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[bpt/emacs.git] / etc / PROBLEMS
CommitLineData
a933dad1 1This file describes various problems that have been encountered
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2in compiling, installing and running GNU Emacs. Try doing Ctl t
3and browsing through the outline headers.
a933dad1 4
9dc15871 5* Emacs startup failures
32364f49 6
9dc15871 7** Emacs fails to start, complaining about missing fonts.
32364f49 8
9dc15871 9A typical error message might be something like
32364f49 10
9dc15871 11 No fonts match `-*-fixed-medium-r-*--6-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1'
984002eb 12
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13This happens because some X resource specifies a bad font family for
14Emacs to use. The possible places where this specification might be
15are:
984002eb 16
9dc15871 17 - in your ~/.Xdefaults file
984002eb 18
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19 - client-side X resource file, such as ~/Emacs or
20 /usr/X11R6/lib/app-defaults/Emacs or
21 /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/app-defaults/Emacs
984002eb 22
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23One of these files might have bad or malformed specification of a
24fontset that Emacs should use. To fix the problem, you need to find
25the problematic line(s) and correct them.
984002eb 26
9dc15871 27** Emacs aborts while starting up, only when run without X.
984002eb 28
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29This problem often results from compiling Emacs with GCC when GCC was
30installed incorrectly. The usual error in installing GCC is to
31specify --includedir=/usr/include. Installation of GCC makes
32corrected copies of the system header files. GCC is supposed to use
33the corrected copies in preference to the original system headers.
34Specifying --includedir=/usr/include causes the original system header
35files to be used. On some systems, the definition of ioctl in the
36original system header files is invalid for ANSI C and causes Emacs
37not to work.
984002eb 38
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39The fix is to reinstall GCC, and this time do not specify --includedir
40when you configure it. Then recompile Emacs. Specifying --includedir
41is appropriate only in very special cases and it should *never* be the
42same directory where system header files are kept.
984002eb 43
9dc15871 44** Emacs does not start, complaining that it cannot open termcap database file.
984002eb 45
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46If your system uses Terminfo rather than termcap (most modern
47systems do), this could happen if the proper version of
48ncurses is not visible to the Emacs configure script (i.e. it
49cannot be found along the usual path the linker looks for
50libraries). It can happen because your version of ncurses is
51obsolete, or is available only in form of binaries.
f16a1bf6 52
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53The solution is to install an up-to-date version of ncurses in
54the developer's form (header files, static libraries and
55symbolic links); in some GNU/Linux distributions (e.g. Debian)
56it constitutes a separate package.
f16a1bf6 57
9dc15871 58** Emacs 20 and later fails to load Lisp files at startup.
5b4ffca2 59
9dc15871 60The typical error message might be like this:
5b4ffca2 61
9dc15871 62 "Cannot open load file: fontset"
24efe898 63
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64This could happen if you compress the file lisp/subdirs.el. That file
65tells Emacs what are the directories where it should look for Lisp
66files. Emacs cannot work with subdirs.el compressed, since the
67Auto-compress mode it needs for this will not be loaded until later,
68when your .emacs file is processed. (The package `fontset.el' is
69required to set up fonts used to display text on window systems, and
70it's loaded very early in the startup procedure.)
24efe898 71
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72Similarly, any other .el file for which there's no corresponding .elc
73file could fail to load if it is compressed.
24efe898 74
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75The solution is to uncompress all .el files which don't have a .elc
76file.
f0f62f71 77
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78Another possible reason for such failures is stale *.elc files
79lurking somewhere on your load-path. The following command will
80print any duplicate Lisp files that are present in load-path:
f0f62f71 81
9dc15871 82 emacs -q -batch -f list-load-path-shadows
f0f62f71 83
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84If this command prints any file names, some of these files are stale,
85and should be deleted or their directories removed from your
86load-path.
fc1bfc2a 87
9dc15871 88** Emacs prints an error at startup after upgrading from an earlier version.
fc1bfc2a 89
9dc15871 90An example of such an error is:
fc1bfc2a 91
9dc15871 92 x-complement-fontset-spec: "Wrong type argument: stringp, nil"
60f553d2 93
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94This can be another symptom of stale *.elc files in your load-path.
95The following command will print any duplicate Lisp files that are
96present in load-path:
3f82efb4 97
9dc15871 98 emacs -q -batch -f list-load-path-shadows
3f82efb4 99
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100If this command prints any file names, some of these files are stale,
101and should be deleted or their directories removed from your
102load-path.
3f82efb4 103
9dc15871 104** With X11R6.4, public-patch-3, Emacs crashes at startup.
3f82efb4 105
9dc15871 106Reportedly this patch in X fixes the problem.
cc305a60 107
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108 --- xc/lib/X11/imInt.c~ Wed Jun 30 13:31:56 1999
109 +++ xc/lib/X11/imInt.c Thu Jul 1 15:10:27 1999
110 @@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
111 -/* $TOG: imInt.c /main/5 1998/05/30 21:11:16 kaleb $ */
112 +/* $TOG: imInt.c /main/5 1998/05/30 21:11:16 kaleb $ */
113 /******************************************************************
cc305a60 114
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115 Copyright 1992, 1993, 1994 by FUJITSU LIMITED
116 @@ -166,8 +166,8 @@
117 _XimMakeImName(lcd)
118 XLCd lcd;
119 {
120 - char* begin;
121 - char* end;
122 + char* begin = NULL;
123 + char* end = NULL;
124 char* ret;
125 int i = 0;
126 char* ximmodifier = XIMMODIFIER;
127 @@ -182,7 +182,11 @@
128 }
129 ret = Xmalloc(end - begin + 2);
130 if (ret != NULL) {
131 - (void)strncpy(ret, begin, end - begin + 1);
132 + if (begin != NULL) {
133 + (void)strncpy(ret, begin, end - begin + 1);
134 + } else {
135 + ret[0] = '\0';
136 + }
137 ret[end - begin + 1] = '\0';
138 }
139 return ret;
fc2938d1 140
9dc15871 141* Crash bugs
fc2938d1 142
9dc15871 143** Emacs crashes in x-popup-dialog.
177c0ea7 144
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145This can happen if the dialog widget cannot find the font it wants to
146use. You can work around the problem by specifying another font with
147an X resource--for example, `Emacs.dialog*.font: 9x15' (or any font that
148happens to exist on your X server).
fc2938d1 149
9dc15871 150** Emacs crashes when you use Bibtex mode.
fc2938d1 151
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152This happens if your system puts a small limit on stack size. You can
153prevent the problem by using a suitable shell command (often `ulimit')
154to raise the stack size limit before you run Emacs.
2aa82bcf 155
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156Patches to raise the stack size limit automatically in `main'
157(src/emacs.c) on various systems would be greatly appreciated.
2aa82bcf 158
9dc15871 159** Emacs crashes with SIGBUS or SIGSEGV on HPUX 9 after you delete a frame.
8632c7cb 160
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161We think this is due to a bug in the X libraries provided by HP. With
162the alternative X libraries in /usr/contrib/mitX11R5/lib, the problem
163does not happen.
8632c7cb 164
9dc15871 165** Emacs crashes with SIGBUS or SIGSEGV on Solaris after you delete a frame.
2aa82bcf 166
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167We suspect that this is a similar bug in the X libraries provided by
168Sun. There is a report that one of these patches fixes the bug and
169makes the problem stop:
2aa82bcf 170
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171105216-01 105393-01 105518-01 105621-01 105665-01 105615-02 105216-02
172105667-01 105401-08 105615-03 105621-02 105686-02 105736-01 105755-03
173106033-01 105379-01 105786-01 105181-04 105379-03 105786-04 105845-01
174105284-05 105669-02 105837-01 105837-02 105558-01 106125-02 105407-01
c93bdf05 175
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176Another person using a newer system (kernel patch level Generic_105181-06)
177suspects that the bug was fixed by one of these more recent patches:
c93bdf05 178
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179106040-07 SunOS 5.6: X Input & Output Method patch
180106222-01 OpenWindows 3.6: filemgr (ff.core) fixes
181105284-12 Motif 1.2.7: sparc Runtime library patch
c93bdf05 182
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183** Error message `Symbol's value as variable is void: x', followed by
184a segmentation fault and core dump.
c93bdf05 185
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186This has been tracked to a bug in tar! People report that tar erroneously
187added a line like this at the beginning of files of Lisp code:
4593687f 188
9dc15871 189 x FILENAME, N bytes, B tape blocks
9272ccfc 190
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191If your tar has this problem, install GNU tar--if you can manage to
192untar it :-).
9272ccfc 193
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194** Crashes when displaying GIF images in Emacs built with version
195libungif-4.1.0 are resolved by using version libungif-4.1.0b1.
196Configure checks for the correct version, but this problem could occur
197if a binary built against a shared libungif is run on a system with an
198older version.
9272ccfc 199
9dc15871 200** Emacs aborts inside the function `tparam1'.
7aa70236 201
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202This can happen if Emacs was built without terminfo support, but the
203terminal's capabilities use format that is only supported by terminfo.
204If your system has ncurses installed, this might happen if your
205version of ncurses is broken; upgrading to a newer version of ncurses
206and reconfiguring and rebuilding Emacs should solve this.
7aa70236 207
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208All modern systems support terminfo, so even if ncurses is not the
209problem, you should look for a way to configure Emacs so that it uses
210terminfo when built.
7c22dc9d 211
9dc15871 212** Emacs crashes when using the Exceed 6.0 X server.
7c22dc9d 213
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214If you are using Exceed 6.1, upgrade to a later version. This was
215reported to prevent the crashes.
7c22dc9d 216
9dc15871 217** Emacs crashes with SIGSEGV in XtInitializeWidgetClass.
7c22dc9d 218
9dc15871 219It crashes on X, but runs fine when called with option "-nw".
7c22dc9d 220
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221This has been observed when Emacs is linked with GNU ld but without passing
222the -z nocombreloc flag. Emacs normally knows to pass the -z nocombreloc
223flag when needed, so if you come across a situation where the flag is
224necessary but missing, please report it via M-x report-emacs-bug.
677e7496 225
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226On platforms such as Solaris, you can also work around this problem by
227configuring your compiler to use the native linker instead of GNU ld.
677e7496 228
9dc15871 229* General runtime problems
677e7496 230
9dc15871 231** Lisp problems
677e7496 232
9dc15871 233*** Changes made to .el files do not take effect.
677e7496 234
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235You may have forgotten to recompile them into .elc files.
236Then the old .elc files will be loaded, and your changes
237will not be seen. To fix this, do M-x byte-recompile-directory
238and specify the directory that contains the Lisp files.
677e7496 239
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240Emacs should print a warning when loading a .elc file which is older
241than the corresponding .el file.
9ed04369 242
9dc15871 243*** Watch out for .emacs files and EMACSLOADPATH environment vars.
9ed04369 244
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245These control the actions of Emacs.
246~/.emacs is your Emacs init file.
247EMACSLOADPATH overrides which directories the function
248"load" will search.
b87207a0 249
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250If you observe strange problems, check for these and get rid
251of them, then try again.
b87207a0 252
9dc15871 253*** Using epop3.el package causes Emacs to signal an error.
177c0ea7 254
9dc15871 255The error message might be something like this:
177c0ea7 256
9dc15871 257 "Lisp nesting exceeds max-lisp-eval-depth"
177c0ea7 258
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259This happens because epop3 redefines the function gethash, which is a
260built-in primitive beginning with Emacs 21.1. We don't have a patch
261for epop3 that fixes this, but perhaps a newer version of epop3
262corrects that.
177c0ea7 263
9dc15871 264*** Buffers from `with-output-to-temp-buffer' get set up in Help mode.
b87207a0 265
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266Changes in Emacs 20.4 to the hooks used by that function cause
267problems for some packages, specifically BBDB. See the function's
268documentation for the hooks involved. BBDB 2.00.06 fixes the problem.
61638355 269
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270*** The Hyperbole package causes *Help* buffers not to be displayed in
271Help mode due to setting `temp-buffer-show-hook' rather than using
272`add-hook'. Using `(add-hook 'temp-buffer-show-hook
273'help-mode-maybe)' after loading Hyperbole should fix this.
61638355 274
9dc15871 275** Keyboard problems
a47a639f 276
9dc15871 277*** "Compose Character" key does strange things when used as a Meta key.
a47a639f 278
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279If you define one key to serve as both Meta and Compose Character, you
280will get strange results. In previous Emacs versions, this "worked"
281in that the key acted as Meta--that's because the older Emacs versions
282did not try to support Compose Character. Now Emacs tries to do
283character composition in the standard X way. This means that you
284must pick one meaning or the other for any given key.
a47a639f 285
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286You can use both functions (Meta, and Compose Character) if you assign
287them to two different keys.
a47a639f 288
9dc15871 289*** C-z just refreshes the screen instead of suspending Emacs.
61638355 290
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291You are probably using a shell that doesn't support job control, even
292though the system itself is capable of it. Either use a different shell,
293or set the variable `cannot-suspend' to a non-nil value.
61638355 294
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295*** With M-x enable-flow-control, you need to type C-\ twice
296to do incremental search--a single C-\ gets no response.
61638355 297
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298This has been traced to communicating with your machine via kermit,
299with C-\ as the kermit escape character. One solution is to use
300another escape character in kermit. One user did
61638355 301
9dc15871 302 set escape-character 17
61638355 303
9dc15871 304in his .kermrc file, to make C-q the kermit escape character.
61638355 305
9dc15871 306** Mailers and other helper programs
61638355 307
9dc15871 308*** movemail compiled with POP support can't connect to the POP server.
61638355 309
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310Make sure that the `pop' entry in /etc/services, or in the services
311NIS map if your machine uses NIS, has the same port number as the
312entry on the POP server. A common error is for the POP server to be
313listening on port 110, the assigned port for the POP3 protocol, while
314the client is trying to connect on port 109, the assigned port for the
315old POP protocol.
61638355 316
9dc15871 317*** RMAIL gets error getting new mail.
61638355 318
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319RMAIL gets new mail from /usr/spool/mail/$USER using a program
320called `movemail'. This program interlocks with /bin/mail using
321the protocol defined by /bin/mail.
61638355 322
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323There are two different protocols in general use. One of them uses
324the `flock' system call. The other involves creating a lock file;
325`movemail' must be able to write in /usr/spool/mail in order to do
326this. You control which one is used by defining, or not defining,
327the macro MAIL_USE_FLOCK in config.h or the m- or s- file it includes.
328IF YOU DON'T USE THE FORM OF INTERLOCKING THAT IS NORMAL ON YOUR
329SYSTEM, YOU CAN LOSE MAIL!
61638355 330
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331If your system uses the lock file protocol, and fascist restrictions
332prevent ordinary users from writing the lock files in /usr/spool/mail,
333you may need to make `movemail' setgid to a suitable group such as
334`mail'. You can use these commands (as root):
61638355 335
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336 chgrp mail movemail
337 chmod 2755 movemail
61638355 338
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339If your system uses the lock file protocol, and fascist restrictions
340prevent ordinary users from writing the lock files in /usr/spool/mail,
341you may need to make `movemail' setgid to a suitable group such as
342`mail'. To do this, use the following commands (as root) after doing the
343make install.
61638355 344
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345 chgrp mail movemail
346 chmod 2755 movemail
61638355 347
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348Installation normally copies movemail from the build directory to an
349installation directory which is usually under /usr/local/lib. The
350installed copy of movemail is usually in the directory
351/usr/local/lib/emacs/VERSION/TARGET. You must change the group and
352mode of the installed copy; changing the group and mode of the build
353directory copy is ineffective.
61638355 354
9dc15871 355*** rcs2log gives you the awk error message "too many fields".
61638355 356
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357This is due to an arbitrary limit in certain versions of awk.
358The solution is to use gawk (GNU awk).
556a9fad 359
9dc15871 360** Problems with hostname resolution
61638355 361
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362*** Emacs fails to understand most Internet host names, even though
363the names work properly with other programs on the same system.
364*** Emacs won't work with X-windows if the value of DISPLAY is HOSTNAME:0.
365*** GNUs can't make contact with the specified host for nntp.
49172314 366
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367This typically happens on Suns and other systems that use shared
368libraries. The cause is that the site has installed a version of the
369shared library which uses a name server--but has not installed a
370similar version of the unshared library which Emacs uses.
96bde66b 371
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372The result is that most programs, using the shared library, work with
373the nameserver, but Emacs does not.
ed0d1d91 374
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375The fix is to install an unshared library that corresponds to what you
376installed in the shared library, and then relink Emacs.
6e1a66dc 377
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378On SunOS 4.1, simply define HAVE_RES_INIT.
379
380If you have already installed the name resolver in the file libresolv.a,
381then you need to compile Emacs to use that library. The easiest way to
382do this is to add to config.h a definition of LIBS_SYSTEM, LIBS_MACHINE
383or LIB_STANDARD which uses -lresolv. Watch out! If you redefine a macro
384that is already in use in your configuration to supply some other libraries,
385be careful not to lose the others.
6e1a66dc 386
9dc15871 387Thus, you could start by adding this to config.h:
3c418e54 388
9dc15871 389#define LIBS_SYSTEM -lresolv
3c418e54 390
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391Then if this gives you an error for redefining a macro, and you see that
392the s- file defines LIBS_SYSTEM as -lfoo -lbar, you could change config.h
393again to say this:
3c418e54 394
9dc15871 395#define LIBS_SYSTEM -lresolv -lfoo -lbar
f9130829 396
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397*** Emacs does not know your host's fully-qualified domain name.
398
399You need to configure your machine with a fully qualified domain name,
400either in /etc/hosts, /etc/hostname, the NIS, or wherever your system
401calls for specifying this.
402
403If you cannot fix the configuration, you can set the Lisp variable
404mail-host-address to the value you want.
405
406** NFS and RFS
407
408*** Emacs says it has saved a file, but the file does not actually
409appear on disk.
410
411This can happen on certain systems when you are using NFS, if the
412remote disk is full. It is due to a bug in NFS (or certain NFS
413implementations), and there is apparently nothing Emacs can do to
414detect the problem. Emacs checks the failure codes of all the system
415calls involved in writing a file, including `close'; but in the case
416where the problem occurs, none of those system calls fails.
417
418*** Editing files through RFS gives spurious "file has changed" warnings.
419It is possible that a change in Emacs 18.37 gets around this problem,
420but in case not, here is a description of how to fix the RFS bug that
421causes it.
422
423 There was a serious pair of bugs in the handling of the fsync() system
424 call in the RFS server.
425
426 The first is that the fsync() call is handled as another name for the
427 close() system call (!!). It appears that fsync() is not used by very
428 many programs; Emacs version 18 does an fsync() before closing files
429 to make sure that the bits are on the disk.
430
431 This is fixed by the enclosed patch to the RFS server.
432
433 The second, more serious problem, is that fsync() is treated as a
434 non-blocking system call (i.e., it's implemented as a message that
435 gets sent to the remote system without waiting for a reply). Fsync is
436 a useful tool for building atomic file transactions. Implementing it
437 as a non-blocking RPC call (when the local call blocks until the sync
438 is done) is a bad idea; unfortunately, changing it will break the RFS
439 protocol. No fix was supplied for this problem.
440
441 (as always, your line numbers may vary)
442
443 % rcsdiff -c -r1.2 serversyscall.c
444 RCS file: RCS/serversyscall.c,v
445 retrieving revision 1.2
446 diff -c -r1.2 serversyscall.c
447 *** /tmp/,RCSt1003677 Wed Jan 28 15:15:02 1987
448 --- serversyscall.c Wed Jan 28 15:14:48 1987
449 ***************
450 *** 163,169 ****
451 /*
452 * No return sent for close or fsync!
453 */
454 ! if (syscall == RSYS_close || syscall == RSYS_fsync)
455 proc->p_returnval = deallocate_fd(proc, msg->m_args[0]);
456 else
457 {
458 --- 166,172 ----
459 /*
460 * No return sent for close or fsync!
461 */
462 ! if (syscall == RSYS_close)
463 proc->p_returnval = deallocate_fd(proc, msg->m_args[0]);
464 else
465 {
466
467** PSGML
468
469*** Old versions of the PSGML package use the obsolete variables
470`before-change-function' and `after-change-function', which are no
471longer used by Emacs. Please use PSGML 1.2.3 or later.
472
473*** PSGML conflicts with sgml-mode.
474
475PSGML package uses the same names of some variables (like keymap)
476as built-in sgml-mode.el because it was created as a replacement
477of that package. The conflict will be shown if you load
478sgml-mode.el before psgml.el. E.g. this could happen if you edit
479HTML page and then start to work with SGML or XML file. html-mode
480(from sgml-mode.el) is used for HTML file and loading of psgml.el
481(for sgml-mode or xml-mode) will cause an error.
482
483*** Versions of the PSGML package earlier than 1.0.3 (stable) or 1.1.2
484(alpha) fail to parse DTD files correctly in Emacs 20.3 and later.
485Here is a patch for psgml-parse.el from PSGML 1.0.1 and, probably,
486earlier versions.
487
488--- psgml-parse.el 1998/08/21 19:18:18 1.1
489+++ psgml-parse.el 1998/08/21 19:20:00
490@@ -2383,7 +2383,7 @@ (defun sgml-push-to-entity (entity &opti
491 (setq sgml-buffer-parse-state nil))
492 (cond
493 ((stringp entity) ; a file name
494- (save-excursion (insert-file-contents entity))
495+ (insert-file-contents entity)
496 (setq default-directory (file-name-directory entity)))
497 ((consp (sgml-entity-text entity)) ; external id?
498 (let* ((extid (sgml-entity-text entity))
499
500** AUC TeX
501
502*** Emacs 21 freezes when visiting a TeX file with AUC TeX installed.
503
504Emacs 21 needs version 10 or later of AUC TeX; upgrading should solve
505these problems.
506
507*** No colors in AUC TeX with Emacs 21.
508
509Upgrade to AUC TeX version 10 or later, and make sure it is
510byte-compiled with Emacs 21.
511
512*** Running TeX from AUC TeX package with Emacs 20.3 gives a Lisp error
513about a read-only tex output buffer.
514
515This problem appeared for AUC TeX version 9.9j and some earlier
516versions. Here is a patch for the file tex-buf.el in the AUC TeX
517package.
518
519diff -c auctex/tex-buf.el~ auctex/tex-buf.el
520*** auctex/tex-buf.el~ Wed Jul 29 18:35:32 1998
521--- auctex/tex-buf.el Sat Sep 5 15:20:38 1998
522***************
523*** 545,551 ****
524 (dir (TeX-master-directory)))
525 (TeX-process-check file) ; Check that no process is running
526 (setq TeX-command-buffer (current-buffer))
527! (with-output-to-temp-buffer buffer)
528 (set-buffer buffer)
529 (if dir (cd dir))
530 (insert "Running `" name "' on `" file "' with ``" command "''\n")
531- --- 545,552 ----
532 (dir (TeX-master-directory)))
533 (TeX-process-check file) ; Check that no process is running
534 (setq TeX-command-buffer (current-buffer))
535! (let (temp-buffer-show-function temp-buffer-show-hook)
536! (with-output-to-temp-buffer buffer))
537 (set-buffer buffer)
538 (if dir (cd dir))
539 (insert "Running `" name "' on `" file "' with ``" command "''\n")
540
541** Miscellaneous problems
542
543*** Self-documentation messages are garbled.
544
545This means that the file `etc/DOC-...' doesn't properly correspond
546with the Emacs executable. Redumping Emacs and then installing the
547corresponding pair of files should fix the problem.
548
549*** Programs running under terminal emulator do not recognize `emacs'
550terminal type.
551
552The cause of this is a shell startup file that sets the TERMCAP
553environment variable. The terminal emulator uses that variable to
554provide the information on the special terminal type that Emacs
555emulates.
556
557Rewrite your shell startup file so that it does not change TERMCAP
558in such a case. You could use the following conditional which sets
559it only if it is undefined.
560
561 if ( ! ${?TERMCAP} ) setenv TERMCAP ~/my-termcap-file
562
563Or you could set TERMCAP only when you set TERM--which should not
564happen in a non-login shell.
565
566*** In Shell mode, you get a ^M at the end of every line.
567
568This happens to people who use tcsh, because it is trying to be too
569smart. It sees that the Shell uses terminal type `unknown' and turns
570on the flag to output ^M at the end of each line. You can fix the
571problem by adding this to your .cshrc file:
572
573 if ($?EMACS) then
574 if ($EMACS == "t") then
575 unset edit
576 stty -icrnl -onlcr -echo susp ^Z
577 endif
578 endif
579
580*** Emacs startup on GNU/Linux systems (and possibly other systems) is slow.
581
582This can happen if the system is misconfigured and Emacs can't get the
583full qualified domain name, FQDN. You should have your FQDN in the
584/etc/hosts file, something like this:
585
586127.0.0.1 localhost
587129.187.137.82 nuc04.t30.physik.tu-muenchen.de nuc04
588
589The way to set this up may vary on non-GNU systems.
590
591*** Attempting to visit remote files via ange-ftp fails.
592
593If the error message is "ange-ftp-file-modtime: Specified time is not
594representable", then this could happen when `lukemftp' is used as the
595ftp client. This was reported to happen on Debian GNU/Linux, kernel
596version 2.4.3, with `lukemftp' 1.5-5, but might happen on other
597systems as well. To avoid this problem, switch to using the standard
598ftp client. On a Debian system, type
599
600 update-alternatives --config ftp
601
602and then choose /usr/bin/netkit-ftp.
603
604*** JPEG images aren't displayed.
605
606This has been reported when Emacs is built with jpeg-6a library.
607Upgrading to jpeg-6b solves the problem. Configure checks for the
608correct version, but this problem could occur if a binary built
609against a shared libjpeg is run on a system with an older version.
610
611*** Dired is very slow.
612
613This could happen if invocation of the `df' program takes a long
614time. Possible reasons for this include:
615
616 - ClearCase mounted filesystems (VOBs) that sometimes make `df'
617 response time extremely slow (dozens of seconds);
618
619 - slow automounters on some old versions of Unix;
620
621 - slow operation of some versions of `df'.
622
623To work around the problem, you could either (a) set the variable
624`directory-free-space-program' to nil, and thus prevent Emacs from
625invoking `df'; (b) use `df' from the GNU Fileutils package; or
626(c) use CVS, which is Free Software, instead of ClearCase.
627
628*** Versions of the W3 package released before Emacs 21.1 don't run
629under Emacs 21. This fixed in W3 version 4.0pre.47.
630
631*** The LDAP support rely on ldapsearch program from OpenLDAP version 2.
632
633It can fail to work with ldapsearch program from OpenLDAP version 1.
634Version 1 of OpenLDAP is now deprecated. If you are still using it,
635please upgrade to version 2. As a temporary workaround, remove
636argument "-x" from the variable `ldap-ldapsearch-args'.
637
638*** ps-print commands fail to find prologue files ps-prin*.ps.
639
640This can happen if you use an old version of X-Symbol package: it
641defines compatibility functions which trick ps-print into thinking it
642runs in XEmacs, and look for the prologue files in a wrong directory.
643
644The solution is to upgrade X-Symbol to a later version.
645
646*** On systems with shared libraries you might encounter run-time errors
647from the dynamic linker telling you that it is unable to find some
648shared libraries, for instance those for Xaw3d or image support.
649These errors mean Emacs has been linked with a library whose shared
650library is not in the default search path of the dynamic linker.
651
652Similar problems could prevent Emacs from building, since the build
653process invokes Emacs several times.
654
655On many systems, it is possible to set LD_LIBRARY_PATH in your
656environment to specify additional directories where shared libraries
657can be found.
658
659Other systems allow to set LD_RUN_PATH in a similar way, but before
660Emacs is linked. With LD_RUN_PATH set, the linker will include a
661specified run-time search path in the executable.
662
663On some systems, Emacs can crash due to problems with dynamic
664linking. Specifically, on SGI Irix 6.5, crashes were reported with
665backtraces like this:
666
667 (dbx) where
668 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]
669 1 general_find_symbol(0xf49239d, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0xf0000000, 0xf4923aa, 0x0, 0x492ddb2)
670 ["/comp2/mtibuild/v73/workarea/v7.3/rld/rld.c":2140, 0xfb65a98]
671 2 resolve_symbol(0xf49239d, 0x4031184, 0x0, 0xfbdd438, 0x0, 0xf4923aa, 0x0, 0x492ddb2)
672 ["/comp2/mtibuild/v73/workarea/v7.3/rld/rld.c":1947, 0xfb657e4]
673 3 lazy_text_resolve(0xd18, 0x1a3, 0x40302b4, 0x12, 0xf0000000, 0xf4923aa, 0x0, 0x492ddb2)
674 ["/comp2/mtibuild/v73/workarea/v7.3/rld/rld.c":997, 0xfb64d44]
675 4 _rld_text_resolve(0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0)
676 ["/comp2/mtibuild/v73/workarea/v7.3/rld/rld_bridge.s":175, 0xfb6032c]
677
678(`rld' is the dynamic linker.) We don't know yet why this
679happens, but setting the environment variable LD_BIND_NOW to 1 (which
680forces the dynamic linker to bind all shared objects early on) seems
681to work around the problem.
682
683Please refer to the documentation of your dynamic linker for details.
684
685*** You request inverse video, and the first Emacs frame is in inverse
686video, but later frames are not in inverse video.
687
688This can happen if you have an old version of the custom library in
689your search path for Lisp packages. Use M-x list-load-path-shadows to
690check whether this is true. If it is, delete the old custom library.
691
692*** When you run Ispell from Emacs, it reports a "misalignment" error.
693
694This can happen if you compiled the Ispell program to use ASCII
695characters only and then try to use it from Emacs with non-ASCII
696characters, like Latin-1. The solution is to recompile Ispell with
697support for 8-bit characters.
698
699To see whether your Ispell program supports 8-bit characters, type
700this at your shell's prompt:
701
702 ispell -vv
703
704and look in the output for the string "NO8BIT". If Ispell says
705"!NO8BIT (8BIT)", your speller supports 8-bit characters; otherwise it
706does not.
707
708To rebuild Ispell with 8-bit character support, edit the local.h file
709in the Ispell distribution and make sure it does _not_ define NO8BIT.
710Then rebuild the speller.
711
712Another possible cause for "misalignment" error messages is that the
713version of Ispell installed on your machine is old. Upgrade.
714
715Yet another possibility is that you are trying to spell-check a word
716in a language that doesn't fit the dictionary you choose for use by
717Ispell. (Ispell can only spell-check one language at a time, because
718it uses a single dictionary.) Make sure that the text you are
719spelling and the dictionary used by Ispell conform to each other.
720
721If your spell-checking program is Aspell, it has been reported that if
722you have a personal configuration file (normally ~/.aspell.conf), it
723can cause this error. Remove that file, execute `ispell-kill-ispell'
724in Emacs, and then try spell-checking again.
725
726* Runtime problems related to font handling
727
728** Under X11, some characters appear as hollow boxes.
729
730Each X11 font covers just a fraction of the characters that Emacs
731supports. To display the whole range of Emacs characters requires
732many different fonts, collected into a fontset.
733
734If some of the fonts called for in your fontset do not exist on your X
735server, then the characters that have no font appear as hollow boxes.
736You can remedy the problem by installing additional fonts.
f9130829 737
9dc15871
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738The intlfonts distribution includes a full spectrum of fonts that can
739display all the characters Emacs supports.
f9130829 740
9dc15871
EZ
741Another cause of this for specific characters is fonts which have a
742missing glyph and no default character. This is known to occur for
743character number 160 (no-break space) in some fonts, such as Lucida
744but Emacs sets the display table for the unibyte and Latin-1 version
745of this character to display a space.
f9130829 746
9dc15871 747** Under X11, some characters appear improperly aligned in their lines.
f9130829 748
9dc15871 749You may have bad X11 fonts; try installing the intlfonts distribution.
f9130829 750
9dc15871 751** Certain fonts make each line take one pixel more than it "should".
f9130829 752
9dc15871
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753This is because these fonts contain characters a little taller
754than the font's nominal height. Emacs needs to make sure that
755lines do not overlap.
ed85f61d 756
9dc15871 757** Loading fonts is very slow.
b300fd77 758
9dc15871
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759You might be getting scalable fonts instead of precomputed bitmaps.
760Known scalable font directories are "Type1" and "Speedo". A font
761directory contains scalable fonts if it contains the file
762"fonts.scale".
b300fd77 763
9dc15871
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764If this is so, re-order your X windows font path to put the scalable
765font directories last. See the documentation of `xset' for details.
ed85f61d 766
9dc15871
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767With some X servers, it may be necessary to take the scalable font
768directories out of your path entirely, at least for Emacs 19.26.
769Changes in the future may make this unnecessary.
ed85f61d 770
9dc15871 771** Font Lock displays portions of the buffer in incorrect faces.
fa2301bf 772
9dc15871
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773By far the most frequent cause of this is a parenthesis `(' or a brace
774`{' in column zero. Font Lock assumes that such a paren is outside of
775any comment or string. This is of course not true in general, but the
776vast majority of well-formatted program source files don't have such
777parens, and therefore this assumption is used to allow optimizations
778in Font Lock's syntactical analysis. These optimizations avoid some
779pathological cases where jit-lock, the Just-in-Time fontification
780introduced with Emacs 21.1, could significantly slow down scrolling
781through the buffer, especially scrolling backwards, and also jumping
782to the end of a very large buffer.
ed85f61d 783
9dc15871
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784Beginning with version 21.4, a parenthesis or a brace in column zero
785is highlighted in bold-red face if it is inside a string or a comment,
786to indicate that it could interfere with Font Lock (and also with
787indentation) and should be moved or escaped with a backslash.
d0cf6c7d 788
9dc15871
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789If you don't use large buffers, or have a very fast machine which
790makes the delays insignificant, you can avoid the incorrect
791fontification by setting the variable
792`font-lock-beginning-of-syntax-function' to a nil value. (This must
793be done _after_ turning on Font Lock.)
d0cf6c7d 794
9dc15871
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795Another alternative is to avoid a paren in column zero. For example,
796in a Lisp string you could precede the paren with a backslash.
d0cf6c7d 797
9dc15871
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798** With certain fonts, when the cursor appears on a character, the
799character doesn't appear--you get a solid box instead.
d0cf6c7d 800
9dc15871
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801One user on a Linux-based GNU system reported that this problem went
802away with installation of a new X server. The failing server was
803XFree86 3.1.1. XFree86 3.1.2 works.
c289e7f0 804
9dc15871 805** Characters are displayed as empty boxes or with wrong font under X.
339b95d5 806
9dc15871
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807This can occur when two different versions of FontConfig are used.
808For example, XFree86 4.3.0 has one version and Gnome usually comes
809with a newer version. Emacs compiled with --with-gtk will then use
810the newer version. In most cases the problem can be temporarily
811fixed by stopping the application that has the error (it can be
812Emacs or any other application), removing ~/.fonts.cache-1,
813and then start the application again.
814If removing ~/.fonts.cache-1 and restarting doesn't help, the
815application with problem must be recompiled with the same version
816of FontConfig as the rest of the system uses. For KDE, it is
817sufficient to recompile Qt.
339b95d5 818
9dc15871 819** Emacs pauses for several seconds when changing the default font.
339b95d5 820
9dc15871
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821This has been reported for fvwm 2.2.5 and the window manager of KDE
8222.1. The reason for the pause is Xt waiting for a ConfigureNotify
823event from the window manager, which the window manager doesn't send.
824Xt stops waiting after a default timeout of usually 5 seconds.
339b95d5 825
9dc15871 826A workaround for this is to add something like
b87207a0 827
9dc15871 828emacs.waitForWM: false
f936978f 829
9dc15871
EZ
830to your X resources. Alternatively, add `(wait-for-wm . nil)' to a
831frame's parameter list, like this:
6fb6f3ac 832
9dc15871 833 (modify-frame-parameters nil '((wait-for-wm . nil)))
b87207a0 834
9dc15871 835(this should go into your `.emacs' file).
b87207a0 836
9dc15871 837** Underlines appear at the wrong position.
b87207a0 838
9dc15871
EZ
839This is caused by fonts having a wrong UNDERLINE_POSITION property.
840Examples are the font 7x13 on XFree prior to version 4.1, or the jmk
841neep font from the Debian xfonts-jmk package. To circumvent this
842problem, set x-use-underline-position-properties to nil in your
843`.emacs'.
b87207a0 844
9dc15871
EZ
845To see what is the value of UNDERLINE_POSITION defined by the font,
846type `xlsfonts -lll FONT' and look at the font's UNDERLINE_POSITION
847property.
e085efdb 848
9dc15871 849** When using Exceed, fonts sometimes appear too tall.
fa99e2a4 850
9dc15871
EZ
851When the display is set to an Exceed X-server and fonts are specified
852(either explicitly with the -fn option or implicitly with X resources)
853then the fonts may appear "too tall". The actual character sizes are
854correct but there is too much vertical spacing between rows, which
855gives the appearance of "double spacing".
c8d9b4ee 856
9dc15871
EZ
857To prevent this, turn off the Exceed's "automatic font substitution"
858feature (in the font part of the configuration window).
fe445893 859
9dc15871 860* Internationalization problems
c8d9b4ee 861
9dc15871 862** Characters from the mule-unicode charsets aren't displayed under X.
d9810886 863
9dc15871
EZ
864XFree86 4 contains many fonts in iso10646-1 encoding which have
865minimal character repertoires (whereas the encoding part of the font
866name is meant to be a reasonable indication of the repertoire
867according to the XLFD spec). Emacs may choose one of these to display
868characters from the mule-unicode charsets and then typically won't be
869able to find the glyphs to display many characters. (Check with C-u
870C-x = .) To avoid this, you may need to use a fontset which sets the
871font for the mule-unicode sets explicitly. E.g. to use GNU unifont,
872include in the fontset spec:
d9810886 873
9dc15871
EZ
874mule-unicode-2500-33ff:-gnu-unifont-*-iso10646-1,\
875mule-unicode-e000-ffff:-gnu-unifont-*-iso10646-1,\
876mule-unicode-0100-24ff:-gnu-unifont-*-iso10646-1
d04b2e49 877
9dc15871 878** The UTF-8/16/7 coding systems don't encode CJK (Far Eastern) characters.
d9810886 879
9dc15871
EZ
880Emacs by default only supports the parts of the Unicode BMP whose code
881points are in the ranges 0000-33ff and e000-ffff. This excludes: most
882of CJK, Yi and Hangul, as well as everything outside the BMP.
d9810886 883
9dc15871
EZ
884If you read UTF-8 data with code points outside these ranges, the
885characters appear in the buffer as raw bytes of the original UTF-8
886(composed into a single quasi-character) and they will be written back
887correctly as UTF-8, assuming you don't break the composed sequences.
888If you read such characters from UTF-16 or UTF-7 data, they are
889substituted with the Unicode `replacement character', and you lose
890information.
aa99760e 891
9dc15871
EZ
892To edit such UTF data, turn on Utf-Translate-Cjk mode, which makes
893many common CJK characters available for encoding and decoding and can
894be extended by updating the tables it uses. This also allows you to
895save as UTF buffers containing characters decoded by the chinese-,
896japanese- and korean- coding systems, e.g. cut and pasted from
897elsewhere.
aa99760e 898
9dc15871 899** Mule-UCS loads very slowly.
aa99760e 900
9dc15871
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901Changes to Emacs internals interact badly with Mule-UCS's `un-define'
902library, which is the usual interface to Mule-UCS. Apply the
903following patch to Mule-UCS 0.84 and rebuild it. That will help,
904though loading will still be slower than in Emacs 20. (Some
905distributions, such as Debian, may already have applied such a patch.)
086b25d3 906
9dc15871
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907--- lisp/un-define.el 6 Mar 2001 22:41:38 -0000 1.30
908+++ lisp/un-define.el 19 Apr 2002 18:34:26 -0000
909@@ -610,13 +624,21 @@ by calling post-read-conversion and pre-
086b25d3 910
9dc15871
EZ
911 (mapcar
912 (lambda (x)
913- (mapcar
914- (lambda (y)
915- (mucs-define-coding-system
916- (nth 0 y) (nth 1 y) (nth 2 y)
917- (nth 3 y) (nth 4 y) (nth 5 y) (nth 6 y))
918- (coding-system-put (car y) 'alias-coding-systems (list (car x))))
919- (cdr x)))
920+ (if (fboundp 'register-char-codings)
921+ ;; Mule 5, where we don't need the eol-type specified and
922+ ;; register-char-codings may be very slow for these coding
923+ ;; system definitions.
924+ (let ((y (cadr x)))
925+ (mucs-define-coding-system
926+ (car x) (nth 1 y) (nth 2 y)
927+ (nth 3 y) (nth 4 y) (nth 5 y)))
928+ (mapcar
929+ (lambda (y)
930+ (mucs-define-coding-system
931+ (nth 0 y) (nth 1 y) (nth 2 y)
932+ (nth 3 y) (nth 4 y) (nth 5 y) (nth 6 y))
933+ (coding-system-put (car y) 'alias-coding-systems (list (car x)))))
934+ (cdr x)))
935 `((utf-8
936 (utf-8-unix
937 ?u "UTF-8 coding system"
086b25d3 938
9dc15871
EZ
939Note that Emacs has native support for Unicode, roughly equivalent to
940Mule-UCS's, so you may not need it.
086b25d3 941
9dc15871 942** Accented ISO-8859-1 characters are displayed as | or _.
d6b7de9b
EZ
943
944Try other font set sizes (S-mouse-1). If the problem persists with
945other sizes as well, your text is corrupted, probably through software
946that is not 8-bit clean. If the problem goes away with another font
947size, it's probably because some fonts pretend to be ISO-8859-1 fonts
948when they are really ASCII fonts. In particular the schumacher-clean
949fonts have this bug in some versions of X.
950
951To see what glyphs are included in a font, use `xfd', like this:
952
953 xfd -fn -schumacher-clean-medium-r-normal--12-120-75-75-c-60-iso8859-1
954
955If this shows only ASCII glyphs, the font is indeed the source of the
956problem.
957
958The solution is to remove the corresponding lines from the appropriate
959`fonts.alias' file, then run `mkfontdir' in that directory, and then run
960`xset fp rehash'.
961
9dc15871 962** The `oc-unicode' package doesn't work with Emacs 21.
b87207a0 963
9dc15871
EZ
964This package tries to define more private charsets than there are free
965slots now. The current built-in Unicode support is actually more
966flexible. (Use option `utf-translate-cjk-mode' if you need CJK
967support.) Files encoded as emacs-mule using oc-unicode aren't
968generally read correctly by Emacs 21.
b87207a0 969
9dc15871 970** After a while, Emacs slips into unibyte mode.
4e0bd469 971
9dc15871
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972The VM mail package, which is not part of Emacs, sometimes does
973 (standard-display-european t)
974That should be changed to
975 (standard-display-european 1 t)
4e0bd469 976
9dc15871 977* X runtime problems
4e0bd469 978
9dc15871 979** X keyboard problems
4e0bd469 980
9dc15871 981*** You "lose characters" after typing Compose Character key.
4e0bd469 982
9dc15871
EZ
983This is because the Compose Character key is defined as the keysym
984Multi_key, and Emacs (seeing that) does the proper X11
985character-composition processing. If you don't want your Compose key
986to do that, you can redefine it with xmodmap.
4e0bd469 987
9dc15871 988For example, here's one way to turn it into a Meta key:
61638355 989
9dc15871 990 xmodmap -e "keysym Multi_key = Meta_L"
61638355 991
9dc15871
EZ
992If all users at your site of a particular keyboard prefer Meta to
993Compose, you can make the remapping happen automatically by adding the
994xmodmap command to the xdm setup script for that display.
61638355 995
9dc15871 996*** Using X Windows, control-shift-leftbutton makes Emacs hang.
61638355 997
9dc15871 998Use the shell command `xset bc' to make the old X Menu package work.
61638355 999
9dc15871 1000*** M-SPC seems to be ignored as input.
61638355 1001
9dc15871
EZ
1002See if your X server is set up to use this as a command
1003for character composition.
a953a8d3 1004
9dc15871 1005*** The S-C-t key combination doesn't get passed to Emacs on X.
2ebf6139 1006
9dc15871
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1007This happens because some X configurations assign the Ctrl-Shift-t
1008combination the same meaning as the Multi_key. The offending
1009definition is in the file `...lib/X11/locale/iso8859-1/Compose'; there
1010might be other similar combinations which are grabbed by X for similar
1011purposes.
ec383c7d 1012
9dc15871
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1013We think that this can be countermanded with the `xmodmap' utility, if
1014you want to be able to bind one of these key sequences within Emacs.
cc2f2825 1015
9dc15871 1016*** Under X, C-v and/or other keys don't work.
1d297d9b 1017
9dc15871
EZ
1018These may have been intercepted by your window manager. In
1019particular, AfterStep 1.6 is reported to steal C-v in its default
1020configuration. Various Meta keys are also likely to be taken by the
1021configuration of the `feel'. See the WM's documentation for how to
1022change this.
8bd90f0a 1023
9dc15871 1024*** Clicking C-mouse-2 in the scroll bar doesn't split the window.
8bd90f0a 1025
9dc15871
EZ
1026This currently doesn't work with scroll-bar widgets (and we don't know
1027a good way of implementing it with widgets). If Emacs is configured
1028--without-toolkit-scroll-bars, C-mouse-2 on the scroll bar does work.
8f4df059 1029
9dc15871
EZ
1030*** Inability to send an Alt-modified key, when Emacs is communicating
1031directly with an X server.
8f4df059 1032
9dc15871
EZ
1033If you have tried to bind an Alt-modified key as a command, and it
1034does not work to type the command, the first thing you should check is
1035whether the key is getting through to Emacs. To do this, type C-h c
1036followed by the Alt-modified key. C-h c should say what kind of event
1037it read. If it says it read an Alt-modified key, then make sure you
1038have made the key binding correctly.
b098c23c 1039
9dc15871
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1040If C-h c reports an event that doesn't have the Alt modifier, it may
1041be because your X server has no key for the Alt modifier. The X
1042server that comes from MIT does not set up the Alt modifier by
1043default.
224a0b4d 1044
9dc15871 1045If your keyboard has keys named Alt, you can enable them as follows:
6343352f 1046
9dc15871
EZ
1047 xmodmap -e 'add mod2 = Alt_L'
1048 xmodmap -e 'add mod2 = Alt_R'
6343352f 1049
9dc15871
EZ
1050If the keyboard has just one key named Alt, then only one of those
1051commands is needed. The modifier `mod2' is a reasonable choice if you
1052are using an unmodified MIT version of X. Otherwise, choose any
1053modifier bit not otherwise used.
6343352f 1054
9dc15871
EZ
1055If your keyboard does not have keys named Alt, you can use some other
1056keys. Use the keysym command in xmodmap to turn a function key (or
1057some other 'spare' key) into Alt_L or into Alt_R, and then use the
1058commands show above to make them modifier keys.
6343352f 1059
9dc15871
EZ
1060Note that if you have Alt keys but no Meta keys, Emacs translates Alt
1061into Meta. This is because of the great importance of Meta in Emacs.
cc2f2825 1062
9dc15871 1063** Window-manager and toolkit-related problems
cc2f2825 1064
9dc15871 1065*** Gnome: Emacs' xterm-mouse-mode doesn't work on the Gnome terminal.
cc2f2825 1066
9dc15871
EZ
1067A symptom of this bug is that double-clicks insert a control sequence
1068into the buffer. The reason this happens is an apparent
1069incompatibility of the Gnome terminal with Xterm, which also affects
1070other programs using the Xterm mouse interface. A problem report has
1071been filed.
1f42cc71 1072
9dc15871
EZ
1073*** KDE: When running on KDE, colors or fonts are not as specified for Emacs,
1074or messed up.
1f42cc71 1075
9dc15871
EZ
1076For example, you could see background you set for Emacs only in the
1077empty portions of the Emacs display, while characters have some other
1078background.
1f42cc71 1079
9dc15871
EZ
1080This happens because KDE's defaults apply its color and font
1081definitions even to applications that weren't compiled for KDE. The
1082solution is to uncheck the "Apply fonts and colors to non-KDE apps"
1083option in Preferences->Look&Feel->Style (KDE 2). In KDE 3, this option
1084is in the "Colors" section, rather than "Style".
1f42cc71 1085
9dc15871
EZ
1086Alternatively, if you do want the KDE defaults to apply to other
1087applications, but not to Emacs, you could modify the file `Emacs.ad'
1088(should be in the `/usr/share/apps/kdisplay/app-defaults/' directory)
1089so that it doesn't set the default background and foreground only for
1090Emacs. For example, make sure the following resources are either not
1091present or commented out:
f4f4ee4d 1092
9dc15871
EZ
1093 Emacs.default.attributeForeground
1094 Emacs.default.attributeBackground
1095 Emacs*Foreground
1096 Emacs*Background
0cb26e21 1097
9dc15871 1098*** KDE: Emacs hangs on KDE when a large portion of text is killed.
f4f4ee4d 1099
9dc15871
EZ
1100This is caused by a bug in the KDE applet `klipper' which periodically
1101requests the X clipboard contents from applications. Early versions
1102of klipper don't implement the ICCM protocol for large selections,
1103which leads to Emacs being flooded with selection requests. After a
1104while, Emacs will print a message:
f4f4ee4d 1105
9dc15871 1106 Timed out waiting for property-notify event
c31138a1 1107
9dc15871 1108A workaround is to not use `klipper'.
c31138a1 1109
9dc15871 1110*** CDE: Frames may cover dialogs they created when using CDE.
c31138a1 1111
9dc15871
EZ
1112This can happen if you have "Allow Primary Windows On Top" enabled which
1113seems to be the default in the Common Desktop Environment.
1114To change, go in to "Desktop Controls" -> "Window Style Manager"
1115and uncheck "Allow Primary Windows On Top".
f4f4ee4d 1116
9dc15871
EZ
1117*** Xaw3d : When using Xaw3d scroll bars without arrows, the very first mouse
1118click in a scroll bar might be ignored by the scroll bar widget. This
1119is probably a bug in Xaw3d; when Xaw3d is compiled with arrows, the
1120problem disappears.
0c6456ad 1121
9dc15871
EZ
1122*** Xaw: There are known binary incompatibilities between Xaw, Xaw3d, neXtaw,
1123XawM and the few other derivatives of Xaw. So when you compile with
1124one of these, it may not work to dynamically link with another one.
1125For example, strange problems, such as Emacs exiting when you type
1126"C-x 1", were reported when Emacs compiled with Xaw3d and libXaw was
1127used with neXtaw at run time.
b1739b51 1128
9dc15871
EZ
1129The solution is to rebuild Emacs with the toolkit version you actually
1130want to use, or set LD_PRELOAD to preload the same toolkit version you
1131built Emacs with.
b1739b51 1132
9dc15871 1133*** Open Motif: Problems with file dialogs in Emacs built with Open Motif.
b1739b51 1134
9dc15871
EZ
1135When Emacs 21 is built with Open Motif 2.1, it can happen that the
1136graphical file dialog boxes do not work properly. The "OK", "Filter"
1137and "Cancel" buttons do not respond to mouse clicks. Dragging the
1138file dialog window usually causes the buttons to work again.
b1739b51 1139
9dc15871
EZ
1140The solution is to use LessTif instead. LessTif is a free replacement
1141for Motif. See the file INSTALL for information on how to do this.
b1739b51 1142
9dc15871
EZ
1143Another workaround is not to use the mouse to trigger file prompts,
1144but to use the keyboard. This way, you will be prompted for a file in
1145the minibuffer instead of a graphical file dialog.
b1739b51 1146
9dc15871 1147*** LessTif: Problems in Emacs built with LessTif.
e9a52cfe 1148
9dc15871
EZ
1149The problems seem to depend on the version of LessTif and the Motif
1150emulation for which it is set up.
e9a52cfe 1151
9dc15871
EZ
1152Only the Motif 1.2 emulation seems to be stable enough in LessTif.
1153Lesstif 0.92-17's Motif 1.2 emulation seems to work okay on FreeBSD.
1154On GNU/Linux systems, lesstif-0.92.6 configured with "./configure
1155--enable-build-12 --enable-default-12" is reported to be the most
1156successful. The binary GNU/Linux package
1157lesstif-devel-0.92.0-1.i386.rpm was reported to have problems with
1158menu placement.
e9a52cfe 1159
9dc15871
EZ
1160On some systems, even with Motif 1.2 emulation, Emacs occasionally
1161locks up, grabbing all mouse and keyboard events. We still don't know
1162what causes these problems; they are not reproducible by Emacs
1163developers.
e9a52cfe 1164
9dc15871 1165*** Motif: The Motif version of Emacs paints the screen a solid color.
e9a52cfe 1166
9dc15871 1167This has been observed to result from the following X resource:
e9a52cfe 1168
9dc15871 1169 Emacs*default.attributeFont: -*-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-140-*-*-*-*-iso8859-*
e9a52cfe 1170
9dc15871
EZ
1171That the resource has this effect indicates a bug in something, but we
1172do not yet know what. If it is an Emacs bug, we hope someone can
1173explain what the bug is so we can fix it. In the mean time, removing
1174the resource prevents the problem.
f25eb4f7 1175
9dc15871 1176** General X problems
f25eb4f7 1177
9dc15871 1178*** Redisplay using X11 is much slower than previous Emacs versions.
f25eb4f7 1179
9dc15871
EZ
1180We've noticed that certain X servers draw the text much slower when
1181scroll bars are on the left. We don't know why this happens. If this
1182happens to you, you can work around it by putting the scroll bars
1183on the right (as they were in Emacs 19).
f25eb4f7 1184
9dc15871 1185Here's how to do this:
f25eb4f7 1186
9dc15871 1187 (set-scroll-bar-mode 'right)
f25eb4f7 1188
9dc15871
EZ
1189If you're not sure whether (or how much) this problem affects you,
1190try that and see how much difference it makes. To set things back
1191to normal, do
edd7d3be 1192
9dc15871 1193 (set-scroll-bar-mode 'left)
edd7d3be 1194
9dc15871 1195*** Error messages about undefined colors on X.
edd7d3be 1196
9dc15871 1197The messages might say something like this:
42303132 1198
9dc15871 1199 Unable to load color "grey95"
42303132 1200
9dc15871 1201(typically, in the `*Messages*' buffer), or something like this:
42303132 1202
9dc15871 1203 Error while displaying tooltip: (error Undefined color lightyellow)
42303132 1204
9dc15871
EZ
1205These problems could happen if some other X program has used up too
1206many colors of the X palette, leaving Emacs with insufficient system
1207resources to load all the colors it needs.
42303132 1208
9dc15871 1209A solution is to exit the offending X programs before starting Emacs.
42303132 1210
9dc15871 1211*** Improving performance with slow X connections.
f3d6f4ee 1212
9dc15871
EZ
1213There are several ways to improve this performance, any subset of which can
1214be carried out at the same time:
f3d6f4ee 1215
9dc15871
EZ
12161) If you don't need X Input Methods (XIM) for entering text in some
1217 language you use, you can improve performance on WAN links by using
1218 the X resource useXIM to turn off use of XIM. This does not affect
1219 the use of Emacs' own input methods, which are part of the Leim
1220 package.
f3d6f4ee 1221
9dc15871
EZ
12222) If the connection is very slow, you might also want to consider
1223 switching off scroll bars, menu bar, and tool bar.
f3d6f4ee 1224
9dc15871
EZ
12253) Use ssh to forward the X connection, and enable compression on this
1226 forwarded X connection (ssh -XC remotehostname emacs ...).
9f83d8b3 1227
9dc15871
EZ
12284) Use lbxproxy on the remote end of the connection. This is an interface
1229 to the low bandwidth X extension in most modern X servers, which
1230 improves performance dramatically, at the slight expense of correctness
1231 of the X protocol. lbxproxy acheives the performance gain by grouping
1232 several X requests in one TCP packet and sending them off together,
1233 instead of requiring a round-trip for each X request in a seperate
1234 packet. The switches that seem to work best for emacs are:
1235 -noatomsfile -nowinattr -cheaterrors -cheatevents
1236 Note that the -nograbcmap option is known to cause problems.
1237 For more about lbxproxy, see:
1238 http://www.xfree86.org/4.3.0/lbxproxy.1.html
9f83d8b3 1239
9dc15871 1240*** Emacs gives the error, Couldn't find per display information.
9f83d8b3 1241
9dc15871
EZ
1242This can result if the X server runs out of memory because Emacs uses
1243a large number of fonts. On systems where this happens, C-h h is
1244likely to cause it.
f29d1e75 1245
9dc15871 1246We do not know of a way to prevent the problem.
f29d1e75 1247
9dc15871 1248*** Emacs does not notice when you release the mouse.
c24be289 1249
9dc15871
EZ
1250There are reports that this happened with (some) Microsoft mice and
1251that replacing the mouse made it stop.
c24be289 1252
9dc15871 1253*** You can't select from submenus (in the X toolkit version).
b35319bf 1254
9dc15871
EZ
1255On certain systems, mouse-tracking and selection in top-level menus
1256works properly with the X toolkit, but neither of them works when you
1257bring up a submenu (such as Bookmarks or Compare or Apply Patch, in
1258the Files menu).
b35319bf 1259
9dc15871
EZ
1260This works on most systems. There is speculation that the failure is
1261due to bugs in old versions of X toolkit libraries, but no one really
1262knows. If someone debugs this and finds the precise cause, perhaps a
1263workaround can be found.
b35319bf 1264
9dc15871
EZ
1265*** An error message such as `X protocol error: BadMatch (invalid
1266parameter attributes) on protocol request 93'.
b35319bf 1267
9dc15871
EZ
1268This comes from having an invalid X resource, such as
1269 emacs*Cursor: black
1270(which is invalid because it specifies a color name for something
1271that isn't a color.)
787994b7 1272
9dc15871 1273The fix is to correct your X resources.
0a2eeca1 1274
9dc15871 1275*** Slow startup on X11R6 with X windows.
0a2eeca1 1276
9dc15871
EZ
1277If Emacs takes two minutes to start up on X11R6, see if your X
1278resources specify any Adobe fonts. That causes the type-1 font
1279renderer to start up, even if the font you asked for is not a type-1
1280font.
0a2eeca1 1281
9dc15871
EZ
1282One way to avoid this problem is to eliminate the type-1 fonts from
1283your font path, like this:
0a2eeca1 1284
9dc15871 1285 xset -fp /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/
0a2eeca1 1286
9dc15871 1287*** Pull-down menus appear in the wrong place, in the toolkit version of Emacs.
0a2eeca1 1288
9dc15871 1289An X resource of this form can cause the problem:
0a2eeca1 1290
9dc15871 1291 Emacs*geometry: 80x55+0+0
0a2eeca1 1292
9dc15871
EZ
1293This resource is supposed to apply, and does apply, to the menus
1294individually as well as to Emacs frames. If that is not what you
1295want, rewrite the resource.
119d3665 1296
9dc15871
EZ
1297To check thoroughly for such resource specifications, use `xrdb
1298-query' to see what resources the X server records, and also look at
1299the user's ~/.Xdefaults and ~/.Xdefaults-* files.
119d3665 1300
9dc15871 1301*** --with-x-toolkit version crashes when used with shared libraries.
a933dad1 1302
9dc15871
EZ
1303On some systems, including Sunos 4 and DGUX 5.4.2 and perhaps others,
1304unexec doesn't work properly with the shared library for the X
1305toolkit. You might be able to work around this by using a nonshared
1306libXt.a library. The real fix is to upgrade the various versions of
1307unexec and/or ralloc. We think this has been fixed on Sunos 4
1308and Solaris in version 19.29.
a933dad1 1309
9dc15871
EZ
1310*** Emacs running under X Windows does not handle mouse clicks.
1311*** `emacs -geometry 80x20' finds a file named `80x20'.
0de9f9a8 1312
9dc15871
EZ
1313One cause of such problems is having (setq term-file-prefix nil) in
1314your .emacs file. Another cause is a bad value of EMACSLOADPATH in
1315the environment.
0de9f9a8 1316
9dc15871 1317*** Emacs fails to get default settings from X Windows server.
0de9f9a8 1318
9dc15871
EZ
1319The X library in X11R4 has a bug; it interchanges the 2nd and 3rd
1320arguments to XGetDefaults. Define the macro XBACKWARDS in config.h to
1321tell Emacs to compensate for this.
0de9f9a8 1322
9dc15871
EZ
1323I don't believe there is any way Emacs can determine for itself
1324whether this problem is present on a given system.
0de9f9a8 1325
9dc15871 1326*** X Windows doesn't work if DISPLAY uses a hostname.
0de9f9a8 1327
9dc15871
EZ
1328People have reported kernel bugs in certain systems that cause Emacs
1329not to work with X Windows if DISPLAY is set using a host name. But
1330the problem does not occur if DISPLAY is set to `unix:0.0'. I think
1331the bug has to do with SIGIO or FIONREAD.
a933dad1 1332
9dc15871
EZ
1333You may be able to compensate for the bug by doing (set-input-mode nil nil).
1334However, that has the disadvantage of turning off interrupts, so that
1335you are unable to quit out of a Lisp program by typing C-g.
a933dad1 1336
9dc15871 1337The easy way to do this is to put
a933dad1 1338
9dc15871 1339 (setq x-sigio-bug t)
a933dad1 1340
9dc15871 1341in your site-init.el file.
a933dad1 1342
9dc15871 1343* Runtime problems on character termunals
a933dad1 1344
9dc15871 1345** Emacs spontaneously displays "I-search: " at the bottom of the screen.
a933dad1 1346
9dc15871
EZ
1347This means that Control-S/Control-Q (XON/XOFF) "flow control" is being
1348used. C-s/C-q flow control is bad for Emacs editors because it takes
1349away C-s and C-q as user commands. Since editors do not output long
1350streams of text without user commands, there is no need for a
1351user-issuable "stop output" command in an editor; therefore, a
1352properly designed flow control mechanism would transmit all possible
1353input characters without interference. Designing such a mechanism is
1354easy, for a person with at least half a brain.
177c0ea7 1355
9dc15871 1356There are three possible reasons why flow control could be taking place:
a933dad1 1357
9dc15871
EZ
1358 1) Terminal has not been told to disable flow control
1359 2) Insufficient padding for the terminal in use
1360 3) Some sort of terminal concentrator or line switch is responsible
a933dad1 1361
9dc15871
EZ
1362First of all, many terminals have a set-up mode which controls whether
1363they generate XON/XOFF flow control characters. This must be set to
1364"no XON/XOFF" in order for Emacs to work. Sometimes there is an
1365escape sequence that the computer can send to turn flow control off
1366and on. If so, perhaps the termcap `ti' string should turn flow
1367control off, and the `te' string should turn it on.
a933dad1 1368
9dc15871
EZ
1369Once the terminal has been told "no flow control", you may find it
1370needs more padding. The amount of padding Emacs sends is controlled
1371by the termcap entry for the terminal in use, and by the output baud
1372rate as known by the kernel. The shell command `stty' will print
1373your output baud rate; `stty' with suitable arguments will set it if
1374it is wrong. Setting to a higher speed causes increased padding. If
1375the results are wrong for the correct speed, there is probably a
1376problem in the termcap entry. You must speak to a local Unix wizard
1377to fix this. Perhaps you are just using the wrong terminal type.
de121241 1378
9dc15871
EZ
1379For terminals that lack a "no flow control" mode, sometimes just
1380giving lots of padding will prevent actual generation of flow control
1381codes. You might as well try it.
de121241 1382
9dc15871
EZ
1383If you are really unlucky, your terminal is connected to the computer
1384through a concentrator which sends XON/XOFF flow control to the
1385computer, or it insists on sending flow control itself no matter how
1386much padding you give it. Unless you can figure out how to turn flow
1387control off on this concentrator (again, refer to your local wizard),
1388you are screwed! You should have the terminal or concentrator
1389replaced with a properly designed one. In the mean time, some drastic
1390measures can make Emacs semi-work.
de121241 1391
9dc15871
EZ
1392You can make Emacs ignore C-s and C-q and let the operating system
1393handle them. To do this on a per-session basis, just type M-x
1394enable-flow-control RET. You will see a message that C-\ and C-^ are
1395now translated to C-s and C-q. (Use the same command M-x
1396enable-flow-control to turn *off* this special mode. It toggles flow
1397control handling.)
a933dad1 1398
9dc15871
EZ
1399If C-\ and C-^ are inconvenient for you (for example, if one of them
1400is the escape character of your terminal concentrator), you can choose
1401other characters by setting the variables flow-control-c-s-replacement
1402and flow-control-c-q-replacement. But choose carefully, since all
1403other control characters are already used by emacs.
a933dad1 1404
9dc15871
EZ
1405IMPORTANT: if you type C-s by accident while flow control is enabled,
1406Emacs output will freeze, and you will have to remember to type C-q in
1407order to continue.
177c0ea7 1408
9dc15871
EZ
1409If you work in an environment where a majority of terminals of a
1410certain type are flow control hobbled, you can use the function
1411`enable-flow-control-on' to turn on this flow control avoidance scheme
1412automatically. Here is an example:
a933dad1 1413
9dc15871 1414(enable-flow-control-on "vt200" "vt300" "vt101" "vt131")
a933dad1 1415
9dc15871
EZ
1416If this isn't quite correct (e.g. you have a mixture of flow-control hobbled
1417and good vt200 terminals), you can still run enable-flow-control
1418manually.
a933dad1 1419
9dc15871
EZ
1420I have no intention of ever redesigning the Emacs command set for the
1421assumption that terminals use C-s/C-q flow control. XON/XOFF flow
1422control technique is a bad design, and terminals that need it are bad
1423merchandise and should not be purchased. Now that X is becoming
1424widespread, XON/XOFF seems to be on the way out. If you can get some
1425use out of GNU Emacs on inferior terminals, more power to you, but I
1426will not make Emacs worse for properly designed systems for the sake
1427of inferior systems.
a933dad1 1428
9dc15871 1429** Control-S and Control-Q commands are ignored completely.
a933dad1 1430
9dc15871
EZ
1431For some reason, your system is using brain-damaged C-s/C-q flow
1432control despite Emacs's attempts to turn it off. Perhaps your
1433terminal is connected to the computer through a concentrator
1434that wants to use flow control.
a933dad1 1435
9dc15871
EZ
1436You should first try to tell the concentrator not to use flow control.
1437If you succeed in this, try making the terminal work without
1438flow control, as described in the preceding section.
a933dad1 1439
9dc15871
EZ
1440If that line of approach is not successful, map some other characters
1441into C-s and C-q using keyboard-translate-table. The example above
1442shows how to do this with C-^ and C-\.
a933dad1 1443
9dc15871 1444** Screen is updated wrong, but only on one kind of terminal.
a933dad1 1445
9dc15871
EZ
1446This could mean that the termcap entry you are using for that
1447terminal is wrong, or it could mean that Emacs has a bug handing
1448the combination of features specified for that terminal.
a933dad1 1449
9dc15871
EZ
1450The first step in tracking this down is to record what characters
1451Emacs is sending to the terminal. Execute the Lisp expression
1452(open-termscript "./emacs-script") to make Emacs write all
1453terminal output into the file ~/emacs-script as well; then do
1454what makes the screen update wrong, and look at the file
1455and decode the characters using the manual for the terminal.
1456There are several possibilities:
a933dad1 1457
9dc15871 14581) The characters sent are correct, according to the terminal manual.
a933dad1 1459
9dc15871
EZ
1460In this case, there is no obvious bug in Emacs, and most likely you
1461need more padding, or possibly the terminal manual is wrong.
a933dad1 1462
9dc15871
EZ
14632) The characters sent are incorrect, due to an obscure aspect
1464 of the terminal behavior not described in an obvious way
1465 by termcap.
a933dad1 1466
9dc15871
EZ
1467This case is hard. It will be necessary to think of a way for
1468Emacs to distinguish between terminals with this kind of behavior
1469and other terminals that behave subtly differently but are
1470classified the same by termcap; or else find an algorithm for
1471Emacs to use that avoids the difference. Such changes must be
1472tested on many kinds of terminals.
a933dad1 1473
9dc15871 14743) The termcap entry is wrong.
a933dad1 1475
9dc15871
EZ
1476See the file etc/TERMS for information on changes
1477that are known to be needed in commonly used termcap entries
1478for certain terminals.
a933dad1 1479
9dc15871
EZ
14804) The characters sent are incorrect, and clearly cannot be
1481 right for any terminal with the termcap entry you were using.
a933dad1 1482
9dc15871
EZ
1483This is unambiguously an Emacs bug, and can probably be fixed
1484in termcap.c, tparam.c, term.c, scroll.c, cm.c or dispnew.c.
a933dad1 1485
9dc15871 1486** Control-S and Control-Q commands are ignored completely on a net connection.
a933dad1 1487
9dc15871
EZ
1488Some versions of rlogin (and possibly telnet) do not pass flow
1489control characters to the remote system to which they connect.
1490On such systems, emacs on the remote system cannot disable flow
1491control on the local system.
a933dad1 1492
9dc15871
EZ
1493One way to cure this is to disable flow control on the local host
1494(the one running rlogin, not the one running rlogind) using the
1495stty command, before starting the rlogin process. On many systems,
1496"stty start u stop u" will do this.
a933dad1 1497
9dc15871
EZ
1498Some versions of tcsh will prevent even this from working. One way
1499around this is to start another shell before starting rlogin, and
1500issue the stty command to disable flow control from that shell.
a933dad1 1501
9dc15871
EZ
1502If none of these methods work, the best solution is to type
1503M-x enable-flow-control at the beginning of your emacs session, or
1504if you expect the problem to continue, add a line such as the
1505following to your .emacs (on the host running rlogind):
a933dad1 1506
9dc15871 1507(enable-flow-control-on "vt200" "vt300" "vt101" "vt131")
a933dad1 1508
9dc15871
EZ
1509See the entry about spontaneous display of I-search (above) for more
1510info.
a933dad1 1511
9dc15871 1512** Output from Control-V is slow.
a933dad1 1513
9dc15871
EZ
1514On many bit-map terminals, scrolling operations are fairly slow.
1515Often the termcap entry for the type of terminal in use fails
1516to inform Emacs of this. The two lines at the bottom of the screen
1517before a Control-V command are supposed to appear at the top after
1518the Control-V command. If Emacs thinks scrolling the lines is fast,
1519it will scroll them to the top of the screen.
a933dad1 1520
9dc15871
EZ
1521If scrolling is slow but Emacs thinks it is fast, the usual reason is
1522that the termcap entry for the terminal you are using does not
1523specify any padding time for the `al' and `dl' strings. Emacs
1524concludes that these operations take only as much time as it takes to
1525send the commands at whatever line speed you are using. You must
1526fix the termcap entry to specify, for the `al' and `dl', as much
1527time as the operations really take.
a933dad1 1528
9dc15871
EZ
1529Currently Emacs thinks in terms of serial lines which send characters
1530at a fixed rate, so that any operation which takes time for the
1531terminal to execute must also be padded. With bit-map terminals
1532operated across networks, often the network provides some sort of
1533flow control so that padding is never needed no matter how slow
1534an operation is. You must still specify a padding time if you want
1535Emacs to realize that the operation takes a long time. This will
1536cause padding characters to be sent unnecessarily, but they do
1537not really cost much. They will be transmitted while the scrolling
1538is happening and then discarded quickly by the terminal.
a933dad1 1539
9dc15871
EZ
1540Most bit-map terminals provide commands for inserting or deleting
1541multiple lines at once. Define the `AL' and `DL' strings in the
1542termcap entry to say how to do these things, and you will have
1543fast output without wasted padding characters. These strings should
1544each contain a single %-spec saying how to send the number of lines
1545to be scrolled. These %-specs are like those in the termcap
1546`cm' string.
a933dad1 1547
9dc15871
EZ
1548You should also define the `IC' and `DC' strings if your terminal
1549has a command to insert or delete multiple characters. These
1550take the number of positions to insert or delete as an argument.
a933dad1 1551
9dc15871
EZ
1552A `cs' string to set the scrolling region will reduce the amount
1553of motion you see on the screen when part of the screen is scrolled.
a933dad1 1554
9dc15871 1555** You type Control-H (Backspace) expecting to delete characters.
a933dad1 1556
9dc15871
EZ
1557Put `stty dec' in your .login file and your problems will disappear
1558after a day or two.
d238f982 1559
9dc15871
EZ
1560The choice of Backspace for erasure was based on confusion, caused by
1561the fact that backspacing causes erasure (later, when you type another
1562character) on most display terminals. But it is a mistake. Deletion
1563of text is not the same thing as backspacing followed by failure to
1564overprint. I do not wish to propagate this confusion by conforming
1565to it.
d238f982 1566
9dc15871
EZ
1567For this reason, I believe `stty dec' is the right mode to use,
1568and I have designed Emacs to go with that. If there were a thousand
1569other control characters, I would define Control-h to delete as well;
1570but there are not very many other control characters, and I think
1571that providing the most mnemonic possible Help character is more
1572important than adapting to people who don't use `stty dec'.
d7185f9d 1573
9dc15871
EZ
1574If you are obstinate about confusing buggy overprinting with deletion,
1575you can redefine Backspace in your .emacs file:
1576 (global-set-key "\b" 'delete-backward-char)
1577You can probably access help-command via f1.
d7185f9d 1578
9dc15871 1579** Colors are not available on a tty or in xterm.
a933dad1 1580
9dc15871
EZ
1581Emacs 21 supports colors on character terminals and terminal
1582emulators, but this support relies on the terminfo or termcap database
1583entry to specify that the display supports color. Emacs looks at the
1584"Co" capability for the terminal to find out how many colors are
1585supported; it should be non-zero to activate the color support within
1586Emacs. (Most color terminals support 8 or 16 colors.) If your system
1587uses terminfo, the name of the capability equivalent to "Co" is
1588"colors".
a933dad1 1589
9dc15871
EZ
1590In addition to the "Co" capability, Emacs needs the "op" (for
1591``original pair'') capability, which tells how to switch the terminal
1592back to the default foreground and background colors. Emacs will not
1593use colors if this capability is not defined. If your terminal entry
1594doesn't provide such a capability, try using the ANSI standard escape
1595sequence \E[00m (that is, define a new termcap/terminfo entry and make
1596it use your current terminal's entry plus \E[00m for the "op"
1597capability).
a933dad1 1598
9dc15871
EZ
1599Finally, the "NC" capability (terminfo name: "ncv") tells Emacs which
1600attributes cannot be used with colors. Setting this capability
1601incorrectly might have the effect of disabling colors; try setting
1602this capability to `0' (zero) and see if that helps.
a933dad1 1603
9dc15871
EZ
1604Emacs uses the database entry for the terminal whose name is the value
1605of the environment variable TERM. With `xterm', a common terminal
1606entry that supports color is `xterm-color', so setting TERM's value to
1607`xterm-color' might activate the color support on an xterm-compatible
1608emulator.
a933dad1 1609
9dc15871
EZ
1610Beginning with version 21.4, Emacs supports the --color command-line
1611option which may be used to force Emacs to use one of a few popular
1612modes for getting colors on a tty. For example, --color=ansi8 sets up
1613for using the ANSI-standard escape sequences that support 8 colors.
a933dad1 1614
9dc15871
EZ
1615Some modes do not use colors unless you turn on the Font-lock mode.
1616Some people have long ago set their `~/.emacs' files to turn on
1617Font-lock on X only, so they won't see colors on a tty. The
1618recommended way of turning on Font-lock is by typing "M-x
1619global-font-lock-mode RET" or by customizing the variable
1620`global-font-lock-mode'.
a933dad1 1621
9dc15871 1622* Runtime problems specific to individual Unix variants
a933dad1 1623
9dc15871 1624** GNU/Linux
a933dad1 1625
9dc15871
EZ
1626*** GNU/Linux: On Linux-based GNU systems using libc versions 5.4.19 through
16275.4.22, Emacs crashes at startup with a segmentation fault.
a933dad1 1628
9dc15871
EZ
1629This problem happens if libc defines the symbol __malloc_initialized.
1630One known solution is to upgrade to a newer libc version. 5.4.33 is
1631known to work.
a933dad1 1632
9dc15871
EZ
1633*** GNU/Linux: After upgrading to a newer version of Emacs,
1634the Meta key stops working.
a933dad1 1635
9dc15871
EZ
1636This was reported to happen on a GNU/Linux system distributed by
1637Mandrake. The reason is that the previous version of Emacs was
1638modified by Mandrake to make the Alt key act as the Meta key, on a
1639keyboard where the Windows key is the one which produces the Meta
1640modifier. A user who started using a newer version of Emacs, which
1641was not hacked by Mandrake, expected the Alt key to continue to act as
1642Meta, and was astonished when that didn't happen.
a933dad1 1643
9dc15871
EZ
1644The solution is to find out what key on your keyboard produces the Meta
1645modifier, and use that key instead. Try all of the keys to the left
1646and to the right of the space bar, together with the `x' key, and see
1647which combination produces "M-x" in the echo area. You can also use
1648the `xmodmap' utility to show all the keys which produce a Meta
1649modifier:
a933dad1 1650
9dc15871 1651 xmodmap -pk | egrep -i "meta|alt"
17a37d87 1652
9dc15871
EZ
1653A more convenient way of finding out which keys produce a Meta modifier
1654is to use the `xkbprint' utility, if it's available on your system:
17a37d87 1655
9dc15871 1656 xkbprint 0:0 /tmp/k.ps
17a37d87 1657
9dc15871
EZ
1658This produces a PostScript file `/tmp/k.ps' with a picture of your
1659keyboard; printing that file on a PostScript printer will show what
1660keys can serve as Meta.
17a37d87 1661
9dc15871
EZ
1662The `xkeycaps' also shows a visual representation of the current
1663keyboard settings. It also allows to modify them.
a933dad1 1664
9dc15871 1665*** GNU/Linux: low startup on Linux-based GNU systems.
a933dad1 1666
9dc15871
EZ
1667People using systems based on the Linux kernel sometimes report that
1668startup takes 10 to 15 seconds longer than `usual'.
a933dad1 1669
9dc15871
EZ
1670This is because Emacs looks up the host name when it starts.
1671Normally, this takes negligible time; the extra delay is due to
1672improper system configuration. This problem can occur for both
1673networked and non-networked machines.
a933dad1 1674
9dc15871 1675Here is how to fix the configuration. It requires being root.
a933dad1 1676
9dc15871 1677**** Networked Case.
a933dad1 1678
9dc15871
EZ
1679First, make sure the files `/etc/hosts' and `/etc/host.conf' both
1680exist. The first line in the `/etc/hosts' file should look like this
1681(replace HOSTNAME with your host name):
a933dad1 1682
9dc15871 1683 127.0.0.1 HOSTNAME
a933dad1 1684
9dc15871
EZ
1685Also make sure that the `/etc/host.conf' files contains the following
1686lines:
a933dad1 1687
9dc15871
EZ
1688 order hosts, bind
1689 multi on
a933dad1 1690
9dc15871
EZ
1691Any changes, permanent and temporary, to the host name should be
1692indicated in the `/etc/hosts' file, since it acts a limited local
1693database of addresses and names (e.g., some SLIP connections
1694dynamically allocate ip addresses).
a933dad1 1695
9dc15871 1696**** Non-Networked Case.
a933dad1 1697
9dc15871
EZ
1698The solution described in the networked case applies here as well.
1699However, if you never intend to network your machine, you can use a
1700simpler solution: create an empty `/etc/host.conf' file. The command
1701`touch /etc/host.conf' suffices to create the file. The `/etc/hosts'
1702file is not necessary with this approach.
3d00585e 1703
9dc15871 1704*** GNU/Linux: Emacs on a tty switches the cursor to large blinking block.
3d00585e 1705
9dc15871
EZ
1706This was reported to happen on some GNU/Linux systems which use
1707ncurses version 5.0, but could be relevant for other versions as well.
1708These versions of ncurses come with a `linux' terminfo entry, where
1709the "cvvis" capability (termcap "vs") is defined as "\E[?25h\E[?8c"
1710(show cursor, change size). This escape sequence switches on a
1711blinking hardware text-mode cursor whose size is a full character
1712cell. This blinking cannot be stopped, since a hardware cursor
1713always blinks.
3d00585e 1714
9dc15871
EZ
1715A work-around is to redefine the "cvvis" capability so that it
1716enables a *software* cursor. The software cursor works by inverting
1717the colors of the character at point, so what you see is a block
1718cursor that doesn't blink. For this to work, you need to redefine
1719the "cnorm" capability as well, so that it operates on the software
1720cursor instead of the hardware cursor.
3d00585e 1721
9dc15871
EZ
1722To this end, run "infocmp linux > linux-term", edit the file
1723`linux-term' to make both the "cnorm" and "cvvis" capabilities send
1724the sequence "\E[?25h\E[?17;0;64c", and then run "tic linux-term" to
1725produce a modified terminfo entry.
3d00585e 1726
9dc15871
EZ
1727Alternatively, if you want a blinking underscore as your Emacs cursor,
1728change the "cvvis" capability to send the "\E[?25h\E[?0c" command.
a933dad1 1729
9dc15871 1730*** GNU/Linux: Error messages `internal facep []' happen on GNU/Linux systems.
7838ea1b 1731
9dc15871
EZ
1732There is a report that replacing libc.so.5.0.9 with libc.so.5.2.16
1733caused this to start happening. People are not sure why, but the
1734problem seems unlikely to be in Emacs itself. Some suspect that it
1735is actually Xlib which won't work with libc.so.5.2.16.
a933dad1 1736
9dc15871 1737Using the old library version is a workaround.
a933dad1 1738
9dc15871 1739** Mac OS X
a933dad1 1740
9dc15871 1741*** Mac OS X (Carbon): Environment Variables from dotfiles are ignored.
a933dad1 1742
9dc15871
EZ
1743When starting Emacs from the Dock or the Finder on Mac OS X, the
1744environment variables that are set up in dotfiles, such as .cshrc or
1745.profile, are ignored. This is because the Finder and Dock are not
1746started from a shell, but instead from the Window Manager itself.
a933dad1 1747
9dc15871
EZ
1748The workaround for this is to create a .MacOSX/environment.plist file to
1749setup these environment variables. These environment variables will
1750apply to all processes regardless of where they are started.
1751For me information, see http://developer.apple.com/qa/qa2001/qa1067.html.
b5cb4652 1752
9dc15871 1753*** Mac OS X (Carbon): Process output truncated when using ptys.
b5cb4652 1754
9dc15871
EZ
1755There appears to be a problem with the implementation of pty's on the
1756Mac OS X that causes process output to be truncated. To avoid this,
1757leave process-connection-type set to its default value of nil.
a933dad1 1758
9dc15871 1759** FreeBSD
a933dad1 1760
9dc15871
EZ
1761*** FreeBSD 2.1.5: useless symbolic links remain in /tmp or other
1762directories that have the +t bit.
a933dad1 1763
9dc15871
EZ
1764This is because of a kernel bug in FreeBSD 2.1.5 (fixed in 2.2).
1765Emacs uses symbolic links to implement file locks. In a directory
1766with +t bit, the directory owner becomes the owner of the symbolic
1767link, so that it cannot be removed by anyone else.
a933dad1 1768
9dc15871
EZ
1769If you don't like those useless links, you can let Emacs not to using
1770file lock by adding #undef CLASH_DETECTION to config.h.
a933dad1 1771
9dc15871 1772*** FreeBSD: Getting a Meta key on the console.
a933dad1 1773
9dc15871
EZ
1774By default, neither Alt nor any other key acts as a Meta key on
1775FreeBSD, but this can be changed using kbdcontrol(1). Dump the
1776current keymap to a file with the command
a933dad1 1777
9dc15871 1778 $ kbdcontrol -d >emacs.kbd
a933dad1 1779
9dc15871
EZ
1780Edit emacs.kbd, and give the key you want to be the Meta key the
1781definition `meta'. For instance, if your keyboard has a ``Windows''
1782key with scan code 105, change the line for scan code 105 in emacs.kbd
1783to look like this
3156909f 1784
9dc15871 1785 105 meta meta meta meta meta meta meta meta O
a933dad1 1786
9dc15871 1787to make the Windows key the Meta key. Load the new keymap with
a933dad1 1788
9dc15871 1789 $ kbdcontrol -l emacs.kbd
a933dad1 1790
9dc15871 1791** HP-UX
e96c5c69 1792
9dc15871 1793*** HP/UX : Shell mode gives the message, "`tty`: Ambiguous".
e96c5c69 1794
9dc15871 1795christos@theory.tn.cornell.edu says:
a933dad1 1796
9dc15871
EZ
1797The problem is that in your .cshrc you have something that tries to
1798execute `tty`. If you are not running the shell on a real tty then
1799tty will print "not a tty". Csh expects one word in some places,
1800but tty is giving it back 3.
a933dad1 1801
9dc15871
EZ
1802The solution is to add a pair of quotes around `tty` to make it a single
1803word:
a933dad1 1804
9dc15871 1805if (`tty` == "/dev/console")
a933dad1 1806
9dc15871 1807should be changed to:
a933dad1 1808
9dc15871 1809if ("`tty`" == "/dev/console")
a933dad1 1810
9dc15871
EZ
1811Even better, move things that set up terminal sections out of .cshrc
1812and into .login.
a933dad1 1813
9dc15871 1814*** HP/UX: `Pid xxx killed due to text modification or page I/O error'.
a933dad1 1815
9dc15871
EZ
1816On HP/UX, you can get that error when the Emacs executable is on an NFS
1817file system. HP/UX responds this way if it tries to swap in a page and
1818does not get a response from the server within a timeout whose default
1819value is just ten seconds.
a933dad1 1820
9dc15871 1821If this happens to you, extend the timeout period.
a933dad1 1822
9dc15871 1823*** HP/UX: Emacs is slow using X11R5.
a933dad1 1824
9dc15871
EZ
1825This happens if you use the MIT versions of the X libraries--it
1826doesn't run as fast as HP's version. People sometimes use the version
1827because they see the HP version doesn't have the libraries libXaw.a,
1828libXmu.a, libXext.a and others. HP/UX normally doesn't come with
1829those libraries installed. To get good performance, you need to
1830install them and rebuild Emacs.
a933dad1 1831
9dc15871
EZ
1832*** HP/UX: The right Alt key works wrong on German HP keyboards (and perhaps
1833other non-English HP keyboards too).
a933dad1 1834
9dc15871
EZ
1835This is because HP-UX defines the modifiers wrong in X. Here is a
1836shell script to fix the problem; be sure that it is run after VUE
1837configures the X server.
a933dad1 1838
9dc15871
EZ
1839 xmodmap 2> /dev/null - << EOF
1840 keysym Alt_L = Meta_L
1841 keysym Alt_R = Meta_R
1842 EOF
a933dad1 1843
9dc15871
EZ
1844 xmodmap - << EOF
1845 clear mod1
1846 keysym Mode_switch = NoSymbol
1847 add mod1 = Meta_L
1848 keysym Meta_R = Mode_switch
1849 add mod2 = Mode_switch
1850 EOF
a933dad1 1851
9dc15871
EZ
1852*** HP/UX: "Cannot find callback list" messages from dialog boxes in
1853Emacs built with Motif.
a933dad1 1854
9dc15871
EZ
1855This problem resulted from a bug in GCC 2.4.5. Newer GCC versions
1856such as 2.7.0 fix the problem.
a933dad1 1857
9dc15871 1858*** HP/UX: Emacs does not recognize the AltGr key.
a933dad1 1859
9dc15871
EZ
1860To fix this, set up a file ~/.dt/sessions/sessionetc with executable
1861rights, containing this text:
4c635a29 1862
9dc15871
EZ
1863--------------------------------
1864xmodmap 2> /dev/null - << EOF
1865keysym Alt_L = Meta_L
1866keysym Alt_R = Meta_R
1867EOF
a933dad1 1868
9dc15871
EZ
1869xmodmap - << EOF
1870clear mod1
1871keysym Mode_switch = NoSymbol
1872add mod1 = Meta_L
1873keysym Meta_R = Mode_switch
1874add mod2 = Mode_switch
1875EOF
1876--------------------------------
a933dad1 1877
9dc15871 1878*** HP/UX: Large file support is disabled.
a933dad1 1879
9dc15871 1880See the comments in src/s/hpux10.h.
a933dad1 1881
9dc15871 1882*** HP/UX 11.0: Emacs makes HP/UX 11.0 crash.
a933dad1 1883
9dc15871 1884This is a bug in HPUX; HPUX patch PHKL_16260 is said to fix it.
a933dad1 1885
9dc15871 1886** AIX
a933dad1 1887
9dc15871 1888*** AIX: Trouble using ptys.
a933dad1 1889
9dc15871
EZ
1890People often install the pty devices on AIX incorrectly.
1891Use `smit pty' to reinstall them properly.
a933dad1 1892
9dc15871 1893*** AIXterm: Your Delete key sends a Backspace to the terminal.
a933dad1 1894
9dc15871 1895The solution is to include in your .Xdefaults the lines:
a933dad1 1896
9dc15871
EZ
1897 *aixterm.Translations: #override <Key>BackSpace: string(0x7f)
1898 aixterm*ttyModes: erase ^?
a933dad1 1899
9dc15871 1900This makes your Backspace key send DEL (ASCII 127).
a933dad1 1901
9dc15871 1902*** AIX: You get this message when running Emacs:
a933dad1 1903
9dc15871
EZ
1904 Could not load program emacs
1905 Symbol smtcheckinit in csh is undefined
1906 Error was: Exec format error
a933dad1 1907
9dc15871 1908or this one:
a933dad1 1909
9dc15871
EZ
1910 Could not load program .emacs
1911 Symbol _system_con in csh is undefined
1912 Symbol _fp_trapsta in csh is undefined
1913 Error was: Exec format error
a933dad1 1914
9dc15871
EZ
1915These can happen when you try to run on AIX 3.2.5 a program that was
1916compiled with 3.2.4. The fix is to recompile.
a933dad1 1917
9dc15871 1918*** AIX 3.2.4: Releasing Ctrl/Act key has no effect, if Shift is down.
a933dad1 1919
9dc15871
EZ
1920Due to a feature of AIX, pressing or releasing the Ctrl/Act key is
1921ignored when the Shift, Alt or AltGr keys are held down. This can
1922lead to the keyboard being "control-locked"--ordinary letters are
1923treated as control characters.
a933dad1 1924
9dc15871
EZ
1925You can get out of this "control-locked" state by pressing and
1926releasing Ctrl/Act while not pressing or holding any other keys.
a933dad1 1927
9dc15871 1928*** AIX 4.2: Emacs gets a segmentation fault at startup.
a933dad1 1929
9dc15871
EZ
1930If you are using IBM's xlc compiler, compile emacs.c
1931without optimization; that should avoid the problem.
a933dad1 1932
9dc15871
EZ
1933*** AIX: If linking fails because libXbsd isn't found, check if you
1934are compiling with the system's `cc' and CFLAGS containing `-O5'. If
1935so, you have hit a compiler bug. Please make sure to re-configure
1936Emacs so that it isn't compiled with `-O5'.
a933dad1 1937
9dc15871 1938*** AIX 4.3.x or 4.4: Compiling fails.
a933dad1 1939
9dc15871
EZ
1940This could happen if you use /bin/c89 as your compiler, instead of
1941the default `cc'. /bin/c89 treats certain warnings, such as benign
1942redefinitions of macros, as errors, and fails the build. A solution
1943is to use the default compiler `cc'.
a933dad1 1944
9dc15871
EZ
1945*** AIX 4: Some programs fail when run in a Shell buffer
1946with an error message like No terminfo entry for "unknown".
a933dad1 1947
9dc15871
EZ
1948On AIX, many terminal type definitions are not installed by default.
1949`unknown' is one of them. Install the "Special Generic Terminal
1950Definitions" to make them defined.
a933dad1 1951
9dc15871 1952** Solaris
a933dad1 1953
9dc15871
EZ
1954We list bugs in current versions here. Solaris 2.x and 4.x are covered in the
1955section on legacy systems.
a933dad1 1956
9dc15871 1957*** On Solaris, C-x doesn't get through to Emacs when you use the console.
a933dad1 1958
9dc15871
EZ
1959This is a Solaris feature (at least on Intel x86 cpus). Type C-r
1960C-r C-t, to toggle whether C-x gets through to Emacs.
a933dad1 1961
9dc15871 1962*** Problem with remote X server on Suns.
a933dad1 1963
9dc15871
EZ
1964On a Sun, running Emacs on one machine with the X server on another
1965may not work if you have used the unshared system libraries. This
1966is because the unshared libraries fail to use YP for host name lookup.
1967As a result, the host name you specify may not be recognized.
a933dad1 1968
9dc15871 1969*** Emacs reports a BadAtom error (from X) running on Solaris 7 or 8.
a933dad1 1970
9dc15871
EZ
1971This happens when Emacs was built on some other version of Solaris.
1972Rebuild it on Solaris 8.
a933dad1 1973
9dc15871
EZ
1974*** On Solaris, CTRL-t is ignored by Emacs when you use
1975the fr.ISO-8859-15 locale (and maybe other related locales).
a933dad1 1976
9dc15871 1977You can fix this by editing the file:
a933dad1 1978
9dc15871 1979 /usr/openwin/lib/locale/iso8859-15/Compose
a933dad1 1980
9dc15871 1981Near the bottom there is a line that reads:
a933dad1 1982
9dc15871 1983 Ctrl<t> <quotedbl> <Y> : "\276" threequarters
a933dad1 1984
9dc15871 1985that should read:
a933dad1 1986
9dc15871 1987 Ctrl<T> <quotedbl> <Y> : "\276" threequarters
a933dad1 1988
9dc15871 1989Note the lower case <t>. Changing this line should make C-t work.
a933dad1 1990
9dc15871
EZ
1991*** When using M-x dbx with the SparcWorks debugger, the `up' and `down'
1992commands do not move the arrow in Emacs.
a933dad1 1993
9dc15871 1994You can fix this by adding the following line to `~/.dbxinit':
a933dad1 1995
9dc15871 1996 dbxenv output_short_file_name off
a933dad1 1997
9dc15871 1998** Irix
a933dad1 1999
9dc15871 2000*** Irix 5.2: unexelfsgi.c can't find cmplrs/stsupport.h.
f1e54ce1 2001
9dc15871
EZ
2002The file cmplrs/stsupport.h was included in the wrong file set in the
2003Irix 5.2 distribution. You can find it in the optional fileset
2004compiler_dev, or copy it from some other Irix 5.2 system. A kludgy
2005workaround is to change unexelfsgi.c to include sym.h instead of
2006syms.h.
f1e54ce1 2007
9dc15871 2008*** Irix 5.3: "out of virtual swap space".
a933dad1 2009
9dc15871
EZ
2010This message occurs when the system runs out of swap space due to too
2011many large programs running. The solution is either to provide more
2012swap space or to reduce the number of large programs being run. You
2013can check the current status of the swap space by executing the
2014command `swap -l'.
a933dad1 2015
9dc15871
EZ
2016You can increase swap space by changing the file /etc/fstab. Adding a
2017line like this:
a01325b8 2018
9dc15871 2019/usr/swap/swap.more swap swap pri=3 0 0
a01325b8 2020
9dc15871
EZ
2021where /usr/swap/swap.more is a file previously created (for instance
2022by using /etc/mkfile), will increase the swap space by the size of
2023that file. Execute `swap -m' or reboot the machine to activate the
2024new swap area. See the manpages for `swap' and `fstab' for further
2025information.
a933dad1 2026
9dc15871
EZ
2027The objectserver daemon can use up lots of memory because it can be
2028swamped with NIS information. It collects information about all users
2029on the network that can log on to the host.
a933dad1 2030
9dc15871
EZ
2031If you want to disable the objectserver completely, you can execute
2032the command `chkconfig objectserver off' and reboot. That may disable
2033some of the window system functionality, such as responding CDROM
2034icons.
a01325b8 2035
9dc15871
EZ
2036You can also remove NIS support from the objectserver. The SGI `admin'
2037FAQ has a detailed description on how to do that; see question 35
2038("Why isn't the objectserver working?"). The admin FAQ can be found at
2039ftp://viz.tamu.edu/pub/sgi/faq/.
a933dad1 2040
9dc15871 2041*** Irix 5.3: Emacs crashes in utmpname.
a933dad1 2042
9dc15871
EZ
2043This problem is fixed in Patch 3175 for Irix 5.3.
2044It is also fixed in Irix versions 6.2 and up.
a933dad1 2045
9dc15871 2046*** Irix 6.0: Make tries (and fails) to build a program named unexelfsgi.
a933dad1 2047
9dc15871
EZ
2048A compiler bug inserts spaces into the string "unexelfsgi . o"
2049in src/Makefile. Edit src/Makefile, after configure is run,
2050find that string, and take out the spaces.
a933dad1 2051
9dc15871 2052Compiler fixes in Irix 6.0.1 should eliminate this problem.
a933dad1 2053
9dc15871 2054*** Irix 6.5: Emacs crashes on the SGI R10K, when compiled with GCC.
a933dad1 2055
9dc15871 2056This seems to be fixed in GCC 2.95.
a933dad1 2057
9dc15871 2058*** Trouble using ptys on IRIX, or running out of ptys.
a933dad1 2059
9dc15871
EZ
2060The program mkpts (which may be in `/usr/adm' or `/usr/sbin') needs to
2061be set-UID to root, or non-root programs like Emacs will not be able
2062to allocate ptys reliably.
a933dad1 2063
9dc15871 2064** SCO Unix and UnixWare
1dd8b979 2065
9dc15871 2066*** SCO 3.2v4: Unusable default font.
10a763e5 2067
9dc15871
EZ
2068The Open Desktop environment comes with default X resource settings
2069that tell Emacs to use a variable-width font. Emacs cannot use such
2070fonts, so it does not work.
1dd8b979 2071
9dc15871
EZ
2072This is caused by the file /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/ScoTerm, which is
2073the application-specific resource file for the `scoterm' terminal
2074emulator program. It contains several extremely general X resources
2075that affect other programs besides `scoterm'. In particular, these
2076resources affect Emacs also:
a933dad1 2077
9dc15871
EZ
2078 *Font: -*-helvetica-medium-r-*--12-*-p-*
2079 *Background: scoBackground
2080 *Foreground: scoForeground
a933dad1 2081
9dc15871
EZ
2082The best solution is to create an application-specific resource file for
2083Emacs, /usr/lib/X11/sco/startup/Emacs, with the following contents:
a933dad1 2084
9dc15871
EZ
2085 Emacs*Font: -*-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-120-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1
2086 Emacs*Background: white
2087 Emacs*Foreground: black
a933dad1 2088
9dc15871
EZ
2089(These settings mimic the Emacs defaults, but you can change them to
2090suit your needs.) This resource file is only read when the X server
2091starts up, so you should restart it by logging out of the Open Desktop
2092environment or by running `scologin stop; scologin start` from the shell
2093as root. Alternatively, you can put these settings in the
2094/usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/Emacs resource file and simply restart Emacs,
2095but then they will not affect remote invocations of Emacs that use the
2096Open Desktop display.
a933dad1 2097
9dc15871
EZ
2098These resource files are not normally shared across a network of SCO
2099machines; you must create the file on each machine individually.
a933dad1 2100
9dc15871 2101*** Regular expressions matching bugs on SCO systems.
a933dad1 2102
9dc15871
EZ
2103On SCO, there are problems in regexp matching when Emacs is compiled
2104with the system compiler. The compiler version is "Microsoft C
2105version 6", SCO 4.2.0h Dev Sys Maintenance Supplement 01/06/93; Quick
2106C Compiler Version 1.00.46 (Beta). The solution is to compile with
2107GCC.
a933dad1 2108
9dc15871 2109*** UnixWare 2.1: Error 12 (virtual memory exceeded) when dumping Emacs.
a933dad1 2110
9dc15871
EZ
2111Paul Abrahams (abrahams@acm.org) reports that with the installed
2112virtual memory settings for UnixWare 2.1.2, an Error 12 occurs during
2113the "make" that builds Emacs, when running temacs to dump emacs. That
2114error indicates that the per-process virtual memory limit has been
2115exceeded. The default limit is probably 32MB. Raising the virtual
2116memory limit to 40MB should make it possible to finish building Emacs.
a933dad1 2117
9dc15871
EZ
2118You can do this with the command `ulimit' (sh) or `limit' (csh).
2119But you have to be root to do it.
a933dad1 2120
9dc15871 2121According to Martin Sohnius, you can also retune this in the kernel:
a933dad1 2122
9dc15871
EZ
2123 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune SDATLIM 33554432 ## soft data size limit
2124 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune HDATLIM 33554432 ## hard "
2125 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune SVMMSIZE unlimited ## soft process size limit
2126 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune HVMMSIZE unlimited ## hard "
2127 # /etc/conf/bin/idbuild -B
a933dad1 2128
9dc15871
EZ
2129(He recommends you not change the stack limit, though.)
2130These changes take effect when you reboot.
a933dad1 2131
9dc15871 2132* Runtime problems specific to MS-Windows
a933dad1 2133
9dc15871 2134** Emacs exits with "X protocol error" when run with an X server for MS-Windows.
a933dad1 2135
9dc15871
EZ
2136A certain X server for Windows had a bug which caused this.
2137Supposedly the newer 32-bit version of this server doesn't have the
2138problem.
a933dad1 2139
9dc15871 2140** Known problems with the MS-Windows port of Emacs 21.2.
a933dad1 2141
9dc15871
EZ
2142Frames are not refreshed while the File or Font dialog or a pop-up menu
2143is displayed. This also means help text for pop-up menus is not
2144displayed at all. This is because message handling under Windows is
2145synchronous, so we cannot handle repaint (or any other) messages while
2146waiting for a system function to return the result of the dialog or
2147pop-up menu interaction.
a933dad1 2148
9dc15871
EZ
2149Windows 95 and Windows NT up to version 4.0 do not support help text
2150for menus. Help text is only available in later versions of Windows.
a933dad1 2151
9dc15871
EZ
2152There are problems with display if mouse-tracking is enabled and the
2153mouse is moved off a frame, over another frame then back over the first
2154frame. A workaround is to click the left mouse button inside the frame
2155after moving back into it.
a933dad1 2156
9dc15871
EZ
2157Some minor flickering still persists during mouse-tracking, although
2158not as severely as in 21.1.
a933dad1 2159
9dc15871
EZ
2160Emacs can sometimes abort when non-ASCII text, possibly with null
2161characters, is copied and pasted into a buffer.
a933dad1 2162
9dc15871
EZ
2163An inactive cursor remains in an active window after the Windows
2164Manager driven switch of the focus, until a key is pressed.
a933dad1 2165
9dc15871
EZ
2166Windows input methods are not recognized by Emacs (as of v21.2). Some
2167of these input methods cause the keyboard to send characters encoded
2168in the appropriate coding system (e.g., ISO 8859-1 for Latin-1
2169characters, ISO 8859-8 for Hebrew characters, etc.). To make this
2170work, set the keyboard coding system to the appropriate value after
2171you activate the Windows input method. For example, if you activate
2172the Hebrew input method, type "C-x RET k iso-8859-8 RET". (Emacs
2173ought to recognize the Windows language-change event and set up the
2174appropriate keyboard encoding automatically, but it doesn't do that
2175yet.)
a933dad1 2176
9dc15871
EZ
2177The %b specifier for format-time-string does not produce abbreviated
2178month names with consistent widths for some locales on some versions
2179of Windows. This is caused by a deficiency in the underlying system
2180library function.
a933dad1 2181
9dc15871 2182** Problems running Perl under Emacs on MS-Windows NT/95.
a933dad1 2183
9dc15871
EZ
2184`perl -de 0' just hangs when executed in an Emacs subshell.
2185The fault lies with Perl (indirectly with Windows NT/95).
a933dad1 2186
9dc15871
EZ
2187The problem is that the Perl debugger explicitly opens a connection to
2188"CON", which is the DOS/NT equivalent of "/dev/tty", for interacting
2189with the user.
a933dad1 2190
9dc15871
EZ
2191On Unix, this is okay, because Emacs (or the shell?) creates a
2192pseudo-tty so that /dev/tty is really the pipe Emacs is using to
2193communicate with the subprocess.
a933dad1 2194
9dc15871
EZ
2195On NT, this fails because CON always refers to the handle for the
2196relevant console (approximately equivalent to a tty), and cannot be
2197redirected to refer to the pipe Emacs assigned to the subprocess as
2198stdin.
a933dad1 2199
9dc15871 2200A workaround is to modify perldb.pl to use STDIN/STDOUT instead of CON.
a933dad1 2201
9dc15871 2202For Perl 4:
a933dad1 2203
9dc15871
EZ
2204 *** PERL/LIB/PERLDB.PL.orig Wed May 26 08:24:18 1993
2205 --- PERL/LIB/PERLDB.PL Mon Jul 01 15:28:16 1996
2206 ***************
2207 *** 68,74 ****
2208 $rcfile=".perldb";
2209 }
2210 else {
2211 ! $console = "con";
2212 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
2213 }
a933dad1 2214
9dc15871
EZ
2215 --- 68,74 ----
2216 $rcfile=".perldb";
2217 }
2218 else {
2219 ! $console = "";
2220 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
2221 }
a933dad1 2222
a933dad1 2223
9dc15871
EZ
2224 For Perl 5:
2225 *** perl/5.001/lib/perl5db.pl.orig Sun Jun 04 21:13:40 1995
2226 --- perl/5.001/lib/perl5db.pl Mon Jul 01 17:00:08 1996
2227 ***************
2228 *** 22,28 ****
2229 $rcfile=".perldb";
2230 }
2231 elsif (-e "con") {
2232 ! $console = "con";
2233 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
2234 }
2235 else {
2236 --- 22,28 ----
2237 $rcfile=".perldb";
2238 }
2239 elsif (-e "con") {
2240 ! $console = "";
2241 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
2242 }
2243 else {
a933dad1 2244
9dc15871 2245** On MS-Windows 95, Alt-f6 does not get through to Emacs.
a933dad1 2246
9dc15871
EZ
2247This character seems to be trapped by the kernel in Windows 95.
2248You can enter M-f6 by typing ESC f6.
a933dad1 2249
9dc15871 2250** Typing Alt-Shift has strange effects on MS-Windows.
a933dad1 2251
9dc15871
EZ
2252This combination of keys is a command to change keyboard layout. If
2253you proceed to type another non-modifier key before you let go of Alt
2254and Shift, the Alt and Shift act as modifiers in the usual way. A
2255more permanent work around is to change it to another key combination,
2256or disable it in the keyboard control panel.
a933dad1 2257
9dc15871 2258** Interrupting Cygwin port of Bash from Emacs doesn't work.
a933dad1 2259
9dc15871
EZ
2260Cygwin 1.x builds of the ported Bash cannot be interrupted from the
2261MS-Windows version of Emacs. This is due to some change in the Bash
2262port or in the Cygwin library which apparently make Bash ignore the
2263keyboard interrupt event sent by Emacs to Bash. (Older Cygwin ports
2264of Bash, up to b20.1, did receive SIGINT from Emacs.)
a933dad1 2265
9dc15871 2266** Accessing remote files with ange-ftp hangs the MS-Windows version of Emacs.
a933dad1 2267
9dc15871
EZ
2268If the FTP client is the Cygwin port of GNU `ftp', this appears to be
2269due to some bug in the Cygwin DLL or some incompatibility between it
2270and the implementation of asynchronous subprocesses in the Windows
2271port of Emacs. Specifically, some parts of the FTP server responses
2272are not flushed out, apparently due to buffering issues, which
2273confuses ange-ftp.
2274
2275The solution is to downgrade to an older version of the Cygwin DLL
2276(version 1.3.2 was reported to solve the problem), or use the stock
2277Windows FTP client, usually found in the `C:\WINDOWS' or 'C:\WINNT'
2278directory. To force ange-ftp use the stock Windows client, set the
2279variable `ange-ftp-ftp-program-name' to the absolute file name of the
2280client's executable. For example:
a933dad1 2281
9dc15871 2282 (setq ange-ftp-ftp-program-name "c:/windows/ftp.exe")
a933dad1 2283
9dc15871
EZ
2284If you want to stick with the Cygwin FTP client, you can work around
2285this problem by putting this in your `.emacs' file:
a933dad1 2286
9dc15871 2287 (setq ange-ftp-ftp-program-args '("-i" "-n" "-g" "-v" "--prompt" "")
a933dad1 2288
9dc15871 2289** lpr commands don't work on MS-Windows with some cheap printers.
a933dad1 2290
9dc15871
EZ
2291This problem may also strike other platforms, but the solution is
2292likely to be a global one, and not Emacs specific.
a933dad1 2293
9dc15871
EZ
2294Many cheap inkjet, and even some cheap laser printers, do not
2295print plain text anymore, they will only print through graphical
2296printer drivers. A workaround on MS-Windows is to use Windows' basic
2297built in editor to print (this is possibly the only useful purpose it
2298has):
a933dad1 2299
9dc15871
EZ
2300(setq printer-name "") ;; notepad takes the default
2301(setq lpr-command "notepad") ;; notepad
2302(setq lpr-switches nil) ;; not needed
2303(setq lpr-printer-switch "/P") ;; run notepad as batch printer
a933dad1 2304
9dc15871 2305** Antivirus software interacts badly with the MS-Windows version of Emacs.
a933dad1 2306
9dc15871
EZ
2307The usual manifestation of these problems is that subprocesses don't
2308work or even wedge the entire system. In particular, "M-x shell RET"
2309was reported to fail to work. But other commands also sometimes don't
2310work when an antivirus package is installed.
a933dad1 2311
9dc15871
EZ
2312The solution is to switch the antivirus software to a less aggressive
2313mode (e.g., disable the ``auto-protect'' feature), or even uninstall
2314or disable it entirely.
a933dad1 2315
9dc15871 2316** On MS-Windows 95/98/ME, subprocesses do not terminate properly.
a933dad1 2317
9dc15871
EZ
2318This is a limitation of the Operating System, and can cause problems
2319when shutting down Windows. Ensure that all subprocesses are exited
2320cleanly before exiting Emacs. For more details, see the FAQ at
2321http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/windows/.
a933dad1 2322
9dc15871 2323** MS-Windows 95/98/ME crashes when Emacs invokes non-existent programs.
a933dad1 2324
9dc15871
EZ
2325When a program you are trying to run is not found on the PATH,
2326Windows might respond by crashing or locking up your system. In
2327particular, this has been reported when trying to compile a Java
2328program in JDEE when javac.exe is installed, but not on the system
2329PATH.
a933dad1 2330
9dc15871 2331** Pressing the mouse button on MS-Windows does not give a mouse-2 event.
a933dad1 2332
9dc15871
EZ
2333This is usually a problem with the mouse driver. Because most Windows
2334programs do not do anything useful with the middle mouse button, many
2335mouse drivers allow you to define the wheel press to do something
2336different. Some drivers do not even have the option to generate a
2337middle button press. In such cases, setting the wheel press to
2338"scroll" sometimes works if you press the button twice. Trying a
2339generic mouse driver might help.
a933dad1 2340
9dc15871 2341** Scrolling the mouse wheel on MS-Windows always scrolls the top window.
a933dad1 2342
9dc15871
EZ
2343This is another common problem with mouse drivers. Instead of
2344generating scroll events, some mouse drivers try to fake scroll bar
2345movement. But they are not intelligent enough to handle multiple
2346scroll bars within a frame. Trying a generic mouse driver might help.
a933dad1 2347
9dc15871
EZ
2348** Mail sent through Microsoft Exchange in some encodings appears to be
2349mangled and is not seen correctly in Rmail or Gnus. We don't know
2350exactly what happens, but it isn't an Emacs problem in cases we've
2351seen.
a933dad1 2352
9dc15871
EZ
2353** On MS-Windows, you cannot use the right-hand ALT key and the left-hand
2354CTRL key together to type a Control-Meta character.
a933dad1 2355
9dc15871 2356This is a consequence of a misfeature beyond Emacs's control.
a933dad1 2357
9dc15871
EZ
2358Under Windows, the AltGr key on international keyboards generates key
2359events with the modifiers Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl. Since Emacs cannot
2360distinguish AltGr from an explicit Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl
2361combination, whenever it sees Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl it assumes that
2362AltGr has been pressed. The variable `w32-recognize-altgr' can be set
2363to nil to tell Emacs that AltGr is really Ctrl and Alt.
a933dad1 2364
9dc15871 2365** Under some X-servers running on MS-Windows, Emacs' display is incorrect.
a933dad1 2366
9dc15871
EZ
2367The symptoms are that Emacs does not completely erase blank areas of the
2368screen during scrolling or some other screen operations (e.g., selective
2369display or when killing a region). M-x recenter will cause the screen
2370to be completely redisplayed and the "extra" characters will disappear.
a933dad1 2371
9dc15871
EZ
2372This is known to occur under Exceed 6, and possibly earlier versions
2373as well; it is reportedly solved in version 6.2.0.16 and later. The
2374problem lies in the X-server settings.
a933dad1 2375
9dc15871
EZ
2376There are reports that you can solve the problem with Exceed by
2377running `Xconfig' from within NT, choosing "X selection", then
2378un-checking the boxes "auto-copy X selection" and "auto-paste to X
2379selection".
a933dad1 2380
9dc15871
EZ
2381Of this does not work, please inform bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org. Then
2382please call support for your X-server and see if you can get a fix.
2383If you do, please send it to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org so we can list it
2384here.
a933dad1 2385
9dc15871 2386* Build-time problems
a933dad1 2387
9dc15871 2388** Configuration
a933dad1 2389
9dc15871 2390*** The `configure' script doesn't find the jpeg library.
a933dad1 2391
9dc15871
EZ
2392There are reports that this happens on some systems because the linker
2393by default only looks for shared libraries, but jpeg distribution by
2394default only installs a nonshared version of the library, `libjpeg.a'.
a933dad1 2395
9dc15871
EZ
2396If this is the problem, you can configure the jpeg library with the
2397`--enable-shared' option and then rebuild libjpeg. This produces a
2398shared version of libjpeg, which you need to install. Finally, rerun
2399the Emacs configure script, which should now find the jpeg library.
2400Alternatively, modify the generated src/Makefile to link the .a file
2401explicitly, and edit src/config.h to define HAVE_JPEG.
a933dad1 2402
9dc15871 2403*** AIX: You get this compiler error message:
a933dad1 2404
9dc15871
EZ
2405 Processing include file ./XMenuInt.h
2406 1501-106: (S) Include file X11/Xlib.h not found.
a933dad1 2407
9dc15871
EZ
2408This means your system was installed with only the X11 runtime i.d
2409libraries. You have to find your sipo (bootable tape) and install
2410X11Dev... with smit.
a933dad1 2411
9dc15871 2412** Compilation
a933dad1 2413
9dc15871 2414*** Building Emacs over NFS fails with ``Text file busy''.
a933dad1 2415
9dc15871
EZ
2416This was reported to happen when building Emacs on a GNU/Linux system
2417(RedHat Linux 6.2) using a build directory automounted from Solaris
2418(SunOS 5.6) file server, but it might not be limited to that
2419configuration alone. Presumably, the NFS server doesn't commit the
2420files' data to disk quickly enough, and the Emacs executable file is
2421left ``busy'' for several seconds after Emacs has finished dumping
2422itself. This causes the subsequent commands which invoke the dumped
2423Emacs executable to fail with the above message.
a933dad1 2424
9dc15871
EZ
2425In some of these cases, a time skew between the NFS server and the
2426machine where Emacs is built is detected and reported by GNU Make
2427(it says that some of the files have modification time in the future).
2428This might be a symptom of NFS-related problems.
a933dad1 2429
9dc15871
EZ
2430If the NFS server runs on Solaris, apply the Solaris patch 105379-05
2431(Sunos 5.6: /kernel/misc/nfssrv patch). If that doesn't work, or if
2432you have a different version of the OS or the NFS server, you can
2433force the NFS server to use 1KB blocks, which was reported to fix the
2434problem albeit at a price of slowing down file I/O. You can force 1KB
2435blocks by specifying the "-o rsize=1024,wsize=1024" options to the
2436`mount' command, or by adding ",rsize=1024,wsize=1024" to the mount
2437options in the appropriate system configuration file, such as
2438`/etc/auto.home'.
a933dad1 2439
9dc15871
EZ
2440Alternatively, when Make fails due to this problem, you could wait for
2441a few seconds and then invoke Make again. In one particular case,
2442waiting for 10 or more seconds between the two Make invocations seemed
2443to work around the problem.
a933dad1 2444
9dc15871
EZ
2445Similar problems can happen if your machine NFS-mounts a directory
2446onto itself. Suppose the Emacs sources live in `/usr/local/src' and
2447you are working on the host called `marvin'. Then an entry in the
2448`/etc/fstab' file like the following is asking for trouble:
a933dad1 2449
9dc15871 2450 marvin:/usr/local/src /usr/local/src ...options.omitted...
a933dad1 2451
9dc15871 2452The solution is to remove this line from `etc/fstab'.
a933dad1 2453
9dc15871 2454*** Building Emacs with GCC 2.9x fails in the `src' directory.
a933dad1 2455
9dc15871
EZ
2456This may happen if you use a development version of GNU `cpp' from one
2457of the GCC snapshots between Oct 2000 and Feb 2001, or from a released
2458version of GCC newer than 2.95.2 which was prepared around those
2459dates; similar problems were reported with some snapshots of GCC 3.1
2460around Sep 30 2001. The preprocessor in those versions is
2461incompatible with a traditional Unix cpp (e.g., it expands ".." into
2462". .", which breaks relative file names that reference the parent
2463directory; or inserts TAB characters before lines that set Make
2464variables).
a933dad1 2465
9dc15871
EZ
2466The solution is to make sure the preprocessor is run with the
2467`-traditional' option. The `configure' script does that automatically
2468when it detects the known problems in your cpp, but you might hit some
2469unknown ones. To force the `configure' script to use `-traditional',
2470run the script like this:
a933dad1 2471
9dc15871 2472 CPP='gcc -E -traditional' ./configure ...
a933dad1 2473
9dc15871
EZ
2474(replace the ellipsis "..." with any additional arguments you pass to
2475the script).
a933dad1 2476
9dc15871
EZ
2477Note that this problem does not pertain to the MS-Windows port of
2478Emacs, since it doesn't use the preprocessor to generate Makefiles.
a933dad1 2479
9dc15871
EZ
2480*** src/Makefile and lib-src/Makefile are truncated--most of the file missing.
2481*** Compiling wakeup, in lib-src, says it can't make wakeup.c.
a933dad1 2482
9dc15871
EZ
2483This can happen if configure uses GNU sed version 2.03. That version
2484had a bug. GNU sed version 2.05 works properly.To solve the
2485problem, install the current version of GNU Sed, then rerun Emacs's
2486configure script.
a933dad1 2487
9dc15871 2488*** Compiling lib-src says there is no rule to make test-distrib.c.
a933dad1 2489
9dc15871
EZ
2490This results from a bug in a VERY old version of GNU Sed. To solve
2491the problem, install the current version of GNU Sed, then rerun
2492Emacs's configure script.
a933dad1 2493
9dc15871 2494*** Building the MS-Windows port with Cygwin GCC can fail.
a933dad1 2495
9dc15871
EZ
2496Emacs may not build using recent Cygwin builds of GCC, such as Cygwin
2497version 1.1.8, using the default configure settings. It appears to be
2498necessary to specify the -mwin32 flag when compiling, and define
2499__MSVCRT__, like so:
a933dad1 2500
9dc15871 2501 configure --with-gcc --cflags -mwin32 --cflags -D__MSVCRT__
a933dad1 2502
9dc15871 2503*** Building the MS-Windows port fails with a CreateProcess failure.
a933dad1 2504
9dc15871
EZ
2505Some versions of mingw32 make on some versions of Windows do not seem
2506to detect the shell correctly. Try "make SHELL=cmd.exe", or if that
2507fails, try running make from Cygwin bash instead.
a933dad1 2508
9dc15871 2509*** Building the MS-Windows port with Leim fails in the `leim' directory.
a933dad1 2510
9dc15871 2511The error message might be something like this:
a933dad1 2512
9dc15871
EZ
2513 Converting d:/emacs-21.3/leim/CXTERM-DIC/4Corner.tit to quail-package...
2514 Invalid ENCODE: value in TIT dictionary
2515 NMAKE : fatal error U1077: '"../src/obj-spd/i386/emacs.exe"' : return code
2516 '0xffffffff'
2517 Stop.
a933dad1 2518
9dc15871
EZ
2519This can happen if the Leim distribution is unpacked with a program
2520which converts the `*.tit' files to DOS-style CR-LF text format. The
2521`*.tit' files in the leim/CXTERM-DIC directory require Unix-style line
2522endings to compile properly, because Emacs reads them without any code
2523or EOL conversions.
a933dad1 2524
9dc15871
EZ
2525The solution is to make sure the program used to unpack Leim does not
2526change the files' line endings behind your back. The GNU FTP site has
2527in the `/gnu/emacs/windows' directory a program called `djtarnt.exe'
2528which can be used to unpack `.tar.gz' and `.zip' archives without
2529mangling them.
a933dad1 2530
9dc15871 2531*** Building `ctags' for MS-Windows with the MinGW port of GCC fails.
a933dad1 2532
9dc15871
EZ
2533This might happen due to a bug in the MinGW header assert.h, which
2534defines the `assert' macro with a trailing semi-colon. The following
2535patch to assert.h should solve this:
a933dad1 2536
9dc15871
EZ
2537*** include/assert.h.orig Sun Nov 7 02:41:36 1999
2538--- include/assert.h Mon Jan 29 11:49:10 2001
2539***************
2540*** 41,47 ****
2541 /*
2542 * If not debugging, assert does nothing.
2543 */
2544! #define assert(x) ((void)0);
a933dad1 2545
9dc15871 2546 #else /* debugging enabled */
a933dad1 2547
9dc15871
EZ
2548--- 41,47 ----
2549 /*
2550 * If not debugging, assert does nothing.
2551 */
2552! #define assert(x) ((void)0)
a933dad1 2553
9dc15871 2554 #else /* debugging enabled */
a933dad1 2555
a933dad1 2556
9dc15871 2557** Linking
a933dad1 2558
9dc15871
EZ
2559*** Building Emacs with a system compiler fails to link because of an
2560undefined symbol such as __eprintf which does not appear in Emacs.
a933dad1 2561
9dc15871
EZ
2562This can happen if some of the libraries linked into Emacs were built
2563with GCC, but Emacs itself is being linked with a compiler other than
2564GCC. Object files compiled with GCC might need some helper functions
2565from libgcc.a, the library which comes with GCC, but the system
2566compiler does not instruct the linker to search libgcc.a during the
2567link stage.
a933dad1 2568
9dc15871 2569A solution is to link with GCC, like this:
a933dad1 2570
9dc15871 2571 make CC=gcc
a933dad1 2572
9dc15871
EZ
2573Since the .o object files already exist, this will not recompile Emacs
2574with GCC, but just restart by trying again to link temacs.
a933dad1 2575
9dc15871 2576*** AIX 1.3 ptf 0013: Link failure.
a933dad1 2577
9dc15871
EZ
2578There is a real duplicate definition of the function `_slibc_free' in
2579the library /lib/libc_s.a (just do nm on it to verify). The
2580workaround/fix is:
a933dad1 2581
9dc15871
EZ
2582 cd /lib
2583 ar xv libc_s.a NLtmtime.o
2584 ar dv libc_s.a NLtmtime.o
a933dad1 2585
9dc15871
EZ
2586*** AIX 4.1.2: Linker error messages such as
2587 ld: 0711-212 SEVERE ERROR: Symbol .__quous, found in the global symbol table
2588 of archive /usr/lib/libIM.a, was not defined in archive member shr.o.
a933dad1 2589
9dc15871
EZ
2590This is a problem in libIM.a. You can work around it by executing
2591these shell commands in the src subdirectory of the directory where
2592you build Emacs:
a933dad1 2593
9dc15871
EZ
2594 cp /usr/lib/libIM.a .
2595 chmod 664 libIM.a
2596 ranlib libIM.a
a933dad1 2597
9dc15871
EZ
2598Then change -lIM to ./libIM.a in the command to link temacs (in
2599Makefile).
a933dad1 2600
9dc15871 2601*** Sun with acc: Link failure when using acc on a Sun.
a933dad1 2602
9dc15871 2603To use acc, you need additional options just before the libraries, such as
a933dad1 2604
9dc15871 2605 /usr/lang/SC2.0.1/values-Xt.o -L/usr/lang/SC2.0.1/cg87 -L/usr/lang/SC2.0.1
a933dad1 2606
9dc15871 2607and you need to add -lansi just before -lc.
a933dad1 2608
9dc15871
EZ
2609The precise file names depend on the compiler version, so we
2610cannot easily arrange to supply them.
a933dad1 2611
9dc15871 2612*** Linking says that the functions insque and remque are undefined.
a933dad1 2613
9dc15871 2614Change oldXMenu/Makefile by adding insque.o to the variable OBJS.
a933dad1 2615
9dc15871 2616*** `tparam' reported as a multiply-defined symbol when linking with ncurses.
a933dad1 2617
9dc15871
EZ
2618This problem results from an incompatible change in ncurses, in
2619version 1.9.9e approximately. This version is unable to provide a
2620definition of tparm without also defining tparam. This is also
2621incompatible with Terminfo; as a result, the Emacs Terminfo support
2622does not work with this version of ncurses.
a933dad1 2623
9dc15871 2624The fix is to install a newer version of ncurses, such as version 4.2.
a933dad1 2625
9dc15871 2626** Dumping
a933dad1 2627
9dc15871 2628*** Linux: Segfault during `make bootstrap' under certain recent versions of the Linux kernel.
a933dad1 2629
9dc15871
EZ
2630With certain recent Linux kernels (like the one of Redhat Fedora Core
26311), the new "Exec-shield" functionality is enabled by default, which
2632creates a different memory layout that breaks the emacs dumper.
a933dad1 2633
9dc15871 2634You can check the Exec-shield state like this:
a933dad1 2635
9dc15871 2636 cat /proc/sys/kernel/exec-shield
a933dad1 2637
9dc15871
EZ
2638It returns 1 or 2 when Exec-shield is enabled, 0 otherwise. Please
2639read your system documentation for more details on Exec-shield and
2640associated commands.
a933dad1 2641
9dc15871
EZ
2642When Exec-shield is enabled, building Emacs will segfault during the
2643execution of this command:
a933dad1 2644
9dc15871 2645temacs --batch --load loadup [dump|bootstrap]
177c0ea7 2646
9dc15871
EZ
2647To work around this problem, it is necessary to temporarily disable
2648Exec-shield while building Emacs, using the `setarch' command like
2649this:
a933dad1 2650
9dc15871
EZ
2651 setarch i386 ./configure <configure parameters>
2652 setarch i386 make <make parameters>
a933dad1 2653
9dc15871 2654*** Fatal signal in the command temacs -l loadup inc dump.
a933dad1 2655
9dc15871
EZ
2656This command is the final stage of building Emacs. It is run by the
2657Makefile in the src subdirectory, or by build.com on VMS.
a933dad1 2658
9dc15871
EZ
2659It has been known to get fatal errors due to insufficient swapping
2660space available on the machine.
a933dad1 2661
9dc15871
EZ
2662On 68000s, it has also happened because of bugs in the
2663subroutine `alloca'. Verify that `alloca' works right, even
2664for large blocks (many pages).
a933dad1 2665
9dc15871
EZ
2666*** test-distrib says that the distribution has been clobbered.
2667*** or, temacs prints "Command key out of range 0-127".
2668*** or, temacs runs and dumps emacs, but emacs totally fails to work.
2669*** or, temacs gets errors dumping emacs.
a933dad1 2670
9dc15871
EZ
2671This can be because the .elc files have been garbled. Do not be
2672fooled by the fact that most of a .elc file is text: these are
2673binary files and can contain all 256 byte values.
a933dad1 2674
9dc15871
EZ
2675In particular `shar' cannot be used for transmitting GNU Emacs.
2676It typically truncates "lines". What appear to be "lines" in
2677a binary file can of course be of any length. Even once `shar'
2678itself is made to work correctly, `sh' discards null characters
2679when unpacking the shell archive.
a933dad1 2680
9dc15871
EZ
2681I have also seen character \177 changed into \377. I do not know
2682what transfer means caused this problem. Various network
2683file transfer programs are suspected of clobbering the high bit.
a933dad1 2684
9dc15871
EZ
2685If you have a copy of Emacs that has been damaged in its
2686nonprinting characters, you can fix them:
a933dad1 2687
9dc15871
EZ
2688 1) Record the names of all the .elc files.
2689 2) Delete all the .elc files.
2690 3) Recompile alloc.c with a value of PURESIZE twice as large.
2691 (See puresize.h.) You might as well save the old alloc.o.
2692 4) Remake emacs. It should work now.
2693 5) Running emacs, do Meta-x byte-compile-file repeatedly
2694 to recreate all the .elc files that used to exist.
2695 You may need to increase the value of the variable
2696 max-lisp-eval-depth to succeed in running the compiler interpreted
2697 on certain .el files. 400 was sufficient as of last report.
2698 6) Reinstall the old alloc.o (undoing changes to alloc.c if any)
2699 and remake temacs.
2700 7) Remake emacs. It should work now, with valid .elc files.
a933dad1 2701
9dc15871 2702*** temacs prints "Pure Lisp storage exhausted".
a933dad1 2703
9dc15871
EZ
2704This means that the Lisp code loaded from the .elc and .el
2705files during temacs -l loadup inc dump took up more
2706space than was allocated.
a933dad1 2707
9dc15871
EZ
2708This could be caused by
2709 1) adding code to the preloaded Lisp files
2710 2) adding more preloaded files in loadup.el
2711 3) having a site-init.el or site-load.el which loads files.
2712 Note that ANY site-init.el or site-load.el is nonstandard;
2713 if you have received Emacs from some other site
2714 and it contains a site-init.el or site-load.el file, consider
2715 deleting that file.
2716 4) getting the wrong .el or .elc files
2717 (not from the directory you expected).
2718 5) deleting some .elc files that are supposed to exist.
2719 This would cause the source files (.el files) to be
2720 loaded instead. They take up more room, so you lose.
2721 6) a bug in the Emacs distribution which underestimates
2722 the space required.
a933dad1 2723
9dc15871
EZ
2724If the need for more space is legitimate, change the definition
2725of PURESIZE in puresize.h.
a933dad1 2726
9dc15871
EZ
2727But in some of the cases listed above, this problem is a consequence
2728of something else that is wrong. Be sure to check and fix the real
2729problem.
a933dad1 2730
9dc15871 2731*** Linux: Emacs crashes when dumping itself on Mac PPC running Yellow Dog GNU/Linux.
a933dad1 2732
9dc15871
EZ
2733The crashes happen inside the function Fmake_symbol; here's a typical
2734C backtrace printed by GDB:
a933dad1 2735
9dc15871
EZ
2736 0x190c0c0 in Fmake_symbol ()
2737 (gdb) where
2738 #0 0x190c0c0 in Fmake_symbol ()
2739 #1 0x1942ca4 in init_obarray ()
2740 #2 0x18b3500 in main ()
2741 #3 0x114371c in __libc_start_main (argc=5, argv=0x7ffff5b4, envp=0x7ffff5cc,
a933dad1 2742
9dc15871
EZ
2743This could happen because GCC version 2.95 and later changed the base
2744of the load address to 0x10000000. Emacs needs to be told about this,
2745but we currently cannot do that automatically, because that breaks
2746other versions of GNU/Linux on the MacPPC. Until we find a way to
2747distinguish between the Yellow Dog and the other varieties of
2748GNU/Linux systems on the PPC, you will have to manually uncomment the
2749following section near the end of the file src/m/macppc.h in the Emacs
2750distribution:
a933dad1 2751
9dc15871
EZ
2752 #if 0 /* This breaks things on PPC GNU/Linux except for Yellowdog,
2753 even with identical GCC, as, ld. Let's take it out until we
2754 know what's really going on here. */
2755 /* GCC 2.95 and newer on GNU/Linux PPC changed the load address to
2756 0x10000000. */
2757 #if defined __linux__
2758 #if __GNUC__ > 2 || (__GNUC__ == 2 && __GNUC_MINOR__ >= 95)
2759 #define DATA_SEG_BITS 0x10000000
2760 #endif
2761 #endif
2762 #endif /* 0 */
a933dad1 2763
9dc15871
EZ
2764Remove the "#if 0" and "#endif" directives which surround this, save
2765the file, and then reconfigure and rebuild Emacs. The dumping process
2766should now succeed.
a933dad1 2767
9dc15871 2768*** HPUX 10.20: Emacs crashes during dumping on the HPPA machine.
a933dad1 2769
9dc15871 2770This seems to be due to a GCC bug; it is fixed in GCC 2.8.1.
a933dad1 2771
9dc15871 2772** Installation
a933dad1 2773
9dc15871 2774*** Installing Emacs gets an error running `install-info'.
a933dad1 2775
9dc15871
EZ
2776You need to install a recent version of Texinfo; that package
2777supplies the `install-info' command.
a933dad1 2778
9dc15871 2779** First execution
a933dad1 2780
9dc15871 2781*** Emacs binary is not in executable format, and cannot be run.
a933dad1 2782
9dc15871
EZ
2783This was reported to happen when Emacs is built in a directory mounted
2784via NFS, for some combinations of NFS client and NFS server.
2785Usually, the file `emacs' produced in these cases is full of
2786binary null characters, and the `file' utility says:
a933dad1 2787
9dc15871 2788 emacs: ASCII text, with no line terminators
a933dad1 2789
9dc15871
EZ
2790We don't know what exactly causes this failure. A work-around is to
2791build Emacs in a directory on a local disk.
a933dad1 2792
9dc15871 2793*** The dumped Emacs crashes when run, trying to write pure data.
a933dad1 2794
9dc15871 2795Two causes have been seen for such problems.
a933dad1 2796
9dc15871
EZ
27971) On a system where getpagesize is not a system call, it is defined
2798as a macro. If the definition (in both unexec.c and malloc.c) is wrong,
2799it can cause problems like this. You might be able to find the correct
2800value in the man page for a.out (5).
a933dad1 2801
9dc15871
EZ
28022) Some systems allocate variables declared static among the
2803initialized variables. Emacs makes all initialized variables in most
2804of its files pure after dumping, but the variables declared static and
2805not initialized are not supposed to be pure. On these systems you
2806may need to add "#define static" to the m- or the s- file.
a933dad1 2807
9dc15871 2808* Emacs 19 problems
a933dad1 2809
9dc15871 2810** Error messages `Wrong number of arguments: #<subr where-is-internal>, 5'.
a933dad1 2811
9dc15871
EZ
2812This typically results from having the powerkey library loaded.
2813Powerkey was designed for Emacs 19.22. It is obsolete now because
2814Emacs 19 now has this feature built in; and powerkey also calls
2815where-is-internal in an obsolete way.
a933dad1 2816
9dc15871 2817So the fix is to arrange not to load powerkey.
a933dad1 2818
9dc15871 2819* Runtime problems on legacy systems
a933dad1 2820
9dc15871
EZ
2821This section covers bugs reported on very old hardware or software.
2822If you are using hardware and an operating system shipped after 2000,
2823it is unlikely you will see any of these.
a933dad1 2824
9dc15871 2825** Ancient operating systems
a933dad1 2826
9dc15871 2827*** ISC Unix
a933dad1 2828
9dc15871 2829**** ISC: display-time causes kernel problems on ISC systems.
a933dad1 2830
9dc15871
EZ
2831Under Interactive Unix versions 3.0.1 and 4.0 (and probably other
2832versions), display-time causes the loss of large numbers of STREVENT
2833cells. Eventually the kernel's supply of these cells is exhausted.
2834This makes emacs and the whole system run slow, and can make other
2835processes die, in particular pcnfsd.
a933dad1 2836
9dc15871
EZ
2837Other emacs functions that communicate with remote processes may have
2838the same problem. Display-time seems to be far the worst.
a933dad1 2839
9dc15871 2840The only known fix: Don't run display-time.
a933dad1 2841
9dc15871 2842*** SunOS
a933dad1 2843
9dc15871 2844**** Sun 4.0.x: M-x shell persistently reports "Process shell exited abnormally with code 1".
a933dad1 2845
9dc15871
EZ
2846This happened on Suns as a result of what is said to be a bug in Sunos
2847version 4.0.x. The only fix was to reboot the machine.
a933dad1 2848
9dc15871 2849**** SunOS4.1.1 and SunOS4.1.3: Mail is lost when sent to local aliases.
a933dad1
DL
2850
2851Many emacs mail user agents (VM and rmail, for instance) use the
2852sendmail.el library. This library can arrange for mail to be
2853delivered by passing messages to the /usr/lib/sendmail (usually)
2854program . In doing so, it passes the '-t' flag to sendmail, which
2855means that the name of the recipient of the message is not on the
2856command line and, therefore, that sendmail must parse the message to
2857obtain the destination address.
2858
2859There is a bug in the SunOS4.1.1 and SunOS4.1.3 versions of sendmail.
2860In short, when given the -t flag, the SunOS sendmail won't recognize
2861non-local (i.e. NIS) aliases. It has been reported that the Solaris
28622.x versions of sendmail do not have this bug. For those using SunOS
28634.1, the best fix is to install sendmail V8 or IDA sendmail (which
2864have other advantages over the regular sendmail as well). At the time
2865of this writing, these official versions are available:
2866
2867 Sendmail V8 on ftp.cs.berkeley.edu in /ucb/sendmail:
2868 sendmail.8.6.9.base.tar.Z (the base system source & documentation)
2869 sendmail.8.6.9.cf.tar.Z (configuration files)
2870 sendmail.8.6.9.misc.tar.Z (miscellaneous support programs)
2871 sendmail.8.6.9.xdoc.tar.Z (extended documentation, with postscript)
2872
2873 IDA sendmail on vixen.cso.uiuc.edu in /pub:
2874 sendmail-5.67b+IDA-1.5.tar.gz
2875
9dc15871 2876**** Sunos 5.3: Subprocesses remain, hanging but not zombies.
a933dad1 2877
9dc15871
EZ
2878A bug in Sunos 5.3 causes Emacs subprocesses to remain after Emacs
2879exits. Sun patch # 101415-02 is part of the fix for this, but it only
2880applies to ptys, and doesn't fix the problem with subprocesses
2881communicating through pipes.
a933dad1 2882
9dc15871 2883**** Sunos 4: You get the error ld: Undefined symbol __lib_version.
a933dad1 2884
9dc15871
EZ
2885This is the result of using cc or gcc with the shared library meant
2886for acc (the Sunpro compiler). Check your LD_LIBRARY_PATH and delete
2887/usr/lang/SC2.0.1 or some similar directory.
a933dad1 2888
9dc15871 2889**** SunOS 4.1.3: Emacs unpredictably crashes in _yp_dobind_soft.
a933dad1 2890
9dc15871
EZ
2891This happens if you configure Emacs specifying just `sparc-sun-sunos4'
2892on a system that is version 4.1.3. You must specify the precise
2893version number (or let configure figure out the configuration, which
2894it can do perfectly well for SunOS).
a933dad1 2895
9dc15871 2896**** Sunos 4.1.3: Emacs gets hung shortly after startup.
a933dad1 2897
9dc15871
EZ
2898We think this is due to a bug in Sunos. The word is that
2899one of these Sunos patches fixes the bug:
a933dad1 2900
9dc15871
EZ
2901100075-11 100224-06 100347-03 100482-05 100557-02 100623-03 100804-03 101080-01
2902100103-12 100249-09 100496-02 100564-07 100630-02 100891-10 101134-01
2903100170-09 100296-04 100377-09 100507-04 100567-04 100650-02 101070-01 101145-01
2904100173-10 100305-15 100383-06 100513-04 100570-05 100689-01 101071-03 101200-02
2905100178-09 100338-05 100421-03 100536-02 100584-05 100784-01 101072-01 101207-01
a933dad1 2906
9dc15871
EZ
2907We don't know which of these patches really matter. If you find out
2908which ones, please inform bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
a933dad1 2909
9dc15871
EZ
2910**** SunOS 4: Emacs processes keep going after you kill the X server
2911(or log out, if you logged in using X).
a933dad1 2912
9dc15871 2913Someone reported that recompiling with GCC 2.7.0 fixed this problem.
a933dad1 2914
9dc15871
EZ
2915**** SunOS: You get linker errors
2916 ld: Undefined symbol
2917 _get_wmShellWidgetClass
2918 _get_applicationShellWidgetClass
a933dad1 2919
9dc15871
EZ
2920The fix to this is to install patch 100573 for OpenWindows 3.0
2921or link libXmu statically.
a933dad1 2922
9dc15871 2923*** Apollo Domain
a933dad1 2924
9dc15871 2925**** Shell mode ignores interrupts on Apollo Domain.
a933dad1 2926
9dc15871 2927You may find that M-x shell prints the following message:
a933dad1 2928
9dc15871 2929 Warning: no access to tty; thus no job control in this shell...
a933dad1 2930
9dc15871
EZ
2931This can happen if there are not enough ptys on your system.
2932Here is how to make more of them.
a933dad1 2933
9dc15871
EZ
2934 % cd /dev
2935 % ls pty*
2936 # shows how many pty's you have. I had 8, named pty0 to pty7)
2937 % /etc/crpty 8
2938 # creates eight new pty's
a933dad1 2939
9dc15871 2940*** Irix
a933dad1 2941
9dc15871 2942*** Irix 6.2: No visible display on mips-sgi-irix6.2 when compiling with GCC 2.8.1.
a933dad1 2943
9dc15871
EZ
2944This problem went away after installing the latest IRIX patches
2945as of 8 Dec 1998.
a933dad1 2946
9dc15871 2947The same problem has been reported on Irix 6.3.
a933dad1 2948
9dc15871
EZ
2949*** Irix 6.3: substituting environment variables in file names
2950in the minibuffer gives peculiar error messages such as
a933dad1 2951
9dc15871 2952 Substituting nonexistent environment variable ""
a933dad1 2953
9dc15871
EZ
2954This is not an Emacs bug; it is caused by something in SGI patch
2955003082 August 11, 1998.
a933dad1 2956
9dc15871 2957*** OPENSTEP
a933dad1 2958
9dc15871 2959**** OPENSTEP 4.2: Compiling syntax.c with gcc 2.7.2.1 fails.
a933dad1 2960
9dc15871
EZ
2961The compiler was reported to crash while compiling syntax.c with the
2962following message:
a933dad1 2963
9dc15871 2964 cc: Internal compiler error: program cc1obj got fatal signal 11
a933dad1 2965
9dc15871
EZ
2966To work around this, replace the macros UPDATE_SYNTAX_TABLE_FORWARD,
2967INC_BOTH, and INC_FROM with functions. To this end, first define 3
2968functions, one each for every macro. Here's an example:
a933dad1 2969
9dc15871
EZ
2970 static int update_syntax_table_forward(int from)
2971 {
2972 return(UPDATE_SYNTAX_TABLE_FORWARD(from));
2973 }/*update_syntax_table_forward*/
a933dad1 2974
9dc15871
EZ
2975Then replace all references to UPDATE_SYNTAX_TABLE_FORWARD in syntax.c
2976with a call to the function update_syntax_table_forward.
a933dad1 2977
9dc15871 2978*** Solaris 2.x
a933dad1 2979
9dc15871 2980**** Strange results from format %d in a few cases, on a Sun.
a933dad1 2981
9dc15871
EZ
2982Sun compiler version SC3.0 has been found to miscompile part of
2983editfns.c. The workaround is to compile with some other compiler such
2984as GCC.
a933dad1 2985
9dc15871 2986**** On Solaris, Emacs dumps core if lisp-complete-symbol is called.
a933dad1 2987
9dc15871
EZ
2988If you compile Emacs with the -fast or -xO4 option with version 3.0.2
2989of the Sun C compiler, Emacs dumps core when lisp-complete-symbol is
2990called. The problem does not happen if you compile with GCC.
a933dad1 2991
9dc15871 2992**** On Solaris, Emacs crashes if you use (display-time).
a933dad1 2993
9dc15871
EZ
2994This can happen if you configure Emacs without specifying the precise
2995version of Solaris that you are using.
a933dad1 2996
9dc15871 2997**** Solaris 2.3 and 2.4: Unpredictable segmentation faults.
a933dad1 2998
9dc15871
EZ
2999A user reported that this happened in 19.29 when it was compiled with
3000the Sun compiler, but not when he recompiled with GCC 2.7.0.
a933dad1 3001
9dc15871 3002We do not know whether something in Emacs is partly to blame for this.
a933dad1 3003
9dc15871 3004**** Solaris 2.4: Emacs dumps core on startup.
a933dad1 3005
9dc15871
EZ
3006Bill Sebok says that the cause of this is Solaris 2.4 vendor patch
3007102303-05, which extends the Solaris linker to deal with the Solaris
3008Common Desktop Environment's linking needs. You can fix the problem
3009by removing this patch and installing patch 102049-02 instead.
3010However, that linker version won't work with CDE.
a933dad1 3011
9dc15871
EZ
3012Solaris 2.5 comes with a linker that has this bug. It is reported that if
3013you install all the latest patches (as of June 1996), the bug is fixed.
3014We suspect the crucial patch is one of these, but we don't know
3015for certain.
a933dad1 3016
9dc15871
EZ
3017 103093-03: [README] SunOS 5.5: kernel patch (2140557 bytes)
3018 102832-01: [README] OpenWindows 3.5: Xview Jumbo Patch (4181613 bytes)
3019 103242-04: [README] SunOS 5.5: linker patch (595363 bytes)
a933dad1 3020
9dc15871
EZ
3021(One user reports that the bug was fixed by those patches together
3022with patches 102980-04, 103279-01, 103300-02, and 103468-01.)
a933dad1 3023
9dc15871
EZ
3024If you can determine which patch does fix the bug, please tell
3025bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
a933dad1 3026
9dc15871
EZ
3027Meanwhile, the GNU linker links Emacs properly on both Solaris 2.4 and
3028Solaris 2.5.
a933dad1 3029
9dc15871
EZ
3030**** Solaris 2.4: Dired hangs and C-g does not work. Or Emacs hangs
3031forever waiting for termination of a subprocess that is a zombie.
a933dad1 3032
9dc15871
EZ
3033casper@fwi.uva.nl says the problem is in X11R6. Rebuild libX11.so
3034after changing the file xc/config/cf/sunLib.tmpl. Change the lines
a933dad1 3035
9dc15871
EZ
3036 #if ThreadedX
3037 #define SharedX11Reqs -lthread
3038 #endif
a933dad1 3039
9dc15871 3040to:
a933dad1 3041
9dc15871
EZ
3042 #if OSMinorVersion < 4
3043 #if ThreadedX
3044 #define SharedX11Reqs -lthread
3045 #endif
3046 #endif
3047
3048Be sure also to edit x/config/cf/sun.cf so that OSMinorVersion is 4
3049(as it should be for Solaris 2.4). The file has three definitions for
3050OSMinorVersion: the first is for x86, the second for SPARC under
3051Solaris, and the third for SunOS 4. Make sure to update the
3052definition for your type of machine and system.
a933dad1 3053
9dc15871
EZ
3054Then do `make Everything' in the top directory of X11R6, to rebuild
3055the makefiles and rebuild X. The X built this way work only on
3056Solaris 2.4, not on 2.3.
a933dad1 3057
9dc15871
EZ
3058For multithreaded X to work it is necessary to install patch
3059101925-02 to fix problems in header files [2.4]. You need
3060to reinstall gcc or re-run just-fixinc after installing that
3061patch.
a933dad1 3062
9dc15871
EZ
3063However, Frank Rust <frust@iti.cs.tu-bs.de> used a simpler solution:
3064he changed
3065 #define ThreadedX YES
3066to
3067 #define ThreadedX NO
3068in sun.cf and did `make World' to rebuild X11R6. Removing all
3069`-DXTHREAD*' flags and `-lthread' entries from lib/X11/Makefile and
3070typing 'make install' in that directory also seemed to work.
a933dad1 3071
9dc15871 3072**** Solaris 2.x: GCC complains "64 bit integer types not supported".
a933dad1 3073
9dc15871
EZ
3074This suggests that GCC is not installed correctly. Most likely you
3075are using GCC 2.7.2.3 (or earlier) on Solaris 2.6 (or later); this
3076does not work without patching. To run GCC 2.7.2.3 on Solaris 2.6 or
3077later, you must patch fixinc.svr4 and reinstall GCC from scratch as
3078described in the Solaris FAQ
3079<http://www.wins.uva.nl/pub/solaris/solaris2.html>. A better fix is
3080to upgrade to GCC 2.8.1 or later.
a933dad1 3081
9dc15871
EZ
3082**** Solaris 2.7: Building Emacs with WorkShop Compilers 5.0 98/12/15
3083C 5.0 failed, apparently with non-default CFLAGS, most probably due to
3084compiler bugs. Using Sun Solaris 2.7 Sun WorkShop 6 update 1 C
3085release was reported to work without problems. It worked OK on
3086another system with Solaris 8 using apparently the same 5.0 compiler
3087and the default CFLAGS.
a933dad1 3088
9dc15871 3089**** Solaris 2.x: Emacs dumps core when built with Motif.
a933dad1 3090
9dc15871
EZ
3091The Solaris Motif libraries are buggy, at least up through Solaris 2.5.1.
3092Install the current Motif runtime library patch appropriate for your host.
3093(Make sure the patch is current; some older patch versions still have the bug.)
3094You should install the other patches recommended by Sun for your host, too.
3095You can obtain Sun patches from ftp://sunsolve.sun.com/pub/patches/;
3096look for files with names ending in `.PatchReport' to see which patches
3097are currently recommended for your host.
a933dad1 3098
9dc15871
EZ
3099On Solaris 2.6, Emacs is said to work with Motif when Solaris patch
3100105284-12 is installed, but fail when 105284-15 is installed.
3101105284-18 might fix it again.
a933dad1 3102
9dc15871 3103*** Solaris 2.6 and 7: the Compose key does not work.
a933dad1 3104
9dc15871
EZ
3105This is a bug in Motif in Solaris. Supposedly it has been fixed for
3106the next major release of Solaris. However, if someone with Sun
3107support complains to Sun about the bug, they may release a patch.
3108If you do this, mention Sun bug #4188711.
a933dad1 3109
9dc15871
EZ
3110One workaround is to use a locale that allows non-ASCII characters.
3111For example, before invoking emacs, set the LC_ALL environment
3112variable to "en_US" (American English). The directory /usr/lib/locale
3113lists the supported locales; any locale other than "C" or "POSIX"
3114should do.
a933dad1 3115
9dc15871
EZ
3116pen@lysator.liu.se says (Feb 1998) that the Compose key does work
3117if you link with the MIT X11 libraries instead of the Solaris X11
3118libraries.
a933dad1 3119
9dc15871 3120*** Ultrix and Digital Unix
a933dad1 3121
9dc15871 3122**** Ultrix 4.2: `make install' fails on install-doc with `Error 141'.
a933dad1 3123
9dc15871
EZ
3124This happens on Ultrix 4.2 due to failure of a pipeline of tar
3125commands. We don't know why they fail, but the bug seems not to be in
3126Emacs. The workaround is to run the shell command in install-doc by
3127hand.
a933dad1 3128
9dc15871 3129**** Digital Unix 4.0: Garbled display on non-X terminals when Emacs runs.
a933dad1 3130
9dc15871
EZ
3131So far it appears that running `tset' triggers this problem (when TERM
3132is vt100, at least). If you do not run `tset', then Emacs displays
3133properly. If someone can tell us precisely which effect of running
3134`tset' actually causes the problem, we may be able to implement a fix
3135in Emacs.
a933dad1 3136
9dc15871 3137**** Ultrix: `expand-file-name' fails to work on any but the machine you dumped Emacs on.
a933dad1 3138
9dc15871
EZ
3139On Ultrix, if you use any of the functions which look up information
3140in the passwd database before dumping Emacs (say, by using
3141expand-file-name in site-init.el), then those functions will not work
3142in the dumped Emacs on any host but the one Emacs was dumped on.
a933dad1 3143
9dc15871
EZ
3144The solution? Don't use expand-file-name in site-init.el, or in
3145anything it loads. Yuck - some solution.
a933dad1 3146
9dc15871
EZ
3147I'm not sure why this happens; if you can find out exactly what is
3148going on, and perhaps find a fix or a workaround, please let us know.
3149Perhaps the YP functions cache some information, the cache is included
3150in the dumped Emacs, and is then inaccurate on any other host.
a933dad1 3151
9dc15871 3152*** SVr4
a933dad1 3153
9dc15871 3154**** SVr4: On some variants of SVR4, Emacs does not work at all with X.
a933dad1 3155
9dc15871
EZ
3156Try defining BROKEN_FIONREAD in your config.h file. If this solves
3157the problem, please send a bug report to tell us this is needed; be
3158sure to say exactly what type of machine and system you are using.
a933dad1 3159
9dc15871 3160**** SVr4: After running emacs once, subsequent invocations crash.
a933dad1 3161
9dc15871
EZ
3162Some versions of SVR4 have a serious bug in the implementation of the
3163mmap () system call in the kernel; this causes emacs to run correctly
3164the first time, and then crash when run a second time.
a933dad1 3165
9dc15871
EZ
3166Contact your vendor and ask for the mmap bug fix; in the mean time,
3167you may be able to work around the problem by adding a line to your
3168operating system description file (whose name is reported by the
3169configure script) that reads:
3170#define SYSTEM_MALLOC
3171This makes Emacs use memory less efficiently, but seems to work around
3172the kernel bug.
a933dad1 3173
9dc15871 3174*** Linux 1.x
a933dad1 3175
9dc15871 3176**** Linux 1.0-1.04: Typing C-c C-c in Shell mode kills your X server.
a933dad1 3177
9dc15871
EZ
3178This happens with Linux kernel 1.0 thru 1.04, approximately. The workaround is
3179to define SIGNALS_VIA_CHARACTERS in config.h and recompile Emacs.
3180Newer Linux kernel versions don't have this problem.
a933dad1 3181
9dc15871
EZ
3182**** Linux 1.3: Output from subprocess (such as man or diff) is randomly
3183truncated on GNU/Linux systems.
a933dad1 3184
9dc15871
EZ
3185This is due to a kernel bug which seems to be fixed in Linux version
31861.3.75.
a933dad1 3187
9dc15871 3188** MS-DOS
a933dad1 3189
9dc15871 3190*** When compiling with DJGPP on MS-Windows NT, "config msdos" fails.
a933dad1 3191
9dc15871
EZ
3192If the error message is "VDM has been already loaded", this is because
3193Windows has a program called `redir.exe' that is incompatible with a
3194program by the same name supplied with DJGPP, which is used by
3195config.bat. To resolve this, move the DJGPP's `bin' subdirectory to
3196the front of your PATH environment variable.
a933dad1 3197
9dc15871
EZ
3198*** When compiling with DJGPP on MS-Windows 95, Make fails for some targets
3199like make-docfile.
a933dad1 3200
9dc15871
EZ
3201This can happen if long file name support (the setting of environment
3202variable LFN) when Emacs distribution was unpacked and during
3203compilation are not the same. See the MSDOG section of INSTALL for
3204the explanation of how to avoid this problem.
a933dad1 3205
9dc15871 3206*** Emacs compiled with DJGPP complains at startup:
a933dad1 3207
9dc15871 3208 "Wrong type of argument: internal-facep, msdos-menu-active-face"
a933dad1 3209
9dc15871
EZ
3210This can happen if you define an environment variable `TERM'. Emacs
3211on MSDOS uses an internal terminal emulator which is disabled if the
3212value of `TERM' is anything but the string "internal". Emacs then
3213works as if its terminal were a dumb glass teletype that doesn't
3214support faces. To work around this, arrange for `TERM' to be
3215undefined when Emacs runs. The best way to do that is to add an
3216[emacs] section to the DJGPP.ENV file which defines an empty value for
3217`TERM'; this way, only Emacs gets the empty value, while the rest of
3218your system works as before.
a933dad1 3219
9dc15871 3220*** MS-DOS: Emacs crashes at startup.
a933dad1 3221
9dc15871
EZ
3222Some users report that Emacs 19.29 requires dpmi memory management,
3223and crashes on startup if the system does not have it. We don't yet
3224know why this happens--perhaps these machines don't have enough real
3225memory, or perhaps something is wrong in Emacs or the compiler.
3226However, arranging to use dpmi support is a workaround.
a933dad1 3227
9dc15871
EZ
3228You can find out if you have a dpmi host by running go32 without
3229arguments; it will tell you if it uses dpmi memory. For more
3230information about dpmi memory, consult the djgpp FAQ. (djgpp
3231is the GNU C compiler as packaged for MSDOS.)
a933dad1 3232
9dc15871
EZ
3233Compiling Emacs under MSDOS is extremely sensitive for proper memory
3234configuration. If you experience problems during compilation, consider
3235removing some or all memory resident programs (notably disk caches)
3236and make sure that your memory managers are properly configured. See
3237the djgpp faq for configuration hints.
a933dad1 3238
9dc15871
EZ
3239*** Emacs compiled with DJGPP for MS-DOS/MS-Windows cannot access files
3240in the directory with the special name `dev' under the root of any
3241drive, e.g. `c:/dev'.
a933dad1 3242
9dc15871
EZ
3243This is an unfortunate side-effect of the support for Unix-style
3244device names such as /dev/null in the DJGPP runtime library. A
3245work-around is to rename the problem directory to another name.
a933dad1 3246
9dc15871 3247*** MS-DOS+DJGPP: Problems on MS-DOG if DJGPP v2.0 is used to compile Emacs.
a933dad1 3248
9dc15871 3249There are two DJGPP library bugs which cause problems:
a933dad1 3250
9dc15871
EZ
3251 * Running `shell-command' (or `compile', or `grep') you get
3252 `Searching for program: permission denied (EACCES), c:/command.com';
3253 * After you shell to DOS, Ctrl-Break kills Emacs.
a933dad1 3254
9dc15871
EZ
3255To work around these bugs, you can use two files in the msdos
3256subdirectory: `is_exec.c' and `sigaction.c'. Compile them and link
3257them into the Emacs executable `temacs'; then they will replace the
3258incorrect library functions.
a933dad1 3259
9dc15871
EZ
3260*** MS-DOS: Emacs compiled for MSDOS cannot find some Lisp files, or other
3261run-time support files, when long filename support is enabled.
a933dad1 3262
9dc15871
EZ
3263Usually, this problem will manifest itself when Emacs exits
3264immediately after flashing the startup screen, because it cannot find
3265the Lisp files it needs to load at startup. Redirect Emacs stdout
3266and stderr to a file to see the error message printed by Emacs.
a933dad1 3267
9dc15871
EZ
3268Another manifestation of this problem is that Emacs is unable to load
3269the support for editing program sources in languages such as C and
3270Lisp.
a933dad1 3271
9dc15871
EZ
3272This can happen if the Emacs distribution was unzipped without LFN
3273support, thus causing long filenames to be truncated to the first 6
3274characters and a numeric tail that Windows 95 normally attaches to it.
3275You should unzip the files again with a utility that supports long
3276filenames (such as djtar from DJGPP or InfoZip's UnZip program
3277compiled with DJGPP v2). The MSDOG section of the file INSTALL
3278explains this issue in more detail.
a933dad1 3279
9dc15871
EZ
3280Another possible reason for such failures is that Emacs compiled for
3281MSDOS is used on Windows NT, where long file names are not supported
3282by this version of Emacs, but the distribution was unpacked by an
3283unzip program that preserved the long file names instead of truncating
3284them to DOS 8+3 limits. To be useful on NT, the MSDOS port of Emacs
3285must be unzipped by a DOS utility, so that long file names are
3286properly truncated.
a933dad1 3287
9dc15871 3288** Archaic window managers and toolkits
a933dad1 3289
9dc15871 3290*** OpenLook: Under OpenLook, the Emacs window disappears when you type M-q.
a933dad1 3291
9dc15871
EZ
3292Some versions of the Open Look window manager interpret M-q as a quit
3293command for whatever window you are typing at. If you want to use
3294Emacs with that window manager, you should try to configure the window
3295manager to use some other command. You can disable the
3296shortcut keys entirely by adding this line to ~/.OWdefaults:
a933dad1 3297
9dc15871 3298 OpenWindows.WindowMenuAccelerators: False
a933dad1 3299
9dc15871 3300**** twm: A position you specified in .Xdefaults is ignored, using twm.
a933dad1 3301
9dc15871
EZ
3302twm normally ignores "program-specified" positions.
3303You can tell it to obey them with this command in your `.twmrc' file:
a933dad1 3304
9dc15871 3305 UsePPosition "on" #allow clients to request a position
a933dad1 3306
9dc15871 3307** Bugs related to old DEC hardware
a933dad1 3308
9dc15871 3309*** The Compose key on a DEC keyboard does not work as Meta key.
a933dad1 3310
9dc15871 3311This shell command should fix it:
a933dad1 3312
9dc15871 3313 xmodmap -e 'keycode 0xb1 = Meta_L'
a933dad1 3314
9dc15871
EZ
3315*** Keyboard input gets confused after a beep when using a DECserver
3316as a concentrator.
a933dad1 3317
9dc15871
EZ
3318This problem seems to be a matter of configuring the DECserver to use
33197 bit characters rather than 8 bit characters.
a933dad1 3320
9dc15871 3321* Build problems on legacy systems
a933dad1 3322
9dc15871 3323** BSD/386 1.0: --with-x-toolkit option configures wrong.
a933dad1 3324
9dc15871
EZ
3325This problem is due to bugs in the shell in version 1.0 of BSD/386.
3326The workaround is to edit the configure file to use some other shell,
3327such as bash.
a933dad1 3328
9dc15871
EZ
3329** Digital Unix 4.0: Emacs fails to build, giving error message
3330 Invalid dimension for the charset-ID 160
a933dad1 3331
9dc15871
EZ
3332This is due to a bug or an installation problem in GCC 2.8.0.
3333Installing a more recent version of GCC fixes the problem.
a933dad1 3334
9dc15871 3335** Digital Unix 4.0: Failure in unexec while dumping emacs.
a933dad1 3336
9dc15871 3337This problem manifests itself as an error message
a933dad1 3338
9dc15871 3339 unexec: Bad address, writing data section to ...
a933dad1 3340
9dc15871
EZ
3341The user suspects that this happened because his X libraries
3342were built for an older system version,
a933dad1 3343
9dc15871 3344 ./configure --x-includes=/usr/include --x-libraries=/usr/shlib
a933dad1 3345
9dc15871 3346made the problem go away.
a933dad1 3347
9dc15871 3348** Sunos 4.1.1: there are errors compiling sysdep.c.
a933dad1 3349
9dc15871 3350If you get errors such as
a933dad1 3351
9dc15871
EZ
3352 "sysdep.c", line 2017: undefined structure or union
3353 "sysdep.c", line 2017: undefined structure or union
3354 "sysdep.c", line 2019: nodename undefined
a933dad1 3355
9dc15871
EZ
3356This can result from defining LD_LIBRARY_PATH. It is very tricky
3357to use that environment variable with Emacs. The Emacs configure
3358script links many test programs with the system libraries; you must
3359make sure that the libraries available to configure are the same
3360ones available when you build Emacs.
a933dad1 3361
9dc15871 3362** SunOS 4.1.1: You get this error message from GNU ld:
a933dad1 3363
9dc15871 3364 /lib/libc.a(_Q_sub.o): Undefined symbol __Q_get_rp_rd referenced from text segment
a933dad1 3365
9dc15871 3366The problem is in the Sun shared C library, not in GNU ld.
a933dad1 3367
9dc15871 3368The solution is to install Patch-ID# 100267-03 from Sun.
a933dad1 3369
9dc15871 3370** Sunos 4.1: Undefined symbols when linking using --with-x-toolkit.
a933dad1 3371
9dc15871
EZ
3372If you get the undefined symbols _atowc _wcslen, _iswprint, _iswspace,
3373_iswcntrl, _wcscpy, and _wcsncpy, then you need to add -lXwchar after
3374-lXaw in the command that links temacs.
a933dad1 3375
9dc15871
EZ
3376This problem seems to arise only when the international language
3377extensions to X11R5 are installed.
a933dad1 3378
9dc15871 3379** SunOS: Emacs gets error message from linker on Sun.
a933dad1 3380
9dc15871
EZ
3381If the error message says that a symbol such as `f68881_used' or
3382`ffpa_used' or `start_float' is undefined, this probably indicates
3383that you have compiled some libraries, such as the X libraries,
3384with a floating point option other than the default.
a933dad1 3385
9dc15871
EZ
3386It's not terribly hard to make this work with small changes in
3387crt0.c together with linking with Fcrt1.o, Wcrt1.o or Mcrt1.o.
3388However, the easiest approach is to build Xlib with the default
3389floating point option: -fsoft.
a933dad1 3390
9dc15871 3391** SunOS: Undefined symbols _dlopen, _dlsym and/or _dlclose.
a933dad1 3392
9dc15871
EZ
3393If you see undefined symbols _dlopen, _dlsym, or _dlclose when linking
3394with -lX11, compile and link against the file mit/util/misc/dlsym.c in
3395the MIT X11R5 distribution. Alternatively, link temacs using shared
3396libraries with s/sunos4shr.h. (This doesn't work if you use the X
3397toolkit.)
a933dad1 3398
9dc15871
EZ
3399If you get the additional error that the linker could not find
3400lib_version.o, try extracting it from X11/usr/lib/X11/libvim.a in
3401X11R4, then use it in the link.
a933dad1 3402
9dc15871 3403** VMS: Compilation errors on VMS.
a933dad1 3404
9dc15871
EZ
3405You will get warnings when compiling on VMS because there are
3406variable names longer than 32 (or whatever it is) characters.
3407This is not an error. Ignore it.
a933dad1 3408
9dc15871
EZ
3409VAX C does not support #if defined(foo). Uses of this construct
3410were removed, but some may have crept back in. They must be rewritten.
a933dad1 3411
9dc15871
EZ
3412There is a bug in the C compiler which fails to sign extend characters
3413in conditional expressions. The bug is:
3414 char c = -1, d = 1;
3415 int i;
a933dad1 3416
9dc15871
EZ
3417 i = d ? c : d;
3418The result is i == 255; the fix is to typecast the char in the
3419conditional expression as an (int). Known occurrences of such
3420constructs in Emacs have been fixed.
a933dad1 3421
9dc15871 3422** Vax C compiler bugs affecting Emacs.
a933dad1
DL
3423
3424You may get one of these problems compiling Emacs:
3425
3426 foo.c line nnn: compiler error: no table entry for op STASG
3427 foo.c: fatal error in /lib/ccom
3428
3429These are due to bugs in the C compiler; the code is valid C.
3430Unfortunately, the bugs are unpredictable: the same construct
3431may compile properly or trigger one of these bugs, depending
3432on what else is in the source file being compiled. Even changes
3433in header files that should not affect the file being compiled
3434can affect whether the bug happens. In addition, sometimes files
3435that compile correctly on one machine get this bug on another machine.
3436
3437As a result, it is hard for me to make sure this bug will not affect
3438you. I have attempted to find and alter these constructs, but more
3439can always appear. However, I can tell you how to deal with it if it
3440should happen. The bug comes from having an indexed reference to an
3441array of Lisp_Objects, as an argument in a function call:
3442 Lisp_Object *args;
3443 ...
3444 ... foo (5, args[i], ...)...
3445putting the argument into a temporary variable first, as in
3446 Lisp_Object *args;
3447 Lisp_Object tem;
3448 ...
3449 tem = args[i];
3450 ... foo (r, tem, ...)...
3451causes the problem to go away.
3452The `contents' field of a Lisp vector is an array of Lisp_Objects,
3453so you may see the problem happening with indexed references to that.
3454
9dc15871 3455** 68000 C compiler problems
a933dad1
DL
3456
3457Various 68000 compilers have different problems.
3458These are some that have been observed.
3459
9dc15871 3460*** Using value of assignment expression on union type loses.
a933dad1
DL
3461This means that x = y = z; or foo (x = z); does not work
3462if x is of type Lisp_Object.
3463
9dc15871 3464*** "cannot reclaim" error.
a933dad1
DL
3465
3466This means that an expression is too complicated. You get the correct
3467line number in the error message. The code must be rewritten with
3468simpler expressions.
3469
9dc15871 3470*** XCONS, XSTRING, etc macros produce incorrect code.
a933dad1
DL
3471
3472If temacs fails to run at all, this may be the cause.
3473Compile this test program and look at the assembler code:
3474
3475struct foo { char x; unsigned int y : 24; };
3476
3477lose (arg)
3478 struct foo arg;
3479{
3480 test ((int *) arg.y);
3481}
3482
3483If the code is incorrect, your compiler has this problem.
3484In the XCONS, etc., macros in lisp.h you must replace (a).u.val with
3485((a).u.val + coercedummy) where coercedummy is declared as int.
3486
3487This problem will not happen if the m-...h file for your type
3488of machine defines NO_UNION_TYPE. That is the recommended setting now.
3489
9dc15871 3490*** C compilers lose on returning unions.
a933dad1
DL
3491
3492I hear that some C compilers cannot handle returning a union type.
3493Most of the functions in GNU Emacs return type Lisp_Object, which is
3494defined as a union on some rare architectures.
3495
3496This problem will not happen if the m-...h file for your type
3497of machine defines NO_UNION_TYPE.
3498
53854552 3499\f
9dc15871 3500Copyright 1987,88,89,93,94,95,96,97,98,1999,2001,2002,2004
fe6b4873
RS
3501 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
3502
3503Copying and redistribution of this file with or without modification
3504are permitted without royalty provided this notice is preserved.
3505
53854552
EZ
3506Local variables:
3507mode: outline
3508paragraph-separate: "[ \f]*$"
3509end:
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