* textmodes/ispell.el (ispell-region): Adapt "done" message
[bpt/emacs.git] / etc / PROBLEMS
CommitLineData
5e14abf8
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1Known Problems with GNU Emacs
2
5b87ad55 3Copyright (C) 1987, 1988, 1989, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999,
bb65542c 4 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009
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5 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
6See the end of the file for license conditions.
7
8
a933dad1 9This file describes various problems that have been encountered
2de04022
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10in compiling, installing and running GNU Emacs. Try doing C-c C-t
11and browsing through the outline headers. (See C-h m for help on
12Outline mode.)
a933dad1 13
8589dc17 14* Mule-UCS doesn't work in Emacs 23.
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15
16It's completely redundant now, as far as we know.
17
9dc15871 18* Emacs startup failures
32364f49 19
9dc15871 20** Emacs fails to start, complaining about missing fonts.
32364f49 21
9dc15871 22A typical error message might be something like
32364f49 23
9dc15871 24 No fonts match `-*-fixed-medium-r-*--6-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1'
6b61353c 25
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26This happens because some X resource specifies a bad font family for
27Emacs to use. The possible places where this specification might be
28are:
6b61353c 29
9dc15871 30 - in your ~/.Xdefaults file
6b61353c 31
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32 - client-side X resource file, such as ~/Emacs or
33 /usr/X11R6/lib/app-defaults/Emacs or
34 /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/app-defaults/Emacs
6b61353c 35
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36One of these files might have bad or malformed specification of a
37fontset that Emacs should use. To fix the problem, you need to find
38the problematic line(s) and correct them.
6b61353c 39
9dc15871 40** Emacs aborts while starting up, only when run without X.
6b61353c 41
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42This problem often results from compiling Emacs with GCC when GCC was
43installed incorrectly. The usual error in installing GCC is to
44specify --includedir=/usr/include. Installation of GCC makes
45corrected copies of the system header files. GCC is supposed to use
46the corrected copies in preference to the original system headers.
47Specifying --includedir=/usr/include causes the original system header
48files to be used. On some systems, the definition of ioctl in the
49original system header files is invalid for ANSI C and causes Emacs
50not to work.
6b61353c 51
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52The fix is to reinstall GCC, and this time do not specify --includedir
53when you configure it. Then recompile Emacs. Specifying --includedir
54is appropriate only in very special cases and it should *never* be the
55same directory where system header files are kept.
6b61353c 56
9dc15871 57** Emacs does not start, complaining that it cannot open termcap database file.
6b61353c 58
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59If your system uses Terminfo rather than termcap (most modern
60systems do), this could happen if the proper version of
61ncurses is not visible to the Emacs configure script (i.e. it
62cannot be found along the usual path the linker looks for
63libraries). It can happen because your version of ncurses is
64obsolete, or is available only in form of binaries.
6b61353c 65
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66The solution is to install an up-to-date version of ncurses in
67the developer's form (header files, static libraries and
68symbolic links); in some GNU/Linux distributions (e.g. Debian)
69it constitutes a separate package.
6b61353c 70
9dc15871 71** Emacs 20 and later fails to load Lisp files at startup.
5b4ffca2 72
9dc15871 73The typical error message might be like this:
5b4ffca2 74
9dc15871 75 "Cannot open load file: fontset"
c763d515 76
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77This could happen if you compress the file lisp/subdirs.el. That file
78tells Emacs what are the directories where it should look for Lisp
79files. Emacs cannot work with subdirs.el compressed, since the
80Auto-compress mode it needs for this will not be loaded until later,
81when your .emacs file is processed. (The package `fontset.el' is
82required to set up fonts used to display text on window systems, and
83it's loaded very early in the startup procedure.)
f1c231c4 84
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85Similarly, any other .el file for which there's no corresponding .elc
86file could fail to load if it is compressed.
fc2938d1 87
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88The solution is to uncompress all .el files which don't have a .elc
89file.
6b61353c 90
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91Another possible reason for such failures is stale *.elc files
92lurking somewhere on your load-path. The following command will
93print any duplicate Lisp files that are present in load-path:
6b61353c 94
9dc15871 95 emacs -q -batch -f list-load-path-shadows
6b61353c 96
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97If this command prints any file names, some of these files are stale,
98and should be deleted or their directories removed from your
99load-path.
f0f62f71 100
9dc15871 101** Emacs prints an error at startup after upgrading from an earlier version.
f0f62f71 102
9dc15871 103An example of such an error is:
f0f62f71 104
9dc15871 105 x-complement-fontset-spec: "Wrong type argument: stringp, nil"
fc1bfc2a 106
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107This can be another symptom of stale *.elc files in your load-path.
108The following command will print any duplicate Lisp files that are
109present in load-path:
fc1bfc2a 110
9dc15871 111 emacs -q -batch -f list-load-path-shadows
fc1bfc2a 112
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113If this command prints any file names, some of these files are stale,
114and should be deleted or their directories removed from your
115load-path.
60f553d2 116
9dc15871 117** With X11R6.4, public-patch-3, Emacs crashes at startup.
3f82efb4 118
9dc15871 119Reportedly this patch in X fixes the problem.
3f82efb4 120
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121 --- xc/lib/X11/imInt.c~ Wed Jun 30 13:31:56 1999
122 +++ xc/lib/X11/imInt.c Thu Jul 1 15:10:27 1999
123 @@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
124 -/* $TOG: imInt.c /main/5 1998/05/30 21:11:16 kaleb $ */
125 +/* $TOG: imInt.c /main/5 1998/05/30 21:11:16 kaleb $ */
126 /******************************************************************
3f82efb4 127
3256a475 128 Copyright 1992, 1993, 1994 by FUJITSU LIMITED
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129 @@ -166,8 +166,8 @@
130 _XimMakeImName(lcd)
3256a475 131 XLCd lcd;
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132 {
133 - char* begin;
134 - char* end;
135 + char* begin = NULL;
136 + char* end = NULL;
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137 char* ret;
138 int i = 0;
139 char* ximmodifier = XIMMODIFIER;
9dc15871 140 @@ -182,7 +182,11 @@
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141 }
142 ret = Xmalloc(end - begin + 2);
143 if (ret != NULL) {
144 - (void)strncpy(ret, begin, end - begin + 1);
9dc15871 145 + if (begin != NULL) {
3256a475 146 + (void)strncpy(ret, begin, end - begin + 1);
9dc15871 147 + } else {
3256a475 148 + ret[0] = '\0';
9dc15871 149 + }
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150 ret[end - begin + 1] = '\0';
151 }
152 return ret;
3f82efb4 153
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154** Emacs crashes on startup after a glibc upgrade.
155
156This is caused by a binary incompatible change to the malloc
157implementation in glibc 2.5.90-22. As a result, Emacs binaries built
158using prior versions of glibc crash when run under 2.5.90-22.
159
0a7aab83 160This problem was first seen in pre-release versions of Fedora 7, and
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161may be fixed in the final Fedora 7 release. To stop the crash from
162happening, first try upgrading to the newest version of glibc; if this
163does not work, rebuild Emacs with the same version of glibc that you
164will run it under. For details, see
165
166https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=239344
167
9dc15871 168* Crash bugs
cc305a60 169
9dc15871 170** Emacs crashes in x-popup-dialog.
cc305a60 171
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172This can happen if the dialog widget cannot find the font it wants to
173use. You can work around the problem by specifying another font with
174an X resource--for example, `Emacs.dialog*.font: 9x15' (or any font that
175happens to exist on your X server).
fc2938d1 176
9dc15871 177** Emacs crashes when you use Bibtex mode.
fc2938d1 178
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179This happens if your system puts a small limit on stack size. You can
180prevent the problem by using a suitable shell command (often `ulimit')
181to raise the stack size limit before you run Emacs.
177c0ea7 182
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183Patches to raise the stack size limit automatically in `main'
184(src/emacs.c) on various systems would be greatly appreciated.
fc2938d1 185
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186** Error message `Symbol's value as variable is void: x', followed by
187a segmentation fault and core dump.
c93bdf05 188
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189This has been tracked to a bug in tar! People report that tar erroneously
190added a line like this at the beginning of files of Lisp code:
c93bdf05 191
9dc15871 192 x FILENAME, N bytes, B tape blocks
c93bdf05 193
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194If your tar has this problem, install GNU tar--if you can manage to
195untar it :-).
c93bdf05 196
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197** Crashes when displaying GIF images in Emacs built with version
198libungif-4.1.0 are resolved by using version libungif-4.1.0b1.
199Configure checks for the correct version, but this problem could occur
200if a binary built against a shared libungif is run on a system with an
201older version.
4593687f 202
9dc15871 203** Emacs aborts inside the function `tparam1'.
9272ccfc 204
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205This can happen if Emacs was built without terminfo support, but the
206terminal's capabilities use format that is only supported by terminfo.
207If your system has ncurses installed, this might happen if your
208version of ncurses is broken; upgrading to a newer version of ncurses
209and reconfiguring and rebuilding Emacs should solve this.
9272ccfc 210
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211All modern systems support terminfo, so even if ncurses is not the
212problem, you should look for a way to configure Emacs so that it uses
213terminfo when built.
9272ccfc 214
9dc15871 215** Emacs crashes when using the Exceed 6.0 X server.
7aa70236 216
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217If you are using Exceed 6.1, upgrade to a later version. This was
218reported to prevent the crashes.
7aa70236 219
9dc15871 220** Emacs crashes with SIGSEGV in XtInitializeWidgetClass.
7c22dc9d 221
9dc15871 222It crashes on X, but runs fine when called with option "-nw".
7c22dc9d 223
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224This has been observed when Emacs is linked with GNU ld but without passing
225the -z nocombreloc flag. Emacs normally knows to pass the -z nocombreloc
226flag when needed, so if you come across a situation where the flag is
227necessary but missing, please report it via M-x report-emacs-bug.
7c22dc9d 228
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229On platforms such as Solaris, you can also work around this problem by
230configuring your compiler to use the native linker instead of GNU ld.
7c22dc9d 231
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232** Emacs compiled with Gtk+ crashes when closing a display (x-close-connection).
233
234This happens because of bugs in Gtk+. Gtk+ 2.10 seems to be OK. See bug
235http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=85715.
236
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237** Emacs compiled with Gtk+ may loop forever if a display crashes.
238
62e466d0 239This is related to the bug above. A scenario for this is when emacs is run
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240as a server, and an X frame is created. If the X server for the frame
241crashes or exits unexpectedly and an attempt is made to create a new
242frame on another X display, then a Gtk+ error happens in the emacs
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243server that results in an endless loop. This is not fixed in any known
244Gtk+ version (2.14.4 being current).
c4c122cb 245
1020d879 246** Emacs compiled with Gtk+ crashes on startup on Cygwin.
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247
248A typical error message is
dc13f3f5 249 ***MEMORY-ERROR***: emacs[5172]: GSlice: failed to allocate 504 bytes
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250 (alignment: 512): Function not implemented
251
252Emacs supplies its own malloc, but glib (part of Gtk+) calls memalign and on
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253Cygwin, that becomes the Cygwin supplied memalign. As malloc is not the
254Cygwin malloc, the Cygwin memalign always returns ENOSYS. A fix for this
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255problem would be welcome.
256
9dc15871 257* General runtime problems
7c22dc9d 258
9dc15871 259** Lisp problems
677e7496 260
9dc15871 261*** Changes made to .el files do not take effect.
677e7496 262
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263You may have forgotten to recompile them into .elc files.
264Then the old .elc files will be loaded, and your changes
265will not be seen. To fix this, do M-x byte-recompile-directory
266and specify the directory that contains the Lisp files.
677e7496 267
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268Emacs should print a warning when loading a .elc file which is older
269than the corresponding .el file.
677e7496 270
9dc15871 271*** Watch out for .emacs files and EMACSLOADPATH environment vars.
677e7496 272
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273These control the actions of Emacs.
274~/.emacs is your Emacs init file.
275EMACSLOADPATH overrides which directories the function
276"load" will search.
677e7496 277
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278If you observe strange problems, check for these and get rid
279of them, then try again.
9ed04369 280
9dc15871 281*** Using epop3.el package causes Emacs to signal an error.
9ed04369 282
9dc15871 283The error message might be something like this:
b87207a0 284
9dc15871 285 "Lisp nesting exceeds max-lisp-eval-depth"
b87207a0 286
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287This happens because epop3 redefines the function gethash, which is a
288built-in primitive beginning with Emacs 21.1. We don't have a patch
289for epop3 that fixes this, but perhaps a newer version of epop3
290corrects that.
177c0ea7 291
9dc15871 292*** Buffers from `with-output-to-temp-buffer' get set up in Help mode.
177c0ea7 293
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294Changes in Emacs 20.4 to the hooks used by that function cause
295problems for some packages, specifically BBDB. See the function's
296documentation for the hooks involved. BBDB 2.00.06 fixes the problem.
177c0ea7 297
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298*** The Hyperbole package causes *Help* buffers not to be displayed in
299Help mode due to setting `temp-buffer-show-hook' rather than using
300`add-hook'. Using `(add-hook 'temp-buffer-show-hook
301'help-mode-maybe)' after loading Hyperbole should fix this.
177c0ea7 302
9dc15871 303** Keyboard problems
b87207a0 304
9dc15871 305*** "Compose Character" key does strange things when used as a Meta key.
61638355 306
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307If you define one key to serve as both Meta and Compose Character, you
308will get strange results. In previous Emacs versions, this "worked"
309in that the key acted as Meta--that's because the older Emacs versions
310did not try to support Compose Character. Now Emacs tries to do
311character composition in the standard X way. This means that you
312must pick one meaning or the other for any given key.
61638355 313
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314You can use both functions (Meta, and Compose Character) if you assign
315them to two different keys.
a47a639f 316
9dc15871 317*** C-z just refreshes the screen instead of suspending Emacs.
a47a639f 318
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319You are probably using a shell that doesn't support job control, even
320though the system itself is capable of it. Either use a different shell,
321or set the variable `cannot-suspend' to a non-nil value.
a47a639f 322
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323*** With M-x enable-flow-control, you need to type C-\ twice
324to do incremental search--a single C-\ gets no response.
a47a639f 325
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326This has been traced to communicating with your machine via kermit,
327with C-\ as the kermit escape character. One solution is to use
328another escape character in kermit. One user did
61638355 329
9dc15871 330 set escape-character 17
61638355 331
9dc15871 332in his .kermrc file, to make C-q the kermit escape character.
61638355 333
9dc15871 334** Mailers and other helper programs
61638355 335
9dc15871 336*** movemail compiled with POP support can't connect to the POP server.
61638355 337
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338Make sure that the `pop' entry in /etc/services, or in the services
339NIS map if your machine uses NIS, has the same port number as the
340entry on the POP server. A common error is for the POP server to be
341listening on port 110, the assigned port for the POP3 protocol, while
342the client is trying to connect on port 109, the assigned port for the
343old POP protocol.
61638355 344
9dc15871 345*** RMAIL gets error getting new mail.
61638355 346
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347RMAIL gets new mail from /usr/spool/mail/$USER using a program
348called `movemail'. This program interlocks with /bin/mail using
349the protocol defined by /bin/mail.
61638355 350
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351There are two different protocols in general use. One of them uses
352the `flock' system call. The other involves creating a lock file;
353`movemail' must be able to write in /usr/spool/mail in order to do
354this. You control which one is used by defining, or not defining,
355the macro MAIL_USE_FLOCK in config.h or the m- or s- file it includes.
356IF YOU DON'T USE THE FORM OF INTERLOCKING THAT IS NORMAL ON YOUR
357SYSTEM, YOU CAN LOSE MAIL!
61638355 358
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359If your system uses the lock file protocol, and fascist restrictions
360prevent ordinary users from writing the lock files in /usr/spool/mail,
361you may need to make `movemail' setgid to a suitable group such as
362`mail'. To do this, use the following commands (as root) after doing the
363make install.
61638355 364
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365 chgrp mail movemail
366 chmod 2755 movemail
61638355 367
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368Installation normally copies movemail from the build directory to an
369installation directory which is usually under /usr/local/lib. The
370installed copy of movemail is usually in the directory
371/usr/local/lib/emacs/VERSION/TARGET. You must change the group and
372mode of the installed copy; changing the group and mode of the build
373directory copy is ineffective.
61638355 374
9dc15871 375*** rcs2log gives you the awk error message "too many fields".
61638355 376
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377This is due to an arbitrary limit in certain versions of awk.
378The solution is to use gawk (GNU awk).
61638355 379
9dc15871 380** Problems with hostname resolution
61638355 381
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382*** Emacs fails to understand most Internet host names, even though
383the names work properly with other programs on the same system.
384*** Emacs won't work with X-windows if the value of DISPLAY is HOSTNAME:0.
20dc2215 385*** Gnus can't make contact with the specified host for nntp.
61638355 386
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387This typically happens on Suns and other systems that use shared
388libraries. The cause is that the site has installed a version of the
389shared library which uses a name server--but has not installed a
390similar version of the unshared library which Emacs uses.
556a9fad 391
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392The result is that most programs, using the shared library, work with
393the nameserver, but Emacs does not.
61638355 394
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395The fix is to install an unshared library that corresponds to what you
396installed in the shared library, and then relink Emacs.
49172314 397
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398If you have already installed the name resolver in the file libresolv.a,
399then you need to compile Emacs to use that library. The easiest way to
400do this is to add to config.h a definition of LIBS_SYSTEM, LIBS_MACHINE
401or LIB_STANDARD which uses -lresolv. Watch out! If you redefine a macro
402that is already in use in your configuration to supply some other libraries,
403be careful not to lose the others.
ed0d1d91 404
9dc15871 405Thus, you could start by adding this to config.h:
6e1a66dc 406
9dc15871 407#define LIBS_SYSTEM -lresolv
6e1a66dc 408
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409Then if this gives you an error for redefining a macro, and you see that
410the s- file defines LIBS_SYSTEM as -lfoo -lbar, you could change config.h
411again to say this:
3c418e54 412
9dc15871 413#define LIBS_SYSTEM -lresolv -lfoo -lbar
3c418e54 414
9dc15871 415*** Emacs does not know your host's fully-qualified domain name.
3c418e54 416
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417For example, (system-name) returns some variation on
418"localhost.localdomain", rather the name you were expecting.
419
9dc15871 420You need to configure your machine with a fully qualified domain name,
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421(i.e. a name with at least one ".") either in /etc/hosts,
422/etc/hostname, the NIS, or wherever your system calls for specifying
423this.
f9130829 424
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425If you cannot fix the configuration, you can set the Lisp variable
426mail-host-address to the value you want.
f9130829 427
9dc15871 428** NFS and RFS
f9130829 429
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430*** Emacs says it has saved a file, but the file does not actually
431appear on disk.
f9130829 432
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433This can happen on certain systems when you are using NFS, if the
434remote disk is full. It is due to a bug in NFS (or certain NFS
435implementations), and there is apparently nothing Emacs can do to
436detect the problem. Emacs checks the failure codes of all the system
437calls involved in writing a file, including `close'; but in the case
438where the problem occurs, none of those system calls fails.
f9130829 439
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440*** Editing files through RFS gives spurious "file has changed" warnings.
441It is possible that a change in Emacs 18.37 gets around this problem,
442but in case not, here is a description of how to fix the RFS bug that
443causes it.
f9130829 444
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445 There was a serious pair of bugs in the handling of the fsync() system
446 call in the RFS server.
f9130829 447
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448 The first is that the fsync() call is handled as another name for the
449 close() system call (!!). It appears that fsync() is not used by very
450 many programs; Emacs version 18 does an fsync() before closing files
451 to make sure that the bits are on the disk.
ed85f61d 452
9dc15871 453 This is fixed by the enclosed patch to the RFS server.
b300fd77 454
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455 The second, more serious problem, is that fsync() is treated as a
456 non-blocking system call (i.e., it's implemented as a message that
457 gets sent to the remote system without waiting for a reply). Fsync is
458 a useful tool for building atomic file transactions. Implementing it
459 as a non-blocking RPC call (when the local call blocks until the sync
460 is done) is a bad idea; unfortunately, changing it will break the RFS
461 protocol. No fix was supplied for this problem.
b300fd77 462
9dc15871 463 (as always, your line numbers may vary)
ed85f61d 464
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465 % rcsdiff -c -r1.2 serversyscall.c
466 RCS file: RCS/serversyscall.c,v
467 retrieving revision 1.2
468 diff -c -r1.2 serversyscall.c
469 *** /tmp/,RCSt1003677 Wed Jan 28 15:15:02 1987
470 --- serversyscall.c Wed Jan 28 15:14:48 1987
471 ***************
472 *** 163,169 ****
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473 /*
474 * No return sent for close or fsync!
475 */
9dc15871 476 ! if (syscall == RSYS_close || syscall == RSYS_fsync)
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477 proc->p_returnval = deallocate_fd(proc, msg->m_args[0]);
478 else
479 {
9dc15871 480 --- 166,172 ----
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481 /*
482 * No return sent for close or fsync!
483 */
9dc15871 484 ! if (syscall == RSYS_close)
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485 proc->p_returnval = deallocate_fd(proc, msg->m_args[0]);
486 else
487 {
ed85f61d 488
9dc15871 489** PSGML
fa2301bf 490
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491*** Old versions of the PSGML package use the obsolete variables
492`before-change-function' and `after-change-function', which are no
493longer used by Emacs. Please use PSGML 1.2.3 or later.
ed85f61d 494
9dc15871 495*** PSGML conflicts with sgml-mode.
d0cf6c7d 496
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497PSGML package uses the same names of some variables (like keymap)
498as built-in sgml-mode.el because it was created as a replacement
499of that package. The conflict will be shown if you load
500sgml-mode.el before psgml.el. E.g. this could happen if you edit
501HTML page and then start to work with SGML or XML file. html-mode
502(from sgml-mode.el) is used for HTML file and loading of psgml.el
503(for sgml-mode or xml-mode) will cause an error.
d0cf6c7d 504
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505*** Versions of the PSGML package earlier than 1.0.3 (stable) or 1.1.2
506(alpha) fail to parse DTD files correctly in Emacs 20.3 and later.
507Here is a patch for psgml-parse.el from PSGML 1.0.1 and, probably,
508earlier versions.
d0cf6c7d 509
9dc15871
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510--- psgml-parse.el 1998/08/21 19:18:18 1.1
511+++ psgml-parse.el 1998/08/21 19:20:00
512@@ -2383,7 +2383,7 @@ (defun sgml-push-to-entity (entity &opti
513 (setq sgml-buffer-parse-state nil))
514 (cond
515 ((stringp entity) ; a file name
516- (save-excursion (insert-file-contents entity))
517+ (insert-file-contents entity)
518 (setq default-directory (file-name-directory entity)))
519 ((consp (sgml-entity-text entity)) ; external id?
520 (let* ((extid (sgml-entity-text entity))
d0cf6c7d 521
90a02640 522** AUCTeX
c289e7f0 523
90a02640
DK
524You should not be using a version older than 11.52 if you can avoid
525it.
339b95d5 526
90a02640 527*** Emacs 21 freezes when visiting a TeX file with AUCTeX installed.
339b95d5 528
90a02640 529Emacs 21 needs version 10 or later of AUCTeX; upgrading should solve
9dc15871 530these problems.
339b95d5 531
90a02640 532*** No colors in AUCTeX with Emacs 21.
339b95d5 533
9dc15871
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534Upgrade to AUC TeX version 10 or later, and make sure it is
535byte-compiled with Emacs 21.
b87207a0 536
73639601
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537** PCL-CVS
538
539*** Lines are not updated or new lines are added in the buffer upon commit.
540
541When committing files located higher in the hierarchy than the examined
542directory, some versions of the CVS program return an ambiguous message
543from which PCL-CVS cannot extract the full location of the committed
544files. As a result, the corresponding lines in the PCL-CVS buffer are
545not updated with the new revision of these files, and new lines are
546added to the top-level directory.
547
548This can happen with CVS versions 1.12.8 and 1.12.9. Upgrade to CVS
5491.12.10 or newer to fix this problem.
550
9dc15871 551** Miscellaneous problems
f936978f 552
f5578c7f
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553*** Emacs uses 100% of CPU time
554
555This is a known problem with some versions of the Semantic package.
3f37e604
GM
556The solution is to upgrade Semantic to version 2.0pre4 (distributed
557with CEDET 1.0pre4) or later.
f5578c7f 558
9dc15871 559*** Self-documentation messages are garbled.
6fb6f3ac 560
9dc15871
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561This means that the file `etc/DOC-...' doesn't properly correspond
562with the Emacs executable. Redumping Emacs and then installing the
563corresponding pair of files should fix the problem.
b87207a0 564
9dc15871
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565*** Programs running under terminal emulator do not recognize `emacs'
566terminal type.
b87207a0 567
9dc15871
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568The cause of this is a shell startup file that sets the TERMCAP
569environment variable. The terminal emulator uses that variable to
570provide the information on the special terminal type that Emacs
571emulates.
b87207a0 572
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573Rewrite your shell startup file so that it does not change TERMCAP
574in such a case. You could use the following conditional which sets
575it only if it is undefined.
b87207a0 576
9dc15871 577 if ( ! ${?TERMCAP} ) setenv TERMCAP ~/my-termcap-file
e085efdb 578
9dc15871
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579Or you could set TERMCAP only when you set TERM--which should not
580happen in a non-login shell.
fa99e2a4 581
9dc15871 582*** In Shell mode, you get a ^M at the end of every line.
c8d9b4ee 583
9dc15871
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584This happens to people who use tcsh, because it is trying to be too
585smart. It sees that the Shell uses terminal type `unknown' and turns
586on the flag to output ^M at the end of each line. You can fix the
587problem by adding this to your .cshrc file:
fe445893 588
9dc15871 589 if ($?EMACS) then
4b1aaa8b 590 if ("$EMACS" =~ /*) then
9dc15871
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591 unset edit
592 stty -icrnl -onlcr -echo susp ^Z
593 endif
594 endif
c8d9b4ee 595
9dc15871 596*** Emacs startup on GNU/Linux systems (and possibly other systems) is slow.
d9810886 597
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598This can happen if the system is misconfigured and Emacs can't get the
599full qualified domain name, FQDN. You should have your FQDN in the
600/etc/hosts file, something like this:
a408ce18 601
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602127.0.0.1 localhost
603129.187.137.82 nuc04.t30.physik.tu-muenchen.de nuc04
a408ce18 604
9dc15871 605The way to set this up may vary on non-GNU systems.
a38f41c4 606
9dc15871 607*** Attempting to visit remote files via ange-ftp fails.
a38f41c4 608
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609If the error message is "ange-ftp-file-modtime: Specified time is not
610representable", then this could happen when `lukemftp' is used as the
611ftp client. This was reported to happen on Debian GNU/Linux, kernel
612version 2.4.3, with `lukemftp' 1.5-5, but might happen on other
613systems as well. To avoid this problem, switch to using the standard
614ftp client. On a Debian system, type
a38f41c4 615
9dc15871 616 update-alternatives --config ftp
a38f41c4 617
9dc15871 618and then choose /usr/bin/netkit-ftp.
a38f41c4 619
9dc15871 620*** JPEG images aren't displayed.
b87207a0 621
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622This has been reported when Emacs is built with jpeg-6a library.
623Upgrading to jpeg-6b solves the problem. Configure checks for the
624correct version, but this problem could occur if a binary built
625against a shared libjpeg is run on a system with an older version.
b87207a0 626
9dc15871 627*** Dired is very slow.
4e0bd469
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628
629This could happen if invocation of the `df' program takes a long
630time. Possible reasons for this include:
631
632 - ClearCase mounted filesystems (VOBs) that sometimes make `df'
633 response time extremely slow (dozens of seconds);
634
635 - slow automounters on some old versions of Unix;
636
637 - slow operation of some versions of `df'.
638
639To work around the problem, you could either (a) set the variable
640`directory-free-space-program' to nil, and thus prevent Emacs from
641invoking `df'; (b) use `df' from the GNU Fileutils package; or
642(c) use CVS, which is Free Software, instead of ClearCase.
643
9dc15871 644*** Versions of the W3 package released before Emacs 21.1 don't run
fc2938d1 645under Emacs 21. This fixed in W3 version 4.0pre.47.
a953a8d3 646
9dc15871 647*** The LDAP support rely on ldapsearch program from OpenLDAP version 2.
8f4df059
PJ
648
649It can fail to work with ldapsearch program from OpenLDAP version 1.
650Version 1 of OpenLDAP is now deprecated. If you are still using it,
651please upgrade to version 2. As a temporary workaround, remove
652argument "-x" from the variable `ldap-ldapsearch-args'.
653
9dc15871 654*** ps-print commands fail to find prologue files ps-prin*.ps.
cc2f2825
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655
656This can happen if you use an old version of X-Symbol package: it
657defines compatibility functions which trick ps-print into thinking it
658runs in XEmacs, and look for the prologue files in a wrong directory.
659
660The solution is to upgrade X-Symbol to a later version.
661
9dc15871 662*** On systems with shared libraries you might encounter run-time errors
f4f4ee4d
GM
663from the dynamic linker telling you that it is unable to find some
664shared libraries, for instance those for Xaw3d or image support.
665These errors mean Emacs has been linked with a library whose shared
666library is not in the default search path of the dynamic linker.
667
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668Similar problems could prevent Emacs from building, since the build
669process invokes Emacs several times.
670
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GM
671On many systems, it is possible to set LD_LIBRARY_PATH in your
672environment to specify additional directories where shared libraries
673can be found.
674
675Other systems allow to set LD_RUN_PATH in a similar way, but before
676Emacs is linked. With LD_RUN_PATH set, the linker will include a
677specified run-time search path in the executable.
678
8643647c 679On some systems, Emacs can crash due to problems with dynamic
c31138a1
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680linking. Specifically, on SGI Irix 6.5, crashes were reported with
681backtraces like this:
682
683 (dbx) where
684 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]
685 1 general_find_symbol(0xf49239d, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0xf0000000, 0xf4923aa, 0x0, 0x492ddb2)
686 ["/comp2/mtibuild/v73/workarea/v7.3/rld/rld.c":2140, 0xfb65a98]
687 2 resolve_symbol(0xf49239d, 0x4031184, 0x0, 0xfbdd438, 0x0, 0xf4923aa, 0x0, 0x492ddb2)
688 ["/comp2/mtibuild/v73/workarea/v7.3/rld/rld.c":1947, 0xfb657e4]
689 3 lazy_text_resolve(0xd18, 0x1a3, 0x40302b4, 0x12, 0xf0000000, 0xf4923aa, 0x0, 0x492ddb2)
690 ["/comp2/mtibuild/v73/workarea/v7.3/rld/rld.c":997, 0xfb64d44]
691 4 _rld_text_resolve(0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0)
692 ["/comp2/mtibuild/v73/workarea/v7.3/rld/rld_bridge.s":175, 0xfb6032c]
693
8643647c
RS
694(`rld' is the dynamic linker.) We don't know yet why this
695happens, but setting the environment variable LD_BIND_NOW to 1 (which
c31138a1
EZ
696forces the dynamic linker to bind all shared objects early on) seems
697to work around the problem.
698
f4f4ee4d
GM
699Please refer to the documentation of your dynamic linker for details.
700
9dc15871
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701*** You request inverse video, and the first Emacs frame is in inverse
702video, but later frames are not in inverse video.
b1739b51 703
9dc15871
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704This can happen if you have an old version of the custom library in
705your search path for Lisp packages. Use M-x list-load-path-shadows to
706check whether this is true. If it is, delete the old custom library.
b1739b51 707
9dc15871 708*** When you run Ispell from Emacs, it reports a "misalignment" error.
b1739b51 709
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710This can happen if you compiled the Ispell program to use ASCII
711characters only and then try to use it from Emacs with non-ASCII
712characters, like Latin-1. The solution is to recompile Ispell with
713support for 8-bit characters.
b1739b51 714
9dc15871
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715To see whether your Ispell program supports 8-bit characters, type
716this at your shell's prompt:
b1739b51 717
9dc15871 718 ispell -vv
b1739b51 719
9dc15871
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720and look in the output for the string "NO8BIT". If Ispell says
721"!NO8BIT (8BIT)", your speller supports 8-bit characters; otherwise it
722does not.
e9a52cfe 723
9dc15871
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724To rebuild Ispell with 8-bit character support, edit the local.h file
725in the Ispell distribution and make sure it does _not_ define NO8BIT.
726Then rebuild the speller.
e9a52cfe 727
9dc15871
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728Another possible cause for "misalignment" error messages is that the
729version of Ispell installed on your machine is old. Upgrade.
e9a52cfe 730
9dc15871
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731Yet another possibility is that you are trying to spell-check a word
732in a language that doesn't fit the dictionary you choose for use by
733Ispell. (Ispell can only spell-check one language at a time, because
734it uses a single dictionary.) Make sure that the text you are
735spelling and the dictionary used by Ispell conform to each other.
e9a52cfe 736
9dc15871
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737If your spell-checking program is Aspell, it has been reported that if
738you have a personal configuration file (normally ~/.aspell.conf), it
739can cause this error. Remove that file, execute `ispell-kill-ispell'
740in Emacs, and then try spell-checking again.
e9a52cfe 741
9dc15871 742* Runtime problems related to font handling
e9a52cfe 743
b1446261
CY
744** Characters are displayed as empty boxes or with wrong font under X.
745
746*** This can occur when two different versions of FontConfig are used.
747For example, XFree86 4.3.0 has one version and Gnome usually comes
748with a newer version. Emacs compiled with Gtk+ will then use the
749newer version. In most cases the problem can be temporarily fixed by
750stopping the application that has the error (it can be Emacs or any
751other application), removing ~/.fonts.cache-1, and then start the
752application again. If removing ~/.fonts.cache-1 and restarting
753doesn't help, the application with problem must be recompiled with the
754same version of FontConfig as the rest of the system uses. For KDE,
755it is sufficient to recompile Qt.
756
757*** Some fonts have a missing glyph and no default character. This is
758known to occur for character number 160 (no-break space) in some
759fonts, such as Lucida but Emacs sets the display table for the unibyte
760and Latin-1 version of this character to display a space.
761
762*** Some of the fonts called for in your fontset may not exist on your
763X server.
e9a52cfe 764
9dc15871
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765Each X11 font covers just a fraction of the characters that Emacs
766supports. To display the whole range of Emacs characters requires
b1446261
CY
767many different fonts, collected into a fontset. You can remedy the
768problem by installing additional fonts.
f25eb4f7 769
9dc15871 770The intlfonts distribution includes a full spectrum of fonts that can
9222ba5e
EZ
771display all the characters Emacs supports. The etl-unicode collection
772of fonts (available from <URL:ftp://ftp.x.org/contrib/fonts/> and
773<URL:ftp://ftp.xfree86.org/pub/mirror/X.Org/contrib/fonts/>) includes
774fonts that can display many Unicode characters; they can also be used
775by ps-print and ps-mule to print Unicode characters.
f25eb4f7 776
9dc15871 777** Under X11, some characters appear improperly aligned in their lines.
f25eb4f7 778
9222ba5e 779You may have bad X11 fonts; try installing the intlfonts distribution
b1446261
CY
780or the etl-unicode collection (see above).
781
782** Under X, an unexpected monospace font is used as the default font.
783
784When compiled with XFT, Emacs tries to use a default font named
785"monospace". This is a "virtual font", which the operating system
786(Fontconfig) redirects to a suitable font such as DejaVu Sans Mono.
787On some systems, there exists a font that is actually named Monospace,
788which takes over the virtual font. This is considered an operating
789system bug; see
f25eb4f7 790
b1446261 791http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2008-10/msg00696.html
edd7d3be 792
b1446261
CY
793If you encounter this problem, set the default font to a specific font
794in your .Xresources or initialization file. For instance, you can put
795the following in your .Xresources:
796
797Emacs.font: DejaVu Sans Mono 12
798
799** Certain fonts make each line take one pixel more than it should.
800
801This is because these fonts contain characters a little taller than
802the font's nominal height. Emacs needs to make sure that lines do not
803overlap.
edd7d3be 804
9dc15871 805** Loading fonts is very slow.
edd7d3be 806
9dc15871
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807You might be getting scalable fonts instead of precomputed bitmaps.
808Known scalable font directories are "Type1" and "Speedo". A font
809directory contains scalable fonts if it contains the file
810"fonts.scale".
42303132 811
9dc15871
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812If this is so, re-order your X windows font path to put the scalable
813font directories last. See the documentation of `xset' for details.
42303132 814
9dc15871
EZ
815With some X servers, it may be necessary to take the scalable font
816directories out of your path entirely, at least for Emacs 19.26.
817Changes in the future may make this unnecessary.
42303132 818
9dc15871 819** Font Lock displays portions of the buffer in incorrect faces.
42303132 820
9dc15871
EZ
821By far the most frequent cause of this is a parenthesis `(' or a brace
822`{' in column zero. Font Lock assumes that such a paren is outside of
823any comment or string. This is of course not true in general, but the
824vast majority of well-formatted program source files don't have such
825parens, and therefore this assumption is used to allow optimizations
826in Font Lock's syntactical analysis. These optimizations avoid some
827pathological cases where jit-lock, the Just-in-Time fontification
828introduced with Emacs 21.1, could significantly slow down scrolling
829through the buffer, especially scrolling backwards, and also jumping
830to the end of a very large buffer.
42303132 831
bf247b6e 832Beginning with version 22.1, a parenthesis or a brace in column zero
9dc15871
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833is highlighted in bold-red face if it is inside a string or a comment,
834to indicate that it could interfere with Font Lock (and also with
835indentation) and should be moved or escaped with a backslash.
42303132 836
9dc15871
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837If you don't use large buffers, or have a very fast machine which
838makes the delays insignificant, you can avoid the incorrect
839fontification by setting the variable
840`font-lock-beginning-of-syntax-function' to a nil value. (This must
841be done _after_ turning on Font Lock.)
f3d6f4ee 842
9dc15871
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843Another alternative is to avoid a paren in column zero. For example,
844in a Lisp string you could precede the paren with a backslash.
f3d6f4ee 845
9dc15871
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846** With certain fonts, when the cursor appears on a character, the
847character doesn't appear--you get a solid box instead.
f3d6f4ee 848
9dc15871
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849One user on a Linux-based GNU system reported that this problem went
850away with installation of a new X server. The failing server was
851XFree86 3.1.1. XFree86 3.1.2 works.
f3d6f4ee 852
9dc15871 853** Emacs pauses for several seconds when changing the default font.
9f83d8b3 854
9dc15871
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855This has been reported for fvwm 2.2.5 and the window manager of KDE
8562.1. The reason for the pause is Xt waiting for a ConfigureNotify
857event from the window manager, which the window manager doesn't send.
858Xt stops waiting after a default timeout of usually 5 seconds.
f29d1e75 859
9dc15871 860A workaround for this is to add something like
f29d1e75 861
9dc15871 862emacs.waitForWM: false
c24be289 863
9dc15871
EZ
864to your X resources. Alternatively, add `(wait-for-wm . nil)' to a
865frame's parameter list, like this:
c24be289 866
9dc15871 867 (modify-frame-parameters nil '((wait-for-wm . nil)))
b35319bf 868
9dc15871 869(this should go into your `.emacs' file).
b35319bf 870
9dc15871 871** Underlines appear at the wrong position.
b35319bf 872
9dc15871
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873This is caused by fonts having a wrong UNDERLINE_POSITION property.
874Examples are the font 7x13 on XFree prior to version 4.1, or the jmk
6fc3871e
GM
875neep font from the Debian xfonts-jmk package prior to version 3.0.17.
876To circumvent this problem, set x-use-underline-position-properties
877to nil in your `.emacs'.
b35319bf 878
9dc15871
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879To see what is the value of UNDERLINE_POSITION defined by the font,
880type `xlsfonts -lll FONT' and look at the font's UNDERLINE_POSITION
881property.
787994b7 882
9dc15871 883** When using Exceed, fonts sometimes appear too tall.
0a2eeca1 884
9dc15871
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885When the display is set to an Exceed X-server and fonts are specified
886(either explicitly with the -fn option or implicitly with X resources)
887then the fonts may appear "too tall". The actual character sizes are
888correct but there is too much vertical spacing between rows, which
889gives the appearance of "double spacing".
0a2eeca1 890
9dc15871
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891To prevent this, turn off the Exceed's "automatic font substitution"
892feature (in the font part of the configuration window).
0a2eeca1 893
405b495f
GM
894** Subscript/superscript text in TeX is hard to read.
895
896If `tex-fontify-script' is non-nil, tex-mode displays
897subscript/superscript text in the faces subscript/superscript, which
898are smaller than the normal font and lowered/raised. With some fonts,
899nested superscripts (say) can be hard to read. Switching to a
900different font, or changing your antialiasing setting (on an LCD
901screen), can both make the problem disappear. Alternatively, customize
902the following variables: tex-font-script-display (how much to
903lower/raise); tex-suscript-height-ratio (how much smaller than
904normal); tex-suscript-height-minimum (minimum height).
905
9dc15871 906* Internationalization problems
0a2eeca1 907
de25ebb8
RS
908** M-{ does not work on a Spanish PC keyboard.
909
910Many Spanish keyboards seem to ignore that combination. Emacs can't
911do anything about it.
912
9dc15871 913** Characters from the mule-unicode charsets aren't displayed under X.
0a2eeca1 914
9dc15871
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915XFree86 4 contains many fonts in iso10646-1 encoding which have
916minimal character repertoires (whereas the encoding part of the font
917name is meant to be a reasonable indication of the repertoire
918according to the XLFD spec). Emacs may choose one of these to display
919characters from the mule-unicode charsets and then typically won't be
920able to find the glyphs to display many characters. (Check with C-u
921C-x = .) To avoid this, you may need to use a fontset which sets the
922font for the mule-unicode sets explicitly. E.g. to use GNU unifont,
923include in the fontset spec:
0a2eeca1 924
9dc15871
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925mule-unicode-2500-33ff:-gnu-unifont-*-iso10646-1,\
926mule-unicode-e000-ffff:-gnu-unifont-*-iso10646-1,\
927mule-unicode-0100-24ff:-gnu-unifont-*-iso10646-1
0a2eeca1 928
9dc15871 929** The UTF-8/16/7 coding systems don't encode CJK (Far Eastern) characters.
0a2eeca1 930
ce9b56fe
KH
931Emacs directly supports the Unicode BMP whose code points are in the
932ranges 0000-33ff and e000-ffff, and indirectly supports the parts of
933CJK characters belonging to these legacy charsets:
934
935 GB2312, Big5, JISX0208, JISX0212, JISX0213-1, JISX0213-2, KSC5601
936
937The latter support is done in Utf-Translate-Cjk mode (turned on by
938default). Which Unicode CJK characters are decoded into which Emacs
939charset is decided by the current language environment. For instance,
940in Chinese-GB, most of them are decoded into chinese-gb2312.
119d3665 941
9dc15871
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942If you read UTF-8 data with code points outside these ranges, the
943characters appear in the buffer as raw bytes of the original UTF-8
944(composed into a single quasi-character) and they will be written back
945correctly as UTF-8, assuming you don't break the composed sequences.
946If you read such characters from UTF-16 or UTF-7 data, they are
947substituted with the Unicode `replacement character', and you lose
948information.
119d3665 949
9dc15871 950** Mule-UCS loads very slowly.
a933dad1 951
9dc15871
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952Changes to Emacs internals interact badly with Mule-UCS's `un-define'
953library, which is the usual interface to Mule-UCS. Apply the
954following patch to Mule-UCS 0.84 and rebuild it. That will help,
955though loading will still be slower than in Emacs 20. (Some
956distributions, such as Debian, may already have applied such a patch.)
0de9f9a8 957
9dc15871
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958--- lisp/un-define.el 6 Mar 2001 22:41:38 -0000 1.30
959+++ lisp/un-define.el 19 Apr 2002 18:34:26 -0000
960@@ -610,13 +624,21 @@ by calling post-read-conversion and pre-
0de9f9a8 961
9dc15871
EZ
962 (mapcar
963 (lambda (x)
964- (mapcar
965- (lambda (y)
966- (mucs-define-coding-system
967- (nth 0 y) (nth 1 y) (nth 2 y)
968- (nth 3 y) (nth 4 y) (nth 5 y) (nth 6 y))
969- (coding-system-put (car y) 'alias-coding-systems (list (car x))))
970- (cdr x)))
971+ (if (fboundp 'register-char-codings)
972+ ;; Mule 5, where we don't need the eol-type specified and
973+ ;; register-char-codings may be very slow for these coding
974+ ;; system definitions.
975+ (let ((y (cadr x)))
3256a475
RC
976+ (mucs-define-coding-system
977+ (car x) (nth 1 y) (nth 2 y)
978+ (nth 3 y) (nth 4 y) (nth 5 y)))
9dc15871
EZ
979+ (mapcar
980+ (lambda (y)
3256a475
RC
981+ (mucs-define-coding-system
982+ (nth 0 y) (nth 1 y) (nth 2 y)
983+ (nth 3 y) (nth 4 y) (nth 5 y) (nth 6 y))
984+ (coding-system-put (car y) 'alias-coding-systems (list (car x)))))
9dc15871
EZ
985+ (cdr x)))
986 `((utf-8
987 (utf-8-unix
988 ?u "UTF-8 coding system"
0de9f9a8 989
9dc15871
EZ
990Note that Emacs has native support for Unicode, roughly equivalent to
991Mule-UCS's, so you may not need it.
a933dad1 992
d87ceee0
KH
993** Mule-UCS compilation problem.
994
995Emacs of old versions and XEmacs byte-compile the form `(progn progn
996...)' the same way as `(progn ...)', but Emacs of version 21.3 and the
997later process that form just as interpreter does, that is, as `progn'
998variable reference. Apply the following patch to Mule-UCS 0.84 to
999make it compiled by the latest Emacs.
1000
1001--- mucs-ccl.el 2 Sep 2005 00:42:23 -0000 1.1.1.1
1002+++ mucs-ccl.el 2 Sep 2005 01:31:51 -0000 1.3
1003@@ -639,10 +639,14 @@
1004 (mucs-notify-embedment 'mucs-ccl-required name)
1005 (setq ccl-pgm-list (cdr ccl-pgm-list)))
1006 ; (message "MCCLREGFIN:%S" result)
1007- `(progn
1008- (setq mucs-ccl-facility-alist
3256a475 1009- (quote ,mucs-ccl-facility-alist))
d87ceee0
KH
1010- ,@result)))
1011+ ;; The only way the function is used in this package is included
1012+ ;; in `mucs-package-definition-end-hook' value, where it must
1013+ ;; return (possibly empty) *list* of forms. Do this. Do not rely
ade79051 1014+ ;; on byte compiler to remove extra `progn's in `(progn ...)'
d87ceee0
KH
1015+ ;; form.
1016+ `((setq mucs-ccl-facility-alist
3256a475 1017+ (quote ,mucs-ccl-facility-alist))
d87ceee0 1018+ ,@result)))
ade79051 1019
d87ceee0
KH
1020 ;;; Add hook for embedding translation informations to a package.
1021 (add-hook 'mucs-package-definition-end-hook
1022
9dc15871 1023** Accented ISO-8859-1 characters are displayed as | or _.
a933dad1 1024
d6b7de9b
EZ
1025Try other font set sizes (S-mouse-1). If the problem persists with
1026other sizes as well, your text is corrupted, probably through software
1027that is not 8-bit clean. If the problem goes away with another font
1028size, it's probably because some fonts pretend to be ISO-8859-1 fonts
1029when they are really ASCII fonts. In particular the schumacher-clean
1030fonts have this bug in some versions of X.
a933dad1 1031
d6b7de9b 1032To see what glyphs are included in a font, use `xfd', like this:
a933dad1 1033
d6b7de9b 1034 xfd -fn -schumacher-clean-medium-r-normal--12-120-75-75-c-60-iso8859-1
a933dad1 1035
d6b7de9b
EZ
1036If this shows only ASCII glyphs, the font is indeed the source of the
1037problem.
a933dad1 1038
d6b7de9b
EZ
1039The solution is to remove the corresponding lines from the appropriate
1040`fonts.alias' file, then run `mkfontdir' in that directory, and then run
1041`xset fp rehash'.
177c0ea7 1042
9dc15871 1043** The `oc-unicode' package doesn't work with Emacs 21.
a933dad1 1044
9dc15871
EZ
1045This package tries to define more private charsets than there are free
1046slots now. The current built-in Unicode support is actually more
1047flexible. (Use option `utf-translate-cjk-mode' if you need CJK
1048support.) Files encoded as emacs-mule using oc-unicode aren't
1049generally read correctly by Emacs 21.
a933dad1 1050
9dc15871 1051** After a while, Emacs slips into unibyte mode.
a933dad1 1052
9dc15871
EZ
1053The VM mail package, which is not part of Emacs, sometimes does
1054 (standard-display-european t)
1055That should be changed to
1056 (standard-display-european 1 t)
de121241 1057
9dc15871 1058* X runtime problems
de121241 1059
9dc15871 1060** X keyboard problems
de121241 1061
9dc15871 1062*** You "lose characters" after typing Compose Character key.
a933dad1 1063
9dc15871
EZ
1064This is because the Compose Character key is defined as the keysym
1065Multi_key, and Emacs (seeing that) does the proper X11
1066character-composition processing. If you don't want your Compose key
1067to do that, you can redefine it with xmodmap.
a933dad1 1068
9dc15871 1069For example, here's one way to turn it into a Meta key:
177c0ea7 1070
9dc15871 1071 xmodmap -e "keysym Multi_key = Meta_L"
a933dad1 1072
9dc15871
EZ
1073If all users at your site of a particular keyboard prefer Meta to
1074Compose, you can make the remapping happen automatically by adding the
1075xmodmap command to the xdm setup script for that display.
a933dad1 1076
9dc15871 1077*** Using X Windows, control-shift-leftbutton makes Emacs hang.
a933dad1 1078
9dc15871 1079Use the shell command `xset bc' to make the old X Menu package work.
a933dad1 1080
9f4f9273 1081*** C-SPC fails to work on Fedora GNU/Linux (or with fcitx input method).
09352e8f
RS
1082
1083Fedora Core 4 steals the C-SPC key by default for the `iiimx' program
1084which is the input method for some languages. It blocks Emacs users
1085from using the C-SPC key for `set-mark-command'.
1086
1087One solutions is to remove the `<Ctrl>space' from the `Iiimx' file
1088which can be found in the `/usr/lib/X11/app-defaults' directory.
1089However, that requires root access.
1090
1091Another is to specify `Emacs*useXIM: false' in your X resources.
1092
1093Another is to build Emacs with the `--without-xim' configure option.
1094
2fb18d13
KH
1095The same problem happens on any other system if you are using fcitx
1096(Chinese input method) which by default use C-SPC for toggling. If
1097you want to use fcitx with Emacs, you have two choices. Toggle fcitx
1098by another key (e.g. C-\) by modifying ~/.fcitx/config, or be
1099accustomed to use C-@ for `set-mark-command'.
1100
9dc15871 1101*** M-SPC seems to be ignored as input.
a933dad1 1102
9dc15871
EZ
1103See if your X server is set up to use this as a command
1104for character composition.
a933dad1 1105
9dc15871 1106*** The S-C-t key combination doesn't get passed to Emacs on X.
a933dad1 1107
9dc15871
EZ
1108This happens because some X configurations assign the Ctrl-Shift-t
1109combination the same meaning as the Multi_key. The offending
1110definition is in the file `...lib/X11/locale/iso8859-1/Compose'; there
1111might be other similar combinations which are grabbed by X for similar
1112purposes.
a933dad1 1113
9dc15871
EZ
1114We think that this can be countermanded with the `xmodmap' utility, if
1115you want to be able to bind one of these key sequences within Emacs.
a933dad1 1116
9dc15871 1117*** Under X, C-v and/or other keys don't work.
a933dad1
DL
1118
1119These may have been intercepted by your window manager. In
1120particular, AfterStep 1.6 is reported to steal C-v in its default
1121configuration. Various Meta keys are also likely to be taken by the
1122configuration of the `feel'. See the WM's documentation for how to
1123change this.
1124
9dc15871 1125*** Clicking C-mouse-2 in the scroll bar doesn't split the window.
a933dad1 1126
9dc15871
EZ
1127This currently doesn't work with scroll-bar widgets (and we don't know
1128a good way of implementing it with widgets). If Emacs is configured
1129--without-toolkit-scroll-bars, C-mouse-2 on the scroll bar does work.
a933dad1 1130
9dc15871
EZ
1131*** Inability to send an Alt-modified key, when Emacs is communicating
1132directly with an X server.
a933dad1 1133
9dc15871
EZ
1134If you have tried to bind an Alt-modified key as a command, and it
1135does not work to type the command, the first thing you should check is
1136whether the key is getting through to Emacs. To do this, type C-h c
1137followed by the Alt-modified key. C-h c should say what kind of event
1138it read. If it says it read an Alt-modified key, then make sure you
1139have made the key binding correctly.
a933dad1 1140
9dc15871
EZ
1141If C-h c reports an event that doesn't have the Alt modifier, it may
1142be because your X server has no key for the Alt modifier. The X
1143server that comes from MIT does not set up the Alt modifier by
1144default.
a933dad1 1145
9dc15871 1146If your keyboard has keys named Alt, you can enable them as follows:
a933dad1 1147
9dc15871
EZ
1148 xmodmap -e 'add mod2 = Alt_L'
1149 xmodmap -e 'add mod2 = Alt_R'
a933dad1 1150
9dc15871
EZ
1151If the keyboard has just one key named Alt, then only one of those
1152commands is needed. The modifier `mod2' is a reasonable choice if you
1153are using an unmodified MIT version of X. Otherwise, choose any
1154modifier bit not otherwise used.
a933dad1 1155
9dc15871
EZ
1156If your keyboard does not have keys named Alt, you can use some other
1157keys. Use the keysym command in xmodmap to turn a function key (or
1158some other 'spare' key) into Alt_L or into Alt_R, and then use the
1159commands show above to make them modifier keys.
a933dad1 1160
9dc15871
EZ
1161Note that if you have Alt keys but no Meta keys, Emacs translates Alt
1162into Meta. This is because of the great importance of Meta in Emacs.
a933dad1 1163
9dc15871 1164** Window-manager and toolkit-related problems
a933dad1 1165
0e71e4a8
CY
1166*** Gnome: Emacs receives input directly from the keyboard, bypassing XIM.
1167
1168This seems to happen when gnome-settings-daemon version 2.12 or later
1169is running. If gnome-settings-daemon is not running, Emacs receives
1170input through XIM without any problem. Furthermore, this seems only
1171to happen in *.UTF-8 locales; zh_CN.GB2312 and zh_CN.GBK locales, for
1172example, work fine. A bug report has been filed in the Gnome
1173bugzilla: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=357032
1174
9dc15871 1175*** Gnome: Emacs' xterm-mouse-mode doesn't work on the Gnome terminal.
a933dad1 1176
9dc15871
EZ
1177A symptom of this bug is that double-clicks insert a control sequence
1178into the buffer. The reason this happens is an apparent
1179incompatibility of the Gnome terminal with Xterm, which also affects
1180other programs using the Xterm mouse interface. A problem report has
1181been filed.
a933dad1 1182
9dc15871
EZ
1183*** KDE: When running on KDE, colors or fonts are not as specified for Emacs,
1184or messed up.
a933dad1 1185
9dc15871
EZ
1186For example, you could see background you set for Emacs only in the
1187empty portions of the Emacs display, while characters have some other
1188background.
a933dad1 1189
9dc15871
EZ
1190This happens because KDE's defaults apply its color and font
1191definitions even to applications that weren't compiled for KDE. The
1192solution is to uncheck the "Apply fonts and colors to non-KDE apps"
1193option in Preferences->Look&Feel->Style (KDE 2). In KDE 3, this option
1194is in the "Colors" section, rather than "Style".
a933dad1 1195
9dc15871
EZ
1196Alternatively, if you do want the KDE defaults to apply to other
1197applications, but not to Emacs, you could modify the file `Emacs.ad'
1198(should be in the `/usr/share/apps/kdisplay/app-defaults/' directory)
1199so that it doesn't set the default background and foreground only for
1200Emacs. For example, make sure the following resources are either not
1201present or commented out:
a933dad1 1202
9dc15871
EZ
1203 Emacs.default.attributeForeground
1204 Emacs.default.attributeBackground
1205 Emacs*Foreground
1206 Emacs*Background
a933dad1 1207
a3475659
JD
1208It is also reported that a bug in the gtk-engines-qt engine can cause this if
1209Emacs is compiled with Gtk+.
1210The bug is fixed in version 0.7 or newer of gtk-engines-qt.
1211
9dc15871 1212*** KDE: Emacs hangs on KDE when a large portion of text is killed.
a933dad1 1213
9dc15871
EZ
1214This is caused by a bug in the KDE applet `klipper' which periodically
1215requests the X clipboard contents from applications. Early versions
8576f724 1216of klipper don't implement the ICCCM protocol for large selections,
9dc15871 1217which leads to Emacs being flooded with selection requests. After a
b11e8823 1218while, Emacs may print a message:
a933dad1 1219
9dc15871 1220 Timed out waiting for property-notify event
a933dad1 1221
b11e8823
JD
1222A workaround is to not use `klipper'. An upgrade to the `klipper' that
1223comes with KDE 3.3 or later also solves the problem.
a933dad1 1224
9dc15871 1225*** CDE: Frames may cover dialogs they created when using CDE.
a933dad1 1226
9dc15871
EZ
1227This can happen if you have "Allow Primary Windows On Top" enabled which
1228seems to be the default in the Common Desktop Environment.
1229To change, go in to "Desktop Controls" -> "Window Style Manager"
1230and uncheck "Allow Primary Windows On Top".
d238f982 1231
9dc15871
EZ
1232*** Xaw3d : When using Xaw3d scroll bars without arrows, the very first mouse
1233click in a scroll bar might be ignored by the scroll bar widget. This
1234is probably a bug in Xaw3d; when Xaw3d is compiled with arrows, the
1235problem disappears.
d238f982 1236
9dc15871
EZ
1237*** Xaw: There are known binary incompatibilities between Xaw, Xaw3d, neXtaw,
1238XawM and the few other derivatives of Xaw. So when you compile with
1239one of these, it may not work to dynamically link with another one.
1240For example, strange problems, such as Emacs exiting when you type
1241"C-x 1", were reported when Emacs compiled with Xaw3d and libXaw was
1242used with neXtaw at run time.
d7185f9d 1243
9dc15871
EZ
1244The solution is to rebuild Emacs with the toolkit version you actually
1245want to use, or set LD_PRELOAD to preload the same toolkit version you
1246built Emacs with.
d7185f9d 1247
9dc15871 1248*** Open Motif: Problems with file dialogs in Emacs built with Open Motif.
a933dad1 1249
9dc15871
EZ
1250When Emacs 21 is built with Open Motif 2.1, it can happen that the
1251graphical file dialog boxes do not work properly. The "OK", "Filter"
1252and "Cancel" buttons do not respond to mouse clicks. Dragging the
1253file dialog window usually causes the buttons to work again.
a933dad1 1254
9dc15871
EZ
1255The solution is to use LessTif instead. LessTif is a free replacement
1256for Motif. See the file INSTALL for information on how to do this.
a933dad1 1257
9dc15871
EZ
1258Another workaround is not to use the mouse to trigger file prompts,
1259but to use the keyboard. This way, you will be prompted for a file in
1260the minibuffer instead of a graphical file dialog.
a933dad1 1261
9dc15871 1262*** LessTif: Problems in Emacs built with LessTif.
a933dad1 1263
9dc15871
EZ
1264The problems seem to depend on the version of LessTif and the Motif
1265emulation for which it is set up.
a933dad1 1266
9dc15871 1267Only the Motif 1.2 emulation seems to be stable enough in LessTif.
880ea925 1268LessTif 0.92-17's Motif 1.2 emulation seems to work okay on FreeBSD.
9dc15871
EZ
1269On GNU/Linux systems, lesstif-0.92.6 configured with "./configure
1270--enable-build-12 --enable-default-12" is reported to be the most
1271successful. The binary GNU/Linux package
1272lesstif-devel-0.92.0-1.i386.rpm was reported to have problems with
1273menu placement.
a933dad1 1274
9dc15871
EZ
1275On some systems, even with Motif 1.2 emulation, Emacs occasionally
1276locks up, grabbing all mouse and keyboard events. We still don't know
1277what causes these problems; they are not reproducible by Emacs
1278developers.
a933dad1 1279
9dc15871 1280*** Motif: The Motif version of Emacs paints the screen a solid color.
a933dad1 1281
9dc15871 1282This has been observed to result from the following X resource:
a933dad1 1283
9dc15871 1284 Emacs*default.attributeFont: -*-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-140-*-*-*-*-iso8859-*
a933dad1 1285
9dc15871
EZ
1286That the resource has this effect indicates a bug in something, but we
1287do not yet know what. If it is an Emacs bug, we hope someone can
1288explain what the bug is so we can fix it. In the mean time, removing
1289the resource prevents the problem.
a933dad1 1290
9dc15871 1291** General X problems
17a37d87 1292
9dc15871 1293*** Redisplay using X11 is much slower than previous Emacs versions.
17a37d87 1294
9dc15871
EZ
1295We've noticed that certain X servers draw the text much slower when
1296scroll bars are on the left. We don't know why this happens. If this
1297happens to you, you can work around it by putting the scroll bars
1298on the right (as they were in Emacs 19).
17a37d87 1299
9dc15871 1300Here's how to do this:
17a37d87 1301
9dc15871 1302 (set-scroll-bar-mode 'right)
a933dad1 1303
9dc15871
EZ
1304If you're not sure whether (or how much) this problem affects you,
1305try that and see how much difference it makes. To set things back
1306to normal, do
a933dad1 1307
9dc15871 1308 (set-scroll-bar-mode 'left)
a933dad1 1309
9dc15871 1310*** Error messages about undefined colors on X.
a933dad1 1311
9dc15871 1312The messages might say something like this:
a933dad1 1313
9dc15871 1314 Unable to load color "grey95"
a933dad1 1315
9dc15871 1316(typically, in the `*Messages*' buffer), or something like this:
a933dad1 1317
9dc15871 1318 Error while displaying tooltip: (error Undefined color lightyellow)
a933dad1 1319
9dc15871
EZ
1320These problems could happen if some other X program has used up too
1321many colors of the X palette, leaving Emacs with insufficient system
1322resources to load all the colors it needs.
a933dad1 1323
9dc15871 1324A solution is to exit the offending X programs before starting Emacs.
a933dad1 1325
9257b627
EZ
1326"undefined color" messages can also occur if the RgbPath entry in the
1327X configuration file is incorrect, or the rgb.txt file is not where
1328X expects to find it.
1329
9dc15871 1330*** Improving performance with slow X connections.
a933dad1 1331
9dc15871
EZ
1332There are several ways to improve this performance, any subset of which can
1333be carried out at the same time:
a933dad1 1334
9dc15871
EZ
13351) If you don't need X Input Methods (XIM) for entering text in some
1336 language you use, you can improve performance on WAN links by using
1337 the X resource useXIM to turn off use of XIM. This does not affect
1338 the use of Emacs' own input methods, which are part of the Leim
1339 package.
3d00585e 1340
9dc15871 13412) If the connection is very slow, you might also want to consider
634e516b
EZ
1342 switching off scroll bars, menu bar, and tool bar. Adding the
1343 following forms to your .emacs file will accomplish that, but only
1344 after the the initial frame is displayed:
1345
1346 (scroll-bar-mode -1)
1347 (menu-bar-mode -1)
1348 (tool-bar-mode -1)
1349
1350 For still quicker startup, put these X resources in your .Xdefaults
1351 file:
1352
1353 Emacs.verticalScrollBars: off
1354 Emacs.menuBar: off
1355 Emacs.toolBar: off
3d00585e 1356
9dc15871
EZ
13573) Use ssh to forward the X connection, and enable compression on this
1358 forwarded X connection (ssh -XC remotehostname emacs ...).
3d00585e 1359
9dc15871
EZ
13604) Use lbxproxy on the remote end of the connection. This is an interface
1361 to the low bandwidth X extension in most modern X servers, which
1362 improves performance dramatically, at the slight expense of correctness
1363 of the X protocol. lbxproxy acheives the performance gain by grouping
1364 several X requests in one TCP packet and sending them off together,
880ea925 1365 instead of requiring a round-trip for each X request in a separate
9dc15871
EZ
1366 packet. The switches that seem to work best for emacs are:
1367 -noatomsfile -nowinattr -cheaterrors -cheatevents
1368 Note that the -nograbcmap option is known to cause problems.
1369 For more about lbxproxy, see:
1370 http://www.xfree86.org/4.3.0/lbxproxy.1.html
3d00585e 1371
34431988
KS
13725) If copying and killing is slow, try to disable the interaction with the
1373 native system's clipboard by adding these lines to your .emacs file:
1374 (setq interprogram-cut-function nil)
1375 (setq interprogram-paste-function nil)
1376
9dc15871 1377*** Emacs gives the error, Couldn't find per display information.
3d00585e 1378
9dc15871
EZ
1379This can result if the X server runs out of memory because Emacs uses
1380a large number of fonts. On systems where this happens, C-h h is
1381likely to cause it.
a933dad1 1382
9dc15871 1383We do not know of a way to prevent the problem.
7838ea1b 1384
9dc15871 1385*** Emacs does not notice when you release the mouse.
a933dad1 1386
9dc15871
EZ
1387There are reports that this happened with (some) Microsoft mice and
1388that replacing the mouse made it stop.
a933dad1 1389
9dc15871 1390*** You can't select from submenus (in the X toolkit version).
a933dad1 1391
9dc15871
EZ
1392On certain systems, mouse-tracking and selection in top-level menus
1393works properly with the X toolkit, but neither of them works when you
1394bring up a submenu (such as Bookmarks or Compare or Apply Patch, in
1395the Files menu).
a933dad1 1396
9dc15871
EZ
1397This works on most systems. There is speculation that the failure is
1398due to bugs in old versions of X toolkit libraries, but no one really
1399knows. If someone debugs this and finds the precise cause, perhaps a
1400workaround can be found.
a933dad1 1401
9dc15871
EZ
1402*** An error message such as `X protocol error: BadMatch (invalid
1403parameter attributes) on protocol request 93'.
b5cb4652 1404
9dc15871
EZ
1405This comes from having an invalid X resource, such as
1406 emacs*Cursor: black
1407(which is invalid because it specifies a color name for something
1408that isn't a color.)
b5cb4652 1409
9dc15871 1410The fix is to correct your X resources.
a933dad1 1411
9dc15871 1412*** Slow startup on X11R6 with X windows.
a933dad1 1413
9dc15871
EZ
1414If Emacs takes two minutes to start up on X11R6, see if your X
1415resources specify any Adobe fonts. That causes the type-1 font
1416renderer to start up, even if the font you asked for is not a type-1
1417font.
a933dad1 1418
9dc15871
EZ
1419One way to avoid this problem is to eliminate the type-1 fonts from
1420your font path, like this:
a933dad1 1421
3256a475 1422 xset -fp /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/
a933dad1 1423
9dc15871 1424*** Pull-down menus appear in the wrong place, in the toolkit version of Emacs.
a933dad1 1425
9dc15871 1426An X resource of this form can cause the problem:
a933dad1 1427
9dc15871 1428 Emacs*geometry: 80x55+0+0
a933dad1 1429
9dc15871
EZ
1430This resource is supposed to apply, and does apply, to the menus
1431individually as well as to Emacs frames. If that is not what you
1432want, rewrite the resource.
3156909f 1433
9dc15871
EZ
1434To check thoroughly for such resource specifications, use `xrdb
1435-query' to see what resources the X server records, and also look at
1436the user's ~/.Xdefaults and ~/.Xdefaults-* files.
a933dad1 1437
9dc15871
EZ
1438*** Emacs running under X Windows does not handle mouse clicks.
1439*** `emacs -geometry 80x20' finds a file named `80x20'.
e96c5c69 1440
9dc15871
EZ
1441One cause of such problems is having (setq term-file-prefix nil) in
1442your .emacs file. Another cause is a bad value of EMACSLOADPATH in
1443the environment.
e96c5c69 1444
9dc15871 1445*** Emacs fails to get default settings from X Windows server.
a933dad1 1446
9dc15871
EZ
1447The X library in X11R4 has a bug; it interchanges the 2nd and 3rd
1448arguments to XGetDefaults. Define the macro XBACKWARDS in config.h to
1449tell Emacs to compensate for this.
a933dad1 1450
9dc15871
EZ
1451I don't believe there is any way Emacs can determine for itself
1452whether this problem is present on a given system.
a933dad1 1453
9dc15871 1454*** X Windows doesn't work if DISPLAY uses a hostname.
a933dad1 1455
9dc15871
EZ
1456People have reported kernel bugs in certain systems that cause Emacs
1457not to work with X Windows if DISPLAY is set using a host name. But
1458the problem does not occur if DISPLAY is set to `unix:0.0'. I think
1459the bug has to do with SIGIO or FIONREAD.
a933dad1 1460
9dc15871
EZ
1461You may be able to compensate for the bug by doing (set-input-mode nil nil).
1462However, that has the disadvantage of turning off interrupts, so that
1463you are unable to quit out of a Lisp program by typing C-g.
a933dad1 1464
9dc15871 1465The easy way to do this is to put
a933dad1 1466
9dc15871 1467 (setq x-sigio-bug t)
a933dad1 1468
9dc15871 1469in your site-init.el file.
a933dad1 1470
3256a475
RC
1471*** Prevent double pastes in X
1472
1473The problem: a region, such as a command, is pasted twice when you copy
1474it with your mouse from GNU Emacs to an xterm or an RXVT shell in X.
1475The solution: try the following in your X configuration file,
1476/etc/X11/xorg.conf This should enable both PS/2 and USB mice for
1477single copies. You do not need any other drivers or options.
1478
1479 Section "InputDevice"
1480 Identifier "Generic Mouse"
1481 Driver "mousedev"
1482 Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
1483 EndSection
1484
880ea925 1485* Runtime problems on character terminals
a933dad1 1486
9dc15871 1487** Emacs spontaneously displays "I-search: " at the bottom of the screen.
a933dad1 1488
9dc15871
EZ
1489This means that Control-S/Control-Q (XON/XOFF) "flow control" is being
1490used. C-s/C-q flow control is bad for Emacs editors because it takes
1491away C-s and C-q as user commands. Since editors do not output long
1492streams of text without user commands, there is no need for a
1493user-issuable "stop output" command in an editor; therefore, a
1494properly designed flow control mechanism would transmit all possible
1495input characters without interference. Designing such a mechanism is
1496easy, for a person with at least half a brain.
a933dad1 1497
9dc15871 1498There are three possible reasons why flow control could be taking place:
a933dad1 1499
9dc15871
EZ
1500 1) Terminal has not been told to disable flow control
1501 2) Insufficient padding for the terminal in use
1502 3) Some sort of terminal concentrator or line switch is responsible
a933dad1 1503
9dc15871
EZ
1504First of all, many terminals have a set-up mode which controls whether
1505they generate XON/XOFF flow control characters. This must be set to
1506"no XON/XOFF" in order for Emacs to work. Sometimes there is an
1507escape sequence that the computer can send to turn flow control off
1508and on. If so, perhaps the termcap `ti' string should turn flow
1509control off, and the `te' string should turn it on.
a933dad1 1510
9dc15871
EZ
1511Once the terminal has been told "no flow control", you may find it
1512needs more padding. The amount of padding Emacs sends is controlled
1513by the termcap entry for the terminal in use, and by the output baud
1514rate as known by the kernel. The shell command `stty' will print
1515your output baud rate; `stty' with suitable arguments will set it if
1516it is wrong. Setting to a higher speed causes increased padding. If
1517the results are wrong for the correct speed, there is probably a
1518problem in the termcap entry. You must speak to a local Unix wizard
1519to fix this. Perhaps you are just using the wrong terminal type.
a933dad1 1520
9dc15871
EZ
1521For terminals that lack a "no flow control" mode, sometimes just
1522giving lots of padding will prevent actual generation of flow control
1523codes. You might as well try it.
a933dad1 1524
9dc15871
EZ
1525If you are really unlucky, your terminal is connected to the computer
1526through a concentrator which sends XON/XOFF flow control to the
1527computer, or it insists on sending flow control itself no matter how
1528much padding you give it. Unless you can figure out how to turn flow
1529control off on this concentrator (again, refer to your local wizard),
1530you are screwed! You should have the terminal or concentrator
1531replaced with a properly designed one. In the mean time, some drastic
1532measures can make Emacs semi-work.
4c635a29 1533
9dc15871
EZ
1534You can make Emacs ignore C-s and C-q and let the operating system
1535handle them. To do this on a per-session basis, just type M-x
1536enable-flow-control RET. You will see a message that C-\ and C-^ are
1537now translated to C-s and C-q. (Use the same command M-x
1538enable-flow-control to turn *off* this special mode. It toggles flow
1539control handling.)
a933dad1 1540
9dc15871
EZ
1541If C-\ and C-^ are inconvenient for you (for example, if one of them
1542is the escape character of your terminal concentrator), you can choose
1543other characters by setting the variables flow-control-c-s-replacement
1544and flow-control-c-q-replacement. But choose carefully, since all
1545other control characters are already used by emacs.
a933dad1 1546
9dc15871
EZ
1547IMPORTANT: if you type C-s by accident while flow control is enabled,
1548Emacs output will freeze, and you will have to remember to type C-q in
1549order to continue.
a933dad1 1550
9dc15871
EZ
1551If you work in an environment where a majority of terminals of a
1552certain type are flow control hobbled, you can use the function
1553`enable-flow-control-on' to turn on this flow control avoidance scheme
1554automatically. Here is an example:
a933dad1 1555
9dc15871 1556(enable-flow-control-on "vt200" "vt300" "vt101" "vt131")
a933dad1 1557
9dc15871
EZ
1558If this isn't quite correct (e.g. you have a mixture of flow-control hobbled
1559and good vt200 terminals), you can still run enable-flow-control
1560manually.
a933dad1 1561
9dc15871
EZ
1562I have no intention of ever redesigning the Emacs command set for the
1563assumption that terminals use C-s/C-q flow control. XON/XOFF flow
1564control technique is a bad design, and terminals that need it are bad
1565merchandise and should not be purchased. Now that X is becoming
1566widespread, XON/XOFF seems to be on the way out. If you can get some
1567use out of GNU Emacs on inferior terminals, more power to you, but I
1568will not make Emacs worse for properly designed systems for the sake
1569of inferior systems.
a933dad1 1570
9dc15871 1571** Control-S and Control-Q commands are ignored completely.
a933dad1 1572
9dc15871
EZ
1573For some reason, your system is using brain-damaged C-s/C-q flow
1574control despite Emacs's attempts to turn it off. Perhaps your
1575terminal is connected to the computer through a concentrator
1576that wants to use flow control.
a933dad1 1577
9dc15871
EZ
1578You should first try to tell the concentrator not to use flow control.
1579If you succeed in this, try making the terminal work without
1580flow control, as described in the preceding section.
a933dad1 1581
9dc15871
EZ
1582If that line of approach is not successful, map some other characters
1583into C-s and C-q using keyboard-translate-table. The example above
1584shows how to do this with C-^ and C-\.
a933dad1 1585
9dc15871 1586** Screen is updated wrong, but only on one kind of terminal.
a933dad1 1587
9dc15871
EZ
1588This could mean that the termcap entry you are using for that
1589terminal is wrong, or it could mean that Emacs has a bug handing
1590the combination of features specified for that terminal.
a933dad1 1591
9dc15871
EZ
1592The first step in tracking this down is to record what characters
1593Emacs is sending to the terminal. Execute the Lisp expression
1594(open-termscript "./emacs-script") to make Emacs write all
1595terminal output into the file ~/emacs-script as well; then do
1596what makes the screen update wrong, and look at the file
1597and decode the characters using the manual for the terminal.
1598There are several possibilities:
a933dad1 1599
9dc15871 16001) The characters sent are correct, according to the terminal manual.
a933dad1 1601
9dc15871
EZ
1602In this case, there is no obvious bug in Emacs, and most likely you
1603need more padding, or possibly the terminal manual is wrong.
a933dad1 1604
9dc15871
EZ
16052) The characters sent are incorrect, due to an obscure aspect
1606 of the terminal behavior not described in an obvious way
1607 by termcap.
a933dad1 1608
9dc15871
EZ
1609This case is hard. It will be necessary to think of a way for
1610Emacs to distinguish between terminals with this kind of behavior
1611and other terminals that behave subtly differently but are
1612classified the same by termcap; or else find an algorithm for
1613Emacs to use that avoids the difference. Such changes must be
1614tested on many kinds of terminals.
a933dad1 1615
9dc15871 16163) The termcap entry is wrong.
a933dad1 1617
9dc15871
EZ
1618See the file etc/TERMS for information on changes
1619that are known to be needed in commonly used termcap entries
1620for certain terminals.
a933dad1 1621
9dc15871
EZ
16224) The characters sent are incorrect, and clearly cannot be
1623 right for any terminal with the termcap entry you were using.
a933dad1 1624
9dc15871
EZ
1625This is unambiguously an Emacs bug, and can probably be fixed
1626in termcap.c, tparam.c, term.c, scroll.c, cm.c or dispnew.c.
a933dad1 1627
9dc15871 1628** Control-S and Control-Q commands are ignored completely on a net connection.
a933dad1 1629
9dc15871
EZ
1630Some versions of rlogin (and possibly telnet) do not pass flow
1631control characters to the remote system to which they connect.
1632On such systems, emacs on the remote system cannot disable flow
1633control on the local system.
a933dad1 1634
9dc15871
EZ
1635One way to cure this is to disable flow control on the local host
1636(the one running rlogin, not the one running rlogind) using the
1637stty command, before starting the rlogin process. On many systems,
1638"stty start u stop u" will do this.
a933dad1 1639
9dc15871
EZ
1640Some versions of tcsh will prevent even this from working. One way
1641around this is to start another shell before starting rlogin, and
1642issue the stty command to disable flow control from that shell.
a933dad1 1643
9dc15871
EZ
1644If none of these methods work, the best solution is to type
1645M-x enable-flow-control at the beginning of your emacs session, or
1646if you expect the problem to continue, add a line such as the
1647following to your .emacs (on the host running rlogind):
a933dad1 1648
9dc15871 1649(enable-flow-control-on "vt200" "vt300" "vt101" "vt131")
a933dad1 1650
9dc15871
EZ
1651See the entry about spontaneous display of I-search (above) for more
1652info.
a933dad1 1653
9dc15871 1654** Output from Control-V is slow.
a933dad1 1655
9dc15871
EZ
1656On many bit-map terminals, scrolling operations are fairly slow.
1657Often the termcap entry for the type of terminal in use fails
1658to inform Emacs of this. The two lines at the bottom of the screen
1659before a Control-V command are supposed to appear at the top after
1660the Control-V command. If Emacs thinks scrolling the lines is fast,
1661it will scroll them to the top of the screen.
a933dad1 1662
9dc15871
EZ
1663If scrolling is slow but Emacs thinks it is fast, the usual reason is
1664that the termcap entry for the terminal you are using does not
1665specify any padding time for the `al' and `dl' strings. Emacs
1666concludes that these operations take only as much time as it takes to
1667send the commands at whatever line speed you are using. You must
1668fix the termcap entry to specify, for the `al' and `dl', as much
1669time as the operations really take.
a933dad1 1670
9dc15871
EZ
1671Currently Emacs thinks in terms of serial lines which send characters
1672at a fixed rate, so that any operation which takes time for the
1673terminal to execute must also be padded. With bit-map terminals
1674operated across networks, often the network provides some sort of
1675flow control so that padding is never needed no matter how slow
1676an operation is. You must still specify a padding time if you want
1677Emacs to realize that the operation takes a long time. This will
1678cause padding characters to be sent unnecessarily, but they do
1679not really cost much. They will be transmitted while the scrolling
1680is happening and then discarded quickly by the terminal.
a933dad1 1681
9dc15871
EZ
1682Most bit-map terminals provide commands for inserting or deleting
1683multiple lines at once. Define the `AL' and `DL' strings in the
1684termcap entry to say how to do these things, and you will have
1685fast output without wasted padding characters. These strings should
1686each contain a single %-spec saying how to send the number of lines
1687to be scrolled. These %-specs are like those in the termcap
1688`cm' string.
a933dad1 1689
9dc15871
EZ
1690You should also define the `IC' and `DC' strings if your terminal
1691has a command to insert or delete multiple characters. These
1692take the number of positions to insert or delete as an argument.
a933dad1 1693
9dc15871
EZ
1694A `cs' string to set the scrolling region will reduce the amount
1695of motion you see on the screen when part of the screen is scrolled.
a933dad1 1696
9dc15871 1697** You type Control-H (Backspace) expecting to delete characters.
a933dad1 1698
9dc15871
EZ
1699Put `stty dec' in your .login file and your problems will disappear
1700after a day or two.
a933dad1 1701
9dc15871
EZ
1702The choice of Backspace for erasure was based on confusion, caused by
1703the fact that backspacing causes erasure (later, when you type another
1704character) on most display terminals. But it is a mistake. Deletion
1705of text is not the same thing as backspacing followed by failure to
1706overprint. I do not wish to propagate this confusion by conforming
1707to it.
a933dad1 1708
9dc15871
EZ
1709For this reason, I believe `stty dec' is the right mode to use,
1710and I have designed Emacs to go with that. If there were a thousand
1711other control characters, I would define Control-h to delete as well;
1712but there are not very many other control characters, and I think
1713that providing the most mnemonic possible Help character is more
1714important than adapting to people who don't use `stty dec'.
a933dad1 1715
9dc15871
EZ
1716If you are obstinate about confusing buggy overprinting with deletion,
1717you can redefine Backspace in your .emacs file:
1718 (global-set-key "\b" 'delete-backward-char)
1719You can probably access help-command via f1.
a933dad1 1720
9dc15871 1721** Colors are not available on a tty or in xterm.
a933dad1 1722
9dc15871
EZ
1723Emacs 21 supports colors on character terminals and terminal
1724emulators, but this support relies on the terminfo or termcap database
1725entry to specify that the display supports color. Emacs looks at the
1726"Co" capability for the terminal to find out how many colors are
1727supported; it should be non-zero to activate the color support within
1728Emacs. (Most color terminals support 8 or 16 colors.) If your system
1729uses terminfo, the name of the capability equivalent to "Co" is
1730"colors".
a933dad1 1731
9dc15871
EZ
1732In addition to the "Co" capability, Emacs needs the "op" (for
1733``original pair'') capability, which tells how to switch the terminal
1734back to the default foreground and background colors. Emacs will not
1735use colors if this capability is not defined. If your terminal entry
1736doesn't provide such a capability, try using the ANSI standard escape
1737sequence \E[00m (that is, define a new termcap/terminfo entry and make
1738it use your current terminal's entry plus \E[00m for the "op"
1739capability).
a933dad1 1740
9dc15871
EZ
1741Finally, the "NC" capability (terminfo name: "ncv") tells Emacs which
1742attributes cannot be used with colors. Setting this capability
1743incorrectly might have the effect of disabling colors; try setting
1744this capability to `0' (zero) and see if that helps.
a933dad1 1745
9dc15871
EZ
1746Emacs uses the database entry for the terminal whose name is the value
1747of the environment variable TERM. With `xterm', a common terminal
1748entry that supports color is `xterm-color', so setting TERM's value to
1749`xterm-color' might activate the color support on an xterm-compatible
1750emulator.
a933dad1 1751
bf247b6e 1752Beginning with version 22.1, Emacs supports the --color command-line
9dc15871
EZ
1753option which may be used to force Emacs to use one of a few popular
1754modes for getting colors on a tty. For example, --color=ansi8 sets up
1755for using the ANSI-standard escape sequences that support 8 colors.
a933dad1 1756
9dc15871
EZ
1757Some modes do not use colors unless you turn on the Font-lock mode.
1758Some people have long ago set their `~/.emacs' files to turn on
1759Font-lock on X only, so they won't see colors on a tty. The
1760recommended way of turning on Font-lock is by typing "M-x
1761global-font-lock-mode RET" or by customizing the variable
1762`global-font-lock-mode'.
a933dad1 1763
9dc15871 1764* Runtime problems specific to individual Unix variants
f1e54ce1 1765
9dc15871 1766** GNU/Linux
f1e54ce1 1767
f77e4514
KS
1768*** GNU/Linux: Process output is corrupted.
1769
1770There is a bug in Linux kernel 2.6.10 PTYs that can cause emacs to
1771read corrupted process output.
1772
1773*** GNU/Linux: Remote access to CVS with SSH causes file corruption.
1774
1775If you access a remote CVS repository via SSH, files may be corrupted
1776due to bad interaction between CVS, SSH, and libc.
1777
1778To fix the problem, save the following script into a file, make it
1779executable, and set CVS_RSH environment variable to the file name of
1780the script:
1781
1782#!/bin/bash
1783exec 2> >(exec cat >&2 2>/dev/null)
1784exec ssh "$@"
1785
9dc15871
EZ
1786*** GNU/Linux: On Linux-based GNU systems using libc versions 5.4.19 through
17875.4.22, Emacs crashes at startup with a segmentation fault.
a933dad1 1788
9dc15871
EZ
1789This problem happens if libc defines the symbol __malloc_initialized.
1790One known solution is to upgrade to a newer libc version. 5.4.33 is
1791known to work.
a933dad1 1792
9dc15871
EZ
1793*** GNU/Linux: After upgrading to a newer version of Emacs,
1794the Meta key stops working.
a01325b8 1795
9dc15871
EZ
1796This was reported to happen on a GNU/Linux system distributed by
1797Mandrake. The reason is that the previous version of Emacs was
1798modified by Mandrake to make the Alt key act as the Meta key, on a
1799keyboard where the Windows key is the one which produces the Meta
1800modifier. A user who started using a newer version of Emacs, which
1801was not hacked by Mandrake, expected the Alt key to continue to act as
1802Meta, and was astonished when that didn't happen.
a01325b8 1803
9dc15871
EZ
1804The solution is to find out what key on your keyboard produces the Meta
1805modifier, and use that key instead. Try all of the keys to the left
1806and to the right of the space bar, together with the `x' key, and see
1807which combination produces "M-x" in the echo area. You can also use
1808the `xmodmap' utility to show all the keys which produce a Meta
1809modifier:
a933dad1 1810
9dc15871 1811 xmodmap -pk | egrep -i "meta|alt"
a933dad1 1812
9dc15871
EZ
1813A more convenient way of finding out which keys produce a Meta modifier
1814is to use the `xkbprint' utility, if it's available on your system:
a01325b8 1815
9dc15871 1816 xkbprint 0:0 /tmp/k.ps
a933dad1 1817
9dc15871
EZ
1818This produces a PostScript file `/tmp/k.ps' with a picture of your
1819keyboard; printing that file on a PostScript printer will show what
1820keys can serve as Meta.
a933dad1 1821
9dc15871
EZ
1822The `xkeycaps' also shows a visual representation of the current
1823keyboard settings. It also allows to modify them.
a933dad1 1824
ff3e9dbc 1825*** GNU/Linux: slow startup on Linux-based GNU systems.
a933dad1 1826
9dc15871
EZ
1827People using systems based on the Linux kernel sometimes report that
1828startup takes 10 to 15 seconds longer than `usual'.
a933dad1 1829
9dc15871
EZ
1830This is because Emacs looks up the host name when it starts.
1831Normally, this takes negligible time; the extra delay is due to
1832improper system configuration. This problem can occur for both
1833networked and non-networked machines.
a933dad1 1834
9dc15871 1835Here is how to fix the configuration. It requires being root.
a933dad1 1836
9dc15871 1837**** Networked Case.
a933dad1 1838
9dc15871
EZ
1839First, make sure the files `/etc/hosts' and `/etc/host.conf' both
1840exist. The first line in the `/etc/hosts' file should look like this
1841(replace HOSTNAME with your host name):
a933dad1 1842
9dc15871 1843 127.0.0.1 HOSTNAME
a933dad1 1844
9dc15871
EZ
1845Also make sure that the `/etc/host.conf' files contains the following
1846lines:
1dd8b979 1847
9dc15871
EZ
1848 order hosts, bind
1849 multi on
10a763e5 1850
9dc15871
EZ
1851Any changes, permanent and temporary, to the host name should be
1852indicated in the `/etc/hosts' file, since it acts a limited local
1853database of addresses and names (e.g., some SLIP connections
1854dynamically allocate ip addresses).
1dd8b979 1855
9dc15871 1856**** Non-Networked Case.
a933dad1 1857
9dc15871
EZ
1858The solution described in the networked case applies here as well.
1859However, if you never intend to network your machine, you can use a
1860simpler solution: create an empty `/etc/host.conf' file. The command
1861`touch /etc/host.conf' suffices to create the file. The `/etc/hosts'
1862file is not necessary with this approach.
a933dad1 1863
9dc15871 1864*** GNU/Linux: Emacs on a tty switches the cursor to large blinking block.
a933dad1 1865
9dc15871
EZ
1866This was reported to happen on some GNU/Linux systems which use
1867ncurses version 5.0, but could be relevant for other versions as well.
1868These versions of ncurses come with a `linux' terminfo entry, where
1869the "cvvis" capability (termcap "vs") is defined as "\E[?25h\E[?8c"
1870(show cursor, change size). This escape sequence switches on a
1871blinking hardware text-mode cursor whose size is a full character
1872cell. This blinking cannot be stopped, since a hardware cursor
1873always blinks.
3d00585e 1874
9dc15871
EZ
1875A work-around is to redefine the "cvvis" capability so that it
1876enables a *software* cursor. The software cursor works by inverting
1877the colors of the character at point, so what you see is a block
1878cursor that doesn't blink. For this to work, you need to redefine
1879the "cnorm" capability as well, so that it operates on the software
1880cursor instead of the hardware cursor.
3d00585e 1881
9dc15871
EZ
1882To this end, run "infocmp linux > linux-term", edit the file
1883`linux-term' to make both the "cnorm" and "cvvis" capabilities send
1884the sequence "\E[?25h\E[?17;0;64c", and then run "tic linux-term" to
1885produce a modified terminfo entry.
3d00585e 1886
9dc15871
EZ
1887Alternatively, if you want a blinking underscore as your Emacs cursor,
1888change the "cvvis" capability to send the "\E[?25h\E[?0c" command.
a933dad1 1889
9dc15871 1890*** GNU/Linux: Error messages `internal facep []' happen on GNU/Linux systems.
a933dad1
DL
1891
1892There is a report that replacing libc.so.5.0.9 with libc.so.5.2.16
1893caused this to start happening. People are not sure why, but the
1894problem seems unlikely to be in Emacs itself. Some suspect that it
1895is actually Xlib which won't work with libc.so.5.2.16.
1896
1897Using the old library version is a workaround.
1898
9dc15871 1899** FreeBSD
a933dad1 1900
9dc15871
EZ
1901*** FreeBSD 2.1.5: useless symbolic links remain in /tmp or other
1902directories that have the +t bit.
a933dad1 1903
9dc15871
EZ
1904This is because of a kernel bug in FreeBSD 2.1.5 (fixed in 2.2).
1905Emacs uses symbolic links to implement file locks. In a directory
1906with +t bit, the directory owner becomes the owner of the symbolic
1907link, so that it cannot be removed by anyone else.
a933dad1 1908
9dc15871
EZ
1909If you don't like those useless links, you can let Emacs not to using
1910file lock by adding #undef CLASH_DETECTION to config.h.
a933dad1 1911
9dc15871 1912*** FreeBSD: Getting a Meta key on the console.
a933dad1 1913
9dc15871
EZ
1914By default, neither Alt nor any other key acts as a Meta key on
1915FreeBSD, but this can be changed using kbdcontrol(1). Dump the
1916current keymap to a file with the command
a933dad1 1917
9dc15871 1918 $ kbdcontrol -d >emacs.kbd
a933dad1 1919
9dc15871
EZ
1920Edit emacs.kbd, and give the key you want to be the Meta key the
1921definition `meta'. For instance, if your keyboard has a ``Windows''
1922key with scan code 105, change the line for scan code 105 in emacs.kbd
1923to look like this
a933dad1 1924
9dc15871 1925 105 meta meta meta meta meta meta meta meta O
a933dad1 1926
9dc15871 1927to make the Windows key the Meta key. Load the new keymap with
a933dad1 1928
9dc15871 1929 $ kbdcontrol -l emacs.kbd
a933dad1 1930
9dc15871 1931** HP-UX
a933dad1 1932
9dc15871 1933*** HP/UX : Shell mode gives the message, "`tty`: Ambiguous".
a933dad1 1934
9dc15871 1935christos@theory.tn.cornell.edu says:
a933dad1 1936
9dc15871
EZ
1937The problem is that in your .cshrc you have something that tries to
1938execute `tty`. If you are not running the shell on a real tty then
1939tty will print "not a tty". Csh expects one word in some places,
1940but tty is giving it back 3.
a933dad1 1941
9dc15871
EZ
1942The solution is to add a pair of quotes around `tty` to make it a single
1943word:
a933dad1 1944
9dc15871 1945if (`tty` == "/dev/console")
a933dad1 1946
9dc15871 1947should be changed to:
a933dad1 1948
9dc15871 1949if ("`tty`" == "/dev/console")
a933dad1 1950
9dc15871
EZ
1951Even better, move things that set up terminal sections out of .cshrc
1952and into .login.
a933dad1 1953
9dc15871 1954*** HP/UX: `Pid xxx killed due to text modification or page I/O error'.
a933dad1 1955
9dc15871
EZ
1956On HP/UX, you can get that error when the Emacs executable is on an NFS
1957file system. HP/UX responds this way if it tries to swap in a page and
1958does not get a response from the server within a timeout whose default
1959value is just ten seconds.
a933dad1 1960
9dc15871 1961If this happens to you, extend the timeout period.
a933dad1 1962
9dc15871
EZ
1963*** HP/UX: The right Alt key works wrong on German HP keyboards (and perhaps
1964other non-English HP keyboards too).
a933dad1 1965
9dc15871
EZ
1966This is because HP-UX defines the modifiers wrong in X. Here is a
1967shell script to fix the problem; be sure that it is run after VUE
1968configures the X server.
a933dad1 1969
9dc15871
EZ
1970 xmodmap 2> /dev/null - << EOF
1971 keysym Alt_L = Meta_L
1972 keysym Alt_R = Meta_R
1973 EOF
a933dad1 1974
9dc15871
EZ
1975 xmodmap - << EOF
1976 clear mod1
1977 keysym Mode_switch = NoSymbol
1978 add mod1 = Meta_L
1979 keysym Meta_R = Mode_switch
1980 add mod2 = Mode_switch
1981 EOF
a933dad1 1982
9dc15871
EZ
1983*** HP/UX: "Cannot find callback list" messages from dialog boxes in
1984Emacs built with Motif.
a933dad1 1985
9dc15871
EZ
1986This problem resulted from a bug in GCC 2.4.5. Newer GCC versions
1987such as 2.7.0 fix the problem.
a933dad1 1988
9dc15871 1989*** HP/UX: Emacs does not recognize the AltGr key.
a933dad1 1990
9dc15871
EZ
1991To fix this, set up a file ~/.dt/sessions/sessionetc with executable
1992rights, containing this text:
a933dad1 1993
9dc15871
EZ
1994--------------------------------
1995xmodmap 2> /dev/null - << EOF
1996keysym Alt_L = Meta_L
1997keysym Alt_R = Meta_R
1998EOF
a933dad1 1999
9dc15871
EZ
2000xmodmap - << EOF
2001clear mod1
2002keysym Mode_switch = NoSymbol
2003add mod1 = Meta_L
2004keysym Meta_R = Mode_switch
2005add mod2 = Mode_switch
2006EOF
2007--------------------------------
a933dad1 2008
9dc15871 2009*** HP/UX 11.0: Emacs makes HP/UX 11.0 crash.
a933dad1 2010
9dc15871 2011This is a bug in HPUX; HPUX patch PHKL_16260 is said to fix it.
a933dad1 2012
9dc15871 2013** AIX
a933dad1 2014
9dc15871 2015*** AIX: Trouble using ptys.
a933dad1 2016
9dc15871
EZ
2017People often install the pty devices on AIX incorrectly.
2018Use `smit pty' to reinstall them properly.
a933dad1 2019
9dc15871 2020*** AIXterm: Your Delete key sends a Backspace to the terminal.
a933dad1 2021
9dc15871 2022The solution is to include in your .Xdefaults the lines:
a933dad1 2023
9dc15871
EZ
2024 *aixterm.Translations: #override <Key>BackSpace: string(0x7f)
2025 aixterm*ttyModes: erase ^?
a933dad1 2026
9dc15871 2027This makes your Backspace key send DEL (ASCII 127).
a933dad1 2028
9dc15871
EZ
2029*** AIX: If linking fails because libXbsd isn't found, check if you
2030are compiling with the system's `cc' and CFLAGS containing `-O5'. If
2031so, you have hit a compiler bug. Please make sure to re-configure
2032Emacs so that it isn't compiled with `-O5'.
a933dad1 2033
9dc15871 2034*** AIX 4.3.x or 4.4: Compiling fails.
a933dad1 2035
9dc15871
EZ
2036This could happen if you use /bin/c89 as your compiler, instead of
2037the default `cc'. /bin/c89 treats certain warnings, such as benign
2038redefinitions of macros, as errors, and fails the build. A solution
2039is to use the default compiler `cc'.
a933dad1 2040
9dc15871
EZ
2041*** AIX 4: Some programs fail when run in a Shell buffer
2042with an error message like No terminfo entry for "unknown".
a933dad1 2043
9dc15871
EZ
2044On AIX, many terminal type definitions are not installed by default.
2045`unknown' is one of them. Install the "Special Generic Terminal
2046Definitions" to make them defined.
a933dad1 2047
9dc15871 2048** Solaris
a933dad1 2049
9dc15871
EZ
2050We list bugs in current versions here. Solaris 2.x and 4.x are covered in the
2051section on legacy systems.
a933dad1 2052
9dc15871 2053*** On Solaris, C-x doesn't get through to Emacs when you use the console.
a933dad1 2054
9dc15871
EZ
2055This is a Solaris feature (at least on Intel x86 cpus). Type C-r
2056C-r C-t, to toggle whether C-x gets through to Emacs.
a933dad1 2057
9dc15871 2058*** Problem with remote X server on Suns.
a933dad1 2059
9dc15871
EZ
2060On a Sun, running Emacs on one machine with the X server on another
2061may not work if you have used the unshared system libraries. This
2062is because the unshared libraries fail to use YP for host name lookup.
2063As a result, the host name you specify may not be recognized.
a933dad1 2064
0a4dd4e4 2065*** Solaris 2,6: Emacs crashes with SIGBUS or SIGSEGV on Solaris after you delete a frame.
a933dad1 2066
0a4dd4e4
EZ
2067We suspect that this is a bug in the X libraries provided by
2068Sun. There is a report that one of these patches fixes the bug and
2069makes the problem stop:
a933dad1 2070
0a4dd4e4
EZ
2071105216-01 105393-01 105518-01 105621-01 105665-01 105615-02 105216-02
2072105667-01 105401-08 105615-03 105621-02 105686-02 105736-01 105755-03
2073106033-01 105379-01 105786-01 105181-04 105379-03 105786-04 105845-01
2074105284-05 105669-02 105837-01 105837-02 105558-01 106125-02 105407-01
a933dad1 2075
0a4dd4e4
EZ
2076Another person using a newer system (kernel patch level Generic_105181-06)
2077suspects that the bug was fixed by one of these more recent patches:
a933dad1 2078
0a4dd4e4
EZ
2079106040-07 SunOS 5.6: X Input & Output Method patch
2080106222-01 OpenWindows 3.6: filemgr (ff.core) fixes
2081105284-12 Motif 1.2.7: sparc Runtime library patch
a933dad1 2082
0a4dd4e4 2083*** Solaris 7 or 8: Emacs reports a BadAtom error (from X)
a933dad1 2084
0a4dd4e4
EZ
2085This happens when Emacs was built on some other version of Solaris.
2086Rebuild it on Solaris 8.
a933dad1 2087
9dc15871
EZ
2088*** When using M-x dbx with the SparcWorks debugger, the `up' and `down'
2089commands do not move the arrow in Emacs.
a933dad1 2090
9dc15871 2091You can fix this by adding the following line to `~/.dbxinit':
a933dad1 2092
9dc15871 2093 dbxenv output_short_file_name off
a933dad1 2094
0a4dd4e4
EZ
2095*** On Solaris, CTRL-t is ignored by Emacs when you use
2096the fr.ISO-8859-15 locale (and maybe other related locales).
a933dad1 2097
0a4dd4e4 2098You can fix this by editing the file:
a933dad1 2099
3256a475 2100 /usr/openwin/lib/locale/iso8859-15/Compose
a933dad1 2101
0a4dd4e4 2102Near the bottom there is a line that reads:
a933dad1 2103
3256a475 2104 Ctrl<t> <quotedbl> <Y> : "\276" threequarters
a933dad1 2105
0a4dd4e4 2106that should read:
a933dad1 2107
3256a475 2108 Ctrl<T> <quotedbl> <Y> : "\276" threequarters
a933dad1 2109
0a4dd4e4 2110Note the lower case <t>. Changing this line should make C-t work.
a933dad1 2111
1b6406b3
CY
2112*** On Solaris, Emacs fails to set menu-bar-update-hook on startup, with error
2113"Error in menu-bar-update-hook: (error Point before start of properties)".
2114This seems to be a GCC optimization bug that occurs for GCC 4.1.2 (-g
2115and -g -O2) and GCC 4.2.3 (-g -O and -g -O2). You can fix this by
2116compiling with GCC 4.2.3 or CC 5.7, with no optimizations.
2117
0a4dd4e4 2118** Irix
a933dad1 2119
9dc15871 2120*** Irix 6.5: Emacs crashes on the SGI R10K, when compiled with GCC.
a933dad1 2121
9dc15871 2122This seems to be fixed in GCC 2.95.
a933dad1 2123
0a4dd4e4 2124*** Irix: Trouble using ptys, or running out of ptys.
a933dad1 2125
9dc15871
EZ
2126The program mkpts (which may be in `/usr/adm' or `/usr/sbin') needs to
2127be set-UID to root, or non-root programs like Emacs will not be able
2128to allocate ptys reliably.
a933dad1 2129
9dc15871 2130* Runtime problems specific to MS-Windows
a933dad1 2131
62e466d0
JB
2132** PATH can contain unexpanded environment variables
2133
2134Old releases of TCC (version 9) and 4NT (up to version 8) do not correctly
2135expand App Paths entries of type REG_EXPAND_SZ. When Emacs is run from TCC
2136and such an entry exists for emacs.exe, exec-path will contain the
2137unexpanded entry. This has been fixed in TCC 10. For more information,
2138see bug#2062.
2139
d9b0e161
EZ
2140** Setting w32-pass-rwindow-to-system and w32-pass-lwindow-to-system to nil
2141does not prevent the Start menu from popping up when the left or right
2142``Windows'' key is pressed.
2143
2144This was reported to happen when XKeymacs is installed. At least with
2145XKeymacs Version 3.47, deactivating XKeymacs when Emacs is active is
2146not enough to avoid its messing with the keyboard input. Exiting
2147XKeymacs completely is reported to solve the problem.
2148
ade79051
KS
2149** Windows 95 and networking.
2150
2151To support server sockets, Emacs 22.1 loads ws2_32.dll. If this file
2152is missing, all Emacs networking features are disabled.
2153
2154Old versions of Windows 95 may not have the required DLL. To use
2155Emacs' networking features on Windows 95, you must install the
2156"Windows Socket 2" update available from MicroSoft's support Web.
2157
9dc15871 2158** Emacs exits with "X protocol error" when run with an X server for MS-Windows.
a933dad1 2159
9dc15871
EZ
2160A certain X server for Windows had a bug which caused this.
2161Supposedly the newer 32-bit version of this server doesn't have the
2162problem.
177c0ea7 2163
b6ec0fa0
JR
2164** Emacs crashes when opening a file with a UNC path and rails-mode is loaded.
2165
2166Loading rails-mode seems to interfere with UNC path handling. This has been
2167reported as a bug against both Emacs and rails-mode, so look for an updated
2168rails-mode that avoids this crash, or avoid using UNC paths if using
2169rails-mode.
2170
2171** Known problems with the MS-Windows port of Emacs 22.3
de66e883 2172
117402b8
JR
2173M-x term does not work on MS-Windows. TTY emulation on Windows is
2174undocumented, and programs such as stty which are used on posix platforms
2175to control tty emulation do not exist for native windows terminals.
2176
de66e883
JR
2177Using create-fontset-from-ascii-font or the --font startup parameter
2178with a Chinese, Japanese or Korean font leads to display problems.
2179Use a Latin-only font as your default font. If you want control over
2180which font is used to display Chinese, Japanese or Korean character,
2181use create-fontset-from-fontset-spec to define a fontset.
a933dad1 2182
9dc15871
EZ
2183Frames are not refreshed while the File or Font dialog or a pop-up menu
2184is displayed. This also means help text for pop-up menus is not
2185displayed at all. This is because message handling under Windows is
2186synchronous, so we cannot handle repaint (or any other) messages while
2187waiting for a system function to return the result of the dialog or
2188pop-up menu interaction.
a933dad1 2189
9dc15871
EZ
2190Windows 95 and Windows NT up to version 4.0 do not support help text
2191for menus. Help text is only available in later versions of Windows.
a933dad1 2192
af71f3ce
EZ
2193When "ClearType" method is selected as the "method to smooth edges of
2194screen fonts" (in Display Properties, Appearance tab, under
2195"Effects"), there are various problems related to display of
f396bf16
JR
2196characters: Bold fonts can be hard to read, small portions of some
2197characters could appear chopped, etc. This happens because, under
2198ClearType, characters are drawn outside their advertised bounding box.
2199Emacs 21 disabled the use of ClearType, whereas Emacs 22 allows it and
2200has some code to enlarge the width of the bounding box. Apparently,
2201this display feature needs more changes to get it 100% right. A
2202workaround is to disable ClearType.
af71f3ce 2203
9dc15871
EZ
2204There are problems with display if mouse-tracking is enabled and the
2205mouse is moved off a frame, over another frame then back over the first
2206frame. A workaround is to click the left mouse button inside the frame
2207after moving back into it.
a933dad1 2208
9dc15871
EZ
2209Some minor flickering still persists during mouse-tracking, although
2210not as severely as in 21.1.
a933dad1 2211
9dc15871
EZ
2212An inactive cursor remains in an active window after the Windows
2213Manager driven switch of the focus, until a key is pressed.
a933dad1 2214
4ed1bce5 2215Windows input methods are not recognized by Emacs. However, some
9dc15871
EZ
2216of these input methods cause the keyboard to send characters encoded
2217in the appropriate coding system (e.g., ISO 8859-1 for Latin-1
4ed1bce5
EZ
2218characters, ISO 8859-8 for Hebrew characters, etc.). To make these
2219input methods work with Emacs, set the keyboard coding system to the
2220appropriate value after you activate the Windows input method. For
2221example, if you activate the Hebrew input method, type this:
2222
2223 C-x RET k hebrew-iso-8bit RET
2224
2225(Emacs ought to recognize the Windows language-change event and set up
2226the appropriate keyboard encoding automatically, but it doesn't do
2227that yet.) In addition, to use these Windows input methods, you
2228should set your "Language for non-Unicode programs" (on Windows XP,
2229this is on the Advanced tab of Regional Settings) to the language of
2230the input method.
a933dad1 2231
868c31fe
EZ
2232To bind keys that produce non-ASCII characters with modifiers, you
2233must specify raw byte codes. For instance, if you want to bind
2234META-a-grave to a command, you need to specify this in your `~/.emacs':
2235
2236 (global-set-key [?\M-\340] ...)
2237
2238The above example is for the Latin-1 environment where the byte code
2239of the encoded a-grave is 340 octal. For other environments, use the
2240encoding appropriate to that environment.
a933dad1 2241
9dc15871
EZ
2242The %b specifier for format-time-string does not produce abbreviated
2243month names with consistent widths for some locales on some versions
2244of Windows. This is caused by a deficiency in the underlying system
2245library function.
a933dad1 2246
cdc9f5c2
JR
2247The function set-time-zone-rule gives incorrect results for many
2248non-US timezones. This is due to over-simplistic handling of
2249daylight savings switchovers by the Windows libraries.
9f1bc31f 2250
365b9257
EZ
2251Files larger than 4GB cause overflow in the size (represented as a
225232-bit integer) reported by `file-attributes'. This affects Dired as
2253well, since the Windows port uses a Lisp emulation of `ls' that relies
2254on `file-attributes'.
2255
56dc0646
EZ
2256Sound playing is not supported with the `:data DATA' key-value pair.
2257You _must_ use the `:file FILE' method.
2258
0a4dd4e4 2259** Typing Alt-Shift has strange effects on MS-Windows.
a933dad1 2260
0a4dd4e4
EZ
2261This combination of keys is a command to change keyboard layout. If
2262you proceed to type another non-modifier key before you let go of Alt
2263and Shift, the Alt and Shift act as modifiers in the usual way. A
2264more permanent work around is to change it to another key combination,
d169ccbd
EZ
2265or disable it in the "Regional and Language Options" applet of the
2266Control Panel. (The exact sequence of mouse clicks in the "Regional
2267and Language Options" applet needed to find the key combination that
2268changes the keyboard layout depends on your Windows version; for XP,
2269in the Languages tab, click "Details" and then "Key Settings".)
a933dad1 2270
651f8172
EZ
2271** Cygwin build of Emacs hangs after rebasing Cygwin DLLs
2272
2273Usually, on Cygwin, one needs to rebase the DLLs if an application
2274aborts with a message like this:
2275
2276 C:\cygwin\bin\python.exe: *** unable to remap C:\cygwin\bin\cygssl.dll to
2277 same address as parent(0xDF0000) != 0xE00000
2278
2279However, since Cygwin DLL 1.5.17 was released, after such rebasing,
2280Emacs hangs.
2281
2282This was reported to happen for Emacs 21.2 and also for the pretest of
2283Emacs 22.1 on Cygwin.
2284
2285To work around this, build Emacs like this:
2286
2287 LDFLAGS='-Wl,--enable-auto-import -Wl,--enable-auto-image-base' ./configure
2288 make LD='$(CC)'
2289 make LD='$(CC)' install
2290
2291This produces an Emacs binary that is independent of rebasing.
2292
2293Note that you _must_ use LD='$(CC)' in the last two commands above, to
2294prevent GCC from passing the "--image-base 0x20000000" option to the
2295linker, which is what it does by default. That option produces an
2296Emacs binary with the base address 0x20000000, which will cause Emacs
2297to hang after Cygwin DLLs are rebased.
2298
0a4dd4e4 2299** Interrupting Cygwin port of Bash from Emacs doesn't work.
a933dad1 2300
0a4dd4e4
EZ
2301Cygwin 1.x builds of the ported Bash cannot be interrupted from the
2302MS-Windows version of Emacs. This is due to some change in the Bash
2303port or in the Cygwin library which apparently make Bash ignore the
2304keyboard interrupt event sent by Emacs to Bash. (Older Cygwin ports
2305of Bash, up to b20.1, did receive SIGINT from Emacs.)
a933dad1 2306
0a4dd4e4 2307** Accessing remote files with ange-ftp hangs the MS-Windows version of Emacs.
a933dad1 2308
0a4dd4e4
EZ
2309If the FTP client is the Cygwin port of GNU `ftp', this appears to be
2310due to some bug in the Cygwin DLL or some incompatibility between it
2311and the implementation of asynchronous subprocesses in the Windows
2312port of Emacs. Specifically, some parts of the FTP server responses
2313are not flushed out, apparently due to buffering issues, which
2314confuses ange-ftp.
a933dad1 2315
0a4dd4e4
EZ
2316The solution is to downgrade to an older version of the Cygwin DLL
2317(version 1.3.2 was reported to solve the problem), or use the stock
2318Windows FTP client, usually found in the `C:\WINDOWS' or 'C:\WINNT'
2319directory. To force ange-ftp use the stock Windows client, set the
2320variable `ange-ftp-ftp-program-name' to the absolute file name of the
2321client's executable. For example:
a933dad1 2322
9dc15871 2323 (setq ange-ftp-ftp-program-name "c:/windows/ftp.exe")
a933dad1 2324
9dc15871
EZ
2325If you want to stick with the Cygwin FTP client, you can work around
2326this problem by putting this in your `.emacs' file:
a933dad1 2327
9dc15871 2328 (setq ange-ftp-ftp-program-args '("-i" "-n" "-g" "-v" "--prompt" "")
a933dad1 2329
9dc15871 2330** lpr commands don't work on MS-Windows with some cheap printers.
a933dad1 2331
9dc15871
EZ
2332This problem may also strike other platforms, but the solution is
2333likely to be a global one, and not Emacs specific.
a933dad1 2334
9dc15871
EZ
2335Many cheap inkjet, and even some cheap laser printers, do not
2336print plain text anymore, they will only print through graphical
2337printer drivers. A workaround on MS-Windows is to use Windows' basic
2338built in editor to print (this is possibly the only useful purpose it
2339has):
a933dad1 2340
9dc15871
EZ
2341(setq printer-name "") ;; notepad takes the default
2342(setq lpr-command "notepad") ;; notepad
2343(setq lpr-switches nil) ;; not needed
2344(setq lpr-printer-switch "/P") ;; run notepad as batch printer
a933dad1 2345
9dc15871 2346** Antivirus software interacts badly with the MS-Windows version of Emacs.
a933dad1 2347
9dc15871
EZ
2348The usual manifestation of these problems is that subprocesses don't
2349work or even wedge the entire system. In particular, "M-x shell RET"
2350was reported to fail to work. But other commands also sometimes don't
2351work when an antivirus package is installed.
a933dad1 2352
9dc15871
EZ
2353The solution is to switch the antivirus software to a less aggressive
2354mode (e.g., disable the ``auto-protect'' feature), or even uninstall
2355or disable it entirely.
a933dad1 2356
9dc15871 2357** Pressing the mouse button on MS-Windows does not give a mouse-2 event.
a933dad1 2358
9dc15871
EZ
2359This is usually a problem with the mouse driver. Because most Windows
2360programs do not do anything useful with the middle mouse button, many
2361mouse drivers allow you to define the wheel press to do something
2362different. Some drivers do not even have the option to generate a
2363middle button press. In such cases, setting the wheel press to
2364"scroll" sometimes works if you press the button twice. Trying a
2365generic mouse driver might help.
a933dad1 2366
9dc15871 2367** Scrolling the mouse wheel on MS-Windows always scrolls the top window.
a933dad1 2368
9dc15871
EZ
2369This is another common problem with mouse drivers. Instead of
2370generating scroll events, some mouse drivers try to fake scroll bar
2371movement. But they are not intelligent enough to handle multiple
2372scroll bars within a frame. Trying a generic mouse driver might help.
a933dad1 2373
9dc15871
EZ
2374** Mail sent through Microsoft Exchange in some encodings appears to be
2375mangled and is not seen correctly in Rmail or Gnus. We don't know
2376exactly what happens, but it isn't an Emacs problem in cases we've
2377seen.
a933dad1 2378
9dc15871
EZ
2379** On MS-Windows, you cannot use the right-hand ALT key and the left-hand
2380CTRL key together to type a Control-Meta character.
a933dad1 2381
9dc15871 2382This is a consequence of a misfeature beyond Emacs's control.
a933dad1 2383
9dc15871
EZ
2384Under Windows, the AltGr key on international keyboards generates key
2385events with the modifiers Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl. Since Emacs cannot
2386distinguish AltGr from an explicit Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl
2387combination, whenever it sees Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl it assumes that
2388AltGr has been pressed. The variable `w32-recognize-altgr' can be set
2389to nil to tell Emacs that AltGr is really Ctrl and Alt.
a933dad1 2390
9dc15871 2391** Under some X-servers running on MS-Windows, Emacs' display is incorrect.
a933dad1 2392
9dc15871
EZ
2393The symptoms are that Emacs does not completely erase blank areas of the
2394screen during scrolling or some other screen operations (e.g., selective
2395display or when killing a region). M-x recenter will cause the screen
2396to be completely redisplayed and the "extra" characters will disappear.
a933dad1 2397
9dc15871
EZ
2398This is known to occur under Exceed 6, and possibly earlier versions
2399as well; it is reportedly solved in version 6.2.0.16 and later. The
2400problem lies in the X-server settings.
a933dad1 2401
9dc15871
EZ
2402There are reports that you can solve the problem with Exceed by
2403running `Xconfig' from within NT, choosing "X selection", then
2404un-checking the boxes "auto-copy X selection" and "auto-paste to X
2405selection".
a933dad1 2406
9dc15871
EZ
2407Of this does not work, please inform bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org. Then
2408please call support for your X-server and see if you can get a fix.
2409If you do, please send it to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org so we can list it
2410here.
a933dad1 2411
9dc15871 2412* Build-time problems
a933dad1 2413
9dc15871 2414** Configuration
a933dad1 2415
9dc15871 2416*** The `configure' script doesn't find the jpeg library.
a933dad1 2417
9dc15871
EZ
2418There are reports that this happens on some systems because the linker
2419by default only looks for shared libraries, but jpeg distribution by
2420default only installs a nonshared version of the library, `libjpeg.a'.
a933dad1 2421
9dc15871
EZ
2422If this is the problem, you can configure the jpeg library with the
2423`--enable-shared' option and then rebuild libjpeg. This produces a
2424shared version of libjpeg, which you need to install. Finally, rerun
2425the Emacs configure script, which should now find the jpeg library.
2426Alternatively, modify the generated src/Makefile to link the .a file
2427explicitly, and edit src/config.h to define HAVE_JPEG.
a933dad1 2428
f4b84ef4
GM
2429*** `configure' warns ``accepted by the compiler, rejected by the preprocessor''.
2430
2431This indicates a mismatch between the C compiler and preprocessor that
2432configure is using. For example, on Solaris 10 trying to use
2433CC=/opt/SUNWspro/bin/cc (the Sun Studio compiler) together with
2434CPP=/usr/ccs/lib/cpp can result in errors of this form (you may also
2435see the error ``"/usr/include/sys/isa_defs.h", line 500: undefined control'').
2436
2437The solution is to tell configure to use the correct C preprocessor
2438for your C compiler (CPP="/opt/SUNWspro/bin/cc -E" in the above
2439example).
2440
2441*** `configure' fails with ``"junk.c", line 660: invalid input token: 8.elc''
2442
2443The final stage of the Emacs configure process uses the C preprocessor
2444to generate the Makefiles. Errors of this form can occur if the C
2445preprocessor inserts extra whitespace into its output. The solution
2446is to find the switches that stop your preprocessor from inserting extra
2447whitespace, add them to CPPFLAGS, and re-run configure. For example,
2448this error can occur on Solaris 10 when using the Sun Studio compiler
2449``Sun C 5.8'' with its preprocessor CPP="/opt/SUNWspro/bin/cc -E".
2450The relevant switch in this case is "-Xs" (``compile assuming
2451(pre-ANSI) K & R C style code'').
2452
9dc15871 2453** Compilation
a933dad1 2454
9dc15871 2455*** Building Emacs over NFS fails with ``Text file busy''.
a933dad1 2456
9dc15871 2457This was reported to happen when building Emacs on a GNU/Linux system
880ea925 2458(Red Hat Linux 6.2) using a build directory automounted from Solaris
9dc15871
EZ
2459(SunOS 5.6) file server, but it might not be limited to that
2460configuration alone. Presumably, the NFS server doesn't commit the
2461files' data to disk quickly enough, and the Emacs executable file is
2462left ``busy'' for several seconds after Emacs has finished dumping
2463itself. This causes the subsequent commands which invoke the dumped
2464Emacs executable to fail with the above message.
a933dad1 2465
9dc15871
EZ
2466In some of these cases, a time skew between the NFS server and the
2467machine where Emacs is built is detected and reported by GNU Make
2468(it says that some of the files have modification time in the future).
2469This might be a symptom of NFS-related problems.
a933dad1 2470
9dc15871
EZ
2471If the NFS server runs on Solaris, apply the Solaris patch 105379-05
2472(Sunos 5.6: /kernel/misc/nfssrv patch). If that doesn't work, or if
2473you have a different version of the OS or the NFS server, you can
2474force the NFS server to use 1KB blocks, which was reported to fix the
2475problem albeit at a price of slowing down file I/O. You can force 1KB
2476blocks by specifying the "-o rsize=1024,wsize=1024" options to the
2477`mount' command, or by adding ",rsize=1024,wsize=1024" to the mount
2478options in the appropriate system configuration file, such as
2479`/etc/auto.home'.
a933dad1 2480
9dc15871
EZ
2481Alternatively, when Make fails due to this problem, you could wait for
2482a few seconds and then invoke Make again. In one particular case,
2483waiting for 10 or more seconds between the two Make invocations seemed
2484to work around the problem.
a933dad1 2485
9dc15871
EZ
2486Similar problems can happen if your machine NFS-mounts a directory
2487onto itself. Suppose the Emacs sources live in `/usr/local/src' and
2488you are working on the host called `marvin'. Then an entry in the
2489`/etc/fstab' file like the following is asking for trouble:
a933dad1 2490
9dc15871 2491 marvin:/usr/local/src /usr/local/src ...options.omitted...
a933dad1 2492
9dc15871 2493The solution is to remove this line from `etc/fstab'.
a933dad1 2494
9dc15871 2495*** Building Emacs with GCC 2.9x fails in the `src' directory.
a933dad1 2496
9dc15871
EZ
2497This may happen if you use a development version of GNU `cpp' from one
2498of the GCC snapshots between Oct 2000 and Feb 2001, or from a released
2499version of GCC newer than 2.95.2 which was prepared around those
2500dates; similar problems were reported with some snapshots of GCC 3.1
2501around Sep 30 2001. The preprocessor in those versions is
2502incompatible with a traditional Unix cpp (e.g., it expands ".." into
2503". .", which breaks relative file names that reference the parent
2504directory; or inserts TAB characters before lines that set Make
2505variables).
a933dad1 2506
9dc15871
EZ
2507The solution is to make sure the preprocessor is run with the
2508`-traditional' option. The `configure' script does that automatically
2509when it detects the known problems in your cpp, but you might hit some
2510unknown ones. To force the `configure' script to use `-traditional',
2511run the script like this:
a933dad1 2512
9dc15871 2513 CPP='gcc -E -traditional' ./configure ...
a933dad1 2514
9dc15871
EZ
2515(replace the ellipsis "..." with any additional arguments you pass to
2516the script).
a933dad1 2517
9dc15871
EZ
2518Note that this problem does not pertain to the MS-Windows port of
2519Emacs, since it doesn't use the preprocessor to generate Makefiles.
a933dad1 2520
9dc15871
EZ
2521*** src/Makefile and lib-src/Makefile are truncated--most of the file missing.
2522*** Compiling wakeup, in lib-src, says it can't make wakeup.c.
a933dad1 2523
9dc15871
EZ
2524This can happen if configure uses GNU sed version 2.03. That version
2525had a bug. GNU sed version 2.05 works properly.To solve the
2526problem, install the current version of GNU Sed, then rerun Emacs's
2527configure script.
a933dad1 2528
9dc15871 2529*** Compiling lib-src says there is no rule to make test-distrib.c.
a933dad1 2530
9dc15871
EZ
2531This results from a bug in a VERY old version of GNU Sed. To solve
2532the problem, install the current version of GNU Sed, then rerun
2533Emacs's configure script.
a933dad1 2534
745377e8
GM
2535*** Building a 32-bit executable on a 64-bit GNU/Linux architecture.
2536
2537First ensure that the necessary 32-bit system libraries and include
2538files are installed. Then use:
2539
2540 env CC="gcc -m32" ./configure --build=i386-linux-gnu \
2541 --x-libraries=/usr/X11R6/lib
2542
2543(using the location of the 32-bit X libraries on your system).
2544
1020d879 2545*** Building the Cygwin port for MS-Windows can fail with some GCC versions
9c9f0081
EZ
2546
2547Building Emacs 22 with Cygwin builds of GCC 3.4.4-1 and 3.4.4-2 is
2548reported to either fail or cause Emacs to segfault at run time. In
2549addition, the Cygwin GCC 3.4.4-2 has problems with generating debug
2550info. Cygwin users are advised not to use these versions of GCC for
485a6c18
EZ
2551compiling Emacs. GCC versions 4.0.3, 4.0.4, 4.1.1, and 4.1.2
2552reportedly build a working Cygwin binary of Emacs, so we recommend
2553these GCC versions. Note that these versions of GCC, 4.0.3, 4.0.4,
25544.1.1, and 4.1.2, are currently the _only_ versions known to succeed
2555in building Emacs (as of v22.1).
9c9f0081
EZ
2556
2557*** Building the native MS-Windows port with Cygwin GCC can fail.
a933dad1 2558
ad05a5de 2559Emacs may not build using some Cygwin builds of GCC, such as Cygwin
9dc15871
EZ
2560version 1.1.8, using the default configure settings. It appears to be
2561necessary to specify the -mwin32 flag when compiling, and define
2562__MSVCRT__, like so:
a933dad1 2563
9dc15871 2564 configure --with-gcc --cflags -mwin32 --cflags -D__MSVCRT__
a933dad1 2565
9dc15871 2566*** Building the MS-Windows port fails with a CreateProcess failure.
a933dad1 2567
9dc15871
EZ
2568Some versions of mingw32 make on some versions of Windows do not seem
2569to detect the shell correctly. Try "make SHELL=cmd.exe", or if that
2570fails, try running make from Cygwin bash instead.
a933dad1 2571
9dc15871 2572*** Building `ctags' for MS-Windows with the MinGW port of GCC fails.
a933dad1 2573
9dc15871
EZ
2574This might happen due to a bug in the MinGW header assert.h, which
2575defines the `assert' macro with a trailing semi-colon. The following
2576patch to assert.h should solve this:
a933dad1 2577
0cc69e7d
EZ
2578 *** include/assert.h.orig Sun Nov 7 02:41:36 1999
2579 --- include/assert.h Mon Jan 29 11:49:10 2001
2580 ***************
2581 *** 41,47 ****
2582 /*
2583 * If not debugging, assert does nothing.
2584 */
2585 ! #define assert(x) ((void)0);
2586
2587 #else /* debugging enabled */
2588
2589 --- 41,47 ----
2590 /*
2591 * If not debugging, assert does nothing.
2592 */
2593 ! #define assert(x) ((void)0)
2594
2595 #else /* debugging enabled */
a933dad1 2596
a933dad1 2597
3e7c244e 2598*** Building the MS-Windows port with Visual Studio 2005 fails.
a933dad1 2599
3e7c244e
JR
2600Microsoft no longer ships the single threaded version of the C library
2601with their compiler, and the multithreaded static library is missing
0cc69e7d 2602some functions that Microsoft have deemed non-threadsafe. The
3e7c244e
JR
2603dynamically linked C library has all the functions, but there is a
2604conflict between the versions of malloc in the DLL and in Emacs, which
2605is not resolvable due to the way Windows does dynamic linking.
a933dad1 2606
8c4fae51 2607We recommend the use of the MinGW port of GCC for compiling Emacs, as
3e7c244e
JR
2608not only does it not suffer these problems, but it is also Free
2609software like Emacs.
a933dad1 2610
8c4fae51
JR
2611*** Building the MS-Windows port with Visual Studio fails compiling emacs.rc
2612
2613If the build fails with the following message then the problem
2614described here most likely applies:
2615
2616../nt/emacs.rc(1) : error RC2176 : old DIB in icons\emacs.ico; pass it
2617through SDKPAINT
2618
2619The Emacs icon contains a high resolution PNG icon for Vista, which is
2620not recognized by older versions of the resource compiler. There are
2621several workarounds for this problem:
2622 1. Use Free MinGW tools to compile, which do not have this problem.
2623 2. Install the latest Windows SDK.
2624 3. Replace emacs.ico with an older or edited icon.
2625
9dc15871 2626** Linking
a933dad1 2627
9dc15871
EZ
2628*** Building Emacs with a system compiler fails to link because of an
2629undefined symbol such as __eprintf which does not appear in Emacs.
a933dad1 2630
9dc15871
EZ
2631This can happen if some of the libraries linked into Emacs were built
2632with GCC, but Emacs itself is being linked with a compiler other than
2633GCC. Object files compiled with GCC might need some helper functions
2634from libgcc.a, the library which comes with GCC, but the system
2635compiler does not instruct the linker to search libgcc.a during the
2636link stage.
a933dad1 2637
9dc15871 2638A solution is to link with GCC, like this:
a933dad1 2639
3256a475 2640 make CC=gcc
a933dad1 2641
9dc15871
EZ
2642Since the .o object files already exist, this will not recompile Emacs
2643with GCC, but just restart by trying again to link temacs.
a933dad1 2644
9dc15871 2645*** AIX 1.3 ptf 0013: Link failure.
a933dad1 2646
9dc15871
EZ
2647There is a real duplicate definition of the function `_slibc_free' in
2648the library /lib/libc_s.a (just do nm on it to verify). The
2649workaround/fix is:
a933dad1 2650
9dc15871
EZ
2651 cd /lib
2652 ar xv libc_s.a NLtmtime.o
2653 ar dv libc_s.a NLtmtime.o
a933dad1 2654
9dc15871
EZ
2655*** AIX 4.1.2: Linker error messages such as
2656 ld: 0711-212 SEVERE ERROR: Symbol .__quous, found in the global symbol table
3256a475 2657 of archive /usr/lib/libIM.a, was not defined in archive member shr.o.
a933dad1 2658
9dc15871
EZ
2659This is a problem in libIM.a. You can work around it by executing
2660these shell commands in the src subdirectory of the directory where
2661you build Emacs:
a933dad1 2662
9dc15871
EZ
2663 cp /usr/lib/libIM.a .
2664 chmod 664 libIM.a
2665 ranlib libIM.a
a933dad1 2666
9dc15871
EZ
2667Then change -lIM to ./libIM.a in the command to link temacs (in
2668Makefile).
a933dad1 2669
9dc15871 2670*** Sun with acc: Link failure when using acc on a Sun.
a933dad1 2671
9dc15871 2672To use acc, you need additional options just before the libraries, such as
a933dad1 2673
9dc15871 2674 /usr/lang/SC2.0.1/values-Xt.o -L/usr/lang/SC2.0.1/cg87 -L/usr/lang/SC2.0.1
a933dad1 2675
9dc15871 2676and you need to add -lansi just before -lc.
a933dad1 2677
9dc15871
EZ
2678The precise file names depend on the compiler version, so we
2679cannot easily arrange to supply them.
a933dad1 2680
9dc15871 2681*** Linking says that the functions insque and remque are undefined.
a933dad1 2682
9dc15871 2683Change oldXMenu/Makefile by adding insque.o to the variable OBJS.
a933dad1 2684
9dc15871 2685*** `tparam' reported as a multiply-defined symbol when linking with ncurses.
a933dad1 2686
9dc15871
EZ
2687This problem results from an incompatible change in ncurses, in
2688version 1.9.9e approximately. This version is unable to provide a
2689definition of tparm without also defining tparam. This is also
2690incompatible with Terminfo; as a result, the Emacs Terminfo support
2691does not work with this version of ncurses.
a933dad1 2692
9dc15871 2693The fix is to install a newer version of ncurses, such as version 4.2.
a933dad1 2694
d7ef7cd4
GM
2695** Bootstrapping
2696
2697Bootstrapping (compiling the .el files) is normally only necessary
62e466d0 2698with CVS builds, since the .elc files are pre-compiled in releases.
d7ef7cd4
GM
2699
2700*** "No rule to make target" with Ubuntu 8.04 make 3.81-3build1
2701
2702Compiling the lisp files fails at random places, complaining:
2703"No rule to make target `/path/to/some/lisp.elc'".
2704The causes of this problem are not understood. Using GNU make 3.81 compiled
2705from source, rather than the Ubuntu version, worked. See Bug#327,821.
2706
9dc15871 2707** Dumping
a933dad1 2708
9dc15871 2709*** Linux: Segfault during `make bootstrap' under certain recent versions of the Linux kernel.
a933dad1 2710
880ea925 2711With certain recent Linux kernels (like the one of Red Hat Fedora Core
cf14a51c 27121 and newer), the new "Exec-shield" functionality is enabled by default, which
ed214edf
JD
2713creates a different memory layout that breaks the emacs dumper. Emacs tries
2714to handle this at build time, but if the workaround used fails, these
2715instructions can be useful.
cf14a51c
JD
2716The work-around explained here is not enough on Fedora Core 4 (and possible
2717newer). Read the next item.
a933dad1 2718
1f02a4ba
JD
2719Configure can overcome the problem of exec-shield if the architecture is
2720x86 and the program setarch is present. On other architectures no
2721workaround is known.
2722
9dc15871 2723You can check the Exec-shield state like this:
a933dad1 2724
9dc15871 2725 cat /proc/sys/kernel/exec-shield
a933dad1 2726
1f02a4ba 2727It returns non-zero when Exec-shield is enabled, 0 otherwise. Please
9dc15871 2728read your system documentation for more details on Exec-shield and
1f02a4ba
JD
2729associated commands. Exec-shield can be turned off with this command:
2730
2731 echo "0" > /proc/sys/kernel/exec-shield
a933dad1 2732
9dc15871
EZ
2733When Exec-shield is enabled, building Emacs will segfault during the
2734execution of this command:
a933dad1 2735
1f02a4ba 2736 ./temacs --batch --load loadup [dump|bootstrap]
a933dad1 2737
9dc15871 2738To work around this problem, it is necessary to temporarily disable
1f02a4ba
JD
2739Exec-shield while building Emacs, or, on x86, by using the `setarch'
2740command when running temacs like this:
2741
2742 setarch i386 ./temacs --batch --load loadup [dump|bootstrap]
a933dad1 2743
ade79051 2744
ff0ab406
RS
2745*** Fedora Core 4 GNU/Linux: Segfault during dumping.
2746
2747In addition to exec-shield explained above "Linux: Segfault during
2748`make bootstrap' under certain recent versions of the Linux kernel"
2749item, Linux kernel shipped with Fedora Core 4 randomizes the virtual
cf14a51c
JD
2750address space of a process. As the result dumping may fail even if
2751you turn off exec-shield. In this case, use the -R option to the setarch
ff0ab406
RS
2752command:
2753
25fd144d 2754 setarch i386 -R ./temacs --batch --load loadup [dump|bootstrap]
ff0ab406
RS
2755
2756or
2757
ade79051 2758 setarch i386 -R make bootstrap
a933dad1 2759
9dc15871 2760*** Fatal signal in the command temacs -l loadup inc dump.
a933dad1
DL
2761
2762This command is the final stage of building Emacs. It is run by the
7c2fb837 2763Makefile in the src subdirectory.
a933dad1
DL
2764
2765It has been known to get fatal errors due to insufficient swapping
2766space available on the machine.
2767
9dc15871 2768On 68000s, it has also happened because of bugs in the
a933dad1
DL
2769subroutine `alloca'. Verify that `alloca' works right, even
2770for large blocks (many pages).
2771
9dc15871
EZ
2772*** test-distrib says that the distribution has been clobbered.
2773*** or, temacs prints "Command key out of range 0-127".
2774*** or, temacs runs and dumps emacs, but emacs totally fails to work.
2775*** or, temacs gets errors dumping emacs.
a933dad1
DL
2776
2777This can be because the .elc files have been garbled. Do not be
2778fooled by the fact that most of a .elc file is text: these are
2779binary files and can contain all 256 byte values.
2780
2781In particular `shar' cannot be used for transmitting GNU Emacs.
2782It typically truncates "lines". What appear to be "lines" in
2783a binary file can of course be of any length. Even once `shar'
2784itself is made to work correctly, `sh' discards null characters
2785when unpacking the shell archive.
2786
2787I have also seen character \177 changed into \377. I do not know
2788what transfer means caused this problem. Various network
2789file transfer programs are suspected of clobbering the high bit.
2790
2791If you have a copy of Emacs that has been damaged in its
2792nonprinting characters, you can fix them:
2793
2794 1) Record the names of all the .elc files.
2795 2) Delete all the .elc files.
2796 3) Recompile alloc.c with a value of PURESIZE twice as large.
2797 (See puresize.h.) You might as well save the old alloc.o.
2798 4) Remake emacs. It should work now.
2799 5) Running emacs, do Meta-x byte-compile-file repeatedly
2800 to recreate all the .elc files that used to exist.
2801 You may need to increase the value of the variable
2802 max-lisp-eval-depth to succeed in running the compiler interpreted
2803 on certain .el files. 400 was sufficient as of last report.
2804 6) Reinstall the old alloc.o (undoing changes to alloc.c if any)
2805 and remake temacs.
2806 7) Remake emacs. It should work now, with valid .elc files.
2807
9dc15871 2808*** temacs prints "Pure Lisp storage exhausted".
a933dad1
DL
2809
2810This means that the Lisp code loaded from the .elc and .el
2811files during temacs -l loadup inc dump took up more
2812space than was allocated.
2813
2814This could be caused by
2815 1) adding code to the preloaded Lisp files
2816 2) adding more preloaded files in loadup.el
2817 3) having a site-init.el or site-load.el which loads files.
2818 Note that ANY site-init.el or site-load.el is nonstandard;
2819 if you have received Emacs from some other site
2820 and it contains a site-init.el or site-load.el file, consider
2821 deleting that file.
2822 4) getting the wrong .el or .elc files
2823 (not from the directory you expected).
2824 5) deleting some .elc files that are supposed to exist.
2825 This would cause the source files (.el files) to be
2826 loaded instead. They take up more room, so you lose.
2827 6) a bug in the Emacs distribution which underestimates
2828 the space required.
2829
2830If the need for more space is legitimate, change the definition
2831of PURESIZE in puresize.h.
2832
2833But in some of the cases listed above, this problem is a consequence
2834of something else that is wrong. Be sure to check and fix the real
2835problem.
2836
9dc15871 2837*** Linux: Emacs crashes when dumping itself on Mac PPC running Yellow Dog GNU/Linux.
a933dad1 2838
9dc15871
EZ
2839The crashes happen inside the function Fmake_symbol; here's a typical
2840C backtrace printed by GDB:
a933dad1 2841
9dc15871
EZ
2842 0x190c0c0 in Fmake_symbol ()
2843 (gdb) where
2844 #0 0x190c0c0 in Fmake_symbol ()
2845 #1 0x1942ca4 in init_obarray ()
2846 #2 0x18b3500 in main ()
2847 #3 0x114371c in __libc_start_main (argc=5, argv=0x7ffff5b4, envp=0x7ffff5cc,
a933dad1 2848
9dc15871
EZ
2849This could happen because GCC version 2.95 and later changed the base
2850of the load address to 0x10000000. Emacs needs to be told about this,
2851but we currently cannot do that automatically, because that breaks
2852other versions of GNU/Linux on the MacPPC. Until we find a way to
2853distinguish between the Yellow Dog and the other varieties of
2854GNU/Linux systems on the PPC, you will have to manually uncomment the
2855following section near the end of the file src/m/macppc.h in the Emacs
2856distribution:
a933dad1 2857
9dc15871 2858 #if 0 /* This breaks things on PPC GNU/Linux except for Yellowdog,
3256a475
RC
2859 even with identical GCC, as, ld. Let's take it out until we
2860 know what's really going on here. */
9dc15871
EZ
2861 /* GCC 2.95 and newer on GNU/Linux PPC changed the load address to
2862 0x10000000. */
2863 #if defined __linux__
2864 #if __GNUC__ > 2 || (__GNUC__ == 2 && __GNUC_MINOR__ >= 95)
2865 #define DATA_SEG_BITS 0x10000000
2866 #endif
2867 #endif
2868 #endif /* 0 */
a933dad1 2869
9dc15871
EZ
2870Remove the "#if 0" and "#endif" directives which surround this, save
2871the file, and then reconfigure and rebuild Emacs. The dumping process
2872should now succeed.
a933dad1 2873
0bce976c
GM
2874*** OpenBSD 4.0 macppc: Segfault during dumping.
2875
2876The build aborts with signal 11 when the command `./temacs --batch
14395431 2877--load loadup bootstrap' tries to load files.el. A workaround seems
464df798 2878to be to reduce the level of compiler optimization used during the
14395431
GM
2879build (from -O2 to -O1). It is possible this is an OpenBSD
2880GCC problem specific to the macppc architecture, possibly only
2881occurring with older versions of GCC (e.g. 3.3.5).
0bce976c 2882
ce46543c
GM
2883*** openSUSE 10.3: Segfault in bcopy during dumping.
2884
2885This is due to a bug in the bcopy implementation in openSUSE 10.3.
2886It is/will be fixed in an openSUSE update.
2887
9dc15871 2888** Installation
a933dad1 2889
9dc15871 2890*** Installing Emacs gets an error running `install-info'.
a933dad1 2891
9dc15871
EZ
2892You need to install a recent version of Texinfo; that package
2893supplies the `install-info' command.
a933dad1 2894
6afdff63
GM
2895*** Installing to a directory with spaces in the name fails.
2896
2897For example, if you call configure with a directory-related option
2898with spaces in the value, eg --enable-locallisppath='/path/with\ spaces'.
2899Using directory paths with spaces is not supported at this time: you
2900must re-configure without using spaces.
2901
6c06422c
CY
2902*** Installing to a directory with non-ASCII characters in the name fails.
2903
2904Installation may fail, or the Emacs executable may not start
2905correctly, if a directory name containing non-ASCII characters is used
2906as a `configure' argument (e.g. `--prefix'). The problem can also
2907occur if a non-ASCII directory is specified in the EMACSLOADPATH
2908envvar.
2909
2f6e7d3f
GM
2910*** On Solaris, use GNU Make when installing an out-of-tree build
2911
2912The Emacs configuration process allows you to configure the
2913build environment so that you can build emacs in a directory
2914outside of the distribution tree. When installing Emacs from an
2915out-of-tree build directory on Solaris, you may need to use GNU
2916make. The make programs bundled with Solaris support the VPATH
2917macro but use it differently from the way the VPATH macro is
2918used by GNU make. The differences will cause the "make install"
2919step to fail, leaving you with an incomplete emacs
2920installation. GNU make is available in /usr/sfw/bin on Solaris
292110 and can be installed as /opt/sfw/bin/gmake from the Solaris 9
2922Software Companion CDROM.
2923
2924The problems due to the VPATH processing differences affect only
2925out of tree builds so, if you are on a Solaris installation
2926without GNU make, you can install Emacs completely by installing
2927from a build environment using the original emacs distribution tree.
2928
9dc15871 2929** First execution
a933dad1 2930
9dc15871 2931*** Emacs binary is not in executable format, and cannot be run.
a933dad1 2932
9dc15871
EZ
2933This was reported to happen when Emacs is built in a directory mounted
2934via NFS, for some combinations of NFS client and NFS server.
2935Usually, the file `emacs' produced in these cases is full of
2936binary null characters, and the `file' utility says:
a933dad1 2937
9dc15871 2938 emacs: ASCII text, with no line terminators
a933dad1 2939
9dc15871
EZ
2940We don't know what exactly causes this failure. A work-around is to
2941build Emacs in a directory on a local disk.
a933dad1 2942
9dc15871 2943*** The dumped Emacs crashes when run, trying to write pure data.
a933dad1
DL
2944
2945Two causes have been seen for such problems.
2946
29471) On a system where getpagesize is not a system call, it is defined
2948as a macro. If the definition (in both unexec.c and malloc.c) is wrong,
2949it can cause problems like this. You might be able to find the correct
2950value in the man page for a.out (5).
2951
29522) Some systems allocate variables declared static among the
2953initialized variables. Emacs makes all initialized variables in most
2954of its files pure after dumping, but the variables declared static and
2955not initialized are not supposed to be pure. On these systems you
2956may need to add "#define static" to the m- or the s- file.
2957
9dc15871 2958* Emacs 19 problems
a933dad1 2959
9dc15871 2960** Error messages `Wrong number of arguments: #<subr where-is-internal>, 5'.
a933dad1 2961
9dc15871
EZ
2962This typically results from having the powerkey library loaded.
2963Powerkey was designed for Emacs 19.22. It is obsolete now because
2964Emacs 19 now has this feature built in; and powerkey also calls
2965where-is-internal in an obsolete way.
a933dad1 2966
9dc15871 2967So the fix is to arrange not to load powerkey.
a933dad1 2968
9dc15871 2969* Runtime problems on legacy systems
a933dad1 2970
9dc15871
EZ
2971This section covers bugs reported on very old hardware or software.
2972If you are using hardware and an operating system shipped after 2000,
2973it is unlikely you will see any of these.
a933dad1 2974
9dc15871 2975** Ancient operating systems
a933dad1 2976
0a4dd4e4
EZ
2977AIX 4.2 was end-of-lifed on Dec 31st, 1999.
2978
2979*** AIX: You get this compiler error message:
2980
2981 Processing include file ./XMenuInt.h
2982 1501-106: (S) Include file X11/Xlib.h not found.
2983
2984This means your system was installed with only the X11 runtime i.d
2985libraries. You have to find your sipo (bootable tape) and install
2986X11Dev... with smit.
2987
2988(This report must be ancient. Bootable tapes are long dead.)
2989
2990*** AIX 3.2.4: Releasing Ctrl/Act key has no effect, if Shift is down.
2991
2992Due to a feature of AIX, pressing or releasing the Ctrl/Act key is
2993ignored when the Shift, Alt or AltGr keys are held down. This can
2994lead to the keyboard being "control-locked"--ordinary letters are
2995treated as control characters.
2996
2997You can get out of this "control-locked" state by pressing and
2998releasing Ctrl/Act while not pressing or holding any other keys.
2999
3000*** AIX 3.2.5: You get this message when running Emacs:
3001
3002 Could not load program emacs
3003 Symbol smtcheckinit in csh is undefined
3004 Error was: Exec format error
3005
3006or this one:
3007
3008 Could not load program .emacs
3009 Symbol _system_con in csh is undefined
3010 Symbol _fp_trapsta in csh is undefined
3011 Error was: Exec format error
3012
3013These can happen when you try to run on AIX 3.2.5 a program that was
3014compiled with 3.2.4. The fix is to recompile.
3015
3016*** AIX 4.2: Emacs gets a segmentation fault at startup.
3017
3018If you are using IBM's xlc compiler, compile emacs.c
3019without optimization; that should avoid the problem.
3020
9dc15871 3021*** ISC Unix
a933dad1 3022
9dc15871 3023**** ISC: display-time causes kernel problems on ISC systems.
a933dad1 3024
9dc15871
EZ
3025Under Interactive Unix versions 3.0.1 and 4.0 (and probably other
3026versions), display-time causes the loss of large numbers of STREVENT
3027cells. Eventually the kernel's supply of these cells is exhausted.
3028This makes emacs and the whole system run slow, and can make other
3029processes die, in particular pcnfsd.
a933dad1 3030
9dc15871
EZ
3031Other emacs functions that communicate with remote processes may have
3032the same problem. Display-time seems to be far the worst.
a933dad1 3033
9dc15871 3034The only known fix: Don't run display-time.
a933dad1 3035
0a4dd4e4
EZ
3036**** Sunos 5.3: Subprocesses remain, hanging but not zombies.
3037
3038A bug in Sunos 5.3 causes Emacs subprocesses to remain after Emacs
3039exits. Sun patch # 101415-02 is part of the fix for this, but it only
3040applies to ptys, and doesn't fix the problem with subprocesses
3041communicating through pipes.
3042
9dc15871 3043*** Irix
a933dad1 3044
9dc15871 3045*** Irix 6.2: No visible display on mips-sgi-irix6.2 when compiling with GCC 2.8.1.
a933dad1 3046
9dc15871
EZ
3047This problem went away after installing the latest IRIX patches
3048as of 8 Dec 1998.
a933dad1 3049
9dc15871 3050The same problem has been reported on Irix 6.3.
a933dad1 3051
9dc15871
EZ
3052*** Irix 6.3: substituting environment variables in file names
3053in the minibuffer gives peculiar error messages such as
a933dad1 3054
9dc15871 3055 Substituting nonexistent environment variable ""
a933dad1 3056
9dc15871
EZ
3057This is not an Emacs bug; it is caused by something in SGI patch
3058003082 August 11, 1998.
a933dad1 3059
9dc15871 3060*** OPENSTEP
a933dad1 3061
9dc15871 3062**** OPENSTEP 4.2: Compiling syntax.c with gcc 2.7.2.1 fails.
a933dad1 3063
9dc15871
EZ
3064The compiler was reported to crash while compiling syntax.c with the
3065following message:
a933dad1 3066
9dc15871 3067 cc: Internal compiler error: program cc1obj got fatal signal 11
a933dad1 3068
9dc15871
EZ
3069To work around this, replace the macros UPDATE_SYNTAX_TABLE_FORWARD,
3070INC_BOTH, and INC_FROM with functions. To this end, first define 3
3071functions, one each for every macro. Here's an example:
a933dad1 3072
9dc15871
EZ
3073 static int update_syntax_table_forward(int from)
3074 {
3075 return(UPDATE_SYNTAX_TABLE_FORWARD(from));
3076 }/*update_syntax_table_forward*/
a933dad1 3077
9dc15871
EZ
3078Then replace all references to UPDATE_SYNTAX_TABLE_FORWARD in syntax.c
3079with a call to the function update_syntax_table_forward.
a933dad1 3080
9dc15871 3081*** Solaris 2.x
a933dad1 3082
9dc15871 3083**** Strange results from format %d in a few cases, on a Sun.
a933dad1 3084
9dc15871
EZ
3085Sun compiler version SC3.0 has been found to miscompile part of
3086editfns.c. The workaround is to compile with some other compiler such
3087as GCC.
a933dad1 3088
9dc15871 3089**** On Solaris, Emacs dumps core if lisp-complete-symbol is called.
a933dad1 3090
9dc15871
EZ
3091If you compile Emacs with the -fast or -xO4 option with version 3.0.2
3092of the Sun C compiler, Emacs dumps core when lisp-complete-symbol is
3093called. The problem does not happen if you compile with GCC.
a933dad1 3094
9dc15871 3095**** On Solaris, Emacs crashes if you use (display-time).
a933dad1 3096
9dc15871
EZ
3097This can happen if you configure Emacs without specifying the precise
3098version of Solaris that you are using.
a933dad1 3099
9dc15871 3100**** Solaris 2.3 and 2.4: Unpredictable segmentation faults.
a933dad1 3101
9dc15871
EZ
3102A user reported that this happened in 19.29 when it was compiled with
3103the Sun compiler, but not when he recompiled with GCC 2.7.0.
a933dad1 3104
9dc15871 3105We do not know whether something in Emacs is partly to blame for this.
a933dad1 3106
9dc15871 3107**** Solaris 2.4: Emacs dumps core on startup.
a933dad1 3108
9dc15871
EZ
3109Bill Sebok says that the cause of this is Solaris 2.4 vendor patch
3110102303-05, which extends the Solaris linker to deal with the Solaris
3111Common Desktop Environment's linking needs. You can fix the problem
3112by removing this patch and installing patch 102049-02 instead.
3113However, that linker version won't work with CDE.
a933dad1 3114
9dc15871
EZ
3115Solaris 2.5 comes with a linker that has this bug. It is reported that if
3116you install all the latest patches (as of June 1996), the bug is fixed.
3117We suspect the crucial patch is one of these, but we don't know
3118for certain.
a933dad1 3119
9dc15871
EZ
3120 103093-03: [README] SunOS 5.5: kernel patch (2140557 bytes)
3121 102832-01: [README] OpenWindows 3.5: Xview Jumbo Patch (4181613 bytes)
3256a475 3122 103242-04: [README] SunOS 5.5: linker patch (595363 bytes)
a933dad1 3123
9dc15871
EZ
3124(One user reports that the bug was fixed by those patches together
3125with patches 102980-04, 103279-01, 103300-02, and 103468-01.)
a933dad1 3126
9dc15871
EZ
3127If you can determine which patch does fix the bug, please tell
3128bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
a933dad1 3129
9dc15871
EZ
3130Meanwhile, the GNU linker links Emacs properly on both Solaris 2.4 and
3131Solaris 2.5.
a933dad1 3132
9dc15871
EZ
3133**** Solaris 2.4: Dired hangs and C-g does not work. Or Emacs hangs
3134forever waiting for termination of a subprocess that is a zombie.
a933dad1 3135
9dc15871
EZ
3136casper@fwi.uva.nl says the problem is in X11R6. Rebuild libX11.so
3137after changing the file xc/config/cf/sunLib.tmpl. Change the lines
a933dad1 3138
9dc15871
EZ
3139 #if ThreadedX
3140 #define SharedX11Reqs -lthread
3141 #endif
a933dad1 3142
9dc15871 3143to:
a933dad1 3144
9dc15871
EZ
3145 #if OSMinorVersion < 4
3146 #if ThreadedX
3147 #define SharedX11Reqs -lthread
3148 #endif
3149 #endif
3150
3151Be sure also to edit x/config/cf/sun.cf so that OSMinorVersion is 4
3152(as it should be for Solaris 2.4). The file has three definitions for
3153OSMinorVersion: the first is for x86, the second for SPARC under
3154Solaris, and the third for SunOS 4. Make sure to update the
3155definition for your type of machine and system.
a933dad1 3156
9dc15871
EZ
3157Then do `make Everything' in the top directory of X11R6, to rebuild
3158the makefiles and rebuild X. The X built this way work only on
3159Solaris 2.4, not on 2.3.
a933dad1 3160
9dc15871
EZ
3161For multithreaded X to work it is necessary to install patch
3162101925-02 to fix problems in header files [2.4]. You need
3163to reinstall gcc or re-run just-fixinc after installing that
3164patch.
a933dad1 3165
9dc15871
EZ
3166However, Frank Rust <frust@iti.cs.tu-bs.de> used a simpler solution:
3167he changed
3168 #define ThreadedX YES
3169to
3170 #define ThreadedX NO
3171in sun.cf and did `make World' to rebuild X11R6. Removing all
3172`-DXTHREAD*' flags and `-lthread' entries from lib/X11/Makefile and
3173typing 'make install' in that directory also seemed to work.
a933dad1 3174
9dc15871 3175**** Solaris 2.x: GCC complains "64 bit integer types not supported".
a933dad1 3176
9dc15871
EZ
3177This suggests that GCC is not installed correctly. Most likely you
3178are using GCC 2.7.2.3 (or earlier) on Solaris 2.6 (or later); this
3179does not work without patching. To run GCC 2.7.2.3 on Solaris 2.6 or
3180later, you must patch fixinc.svr4 and reinstall GCC from scratch as
3181described in the Solaris FAQ
3182<http://www.wins.uva.nl/pub/solaris/solaris2.html>. A better fix is
3183to upgrade to GCC 2.8.1 or later.
a933dad1 3184
9dc15871
EZ
3185**** Solaris 2.7: Building Emacs with WorkShop Compilers 5.0 98/12/15
3186C 5.0 failed, apparently with non-default CFLAGS, most probably due to
3187compiler bugs. Using Sun Solaris 2.7 Sun WorkShop 6 update 1 C
3188release was reported to work without problems. It worked OK on
3189another system with Solaris 8 using apparently the same 5.0 compiler
3190and the default CFLAGS.
a933dad1 3191
9dc15871 3192**** Solaris 2.x: Emacs dumps core when built with Motif.
a933dad1 3193
9dc15871
EZ
3194The Solaris Motif libraries are buggy, at least up through Solaris 2.5.1.
3195Install the current Motif runtime library patch appropriate for your host.
3196(Make sure the patch is current; some older patch versions still have the bug.)
3197You should install the other patches recommended by Sun for your host, too.
3198You can obtain Sun patches from ftp://sunsolve.sun.com/pub/patches/;
3199look for files with names ending in `.PatchReport' to see which patches
3200are currently recommended for your host.
a933dad1 3201
9dc15871
EZ
3202On Solaris 2.6, Emacs is said to work with Motif when Solaris patch
3203105284-12 is installed, but fail when 105284-15 is installed.
3204105284-18 might fix it again.
a933dad1 3205
0a4dd4e4 3206**** Solaris 2.6 and 7: the Compose key does not work.
a933dad1 3207
9dc15871
EZ
3208This is a bug in Motif in Solaris. Supposedly it has been fixed for
3209the next major release of Solaris. However, if someone with Sun
3210support complains to Sun about the bug, they may release a patch.
3211If you do this, mention Sun bug #4188711.
a933dad1 3212
9dc15871
EZ
3213One workaround is to use a locale that allows non-ASCII characters.
3214For example, before invoking emacs, set the LC_ALL environment
3215variable to "en_US" (American English). The directory /usr/lib/locale
3216lists the supported locales; any locale other than "C" or "POSIX"
3217should do.
a933dad1 3218
9dc15871
EZ
3219pen@lysator.liu.se says (Feb 1998) that the Compose key does work
3220if you link with the MIT X11 libraries instead of the Solaris X11
3221libraries.
a933dad1 3222
0a4dd4e4
EZ
3223*** HP/UX versions before 11.0
3224
bf247b6e 3225HP/UX 9 was end-of-lifed in December 1998.
0a4dd4e4
EZ
3226HP/UX 10 was end-of-lifed in May 1999.
3227
3228**** HP/UX 9: Emacs crashes with SIGBUS or SIGSEGV after you delete a frame.
3229
3230We think this is due to a bug in the X libraries provided by HP. With
3231the alternative X libraries in /usr/contrib/mitX11R5/lib, the problem
3232does not happen.
3233
3234*** HP/UX 10: Large file support is disabled.
3235
3236See the comments in src/s/hpux10.h.
3237
3238*** HP/UX: Emacs is slow using X11R5.
3239
3240This happens if you use the MIT versions of the X libraries--it
3241doesn't run as fast as HP's version. People sometimes use the version
3242because they see the HP version doesn't have the libraries libXaw.a,
3243libXmu.a, libXext.a and others. HP/UX normally doesn't come with
3244those libraries installed. To get good performance, you need to
3245install them and rebuild Emacs.
3246
9dc15871 3247*** Ultrix and Digital Unix
a933dad1 3248
9dc15871 3249**** Ultrix 4.2: `make install' fails on install-doc with `Error 141'.
a933dad1 3250
9dc15871
EZ
3251This happens on Ultrix 4.2 due to failure of a pipeline of tar
3252commands. We don't know why they fail, but the bug seems not to be in
3253Emacs. The workaround is to run the shell command in install-doc by
3254hand.
a933dad1 3255
9dc15871 3256**** Digital Unix 4.0: Garbled display on non-X terminals when Emacs runs.
a933dad1 3257
9dc15871
EZ
3258So far it appears that running `tset' triggers this problem (when TERM
3259is vt100, at least). If you do not run `tset', then Emacs displays
3260properly. If someone can tell us precisely which effect of running
3261`tset' actually causes the problem, we may be able to implement a fix
3262in Emacs.
a933dad1 3263
9dc15871 3264**** Ultrix: `expand-file-name' fails to work on any but the machine you dumped Emacs on.
a933dad1 3265
9dc15871
EZ
3266On Ultrix, if you use any of the functions which look up information
3267in the passwd database before dumping Emacs (say, by using
3268expand-file-name in site-init.el), then those functions will not work
3269in the dumped Emacs on any host but the one Emacs was dumped on.
a933dad1 3270
9dc15871
EZ
3271The solution? Don't use expand-file-name in site-init.el, or in
3272anything it loads. Yuck - some solution.
a933dad1 3273
9dc15871
EZ
3274I'm not sure why this happens; if you can find out exactly what is
3275going on, and perhaps find a fix or a workaround, please let us know.
3276Perhaps the YP functions cache some information, the cache is included
3277in the dumped Emacs, and is then inaccurate on any other host.
a933dad1 3278
9dc15871 3279*** SVr4
a933dad1 3280
9dc15871 3281**** SVr4: On some variants of SVR4, Emacs does not work at all with X.
a933dad1 3282
9dc15871
EZ
3283Try defining BROKEN_FIONREAD in your config.h file. If this solves
3284the problem, please send a bug report to tell us this is needed; be
3285sure to say exactly what type of machine and system you are using.
a933dad1 3286
9dc15871 3287**** SVr4: After running emacs once, subsequent invocations crash.
a933dad1 3288
9dc15871
EZ
3289Some versions of SVR4 have a serious bug in the implementation of the
3290mmap () system call in the kernel; this causes emacs to run correctly
3291the first time, and then crash when run a second time.
a933dad1 3292
9dc15871
EZ
3293Contact your vendor and ask for the mmap bug fix; in the mean time,
3294you may be able to work around the problem by adding a line to your
3295operating system description file (whose name is reported by the
3296configure script) that reads:
3297#define SYSTEM_MALLOC
3298This makes Emacs use memory less efficiently, but seems to work around
3299the kernel bug.
a933dad1 3300
0a4dd4e4
EZ
3301*** Irix 5 and earlier
3302
bf247b6e 3303Exactly when Irix-5 end-of-lifed is obscure. But since Irix 6.0
0a4dd4e4
EZ
3304shipped in 1994, it has been some years.
3305
3306**** Irix 5.2: unexelfsgi.c can't find cmplrs/stsupport.h.
3307
3308The file cmplrs/stsupport.h was included in the wrong file set in the
3309Irix 5.2 distribution. You can find it in the optional fileset
3310compiler_dev, or copy it from some other Irix 5.2 system. A kludgy
3311workaround is to change unexelfsgi.c to include sym.h instead of
3312syms.h.
3313
3314**** Irix 5.3: "out of virtual swap space".
3315
3316This message occurs when the system runs out of swap space due to too
3317many large programs running. The solution is either to provide more
3318swap space or to reduce the number of large programs being run. You
3319can check the current status of the swap space by executing the
3320command `swap -l'.
3321
3322You can increase swap space by changing the file /etc/fstab. Adding a
3323line like this:
3324
3325/usr/swap/swap.more swap swap pri=3 0 0
3326
3327where /usr/swap/swap.more is a file previously created (for instance
3328by using /etc/mkfile), will increase the swap space by the size of
3329that file. Execute `swap -m' or reboot the machine to activate the
3330new swap area. See the manpages for `swap' and `fstab' for further
3331information.
3332
3333The objectserver daemon can use up lots of memory because it can be
3334swamped with NIS information. It collects information about all users
3335on the network that can log on to the host.
3336
3337If you want to disable the objectserver completely, you can execute
3338the command `chkconfig objectserver off' and reboot. That may disable
3339some of the window system functionality, such as responding CDROM
3340icons.
3341
3342You can also remove NIS support from the objectserver. The SGI `admin'
3343FAQ has a detailed description on how to do that; see question 35
3344("Why isn't the objectserver working?"). The admin FAQ can be found at
3345ftp://viz.tamu.edu/pub/sgi/faq/.
3346
3347**** Irix 5.3: Emacs crashes in utmpname.
3348
3349This problem is fixed in Patch 3175 for Irix 5.3.
3350It is also fixed in Irix versions 6.2 and up.
3351
3352**** Irix 6.0: Make tries (and fails) to build a program named unexelfsgi.
3353
3354A compiler bug inserts spaces into the string "unexelfsgi . o"
3355in src/Makefile. Edit src/Makefile, after configure is run,
3356find that string, and take out the spaces.
3357
3358Compiler fixes in Irix 6.0.1 should eliminate this problem.
3359
3360*** SCO Unix and UnixWare
3361
3362**** SCO 3.2v4: Unusable default font.
3363
3364The Open Desktop environment comes with default X resource settings
3365that tell Emacs to use a variable-width font. Emacs cannot use such
3366fonts, so it does not work.
3367
3368This is caused by the file /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/ScoTerm, which is
3369the application-specific resource file for the `scoterm' terminal
3370emulator program. It contains several extremely general X resources
3371that affect other programs besides `scoterm'. In particular, these
3372resources affect Emacs also:
3373
3256a475
RC
3374 *Font: -*-helvetica-medium-r-*--12-*-p-*
3375 *Background: scoBackground
3376 *Foreground: scoForeground
0a4dd4e4
EZ
3377
3378The best solution is to create an application-specific resource file for
3379Emacs, /usr/lib/X11/sco/startup/Emacs, with the following contents:
3380
3256a475
RC
3381 Emacs*Font: -*-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-120-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1
3382 Emacs*Background: white
3383 Emacs*Foreground: black
0a4dd4e4
EZ
3384
3385(These settings mimic the Emacs defaults, but you can change them to
3386suit your needs.) This resource file is only read when the X server
3387starts up, so you should restart it by logging out of the Open Desktop
3388environment or by running `scologin stop; scologin start` from the shell
3389as root. Alternatively, you can put these settings in the
3390/usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/Emacs resource file and simply restart Emacs,
3391but then they will not affect remote invocations of Emacs that use the
3392Open Desktop display.
3393
3394These resource files are not normally shared across a network of SCO
3395machines; you must create the file on each machine individually.
3396
3397**** SCO 4.2.0: Regular expressions matching bugs on SCO systems.
3398
3399On SCO, there are problems in regexp matching when Emacs is compiled
3400with the system compiler. The compiler version is "Microsoft C
3401version 6", SCO 4.2.0h Dev Sys Maintenance Supplement 01/06/93; Quick
3402C Compiler Version 1.00.46 (Beta). The solution is to compile with
3403GCC.
3404
3405**** UnixWare 2.1: Error 12 (virtual memory exceeded) when dumping Emacs.
3406
3407Paul Abrahams (abrahams@acm.org) reports that with the installed
3408virtual memory settings for UnixWare 2.1.2, an Error 12 occurs during
3409the "make" that builds Emacs, when running temacs to dump emacs. That
3410error indicates that the per-process virtual memory limit has been
3411exceeded. The default limit is probably 32MB. Raising the virtual
3412memory limit to 40MB should make it possible to finish building Emacs.
3413
3414You can do this with the command `ulimit' (sh) or `limit' (csh).
3415But you have to be root to do it.
3416
3417According to Martin Sohnius, you can also retune this in the kernel:
3418
3419 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune SDATLIM 33554432 ## soft data size limit
3420 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune HDATLIM 33554432 ## hard "
3421 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune SVMMSIZE unlimited ## soft process size limit
3422 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune HVMMSIZE unlimited ## hard "
3423 # /etc/conf/bin/idbuild -B
3424
3425(He recommends you not change the stack limit, though.)
3426These changes take effect when you reboot.
3427
9dc15871 3428*** Linux 1.x
a933dad1 3429
9dc15871 3430**** Linux 1.0-1.04: Typing C-c C-c in Shell mode kills your X server.
a933dad1 3431
9dc15871
EZ
3432This happens with Linux kernel 1.0 thru 1.04, approximately. The workaround is
3433to define SIGNALS_VIA_CHARACTERS in config.h and recompile Emacs.
3434Newer Linux kernel versions don't have this problem.
a933dad1 3435
9dc15871
EZ
3436**** Linux 1.3: Output from subprocess (such as man or diff) is randomly
3437truncated on GNU/Linux systems.
a933dad1 3438
9dc15871
EZ
3439This is due to a kernel bug which seems to be fixed in Linux version
34401.3.75.
a933dad1 3441
0a4dd4e4
EZ
3442** Windows 3.1, 95, 98, and ME
3443
3444*** MS-Windows NT/95: Problems running Perl under Emacs
3445
3446`perl -de 0' just hangs when executed in an Emacs subshell.
3447The fault lies with Perl (indirectly with Windows NT/95).
3448
3449The problem is that the Perl debugger explicitly opens a connection to
3450"CON", which is the DOS/NT equivalent of "/dev/tty", for interacting
3451with the user.
3452
3453On Unix, this is okay, because Emacs (or the shell?) creates a
3454pseudo-tty so that /dev/tty is really the pipe Emacs is using to
3455communicate with the subprocess.
3456
3457On NT, this fails because CON always refers to the handle for the
3458relevant console (approximately equivalent to a tty), and cannot be
3459redirected to refer to the pipe Emacs assigned to the subprocess as
3460stdin.
3461
3462A workaround is to modify perldb.pl to use STDIN/STDOUT instead of CON.
3463
3464For Perl 4:
3465
3466 *** PERL/LIB/PERLDB.PL.orig Wed May 26 08:24:18 1993
3467 --- PERL/LIB/PERLDB.PL Mon Jul 01 15:28:16 1996
3468 ***************
3469 *** 68,74 ****
3256a475 3470 $rcfile=".perldb";
0a4dd4e4
EZ
3471 }
3472 else {
3473 ! $console = "con";
3256a475 3474 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
0a4dd4e4
EZ
3475 }
3476
3477 --- 68,74 ----
3256a475 3478 $rcfile=".perldb";
0a4dd4e4
EZ
3479 }
3480 else {
3481 ! $console = "";
3256a475 3482 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
0a4dd4e4
EZ
3483 }
3484
3485
3486 For Perl 5:
3487 *** perl/5.001/lib/perl5db.pl.orig Sun Jun 04 21:13:40 1995
3488 --- perl/5.001/lib/perl5db.pl Mon Jul 01 17:00:08 1996
3489 ***************
3490 *** 22,28 ****
3256a475 3491 $rcfile=".perldb";
0a4dd4e4
EZ
3492 }
3493 elsif (-e "con") {
3494 ! $console = "con";
3256a475 3495 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
0a4dd4e4
EZ
3496 }
3497 else {
3498 --- 22,28 ----
3256a475 3499 $rcfile=".perldb";
0a4dd4e4
EZ
3500 }
3501 elsif (-e "con") {
3502 ! $console = "";
3256a475 3503 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
0a4dd4e4
EZ
3504 }
3505 else {
3506
3507*** MS-Windows 95: Alt-f6 does not get through to Emacs.
3508
3509This character seems to be trapped by the kernel in Windows 95.
3510You can enter M-f6 by typing ESC f6.
3511
3512*** MS-Windows 95/98/ME: subprocesses do not terminate properly.
3513
3514This is a limitation of the Operating System, and can cause problems
3515when shutting down Windows. Ensure that all subprocesses are exited
3516cleanly before exiting Emacs. For more details, see the FAQ at
3517http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/windows/.
3518
3519*** MS-Windows 95/98/ME: crashes when Emacs invokes non-existent programs.
3520
3521When a program you are trying to run is not found on the PATH,
3522Windows might respond by crashing or locking up your system. In
3523particular, this has been reported when trying to compile a Java
3524program in JDEE when javac.exe is installed, but not on the system
3525PATH.
3526
9dc15871 3527** MS-DOS
a933dad1 3528
bde76d3e 3529*** When compiling with DJGPP on MS-Windows NT or later, "config msdos" fails.
a933dad1 3530
9dc15871
EZ
3531If the error message is "VDM has been already loaded", this is because
3532Windows has a program called `redir.exe' that is incompatible with a
3533program by the same name supplied with DJGPP, which is used by
3534config.bat. To resolve this, move the DJGPP's `bin' subdirectory to
3535the front of your PATH environment variable.
a933dad1 3536
bde76d3e
EZ
3537*** When Emacs compiled with DJGPP runs on Vista, it runs out of memory.
3538
3539If Emacs running on Vista displays "!MEM FULL!" in the mode line, you
3540are hitting the memory allocation bugs in the Vista DPMI server. See
3541msdos/INSTALL for how to work around these bugs (search for "Vista").
3542
9dc15871
EZ
3543*** When compiling with DJGPP on MS-Windows 95, Make fails for some targets
3544like make-docfile.
a933dad1 3545
9dc15871
EZ
3546This can happen if long file name support (the setting of environment
3547variable LFN) when Emacs distribution was unpacked and during
bde76d3e
EZ
3548compilation are not the same. See msdos/INSTALL for the explanation
3549of how to avoid this problem.
a933dad1 3550
9dc15871 3551*** Emacs compiled with DJGPP complains at startup:
a933dad1 3552
9dc15871 3553 "Wrong type of argument: internal-facep, msdos-menu-active-face"
a933dad1 3554
9dc15871
EZ
3555This can happen if you define an environment variable `TERM'. Emacs
3556on MSDOS uses an internal terminal emulator which is disabled if the
3557value of `TERM' is anything but the string "internal". Emacs then
3558works as if its terminal were a dumb glass teletype that doesn't
3559support faces. To work around this, arrange for `TERM' to be
3560undefined when Emacs runs. The best way to do that is to add an
3561[emacs] section to the DJGPP.ENV file which defines an empty value for
3562`TERM'; this way, only Emacs gets the empty value, while the rest of
3563your system works as before.
a933dad1 3564
9dc15871 3565*** MS-DOS: Emacs crashes at startup.
a933dad1 3566
9dc15871
EZ
3567Some users report that Emacs 19.29 requires dpmi memory management,
3568and crashes on startup if the system does not have it. We don't yet
3569know why this happens--perhaps these machines don't have enough real
3570memory, or perhaps something is wrong in Emacs or the compiler.
3571However, arranging to use dpmi support is a workaround.
a933dad1 3572
9dc15871
EZ
3573You can find out if you have a dpmi host by running go32 without
3574arguments; it will tell you if it uses dpmi memory. For more
3575information about dpmi memory, consult the djgpp FAQ. (djgpp
3576is the GNU C compiler as packaged for MSDOS.)
a933dad1 3577
9dc15871
EZ
3578Compiling Emacs under MSDOS is extremely sensitive for proper memory
3579configuration. If you experience problems during compilation, consider
3580removing some or all memory resident programs (notably disk caches)
3581and make sure that your memory managers are properly configured. See
3582the djgpp faq for configuration hints.
a933dad1 3583
9dc15871
EZ
3584*** Emacs compiled with DJGPP for MS-DOS/MS-Windows cannot access files
3585in the directory with the special name `dev' under the root of any
3586drive, e.g. `c:/dev'.
a933dad1 3587
9dc15871
EZ
3588This is an unfortunate side-effect of the support for Unix-style
3589device names such as /dev/null in the DJGPP runtime library. A
3590work-around is to rename the problem directory to another name.
a933dad1 3591
9dc15871 3592*** MS-DOS+DJGPP: Problems on MS-DOG if DJGPP v2.0 is used to compile Emacs.
a933dad1 3593
9dc15871 3594There are two DJGPP library bugs which cause problems:
a933dad1 3595
9dc15871
EZ
3596 * Running `shell-command' (or `compile', or `grep') you get
3597 `Searching for program: permission denied (EACCES), c:/command.com';
3598 * After you shell to DOS, Ctrl-Break kills Emacs.
a933dad1 3599
9dc15871
EZ
3600To work around these bugs, you can use two files in the msdos
3601subdirectory: `is_exec.c' and `sigaction.c'. Compile them and link
3602them into the Emacs executable `temacs'; then they will replace the
3603incorrect library functions.
a933dad1 3604
9dc15871
EZ
3605*** MS-DOS: Emacs compiled for MSDOS cannot find some Lisp files, or other
3606run-time support files, when long filename support is enabled.
a933dad1 3607
9dc15871
EZ
3608Usually, this problem will manifest itself when Emacs exits
3609immediately after flashing the startup screen, because it cannot find
3610the Lisp files it needs to load at startup. Redirect Emacs stdout
3611and stderr to a file to see the error message printed by Emacs.
a933dad1 3612
9dc15871
EZ
3613Another manifestation of this problem is that Emacs is unable to load
3614the support for editing program sources in languages such as C and
3615Lisp.
a933dad1 3616
9dc15871
EZ
3617This can happen if the Emacs distribution was unzipped without LFN
3618support, thus causing long filenames to be truncated to the first 6
3619characters and a numeric tail that Windows 95 normally attaches to it.
3620You should unzip the files again with a utility that supports long
3621filenames (such as djtar from DJGPP or InfoZip's UnZip program
bde76d3e
EZ
3622compiled with DJGPP v2). The file msdos/INSTALL explains this issue
3623in more detail.
a933dad1 3624
9dc15871
EZ
3625Another possible reason for such failures is that Emacs compiled for
3626MSDOS is used on Windows NT, where long file names are not supported
3627by this version of Emacs, but the distribution was unpacked by an
3628unzip program that preserved the long file names instead of truncating
3629them to DOS 8+3 limits. To be useful on NT, the MSDOS port of Emacs
3630must be unzipped by a DOS utility, so that long file names are
3631properly truncated.
a933dad1 3632
9dc15871 3633** Archaic window managers and toolkits
a933dad1 3634
9dc15871 3635*** OpenLook: Under OpenLook, the Emacs window disappears when you type M-q.
a933dad1 3636
9dc15871
EZ
3637Some versions of the Open Look window manager interpret M-q as a quit
3638command for whatever window you are typing at. If you want to use
3639Emacs with that window manager, you should try to configure the window
3640manager to use some other command. You can disable the
3641shortcut keys entirely by adding this line to ~/.OWdefaults:
a933dad1 3642
9dc15871 3643 OpenWindows.WindowMenuAccelerators: False
a933dad1 3644
9dc15871 3645**** twm: A position you specified in .Xdefaults is ignored, using twm.
a933dad1 3646
9dc15871
EZ
3647twm normally ignores "program-specified" positions.
3648You can tell it to obey them with this command in your `.twmrc' file:
a933dad1 3649
9dc15871 3650 UsePPosition "on" #allow clients to request a position
a933dad1 3651
9dc15871 3652** Bugs related to old DEC hardware
a933dad1 3653
9dc15871 3654*** The Compose key on a DEC keyboard does not work as Meta key.
a933dad1 3655
9dc15871 3656This shell command should fix it:
a933dad1 3657
9dc15871 3658 xmodmap -e 'keycode 0xb1 = Meta_L'
a933dad1 3659
9dc15871
EZ
3660*** Keyboard input gets confused after a beep when using a DECserver
3661as a concentrator.
a933dad1 3662
9dc15871
EZ
3663This problem seems to be a matter of configuring the DECserver to use
36647 bit characters rather than 8 bit characters.
a933dad1 3665
9dc15871 3666* Build problems on legacy systems
a933dad1 3667
9dc15871 3668** BSD/386 1.0: --with-x-toolkit option configures wrong.
a933dad1 3669
9dc15871
EZ
3670This problem is due to bugs in the shell in version 1.0 of BSD/386.
3671The workaround is to edit the configure file to use some other shell,
3672such as bash.
a933dad1 3673
9dc15871
EZ
3674** Digital Unix 4.0: Emacs fails to build, giving error message
3675 Invalid dimension for the charset-ID 160
a933dad1 3676
9dc15871
EZ
3677This is due to a bug or an installation problem in GCC 2.8.0.
3678Installing a more recent version of GCC fixes the problem.
a933dad1 3679
9dc15871 3680** Digital Unix 4.0: Failure in unexec while dumping emacs.
a933dad1 3681
9dc15871 3682This problem manifests itself as an error message
a933dad1 3683
9dc15871 3684 unexec: Bad address, writing data section to ...
a933dad1 3685
9dc15871
EZ
3686The user suspects that this happened because his X libraries
3687were built for an older system version,
a933dad1 3688
9dc15871 3689 ./configure --x-includes=/usr/include --x-libraries=/usr/shlib
a933dad1 3690
9dc15871 3691made the problem go away.
a933dad1 3692
9dc15871 3693** Sunos 4.1.1: there are errors compiling sysdep.c.
a933dad1 3694
9dc15871 3695If you get errors such as
a933dad1 3696
9dc15871
EZ
3697 "sysdep.c", line 2017: undefined structure or union
3698 "sysdep.c", line 2017: undefined structure or union
3699 "sysdep.c", line 2019: nodename undefined
a933dad1 3700
9dc15871
EZ
3701This can result from defining LD_LIBRARY_PATH. It is very tricky
3702to use that environment variable with Emacs. The Emacs configure
3703script links many test programs with the system libraries; you must
3704make sure that the libraries available to configure are the same
3705ones available when you build Emacs.
a933dad1 3706
9dc15871 3707** SunOS 4.1.1: You get this error message from GNU ld:
a933dad1 3708
9dc15871 3709 /lib/libc.a(_Q_sub.o): Undefined symbol __Q_get_rp_rd referenced from text segment
a933dad1 3710
9dc15871 3711The problem is in the Sun shared C library, not in GNU ld.
a933dad1 3712
9dc15871 3713The solution is to install Patch-ID# 100267-03 from Sun.
a933dad1 3714
9dc15871 3715** Sunos 4.1: Undefined symbols when linking using --with-x-toolkit.
a933dad1 3716
9dc15871
EZ
3717If you get the undefined symbols _atowc _wcslen, _iswprint, _iswspace,
3718_iswcntrl, _wcscpy, and _wcsncpy, then you need to add -lXwchar after
3719-lXaw in the command that links temacs.
a933dad1 3720
9dc15871
EZ
3721This problem seems to arise only when the international language
3722extensions to X11R5 are installed.
a933dad1 3723
9dc15871 3724** SunOS: Emacs gets error message from linker on Sun.
a933dad1 3725
9dc15871
EZ
3726If the error message says that a symbol such as `f68881_used' or
3727`ffpa_used' or `start_float' is undefined, this probably indicates
3728that you have compiled some libraries, such as the X libraries,
3729with a floating point option other than the default.
a933dad1 3730
9dc15871
EZ
3731It's not terribly hard to make this work with small changes in
3732crt0.c together with linking with Fcrt1.o, Wcrt1.o or Mcrt1.o.
3733However, the easiest approach is to build Xlib with the default
3734floating point option: -fsoft.
a933dad1 3735
0a4dd4e4
EZ
3736** HPUX 10.20: Emacs crashes during dumping on the HPPA machine.
3737
3738This seems to be due to a GCC bug; it is fixed in GCC 2.8.1.
3739
9dc15871 3740** Vax C compiler bugs affecting Emacs.
a933dad1
DL
3741
3742You may get one of these problems compiling Emacs:
3743
3744 foo.c line nnn: compiler error: no table entry for op STASG
3745 foo.c: fatal error in /lib/ccom
3746
3747These are due to bugs in the C compiler; the code is valid C.
3748Unfortunately, the bugs are unpredictable: the same construct
3749may compile properly or trigger one of these bugs, depending
3750on what else is in the source file being compiled. Even changes
3751in header files that should not affect the file being compiled
3752can affect whether the bug happens. In addition, sometimes files
3753that compile correctly on one machine get this bug on another machine.
3754
3755As a result, it is hard for me to make sure this bug will not affect
3756you. I have attempted to find and alter these constructs, but more
3757can always appear. However, I can tell you how to deal with it if it
3758should happen. The bug comes from having an indexed reference to an
3759array of Lisp_Objects, as an argument in a function call:
3760 Lisp_Object *args;
3761 ...
3762 ... foo (5, args[i], ...)...
3763putting the argument into a temporary variable first, as in
3764 Lisp_Object *args;
3765 Lisp_Object tem;
3766 ...
3767 tem = args[i];
3768 ... foo (r, tem, ...)...
3769causes the problem to go away.
3770The `contents' field of a Lisp vector is an array of Lisp_Objects,
3771so you may see the problem happening with indexed references to that.
3772
9dc15871 3773** 68000 C compiler problems
a933dad1
DL
3774
3775Various 68000 compilers have different problems.
3776These are some that have been observed.
3777
9dc15871 3778*** Using value of assignment expression on union type loses.
a933dad1
DL
3779This means that x = y = z; or foo (x = z); does not work
3780if x is of type Lisp_Object.
3781
9dc15871 3782*** "cannot reclaim" error.
a933dad1
DL
3783
3784This means that an expression is too complicated. You get the correct
3785line number in the error message. The code must be rewritten with
3786simpler expressions.
3787
9dc15871 3788*** XCONS, XSTRING, etc macros produce incorrect code.
a933dad1
DL
3789
3790If temacs fails to run at all, this may be the cause.
3791Compile this test program and look at the assembler code:
3792
3793struct foo { char x; unsigned int y : 24; };
3794
3795lose (arg)
3796 struct foo arg;
3797{
3798 test ((int *) arg.y);
3799}
3800
3801If the code is incorrect, your compiler has this problem.
3802In the XCONS, etc., macros in lisp.h you must replace (a).u.val with
3803((a).u.val + coercedummy) where coercedummy is declared as int.
3804
6e5cb96f
DN
3805This problem will only happen if USE_LISP_UNION_TYPE is manually
3806defined in lisp.h.
a933dad1 3807
9dc15871 3808*** C compilers lose on returning unions.
a933dad1
DL
3809
3810I hear that some C compilers cannot handle returning a union type.
3811Most of the functions in GNU Emacs return type Lisp_Object, which is
3812defined as a union on some rare architectures.
3813
6e5cb96f
DN
3814This problem will only happen if USE_LISP_UNION_TYPE is manually
3815defined in lisp.h.
a933dad1 3816
53854552 3817\f
5b87ad55 3818This file is part of GNU Emacs.
fe6b4873 3819
ab73e885 3820GNU Emacs is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
5b87ad55 3821it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
ab73e885
GM
3822the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
3823(at your option) any later version.
fe6b4873 3824
5b87ad55
GM
3825GNU Emacs is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
3826but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
3827MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
3828GNU General Public License for more details.
3829
3830You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
ab73e885 3831along with GNU Emacs. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
5b87ad55
GM
3832
3833\f
53854552
EZ
3834Local variables:
3835mode: outline
3256a475 3836paragraph-separate: "[ \f]*$"
53854552 3837end:
6b61353c
KH
3838
3839arch-tag: 49fc0d95-88cb-4715-b21c-f27fb5a4764a