain fonts, when the cursor appears on a character, the
832 character doesn't appear--you get a solid box instead.
833
834 One user on a Linux-based GNU system reported that this problem went
835 away with installation of a new X server. The failing server was
836 XFree86 3.1.1. XFree86 3.1.2 works.
837
838 ** Emacs pauses for several seconds when changing the default font.
839
840 This has been reported for fvwm 2.2.5 and the window manager of KDE
841 2.1. The reason for the pause is Xt waiting for a ConfigureNotify
842 event from the window manager, which the window manager doesn't send.
843 Xt stops waiting after a default timeout of usually 5 seconds.
844
845 A workaround for this is to add something like
846
847 emacs.waitForWM: false
848
849 to your X resources. Alternatively, add `(wait-for-wm . nil)' to a
850 frame's parameter list, like this:
851
852 (modify-frame-parameters nil '((wait-for-wm . nil)))
853
854 (this should go into your `.emacs' file).
855
856 ** Underlines appear at the wrong position.
857
858 This is caused by fonts having a wrong UNDERLINE_POSITION property.
859 Examples are the font 7x13 on XFree prior to version 4.1, or the jmk
860 neep font from the Debian xfonts-jmk package prior to version 3.0.17.
861 To circumvent this problem, set x-use-underline-position-properties
862 to nil in your `.emacs'.
863
864 To see what is the value of UNDERLINE_POSITION defined by the font,
865 type `xlsfonts -lll FONT' and look at the font's UNDERLINE_POSITION
866 property.
867
868 ** When using Exceed, fonts sometimes appear too tall.
869
870 When the display is set to an Exceed X-server and fonts are specified
871 (either explicitly with the -fn option or implicitly with X resources)
872 then the fonts may appear "too tall". The actual character sizes are
873 correct but there is too much vertical spacing between rows, which
874 gives the appearance of "double spacing".
875
876 To prevent this, turn off the Exceed's "automatic font substitution"
877 feature (in the font part of the configuration window).
878
879 ** Subscript/superscript text in TeX is hard to read.
880
881 If `tex-fontify-script' is non-nil, tex-mode displays
882 subscript/superscript text in the faces subscript/superscript, which
883 are smaller than the normal font and lowered/raised. With some fonts,
884 nested superscripts (say) can be hard to read. Switching to a
885 different font, or changing your antialiasing setting (on an LCD
886 screen), can both make the problem disappear. Alternatively, customize
887 the following variables: tex-font-script-display (how much to
888 lower/raise); tex-suscript-height-ratio (how much smaller than
889 normal); tex-suscript-height-minimum (minimum height).
890
891 * Internationalization problems
892
893 ** M-{ does not work on a Spanish PC keyboard.
894
895 Many Spanish keyboards seem to ignore that combination. Emacs can't
896 do anything about it.
897
898 ** International characters aren't displayed under X.
899
900 *** Missing X fonts
901
902 XFree86 4 contains many fonts in iso10646-1 encoding which have
903 minimal character repertoires (whereas the encoding part of the font
904 name is meant to be a reasonable indication of the repertoire
905 according to the XLFD spec). Emacs may choose one of these to display
906 characters from the mule-unicode charsets and then typically won't be
907 able to find the glyphs to display many characters. (Check with C-u
908 C-x = .) To avoid this, you may need to use a fontset which sets the
909 font for the mule-unicode sets explicitly. E.g. to use GNU unifont,
910 include in the fontset spec:
911
912 mule-unicode-2500-33ff:-gnu-unifont-*-iso10646-1,\
913 mule-unicode-e000-ffff:-gnu-unifont-*-iso10646-1,\
914 mule-unicode-0100-24ff:-gnu-unifont-*-iso10646-1
915
916 ** The UTF-8/16/7 coding systems don't encode CJK (Far Eastern) characters.
917
918 Emacs directly supports the Unicode BMP whose code points are in the
919 ranges 0000-33ff and e000-ffff, and indirectly supports the parts of
920 CJK characters belonging to these legacy charsets:
921
922 GB2312, Big5, JISX0208, JISX0212, JISX0213-1, JISX0213-2, KSC5601
923
924 The latter support is done in Utf-Translate-Cjk mode (turned on by
925 default). Which Unicode CJK characters are decoded into which Emacs
926 charset is decided by the current language environment. For instance,
927 in Chinese-GB, most of them are decoded into chinese-gb2312.
928
929 If you read UTF-8 data with code points outside these ranges, the
930 characters appear in the buffer as raw bytes of the original UTF-8
931 (composed into a single quasi-character) and they will be written back
932 correctly as UTF-8, assuming you don't break the composed sequences.
933 If you read such characters from UTF-16 or UTF-7 data, they are
934 substituted with the Unicode `replacement character', and you lose
935 information.
936
937 ** Accented ISO-8859-1 characters are displayed as | or _.
938
939 Try other font set sizes (S-mouse-1). If the problem persists with
940 other sizes as well, your text is corrupted, probably through software
941 that is not 8-bit clean. If the problem goes away with another font
942 size, it's probably because some fonts pretend to be ISO-8859-1 fonts
943 when they are really ASCII fonts. In particular the schumacher-clean
944 fonts have this bug in some versions of X.
945
946 To see what glyphs are included in a font, use `xfd', like this:
947
948 xfd -fn -schumacher-clean-medium-r-normal--12-120-75-75-c-60-iso8859-1
949
950 If this shows only ASCII glyphs, the font is indeed the source of the
951 problem.
952
953 The solution is to remove the corresponding lines from the appropriate
954 `fonts.alias' file, then run `mkfontdir' in that directory, and then run
955 `xset fp rehash'.
956
957 ** The `oc-unicode' package doesn't work with Emacs 21.
958
959 This package tries to define more private charsets than there are free
960 slots now. The current built-in Unicode support is actually more
961 flexible. (Use option `utf-translate-cjk-mode' if you need CJK
962 support.) Files encoded as emacs-mule using oc-unicode aren't
963 generally read correctly by Emacs 21.
964
965 ** After a while, Emacs slips into unibyte mode.
966
967 The VM mail package, which is not part of Emacs, sometimes does
968 (standard-display-european t)
969 That should be changed to
970 (standard-display-european 1 t)
971
972 * X runtime problems
973
974 ** X keyboard problems
975
976 *** You "lose characters" after typing Compose Character key.
977
978 This is because the Compose Character key is defined as the keysym
979 Multi_key, and Emacs (seeing that) does the proper X11
980 character-composition processing. If you don't want your Compose key
981 to do that, you can redefine it with xmodmap.
982
983 For example, here's one way to turn it into a Meta key:
984
985 xmodmap -e "keysym Multi_key = Meta_L"
986
987 If all users at your site of a particular keyboard prefer Meta to
988 Compose, you can make the remapping happen automatically by adding the
989 xmodmap command to the xdm setup script for that display.
990
991 *** Using X Windows, control-shift-leftbutton makes Emacs hang.
992
993 Use the shell command `xset bc' to make the old X Menu package work.
994
995 *** C-SPC fails to work on Fedora GNU/Linux (or with fcitx input method).
996
997 Fedora Core 4 steals the C-SPC key by default for the `iiimx' program
998 which is the input method for some languages. It blocks Emacs users
999 from using the C-SPC key for `set-mark-command'.
1000
1001 One solutions is to remove the `<Ctrl>space' from the `Iiimx' file
1002 which can be found in the `/usr/lib/X11/app-defaults' directory.
1003 However, that requires root access.
1004
1005 Another is to specify `Emacs*useXIM: false' in your X resources.
1006
1007 Another is to build Emacs with the `--without-xim' configure option.
1008
1009 The same problem happens on any other system if you are using fcitx
1010 (Chinese input method) which by default use C-SPC for toggling. If
1011 you want to use fcitx with Emacs, you have two choices. Toggle fcitx
1012 by another key (e.g. C-\) by modifying ~/.fcitx/config, or be
1013 accustomed to use C-@ for `set-mark-command'.
1014
1015 *** M-SPC seems to be ignored as input.
1016
1017 See if your X server is set up to use this as a command
1018 for character composition.
1019
1020 *** The S-C-t key combination doesn't get passed to Emacs on X.
1021
1022 This happens because some X configurations assign the Ctrl-Shift-t
1023 combination the same meaning as the Multi_key. The offending
1024 definition is in the file `...lib/X11/locale/iso8859-1/Compose'; there
1025 might be other similar combinations which are grabbed by X for similar
1026 purposes.
1027
1028 We think that this can be countermanded with the `xmodmap' utility, if
1029 you want to be able to bind one of these key sequences within Emacs.
1030
1031 *** Under X, C-v and/or other keys don't work.
1032
1033 These may have been intercepted by your window manager. In
1034 particular, AfterStep 1.6 is reported to steal C-v in its default
1035 configuration. Various Meta keys are also likely to be taken by the
1036 configuration of the `feel'. See the WM's documentation for how to
1037 change this.
1038
1039 *** Clicking C-mouse-2 in the scroll bar doesn't split the window.
1040
1041 This currently doesn't work with scroll-bar widgets (and we don't know
1042 a good way of implementing it with widgets). If Emacs is configured
1043 --without-toolkit-scroll-bars, C-mouse-2 on the scroll bar does work.
1044
1045 *** Inability to send an Alt-modified key, when Emacs is communicating
1046 directly with an X server.
1047
1048 If you have tried to bind an Alt-modified key as a command, and it
1049 does not work to type the command, the first thing you should check is
1050 whether the key is getting through to Emacs. To do this, type C-h c
1051 followed by the Alt-modified key. C-h c should say what kind of event
1052 it read. If it says it read an Alt-modified key, then make sure you
1053 have made the key binding correctly.
1054
1055 If C-h c reports an event that doesn't have the Alt modifier, it may
1056 be because your X server has no key for the Alt modifier. The X
1057 server that comes from MIT does not set up the Alt modifier by
1058 default.
1059
1060 If your keyboard has keys named Alt, you can enable them as follows:
1061
1062 xmodmap -e 'add mod2 = Alt_L'
1063 xmodmap -e 'add mod2 = Alt_R'
1064
1065 If the keyboard has just one key named Alt, then only one of those
1066 commands is needed. The modifier `mod2' is a reasonable choice if you
1067 are using an unmodified MIT version of X. Otherwise, choose any
1068 modifier bit not otherwise used.
1069
1070 If your keyboard does not have keys named Alt, you can use some other
1071 keys. Use the keysym command in xmodmap to turn a function key (or
1072 some other 'spare' key) into Alt_L or into Alt_R, and then use the
1073 commands show above to make them modifier keys.
1074
1075 Note that if you have Alt keys but no Meta keys, Emacs translates Alt
1076 into Meta. This is because of the great importance of Meta in Emacs.
1077
1078 ** Window-manager and toolkit-related problems
1079
1080 *** Metacity: Resizing Emacs or ALT-Tab causes X to be unresponsive.
1081
1082 This happens sometimes when using Metacity. Resizing Emacs or ALT-Tab:bing
1083 makes the system unresponsive to the mouse or the keyboard. Killing Emacs
1084 or shifting out from X11 and back again usually cures it (i.e. Ctrl-Alt-F1
1085 and then Alt-F7). A bug for it is here:
1086 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/metacity/+bug/231034.
1087 Note that a permanent fix seems to be to disable "assistive technologies".
1088
1089 *** Gnome: Emacs receives input directly from the keyboard, bypassing XIM.
1090
1091 This seems to happen when gnome-settings-daemon version 2.12 or later
1092 is running. If gnome-settings-daemon is not running, Emacs receives
1093 input through XIM without any problem. Furthermore, this seems only
1094 to happen in *.UTF-8 locales; zh_CN.GB2312 and zh_CN.GBK locales, for
1095 example, work fine. A bug report has been filed in the Gnome
1096 bugzilla: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=357032
1097
1098 *** Gnome: Emacs' xterm-mouse-mode doesn't work on the Gnome terminal.
1099
1100 A symptom of this bug is that double-clicks insert a control sequence
1101 into the buffer. The reason this happens is an apparent
1102 incompatibility of the Gnome terminal with Xterm, which also affects
1103 other programs using the Xterm mouse interface. A problem report has
1104 been filed.
1105
1106 *** KDE: When running on KDE, colors or fonts are not as specified for Emacs,
1107 or messed up.
1108
1109 For example, you could see background you set for Emacs only in the
1110 empty portions of the Emacs display, while characters have some other
1111 background.
1112
1113 This happens because KDE's defaults apply its color and font
1114 definitions even to applications that weren't compiled for KDE. The
1115 solution is to uncheck the "Apply fonts and colors to non-KDE apps"
1116 option in Preferences->Look&Feel->Style (KDE 2). In KDE 3, this option
1117 is in the "Colors" section, rather than "Style".
1118
1119 Alternatively, if you do want the KDE defaults to apply to other
1120 applications, but not to Emacs, you could modify the file `Emacs.ad'
1121 (should be in the `/usr/share/apps/kdisplay/app-defaults/' directory)
1122 so that it doesn't set the default background and foreground only for
1123 Emacs. For example, make sure the following resources are either not
1124 present or commented out:
1125
1126 Emacs.default.attributeForeground
1127 Emacs.default.attributeBackground
1128 Emacs*Foreground
1129 Emacs*Background
1130
1131 It is also reported that a bug in the gtk-engines-qt engine can cause this if
1132 Emacs is compiled with Gtk+.
1133 The bug is fixed in version 0.7 or newer of gtk-engines-qt.
1134
1135 *** KDE: Emacs hangs on KDE when a large portion of text is killed.
1136
1137 This is caused by a bug in the KDE applet `klipper' which periodically
1138 requests the X clipboard contents from applications. Early versions
1139 of klipper don't implement the ICCCM protocol for large selections,
1140 which leads to Emacs being flooded with selection requests. After a
1141 while, Emacs may print a message:
1142
1143 Timed out waiting for property-notify event
1144
1145 A workaround is to not use `klipper'. An upgrade to the `klipper' that
1146 comes with KDE 3.3 or later also solves the problem.
1147
1148 *** CDE: Frames may cover dialogs they created when using CDE.
1149
1150 This can happen if you have "Allow Primary Windows On Top" enabled which
1151 seems to be the default in the Common Desktop Environment.
1152 To change, go in to "Desktop Controls" -> "Window Style Manager"
1153 and uncheck "Allow Primary Windows On Top".
1154
1155 *** Xaw3d : When using Xaw3d scroll bars without arrows, the very first mouse
1156 click in a scroll bar might be ignored by the scroll bar widget. This
1157 is probably a bug in Xaw3d; when Xaw3d is compiled with arrows, the
1158 problem disappears.
1159
1160 *** Xaw: There are known binary incompatibilities between Xaw, Xaw3d, neXtaw,
1161 XawM and the few other derivatives of Xaw. So when you compile with
1162 one of these, it may not work to dynamically link with another one.
1163 For example, strange problems, such as Emacs exiting when you type
1164 "C-x 1", were reported when Emacs compiled with Xaw3d and libXaw was
1165 used with neXtaw at run time.
1166
1167 The solution is to rebuild Emacs with the toolkit version you actually
1168 want to use, or set LD_PRELOAD to preload the same toolkit version you
1169 built Emacs with.
1170
1171 *** Open Motif: Problems with file dialogs in Emacs built with Open Motif.
1172
1173 When Emacs 21 is built with Open Motif 2.1, it can happen that the
1174 graphical file dialog boxes do not work properly. The "OK", "Filter"
1175 and "Cancel" buttons do not respond to mouse clicks. Dragging the
1176 file dialog window usually causes the buttons to work again.
1177
1178 The solution is to use LessTif instead. LessTif is a free replacement
1179 for Motif. See the file INSTALL for information on how to do this.
1180
1181 Another workaround is not to use the mouse to trigger file prompts,
1182 but to use the keyboard. This way, you will be prompted for a file in
1183 the minibuffer instead of a graphical file dialog.
1184
1185 *** LessTif: Problems in Emacs built with LessTif.
1186
1187 The problems seem to depend on the version of LessTif and the Motif
1188 emulation for which it is set up.
1189
1190 Only the Motif 1.2 emulation seems to be stable enough in LessTif.
1191 LessTif 0.92-17's Motif 1.2 emulation seems to work okay on FreeBSD.
1192 On GNU/Linux systems, lesstif-0.92.6 configured with "./configure
1193 --enable-build-12 --enable-default-12" is reported to be the most
1194 successful. The binary GNU/Linux package
1195 lesstif-devel-0.92.0-1.i386.rpm was reported to have problems with
1196 menu placement.
1197
1198 On some systems, even with Motif 1.2 emulation, Emacs occasionally
1199 locks up, grabbing all mouse and keyboard events. We still don't know
1200 what causes these problems; they are not reproducible by Emacs
1201 developers.
1202
1203 *** Motif: The Motif version of Emacs paints the screen a solid color.
1204
1205 This has been observed to result from the following X resource:
1206
1207 Emacs*default.attributeFont: -*-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-140-*-*-*-*-iso8859-*
1208
1209 That the resource has this effect indicates a bug in something, but we
1210 do not yet know what. If it is an Emacs bug, we hope someone can
1211 explain what the bug is so we can fix it. In the mean time, removing
1212 the resource prevents the problem.
1213
1214 ** General X problems
1215
1216 *** Redisplay using X11 is much slower than previous Emacs versions.
1217
1218 We've noticed that certain X servers draw the text much slower when
1219 scroll bars are on the left. We don't know why this happens. If this
1220 happens to you, you can work around it by putting the scroll bars
1221 on the right (as they were in Emacs 19).
1222
1223 Here's how to do this:
1224
1225 (set-scroll-bar-mode 'right)
1226
1227 If you're not sure whether (or how much) this problem affects you,
1228 try that and see how much difference it makes. To set things back
1229 to normal, do
1230
1231 (set-scroll-bar-mode 'left)
1232
1233 *** Error messages about undefined colors on X.
1234
1235 The messages might say something like this:
1236
1237 Unable to load color "grey95"
1238
1239 (typically, in the `*Messages*' buffer), or something like this:
1240
1241 Error while displaying tooltip: (error Undefined color lightyellow)
1242
1243 These problems could happen if some other X program has used up too
1244 many colors of the X palette, leaving Emacs with insufficient system
1245 resources to load all the colors it needs.
1246
1247 A solution is to exit the offending X programs before starting Emacs.
1248
1249 "undefined color" messages can also occur if the RgbPath entry in the
1250 X configuration file is incorrect, or the rgb.txt file is not where
1251 X expects to find it.
1252
1253 *** Improving performance with slow X connections.
1254
1255 There are several ways to improve this performance, any subset of which can
1256 be carried out at the same time:
1257
1258 1) If you don't need X Input Methods (XIM) for entering text in some
1259 language you use, you can improve performance on WAN links by using
1260 the X resource useXIM to turn off use of XIM. This does not affect
1261 the use of Emacs' own input methods, which are part of the Leim
1262 package.
1263
1264 2) If the connection is very slow, you might also want to consider
1265 switching off scroll bars, menu bar, and tool bar. Adding the
1266 following forms to your .emacs file will accomplish that, but only
1267 after the the initial frame is displayed:
1268
1269 (scroll-bar-mode -1)
1270 (menu-bar-mode -1)
1271 (tool-bar-mode -1)
1272
1273 For still quicker startup, put these X resources in your .Xdefaults
1274 file:
1275
1276 Emacs.verticalScrollBars: off
1277 Emacs.menuBar: off
1278 Emacs.toolBar: off
1279
1280 3) Use ssh to forward the X connection, and enable compression on this
1281 forwarded X connection (ssh -XC remotehostname emacs ...).
1282
1283 4) Use lbxproxy on the remote end of the connection. This is an interface
1284 to the low bandwidth X extension in most modern X servers, which
1285 improves performance dramatically, at the slight expense of correctness
1286 of the X protocol. lbxproxy acheives the performance gain by grouping
1287 several X requests in one TCP packet and sending them off together,
1288 instead of requiring a round-trip for each X request in a separate
1289 packet. The switches that seem to work best for emacs are:
1290 -noatomsfile -nowinattr -cheaterrors -cheatevents
1291 Note that the -nograbcmap option is known to cause problems.
1292 For more about lbxproxy, see:
1293 http://www.xfree86.org/4.3.0/lbxproxy.1.html
1294
1295 5) If copying and killing is slow, try to disable the interaction with the
1296 native system's clipboard by adding these lines to your .emacs file:
1297 (setq interprogram-cut-function nil)
1298 (setq interprogram-paste-function nil)
1299
1300 *** Emacs gives the error, Couldn't find per display information.
1301
1302 This can result if the X server runs out of memory because Emacs uses
1303 a large number of fonts. On systems where this happens, C-h h is
1304 likely to cause it.
1305
1306 We do not know of a way to prevent the problem.
1307
1308 *** Emacs does not notice when you release the mouse.
1309
1310 There are reports that this happened with (some) Microsoft mice and
1311 that replacing the mouse made it stop.
1312
1313 *** You can't select from submenus (in the X toolkit version).
1314
1315 On certain systems, mouse-tracking and selection in top-level menus
1316 works properly with the X toolkit, but neither of them works when you
1317 bring up a submenu (such as Bookmarks or Compare or Apply Patch, in
1318 the Files menu).
1319
1320 This works on most systems. There is speculation that the failure is
1321 due to bugs in old versions of X toolkit libraries, but no one really
1322 knows. If someone debugs this and finds the precise cause, perhaps a
1323 workaround can be found.
1324
1325 *** An error message such as `X protocol error: BadMatch (invalid
1326 parameter attributes) on protocol request 93'.
1327
1328 This comes from having an invalid X resource, such as
1329 emacs*Cursor: black
1330 (which is invalid because it specifies a color name for something
1331 that isn't a color.)
1332
1333 The fix is to correct your X resources.
1334
1335 *** Slow startup on X11R6 with X windows.
1336
1337 If Emacs takes two minutes to start up on X11R6, see if your X
1338 resources specify any Adobe fonts. That causes the type-1 font
1339 renderer to start up, even if the font you asked for is not a type-1
1340 font.
1341
1342 One way to avoid this problem is to eliminate the type-1 fonts from
1343 your font path, like this:
1344
1345 xset -fp /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/
1346
1347 *** Pull-down menus appear in the wrong place, in the toolkit version of Emacs.
1348
1349 An X resource of this form can cause the problem:
1350
1351 Emacs*geometry: 80x55+0+0
1352
1353 This resource is supposed to apply, and does apply, to the menus
1354 individually as well as to Emacs frames. If that is not what you
1355 want, rewrite the resource.
1356
1357 To check thoroughly for such resource specifications, use `xrdb
1358 -query' to see what resources the X server records, and also look at
1359 the user's ~/.Xdefaults and ~/.Xdefaults-* files.
1360
1361 *** Emacs running under X Windows does not handle mouse clicks.
1362 *** `emacs -geometry 80x20' finds a file named `80x20'.
1363
1364 One cause of such problems is having (setq term-file-prefix nil) in
1365 your .emacs file. Another cause is a bad value of EMACSLOADPATH in
1366 the environment.
1367
1368 *** Emacs fails to get default settings from X Windows server.
1369
1370 The X library in X11R4 has a bug; it interchanges the 2nd and 3rd
1371 arguments to XGetDefaults. Define the macro XBACKWARDS in config.h to
1372 tell Emacs to compensate for this.
1373
1374 I don't believe there is any way Emacs can determine for itself
1375 whether this problem is present on a given system.
1376
1377 *** X Windows doesn't work if DISPLAY uses a hostname.
1378
1379 People have reported kernel bugs in certain systems that cause Emacs
1380 not to work with X Windows if DISPLAY is set using a host name. But
1381 the problem does not occur if DISPLAY is set to `unix:0.0'. I think
1382 the bug has to do with SIGIO or FIONREAD.
1383
1384 You may be able to compensate for the bug by doing (set-input-mode nil nil).
1385 However, that has the disadvantage of turning off interrupts, so that
1386 you are unable to quit out of a Lisp program by typing C-g.
1387
1388 The easy way to do this is to put
1389
1390 (setq x-sigio-bug t)
1391
1392 in your site-init.el file.
1393
1394 *** Prevent double pastes in X
1395
1396 The problem: a region, such as a command, is pasted twice when you copy
1397 it with your mouse from GNU Emacs to an xterm or an RXVT shell in X.
1398 The solution: try the following in your X configuration file,
1399 /etc/X11/xorg.conf This should enable both PS/2 and USB mice for
1400 single copies. You do not need any other drivers or options.
1401
1402 Section "InputDevice"
1403 Identifier "Generic Mouse"
1404 Driver "mousedev"
1405 Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
1406 EndSection
1407
1408 * Runtime problems on character terminals
1409
1410 ** The meta key does not work on xterm.
1411 Typing M-x rings the terminal bell, and inserts a string like ";120~".
1412 For recent xterm versions (>= 216), Emacs uses xterm's modifyOtherKeys
1413 feature to generate strings for key combinations that are not
1414 otherwise usable. One circumstance in which this can cause problems
1415 is if you have specified the X resource
1416
1417 xterm*VT100.Translations
1418
1419 to contain translations that use the meta key. Then xterm will not
1420 use meta in modified function-keys, which confuses Emacs. To fix
1421 this, you can remove the X resource or put this in your init file:
1422
1423 (xterm-remove-modify-other-keys)
1424
1425 ** Emacs spontaneously displays "I-search: " at the bottom of the screen.
1426
1427 This means that Control-S/Control-Q (XON/XOFF) "flow control" is being
1428 used. C-s/C-q flow control is bad for Emacs editors because it takes
1429 away C-s and C-q as user commands. Since editors do not output long
1430 streams of text without user commands, there is no need for a
1431 user-issuable "stop output" command in an editor; therefore, a
1432 properly designed flow control mechanism would transmit all possible
1433 input characters without interference. Designing such a mechanism is
1434 easy, for a person with at least half a brain.
1435
1436 There are three possible reasons why flow control could be taking place:
1437
1438 1) Terminal has not been told to disable flow control
1439 2) Insufficient padding for the terminal in use
1440 3) Some sort of terminal concentrator or line switch is responsible
1441
1442 First of all, many terminals have a set-up mode which controls whether
1443 they generate XON/XOFF flow control characters. This must be set to
1444 "no XON/XOFF" in order for Emacs to work. (For example, on a VT220
1445 you may select "No XOFF" in the setup menu.) Sometimes there is an
1446 escape sequence that the computer can send to turn flow control off
1447 and on. If so, perhaps the termcap `ti' string should turn flow
1448 control off, and the `te' string should turn it on.
1449
1450 Once the terminal has been told "no flow control", you may find it
1451 needs more padding. The amount of padding Emacs sends is controlled
1452 by the termcap entry for the terminal in use, and by the output baud
1453 rate as known by the kernel. The shell command `stty' will print
1454 your output baud rate; `stty' with suitable arguments will set it if
1455 it is wrong. Setting to a higher speed causes increased padding. If
1456 the results are wrong for the correct speed, there is probably a
1457 problem in the termcap entry. You must speak to a local Unix wizard
1458 to fix this. Perhaps you are just using the wrong terminal type.
1459
1460 For terminals that lack a "no flow control" mode, sometimes just
1461 giving lots of padding will prevent actual generation of flow control
1462 codes. You might as well try it.
1463
1464 If you are really unlucky, your terminal is connected to the computer
1465 through a concentrator which sends XON/XOFF flow control to the
1466 computer, or it insists on sending flow control itself no matter how
1467 much padding you give it. Unless you can figure out how to turn flow
1468 control off on this concentrator (again, refer to your local wizard),
1469 you are screwed! You should have the terminal or concentrator
1470 replaced with a properly designed one. In the mean time, some drastic
1471 measures can make Emacs semi-work.
1472
1473 You can make Emacs ignore C-s and C-q and let the operating system
1474 handle them. To do this on a per-session basis, just type M-x
1475 enable-flow-control RET. You will see a message that C-\ and C-^ are
1476 now translated to C-s and C-q. (Use the same command M-x
1477 enable-flow-control to turn *off* this special mode. It toggles flow
1478 control handling.)
1479
1480 If C-\ and C-^ are inconvenient for you (for example, if one of them
1481 is the escape character of your terminal concentrator), you can choose
1482 other characters by setting the variables flow-control-c-s-replacement
1483 and flow-control-c-q-replacement. But choose carefully, since all
1484 other control characters are already used by emacs.
1485
1486 IMPORTANT: if you type C-s by accident while flow control is enabled,
1487 Emacs output will freeze, and you will have to remember to type C-q in
1488 order to continue.
1489
1490 If you work in an environment where a majority of terminals of a
1491 certain type are flow control hobbled, you can use the function
1492 `enable-flow-control-on' to turn on this flow control avoidance scheme
1493 automatically. Here is an example:
1494
1495 (enable-flow-control-on "vt200" "vt300" "vt101" "vt131")
1496
1497 If this isn't quite correct (e.g. you have a mixture of flow-control hobbled
1498 and good vt200 terminals), you can still run enable-flow-control
1499 manually.
1500
1501 I have no intention of ever redesigning the Emacs command set for the
1502 assumption that terminals use C-s/C-q flow control. XON/XOFF flow
1503 control technique is a bad design, and terminals that need it are bad
1504 merchandise and should not be purchased. Now that X is becoming
1505 widespread, XON/XOFF seems to be on the way out. If you can get some
1506 use out of GNU Emacs on inferior terminals, more power to you, but I
1507 will not make Emacs worse for properly designed systems for the sake
1508 of inferior systems.
1509
1510 ** Control-S and Control-Q commands are ignored completely.
1511
1512 For some reason, your system is using brain-damaged C-s/C-q flow
1513 control despite Emacs's attempts to turn it off. Perhaps your
1514 terminal is connected to the computer through a concentrator
1515 that wants to use flow control.
1516
1517 You should first try to tell the concentrator not to use flow control.
1518 If you succeed in this, try making the terminal work without
1519 flow control, as described in the preceding section.
1520
1521 If that line of approach is not successful, map some other characters
1522 into C-s and C-q using keyboard-translate-table. The example above
1523 shows how to do this with C-^ and C-\.
1524
1525 ** Screen is updated wrong, but only on one kind of terminal.
1526
1527 This could mean that the termcap entry you are using for that
1528 terminal is wrong, or it could mean that Emacs has a bug handing
1529 the combination of features specified for that terminal.
1530
1531 The first step in tracking this down is to record what characters
1532 Emacs is sending to the terminal. Execute the Lisp expression
1533 (open-termscript "./emacs-script") to make Emacs write all
1534 terminal output into the file ~/emacs-script as well; then do
1535 what makes the screen update wrong, and look at the file
1536 and decode the characters using the manual for the terminal.
1537 There are several possibilities:
1538
1539 1) The characters sent are correct, according to the terminal manual.
1540
1541 In this case, there is no obvious bug in Emacs, and most likely you
1542 need more padding, or possibly the terminal manual is wrong.
1543
1544 2) The characters sent are incorrect, due to an obscure aspect
1545 of the terminal behavior not described in an obvious way
1546 by termcap.
1547
1548 This case is hard. It will be necessary to think of a way for
1549 Emacs to distinguish between terminals with this kind of behavior
1550 and other terminals that behave subtly differently but are
1551 classified the same by termcap; or else find an algorithm for
1552 Emacs to use that avoids the difference. Such changes must be
1553 tested on many kinds of terminals.
1554
1555 3) The termcap entry is wrong.
1556
1557 See the file etc/TERMS for information on changes
1558 that are known to be needed in commonly used termcap entries
1559 for certain terminals.
1560
1561 4) The characters sent are incorrect, and clearly cannot be
1562 right for any terminal with the termcap entry you were using.
1563
1564 This is unambiguously an Emacs bug, and can probably be fixed
1565 in termcap.c, tparam.c, term.c, scroll.c, cm.c or dispnew.c.
1566
1567 ** Control-S and Control-Q commands are ignored completely on a net connection.
1568
1569 Some versions of rlogin (and possibly telnet) do not pass flow
1570 control characters to the remote system to which they connect.
1571 On such systems, emacs on the remote system cannot disable flow
1572 control on the local system. Sometimes `rlogin -8' will avoid this
1573 problem.
1574
1575 One way to cure this is to disable flow control on the local host
1576 (the one running rlogin, not the one running rlogind) using the
1577 stty command, before starting the rlogin process. On many systems,
1578 "stty start u stop u" will do this. On some systems, use
1579 "stty -ixon" instead.
1580
1581 Some versions of tcsh will prevent even this from working. One way
1582 around this is to start another shell before starting rlogin, and
1583 issue the stty command to disable flow control from that shell.
1584
1585 If none of these methods work, the best solution is to type
1586 M-x enable-flow-control at the beginning of your emacs session, or
1587 if you expect the problem to continue, add a line such as the
1588 following to your .emacs (on the host running rlogind):
1589
1590 (enable-flow-control-on "vt200" "vt300" "vt101" "vt131")
1591
1592 See the entry about spontaneous display of I-search (above) for more
1593 info.
1594
1595 ** Output from Control-V is slow.
1596
1597 On many bit-map terminals, scrolling operations are fairly slow.
1598 Often the termcap entry for the type of terminal in use fails
1599 to inform Emacs of this. The two lines at the bottom of the screen
1600 before a Control-V command are supposed to appear at the top after
1601 the Control-V command. If Emacs thinks scrolling the lines is fast,
1602 it will scroll them to the top of the screen.
1603
1604 If scrolling is slow but Emacs thinks it is fast, the usual reason is
1605 that the termcap entry for the terminal you are using does not
1606 specify any padding time for the `al' and `dl' strings. Emacs
1607 concludes that these operations take only as much time as it takes to
1608 send the commands at whatever line speed you are using. You must
1609 fix the termcap entry to specify, for the `al' and `dl', as much
1610 time as the operations really take.
1611
1612 Currently Emacs thinks in terms of serial lines which send characters
1613 at a fixed rate, so that any operation which takes time for the
1614 terminal to execute must also be padded. With bit-map terminals
1615 operated across networks, often the network provides some sort of
1616 flow control so that padding is never needed no matter how slow
1617 an operation is. You must still specify a padding time if you want
1618 Emacs to realize that the operation takes a long time. This will
1619 cause padding characters to be sent unnecessarily, but they do
1620 not really cost much. They will be transmitted while the scrolling
1621 is happening and then discarded quickly by the terminal.
1622
1623 Most bit-map terminals provide commands for inserting or deleting
1624 multiple lines at once. Define the `AL' and `DL' strings in the
1625 termcap entry to say how to do these things, and you will have
1626 fast output without wasted padding characters. These strings should
1627 each contain a single %-spec saying how to send the number of lines
1628 to be scrolled. These %-specs are like those in the termcap
1629 `cm' string.
1630
1631 You should also define the `IC' and `DC' strings if your terminal
1632 has a command to insert or delete multiple characters. These
1633 take the number of positions to insert or delete as an argument.
1634
1635 A `cs' string to set the scrolling region will reduce the amount
1636 of motion you see on the screen when part of the screen is scrolled.
1637
1638 ** You type Control-H (Backspace) expecting to delete characters.
1639
1640 Put `stty dec' in your .login file and your problems will disappear
1641 after a day or two.
1642
1643 The choice of Backspace for erasure was based on confusion, caused by
1644 the fact that backspacing causes erasure (later, when you type another
1645 character) on most display terminals. But it is a mistake. Deletion
1646 of text is not the same thing as backspacing followed by failure to
1647 overprint. I do not wish to propagate this confusion by conforming
1648 to it.
1649
1650 For this reason, I believe `stty dec' is the right mode to use,
1651 and I have designed Emacs to go with that. If there were a thousand
1652 other control characters, I would define Control-h to delete as well;
1653 but there are not very many other control characters, and I think
1654 that providing the most mnemonic possible Help character is more
1655 important than adapting to people who don't use `stty dec'.
1656
1657 If you are obstinate about confusing buggy overprinting with deletion,
1658 you can redefine Backspace in your .emacs file:
1659 (global-set-key "\b" 'delete-backward-char)
1660 You can probably access help-command via f1.
1661
1662 ** Colors are not available on a tty or in xterm.
1663
1664 Emacs 21 supports colors on character terminals and terminal
1665 emulators, but this support relies on the terminfo or termcap database
1666 entry to specify that the display supports color. Emacs looks at the
1667 "Co" capability for the terminal to find out how many colors are
1668 supported; it should be non-zero to activate the color support within
1669 Emacs. (Most color terminals support 8 or 16 colors.) If your system
1670 uses terminfo, the name of the capability equivalent to "Co" is
1671 "colors".
1672
1673 In addition to the "Co" capability, Emacs needs the "op" (for
1674 ``original pair'') capability, which tells how to switch the terminal
1675 back to the default foreground and background colors. Emacs will not
1676 use colors if this capability is not defined. If your terminal entry
1677 doesn't provide such a capability, try using the ANSI standard escape
1678 sequence \E[00m (that is, define a new termcap/terminfo entry and make
1679 it use your current terminal's entry plus \E[00m for the "op"
1680 capability).
1681
1682 Finally, the "NC" capability (terminfo name: "ncv") tells Emacs which
1683 attributes cannot be used with colors. Setting this capability
1684 incorrectly might have the effect of disabling colors; try setting
1685 this capability to `0' (zero) and see if that helps.
1686
1687 Emacs uses the database entry for the terminal whose name is the value
1688 of the environment variable TERM. With `xterm', a common terminal
1689 entry that supports color is `xterm-color', so setting TERM's value to
1690 `xterm-color' might activate the color support on an xterm-compatible
1691 emulator.
1692
1693 Beginning with version 22.1, Emacs supports the --color command-line
1694 option which may be used to force Emacs to use one of a few popular
1695 modes for getting colors on a tty. For example, --color=ansi8 sets up
1696 for using the ANSI-standard escape sequences that support 8 colors.
1697
1698 Some modes do not use colors unless you turn on the Font-lock mode.
1699 Some people have long ago set their `~/.emacs' files to turn on
1700 Font-lock on X only, so they won't see colors on a tty. The
1701 recommended way of turning on Font-lock is by typing "M-x
1702 global-font-lock-mode RET" or by customizing the variable
1703 `global-font-lock-mode'.
1704
1705 * Runtime problems specific to individual Unix variants
1706
1707 ** GNU/Linux
1708
1709 *** GNU/Linux: Process output is corrupted.
1710
1711 There is a bug in Linux kernel 2.6.10 PTYs that can cause emacs to
1712 read corrupted process output.
1713
1714 *** GNU/Linux: Remote access to CVS with SSH causes file corruption.
1715
1716 If you access a remote CVS repository via SSH, files may be corrupted
1717 due to bad interaction between CVS, SSH, and libc.
1718
1719 To fix the problem, save the following script into a file, make it
1720 executable, and set CVS_RSH environment variable to the file name of
1721 the script:
1722
1723 #!/bin/bash
1724 exec 2> >(exec cat >&2 2>/dev/null)
1725 exec ssh "$@"
1726
1727 *** GNU/Linux: On Linux-based GNU systems using libc versions 5.4.19 through
1728 5.4.22, Emacs crashes at startup with a segmentation fault.
1729
1730 This problem happens if libc defines the symbol __malloc_initialized.
1731 One known solution is to upgrade to a newer libc version. 5.4.33 is
1732 known to work.
1733
1734 *** GNU/Linux: After upgrading to a newer version of Emacs,
1735 the Meta key stops working.
1736
1737 This was reported to happen on a GNU/Linux system distributed by
1738 Mandrake. The reason is that the previous version of Emacs was
1739 modified by Mandrake to make the Alt key act as the Meta key, on a
1740 keyboard where the Windows key is the one which produces the Meta
1741 modifier. A user who started using a newer version of Emacs, which
1742 was not hacked by Mandrake, expected the Alt key to continue to act as
1743 Meta, and was astonished when that didn't happen.
1744
1745 The solution is to find out what key on your keyboard produces the Meta
1746 modifier, and use that key instead. Try all of the keys to the left
1747 and to the right of the space bar, together with the `x' key, and see
1748 which combination produces "M-x" in the echo area. You can also use
1749 the `xmodmap' utility to show all the keys which produce a Meta
1750 modifier:
1751
1752 xmodmap -pk | egrep -i "meta|alt"
1753
1754 A more convenient way of finding out which keys produce a Meta modifier
1755 is to use the `xkbprint' utility, if it's available on your system:
1756
1757 xkbprint 0:0 /tmp/k.ps
1758
1759 This produces a PostScript file `/tmp/k.ps' with a picture of your
1760 keyboard; printing that file on a PostScript printer will show what
1761 keys can serve as Meta.
1762
1763 The `xkeycaps' also shows a visual representation of the current
1764 keyboard settings. It also allows to modify them.
1765
1766 *** GNU/Linux: slow startup on Linux-based GNU systems.
1767
1768 People using systems based on the Linux kernel sometimes report that
1769 startup takes 10 to 15 seconds longer than `usual'.
1770
1771 This is because Emacs looks up the host name when it starts.
1772 Normally, this takes negligible time; the extra delay is due to
1773 improper system configuration. This problem can occur for both
1774 networked and non-networked machines.
1775
1776 Here is how to fix the configuration. It requires being root.
1777
1778 **** Networked Case.
1779
1780 First, make sure the files `/etc/hosts' and `/etc/host.conf' both
1781 exist. The first line in the `/etc/hosts' file should look like this
1782 (replace HOSTNAME with your host name):
1783
1784 127.0.0.1 HOSTNAME
1785
1786 Also make sure that the `/etc/host.conf' files contains the following
1787 lines:
1788
1789 order hosts, bind
1790 multi on
1791
1792 Any changes, permanent and temporary, to the host name should be
1793 indicated in the `/etc/hosts' file, since it acts a limited local
1794 database of addresses and names (e.g., some SLIP connections
1795 dynamically allocate ip addresses).
1796
1797 **** Non-Networked Case.
1798
1799 The solution described in the networked case applies here as well.
1800 However, if you never intend to network your machine, you can use a
1801 simpler solution: create an empty `/etc/host.conf' file. The command
1802 `touch /etc/host.conf' suffices to create the file. The `/etc/hosts'
1803 file is not necessary with this approach.
1804
1805 *** GNU/Linux: Emacs on a tty switches the cursor to large blinking block.
1806
1807 This was reported to happen on some GNU/Linux systems which use
1808 ncurses version 5.0, but could be relevant for other versions as well.
1809 These versions of ncurses come with a `linux' terminfo entry, where
1810 the "cvvis" capability (termcap "vs") is defined as "\E[?25h\E[?8c"
1811 (show cursor, change size). This escape sequence switches on a
1812 blinking hardware text-mode cursor whose size is a full character
1813 cell. This blinking cannot be stopped, since a hardware cursor
1814 always blinks.
1815
1816 A work-around is to redefine the "cvvis" capability so that it
1817 enables a *software* cursor. The software cursor works by inverting
1818 the colors of the character at point, so what you see is a block
1819 cursor that doesn't blink. For this to work, you need to redefine
1820 the "cnorm" capability as well, so that it operates on the software
1821 cursor instead of the hardware cursor.
1822
1823 To this end, run "infocmp linux > linux-term", edit the file
1824 `linux-term' to make both the "cnorm" and "cvvis" capabilities send
1825 the sequence "\E[?25h\E[?17;0;64c", and then run "tic linux-term" to
1826 produce a modified terminfo entry.
1827
1828 Alternatively, if you want a blinking underscore as your Emacs cursor,
1829 change the "cvvis" capability to send the "\E[?25h\E[?0c" command.
1830
1831 *** GNU/Linux: Error messages `internal facep []' happen on GNU/Linux systems.
1832
1833 There is a report that replacing libc.so.5.0.9 with libc.so.5.2.16
1834 caused this to start happening. People are not sure why, but the
1835 problem seems unlikely to be in Emacs itself. Some suspect that it
1836 is actually Xlib which won't work with libc.so.5.2.16.
1837
1838 Using the old library version is a workaround.
1839
1840 ** FreeBSD
1841
1842 *** FreeBSD 2.1.5: useless symbolic links remain in /tmp or other
1843 directories that have the +t bit.
1844
1845 This is because of a kernel bug in FreeBSD 2.1.5 (fixed in 2.2).
1846 Emacs uses symbolic links to implement file locks. In a directory
1847 with +t bit, the directory owner becomes the owner of the symbolic
1848 link, so that it cannot be removed by anyone else.
1849
1850 If you don't like those useless links, you can let Emacs not to using
1851 file lock by adding #undef CLASH_DETECTION to config.h.
1852
1853 *** FreeBSD: Getting a Meta key on the console.
1854
1855 By default, neither Alt nor any other key acts as a Meta key on
1856 FreeBSD, but this can be changed using kbdcontrol(1). Dump the
1857 current keymap to a file with the command
1858
1859 $ kbdcontrol -d >emacs.kbd
1860
1861 Edit emacs.kbd, and give the key you want to be the Meta key the
1862 definition `meta'. For instance, if your keyboard has a ``Windows''
1863 key with scan code 105, change the line for scan code 105 in emacs.kbd
1864 to look like this
1865
1866 105 meta meta meta meta meta meta meta meta O
1867
1868 to make the Windows key the Meta key. Load the new keymap with
1869
1870 $ kbdcontrol -l emacs.kbd
1871
1872 ** HP-UX
1873
1874 *** HP/UX : Shell mode gives the message, "`tty`: Ambiguous".
1875
1876 christos@theory.tn.cornell.edu says:
1877
1878 The problem is that in your .cshrc you have something that tries to
1879 execute `tty`. If you are not running the shell on a real tty then
1880 tty will print "not a tty". Csh expects one word in some places,
1881 but tty is giving it back 3.
1882
1883 The solution is to add a pair of quotes around `tty` to make it a single
1884 word:
1885
1886 if (`tty` == "/dev/console")
1887
1888 should be changed to:
1889
1890 if ("`tty`" == "/dev/console")
1891
1892 Even better, move things that set up terminal sections out of .cshrc
1893 and into .login.
1894
1895 *** HP/UX: `Pid xxx killed due to text modification or page I/O error'.
1896
1897 On HP/UX, you can get that error when the Emacs executable is on an NFS
1898 file system. HP/UX responds this way if it tries to swap in a page and
1899 does not get a response from the server within a timeout whose default
1900 value is just ten seconds.
1901
1902 If this happens to you, extend the timeout period.
1903
1904 *** HP/UX: The right Alt key works wrong on German HP keyboards (and perhaps
1905 other non-English HP keyboards too).
1906
1907 This is because HP-UX defines the modifiers wrong in X. Here is a
1908 shell script to fix the problem; be sure that it is run after VUE
1909 configures the X server.
1910
1911 xmodmap 2> /dev/null - << EOF
1912 keysym Alt_L = Meta_L
1913 keysym Alt_R = Meta_R
1914 EOF
1915
1916 xmodmap - << EOF
1917 clear mod1
1918 keysym Mode_switch = NoSymbol
1919 add mod1 = Meta_L
1920 keysym Meta_R = Mode_switch
1921 add mod2 = Mode_switch
1922 EOF
1923
1924 *** HP/UX: "Cannot find callback list" messages from dialog boxes in
1925 Emacs built with Motif.
1926
1927 This problem resulted from a bug in GCC 2.4.5. Newer GCC versions
1928 such as 2.7.0 fix the problem.
1929
1930 *** HP/UX: Emacs does not recognize the AltGr key.
1931
1932 To fix this, set up a file ~/.dt/sessions/sessionetc with executable
1933 rights, containing this text:
1934
1935 --------------------------------
1936 xmodmap 2> /dev/null - << EOF
1937 keysym Alt_L = Meta_L
1938 keysym Alt_R = Meta_R
1939 EOF
1940
1941 xmodmap - << EOF
1942 clear mod1
1943 keysym Mode_switch = NoSymbol
1944 add mod1 = Meta_L
1945 keysym Meta_R = Mode_switch
1946 add mod2 = Mode_switch
1947 EOF
1948 --------------------------------
1949
1950 *** HP/UX 11.0: Emacs makes HP/UX 11.0 crash.
1951
1952 This is a bug in HPUX; HPUX patch PHKL_16260 is said to fix it.
1953
1954 ** AIX
1955
1956 *** AIX: Trouble using ptys.
1957
1958 People often install the pty devices on AIX incorrectly.
1959 Use `smit pty' to reinstall them properly.
1960
1961 *** AIXterm: Your Delete key sends a Backspace to the terminal.
1962
1963 The solution is to include in your .Xdefaults the lines:
1964
1965 *aixterm.Translations: #override <Key>BackSpace: string(0x7f)
1966 aixterm*ttyModes: erase ^?
1967
1968 This makes your Backspace key send DEL (ASCII 127).
1969
1970 *** AIX: If linking fails because libXbsd isn't found, check if you
1971 are compiling with the system's `cc' and CFLAGS containing `-O5'. If
1972 so, you have hit a compiler bug. Please make sure to re-configure
1973 Emacs so that it isn't compiled with `-O5'.
1974
1975 *** AIX 4.3.x or 4.4: Compiling fails.
1976
1977 This could happen if you use /bin/c89 as your compiler, instead of
1978 the default `cc'. /bin/c89 treats certain warnings, such as benign
1979 redefinitions of macros, as errors, and fails the build. A solution
1980 is to use the default compiler `cc'.
1981
1982 *** AIX 4: Some programs fail when run in a Shell buffer
1983 with an error message like No terminfo entry for "unknown".
1984
1985 On AIX, many terminal type definitions are not installed by default.
1986 `unknown' is one of them. Install the "Special Generic Terminal
1987 Definitions" to make them defined.
1988
1989 ** Solaris
1990
1991 We list bugs in current versions here. Solaris 2.x and 4.x are covered in the
1992 section on legacy systems.
1993
1994 *** On Solaris, C-x doesn't get through to Emacs when you use the console.
1995
1996 This is a Solaris feature (at least on Intel x86 cpus). Type C-r
1997 C-r C-t, to toggle whether C-x gets through to Emacs.
1998
1999 *** Problem with remote X server on Suns.
2000
2001 On a Sun, running Emacs on one machine with the X server on another
2002 may not work if you have used the unshared system libraries. This
2003 is because the unshared libraries fail to use YP for host name lookup.
2004 As a result, the host name you specify may not be recognized.
2005
2006 *** Solaris 2,6: Emacs crashes with SIGBUS or SIGSEGV on Solaris after you delete a frame.
2007
2008 We suspect that this is a bug in the X libraries provided by
2009 Sun. There is a report that one of these patches fixes the bug and
2010 makes the problem stop:
2011
2012 105216-01 105393-01 105518-01 105621-01 105665-01 105615-02 105216-02
2013 105667-01 105401-08 105615-03 105621-02 105686-02 105736-01 105755-03
2014 106033-01 105379-01 105786-01 105181-04 105379-03 105786-04 105845-01
2015 105284-05 105669-02 105837-01 105837-02 105558-01 106125-02 105407-01
2016
2017 Another person using a newer system (kernel patch level Generic_105181-06)
2018 suspects that the bug was fixed by one of these more recent patches:
2019
2020 106040-07 SunOS 5.6: X Input & Output Method patch
2021 106222-01 OpenWindows 3.6: filemgr (ff.core) fixes
2022 105284-12 Motif 1.2.7: sparc Runtime library patch
2023
2024 *** Solaris 7 or 8: Emacs reports a BadAtom error (from X)
2025
2026 This happens when Emacs was built on some other version of Solaris.
2027 Rebuild it on Solaris 8.
2028
2029 *** When using M-x dbx with the SparcWorks debugger, the `up' and `down'
2030 commands do not move the arrow in Emacs.
2031
2032 You can fix this by adding the following line to `~/.dbxinit':
2033
2034 dbxenv output_short_file_name off
2035
2036 *** On Solaris, CTRL-t is ignored by Emacs when you use
2037 the fr.ISO-8859-15 locale (and maybe other related locales).
2038
2039 You can fix this by editing the file:
2040
2041 /usr/openwin/lib/locale/iso8859-15/Compose
2042
2043 Near the bottom there is a line that reads:
2044
2045 Ctrl<t> <quotedbl> <Y> : "\276" threequarters
2046
2047 that should read:
2048
2049 Ctrl<T> <quotedbl> <Y> : "\276" threequarters
2050
2051 Note the lower case <t>. Changing this line should make C-t work.
2052
2053 *** On Solaris, Emacs fails to set menu-bar-update-hook on startup, with error
2054 "Error in menu-bar-update-hook: (error Point before start of properties)".
2055 This seems to be a GCC optimization bug that occurs for GCC 4.1.2 (-g
2056 and -g -O2) and GCC 4.2.3 (-g -O and -g -O2). You can fix this by
2057 compiling with GCC 4.2.3 or CC 5.7, with no optimizations.
2058
2059 ** Irix
2060
2061 *** Irix 6.5: Emacs crashes on the SGI R10K, when compiled with GCC.
2062
2063 This seems to be fixed in GCC 2.95.
2064
2065 *** Irix: Trouble using ptys, or running out of ptys.
2066
2067 The program mkpts (which may be in `/usr/adm' or `/usr/sbin') needs to
2068 be set-UID to root, or non-root programs like Emacs will not be able
2069 to allocate ptys reliably.
2070
2071 * Runtime problems specific to MS-Windows
2072
2073 ** PATH can contain unexpanded environment variables
2074
2075 Old releases of TCC (version 9) and 4NT (up to version 8) do not correctly
2076 expand App Paths entries of type REG_EXPAND_SZ. When Emacs is run from TCC
2077 and such an entry exists for emacs.exe, exec-path will contain the
2078 unexpanded entry. This has been fixed in TCC 10. For more information,
2079 see bug#2062.
2080
2081 ** Setting w32-pass-rwindow-to-system and w32-pass-lwindow-to-system to nil
2082 does not prevent the Start menu from popping up when the left or right
2083 ``Windows'' key is pressed.
2084
2085 This was reported to happen when XKeymacs is installed. At least with
2086 XKeymacs Version 3.47, deactivating XKeymacs when Emacs is active is
2087 not enough to avoid its messing with the keyboard input. Exiting
2088 XKeymacs completely is reported to solve the problem.
2089
2090 ** Windows 95 and networking.
2091
2092 To support server sockets, Emacs 22.1 loads ws2_32.dll. If this file
2093 is missing, all Emacs networking features are disabled.
2094
2095 Old versions of Windows 95 may not have the required DLL. To use
2096 Emacs' networking features on Windows 95, you must install the
2097 "Windows Socket 2" update available from MicroSoft's support Web.
2098
2099 ** Emacs exits with "X protocol error" when run with an X server for MS-Windows.
2100
2101 A certain X server for Windows had a bug which caused this.
2102 Supposedly the newer 32-bit version of this server doesn't have the
2103 problem.
2104
2105 ** Emacs crashes when opening a file with a UNC path and rails-mode is loaded.
2106
2107 Loading rails-mode seems to interfere with UNC path handling. This has been
2108 reported as a bug against both Emacs and rails-mode, so look for an updated
2109 rails-mode that avoids this crash, or avoid using UNC paths if using
2110 rails-mode.
2111
2112 ** Known problems with the MS-Windows port of Emacs 22.3
2113
2114 M-x term does not work on MS-Windows. TTY emulation on Windows is
2115 undocumented, and programs such as stty which are used on posix platforms
2116 to control tty emulation do not exist for native windows terminals.
2117
2118 Using create-fontset-from-ascii-font or the --font startup parameter
2119 with a Chinese, Japanese or Korean font leads to display problems.
2120 Use a Latin-only font as your default font. If you want control over
2121 which font is used to display Chinese, Japanese or Korean character,
2122 use create-fontset-from-fontset-spec to define a fontset.
2123
2124 Frames are not refreshed while the File or Font dialog or a pop-up menu
2125 is displayed. This also means help text for pop-up menus is not
2126 displayed at all. This is because message handling under Windows is
2127 synchronous, so we cannot handle repaint (or any other) messages while
2128 waiting for a system function to return the result of the dialog or
2129 pop-up menu interaction.
2130
2131 Windows 95 and Windows NT up to version 4.0 do not support help text
2132 for menus. Help text is only available in later versions of Windows.
2133
2134 When "ClearType" method is selected as the "method to smooth edges of
2135 screen fonts" (in Display Properties, Appearance tab, under
2136 "Effects"), there are various problems related to display of
2137 characters: Bold fonts can be hard to read, small portions of some
2138 characters could appear chopped, etc. This happens because, under
2139 ClearType, characters are drawn outside their advertised bounding box.
2140 Emacs 21 disabled the use of ClearType, whereas Emacs 22 allows it and
2141 has some code to enlarge the width of the bounding box. Apparently,
2142 this display feature needs more changes to get it 100% right. A
2143 workaround is to disable ClearType.
2144
2145 There are problems with display if mouse-tracking is enabled and the
2146 mouse is moved off a frame, over another frame then back over the first
2147 frame. A workaround is to click the left mouse button inside the frame
2148 after moving back into it.
2149
2150 Some minor flickering still persists during mouse-tracking, although
2151 not as severely as in 21.1.
2152
2153 An inactive cursor remains in an active window after the Windows
2154 Manager driven switch of the focus, until a key is pressed.
2155
2156 Windows input methods are not recognized by Emacs. However, some
2157 of these input methods cause the keyboard to send characters encoded
2158 in the appropriate coding system (e.g., ISO 8859-1 for Latin-1
2159 characters, ISO 8859-8 for Hebrew characters, etc.). To make these
2160 input methods work with Emacs, set the keyboard coding system to the
2161 appropriate value after you activate the Windows input method. For
2162 example, if you activate the Hebrew input method, type this:
2163
2164 C-x RET k hebrew-iso-8bit RET
2165
2166 (Emacs ought to recognize the Windows language-change event and set up
2167 the appropriate keyboard encoding automatically, but it doesn't do
2168 that yet.) In addition, to use these Windows input methods, you
2169 should set your "Language for non-Unicode programs" (on Windows XP,
2170 this is on the Advanced tab of Regional Settings) to the language of
2171 the input method.
2172
2173 To bind keys that produce non-ASCII characters with modifiers, you
2174 must specify raw byte codes. For instance, if you want to bind
2175 META-a-grave to a command, you need to specify this in your `~/.emacs':
2176
2177 (global-set-key [?\M-\340] ...)
2178
2179 The above example is for the Latin-1 environment where the byte code
2180 of the encoded a-grave is 340 octal. For other environments, use the
2181 encoding appropriate to that environment.
2182
2183 The %b specifier for format-time-string does not produce abbreviated
2184 month names with consistent widths for some locales on some versions
2185 of Windows. This is caused by a deficiency in the underlying system
2186 library function.
2187
2188 The function set-time-zone-rule gives incorrect results for many
2189 non-US timezones. This is due to over-simplistic handling of
2190 daylight savings switchovers by the Windows libraries.
2191
2192 Files larger than 4GB cause overflow in the size (represented as a
2193 32-bit integer) reported by `file-attributes'. This affects Dired as
2194 well, since the Windows port uses a Lisp emulation of `ls' that relies
2195 on `file-attributes'.
2196
2197 Sound playing is not supported with the `:data DATA' key-value pair.
2198 You _must_ use the `:file FILE' method.
2199
2200 ** Typing Alt-Shift has strange effects on MS-Windows.
2201
2202 This combination of keys is a command to change keyboard layout. If
2203 you proceed to type another non-modifier key before you let go of Alt
2204 and Shift, the Alt and Shift act as modifiers in the usual way. A
2205 more permanent work around is to change it to another key combination,
2206 or disable it in the "Regional and Language Options" applet of the
2207 Control Panel. (The exact sequence of mouse clicks in the "Regional
2208 and Language Options" applet needed to find the key combination that
2209 changes the keyboard layout depends on your Windows version; for XP,
2210 in the Languages tab, click "Details" and then "Key Settings".)
2211
2212 ** Interrupting Cygwin port of Bash from Emacs doesn't work.
2213
2214 Cygwin 1.x builds of the ported Bash cannot be interrupted from the
2215 MS-Windows version of Emacs. This is due to some change in the Bash
2216 port or in the Cygwin library which apparently make Bash ignore the
2217 keyboard interrupt event sent by Emacs to Bash. (Older Cygwin ports
2218 of Bash, up to b20.1, did receive SIGINT from Emacs.)
2219
2220 ** Accessing remote files with ange-ftp hangs the MS-Windows version of Emacs.
2221
2222 If the FTP client is the Cygwin port of GNU `ftp', this appears to be
2223 due to some bug in the Cygwin DLL or some incompatibility between it
2224 and the implementation of asynchronous subprocesses in the Windows
2225 port of Emacs. Specifically, some parts of the FTP server responses
2226 are not flushed out, apparently due to buffering issues, which
2227 confuses ange-ftp.
2228
2229 The solution is to downgrade to an older version of the Cygwin DLL
2230 (version 1.3.2 was reported to solve the problem), or use the stock
2231 Windows FTP client, usually found in the `C:\WINDOWS' or 'C:\WINNT'
2232 directory. To force ange-ftp use the stock Windows client, set the
2233 variable `ange-ftp-ftp-program-name' to the absolute file name of the
2234 client's executable. For example:
2235
2236 (setq ange-ftp-ftp-program-name "c:/windows/ftp.exe")
2237
2238 If you want to stick with the Cygwin FTP client, you can work around
2239 this problem by putting this in your `.emacs' file:
2240
2241 (setq ange-ftp-ftp-program-args '("-i" "-n" "-g" "-v" "--prompt" "")
2242
2243 ** lpr commands don't work on MS-Windows with some cheap printers.
2244
2245 This problem may also strike other platforms, but the solution is
2246 likely to be a global one, and not Emacs specific.
2247
2248 Many cheap inkjet, and even some cheap laser printers, do not
2249 print plain text anymore, they will only print through graphical
2250 printer drivers. A workaround on MS-Windows is to use Windows' basic
2251 built in editor to print (this is possibly the only useful purpose it
2252 has):
2253
2254 (setq printer-name "") ;; notepad takes the default
2255 (setq lpr-command "notepad") ;; notepad
2256 (setq lpr-switches nil) ;; not needed
2257 (setq lpr-printer-switch "/P") ;; run notepad as batch printer
2258
2259 ** Antivirus software interacts badly with the MS-Windows version of Emacs.
2260
2261 The usual manifestation of these problems is that subprocesses don't
2262 work or even wedge the entire system. In particular, "M-x shell RET"
2263 was reported to fail to work. But other commands also sometimes don't
2264 work when an antivirus package is installed.
2265
2266 The solution is to switch the antivirus software to a less aggressive
2267 mode (e.g., disable the ``auto-protect'' feature), or even uninstall
2268 or disable it entirely.
2269
2270 ** Pressing the mouse button on MS-Windows does not give a mouse-2 event.
2271
2272 This is usually a problem with the mouse driver. Because most Windows
2273 programs do not do anything useful with the middle mouse button, many
2274 mouse drivers allow you to define the wheel press to do something
2275 different. Some drivers do not even have the option to generate a
2276 middle button press. In such cases, setting the wheel press to
2277 "scroll" sometimes works if you press the button twice. Trying a
2278 generic mouse driver might help.
2279
2280 ** Scrolling the mouse wheel on MS-Windows always scrolls the top window.
2281
2282 This is another common problem with mouse drivers. Instead of
2283 generating scroll events, some mouse drivers try to fake scroll bar
2284 movement. But they are not intelligent enough to handle multiple
2285 scroll bars within a frame. Trying a generic mouse driver might help.
2286
2287 ** Mail sent through Microsoft Exchange in some encodings appears to be
2288 mangled and is not seen correctly in Rmail or Gnus. We don't know
2289 exactly what happens, but it isn't an Emacs problem in cases we've
2290 seen.
2291
2292 ** On MS-Windows, you cannot use the right-hand ALT key and the left-hand
2293 CTRL key together to type a Control-Meta character.
2294
2295 This is a consequence of a misfeature beyond Emacs's control.
2296
2297 Under Windows, the AltGr key on international keyboards generates key
2298 events with the modifiers Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl. Since Emacs cannot
2299 distinguish AltGr from an explicit Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl
2300 combination, whenever it sees Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl it assumes that
2301 AltGr has been pressed. The variable `w32-recognize-altgr' can be set
2302 to nil to tell Emacs that AltGr is really Ctrl and Alt.
2303
2304 ** Under some X-servers running on MS-Windows, Emacs' display is incorrect.
2305
2306 The symptoms are that Emacs does not completely erase blank areas of the
2307 screen during scrolling or some other screen operations (e.g., selective
2308 display or when killing a region). M-x recenter will cause the screen
2309 to be completely redisplayed and the "extra" characters will disappear.
2310
2311 This is known to occur under Exceed 6, and possibly earlier versions
2312 as well; it is reportedly solved in version 6.2.0.16 and later. The
2313 problem lies in the X-server settings.
2314
2315 There are reports that you can solve the problem with Exceed by
2316 running `Xconfig' from within NT, choosing "X selection", then
2317 un-checking the boxes "auto-copy X selection" and "auto-paste to X
2318 selection".
2319
2320 Of this does not work, please inform bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org. Then
2321 please call support for your X-server and see if you can get a fix.
2322 If you do, please send it to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org so we can list it
2323 here.
2324
2325 * Build-time problems
2326
2327 ** Configuration
2328
2329 *** The `configure' script doesn't find the jpeg library.
2330
2331 There are reports that this happens on some systems because the linker
2332 by default only looks for shared libraries, but jpeg distribution by
2333 default only installs a nonshared version of the library, `libjpeg.a'.
2334
2335 If this is the problem, you can configure the jpeg library with the
2336 `--enable-shared' option and then rebuild libjpeg. This produces a
2337 shared version of libjpeg, which you need to install. Finally, rerun
2338 the Emacs configure script, which should now find the jpeg library.
2339 Alternatively, modify the generated src/Makefile to link the .a file
2340 explicitly, and edit src/config.h to define HAVE_JPEG.
2341
2342 *** `configure' warns ``accepted by the compiler, rejected by the preprocessor''.
2343
2344 This indicates a mismatch between the C compiler and preprocessor that
2345 configure is using. For example, on Solaris 10 trying to use
2346 CC=/opt/SUNWspro/bin/cc (the Sun Studio compiler) together with
2347 CPP=/usr/ccs/lib/cpp can result in errors of this form (you may also
2348 see the error ``"/usr/include/sys/isa_defs.h", line 500: undefined control'').
2349
2350 The solution is to tell configure to use the correct C preprocessor
2351 for your C compiler (CPP="/opt/SUNWspro/bin/cc -E" in the above
2352 example).
2353
2354 ** Compilation
2355
2356 *** Building Emacs over NFS fails with ``Text file busy''.
2357
2358 This was reported to happen when building Emacs on a GNU/Linux system
2359 (Red Hat Linux 6.2) using a build directory automounted from Solaris
2360 (SunOS 5.6) file server, but it might not be limited to that
2361 configuration alone. Presumably, the NFS server doesn't commit the
2362 files' data to disk quickly enough, and the Emacs executable file is
2363 left ``busy'' for several seconds after Emacs has finished dumping
2364 itself. This causes the subsequent commands which invoke the dumped
2365 Emacs executable to fail with the above message.
2366
2367 In some of these cases, a time skew between the NFS server and the
2368 machine where Emacs is built is detected and reported by GNU Make
2369 (it says that some of the files have modification time in the future).
2370 This might be a symptom of NFS-related problems.
2371
2372 If the NFS server runs on Solaris, apply the Solaris patch 105379-05
2373 (Sunos 5.6: /kernel/misc/nfssrv patch). If that doesn't work, or if
2374 you have a different version of the OS or the NFS server, you can
2375 force the NFS server to use 1KB blocks, which was reported to fix the
2376 problem albeit at a price of slowing down file I/O. You can force 1KB
2377 blocks by specifying the "-o rsize=1024,wsize=1024" options to the
2378 `mount' command, or by adding ",rsize=1024,wsize=1024" to the mount
2379 options in the appropriate system configuration file, such as
2380 `/etc/auto.home'.
2381
2382 Alternatively, when Make fails due to this problem, you could wait for
2383 a few seconds and then invoke Make again. In one particular case,
2384 waiting for 10 or more seconds between the two Make invocations seemed
2385 to work around the problem.
2386
2387 Similar problems can happen if your machine NFS-mounts a directory
2388 onto itself. Suppose the Emacs sources live in `/usr/local/src' and
2389 you are working on the host called `marvin'. Then an entry in the
2390 `/etc/fstab' file like the following is asking for trouble:
2391
2392 marvin:/usr/local/src /usr/local/src ...options.omitted...
2393
2394 The solution is to remove this line from `etc/fstab'.
2395
2396 *** Building a 32-bit executable on a 64-bit GNU/Linux architecture.
2397
2398 First ensure that the necessary 32-bit system libraries and include
2399 files are installed. Then use:
2400
2401 env CC="gcc -m32" ./configure --build=i386-linux-gnu \
2402 --x-libraries=/usr/X11R6/lib
2403
2404 (using the location of the 32-bit X libraries on your system).
2405
2406 *** Building the Cygwin port for MS-Windows can fail with some GCC versions
2407
2408 Building Emacs 22 with Cygwin builds of GCC 3.4.4-1 and 3.4.4-2 is
2409 reported to either fail or cause Emacs to segfault at run time. In
2410 addition, the Cygwin GCC 3.4.4-2 has problems with generating debug
2411 info. Cygwin users are advised not to use these versions of GCC for
2412 compiling Emacs. GCC versions 4.0.3, 4.0.4, 4.1.1, and 4.1.2
2413 reportedly build a working Cygwin binary of Emacs, so we recommend
2414 these GCC versions. Note that these versions of GCC, 4.0.3, 4.0.4,
2415 4.1.1, and 4.1.2, are currently the _only_ versions known to succeed
2416 in building Emacs (as of v22.1).
2417
2418 *** Building the native MS-Windows port fails due to unresolved externals
2419
2420 The linker error messages look like this:
2421
2422 oo-spd/i386/ctags.o:ctags.c:(.text+0x156e): undefined reference to `_imp__re_set_syntax'
2423 collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
2424
2425 This happens because GCC finds an incompatible header regex.h
2426 somewhere on the include path, before the version of regex.h supplied
2427 with Emacs. One such incompatible version of regex.h is part of the
2428 GnuWin32 Regex package.
2429
2430 The solution is to remove the incompatible regex.h from the include
2431 path, when compiling Emacs. Alternatively, re-run the configure.bat
2432 script with the "-isystem C:/GnuWin32/include" switch (adapt for your
2433 system's place where you keep the GnuWin32 include files) -- this will
2434 cause the compiler to search headers in the directories specified by
2435 the Emacs Makefile _before_ it looks in the GnuWin32 include
2436 directories.
2437
2438 *** Building the native MS-Windows port with Cygwin GCC can fail.
2439
2440 Emacs may not build using some Cygwin builds of GCC, such as Cygwin
2441 version 1.1.8, using the default configure settings. It appears to be
2442 necessary to specify the -mwin32 flag when compiling, and define
2443 __MSVCRT__, like so:
2444
2445 configure --with-gcc --cflags -mwin32 --cflags -D__MSVCRT__
2446
2447 *** Building the MS-Windows port fails with a CreateProcess failure.
2448
2449 Some versions of mingw32 make on some versions of Windows do not seem
2450 to detect the shell correctly. Try "make SHELL=cmd.exe", or if that
2451 fails, try running make from Cygwin bash instead.
2452
2453 *** Building `ctags' for MS-Windows with the MinGW port of GCC fails.
2454
2455 This might happen due to a bug in the MinGW header assert.h, which
2456 defines the `assert' macro with a trailing semi-colon. The following
2457 patch to assert.h should solve this:
2458
2459 *** include/assert.h.orig Sun Nov 7 02:41:36 1999
2460 --- include/assert.h Mon Jan 29 11:49:10 2001
2461 ***************
2462 *** 41,47 ****
2463 /*
2464 * If not debugging, assert does nothing.
2465 */
2466 ! #define assert(x) ((void)0);
2467
2468 #else /* debugging enabled */
2469
2470 --- 41,47 ----
2471 /*
2472 * If not debugging, assert does nothing.
2473 */
2474 ! #define assert(x) ((void)0)
2475
2476 #else /* debugging enabled */
2477
2478
2479 *** Building the MS-Windows port with Visual Studio 2005 fails.
2480
2481 Microsoft no longer ships the single threaded version of the C library
2482 with their compiler, and the multithreaded static library is missing
2483 some functions that Microsoft have deemed non-threadsafe. The
2484 dynamically linked C library has all the functions, but there is a
2485 conflict between the versions of malloc in the DLL and in Emacs, which
2486 is not resolvable due to the way Windows does dynamic linking.
2487
2488 We recommend the use of the MinGW port of GCC for compiling Emacs, as
2489 not only does it not suffer these problems, but it is also Free
2490 software like Emacs.
2491
2492 *** Building the MS-Windows port with Visual Studio fails compiling emacs.rc
2493
2494 If the build fails with the following message then the problem
2495 described here most likely applies:
2496
2497 ../nt/emacs.rc(1) : error RC2176 : old DIB in icons\emacs.ico; pass it
2498 through SDKPAINT
2499
2500 The Emacs icon contains a high resolution PNG icon for Vista, which is
2501 not recognized by older versions of the resource compiler. There are
2502 several workarounds for this problem:
2503 1. Use Free MinGW tools to compile, which do not have this problem.
2504 2. Install the latest Windows SDK.
2505 3. Replace emacs.ico with an older or edited icon.
2506
2507 ** Linking
2508
2509 *** Building Emacs with a system compiler fails to link because of an
2510 undefined symbol such as __eprintf which does not appear in Emacs.
2511
2512 This can happen if some of the libraries linked into Emacs were built
2513 with GCC, but Emacs itself is being linked with a compiler other than
2514 GCC. Object files compiled with GCC might need some helper functions
2515 from libgcc.a, the library which comes with GCC, but the system
2516 compiler does not instruct the linker to search libgcc.a during the
2517 link stage.
2518
2519 A solution is to link with GCC, like this:
2520
2521 make CC=gcc
2522
2523 Since the .o object files already exist, this will not recompile Emacs
2524 with GCC, but just restart by trying again to link temacs.
2525
2526 *** Sun with acc: Link failure when using acc on a Sun.
2527
2528 To use acc, you need additional options just before the libraries, such as
2529
2530 /usr/lang/SC2.0.1/values-Xt.o -L/usr/lang/SC2.0.1/cg87 -L/usr/lang/SC2.0.1
2531
2532 and you need to add -lansi just before -lc.
2533
2534 The precise file names depend on the compiler version, so we
2535 cannot easily arrange to supply them.
2536
2537 *** Linking says that the functions insque and remque are undefined.
2538
2539 Change oldXMenu/Makefile by adding insque.o to the variable OBJS.
2540
2541 *** `tparam' reported as a multiply-defined symbol when linking with ncurses.
2542
2543 This problem results from an incompatible change in ncurses, in
2544 version 1.9.9e approximately. This version is unable to provide a
2545 definition of tparm without also defining tparam. This is also
2546 incompatible with Terminfo; as a result, the Emacs Terminfo support
2547 does not work with this version of ncurses.
2548
2549 The fix is to install a newer version of ncurses, such as version 4.2.
2550
2551 ** Bootstrapping
2552
2553 Bootstrapping (compiling the .el files) is normally only necessary
2554 with CVS builds, since the .elc files are pre-compiled in releases.
2555
2556 *** "No rule to make target" with Ubuntu 8.04 make 3.81-3build1
2557
2558 Compiling the lisp files fails at random places, complaining:
2559 "No rule to make target `/path/to/some/lisp.elc'".
2560 The causes of this problem are not understood. Using GNU make 3.81 compiled
2561 from source, rather than the Ubuntu version, worked. See Bug#327,821.
2562
2563 ** Dumping
2564
2565 *** Linux: Segfault during `make bootstrap' under certain recent versions of the Linux kernel.
2566
2567 With certain recent Linux kernels (like the one of Red Hat Fedora Core
2568 1 and newer), the new "Exec-shield" functionality is enabled by default, which
2569 creates a different memory layout that breaks the emacs dumper. Emacs tries
2570 to handle this at build time, but if the workaround used fails, these
2571 instructions can be useful.
2572 The work-around explained here is not enough on Fedora Core 4 (and possible
2573 newer). Read the next item.
2574
2575 Configure can overcome the problem of exec-shield if the architecture is
2576 x86 and the program setarch is present. On other architectures no
2577 workaround is known.
2578
2579 You can check the Exec-shield state like this:
2580
2581 cat /proc/sys/kernel/exec-shield
2582
2583 It returns non-zero when Exec-shield is enabled, 0 otherwise. Please
2584 read your system documentation for more details on Exec-shield and
2585 associated commands. Exec-shield can be turned off with this command:
2586
2587 echo "0" > /proc/sys/kernel/exec-shield
2588
2589 When Exec-shield is enabled, building Emacs will segfault during the
2590 execution of this command:
2591
2592 ./temacs --batch --load loadup [dump|bootstrap]
2593
2594 To work around this problem, it is necessary to temporarily disable
2595 Exec-shield while building Emacs, or, on x86, by using the `setarch'
2596 command when running temacs like this:
2597
2598 setarch i386 ./temacs --batch --load loadup [dump|bootstrap]
2599
2600
2601 *** Fedora Core 4 GNU/Linux: Segfault during dumping.
2602
2603 In addition to exec-shield explained above "Linux: Segfault during
2604 `make bootstrap' under certain recent versions of the Linux kernel"
2605 item, Linux kernel shipped with Fedora Core 4 randomizes the virtual
2606 address space of a process. As the result dumping may fail even if
2607 you turn off exec-shield. In this case, use the -R option to the setarch
2608 command:
2609
2610 setarch i386 -R ./temacs --batch --load loadup [dump|bootstrap]
2611
2612 or
2613
2614 setarch i386 -R make bootstrap
2615
2616 *** Fatal signal in the command temacs -l loadup inc dump.
2617
2618 This command is the final stage of building Emacs. It is run by the
2619 Makefile in the src subdirectory.
2620
2621 It has been known to get fatal errors due to insufficient swapping
2622 space available on the machine.
2623
2624 On 68000s, it has also happened because of bugs in the
2625 subroutine `alloca'. Verify that `alloca' works right, even
2626 for large blocks (many pages).
2627
2628 *** test-distrib says that the distribution has been clobbered.
2629 *** or, temacs prints "Command key out of range 0-127".
2630 *** or, temacs runs and dumps emacs, but emacs totally fails to work.
2631 *** or, temacs gets errors dumping emacs.
2632
2633 This can be because the .elc files have been garbled. Do not be
2634 fooled by the fact that most of a .elc file is text: these are
2635 binary files and can contain all 256 byte values.
2636
2637 In particular `shar' cannot be used for transmitting GNU Emacs.
2638 It typically truncates "lines". What appear to be "lines" in
2639 a binary file can of course be of any length. Even once `shar'
2640 itself is made to work correctly, `sh' discards null characters
2641 when unpacking the shell archive.
2642
2643 I have also seen character \177 changed into \377. I do not know
2644 what transfer means caused this problem. Various network
2645 file transfer programs are suspected of clobbering the high bit.
2646
2647 If you have a copy of Emacs that has been damaged in its
2648 nonprinting characters, you can fix them:
2649
2650 1) Record the names of all the .elc files.
2651 2) Delete all the .elc files.
2652 3) Recompile alloc.c with a value of PURESIZE twice as large.
2653 (See puresize.h.) You might as well save the old alloc.o.
2654 4) Remake emacs. It should work now.
2655 5) Running emacs, do Meta-x byte-compile-file repeatedly
2656 to recreate all the .elc files that used to exist.
2657 You may need to increase the value of the variable
2658 max-lisp-eval-depth to succeed in running the compiler interpreted
2659 on certain .el files. 400 was sufficient as of last report.
2660 6) Reinstall the old alloc.o (undoing changes to alloc.c if any)
2661 and remake temacs.
2662 7) Remake emacs. It should work now, with valid .elc files.
2663
2664 *** temacs prints "Pure Lisp storage exhausted".
2665
2666 This means that the Lisp code loaded from the .elc and .el
2667 files during temacs -l loadup inc dump took up more
2668 space than was allocated.
2669
2670 This could be caused by
2671 1) adding code to the preloaded Lisp files
2672 2) adding more preloaded files in loadup.el
2673 3) having a site-init.el or site-load.el which loads files.
2674 Note that ANY site-init.el or site-load.el is nonstandard;
2675 if you have received Emacs from some other site
2676 and it contains a site-init.el or site-load.el file, consider
2677 deleting that file.
2678 4) getting the wrong .el or .elc files
2679 (not from the directory you expected).
2680 5) deleting some .elc files that are supposed to exist.
2681 This would cause the source files (.el files) to be
2682 loaded instead. They take up more room, so you lose.
2683 6) a bug in the Emacs distribution which underestimates
2684 the space required.
2685
2686 If the need for more space is legitimate, change the definition
2687 of PURESIZE in puresize.h.
2688
2689 But in some of the cases listed above, this problem is a consequence
2690 of something else that is wrong. Be sure to check and fix the real
2691 problem.
2692
2693 *** Linux: Emacs crashes when dumping itself on Mac PPC running Yellow Dog GNU/Linux.
2694
2695 The crashes happen inside the function Fmake_symbol; here's a typical
2696 C backtrace printed by GDB:
2697
2698 0x190c0c0 in Fmake_symbol ()
2699 (gdb) where
2700 #0 0x190c0c0 in Fmake_symbol ()
2701 #1 0x1942ca4 in init_obarray ()
2702 #2 0x18b3500 in main ()
2703 #3 0x114371c in __libc_start_main (argc=5, argv=0x7ffff5b4, envp=0x7ffff5cc,
2704
2705 This could happen because GCC version 2.95 and later changed the base
2706 of the load address to 0x10000000. Emacs needs to be told about this,
2707 but we currently cannot do that automatically, because that breaks
2708 other versions of GNU/Linux on the MacPPC. Until we find a way to
2709 distinguish between the Yellow Dog and the other varieties of
2710 GNU/Linux systems on the PPC, you will have to manually uncomment the
2711 following section near the end of the file src/m/macppc.h in the Emacs
2712 distribution:
2713
2714 #if 0 /* This breaks things on PPC GNU/Linux except for Yellowdog,
2715 even with identical GCC, as, ld. Let's take it out until we
2716 know what's really going on here. */
2717 /* GCC 2.95 and newer on GNU/Linux PPC changed the load address to
2718 0x10000000. */
2719 #if defined __linux__
2720 #if __GNUC__ > 2 || (__GNUC__ == 2 && __GNUC_MINOR__ >= 95)
2721 #define DATA_SEG_BITS 0x10000000
2722 #endif
2723 #endif
2724 #endif /* 0 */
2725
2726 Remove the "#if 0" and "#endif" directives which surround this, save
2727 the file, and then reconfigure and rebuild Emacs. The dumping process
2728 should now succeed.
2729
2730 *** OpenBSD 4.0 macppc: Segfault during dumping.
2731
2732 The build aborts with signal 11 when the command `./temacs --batch
2733 --load loadup bootstrap' tries to load files.el. A workaround seems
2734 to be to reduce the level of compiler optimization used during the
2735 build (from -O2 to -O1). It is possible this is an OpenBSD
2736 GCC problem specific to the macppc architecture, possibly only
2737 occurring with older versions of GCC (e.g. 3.3.5).
2738
2739 *** openSUSE 10.3: Segfault in bcopy during dumping.
2740
2741 This is due to a bug in the bcopy implementation in openSUSE 10.3.
2742 It is/will be fixed in an openSUSE update.
2743
2744 ** Installation
2745
2746 *** Installing Emacs gets an error running `install-info'.
2747
2748 You need to install a recent version of Texinfo; that package
2749 supplies the `install-info' command.
2750
2751 *** Installing to a directory with spaces in the name fails.
2752
2753 For example, if you call configure with a directory-related option
2754 with spaces in the value, eg --enable-locallisppath='/path/with\ spaces'.
2755 Using directory paths with spaces is not supported at this time: you
2756 must re-configure without using spaces.
2757
2758 *** Installing to a directory with non-ASCII characters in the name fails.
2759
2760 Installation may fail, or the Emacs executable may not start
2761 correctly, if a directory name containing non-ASCII characters is used
2762 as a `configure' argument (e.g. `--prefix'). The problem can also
2763 occur if a non-ASCII directory is specified in the EMACSLOADPATH
2764 envvar.
2765
2766 *** On Solaris, use GNU Make when installing an out-of-tree build
2767
2768 The Emacs configuration process allows you to configure the
2769 build environment so that you can build emacs in a directory
2770 outside of the distribution tree. When installing Emacs from an
2771 out-of-tree build directory on Solaris, you may need to use GNU
2772 make. The make programs bundled with Solaris support the VPATH
2773 macro but use it differently from the way the VPATH macro is
2774 used by GNU make. The differences will cause the "make install"
2775 step to fail, leaving you with an incomplete emacs
2776 installation. GNU make is available in /usr/sfw/bin on Solaris
2777 10 and can be installed as /opt/sfw/bin/gmake from the Solaris 9
2778 Software Companion CDROM.
2779
2780 The problems due to the VPATH processing differences affect only
2781 out of tree builds so, if you are on a Solaris installation
2782 without GNU make, you can install Emacs completely by installing
2783 from a build environment using the original emacs distribution tree.
2784
2785 ** First execution
2786
2787 *** Emacs binary is not in executable format, and cannot be run.
2788
2789 This was reported to happen when Emacs is built in a directory mounted
2790 via NFS, for some combinations of NFS client and NFS server.
2791 Usually, the file `emacs' produced in these cases is full of
2792 binary null characters, and the `file' utility says:
2793
2794 emacs: ASCII text, with no line terminators
2795
2796 We don't know what exactly causes this failure. A work-around is to
2797 build Emacs in a directory on a local disk.
2798
2799 *** The dumped Emacs crashes when run, trying to write pure data.
2800
2801 Two causes have been seen for such problems.
2802
2803 1) On a system where getpagesize is not a system call, it is defined
2804 as a macro. If the definition (in both unexec.c and malloc.c) is wrong,
2805 it can cause problems like this. You might be able to find the correct
2806 value in the man page for a.out (5).
2807
2808 2) Some systems allocate variables declared static among the
2809 initialized variables. Emacs makes all initialized variables in most
2810 of its files pure after dumping, but the variables declared static and
2811 not initialized are not supposed to be pure. On these systems you
2812 may need to add "#define static" to the m- or the s- file.
2813
2814 * Runtime problems on legacy systems
2815
2816 This section covers bugs reported on very old hardware or software.
2817 If you are using hardware and an operating system shipped after 2000,
2818 it is unlikely you will see any of these.
2819
2820 *** Sunos 5.3: Subprocesses remain, hanging but not zombies.
2821
2822 A bug in Sunos 5.3 causes Emacs subprocesses to remain after Emacs
2823 exits. Sun patch # 101415-02 is part of the fix for this, but it only
2824 applies to ptys, and doesn't fix the problem with subprocesses
2825 communicating through pipes.
2826
2827 *** OPENSTEP
2828
2829 **** OPENSTEP 4.2: Compiling syntax.c with gcc 2.7.2.1 fails.
2830
2831 The compiler was reported to crash while compiling syntax.c with the
2832 following message:
2833
2834 cc: Internal compiler error: program cc1obj got fatal signal 11
2835
2836 To work around this, replace the macros UPDATE_SYNTAX_TABLE_FORWARD,
2837 INC_BOTH, and INC_FROM with functions. To this end, first define 3
2838 functions, one each for every macro. Here's an example:
2839
2840 static int update_syntax_table_forward(int from)
2841 {
2842 return(UPDATE_SYNTAX_TABLE_FORWARD(from));
2843 }/*update_syntax_table_forward*/
2844
2845 Then replace all references to UPDATE_SYNTAX_TABLE_FORWARD in syntax.c
2846 with a call to the function update_syntax_table_forward.
2847
2848 *** Solaris 2.x
2849
2850 **** Strange results from format %d in a few cases, on a Sun.
2851
2852 Sun compiler version SC3.0 has been found to miscompile part of
2853 editfns.c. The workaround is to compile with some other compiler such
2854 as GCC.
2855
2856 **** On Solaris, Emacs dumps core if lisp-complete-symbol is called.
2857
2858 If you compile Emacs with the -fast or -xO4 option with version 3.0.2
2859 of the Sun C compiler, Emacs dumps core when lisp-complete-symbol is
2860 called. The problem does not happen if you compile with GCC.
2861
2862 **** On Solaris, Emacs crashes if you use (display-time).
2863
2864 This can happen if you configure Emacs without specifying the precise
2865 version of Solaris that you are using.
2866
2867 **** Solaris 2.x: GCC complains "64 bit integer types not supported".
2868
2869 This suggests that GCC is not installed correctly. Most likely you
2870 are using GCC 2.7.2.3 (or earlier) on Solaris 2.6 (or later); this
2871 does not work without patching. To run GCC 2.7.2.3 on Solaris 2.6 or
2872 later, you must patch fixinc.svr4 and reinstall GCC from scratch as
2873 described in the Solaris FAQ
2874 <http://www.wins.uva.nl/pub/solaris/solaris2.html>. A better fix is
2875 to upgrade to GCC 2.8.1 or later.
2876
2877 **** Solaris 2.7: Building Emacs with WorkShop Compilers 5.0 98/12/15
2878 C 5.0 failed, apparently with non-default CFLAGS, most probably due to
2879 compiler bugs. Using Sun Solaris 2.7 Sun WorkShop 6 update 1 C
2880 release was reported to work without problems. It worked OK on
2881 another system with Solaris 8 using apparently the same 5.0 compiler
2882 and the default CFLAGS.
2883
2884 **** Solaris 2.x: Emacs dumps core when built with Motif.
2885
2886 The Solaris Motif libraries are buggy, at least up through Solaris 2.5.1.
2887 Install the current Motif runtime library patch appropriate for your host.
2888 (Make sure the patch is current; some older patch versions still have the bug.)
2889 You should install the other patches recommended by Sun for your host, too.
2890 You can obtain Sun patches from ftp://sunsolve.sun.com/pub/patches/;
2891 look for files with names ending in `.PatchReport' to see which patches
2892 are currently recommended for your host.
2893
2894 On Solaris 2.6, Emacs is said to work with Motif when Solaris patch
2895 105284-12 is installed, but fail when 105284-15 is installed.
2896 105284-18 might fix it again.
2897
2898 **** Solaris 2.6 and 7: the Compose key does not work.
2899
2900 This is a bug in Motif in Solaris. Supposedly it has been fixed for
2901 the next major release of Solaris. However, if someone with Sun
2902 support complains to Sun about the bug, they may release a patch.
2903 If you do this, mention Sun bug #4188711.
2904
2905 One workaround is to use a locale that allows non-ASCII characters.
2906 For example, before invoking emacs, set the LC_ALL environment
2907 variable to "en_US" (American English). The directory /usr/lib/locale
2908 lists the supported locales; any locale other than "C" or "POSIX"
2909 should do.
2910
2911 pen@lysator.liu.se says (Feb 1998) that the Compose key does work
2912 if you link with the MIT X11 libraries instead of the Solaris X11
2913 libraries.
2914
2915 *** HP/UX versions before 11.0
2916
2917 HP/UX 10 was end-of-lifed in May 1999.
2918
2919 *** HP/UX 10: Large file support is disabled.
2920
2921 See the comments in src/s/hpux10-20.h.
2922
2923 *** HP/UX: Emacs is slow using X11R5.
2924
2925 This happens if you use the MIT versions of the X libraries--it
2926 doesn't run as fast as HP's version. People sometimes use the version
2927 because they see the HP version doesn't have the libraries libXaw.a,
2928 libXmu.a, libXext.a and others. HP/UX normally doesn't come with
2929 those libraries installed. To get good performance, you need to
2930 install them and rebuild Emacs.
2931
2932 *** Digital Unix 4.0: Garbled display on non-X terminals when Emacs runs.
2933
2934 So far it appears that running `tset' triggers this problem (when TERM
2935 is vt100, at least). If you do not run `tset', then Emacs displays
2936 properly. If someone can tell us precisely which effect of running
2937 `tset' actually causes the problem, we may be able to implement a fix
2938 in Emacs.
2939
2940 *** SVr4
2941
2942 **** SVr4: On some variants of SVR4, Emacs does not work at all with X.
2943
2944 Try defining BROKEN_FIONREAD in your config.h file. If this solves
2945 the problem, please send a bug report to tell us this is needed; be
2946 sure to say exactly what type of machine and system you are using.
2947
2948 **** SVr4: After running emacs once, subsequent invocations crash.
2949
2950 Some versions of SVR4 have a serious bug in the implementation of the
2951 mmap () system call in the kernel; this causes emacs to run correctly
2952 the first time, and then crash when run a second time.
2953
2954 Contact your vendor and ask for the mmap bug fix; in the mean time,
2955 you may be able to work around the problem by adding a line to your
2956 operating system description file (whose name is reported by the
2957 configure script) that reads:
2958 #define SYSTEM_MALLOC
2959 This makes Emacs use memory less efficiently, but seems to work around
2960 the kernel bug.
2961
2962 *** SCO Unix and UnixWare
2963
2964 **** SCO 4.2.0: Regular expressions matching bugs on SCO systems.
2965
2966 On SCO, there are problems in regexp matching when Emacs is compiled
2967 with the system compiler. The compiler version is "Microsoft C
2968 version 6", SCO 4.2.0h Dev Sys Maintenance Supplement 01/06/93; Quick
2969 C Compiler Version 1.00.46 (Beta). The solution is to compile with
2970 GCC.
2971
2972 **** UnixWare 2.1: Error 12 (virtual memory exceeded) when dumping Emacs.
2973
2974 Paul Abrahams (abrahams@acm.org) reports that with the installed
2975 virtual memory settings for UnixWare 2.1.2, an Error 12 occurs during
2976 the "make" that builds Emacs, when running temacs to dump emacs. That
2977 error indicates that the per-process virtual memory limit has been
2978 exceeded. The default limit is probably 32MB. Raising the virtual
2979 memory limit to 40MB should make it possible to finish building Emacs.
2980
2981 You can do this with the command `ulimit' (sh) or `limit' (csh).
2982 But you have to be root to do it.
2983
2984 According to Martin Sohnius, you can also retune this in the kernel:
2985
2986 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune SDATLIM 33554432 ## soft data size limit
2987 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune HDATLIM 33554432 ## hard "
2988 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune SVMMSIZE unlimited ## soft process size limit
2989 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune HVMMSIZE unlimited ## hard "
2990 # /etc/conf/bin/idbuild -B
2991
2992 (He recommends you not change the stack limit, though.)
2993 These changes take effect when you reboot.
2994
2995 ** Windows 3.1, 95, 98, and ME
2996
2997 *** MS-Windows NT/95: Problems running Perl under Emacs
2998
2999 `perl -de 0' just hangs when executed in an Emacs subshell.
3000 The fault lies with Perl (indirectly with Windows NT/95).
3001
3002 The problem is that the Perl debugger explicitly opens a connection to
3003 "CON", which is the DOS/NT equivalent of "/dev/tty", for interacting
3004 with the user.
3005
3006 On Unix, this is okay, because Emacs (or the shell?) creates a
3007 pseudo-tty so that /dev/tty is really the pipe Emacs is using to
3008 communicate with the subprocess.
3009
3010 On NT, this fails because CON always refers to the handle for the
3011 relevant console (approximately equivalent to a tty), and cannot be
3012 redirected to refer to the pipe Emacs assigned to the subprocess as
3013 stdin.
3014
3015 A workaround is to modify perldb.pl to use STDIN/STDOUT instead of CON.
3016
3017 For Perl 4:
3018
3019 *** PERL/LIB/PERLDB.PL.orig Wed May 26 08:24:18 1993
3020 --- PERL/LIB/PERLDB.PL Mon Jul 01 15:28:16 1996
3021 ***************
3022 *** 68,74 ****
3023 $rcfile=".perldb";
3024 }
3025 else {
3026 ! $console = "con";
3027 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
3028 }
3029
3030 --- 68,74 ----
3031 $rcfile=".perldb";
3032 }
3033 else {
3034 ! $console = "";
3035 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
3036 }
3037
3038
3039 For Perl 5:
3040 *** perl/5.001/lib/perl5db.pl.orig Sun Jun 04 21:13:40 1995
3041 --- perl/5.001/lib/perl5db.pl Mon Jul 01 17:00:08 1996
3042 ***************
3043 *** 22,28 ****
3044 $rcfile=".perldb";
3045 }
3046 elsif (-e "con") {
3047 ! $console = "con";
3048 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
3049 }
3050 else {
3051 --- 22,28 ----
3052 $rcfile=".perldb";
3053 }
3054 elsif (-e "con") {
3055 ! $console = "";
3056 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
3057 }
3058 else {
3059
3060 *** MS-Windows 95: Alt-f6 does not get through to Emacs.
3061
3062 This character seems to be trapped by the kernel in Windows 95.
3063 You can enter M-f6 by typing ESC f6.
3064
3065 *** MS-Windows 95/98/ME: subprocesses do not terminate properly.
3066
3067 This is a limitation of the Operating System, and can cause problems
3068 when shutting down Windows. Ensure that all subprocesses are exited
3069 cleanly before exiting Emacs. For more details, see the FAQ at
3070 http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/windows/.
3071
3072 *** MS-Windows 95/98/ME: crashes when Emacs invokes non-existent programs.
3073
3074 When a program you are trying to run is not found on the PATH,
3075 Windows might respond by crashing or locking up your system. In
3076 particular, this has been reported when trying to compile a Java
3077 program in JDEE when javac.exe is installed, but not on the system
3078 PATH.
3079
3080 ** MS-DOS
3081
3082 *** When compiling with DJGPP on MS-Windows NT or later, "config msdos" fails.
3083
3084 If the error message is "VDM has been already loaded", this is because
3085 Windows has a program called `redir.exe' that is incompatible with a
3086 program by the same name supplied with DJGPP, which is used by
3087 config.bat. To resolve this, move the DJGPP's `bin' subdirectory to
3088 the front of your PATH environment variable.
3089
3090 *** When Emacs compiled with DJGPP runs on Windows 2000 and later, it cannot
3091 find your HOME directory.
3092
3093 This was reported to happen when you click on "Save for future
3094 sessions" button in a Customize buffer. You might see an error
3095 message like this one:
3096
3097 basic-save-buffer-2: c:/FOO/BAR/~dosuser/: no such directory
3098
3099 (The telltale sign is the "~USER" part at the end of the directory
3100 Emacs complains about, where USER is your username or the literal
3101 string "dosuser", which is the default username set up by the DJGPP
3102 startup file DJGPP.ENV.)
3103
3104 This happens when the functions `user-login-name' and
3105 `user-real-login-name' return different strings for your username as
3106 Emacs sees it. To correct this, make sure both USER and USERNAME
3107 environment variables are set to the same value. Windows 2000 and
3108 later sets USERNAME, so if you want to keep that, make sure USER is
3109 set to the same value. If you don't want to set USER globally, you
3110 can do it in the [emacs] section of your DJGPP.ENV file.
3111
3112 *** When Emacs compiled with DJGPP runs on Vista, it runs out of memory.
3113
3114 If Emacs running on Vista displays "!MEM FULL!" in the mode line, you
3115 are hitting the memory allocation bugs in the Vista DPMI server. See
3116 msdos/INSTALL for how to work around these bugs (search for "Vista").
3117
3118 *** When compiling with DJGPP on MS-Windows 95, Make fails for some targets
3119 like make-docfile.
3120
3121 This can happen if long file name support (the setting of environment
3122 variable LFN) when Emacs distribution was unpacked and during
3123 compilation are not the same. See msdos/INSTALL for the explanation
3124 of how to avoid this problem.
3125
3126 *** Emacs compiled with DJGPP complains at startup:
3127
3128 "Wrong type of argument: internal-facep, msdos-menu-active-face"
3129
3130 This can happen if you define an environment variable `TERM'. Emacs
3131 on MSDOS uses an internal terminal emulator which is disabled if the
3132 value of `TERM' is anything but the string "internal". Emacs then
3133 works as if its terminal were a dumb glass teletype that doesn't
3134 support faces. To work around this, arrange for `TERM' to be
3135 undefined when Emacs runs. The best way to do that is to add an
3136 [emacs] section to the DJGPP.ENV file which defines an empty value for
3137 `TERM'; this way, only Emacs gets the empty value, while the rest of
3138 your system works as before.
3139
3140 *** MS-DOS: Emacs crashes at startup.
3141
3142 Some users report that Emacs 19.29 requires dpmi memory management,
3143 and crashes on startup if the system does not have it. We don't yet
3144 know why this happens--perhaps these machines don't have enough real
3145 memory, or perhaps something is wrong in Emacs or the compiler.
3146 However, arranging to use dpmi support is a workaround.
3147
3148 You can find out if you have a dpmi host by running go32 without
3149 arguments; it will tell you if it uses dpmi memory. For more
3150 information about dpmi memory, consult the djgpp FAQ. (djgpp
3151 is the GNU C compiler as packaged for MSDOS.)
3152
3153 Compiling Emacs under MSDOS is extremely sensitive for proper memory
3154 configuration. If you experience problems during compilation, consider
3155 removing some or all memory resident programs (notably disk caches)
3156 and make sure that your memory managers are properly configured. See
3157 the djgpp faq for configuration hints.
3158
3159 *** Emacs compiled with DJGPP for MS-DOS/MS-Windows cannot access files
3160 in the directory with the special name `dev' under the root of any
3161 drive, e.g. `c:/dev'.
3162
3163 This is an unfortunate side-effect of the support for Unix-style
3164 device names such as /dev/null in the DJGPP runtime library. A
3165 work-around is to rename the problem directory to another name.
3166
3167 *** MS-DOS+DJGPP: Problems on MS-DOG if DJGPP v2.0 is used to compile Emacs.
3168
3169 There are two DJGPP library bugs which cause problems:
3170
3171 * Running `shell-command' (or `compile', or `grep') you get
3172 `Searching for program: permission denied (EACCES), c:/command.com';
3173 * After you shell to DOS, Ctrl-Break kills Emacs.
3174
3175 To work around these bugs, you can use two files in the msdos
3176 subdirectory: `is_exec.c' and `sigaction.c'. Compile them and link
3177 them into the Emacs executable `temacs'; then they will replace the
3178 incorrect library functions.
3179
3180 *** MS-DOS: Emacs compiled for MSDOS cannot find some Lisp files, or other
3181 run-time support files, when long filename support is enabled.
3182
3183 Usually, this problem will manifest itself when Emacs exits
3184 immediately after flashing the startup screen, because it cannot find
3185 the Lisp files it needs to load at startup. Redirect Emacs stdout
3186 and stderr to a file to see the error message printed by Emacs.
3187
3188 Another manifestation of this problem is that Emacs is unable to load
3189 the support for editing program sources in languages such as C and
3190 Lisp.
3191
3192 This can happen if the Emacs distribution was unzipped without LFN
3193 support, thus causing long filenames to be truncated to the first 6
3194 characters and a numeric tail that Windows 95 normally attaches to it.
3195 You should unzip the files again with a utility that supports long
3196 filenames (such as djtar from DJGPP or InfoZip's UnZip program
3197 compiled with DJGPP v2). The file msdos/INSTALL explains this issue
3198 in more detail.
3199
3200 Another possible reason for such failures is that Emacs compiled for
3201 MSDOS is used on Windows NT, where long file names are not supported
3202 by this version of Emacs, but the distribution was unpacked by an
3203 unzip program that preserved the long file names instead of truncating
3204 them to DOS 8+3 limits. To be useful on NT, the MSDOS port of Emacs
3205 must be unzipped by a DOS utility, so that long file names are
3206 properly truncated.
3207
3208 ** Archaic window managers and toolkits
3209
3210 *** OpenLook: Under OpenLook, the Emacs window disappears when you type M-q.
3211
3212 Some versions of the Open Look window manager interpret M-q as a quit
3213 command for whatever window you are typing at. If you want to use
3214 Emacs with that window manager, you should try to configure the window
3215 manager to use some other command. You can disable the
3216 shortcut keys entirely by adding this line to ~/.OWdefaults:
3217
3218 OpenWindows.WindowMenuAccelerators: False
3219
3220 **** twm: A position you specified in .Xdefaults is ignored, using twm.
3221
3222 twm normally ignores "program-specified" positions.
3223 You can tell it to obey them with this command in your `.twmrc' file:
3224
3225 UsePPosition "on" #allow clients to request a position
3226
3227 ** Bugs related to old DEC hardware
3228
3229 *** The Compose key on a DEC keyboard does not work as Meta key.
3230
3231 This shell command should fix it:
3232
3233 xmodmap -e 'keycode 0xb1 = Meta_L'
3234
3235 *** Keyboard input gets confused after a beep when using a DECserver
3236 as a concentrator.
3237
3238 This problem seems to be a matter of configuring the DECserver to use
3239 7 bit characters rather than 8 bit characters.
3240
3241 * Build problems on legacy systems
3242
3243 ** BSD/386 1.0: --with-x-toolkit option configures wrong.
3244
3245 This problem is due to bugs in the shell in version 1.0 of BSD/386.
3246 The workaround is to edit the configure file to use some other shell,
3247 such as bash.
3248
3249 ** Digital Unix 4.0: Emacs fails to build, giving error message
3250 Invalid dimension for the charset-ID 160
3251
3252 This is due to a bug or an installation problem in GCC 2.8.0.
3253 Installing a more recent version of GCC fixes the problem.
3254
3255 ** Digital Unix 4.0: Failure in unexec while dumping emacs.
3256
3257 This problem manifests itself as an error message
3258
3259 unexec: Bad address, writing data section to ...
3260
3261 The user suspects that this happened because his X libraries
3262 were built for an older system version,
3263
3264 ./configure --x-includes=/usr/include --x-libraries=/usr/shlib
3265
3266 made the problem go away.
3267
3268 ** SunOS: Emacs gets error message from linker on Sun.
3269
3270 If the error message says that a symbol such as `f68881_used' or
3271 `ffpa_used' or `start_float' is undefined, this probably indicates
3272 that you have compiled some libraries, such as the X libraries,
3273 with a floating point option other than the default.
3274
3275 It's not terribly hard to make this work with small changes in
3276 crt0.c together with linking with Fcrt1.o, Wcrt1.o or Mcrt1.o.
3277 However, the easiest approach is to build Xlib with the default
3278 floating point option: -fsoft.
3279
3280 ** HPUX 10.20: Emacs crashes during dumping on the HPPA machine.
3281
3282 This seems to be due to a GCC bug; it is fixed in GCC 2.8.1.
3283
3284 ** Vax C compiler bugs affecting Emacs.
3285
3286 You may get one of these problems compiling Emacs:
3287
3288 foo.c line nnn: compiler error: no table entry for op STASG
3289 foo.c: fatal error in /lib/ccom
3290
3291 These are due to bugs in the C compiler; the code is valid C.
3292 Unfortunately, the bugs are unpredictable: the same construct
3293 may compile properly or trigger one of these bugs, depending
3294 on what else is in the source file being compiled. Even changes
3295 in header files that should not affect the file being compiled
3296 can affect whether the bug happens. In addition, sometimes files
3297 that compile correctly on one machine get this bug on another machine.
3298
3299 As a result, it is hard for me to make sure this bug will not affect
3300 you. I have attempted to find and alter these constructs, but more
3301 can always appear. However, I can tell you how to deal with it if it
3302 should happen. The bug comes from having an indexed reference to an
3303 array of Lisp_Objects, as an argument in a function call:
3304 Lisp_Object *args;
3305 ...
3306 ... foo (5, args[i], ...)...
3307 putting the argument into a temporary variable first, as in
3308 Lisp_Object *args;
3309 Lisp_Object tem;
3310 ...
3311 tem = args[i];
3312 ... foo (r, tem, ...)...
3313 causes the problem to go away.
3314 The `contents' field of a Lisp vector is an array of Lisp_Objects,
3315 so you may see the problem happening with indexed references to that.
3316
3317 ** 68000 C compiler problems
3318
3319 Various 68000 compilers have different problems.
3320 These are some that have been observed.
3321
3322 *** Using value of assignment expression on union type loses.
3323 This means that x = y = z; or foo (x = z); does not work
3324 if x is of type Lisp_Object.
3325
3326 *** "cannot reclaim" error.
3327
3328 This means that an expression is too complicated. You get the correct
3329 line number in the error message. The code must be rewritten with
3330 simpler expressions.
3331
3332 *** XCONS, XSTRING, etc macros produce incorrect code.
3333
3334 If temacs fails to run at all, this may be the cause.
3335 Compile this test program and look at the assembler code:
3336
3337 struct foo { char x; unsigned int y : 24; };
3338
3339 lose (arg)
3340 struct foo arg;
3341 {
3342 test ((int *) arg.y);
3343 }
3344
3345 If the code is incorrect, your compiler has this problem.
3346 In the XCONS, etc., macros in lisp.h you must replace (a).u.val with
3347 ((a).u.val + coercedummy) where coercedummy is declared as int.
3348
3349 This problem will only happen if USE_LISP_UNION_TYPE is manually
3350 defined in lisp.h.
3351
3352 *** C compilers lose on returning unions.
3353
3354 I hear that some C compilers cannot handle returning a union type.
3355 Most of the functions in GNU Emacs return type Lisp_Object, which is
3356 defined as a union on some rare architectures.
3357
3358 This problem will only happen if USE_LISP_UNION_TYPE is manually
3359 defined in lisp.h.
3360
3361 \f
3362 This file is part of GNU Emacs.
3363
3364 GNU Emacs is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
3365 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
3366 the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
3367 (at your option) any later version.
3368
3369 GNU Emacs is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
3370 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
3371 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
3372 GNU General Public License for more details.
3373
3374 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
3375 along with GNU Emacs. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
3376
3377 \f
3378 Local variables:
3379 mode: outline
3380 paragraph-separate: "[ \f]*$"
3381 end:
3382
3383 arch-tag: 49fc0d95-88cb-4715-b21c-f27fb5a4764a