Commit | Line | Data |
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a933dad1 DL |
1 | This file describes various problems that have been encountered |
2 | in compiling, installing and running GNU Emacs. | |
3 | ||
5b4ffca2 AC |
4 | * Process output truncated on Mac OS X (Carbon) when using pty's. |
5 | ||
6 | There appears to be a problem with the implementation of pty's on the | |
7 | Mac OS X that causes process output to be truncated. To avoid this, | |
8 | leave process-connection-type set to its default value of nil. | |
9 | ||
c763d515 ST |
10 | * Emacs crashes on Mac OS X (Carbon) after system software upgrade. |
11 | ||
f1c231c4 AC |
12 | This problem seems to be now solved by Steven Tamm's patch to |
13 | unexmacosx.c on Nov 24, 2002. | |
14 | ||
c763d515 ST |
15 | Between Mac OS X release 10.2.1 and 10.2.2 there was an incompatible |
16 | change in the memory allocator that causes a EXC_BAD_ACCESS error near | |
17 | xrealloc(). Relinking the application (by deleting src/temacs and | |
18 | running make) will solve the problem. It appears to be caused by some | |
19 | problems with the unexec code and its interaction with libSystem.B. | |
fc2938d1 | 20 | |
f0f62f71 DL |
21 | * Characters from the mule-unicode charsets aren't displayed under X. |
22 | ||
23 | XFree86 4 contains many fonts in iso10646-1 encoding which have | |
fc1bfc2a DL |
24 | minimal character repertoires (whereas the encoding part of the font |
25 | name is meant to be a reasonable indication of the repertoire | |
26 | according to the XLFD spec). Emacs may choose one of these to display | |
27 | characters from the mule-unicode charsets and then typically won't be | |
28 | able to find the glyphs to display many characters. (Check with C-u | |
29 | C-x = .) To avoid this, you may need to use a fontset which sets the | |
30 | font for the mule-unicode sets explicitly. E.g. to use GNU unifont, | |
31 | include in the fontset spec: | |
f0f62f71 DL |
32 | |
33 | mule-unicode-2500-33ff:-gnu-unifont-*-iso10646-1,\ | |
34 | mule-unicode-e000-ffff:-gnu-unifont-*-iso10646-1,\ | |
35 | mule-unicode-0100-24ff:-gnu-unifont-*-iso10646-1 | |
36 | ||
fc1bfc2a DL |
37 | * The UTF-8/16/7 coding systems don't encode CJK (Far Eastern) characters. |
38 | ||
39 | Emacs by default only supports the parts of the Unicode BMP whose code | |
40 | points are in the ranges 0000-33ff and e000-ffff. This excludes: most | |
41 | of CJK, Yi and Hangul, as well as everything outside the BMP. | |
42 | ||
43 | If you read UTF-8 data with code points outside these ranges, the | |
44 | characters appear in the buffer as raw bytes of the original UTF-8 | |
45 | (composed into a single quasi-character) and they will be written back | |
46 | correctly as UTF-8, assuming you don't break the composed sequences. | |
47 | If you read such characters from UTF-16 or UTF-7 data, they are | |
48 | substituted with the Unicode `replacement character', and you lose | |
49 | information. | |
50 | ||
51 | To edit such UTF data, turn on Utf-Translate-Cjk mode, which makes | |
52 | many common CJK characters available for encoding and decoding and can | |
53 | be extended by updating the tables it uses. This also allows you to | |
54 | save as UTF buffers containing characters decoded by the chinese-, | |
55 | japanese- and korean- coding systems, e.g. cut and pasted from | |
56 | elsewhere. | |
60f553d2 | 57 | |
3f82efb4 RS |
58 | * Problems with file dialogs in Emacs built with Open Motif. |
59 | ||
60 | When Emacs 21 is built with Open Motif 2.1, it can happen that the | |
61 | graphical file dialog boxes do not work properly. The "OK", "Filter" | |
62 | and "Cancel" buttons do not respond to mouse clicks. Dragging the | |
63 | file dialog window usually causes the buttons to work again. | |
64 | ||
4af77d9f | 65 | The solution is to use LessTif instead. LessTif is a free replacement |
3f82efb4 RS |
66 | for Motif. See the file INSTALL for information on how to do this. |
67 | ||
68 | Another workaround is not to use the mouse to trigger file prompts, | |
69 | but to use the keyboard. This way, you will be prompted for a file in | |
70 | the minibuffer instead of a graphical file dialog. | |
71 | ||
cc305a60 RS |
72 | * Emacs reports a BadAtom error (from X) running on Solaris 7 or 8. |
73 | ||
74 | This happens when Emacs was built on some other version of Solaris. | |
75 | Rebuild it on Solaris 8. | |
76 | ||
fc2938d1 DL |
77 | * Mule-UCS loads very slowly. |
78 | ||
79 | Changes to Emacs internals interact badly with Mule-UCS's `un-define' | |
80 | library, which is the usual interface to Mule-UCS. Apply the | |
81 | following patch to Mule-UCS 0.84 and rebuild it. That will help, | |
82 | though loading will still be slower than in Emacs 20. (Some | |
83 | distributions, such as Debian, may already have applied such a patch.) | |
84 | ||
85 | --- lisp/un-define.el 6 Mar 2001 22:41:38 -0000 1.30 | |
86 | +++ lisp/un-define.el 19 Apr 2002 18:34:26 -0000 | |
87 | @@ -610,13 +624,21 @@ by calling post-read-conversion and pre- | |
177c0ea7 | 88 | |
fc2938d1 DL |
89 | (mapcar |
90 | (lambda (x) | |
91 | - (mapcar | |
92 | - (lambda (y) | |
93 | - (mucs-define-coding-system | |
94 | - (nth 0 y) (nth 1 y) (nth 2 y) | |
95 | - (nth 3 y) (nth 4 y) (nth 5 y) (nth 6 y)) | |
96 | - (coding-system-put (car y) 'alias-coding-systems (list (car x)))) | |
97 | - (cdr x))) | |
98 | + (if (fboundp 'register-char-codings) | |
99 | + ;; Mule 5, where we don't need the eol-type specified and | |
100 | + ;; register-char-codings may be very slow for these coding | |
101 | + ;; system definitions. | |
102 | + (let ((y (cadr x))) | |
103 | + (mucs-define-coding-system | |
104 | + (car x) (nth 1 y) (nth 2 y) | |
105 | + (nth 3 y) (nth 4 y) (nth 5 y))) | |
106 | + (mapcar | |
107 | + (lambda (y) | |
108 | + (mucs-define-coding-system | |
109 | + (nth 0 y) (nth 1 y) (nth 2 y) | |
110 | + (nth 3 y) (nth 4 y) (nth 5 y) (nth 6 y)) | |
111 | + (coding-system-put (car y) 'alias-coding-systems (list (car x))))) | |
112 | + (cdr x))) | |
113 | `((utf-8 | |
114 | (utf-8-unix | |
115 | ?u "UTF-8 coding system" | |
116 | ||
117 | Note that Emacs has native support for Unicode, roughly equivalent to | |
118 | Mule-UCS's, so you may not need it. | |
119 | ||
2aa82bcf EZ |
120 | * Building Emacs with GCC 2.9x fails in the `src' directory. |
121 | ||
122 | This may happen if you use a development version of GNU `cpp' from one | |
123 | of the GCC snapshots between Oct 2000 and Feb 2001, or from a released | |
124 | version of GCC newer than 2.95.2 which was prepared around those | |
8632c7cb EZ |
125 | dates; similar problems were reported with some snapshots of GCC 3.1 |
126 | around Sep 30 2001. The preprocessor in those versions is | |
127 | incompatible with a traditional Unix cpp (e.g., it expands ".." into | |
128 | ". .", which breaks relative file names that reference the parent | |
129 | directory; or inserts TAB characters before lines that set Make | |
130 | variables). | |
2aa82bcf EZ |
131 | |
132 | The solution is to make sure the preprocessor is run with the | |
8632c7cb EZ |
133 | `-traditional' option. The `configure' script does that automatically |
134 | when it detects the known problems in your cpp, but you might hit some | |
135 | unknown ones. To force the `configure' script to use `-traditional', | |
136 | run the script like this: | |
137 | ||
173de997 | 138 | CPP='gcc -E -traditional' ./configure ... |
8632c7cb EZ |
139 | |
140 | (replace the ellipsis "..." with any additional arguments you pass to | |
141 | the script). | |
2aa82bcf EZ |
142 | |
143 | Note that this problem does not pertain to the MS-Windows port of | |
144 | Emacs, since it doesn't use the preprocessor to generate Makefiles. | |
145 | ||
4593687f EZ |
146 | * Building Emacs with a system compiler fails to link because of an |
147 | undefined symbol such as __eprintf which does not appear in Emacs. | |
c93bdf05 EZ |
148 | |
149 | This can happen if some of the libraries linked into Emacs were built | |
150 | with GCC, but Emacs itself is being linked with a compiler other than | |
151 | GCC. Object files compiled with GCC might need some helper functions | |
152 | from libgcc.a, the library which comes with GCC, but the system | |
153 | compiler does not instruct the linker to search libgcc.a during the | |
154 | link stage. | |
155 | ||
156 | A solution is to link with GCC, like this: | |
157 | ||
158 | make CC=gcc | |
159 | ||
4593687f EZ |
160 | Since the .o object files already exist, this will not recompile Emacs |
161 | with GCC, but just restart by trying again to link temacs. | |
162 | ||
9272ccfc AI |
163 | * Building the MS-Windows port with Cygwin GCC can fail. |
164 | ||
165 | Emacs may not build using recent Cygwin builds of GCC, such as Cygwin | |
166 | version 1.1.8, using the default configure settings. It appears to be | |
167 | necessary to specify the -mwin32 flag when compiling, and define | |
168 | __MSVCRT__, like so: | |
169 | ||
170 | configure --with-gcc --cflags -mwin32 --cflags -D__MSVCRT__ | |
171 | ||
172 | * Building the MS-Windows port with Leim fails in the `leim' directory. | |
7c22dc9d EZ |
173 | |
174 | The error message might be something like this: | |
175 | ||
c24be289 | 176 | Converting d:/emacs-21.3/leim/CXTERM-DIC/4Corner.tit to quail-package... |
7c22dc9d EZ |
177 | Invalid ENCODE: value in TIT dictionary |
178 | NMAKE : fatal error U1077: '"../src/obj-spd/i386/emacs.exe"' : return code | |
179 | '0xffffffff' | |
180 | Stop. | |
181 | ||
182 | This can happen if the Leim distribution is unpacked with a program | |
183 | which converts the `*.tit' files to DOS-style CR-LF text format. The | |
184 | `*.tit' files in the leim/CXTERM-DIC directory require Unix-style line | |
185 | endings to compile properly, because Emacs reads them without any code | |
186 | or EOL conversions. | |
187 | ||
188 | The solution is to make sure the program used to unpack Leim does not | |
189 | change the files' line endings behind your back. The GNU FTP site has | |
190 | in the `/gnu/emacs/windows' directory a program called `djtarnt.exe' | |
191 | which can be used to unpack `.tar.gz' and `.zip' archives without | |
192 | mangling them. | |
193 | ||
677e7496 EZ |
194 | * Emacs crashes when dumping itself on Mac PPC running Yellow Dog GNU/Linux. |
195 | ||
196 | The crashes happen inside the function Fmake_symbol; here's a typical | |
197 | C backtrace printed by GDB: | |
198 | ||
199 | 0x190c0c0 in Fmake_symbol () | |
200 | (gdb) where | |
201 | #0 0x190c0c0 in Fmake_symbol () | |
202 | #1 0x1942ca4 in init_obarray () | |
203 | #2 0x18b3500 in main () | |
204 | #3 0x114371c in __libc_start_main (argc=5, argv=0x7ffff5b4, envp=0x7ffff5cc, | |
205 | ||
206 | This could happen because GCC version 2.95 and later changed the base | |
207 | of the load address to 0x10000000. Emacs needs to be told about this, | |
208 | but we currently cannot do that automatically, because that breaks | |
209 | other versions of GNU/Linux on the MacPPC. Until we find a way to | |
210 | distinguish between the Yellow Dog and the other varieties of | |
211 | GNU/Linux systems on the PPC, you will have to manually uncomment the | |
212 | following section near the end of the file src/m/macppc.h in the Emacs | |
213 | distribution: | |
214 | ||
cbfe0252 | 215 | #if 0 /* This breaks things on PPC GNU/Linux except for Yellowdog, |
677e7496 EZ |
216 | even with identical GCC, as, ld. Let's take it out until we |
217 | know what's really going on here. */ | |
218 | /* GCC 2.95 and newer on GNU/Linux PPC changed the load address to | |
219 | 0x10000000. */ | |
220 | #if defined __linux__ | |
221 | #if __GNUC__ > 2 || (__GNUC__ == 2 && __GNUC_MINOR__ >= 95) | |
222 | #define DATA_SEG_BITS 0x10000000 | |
223 | #endif | |
224 | #endif | |
225 | #endif /* 0 */ | |
226 | ||
227 | Remove the "#if 0" and "#endif" directives which surround this, save | |
228 | the file, and then reconfigure and rebuild Emacs. The dumping process | |
229 | should now succeed. | |
230 | ||
9ed04369 DL |
231 | * JPEG images aren't displayed. |
232 | ||
233 | This has been reported when Emacs is built with jpeg-6a library. | |
fc2938d1 DL |
234 | Upgrading to jpeg-6b solves the problem. Configure checks for the |
235 | correct version, but this problem could occur if a binary built | |
236 | against a shared libjpeg is run on a system with an older version. | |
9ed04369 | 237 | |
b87207a0 EZ |
238 | * Building `ctags' for MS-Windows with the MinGW port of GCC fails. |
239 | ||
240 | This might happen due to a bug in the MinGW header assert.h, which | |
241 | defines the `assert' macro with a trailing semi-colon. The following | |
242 | patch to assert.h should solve this: | |
243 | ||
244 | *** include/assert.h.orig Sun Nov 7 02:41:36 1999 | |
245 | --- include/assert.h Mon Jan 29 11:49:10 2001 | |
246 | *************** | |
247 | *** 41,47 **** | |
248 | /* | |
249 | * If not debugging, assert does nothing. | |
250 | */ | |
251 | ! #define assert(x) ((void)0); | |
177c0ea7 | 252 | |
b87207a0 | 253 | #else /* debugging enabled */ |
177c0ea7 | 254 | |
b87207a0 EZ |
255 | --- 41,47 ---- |
256 | /* | |
257 | * If not debugging, assert does nothing. | |
258 | */ | |
259 | ! #define assert(x) ((void)0) | |
177c0ea7 | 260 | |
b87207a0 | 261 | #else /* debugging enabled */ |
177c0ea7 | 262 | |
b87207a0 | 263 | |
61638355 EZ |
264 | |
265 | * Improving performance with slow X connections | |
266 | ||
a47a639f RS |
267 | There are several ways to improve this performance, any subset of which can |
268 | be carried out at the same time: | |
269 | ||
270 | 1) If you don't need X Input Methods (XIM) for entering text in some | |
20888a62 DL |
271 | language you use, you can improve performance on WAN links by using |
272 | the X resource useXIM to turn off use of XIM. This does not affect | |
273 | the use of Emacs' own input methods, which are part of the Leim | |
274 | package. | |
a47a639f RS |
275 | |
276 | 2) If the connection is very slow, you might also want to consider | |
277 | switching off scroll bars, menu bar, and tool bar. | |
278 | ||
279 | 3) Use ssh to forward the X connection, and enable compression on this | |
280 | forwarded X connection (ssh -XC remotehostname emacs ...). | |
281 | ||
282 | 4) Use lbxproxy on the remote end of the connection. This is an interface | |
283 | to the low bandwidth X extension in most modern X servers, which | |
284 | improves performance dramatically, at the slight expense of correctness | |
285 | of the X protocol. lbxproxy acheives the performance gain by grouping | |
286 | several X requests in one TCP packet and sending them off together, | |
287 | instead of requiring a round-trip for each X request in a seperate | |
288 | packet. The switches that seem to work best for emacs are: | |
289 | -noatomsfile -nowinattr -cheaterrors -cheatevents | |
290 | Note that the -nograbcmap option is known to cause problems. | |
291 | For more about lbxproxy, see: | |
20888a62 | 292 | http://www.xfree86.org/4.3.0/lbxproxy.1.html |
61638355 EZ |
293 | |
294 | * Getting a Meta key on the FreeBSD console | |
295 | ||
296 | By default, neither Alt nor any other key acts as a Meta key on | |
297 | FreeBSD, but this can be changed using kbdcontrol(1). Dump the | |
298 | current keymap to a file with the command | |
299 | ||
300 | $ kbdcontrol -d >emacs.kbd | |
301 | ||
302 | Edit emacs.kbd, and give the key you want to be the Meta key the | |
303 | definition `meta'. For instance, if your keyboard has a ``Windows'' | |
304 | key with scan code 105, change the line for scan code 105 in emacs.kbd | |
305 | to look like this | |
306 | ||
307 | 105 meta meta meta meta meta meta meta meta O | |
308 | ||
309 | to make the Windows key the Meta key. Load the new keymap with | |
310 | ||
311 | $ kbdcontrol -l emacs.kbd | |
312 | ||
313 | * Emacs' xterm-mouse-mode doesn't work on the Gnome terminal. | |
314 | ||
315 | A symptom of this bug is that double-clicks insert a control sequence | |
316 | into the buffer. The reason this happens is an apparent | |
317 | incompatibility of the Gnome terminal with Xterm, which also affects | |
318 | other programs using the Xterm mouse interface. A problem report has | |
319 | been filed. | |
320 | ||
321 | * Emacs pauses for several seconds when changing the default font | |
322 | ||
323 | This has been reported for fvwm 2.2.5 and the window manager of KDE | |
324 | 2.1. The reason for the pause is Xt waiting for a ConfigureNotify | |
325 | event from the window manager, which the window manager doesn't send. | |
326 | Xt stops waiting after a default timeout of usually 5 seconds. | |
327 | ||
328 | A workaround for this is to add something like | |
329 | ||
330 | emacs.waitForWM: false | |
331 | ||
332 | to your X resources. Alternatively, add `(wait-for-wm . nil)' to a | |
333 | frame's parameter list, like this: | |
334 | ||
335 | (modify-frame-parameters nil '((wait-for-wm . nil))) | |
336 | ||
337 | (this should go into your `.emacs' file). | |
338 | ||
339 | * Underlines appear at the wrong position. | |
340 | ||
341 | This is caused by fonts having a wrong UNDERLINE_POSITION property. | |
556a9fad EZ |
342 | Examples are the font 7x13 on XFree prior to version 4.1, or the jmk |
343 | neep font from the Debian xfonts-jmk package. To circumvent this | |
344 | problem, set x-use-underline-position-properties to nil in your | |
345 | `.emacs'. | |
346 | ||
347 | To see what is the value of UNDERLINE_POSITION defined by the font, | |
348 | type `xlsfonts -lll FONT' and look at the font's UNDERLINE_POSITION | |
349 | property. | |
61638355 | 350 | |
49172314 GM |
351 | * When using Xaw3d scroll bars without arrows, the very first mouse |
352 | click in a scroll bar might be ignored by the scroll bar widget. This | |
353 | is probably a bug in Xaw3d; when Xaw3d is compiled with arrows, the | |
354 | problem disappears. | |
355 | ||
ed0d1d91 RS |
356 | * There are known binary incompatibilities between Xaw, Xaw3d, neXtaw, |
357 | XawM and the few other derivatives of Xaw. So when you compile with | |
358 | one of these, it may not work to dynamically link with another one. | |
96bde66b EZ |
359 | For example, strange problems, such as Emacs exiting when you type |
360 | "C-x 1", were reported when Emacs compiled with Xaw3d and libXaw was | |
361 | used with neXtaw at run time. | |
362 | ||
363 | The solution is to rebuild Emacs with the toolkit version you actually | |
364 | want to use, or set LD_PRELOAD to preload the same toolkit version you | |
365 | built Emacs with. | |
ed0d1d91 | 366 | |
6e1a66dc EZ |
367 | * Clicking C-mouse-2 in the scroll bar doesn't split the window. |
368 | ||
369 | This currently doesn't work with scroll-bar widgets (and we don't know | |
370 | a good way of implementing it with widgets). If Emacs is configured | |
371 | --without-toolkit-scroll-bars, C-mouse-2 on the scroll bar does work. | |
372 | ||
3c418e54 EZ |
373 | * Emacs aborts inside the function `tparam1'. |
374 | ||
375 | This can happen if Emacs was built without terminfo support, but the | |
376 | terminal's capabilities use format that is only supported by terminfo. | |
377 | If your system has ncurses installed, this might happen if your | |
378 | version of ncurses is broken; upgrading to a newer version of ncurses | |
379 | and reconfiguring and rebuilding Emacs should solve this. | |
380 | ||
381 | All modern systems support terminfo, so even if ncurses is not the | |
382 | problem, you should look for a way to configure Emacs so that it uses | |
383 | terminfo when built. | |
384 | ||
f9130829 EZ |
385 | * Error messages about undefined colors on X. |
386 | ||
387 | The messages might say something like this: | |
388 | ||
389 | Unable to load color "grey95" | |
390 | ||
391 | (typically, in the `*Messages*' buffer), or something like this: | |
392 | ||
393 | Error while displaying tooltip: (error Undefined color lightyellow) | |
394 | ||
395 | These problems could happen if some other X program has used up too | |
396 | many colors of the X palette, leaving Emacs with insufficient system | |
397 | resources to load all the colors it needs. | |
398 | ||
399 | A solution is to exit the offending X programs before starting Emacs. | |
400 | ||
ed85f61d EZ |
401 | * Colors are not available on a tty or in xterm. |
402 | ||
9ed04369 DL |
403 | Emacs 21 supports colors on character terminals and terminal |
404 | emulators, but this support relies on the terminfo or termcap database | |
405 | entry to specify that the display supports color. Emacs looks at the | |
406 | "Co" capability for the terminal to find out how many colors are | |
407 | supported; it should be non-zero to activate the color support within | |
b300fd77 EZ |
408 | Emacs. (Most color terminals support 8 or 16 colors.) If your system |
409 | uses terminfo, the name of the capability equivalent to "Co" is | |
410 | "colors". | |
411 | ||
412 | In addition to the "Co" capability, Emacs needs the "op" (for | |
413 | ``original pair'') capability, which tells how to switch the terminal | |
414 | back to the default foreground and background colors. Emacs will not | |
415 | use colors if this capability is not defined. If your terminal entry | |
416 | doesn't provide such a capability, try using the ANSI standard escape | |
417 | sequence \E[00m (that is, define a new termcap/terminfo entry and make | |
418 | it use your current terminal's entry plus \E[00m for the "op" | |
419 | capability). | |
420 | ||
421 | Finally, the "NC" capability (terminfo name: "ncv") tells Emacs which | |
422 | attributes cannot be used with colors. Setting this capability | |
423 | incorrectly might have the effect of disabling colors; try setting | |
424 | this capability to `0' (zero) and see if that helps. | |
ed85f61d | 425 | |
9ed04369 DL |
426 | Emacs uses the database entry for the terminal whose name is the value |
427 | of the environment variable TERM. With `xterm', a common terminal | |
ed85f61d | 428 | entry that supports color is `xterm-color', so setting TERM's value to |
9ed04369 DL |
429 | `xterm-color' might activate the color support on an xterm-compatible |
430 | emulator. | |
ed85f61d | 431 | |
f5fdfa60 | 432 | Beginning with version 21.4, Emacs supports the --color command-line |
fa2301bf EZ |
433 | option which may be used to force Emacs to use one of a few popular |
434 | modes for getting colors on a tty. For example, --color=ansi8 sets up | |
435 | for using the ANSI-standard escape sequences that support 8 colors. | |
436 | ||
9ed04369 DL |
437 | Some modes do not use colors unless you turn on the Font-lock mode. |
438 | Some people have long ago set their `~/.emacs' files to turn on | |
439 | Font-lock on X only, so they won't see colors on a tty. The | |
440 | recommended way of turning on Font-lock is by typing "M-x | |
e085efdb EZ |
441 | global-font-lock-mode RET" or by customizing the variable |
442 | `global-font-lock-mode'. | |
ed85f61d | 443 | |
d0cf6c7d EZ |
444 | * Emacs on a tty switches the cursor to large blinking block. |
445 | ||
446 | This was reported to happen on some GNU/Linux systems which use | |
447 | ncurses version 5.0, but could be relevant for other versions as well. | |
448 | These versions of ncurses come with a `linux' terminfo entry, where | |
449 | the "cvvis" capability (termcap "vs") is defined as "\E[?25h\E[?8c" | |
450 | (show cursor, change size). This escape sequence switches on a | |
451 | blinking hardware text-mode cursor whose size is a full character | |
452 | cell. This blinking cannot be stopped, since a hardware cursor | |
453 | always blinks. | |
454 | ||
455 | A work-around is to redefine the "cvvis" capability so that it | |
456 | enables a *software* cursor. The software cursor works by inverting | |
457 | the colors of the character at point, so what you see is a block | |
458 | cursor that doesn't blink. For this to work, you need to redefine | |
459 | the "cnorm" capability as well, so that it operates on the software | |
460 | cursor instead of the hardware cursor. | |
461 | ||
462 | To this end, run "infocmp linux > linux-term", edit the file | |
463 | `linux-term' to make both the "cnorm" and "cvvis" capabilities send | |
464 | the sequence "\E[?25h\E[?17;0;64c", and then run "tic linux-term" to | |
465 | produce a modified terminfo entry. | |
466 | ||
c289e7f0 EZ |
467 | Alternatively, if you want a blinking underscore as your Emacs cursor, |
468 | change the "cvvis" capability to send the "\E[?25h\E[?0c" command. | |
469 | ||
339b95d5 EZ |
470 | * Problems in Emacs built with LessTif. |
471 | ||
472 | The problems seem to depend on the version of LessTif and the Motif | |
473 | emulation for which it is set up. | |
474 | ||
9ed04369 DL |
475 | Only the Motif 1.2 emulation seems to be stable enough in LessTif. |
476 | Lesstif 0.92-17's Motif 1.2 emulation seems to work okay on FreeBSD. | |
477 | On GNU/Linux systems, lesstif-0.92.6 configured with "./configure | |
478 | --enable-build-12 --enable-default-12" is reported to be the most | |
479 | successful. The binary GNU/Linux package | |
480 | lesstif-devel-0.92.0-1.i386.rpm was reported to have problems with | |
481 | menu placement. | |
339b95d5 EZ |
482 | |
483 | On some systems, even with Motif 1.2 emulation, Emacs occasionally | |
9ed04369 DL |
484 | locks up, grabbing all mouse and keyboard events. We still don't know |
485 | what causes these problems; they are not reproducible by Emacs | |
486 | developers. | |
339b95d5 | 487 | |
fa99e2a4 | 488 | * Known problems with the MS-Windows port of Emacs 21.2. |
b87207a0 | 489 | |
d6cdfce6 | 490 | Frames are not refreshed while the File or Font dialog or a pop-up menu |
6fb6f3ac | 491 | is displayed. This also means help text for pop-up menus is not |
d6cdfce6 JR |
492 | displayed at all. This is because message handling under Windows is |
493 | synchronous, so we cannot handle repaint (or any other) messages while | |
494 | waiting for a system function to return the result of the dialog or | |
495 | pop-up menu interaction. | |
f936978f | 496 | |
6fb6f3ac JR |
497 | Windows 95 and Windows NT up to version 4.0 do not support help text |
498 | for menus. Help text is only available in later versions of Windows. | |
499 | ||
e071f64e JR |
500 | There are problems with display if mouse-tracking is enabled and the |
501 | mouse is moved off a frame, over another frame then back over the first | |
502 | frame. A workaround is to click the left mouse button inside the frame | |
503 | after moving back into it. | |
b87207a0 | 504 | |
e071f64e JR |
505 | Some minor flickering still persists during mouse-tracking, although |
506 | not as severely as in 21.1. | |
b87207a0 EZ |
507 | |
508 | Emacs can sometimes abort when non-ASCII text, possibly with null | |
509 | characters, is copied and pasted into a buffer. | |
510 | ||
511 | An inactive cursor remains in an active window after the Windows | |
512 | Manager driven switch of the focus, until a key is pressed. | |
513 | ||
fa99e2a4 | 514 | Windows input methods are not recognized by Emacs (as of v21.2). Some |
c24be289 JR |
515 | of these input methods cause the keyboard to send characters encoded |
516 | in the appropriate coding system (e.g., ISO 8859-1 for Latin-1 | |
e085efdb EZ |
517 | characters, ISO 8859-8 for Hebrew characters, etc.). To make this |
518 | work, set the keyboard coding system to the appropriate value after | |
519 | you activate the Windows input method. For example, if you activate | |
520 | the Hebrew input method, type "C-x RET k iso-8859-8 RET". (Emacs | |
521 | ought to recognize the Windows language-change event and set up the | |
522 | appropriate keyboard encoding automatically, but it doesn't do that | |
523 | yet.) | |
524 | ||
fc2938d1 DL |
525 | Windows uses UTF-16 encoding to deal with multilingual text (text not |
526 | encodable in the `system codepage') in the clipboard. To deal with | |
527 | this, load the library `utf-16' and use `set-selection-coding-system' | |
20888a62 | 528 | to set the clipboard coding system to `utf-16-le-with-signature-dos'. |
e085efdb | 529 | |
6e34ec29 JR |
530 | The %b specifier for format-time-string does not produce abbreviated |
531 | month names with consistent widths for some locales on some versions | |
532 | of Windows. This is caused by a deficiency in the underlying system | |
533 | library function. | |
fa99e2a4 | 534 | |
c8d9b4ee EZ |
535 | * The `configure' script doesn't find the jpeg library. |
536 | ||
fe445893 RS |
537 | There are reports that this happens on some systems because the linker |
538 | by default only looks for shared libraries, but jpeg distribution by | |
539 | default only installs a nonshared version of the library, `libjpeg.a'. | |
540 | ||
541 | If this is the problem, you can configure the jpeg library with the | |
542 | `--enable-shared' option and then rebuild libjpeg. This produces a | |
543 | shared version of libjpeg, which you need to install. Finally, rerun | |
544 | the Emacs configure script, which should now find the jpeg library. | |
545 | Alternatively, modify the generated src/Makefile to link the .a file | |
cc305a60 | 546 | explicitly, and edit src/config.h to define HAVE_JPEG. |
c8d9b4ee | 547 | |
d9810886 EZ |
548 | * Building Emacs over NFS fails with ``Text file busy''. |
549 | ||
d67e4586 EZ |
550 | This was reported to happen when building Emacs on a GNU/Linux system |
551 | (RedHat Linux 6.2) using a build directory automounted from Solaris | |
552 | (SunOS 5.6) file server, but it might not be limited to that | |
553 | configuration alone. Presumably, the NFS server doesn't commit the | |
554 | files' data to disk quickly enough, and the Emacs executable file is | |
555 | left ``busy'' for several seconds after Emacs has finished dumping | |
556 | itself. This causes the subsequent commands which invoke the dumped | |
cbfe0252 | 557 | Emacs executable to fail with the above message. |
d9810886 | 558 | |
d04b2e49 EZ |
559 | In some of these cases, a time skew between the NFS server and the |
560 | machine where Emacs is built is detected and reported by GNU Make | |
561 | (it says that some of the files have modification time in the future). | |
562 | This might be a symptom of NFS-related problems. | |
563 | ||
d9810886 EZ |
564 | If the NFS server runs on Solaris, apply the Solaris patch 105379-05 |
565 | (Sunos 5.6: /kernel/misc/nfssrv patch). If that doesn't work, or if | |
566 | you have a different version of the OS or the NFS server, you can | |
567 | force the NFS server to use 1KB blocks, which was reported to fix the | |
568 | problem albeit at a price of slowing down file I/O. You can force 1KB | |
569 | blocks by specifying the "-o rsize=1024,wsize=1024" options to the | |
570 | `mount' command, or by adding ",rsize=1024,wsize=1024" to the mount | |
571 | options in the appropriate system configuration file, such as | |
572 | `/etc/auto.home'. | |
573 | ||
b4da93e1 EZ |
574 | Alternatively, when Make fails due to this problem, you could wait for |
575 | a few seconds and then invoke Make again. In one particular case, | |
576 | waiting for 10 or more seconds between the two Make invocations seemed | |
577 | to work around the problem. | |
d9810886 | 578 | |
aa99760e EZ |
579 | Similar problems can happen if your machine NFS-mounts a directory |
580 | onto itself. Suppose the Emacs sources live in `/usr/local/src' and | |
581 | you are working on the host called `marvin'. Then an entry in the | |
582 | `/etc/fstab' file like the following is asking for trouble: | |
583 | ||
584 | marvin:/usr/local/src /usr/local/src ...options.omitted... | |
585 | ||
586 | The solution is to remove this line from `etc/fstab'. | |
587 | ||
086b25d3 EZ |
588 | * Emacs binary is not in executable format, and cannot be run. |
589 | ||
590 | This was reported to happen when Emacs is built in a directory mounted | |
591 | via NFS. Usually, the file `emacs' produced in these cases is full of | |
592 | binary null characters, and the `file' utility says: | |
593 | ||
594 | emacs: ASCII text, with no line terminators | |
595 | ||
596 | We don't know what exactly causes this failure. A work-around is to | |
597 | build Emacs in a directory on a local disk. | |
598 | ||
9ed04369 | 599 | * Accented ISO-8859-1 characters are displayed as | or _. |
d6b7de9b EZ |
600 | |
601 | Try other font set sizes (S-mouse-1). If the problem persists with | |
602 | other sizes as well, your text is corrupted, probably through software | |
603 | that is not 8-bit clean. If the problem goes away with another font | |
604 | size, it's probably because some fonts pretend to be ISO-8859-1 fonts | |
605 | when they are really ASCII fonts. In particular the schumacher-clean | |
606 | fonts have this bug in some versions of X. | |
607 | ||
608 | To see what glyphs are included in a font, use `xfd', like this: | |
609 | ||
610 | xfd -fn -schumacher-clean-medium-r-normal--12-120-75-75-c-60-iso8859-1 | |
611 | ||
612 | If this shows only ASCII glyphs, the font is indeed the source of the | |
613 | problem. | |
614 | ||
615 | The solution is to remove the corresponding lines from the appropriate | |
616 | `fonts.alias' file, then run `mkfontdir' in that directory, and then run | |
617 | `xset fp rehash'. | |
618 | ||
ec6bd013 DL |
619 | * Large file support is disabled on HP-UX. See the comments in |
620 | src/s/hpux10.h. | |
621 | ||
e9a0a549 | 622 | * Crashes when displaying GIF images in Emacs built with version |
ec6bd013 | 623 | libungif-4.1.0 are resolved by using version libungif-4.1.0b1. |
fc2938d1 DL |
624 | Configure checks for the correct version, but this problem could occur |
625 | if a binary built against a shared libungif is run on a system with an | |
626 | older version. | |
4e0bd469 | 627 | |
4dea3d52 | 628 | * Font Lock displays portions of the buffer in incorrect faces. |
a408ce18 EZ |
629 | |
630 | By far the most frequent cause of this is a parenthesis `(' or a brace | |
631 | `{' in column zero. Font Lock assumes that such a paren is outside of | |
632 | any comment or string. This is of course not true in general, but the | |
633 | vast majority of well-formatted program source files don't have such | |
634 | parens, and therefore this assumption is used to allow optimizations | |
635 | in Font Lock's syntactical analysis. These optimizations avoid some | |
cbfe0252 | 636 | pathological cases where jit-lock, the Just-in-Time fontification |
a408ce18 EZ |
637 | introduced with Emacs 21.1, could significantly slow down scrolling |
638 | through the buffer, especially scrolling backwards, and also jumping | |
639 | to the end of a very large buffer. | |
640 | ||
445f98eb | 641 | Beginning with version 21.4, a parenthesis or a brace in column zero |
cb46def7 EZ |
642 | is highlighted in bold-red face if it is inside a string or a comment, |
643 | to indicate that it could interfere with Font Lock (and also with | |
644 | indentation) and should be moved or escaped with a backslash. | |
473347f6 | 645 | |
a408ce18 EZ |
646 | If you don't use large buffers, or have a very fast machine which |
647 | makes the delays insignificant, you can avoid the incorrect | |
648 | fontification by setting the variable | |
649 | `font-lock-beginning-of-syntax-function' to a nil value. (This must | |
650 | be done _after_ turning on Font Lock.) | |
651 | ||
652 | Another alternative is to avoid a paren in column zero. For example, | |
653 | in a Lisp string you could precede the paren with a backslash. | |
654 | ||
a38f41c4 EZ |
655 | * When running on KDE, colors or fonts are not as specified for Emacs, |
656 | or messed up. | |
657 | ||
cbfe0252 | 658 | For example, you could see background you set for Emacs only in the |
a38f41c4 EZ |
659 | empty portions of the Emacs display, while characters have some other |
660 | background. | |
661 | ||
662 | This happens because KDE's defaults apply its color and font | |
663 | definitions even to applications that weren't compiled for KDE. The | |
664 | solution is to uncheck the "Apply fonts and colors to non-KDE apps" | |
26467c73 GM |
665 | option in Preferences->Look&Feel->Style (KDE 2). In KDE 3, this option |
666 | is in the "Colors" section, rather than "Style". | |
a38f41c4 EZ |
667 | |
668 | Alternatively, if you do want the KDE defaults to apply to other | |
669 | applications, but not to Emacs, you could modify the file `Emacs.ad' | |
670 | (should be in the `/usr/share/apps/kdisplay/app-defaults/' directory) | |
671 | so that it doesn't set the default background and foreground only for | |
672 | Emacs. For example, make sure the following resources are either not | |
673 | present or commented out: | |
674 | ||
675 | Emacs.default.attributeForeground | |
676 | Emacs.default.attributeBackground | |
677 | Emacs*Foreground | |
678 | Emacs*Background | |
679 | ||
b87207a0 EZ |
680 | * Interrupting Cygwin port of Bash from Emacs doesn't work. |
681 | ||
682 | Cygwin 1.x builds of the ported Bash cannot be interrupted from the | |
683 | MS-Windows version of Emacs. This is due to some change in the Bash | |
684 | port or in the Cygwin library which apparently make Bash ignore the | |
685 | keyboard interrupt event sent by Emacs to Bash. (Older Cygwin ports | |
686 | of Bash, up to b20.1, did receive SIGINT from Emacs.) | |
687 | ||
4e0bd469 EZ |
688 | * Dired is very slow. |
689 | ||
690 | This could happen if invocation of the `df' program takes a long | |
691 | time. Possible reasons for this include: | |
692 | ||
693 | - ClearCase mounted filesystems (VOBs) that sometimes make `df' | |
694 | response time extremely slow (dozens of seconds); | |
695 | ||
696 | - slow automounters on some old versions of Unix; | |
697 | ||
698 | - slow operation of some versions of `df'. | |
699 | ||
700 | To work around the problem, you could either (a) set the variable | |
701 | `directory-free-space-program' to nil, and thus prevent Emacs from | |
702 | invoking `df'; (b) use `df' from the GNU Fileutils package; or | |
703 | (c) use CVS, which is Free Software, instead of ClearCase. | |
704 | ||
61638355 EZ |
705 | * Accessing remote files with ange-ftp hangs the MS-Windows version of Emacs. |
706 | ||
707 | If the FTP client is the Cygwin port of GNU `ftp', this appears to be | |
708 | due to some bug in the Cygwin DLL or some incompatibility between it | |
709 | and the implementation of asynchronous subprocesses in the Windows | |
710 | port of Emacs. Specifically, some parts of the FTP server responses | |
711 | are not flushed out, apparently due to buffering issues, which | |
712 | confuses ange-ftp. | |
713 | ||
714 | The solution is to downgrade to an older version of the Cygwin DLL | |
715 | (version 1.3.2 was reported to solve the problem), or use the stock | |
c24be289 JR |
716 | Windows FTP client, usually found in the `C:\WINDOWS' or 'C:\WINNT' |
717 | directory. To force ange-ftp use the stock Windows client, set the | |
718 | variable `ange-ftp-ftp-program-name' to the absolute file name of the | |
719 | client's executable. For example: | |
61638355 EZ |
720 | |
721 | (setq ange-ftp-ftp-program-name "c:/windows/ftp.exe") | |
722 | ||
723 | If you want to stick with the Cygwin FTP client, you can work around | |
724 | this problem by putting this in your `.emacs' file: | |
725 | ||
726 | (setq ange-ftp-ftp-program-args '("-i" "-n" "-g" "-v" "--prompt" "") | |
727 | ||
fc2938d1 DL |
728 | * Versions of the W3 package released before Emacs 21.1 don't run |
729 | under Emacs 21. This fixed in W3 version 4.0pre.47. | |
a953a8d3 | 730 | |
2ebf6139 GM |
731 | * On AIX, if linking fails because libXbsd isn't found, check if you |
732 | are compiling with the system's `cc' and CFLAGS containing `-O5'. If | |
733 | so, you have hit a compiler bug. Please make sure to re-configure | |
734 | Emacs so that it isn't compiled with `-O5'. | |
735 | ||
cc2f2825 | 736 | * Compiling on AIX 4.3.x or 4.4 fails. |
ec383c7d | 737 | |
9e2305c3 | 738 | This could happen if you use /bin/c89 as your compiler, instead of |
cc2f2825 EZ |
739 | the default `cc'. /bin/c89 treats certain warnings, such as benign |
740 | redefinitions of macros, as errors, and fails the build. A solution | |
741 | is to use the default compiler `cc'. | |
742 | ||
a14e05ac | 743 | * Old versions of the PSGML package use the obsolete variables |
e1f9a6b3 | 744 | `before-change-function' and `after-change-function', which are no |
9ec9d3d2 | 745 | longer used by Emacs. Please use PSGML 1.2.3 or later. |
1d297d9b | 746 | |
8bd90f0a PJ |
747 | * PSGML conflicts with sgml-mode. |
748 | ||
749 | PSGML package uses the same names of some variables (like keymap) | |
750 | as built-in sgml-mode.el because it was created as a replacement | |
751 | of that package. The conflict will be shown if you load | |
752 | sgml-mode.el before psgml.el. E.g. this could happen if you edit | |
753 | HTML page and then start to work with SGML or XML file. html-mode | |
754 | (from sgml-mode.el) is used for HTML file and loading of psgml.el | |
755 | (for sgml-mode or xml-mode) will cause an error. | |
756 | ||
8f4df059 PJ |
757 | * The LDAP support rely on ldapsearch program from OpenLDAP version 2. |
758 | ||
759 | It can fail to work with ldapsearch program from OpenLDAP version 1. | |
760 | Version 1 of OpenLDAP is now deprecated. If you are still using it, | |
761 | please upgrade to version 2. As a temporary workaround, remove | |
762 | argument "-x" from the variable `ldap-ldapsearch-args'. | |
763 | ||
b098c23c EZ |
764 | * The `oc-unicode' package doesn't work with Emacs 21. |
765 | ||
9ed04369 | 766 | This package tries to define more private charsets than there are free |
20888a62 DL |
767 | slots now. The current built-in Unicode support is actually more |
768 | flexible. (Use option `utf-translate-cjk-mode' if you need CJK | |
769 | support.) Files encoded as emacs-mule using oc-unicode aren't | |
770 | generally read correctly by Emacs 21. | |
224a0b4d | 771 | |
6343352f EZ |
772 | * Using epop3.el package causes Emacs to signal an error. |
773 | ||
774 | The error message might be something like this: | |
775 | ||
776 | "Lisp nesting exceeds max-lisp-eval-depth" | |
777 | ||
778 | This happens because epop3 redefines the function gethash, which is a | |
779 | built-in primitive beginning with Emacs 21.1. We don't have a patch | |
780 | for epop3 that fixes this, but perhaps a newer version of epop3 | |
781 | corrects that. | |
782 | ||
cc2f2825 EZ |
783 | * ps-print commands fail to find prologue files ps-prin*.ps. |
784 | ||
785 | This can happen if you use an old version of X-Symbol package: it | |
786 | defines compatibility functions which trick ps-print into thinking it | |
787 | runs in XEmacs, and look for the prologue files in a wrong directory. | |
788 | ||
789 | The solution is to upgrade X-Symbol to a later version. | |
790 | ||
1f42cc71 JR |
791 | * lpr commands don't work on MS-Windows with some cheap printers. |
792 | ||
793 | This problem may also strike other platforms, but the solution is | |
794 | likely to be a global one, and not Emacs specific. | |
795 | ||
796 | Many cheap inkjet, and even some cheap laser printers, do not | |
797 | print plain text anymore, they will only print through graphical | |
798 | printer drivers. A workaround on MS-Windows is to use Windows' basic | |
799 | built in editor to print (this is possibly the only useful purpose it | |
800 | has): | |
801 | ||
802 | (setq printer-name "") ;; notepad takes the default | |
803 | (setq lpr-command "notepad") ;; notepad | |
804 | (setq lpr-switches nil) ;; not needed | |
805 | (setq lpr-printer-switch "/P") ;; run notepad as batch printer | |
806 | ||
f4f4ee4d GM |
807 | * On systems with shared libraries you might encounter run-time errors |
808 | from the dynamic linker telling you that it is unable to find some | |
809 | shared libraries, for instance those for Xaw3d or image support. | |
810 | These errors mean Emacs has been linked with a library whose shared | |
811 | library is not in the default search path of the dynamic linker. | |
812 | ||
0cb26e21 EZ |
813 | Similar problems could prevent Emacs from building, since the build |
814 | process invokes Emacs several times. | |
815 | ||
f4f4ee4d GM |
816 | On many systems, it is possible to set LD_LIBRARY_PATH in your |
817 | environment to specify additional directories where shared libraries | |
818 | can be found. | |
819 | ||
820 | Other systems allow to set LD_RUN_PATH in a similar way, but before | |
821 | Emacs is linked. With LD_RUN_PATH set, the linker will include a | |
822 | specified run-time search path in the executable. | |
823 | ||
8643647c | 824 | On some systems, Emacs can crash due to problems with dynamic |
c31138a1 EZ |
825 | linking. Specifically, on SGI Irix 6.5, crashes were reported with |
826 | backtraces like this: | |
827 | ||
828 | (dbx) where | |
829 | 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] | |
830 | 1 general_find_symbol(0xf49239d, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0xf0000000, 0xf4923aa, 0x0, 0x492ddb2) | |
831 | ["/comp2/mtibuild/v73/workarea/v7.3/rld/rld.c":2140, 0xfb65a98] | |
832 | 2 resolve_symbol(0xf49239d, 0x4031184, 0x0, 0xfbdd438, 0x0, 0xf4923aa, 0x0, 0x492ddb2) | |
833 | ["/comp2/mtibuild/v73/workarea/v7.3/rld/rld.c":1947, 0xfb657e4] | |
834 | 3 lazy_text_resolve(0xd18, 0x1a3, 0x40302b4, 0x12, 0xf0000000, 0xf4923aa, 0x0, 0x492ddb2) | |
835 | ["/comp2/mtibuild/v73/workarea/v7.3/rld/rld.c":997, 0xfb64d44] | |
836 | 4 _rld_text_resolve(0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0) | |
837 | ["/comp2/mtibuild/v73/workarea/v7.3/rld/rld_bridge.s":175, 0xfb6032c] | |
838 | ||
8643647c RS |
839 | (`rld' is the dynamic linker.) We don't know yet why this |
840 | happens, but setting the environment variable LD_BIND_NOW to 1 (which | |
c31138a1 EZ |
841 | forces the dynamic linker to bind all shared objects early on) seems |
842 | to work around the problem. | |
843 | ||
f4f4ee4d GM |
844 | Please refer to the documentation of your dynamic linker for details. |
845 | ||
0c6456ad | 846 | * On Solaris 2.7, building Emacs with WorkShop Compilers 5.0 98/12/15 |
9b2999d0 DL |
847 | C 5.0 failed, apparently with non-default CFLAGS, most probably due to |
848 | compiler bugs. Using Sun Solaris 2.7 Sun WorkShop 6 update 1 C | |
849 | release was reported to work without problems. It worked OK on | |
850 | another system with Solaris 8 using apparently the same 5.0 compiler | |
851 | and the default CFLAGS. | |
0c6456ad | 852 | |
b1739b51 EZ |
853 | * Compiling syntax.c with the OPENSTEP 4.2 compiler gcc 2.7.2.1 fails. |
854 | ||
855 | The compiler was reported to crash while compiling syntax.c with the | |
856 | following message: | |
857 | ||
858 | cc: Internal compiler error: program cc1obj got fatal signal 11 | |
859 | ||
860 | To work around this, replace the macros UPDATE_SYNTAX_TABLE_FORWARD, | |
861 | INC_BOTH, and INC_FROM with functions. To this end, first define 3 | |
862 | functions, one each for every macro. Here's an example: | |
863 | ||
864 | static int update_syntax_table_forward(int from) | |
865 | { | |
866 | return(UPDATE_SYNTAX_TABLE_FORWARD(from)); | |
867 | }/*update_syntax_table_forward*/ | |
868 | ||
869 | Then replace all references to UPDATE_SYNTAX_TABLE_FORWARD in syntax.c | |
870 | with a call to the function update_syntax_table_forward. | |
871 | ||
e9a52cfe EZ |
872 | * Emacs fails to start, complaining about missing fonts. |
873 | ||
874 | A typical error message might be something like | |
875 | ||
876 | No fonts match `-*-fixed-medium-r-*--6-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1' | |
877 | ||
878 | This happens because some X resource specifies a bad font family for | |
879 | Emacs to use. The possible places where this specification might be | |
880 | are: | |
881 | ||
882 | - in your ~/.Xdefaults file | |
883 | ||
884 | - client-side X resource file, such as ~/Emacs or | |
885 | /usr/X11R6/lib/app-defaults/Emacs or | |
886 | /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/app-defaults/Emacs | |
887 | ||
888 | One of these files might have bad or malformed specification of a | |
889 | fontset that Emacs should use. To fix the problem, you need to find | |
890 | the problematic line(s) and correct them. | |
891 | ||
f25eb4f7 EZ |
892 | * Emacs 20 and later fails to load Lisp files at startup. |
893 | ||
894 | The typical error message might be like this: | |
895 | ||
896 | "Cannot open load file: fontset" | |
897 | ||
898 | This could happen if you compress the file lisp/subdirs.el. That file | |
899 | tells Emacs what are the directories where it should look for Lisp | |
900 | files. Emacs cannot work with subdirs.el compressed, since the | |
901 | Auto-compress mode it needs for this will not be loaded until later, | |
902 | when your .emacs file is processed. (The package `fontset.el' is | |
903 | required to set up fonts used to display text on window systems, and | |
b75b82ab | 904 | it's loaded very early in the startup procedure.) |
f25eb4f7 EZ |
905 | |
906 | Similarly, any other .el file for which there's no corresponding .elc | |
907 | file could fail to load if it is compressed. | |
908 | ||
909 | The solution is to uncompress all .el files which don't have a .elc | |
910 | file. | |
911 | ||
edd7d3be EZ |
912 | Another possible reason for such failures is stale *.elc files |
913 | lurking somewhere on your load-path. The following command will | |
914 | print any duplicate Lisp files that are present in load-path: | |
915 | ||
916 | emacs -q -batch -f list-load-path-shadows | |
917 | ||
918 | If this command prints any file names, some of these files are stale, | |
919 | and should be deleted or their directories removed from your | |
920 | load-path. | |
921 | ||
42303132 JR |
922 | * Emacs prints an error at startup after upgrading from an earlier version. |
923 | ||
924 | An example of such an error is: | |
925 | ||
177c0ea7 | 926 | x-complement-fontset-spec: "Wrong type argument: stringp, nil" |
42303132 JR |
927 | |
928 | This can be another symptom of stale *.elc files in your classpath. | |
929 | The following command will print any duplicate Lisp files that are | |
930 | present in load-path: | |
931 | ||
932 | emacs -q -batch -f list-load-path-shadows | |
933 | ||
934 | If this command prints any file names, some of these files are stale, | |
935 | and should be deleted or their directories removed from your | |
936 | load-path. | |
937 | ||
f3d6f4ee EZ |
938 | * Attempting to visit remote files via ange-ftp fails. |
939 | ||
940 | If the error message is "ange-ftp-file-modtime: Specified time is not | |
941 | representable", then this could happen when `lukemftp' is used as the | |
f2d176f2 CW |
942 | ftp client. This was reported to happen on Debian GNU/Linux, kernel |
943 | version 2.4.3, with `lukemftp' 1.5-5, but might happen on other | |
944 | systems as well. To avoid this problem, switch to using the standard | |
945 | ftp client. On a Debian system, type | |
f3d6f4ee | 946 | |
f2d176f2 | 947 | update-alternatives --config ftp |
f3d6f4ee EZ |
948 | |
949 | and then choose /usr/bin/netkit-ftp. | |
950 | ||
9f83d8b3 EZ |
951 | * Antivirus software interacts badly with the MS-Windows version of Emacs. |
952 | ||
953 | The usual manifestation of these problems is that subprocesses don't | |
954 | work or even wedge the entire system. In particular, "M-x shell RET" | |
955 | was reported to fail to work. But other commands also sometimes don't | |
956 | work when an antivirus package is installed. | |
957 | ||
958 | The solution is to switch the antivirus software to a less aggressive | |
959 | mode (e.g., disable the ``auto-protect'' feature), or even uninstall | |
960 | or disable it entirely. | |
961 | ||
c34607fc | 962 | * On MS-Windows 95/98/ME, subprocesses do not terminate properly. |
f29d1e75 JR |
963 | |
964 | This is a limitation of the Operating System, and can cause problems | |
965 | when shutting down Windows. Ensure that all subprocesses are exited | |
966 | cleanly before exiting Emacs. For more details, see the FAQ at | |
cbfe0252 | 967 | http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/windows/. |
f29d1e75 | 968 | |
c34607fc | 969 | * MS-Windows 95/98/ME crashes when Emacs invokes non-existent programs. |
c24be289 | 970 | |
4593687f | 971 | When a program you are trying to run is not found on the PATH, |
c24be289 | 972 | Windows might respond by crashing or locking up your system. In |
94e83484 | 973 | particular, this has been reported when trying to compile a Java |
5f08ab61 | 974 | program in JDEE when javac.exe is installed, but not on the system |
94e83484 | 975 | PATH. |
c24be289 | 976 | |
b35319bf JR |
977 | * Pressing the mouse button on MS-Windows does not give a mouse-2 event. |
978 | ||
979 | This is usually a problem with the mouse driver. Because most Windows | |
980 | programs do not do anything useful with the middle mouse button, many | |
981 | mouse drivers allow you to define the wheel press to do something | |
982 | different. Some drivers do not even have the option to generate a | |
983 | middle button press. In such cases, setting the wheel press to | |
984 | "scroll" sometimes works if you press the button twice. Trying a | |
985 | generic mouse driver might help. | |
986 | ||
987 | * Scrolling the mouse wheel on MS-Windows always scrolls the top window. | |
988 | ||
989 | This is another common problem with mouse drivers. Instead of | |
990 | generating scroll events, some mouse drivers try to fake scroll bar | |
991 | movement. But they are not intelligent enough to handle multiple | |
992 | scroll bars within a frame. Trying a generic mouse driver might help. | |
993 | ||
787994b7 DL |
994 | * Mail sent through Microsoft Exchange in some encodings appears to be |
995 | mangled and is not seen correctly in Rmail or Gnus. We don't know | |
996 | exactly what happens, but it isn't an Emacs problem in cases we've | |
997 | seen. | |
998 | ||
0a2eeca1 EZ |
999 | * After upgrading to a newer version of Emacs, the Meta key stops working. |
1000 | ||
1001 | This was reported to happen on a GNU/Linux system distributed by | |
1002 | Mandrake. The reason is that the previous version of Emacs was | |
1003 | modified by Mandrake to make the Alt key act as the Meta key, on a | |
1004 | keyboard where the Windows key is the one which produces the Meta | |
1005 | modifier. A user who started using a newer version of Emacs, which | |
1006 | was not hacked by Mandrake, expected the Alt key to continue to act as | |
1007 | Meta, and was astonished when that didn't happen. | |
1008 | ||
1009 | The solution is to find out what key on your keyboard produces the Meta | |
1010 | modifier, and use that key instead. Try all of the keys to the left | |
1011 | and to the right of the space bar, together with the `x' key, and see | |
1012 | which combination produces "M-x" in the echo area. You can also use | |
1013 | the `xmodmap' utility to show all the keys which produce a Meta | |
1014 | modifier: | |
1015 | ||
1016 | xmodmap -pk | egrep -i "meta|alt" | |
1017 | ||
1018 | A more convenient way of finding out which keys produce a Meta modifier | |
1019 | is to use the `xkbprint' utility, if it's available on your system: | |
1020 | ||
1021 | xkbprint 0:0 /tmp/k.ps | |
1022 | ||
1023 | This produces a PostScript file `/tmp/k.ps' with a picture of your | |
1024 | keyboard; printing that file on a PostScript printer will show what | |
1025 | keys can serve as Meta. | |
1026 | ||
1027 | The `xkeycaps' also shows a visual representation of the current | |
1028 | keyboard settings. It also allows to modify them. | |
1029 | ||
119d3665 DL |
1030 | * On OSF/Dec Unix/Tru64/<whatever it is this year> under X locally or |
1031 | remotely, M-SPC acts as a `compose' key with strange results. See | |
1032 | keyboard(5). | |
1033 | ||
1034 | Changing Alt_L to Meta_L fixes it: | |
1035 | % xmodmap -e 'keysym Alt_L = Meta_L Alt_L' | |
177c0ea7 | 1036 | % xmodmap -e 'keysym Alt_R = Meta_R Alt_R' |
119d3665 | 1037 | |
a933dad1 DL |
1038 | * Error "conflicting types for `initstate'" compiling with GCC on Irix 6. |
1039 | ||
1040 | Install GCC 2.95 or a newer version, and this problem should go away. | |
1041 | It is possible that this problem results from upgrading the operating | |
1042 | system without reinstalling GCC; so you could also try reinstalling | |
1043 | the same version of GCC, and telling us whether that fixes the problem. | |
1044 | ||
0de9f9a8 EZ |
1045 | * Emacs dumps core on Solaris in function IMCheckWindow. |
1046 | ||
1047 | This was reported to happen when Emacs runs with more than one frame, | |
1048 | and one of them is closed, either with "C-x 5 0" or from the window | |
1049 | manager. | |
1050 | ||
1051 | This bug was reported to Sun as | |
1052 | ||
1053 | Gtk apps dump core in ximlocal.so.2:IMCheckIMWindow() | |
1054 | Bug Reports: 4463537 | |
1055 | ||
2aa82bcf | 1056 | Installing Solaris 8 patch 108773-12 for Sparc and 108774-12 for x86 |
0de9f9a8 EZ |
1057 | reportedly fixes the bug, which appears to be inside the shared |
1058 | library xiiimp.so. | |
1059 | ||
1060 | Alternatively, you can configure Emacs with `--with-xim=no' to prevent | |
1061 | the core dump, but will loose X input method support, of course. (You | |
1062 | can use Emacs's own input methods instead, if you install Leim.) | |
1063 | ||
a933dad1 DL |
1064 | * On Solaris 7, Emacs gets a segmentation fault when starting up using X. |
1065 | ||
1066 | This results from Sun patch 107058-01 (SunOS 5.7: Patch for | |
3156909f PE |
1067 | assembler) if you use GCC version 2.7 or later. |
1068 | To work around it, either install patch 106950-03 or later, | |
1069 | or uninstall patch 107058-01, or install the GNU Binutils. | |
a933dad1 DL |
1070 | Then recompile Emacs, and it should work. |
1071 | ||
1072 | * With X11R6.4, public-patch-3, Emacs crashes at startup. | |
1073 | ||
1074 | Reportedly this patch in X fixes the problem. | |
1075 | ||
1076 | --- xc/lib/X11/imInt.c~ Wed Jun 30 13:31:56 1999 | |
1077 | +++ xc/lib/X11/imInt.c Thu Jul 1 15:10:27 1999 | |
1078 | @@ -1,4 +1,4 @@ | |
1079 | -/* $TOG: imInt.c /main/5 1998/05/30 21:11:16 kaleb $ */ | |
1080 | +/* $TOG: imInt.c /main/5 1998/05/30 21:11:16 kaleb $ */ | |
1081 | /****************************************************************** | |
1082 | ||
1083 | Copyright 1992, 1993, 1994 by FUJITSU LIMITED | |
1084 | @@ -166,8 +166,8 @@ | |
1085 | _XimMakeImName(lcd) | |
1086 | XLCd lcd; | |
1087 | { | |
1088 | - char* begin; | |
1089 | - char* end; | |
1090 | + char* begin = NULL; | |
1091 | + char* end = NULL; | |
1092 | char* ret; | |
1093 | int i = 0; | |
1094 | char* ximmodifier = XIMMODIFIER; | |
1095 | @@ -182,7 +182,11 @@ | |
1096 | } | |
1097 | ret = Xmalloc(end - begin + 2); | |
1098 | if (ret != NULL) { | |
1099 | - (void)strncpy(ret, begin, end - begin + 1); | |
1100 | + if (begin != NULL) { | |
1101 | + (void)strncpy(ret, begin, end - begin + 1); | |
1102 | + } else { | |
1103 | + ret[0] = '\0'; | |
1104 | + } | |
1105 | ret[end - begin + 1] = '\0'; | |
1106 | } | |
1107 | return ret; | |
1108 | ||
1109 | ||
a933dad1 | 1110 | * Emacs crashes on Irix 6.5 on the SGI R10K, when compiled with GCC. |
177c0ea7 | 1111 | |
a933dad1 DL |
1112 | This seems to be fixed in GCC 2.95. |
1113 | ||
1114 | * Emacs crashes in utmpname on Irix 5.3. | |
1115 | ||
1116 | This problem is fixed in Patch 3175 for Irix 5.3. | |
1117 | It is also fixed in Irix versions 6.2 and up. | |
1118 | ||
de121241 EZ |
1119 | * The S-C-t key combination doesn't get passed to Emacs on X. |
1120 | ||
1121 | This happens because some X configurations assign the Ctrl-Shift-t | |
1122 | combination the same meaning as the Multi_key. The offending | |
1123 | definition is in the file `...lib/X11/locale/iso8859-1/Compose'; there | |
1124 | might be other similar combinations which are grabbed by X for similar | |
1125 | purposes. | |
1126 | ||
1127 | We think that this can be countermanded with the `xmodmap' utility, if | |
1128 | you want to be able to bind one of these key sequences within Emacs. | |
1129 | ||
a933dad1 DL |
1130 | * On Solaris, CTRL-t is ignored by Emacs when you use |
1131 | the fr.ISO-8859-15 locale (and maybe other related locales). | |
1132 | ||
1133 | You can fix this by editing the file: | |
1134 | ||
1135 | /usr/openwin/lib/locale/iso8859-15/Compose | |
177c0ea7 | 1136 | |
a933dad1 DL |
1137 | Near the bottom there is a line that reads: |
1138 | ||
1139 | Ctrl<t> <quotedbl> <Y> : "\276" threequarters | |
1140 | ||
1141 | that should read: | |
1142 | ||
1143 | Ctrl<T> <quotedbl> <Y> : "\276" threequarters | |
1144 | ||
1145 | Note the lower case <t>. Changing this line should make C-t work. | |
1146 | ||
1147 | * Emacs on Digital Unix 4.0 fails to build, giving error message | |
1148 | Invalid dimension for the charset-ID 160 | |
1149 | ||
1150 | This is due to a bug or an installation problem in GCC 2.8.0. | |
1151 | Installing a more recent version of GCC fixes the problem. | |
1152 | ||
1153 | * Buffers from `with-output-to-temp-buffer' get set up in Help mode. | |
1154 | ||
1155 | Changes in Emacs 20.4 to the hooks used by that function cause | |
1156 | problems for some packages, specifically BBDB. See the function's | |
1157 | documentation for the hooks involved. BBDB 2.00.06 fixes the problem. | |
1158 | ||
1159 | * Under X, C-v and/or other keys don't work. | |
1160 | ||
1161 | These may have been intercepted by your window manager. In | |
1162 | particular, AfterStep 1.6 is reported to steal C-v in its default | |
1163 | configuration. Various Meta keys are also likely to be taken by the | |
1164 | configuration of the `feel'. See the WM's documentation for how to | |
1165 | change this. | |
1166 | ||
1167 | * When using Exceed, fonts sometimes appear too tall. | |
1168 | ||
1169 | When the display is set to an Exceed X-server and fonts are specified | |
1170 | (either explicitly with the -fn option or implicitly with X resources) | |
1171 | then the fonts may appear "too tall". The actual character sizes are | |
177c0ea7 JB |
1172 | correct but there is too much vertical spacing between rows, which |
1173 | gives the appearance of "double spacing". | |
a933dad1 | 1174 | |
e9a0a549 | 1175 | To prevent this, turn off the Exceed's "automatic font substitution" |
a933dad1 DL |
1176 | feature (in the font part of the configuration window). |
1177 | ||
a933dad1 DL |
1178 | * Failure in unexec while dumping emacs on Digital Unix 4.0 |
1179 | ||
1180 | This problem manifests itself as an error message | |
1181 | ||
1182 | unexec: Bad address, writing data section to ... | |
1183 | ||
1184 | The user suspects that this happened because his X libraries | |
1185 | were built for an older system version, | |
1186 | ||
1187 | ./configure --x-includes=/usr/include --x-libraries=/usr/shlib | |
1188 | ||
1189 | made the problem go away. | |
1190 | ||
1191 | * No visible display on mips-sgi-irix6.2 when compiling with GCC 2.8.1. | |
1192 | ||
1193 | This problem went away after installing the latest IRIX patches | |
1194 | as of 8 Dec 1998. | |
1195 | ||
1196 | The same problem has been reported on Irix 6.3. | |
1197 | ||
1198 | * As of version 20.4, Emacs doesn't work properly if configured for | |
1199 | the Motif toolkit and linked against the free LessTif library. The | |
1200 | next Emacs release is expected to work with LessTif. | |
1201 | ||
1202 | * Emacs gives the error, Couldn't find per display information. | |
1203 | ||
1204 | This can result if the X server runs out of memory because Emacs uses | |
1205 | a large number of fonts. On systems where this happens, C-h h is | |
1206 | likely to cause it. | |
1207 | ||
1208 | We do not know of a way to prevent the problem. | |
1209 | ||
1210 | * Emacs makes HPUX 11.0 crash. | |
1211 | ||
1212 | This is a bug in HPUX; HPUX patch PHKL_16260 is said to fix it. | |
1213 | ||
1214 | * Emacs crashes during dumping on the HPPA machine (HPUX 10.20). | |
1215 | ||
1216 | This seems to be due to a GCC bug; it is fixed in GCC 2.8.1. | |
1217 | ||
1218 | * The Hyperbole package causes *Help* buffers not to be displayed in | |
1219 | Help mode due to setting `temp-buffer-show-hook' rather than using | |
1220 | `add-hook'. Using `(add-hook 'temp-buffer-show-hook | |
1221 | 'help-mode-maybe)' after loading Hyperbole should fix this. | |
1222 | ||
1223 | * Versions of the PSGML package earlier than 1.0.3 (stable) or 1.1.2 | |
1224 | (alpha) fail to parse DTD files correctly in Emacs 20.3 and later. | |
1225 | Here is a patch for psgml-parse.el from PSGML 1.0.1 and, probably, | |
1226 | earlier versions. | |
1227 | ||
1228 | --- psgml-parse.el 1998/08/21 19:18:18 1.1 | |
1229 | +++ psgml-parse.el 1998/08/21 19:20:00 | |
1230 | @@ -2383,7 +2383,7 @@ (defun sgml-push-to-entity (entity &opti | |
1231 | (setq sgml-buffer-parse-state nil)) | |
1232 | (cond | |
1233 | ((stringp entity) ; a file name | |
1234 | - (save-excursion (insert-file-contents entity)) | |
1235 | + (insert-file-contents entity) | |
1236 | (setq default-directory (file-name-directory entity))) | |
1237 | ((consp (sgml-entity-text entity)) ; external id? | |
1238 | (let* ((extid (sgml-entity-text entity)) | |
1239 | ||
d238f982 EZ |
1240 | * Emacs 21 freezes when visiting a TeX file with AUC TeX installed. |
1241 | ||
1242 | Emacs 21 needs version 10 or later of AUC TeX; upgrading should solve | |
1243 | these problems. | |
1244 | ||
d7185f9d EZ |
1245 | * No colors in AUC TeX with Emacs 21. |
1246 | ||
1247 | Upgrade to AUC TeX version 10 or later, and make sure it is | |
1248 | byte-compiled with Emacs 21. | |
1249 | ||
d238f982 | 1250 | * Running TeX from AUC TeX package with Emacs 20.3 gives a Lisp error |
a933dad1 DL |
1251 | about a read-only tex output buffer. |
1252 | ||
1253 | This problem appeared for AUC TeX version 9.9j and some earlier | |
1254 | versions. Here is a patch for the file tex-buf.el in the AUC TeX | |
1255 | package. | |
1256 | ||
1257 | diff -c auctex/tex-buf.el~ auctex/tex-buf.el | |
1258 | *** auctex/tex-buf.el~ Wed Jul 29 18:35:32 1998 | |
1259 | --- auctex/tex-buf.el Sat Sep 5 15:20:38 1998 | |
1260 | *************** | |
1261 | *** 545,551 **** | |
1262 | (dir (TeX-master-directory))) | |
1263 | (TeX-process-check file) ; Check that no process is running | |
1264 | (setq TeX-command-buffer (current-buffer)) | |
1265 | ! (with-output-to-temp-buffer buffer) | |
1266 | (set-buffer buffer) | |
1267 | (if dir (cd dir)) | |
1268 | (insert "Running `" name "' on `" file "' with ``" command "''\n") | |
1269 | - --- 545,552 ---- | |
1270 | (dir (TeX-master-directory))) | |
1271 | (TeX-process-check file) ; Check that no process is running | |
1272 | (setq TeX-command-buffer (current-buffer)) | |
1273 | ! (let (temp-buffer-show-function temp-buffer-show-hook) | |
1274 | ! (with-output-to-temp-buffer buffer)) | |
1275 | (set-buffer buffer) | |
1276 | (if dir (cd dir)) | |
1277 | (insert "Running `" name "' on `" file "' with ``" command "''\n") | |
1278 | ||
1279 | * On Irix 6.3, substituting environment variables in file names | |
1280 | in the minibuffer gives peculiar error messages such as | |
1281 | ||
1282 | Substituting nonexistent environment variable "" | |
1283 | ||
1284 | This is not an Emacs bug; it is caused by something in SGI patch | |
1285 | 003082 August 11, 1998. | |
1286 | ||
1287 | * After a while, Emacs slips into unibyte mode. | |
1288 | ||
1289 | The VM mail package, which is not part of Emacs, sometimes does | |
1290 | (standard-display-european t) | |
177c0ea7 | 1291 | That should be changed to |
a933dad1 DL |
1292 | (standard-display-european 1 t) |
1293 | ||
1294 | * Installing Emacs gets an error running `install-info'. | |
1295 | ||
1296 | You need to install a recent version of Texinfo; that package | |
1297 | supplies the `install-info' command. | |
1298 | ||
1299 | * Emacs does not recognize the AltGr key, on HPUX. | |
1300 | ||
1301 | To fix this, set up a file ~/.dt/sessions/sessionetc with executable | |
1302 | rights, containing this text: | |
1303 | ||
1304 | -------------------------------- | |
1305 | xmodmap 2> /dev/null - << EOF | |
1306 | keysym Alt_L = Meta_L | |
1307 | keysym Alt_R = Meta_R | |
1308 | EOF | |
1309 | ||
1310 | xmodmap - << EOF | |
1311 | clear mod1 | |
1312 | keysym Mode_switch = NoSymbol | |
1313 | add mod1 = Meta_L | |
1314 | keysym Meta_R = Mode_switch | |
1315 | add mod2 = Mode_switch | |
1316 | EOF | |
1317 | -------------------------------- | |
1318 | ||
17a37d87 EZ |
1319 | * Emacs hangs on KDE when a large portion of text is killed. |
1320 | ||
62c485d2 GM |
1321 | This is caused by a bug in the KDE applet `klipper' which periodically |
1322 | requests the X clipboard contents from applications. Early versions | |
1323 | of klipper don't implement the ICCM protocol for large selections, | |
1324 | which leads to Emacs being flooded with selection requests. After a | |
1325 | while, Emacs will print a message: | |
17a37d87 EZ |
1326 | |
1327 | Timed out waiting for property-notify event | |
1328 | ||
62c485d2 | 1329 | A workaround is to not use `klipper'. |
17a37d87 | 1330 | |
a933dad1 DL |
1331 | * Emacs compiled with DJGPP for MS-DOS/MS-Windows cannot access files |
1332 | in the directory with the special name `dev' under the root of any | |
1333 | drive, e.g. `c:/dev'. | |
1334 | ||
1335 | This is an unfortunate side-effect of the support for Unix-style | |
1336 | device names such as /dev/null in the DJGPP runtime library. A | |
1337 | work-around is to rename the problem directory to another name. | |
1338 | ||
1339 | * M-SPC seems to be ignored as input. | |
1340 | ||
1341 | See if your X server is set up to use this as a command | |
1342 | for character composition. | |
1343 | ||
1344 | * Emacs startup on GNU/Linux systems (and possibly other systems) is slow. | |
1345 | ||
1346 | This can happen if the system is misconfigured and Emacs can't get the | |
1347 | full qualified domain name, FQDN. You should have your FQDN in the | |
1348 | /etc/hosts file, something like this: | |
1349 | ||
1350 | 127.0.0.1 localhost | |
1351 | 129.187.137.82 nuc04.t30.physik.tu-muenchen.de nuc04 | |
1352 | ||
1353 | The way to set this up may vary on non-GNU systems. | |
1354 | ||
1355 | * Garbled display on non-X terminals when Emacs runs on Digital Unix 4.0. | |
1356 | ||
1357 | So far it appears that running `tset' triggers this problem (when TERM | |
1358 | is vt100, at least). If you do not run `tset', then Emacs displays | |
1359 | properly. If someone can tell us precisely which effect of running | |
1360 | `tset' actually causes the problem, we may be able to implement a fix | |
1361 | in Emacs. | |
1362 | ||
1363 | * When you run Ispell from Emacs, it reports a "misalignment" error. | |
1364 | ||
3d00585e EZ |
1365 | This can happen if you compiled the Ispell program to use ASCII |
1366 | characters only and then try to use it from Emacs with non-ASCII | |
1367 | characters, like Latin-1. The solution is to recompile Ispell with | |
1368 | support for 8-bit characters. | |
a933dad1 | 1369 | |
3d00585e EZ |
1370 | To see whether your Ispell program supports 8-bit characters, type |
1371 | this at your shell's prompt: | |
1372 | ||
1373 | ispell -vv | |
1374 | ||
1375 | and look in the output for the string "NO8BIT". If Ispell says | |
1376 | "!NO8BIT (8BIT)", your speller supports 8-bit characters; otherwise it | |
1377 | does not. | |
1378 | ||
1379 | To rebuild Ispell with 8-bit character support, edit the local.h file | |
1380 | in the Ispell distribution and make sure it does _not_ define NO8BIT. | |
1381 | Then rebuild the speller. | |
1382 | ||
1383 | Another possible cause for "misalignment" error messages is that the | |
1384 | version of Ispell installed on your machine is old. Upgrade. | |
1385 | ||
1386 | Yet another possibility is that you are trying to spell-check a word | |
1387 | in a language that doesn't fit the dictionary you choose for use by | |
1388 | Ispell. (Ispell can only spell-check one language at a time, because | |
1389 | it uses a single dictionary.) Make sure that the text you are | |
1390 | spelling and the dictionary used by Ispell conform to each other. | |
a933dad1 | 1391 | |
7838ea1b GM |
1392 | If your spell-checking program is Aspell, it has been reported that if |
1393 | you have a personal configuration file (normally ~/.aspell.conf), it | |
1394 | can cause this error. Remove that file, execute `ispell-kill-ispell' | |
1395 | in Emacs, and then try spell-checking again. | |
1396 | ||
a933dad1 DL |
1397 | * On Linux-based GNU systems using libc versions 5.4.19 through |
1398 | 5.4.22, Emacs crashes at startup with a segmentation fault. | |
1399 | ||
1400 | This problem happens if libc defines the symbol __malloc_initialized. | |
1401 | One known solution is to upgrade to a newer libc version. 5.4.33 is | |
1402 | known to work. | |
1403 | ||
c34607fc | 1404 | * On MS-Windows, you cannot use the right-hand ALT key and the left-hand |
a933dad1 DL |
1405 | CTRL key together to type a Control-Meta character. |
1406 | ||
1407 | This is a consequence of a misfeature beyond Emacs's control. | |
1408 | ||
1409 | Under Windows, the AltGr key on international keyboards generates key | |
1410 | events with the modifiers Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl. Since Emacs cannot | |
1411 | distinguish AltGr from an explicit Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl | |
1412 | combination, whenever it sees Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl it assumes that | |
c24be289 JR |
1413 | AltGr has been pressed. The variable `w32-recognize-altgr' can be set |
1414 | to nil to tell Emacs that AltGr is really Ctrl and Alt. | |
a933dad1 | 1415 | |
b5cb4652 EZ |
1416 | * Emacs crashes when using the Exceed 6.0 X server |
1417 | ||
1418 | If you are using Exceed 6.1, upgrade to a later version. This was | |
1419 | reported to prevent the crashes. | |
1420 | ||
c34607fc | 1421 | * Under some X-servers running on MS-Windows, Emacs' display is incorrect |
a933dad1 DL |
1422 | |
1423 | The symptoms are that Emacs does not completely erase blank areas of the | |
1424 | screen during scrolling or some other screen operations (e.g., selective | |
1425 | display or when killing a region). M-x recenter will cause the screen | |
1426 | to be completely redisplayed and the "extra" characters will disappear. | |
1427 | ||
e9a0a549 EZ |
1428 | This is known to occur under Exceed 6, and possibly earlier versions |
1429 | as well; it is reportedly solved in version 6.2.0.16 and later. The | |
1430 | problem lies in the X-server settings. | |
a933dad1 DL |
1431 | |
1432 | There are reports that you can solve the problem with Exceed by | |
1433 | running `Xconfig' from within NT, choosing "X selection", then | |
1434 | un-checking the boxes "auto-copy X selection" and "auto-paste to X | |
1435 | selection". | |
1436 | ||
1437 | Of this does not work, please inform bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org. Then | |
1438 | please call support for your X-server and see if you can get a fix. | |
1439 | If you do, please send it to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org so we can list it | |
1440 | here. | |
1441 | ||
1442 | * On Solaris 2, Emacs dumps core when built with Motif. | |
1443 | ||
1444 | The Solaris Motif libraries are buggy, at least up through Solaris 2.5.1. | |
1445 | Install the current Motif runtime library patch appropriate for your host. | |
1446 | (Make sure the patch is current; some older patch versions still have the bug.) | |
1447 | You should install the other patches recommended by Sun for your host, too. | |
1448 | You can obtain Sun patches from ftp://sunsolve.sun.com/pub/patches/; | |
1449 | look for files with names ending in `.PatchReport' to see which patches | |
1450 | are currently recommended for your host. | |
1451 | ||
1452 | On Solaris 2.6, Emacs is said to work with Motif when Solaris patch | |
1453 | 105284-12 is installed, but fail when 105284-15 is installed. | |
1454 | 105284-18 might fix it again. | |
1455 | ||
3156909f PE |
1456 | * On Solaris 2.6 and 7, the Compose key does not work. |
1457 | ||
1458 | This is a bug in Motif in Solaris. Supposedly it has been fixed for | |
1459 | the next major release of Solaris. However, if someone with Sun | |
1460 | support complains to Sun about the bug, they may release a patch. | |
1461 | If you do this, mention Sun bug #4188711. | |
a933dad1 DL |
1462 | |
1463 | One workaround is to use a locale that allows non-ASCII characters. | |
1464 | For example, before invoking emacs, set the LC_ALL environment | |
1465 | variable to "en_US" (American English). The directory /usr/lib/locale | |
1466 | lists the supported locales; any locale other than "C" or "POSIX" | |
1467 | should do. | |
1468 | ||
3156909f PE |
1469 | pen@lysator.liu.se says (Feb 1998) that the Compose key does work |
1470 | if you link with the MIT X11 libraries instead of the Solaris X11 | |
1471 | libraries. | |
a933dad1 | 1472 | |
e96c5c69 JD |
1473 | * Frames may cover dialogs they created when using CDE. |
1474 | ||
1475 | This can happen if you have "Allow Primary Windows On Top" enabled which | |
1476 | seems to be the default in the Common Desktop Environment. | |
1477 | To change, go in to "Desktop Controls" -> "Window Style Manager" | |
1478 | and uncheck "Allow Primary Windows On Top". | |
1479 | ||
a933dad1 DL |
1480 | * Emacs does not know your host's fully-qualified domain name. |
1481 | ||
1482 | You need to configure your machine with a fully qualified domain name, | |
1483 | either in /etc/hosts, /etc/hostname, the NIS, or wherever your system | |
1484 | calls for specifying this. | |
1485 | ||
1486 | If you cannot fix the configuration, you can set the Lisp variable | |
1487 | mail-host-address to the value you want. | |
1488 | ||
1489 | * Error 12 (virtual memory exceeded) when dumping Emacs, on UnixWare 2.1 | |
1490 | ||
1491 | Paul Abrahams (abrahams@acm.org) reports that with the installed | |
1492 | virtual memory settings for UnixWare 2.1.2, an Error 12 occurs during | |
1493 | the "make" that builds Emacs, when running temacs to dump emacs. That | |
1494 | error indicates that the per-process virtual memory limit has been | |
1495 | exceeded. The default limit is probably 32MB. Raising the virtual | |
1496 | memory limit to 40MB should make it possible to finish building Emacs. | |
1497 | ||
1498 | You can do this with the command `ulimit' (sh) or `limit' (csh). | |
1499 | But you have to be root to do it. | |
1500 | ||
1501 | According to Martin Sohnius, you can also retune this in the kernel: | |
1502 | ||
1503 | # /etc/conf/bin/idtune SDATLIM 33554432 ## soft data size limit | |
1504 | # /etc/conf/bin/idtune HDATLIM 33554432 ## hard " | |
1505 | # /etc/conf/bin/idtune SVMMSIZE unlimited ## soft process size limit | |
1506 | # /etc/conf/bin/idtune HVMMSIZE unlimited ## hard " | |
1507 | # /etc/conf/bin/idbuild -B | |
1508 | ||
1509 | (He recommends you not change the stack limit, though.) | |
1510 | These changes take effect when you reboot. | |
1511 | ||
1512 | * Redisplay using X11 is much slower than previous Emacs versions. | |
1513 | ||
1514 | We've noticed that certain X servers draw the text much slower when | |
1515 | scroll bars are on the left. We don't know why this happens. If this | |
1516 | happens to you, you can work around it by putting the scroll bars | |
1517 | on the right (as they were in Emacs 19). | |
1518 | ||
1519 | Here's how to do this: | |
1520 | ||
1521 | (set-scroll-bar-mode 'right) | |
1522 | ||
1523 | If you're not sure whether (or how much) this problem affects you, | |
1524 | try that and see how much difference it makes. To set things back | |
1525 | to normal, do | |
1526 | ||
1527 | (set-scroll-bar-mode 'left) | |
1528 | ||
1529 | * Under X11, some characters appear as hollow boxes. | |
1530 | ||
1531 | Each X11 font covers just a fraction of the characters that Emacs | |
1532 | supports. To display the whole range of Emacs characters requires | |
1533 | many different fonts, collected into a fontset. | |
1534 | ||
1535 | If some of the fonts called for in your fontset do not exist on your X | |
1536 | server, then the characters that have no font appear as hollow boxes. | |
1537 | You can remedy the problem by installing additional fonts. | |
1538 | ||
1539 | The intlfonts distribution includes a full spectrum of fonts that can | |
1540 | display all the characters Emacs supports. | |
1541 | ||
4c635a29 DL |
1542 | Another cause of this for specific characters is fonts which have a |
1543 | missing glyph and no default character. This is known ot occur for | |
1544 | character number 160 (no-break space) in some fonts, such as Lucida | |
1545 | but Emacs sets the display table for the unibyte and Latin-1 version | |
1546 | of this character to display a space. | |
1547 | ||
a933dad1 DL |
1548 | * Under X11, some characters appear improperly aligned in their lines. |
1549 | ||
1550 | You may have bad X11 fonts; try installing the intlfonts distribution. | |
1551 | ||
1552 | * Certain fonts make each line take one pixel more than it "should". | |
1553 | ||
1554 | This is because these fonts contain characters a little taller | |
1555 | than the font's nominal height. Emacs needs to make sure that | |
1556 | lines do not overlap. | |
1557 | ||
1558 | * You request inverse video, and the first Emacs frame is in inverse | |
1559 | video, but later frames are not in inverse video. | |
1560 | ||
1561 | This can happen if you have an old version of the custom library in | |
1562 | your search path for Lisp packages. Use M-x list-load-path-shadows to | |
1563 | check whether this is true. If it is, delete the old custom library. | |
1564 | ||
1565 | * In FreeBSD 2.1.5, useless symbolic links remain in /tmp or other | |
1566 | directories that have the +t bit. | |
1567 | ||
1568 | This is because of a kernel bug in FreeBSD 2.1.5 (fixed in 2.2). | |
1569 | Emacs uses symbolic links to implement file locks. In a directory | |
1570 | with +t bit, the directory owner becomes the owner of the symbolic | |
1571 | link, so that it cannot be removed by anyone else. | |
1572 | ||
1573 | If you don't like those useless links, you can let Emacs not to using | |
1574 | file lock by adding #undef CLASH_DETECTION to config.h. | |
1575 | ||
1576 | * When using M-x dbx with the SparcWorks debugger, the `up' and `down' | |
1577 | commands do not move the arrow in Emacs. | |
1578 | ||
1579 | You can fix this by adding the following line to `~/.dbxinit': | |
1580 | ||
1581 | dbxenv output_short_file_name off | |
1582 | ||
1583 | * Emacs says it has saved a file, but the file does not actually | |
1584 | appear on disk. | |
1585 | ||
1586 | This can happen on certain systems when you are using NFS, if the | |
1587 | remote disk is full. It is due to a bug in NFS (or certain NFS | |
1588 | implementations), and there is apparently nothing Emacs can do to | |
1589 | detect the problem. Emacs checks the failure codes of all the system | |
1590 | calls involved in writing a file, including `close'; but in the case | |
1591 | where the problem occurs, none of those system calls fails. | |
1592 | ||
1593 | * "Compose Character" key does strange things when used as a Meta key. | |
1594 | ||
1595 | If you define one key to serve as both Meta and Compose Character, you | |
1596 | will get strange results. In previous Emacs versions, this "worked" | |
1597 | in that the key acted as Meta--that's because the older Emacs versions | |
1598 | did not try to support Compose Character. Now Emacs tries to do | |
1599 | character composition in the standard X way. This means that you | |
1600 | must pick one meaning or the other for any given key. | |
1601 | ||
1602 | You can use both functions (Meta, and Compose Character) if you assign | |
1603 | them to two different keys. | |
1604 | ||
1605 | * Emacs gets a segmentation fault at startup, on AIX4.2. | |
1606 | ||
1607 | If you are using IBM's xlc compiler, compile emacs.c | |
1608 | without optimization; that should avoid the problem. | |
1609 | ||
1610 | * movemail compiled with POP support can't connect to the POP server. | |
1611 | ||
1612 | Make sure that the `pop' entry in /etc/services, or in the services | |
1613 | NIS map if your machine uses NIS, has the same port number as the | |
1614 | entry on the POP server. A common error is for the POP server to be | |
1615 | listening on port 110, the assigned port for the POP3 protocol, while | |
1616 | the client is trying to connect on port 109, the assigned port for the | |
1617 | old POP protocol. | |
1618 | ||
1619 | * Emacs crashes in x-popup-dialog. | |
1620 | ||
1621 | This can happen if the dialog widget cannot find the font it wants to | |
1622 | use. You can work around the problem by specifying another font with | |
1623 | an X resource--for example, `Emacs.dialog*.font: 9x15' (or any font that | |
1624 | happens to exist on your X server). | |
1625 | ||
1626 | * Emacs crashes when you use Bibtex mode. | |
1627 | ||
1628 | This happens if your system puts a small limit on stack size. You can | |
1629 | prevent the problem by using a suitable shell command (often `ulimit') | |
1630 | to raise the stack size limit before you run Emacs. | |
1631 | ||
1632 | Patches to raise the stack size limit automatically in `main' | |
1633 | (src/emacs.c) on various systems would be greatly appreciated. | |
1634 | ||
1635 | * Emacs crashes with SIGBUS or SIGSEGV on HPUX 9 after you delete a frame. | |
1636 | ||
1637 | We think this is due to a bug in the X libraries provided by HP. With | |
1638 | the alternative X libraries in /usr/contrib/mitX11R5/lib, the problem | |
1639 | does not happen. | |
1640 | ||
1641 | * Emacs crashes with SIGBUS or SIGSEGV on Solaris after you delete a frame. | |
1642 | ||
1643 | We suspect that this is a similar bug in the X libraries provided by | |
1644 | Sun. There is a report that one of these patches fixes the bug and | |
1645 | makes the problem stop: | |
1646 | ||
1647 | 105216-01 105393-01 105518-01 105621-01 105665-01 105615-02 105216-02 | |
1648 | 105667-01 105401-08 105615-03 105621-02 105686-02 105736-01 105755-03 | |
1649 | 106033-01 105379-01 105786-01 105181-04 105379-03 105786-04 105845-01 | |
1650 | 105284-05 105669-02 105837-01 105837-02 105558-01 106125-02 105407-01 | |
1651 | ||
1652 | Another person using a newer system (kernel patch level Generic_105181-06) | |
1653 | suspects that the bug was fixed by one of these more recent patches: | |
1654 | ||
1655 | 106040-07 SunOS 5.6: X Input & Output Method patch | |
1656 | 106222-01 OpenWindows 3.6: filemgr (ff.core) fixes | |
1657 | 105284-12 Motif 1.2.7: sparc Runtime library patch | |
1658 | ||
c34607fc | 1659 | * Problems running Perl under Emacs on MS-Windows NT/95. |
a933dad1 DL |
1660 | |
1661 | `perl -de 0' just hangs when executed in an Emacs subshell. | |
1662 | The fault lies with Perl (indirectly with Windows NT/95). | |
1663 | ||
1664 | The problem is that the Perl debugger explicitly opens a connection to | |
1665 | "CON", which is the DOS/NT equivalent of "/dev/tty", for interacting | |
1666 | with the user. | |
1667 | ||
1668 | On Unix, this is okay, because Emacs (or the shell?) creates a | |
1669 | pseudo-tty so that /dev/tty is really the pipe Emacs is using to | |
1670 | communicate with the subprocess. | |
1671 | ||
1672 | On NT, this fails because CON always refers to the handle for the | |
1673 | relevant console (approximately equivalent to a tty), and cannot be | |
1674 | redirected to refer to the pipe Emacs assigned to the subprocess as | |
1675 | stdin. | |
1676 | ||
1677 | A workaround is to modify perldb.pl to use STDIN/STDOUT instead of CON. | |
1678 | ||
1679 | For Perl 4: | |
1680 | ||
1681 | *** PERL/LIB/PERLDB.PL.orig Wed May 26 08:24:18 1993 | |
1682 | --- PERL/LIB/PERLDB.PL Mon Jul 01 15:28:16 1996 | |
1683 | *************** | |
1684 | *** 68,74 **** | |
1685 | $rcfile=".perldb"; | |
1686 | } | |
1687 | else { | |
1688 | ! $console = "con"; | |
1689 | $rcfile="perldb.ini"; | |
1690 | } | |
1691 | ||
1692 | --- 68,74 ---- | |
1693 | $rcfile=".perldb"; | |
1694 | } | |
1695 | else { | |
1696 | ! $console = ""; | |
1697 | $rcfile="perldb.ini"; | |
1698 | } | |
1699 | ||
1700 | ||
1701 | For Perl 5: | |
1702 | *** perl/5.001/lib/perl5db.pl.orig Sun Jun 04 21:13:40 1995 | |
1703 | --- perl/5.001/lib/perl5db.pl Mon Jul 01 17:00:08 1996 | |
1704 | *************** | |
1705 | *** 22,28 **** | |
1706 | $rcfile=".perldb"; | |
1707 | } | |
1708 | elsif (-e "con") { | |
1709 | ! $console = "con"; | |
1710 | $rcfile="perldb.ini"; | |
1711 | } | |
1712 | else { | |
1713 | --- 22,28 ---- | |
1714 | $rcfile=".perldb"; | |
1715 | } | |
1716 | elsif (-e "con") { | |
1717 | ! $console = ""; | |
1718 | $rcfile="perldb.ini"; | |
1719 | } | |
1720 | else { | |
1721 | ||
a933dad1 DL |
1722 | * Problems on MS-DOG if DJGPP v2.0 is used to compile Emacs: |
1723 | ||
1724 | There are two DJGPP library bugs which cause problems: | |
1725 | ||
1726 | * Running `shell-command' (or `compile', or `grep') you get | |
1727 | `Searching for program: permission denied (EACCES), c:/command.com'; | |
1728 | * After you shell to DOS, Ctrl-Break kills Emacs. | |
1729 | ||
1730 | To work around these bugs, you can use two files in the msdos | |
1731 | subdirectory: `is_exec.c' and `sigaction.c'. Compile them and link | |
1732 | them into the Emacs executable `temacs'; then they will replace the | |
1733 | incorrect library functions. | |
1734 | ||
c34607fc | 1735 | * When compiling with DJGPP on MS-Windows NT, "config msdos" fails. |
f1e54ce1 EZ |
1736 | |
1737 | If the error message is "VDM has been already loaded", this is because | |
1738 | Windows has a program called `redir.exe' that is incompatible with a | |
1739 | program by the same name supplied with DJGPP, which is used by | |
1740 | config.bat. To resolve this, move the DJGPP's `bin' subdirectory to | |
1741 | the front of your PATH environment variable. | |
1742 | ||
c34607fc | 1743 | * When compiling with DJGPP on MS-Windows 95, Make fails for some targets |
a933dad1 DL |
1744 | like make-docfile. |
1745 | ||
1746 | This can happen if long file name support (the setting of environment | |
1747 | variable LFN) when Emacs distribution was unpacked and during | |
1748 | compilation are not the same. See the MSDOG section of INSTALL for | |
1749 | the explanation of how to avoid this problem. | |
1750 | ||
1751 | * Emacs compiled for MSDOS cannot find some Lisp files, or other | |
1752 | run-time support files, when long filename support is enabled. | |
a01325b8 EZ |
1753 | |
1754 | Usually, this problem will manifest itself when Emacs exits | |
a933dad1 DL |
1755 | immediately after flashing the startup screen, because it cannot find |
1756 | the Lisp files it needs to load at startup. Redirect Emacs stdout | |
a01325b8 EZ |
1757 | and stderr to a file to see the error message printed by Emacs. |
1758 | ||
1759 | Another manifestation of this problem is that Emacs is unable to load | |
1760 | the support for editing program sources in languages such as C and | |
1761 | Lisp. | |
a933dad1 DL |
1762 | |
1763 | This can happen if the Emacs distribution was unzipped without LFN | |
1764 | support, thus causing long filenames to be truncated to the first 6 | |
1765 | characters and a numeric tail that Windows 95 normally attaches to it. | |
1766 | You should unzip the files again with a utility that supports long | |
1767 | filenames (such as djtar from DJGPP or InfoZip's UnZip program | |
1768 | compiled with DJGPP v2). The MSDOG section of the file INSTALL | |
1769 | explains this issue in more detail. | |
1770 | ||
a01325b8 EZ |
1771 | Another possible reason for such failures is that Emacs compiled for |
1772 | MSDOS is used on Windows NT, where long file names are not supported | |
1773 | by this version of Emacs, but the distribution was unpacked by an | |
1774 | unzip program that preserved the long file names instead of truncating | |
1775 | them to DOS 8+3 limits. To be useful on NT, the MSDOS port of Emacs | |
1776 | must be unzipped by a DOS utility, so that long file names are | |
1777 | properly truncated. | |
1778 | ||
a933dad1 DL |
1779 | * Emacs compiled with DJGPP complains at startup: |
1780 | ||
1781 | "Wrong type of argument: internal-facep, msdos-menu-active-face" | |
1782 | ||
1783 | This can happen if you define an environment variable `TERM'. Emacs | |
1784 | on MSDOS uses an internal terminal emulator which is disabled if the | |
1785 | value of `TERM' is anything but the string "internal". Emacs then | |
1786 | works as if its terminal were a dumb glass teletype that doesn't | |
1787 | support faces. To work around this, arrange for `TERM' to be | |
1788 | undefined when Emacs runs. The best way to do that is to add an | |
1789 | [emacs] section to the DJGPP.ENV file which defines an empty value for | |
1790 | `TERM'; this way, only Emacs gets the empty value, while the rest of | |
1791 | your system works as before. | |
1792 | ||
c34607fc | 1793 | * On MS-Windows 95, Alt-f6 does not get through to Emacs. |
a933dad1 DL |
1794 | |
1795 | This character seems to be trapped by the kernel in Windows 95. | |
1796 | You can enter M-f6 by typing ESC f6. | |
1797 | ||
c34607fc | 1798 | * Typing Alt-Shift has strange effects on MS-Windows. |
a933dad1 DL |
1799 | |
1800 | This combination of keys is a command to change keyboard layout. If | |
1801 | you proceed to type another non-modifier key before you let go of Alt | |
c24be289 JR |
1802 | and Shift, the Alt and Shift act as modifiers in the usual way. A |
1803 | more permanent work around is to change it to another key combination, | |
1804 | or disable it in the keyboard control panel. | |
a933dad1 DL |
1805 | |
1806 | * `tparam' reported as a multiply-defined symbol when linking with ncurses. | |
1807 | ||
1808 | This problem results from an incompatible change in ncurses, in | |
1809 | version 1.9.9e approximately. This version is unable to provide a | |
1810 | definition of tparm without also defining tparam. This is also | |
1811 | incompatible with Terminfo; as a result, the Emacs Terminfo support | |
1812 | does not work with this version of ncurses. | |
1813 | ||
1814 | The fix is to install a newer version of ncurses, such as version 4.2. | |
1815 | ||
287890ea | 1816 | * Emacs does not start, complaining that it cannot open termcap database file. |
1dd8b979 | 1817 | |
10a763e5 RS |
1818 | If your system uses Terminfo rather than termcap (most modern |
1819 | systems do), this could happen if the proper version of | |
1820 | ncurses is not visible to the Emacs configure script (i.e. it | |
1821 | cannot be found along the usual path the linker looks for | |
1822 | libraries). It can happen because your version of ncurses is | |
1823 | obsolete, or is available only in form of binaries. | |
1824 | ||
1825 | The solution is to install an up-to-date version of ncurses in | |
1826 | the developer's form (header files, static libraries and | |
1827 | symbolic links); in some GNU/Linux distributions (e.g. Debian) | |
1828 | it constitutes a separate package. | |
1dd8b979 | 1829 | |
a933dad1 DL |
1830 | * Strange results from format %d in a few cases, on a Sun. |
1831 | ||
1832 | Sun compiler version SC3.0 has been found to miscompile part of | |
1833 | editfns.c. The workaround is to compile with some other compiler such | |
1834 | as GCC. | |
1835 | ||
1836 | * Output from subprocess (such as man or diff) is randomly truncated | |
1837 | on GNU/Linux systems. | |
1838 | ||
1839 | This is due to a kernel bug which seems to be fixed in Linux version | |
1840 | 1.3.75. | |
1841 | ||
1842 | * Error messages `internal facep []' happen on GNU/Linux systems. | |
1843 | ||
1844 | There is a report that replacing libc.so.5.0.9 with libc.so.5.2.16 | |
1845 | caused this to start happening. People are not sure why, but the | |
1846 | problem seems unlikely to be in Emacs itself. Some suspect that it | |
1847 | is actually Xlib which won't work with libc.so.5.2.16. | |
1848 | ||
1849 | Using the old library version is a workaround. | |
1850 | ||
1851 | * On Solaris, Emacs crashes if you use (display-time). | |
1852 | ||
1853 | This can happen if you configure Emacs without specifying the precise | |
1854 | version of Solaris that you are using. | |
1855 | ||
1856 | * Emacs dumps core on startup, on Solaris. | |
1857 | ||
1858 | Bill Sebok says that the cause of this is Solaris 2.4 vendor patch | |
1859 | 102303-05, which extends the Solaris linker to deal with the Solaris | |
1860 | Common Desktop Environment's linking needs. You can fix the problem | |
1861 | by removing this patch and installing patch 102049-02 instead. | |
1862 | However, that linker version won't work with CDE. | |
1863 | ||
1864 | Solaris 2.5 comes with a linker that has this bug. It is reported that if | |
1865 | you install all the latest patches (as of June 1996), the bug is fixed. | |
1866 | We suspect the crucial patch is one of these, but we don't know | |
1867 | for certain. | |
1868 | ||
177c0ea7 JB |
1869 | 103093-03: [README] SunOS 5.5: kernel patch (2140557 bytes) |
1870 | 102832-01: [README] OpenWindows 3.5: Xview Jumbo Patch (4181613 bytes) | |
a933dad1 DL |
1871 | 103242-04: [README] SunOS 5.5: linker patch (595363 bytes) |
1872 | ||
1873 | (One user reports that the bug was fixed by those patches together | |
1874 | with patches 102980-04, 103279-01, 103300-02, and 103468-01.) | |
1875 | ||
1876 | If you can determine which patch does fix the bug, please tell | |
1877 | bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org. | |
1878 | ||
1879 | Meanwhile, the GNU linker links Emacs properly on both Solaris 2.4 and | |
1880 | Solaris 2.5. | |
1881 | ||
1882 | * Emacs dumps core if lisp-complete-symbol is called, on Solaris. | |
1883 | ||
1884 | If you compile Emacs with the -fast or -xO4 option with version 3.0.2 | |
1885 | of the Sun C compiler, Emacs dumps core when lisp-complete-symbol is | |
1886 | called. The problem does not happen if you compile with GCC. | |
1887 | ||
1888 | * "Cannot find callback list" messages from dialog boxes on HPUX, in | |
1889 | Emacs built with Motif. | |
1890 | ||
1891 | This problem resulted from a bug in GCC 2.4.5. Newer GCC versions | |
1892 | such as 2.7.0 fix the problem. | |
1893 | ||
1894 | * On Irix 6.0, make tries (and fails) to build a program named unexelfsgi | |
1895 | ||
1896 | A compiler bug inserts spaces into the string "unexelfsgi . o" | |
1897 | in src/Makefile. Edit src/Makefile, after configure is run, | |
1898 | find that string, and take out the spaces. | |
1899 | ||
1900 | Compiler fixes in Irix 6.0.1 should eliminate this problem. | |
1901 | ||
1902 | * "out of virtual swap space" on Irix 5.3 | |
1903 | ||
1904 | This message occurs when the system runs out of swap space due to too | |
1905 | many large programs running. The solution is either to provide more | |
1906 | swap space or to reduce the number of large programs being run. You | |
1907 | can check the current status of the swap space by executing the | |
1908 | command `swap -l'. | |
1909 | ||
1910 | You can increase swap space by changing the file /etc/fstab. Adding a | |
1911 | line like this: | |
1912 | ||
1913 | /usr/swap/swap.more swap swap pri=3 0 0 | |
1914 | ||
1915 | where /usr/swap/swap.more is a file previously created (for instance | |
1916 | by using /etc/mkfile), will increase the swap space by the size of | |
1917 | that file. Execute `swap -m' or reboot the machine to activate the | |
1918 | new swap area. See the manpages for `swap' and `fstab' for further | |
1919 | information. | |
1920 | ||
1921 | The objectserver daemon can use up lots of memory because it can be | |
1922 | swamped with NIS information. It collects information about all users | |
1923 | on the network that can log on to the host. | |
1924 | ||
1925 | If you want to disable the objectserver completely, you can execute | |
1926 | the command `chkconfig objectserver off' and reboot. That may disable | |
1927 | some of the window system functionality, such as responding CDROM | |
1928 | icons. | |
1929 | ||
1930 | You can also remove NIS support from the objectserver. The SGI `admin' | |
1931 | FAQ has a detailed description on how to do that; see question 35 | |
1932 | ("Why isn't the objectserver working?"). The admin FAQ can be found at | |
1933 | ftp://viz.tamu.edu/pub/sgi/faq/. | |
1934 | ||
1935 | * With certain fonts, when the cursor appears on a character, the | |
1936 | character doesn't appear--you get a solid box instead. | |
1937 | ||
1938 | One user on a Linux-based GNU system reported that this problem went | |
1939 | away with installation of a new X server. The failing server was | |
1940 | XFree86 3.1.1. XFree86 3.1.2 works. | |
1941 | ||
1942 | * On SunOS 4.1.3, Emacs unpredictably crashes in _yp_dobind_soft. | |
1943 | ||
1944 | This happens if you configure Emacs specifying just `sparc-sun-sunos4' | |
1945 | on a system that is version 4.1.3. You must specify the precise | |
1946 | version number (or let configure figure out the configuration, which | |
1947 | it can do perfectly well for SunOS). | |
1948 | ||
1949 | * On SunOS 4, Emacs processes keep going after you kill the X server | |
1950 | (or log out, if you logged in using X). | |
1951 | ||
1952 | Someone reported that recompiling with GCC 2.7.0 fixed this problem. | |
1953 | ||
1954 | * On AIX 4, some programs fail when run in a Shell buffer | |
1955 | with an error message like No terminfo entry for "unknown". | |
1956 | ||
1957 | On AIX, many terminal type definitions are not installed by default. | |
1958 | `unknown' is one of them. Install the "Special Generic Terminal | |
1959 | Definitions" to make them defined. | |
1960 | ||
1961 | * On SunOS, you get linker errors | |
177c0ea7 | 1962 | ld: Undefined symbol |
a933dad1 DL |
1963 | _get_wmShellWidgetClass |
1964 | _get_applicationShellWidgetClass | |
1965 | ||
1966 | The fix to this is to install patch 100573 for OpenWindows 3.0 | |
1967 | or link libXmu statically. | |
1968 | ||
1969 | * On AIX 4.1.2, linker error messages such as | |
1970 | ld: 0711-212 SEVERE ERROR: Symbol .__quous, found in the global symbol table | |
1971 | of archive /usr/lib/libIM.a, was not defined in archive member shr.o. | |
1972 | ||
1973 | This is a problem in libIM.a. You can work around it by executing | |
1974 | these shell commands in the src subdirectory of the directory where | |
1975 | you build Emacs: | |
1976 | ||
1977 | cp /usr/lib/libIM.a . | |
1978 | chmod 664 libIM.a | |
1979 | ranlib libIM.a | |
1980 | ||
1981 | Then change -lIM to ./libIM.a in the command to link temacs (in | |
1982 | Makefile). | |
1983 | ||
1984 | * Unpredictable segmentation faults on Solaris 2.3 and 2.4. | |
1985 | ||
1986 | A user reported that this happened in 19.29 when it was compiled with | |
1987 | the Sun compiler, but not when he recompiled with GCC 2.7.0. | |
1988 | ||
1989 | We do not know whether something in Emacs is partly to blame for this. | |
1990 | ||
1991 | * Emacs exits with "X protocol error" when run with an X server for | |
c34607fc | 1992 | MS-Windows. |
a933dad1 DL |
1993 | |
1994 | A certain X server for Windows had a bug which caused this. | |
1995 | Supposedly the newer 32-bit version of this server doesn't have the | |
1996 | problem. | |
1997 | ||
1998 | * Emacs crashes at startup on MSDOS. | |
1999 | ||
2000 | Some users report that Emacs 19.29 requires dpmi memory management, | |
2001 | and crashes on startup if the system does not have it. We don't yet | |
2002 | know why this happens--perhaps these machines don't have enough real | |
2003 | memory, or perhaps something is wrong in Emacs or the compiler. | |
2004 | However, arranging to use dpmi support is a workaround. | |
2005 | ||
2006 | You can find out if you have a dpmi host by running go32 without | |
2007 | arguments; it will tell you if it uses dpmi memory. For more | |
2008 | information about dpmi memory, consult the djgpp FAQ. (djgpp | |
2009 | is the GNU C compiler as packaged for MSDOS.) | |
2010 | ||
2011 | Compiling Emacs under MSDOS is extremely sensitive for proper memory | |
2012 | configuration. If you experience problems during compilation, consider | |
2013 | removing some or all memory resident programs (notably disk caches) | |
2014 | and make sure that your memory managers are properly configured. See | |
2015 | the djgpp faq for configuration hints. | |
2016 | ||
2017 | * A position you specified in .Xdefaults is ignored, using twm. | |
2018 | ||
2019 | twm normally ignores "program-specified" positions. | |
2020 | You can tell it to obey them with this command in your `.twmrc' file: | |
2021 | ||
2022 | UsePPosition "on" #allow clients to request a position | |
2023 | ||
2024 | * Compiling lib-src says there is no rule to make test-distrib.c. | |
2025 | ||
2026 | This results from a bug in a VERY old version of GNU Sed. To solve | |
2027 | the problem, install the current version of GNU Sed, then rerun | |
2028 | Emacs's configure script. | |
2029 | ||
2030 | * Compiling wakeup, in lib-src, says it can't make wakeup.c. | |
2031 | ||
2032 | This results from a bug in GNU Sed version 2.03. To solve the | |
2033 | problem, install the current version of GNU Sed, then rerun Emacs's | |
2034 | configure script. | |
2035 | ||
2036 | * On Sunos 4.1.1, there are errors compiling sysdep.c. | |
2037 | ||
2038 | If you get errors such as | |
2039 | ||
2040 | "sysdep.c", line 2017: undefined structure or union | |
2041 | "sysdep.c", line 2017: undefined structure or union | |
2042 | "sysdep.c", line 2019: nodename undefined | |
2043 | ||
2044 | This can result from defining LD_LIBRARY_PATH. It is very tricky | |
2045 | to use that environment variable with Emacs. The Emacs configure | |
2046 | script links many test programs with the system libraries; you must | |
2047 | make sure that the libraries available to configure are the same | |
2048 | ones available when you build Emacs. | |
2049 | ||
2050 | * The right Alt key works wrong on German HP keyboards (and perhaps | |
2051 | other non-English HP keyboards too). | |
2052 | ||
2053 | This is because HPUX defines the modifiers wrong in X. Here is a | |
2054 | shell script to fix the problem; be sure that it is run after VUE | |
2055 | configures the X server. | |
2056 | ||
2057 | xmodmap 2> /dev/null - << EOF | |
2058 | keysym Alt_L = Meta_L | |
2059 | keysym Alt_R = Meta_R | |
2060 | EOF | |
2061 | ||
2062 | xmodmap - << EOF | |
2063 | clear mod1 | |
2064 | keysym Mode_switch = NoSymbol | |
2065 | add mod1 = Meta_L | |
2066 | keysym Meta_R = Mode_switch | |
2067 | add mod2 = Mode_switch | |
2068 | EOF | |
2069 | ||
2070 | * The Emacs window disappears when you type M-q. | |
2071 | ||
2072 | Some versions of the Open Look window manager interpret M-q as a quit | |
2073 | command for whatever window you are typing at. If you want to use | |
2074 | Emacs with that window manager, you should try to configure the window | |
2075 | manager to use some other command. You can disable the | |
2076 | shortcut keys entirely by adding this line to ~/.OWdefaults: | |
2077 | ||
2078 | OpenWindows.WindowMenuAccelerators: False | |
2079 | ||
2080 | * Emacs does not notice when you release the mouse. | |
2081 | ||
2082 | There are reports that this happened with (some) Microsoft mice and | |
2083 | that replacing the mouse made it stop. | |
2084 | ||
2085 | * Trouble using ptys on IRIX, or running out of ptys. | |
2086 | ||
2087 | The program mkpts (which may be in `/usr/adm' or `/usr/sbin') needs to | |
2088 | be set-UID to root, or non-root programs like Emacs will not be able | |
2089 | to allocate ptys reliably. | |
2090 | ||
2091 | * On Irix 5.2, unexelfsgi.c can't find cmplrs/stsupport.h. | |
2092 | ||
2093 | The file cmplrs/stsupport.h was included in the wrong file set in the | |
2094 | Irix 5.2 distribution. You can find it in the optional fileset | |
2095 | compiler_dev, or copy it from some other Irix 5.2 system. A kludgy | |
2096 | workaround is to change unexelfsgi.c to include sym.h instead of | |
2097 | syms.h. | |
2098 | ||
2099 | * Slow startup on Linux-based GNU systems. | |
2100 | ||
2101 | People using systems based on the Linux kernel sometimes report that | |
2102 | startup takes 10 to 15 seconds longer than `usual'. | |
2103 | ||
2104 | This is because Emacs looks up the host name when it starts. | |
2105 | Normally, this takes negligible time; the extra delay is due to | |
2106 | improper system configuration. This problem can occur for both | |
2107 | networked and non-networked machines. | |
2108 | ||
2109 | Here is how to fix the configuration. It requires being root. | |
2110 | ||
2111 | ** Networked Case | |
2112 | ||
2113 | First, make sure the files `/etc/hosts' and `/etc/host.conf' both | |
2114 | exist. The first line in the `/etc/hosts' file should look like this | |
2115 | (replace HOSTNAME with your host name): | |
2116 | ||
2117 | 127.0.0.1 HOSTNAME | |
2118 | ||
2119 | Also make sure that the `/etc/host.conf' files contains the following | |
2120 | lines: | |
2121 | ||
177c0ea7 | 2122 | order hosts, bind |
a933dad1 DL |
2123 | multi on |
2124 | ||
2125 | Any changes, permanent and temporary, to the host name should be | |
2126 | indicated in the `/etc/hosts' file, since it acts a limited local | |
2127 | database of addresses and names (e.g., some SLIP connections | |
2128 | dynamically allocate ip addresses). | |
2129 | ||
2130 | ** Non-Networked Case | |
2131 | ||
2132 | The solution described in the networked case applies here as well. | |
2133 | However, if you never intend to network your machine, you can use a | |
2134 | simpler solution: create an empty `/etc/host.conf' file. The command | |
2135 | `touch /etc/host.conf' suffices to create the file. The `/etc/hosts' | |
2136 | file is not necessary with this approach. | |
2137 | ||
2138 | * On Solaris 2.4, Dired hangs and C-g does not work. Or Emacs hangs | |
2139 | forever waiting for termination of a subprocess that is a zombie. | |
2140 | ||
2141 | casper@fwi.uva.nl says the problem is in X11R6. Rebuild libX11.so | |
2142 | after changing the file xc/config/cf/sunLib.tmpl. Change the lines | |
2143 | ||
2144 | #if ThreadedX | |
2145 | #define SharedX11Reqs -lthread | |
2146 | #endif | |
2147 | ||
2148 | to: | |
2149 | ||
2150 | #if OSMinorVersion < 4 | |
2151 | #if ThreadedX | |
2152 | #define SharedX11Reqs -lthread | |
2153 | #endif | |
2154 | #endif | |
2155 | ||
2156 | Be sure also to edit x/config/cf/sun.cf so that OSMinorVersion is 4 | |
2157 | (as it should be for Solaris 2.4). The file has three definitions for | |
2158 | OSMinorVersion: the first is for x86, the second for SPARC under | |
2159 | Solaris, and the third for SunOS 4. Make sure to update the | |
2160 | definition for your type of machine and system. | |
2161 | ||
2162 | Then do `make Everything' in the top directory of X11R6, to rebuild | |
2163 | the makefiles and rebuild X. The X built this way work only on | |
2164 | Solaris 2.4, not on 2.3. | |
2165 | ||
2166 | For multithreaded X to work it is necessary to install patch | |
2167 | 101925-02 to fix problems in header files [2.4]. You need | |
2168 | to reinstall gcc or re-run just-fixinc after installing that | |
2169 | patch. | |
2170 | ||
2171 | However, Frank Rust <frust@iti.cs.tu-bs.de> used a simpler solution: | |
2172 | he changed | |
2173 | #define ThreadedX YES | |
2174 | to | |
2175 | #define ThreadedX NO | |
2176 | in sun.cf and did `make World' to rebuild X11R6. Removing all | |
2177 | `-DXTHREAD*' flags and `-lthread' entries from lib/X11/Makefile and | |
2178 | typing 'make install' in that directory also seemed to work. | |
2179 | ||
2180 | * With M-x enable-flow-control, you need to type C-\ twice | |
2181 | to do incremental search--a single C-\ gets no response. | |
2182 | ||
2183 | This has been traced to communicating with your machine via kermit, | |
2184 | with C-\ as the kermit escape character. One solution is to use | |
2185 | another escape character in kermit. One user did | |
2186 | ||
2187 | set escape-character 17 | |
2188 | ||
2189 | in his .kermrc file, to make C-q the kermit escape character. | |
2190 | ||
2191 | * The Motif version of Emacs paints the screen a solid color. | |
2192 | ||
2193 | This has been observed to result from the following X resource: | |
2194 | ||
2195 | Emacs*default.attributeFont: -*-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-140-*-*-*-*-iso8859-* | |
2196 | ||
2197 | That the resource has this effect indicates a bug in something, but we | |
2198 | do not yet know what. If it is an Emacs bug, we hope someone can | |
2199 | explain what the bug is so we can fix it. In the mean time, removing | |
2200 | the resource prevents the problem. | |
2201 | ||
2202 | * Emacs gets hung shortly after startup, on Sunos 4.1.3. | |
2203 | ||
2204 | We think this is due to a bug in Sunos. The word is that | |
2205 | one of these Sunos patches fixes the bug: | |
2206 | ||
2207 | 100075-11 100224-06 100347-03 100482-05 100557-02 100623-03 100804-03 101080-01 | |
2208 | 100103-12 100249-09 100496-02 100564-07 100630-02 100891-10 101134-01 | |
2209 | 100170-09 100296-04 100377-09 100507-04 100567-04 100650-02 101070-01 101145-01 | |
2210 | 100173-10 100305-15 100383-06 100513-04 100570-05 100689-01 101071-03 101200-02 | |
2211 | 100178-09 100338-05 100421-03 100536-02 100584-05 100784-01 101072-01 101207-01 | |
2212 | ||
2213 | We don't know which of these patches really matter. If you find out | |
2214 | which ones, please inform bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org. | |
2215 | ||
2216 | * Emacs aborts while starting up, only when run without X. | |
2217 | ||
2218 | This problem often results from compiling Emacs with GCC when GCC was | |
2219 | installed incorrectly. The usual error in installing GCC is to | |
2220 | specify --includedir=/usr/include. Installation of GCC makes | |
2221 | corrected copies of the system header files. GCC is supposed to use | |
2222 | the corrected copies in preference to the original system headers. | |
2223 | Specifying --includedir=/usr/include causes the original system header | |
2224 | files to be used. On some systems, the definition of ioctl in the | |
2225 | original system header files is invalid for ANSI C and causes Emacs | |
2226 | not to work. | |
2227 | ||
2228 | The fix is to reinstall GCC, and this time do not specify --includedir | |
2229 | when you configure it. Then recompile Emacs. Specifying --includedir | |
2230 | is appropriate only in very special cases and it should *never* be the | |
2231 | same directory where system header files are kept. | |
2232 | ||
2233 | * On Solaris 2.x, GCC complains "64 bit integer types not supported" | |
2234 | ||
2235 | This suggests that GCC is not installed correctly. Most likely you | |
2236 | are using GCC 2.7.2.3 (or earlier) on Solaris 2.6 (or later); this | |
2237 | does not work without patching. To run GCC 2.7.2.3 on Solaris 2.6 or | |
2238 | later, you must patch fixinc.svr4 and reinstall GCC from scratch as | |
2239 | described in the Solaris FAQ | |
2240 | <http://www.wins.uva.nl/pub/solaris/solaris2.html>. A better fix is | |
2241 | to upgrade to GCC 2.8.1 or later. | |
2242 | ||
2243 | * The Compose key on a DEC keyboard does not work as Meta key. | |
2244 | ||
2245 | This shell command should fix it: | |
2246 | ||
2247 | xmodmap -e 'keycode 0xb1 = Meta_L' | |
2248 | ||
2249 | * Regular expressions matching bugs on SCO systems. | |
2250 | ||
2251 | On SCO, there are problems in regexp matching when Emacs is compiled | |
2252 | with the system compiler. The compiler version is "Microsoft C | |
2253 | version 6", SCO 4.2.0h Dev Sys Maintenance Supplement 01/06/93; Quick | |
2254 | C Compiler Version 1.00.46 (Beta). The solution is to compile with | |
2255 | GCC. | |
2256 | ||
2257 | * On Sunos 4, you get the error ld: Undefined symbol __lib_version. | |
2258 | ||
2259 | This is the result of using cc or gcc with the shared library meant | |
2260 | for acc (the Sunpro compiler). Check your LD_LIBRARY_PATH and delete | |
2261 | /usr/lang/SC2.0.1 or some similar directory. | |
2262 | ||
2263 | * You can't select from submenus (in the X toolkit version). | |
2264 | ||
2265 | On certain systems, mouse-tracking and selection in top-level menus | |
2266 | works properly with the X toolkit, but neither of them works when you | |
2267 | bring up a submenu (such as Bookmarks or Compare or Apply Patch, in | |
2268 | the Files menu). | |
2269 | ||
2270 | This works on most systems. There is speculation that the failure is | |
2271 | due to bugs in old versions of X toolkit libraries, but no one really | |
2272 | knows. If someone debugs this and finds the precise cause, perhaps a | |
2273 | workaround can be found. | |
2274 | ||
2275 | * Unusable default font on SCO 3.2v4. | |
2276 | ||
2277 | The Open Desktop environment comes with default X resource settings | |
2278 | that tell Emacs to use a variable-width font. Emacs cannot use such | |
2279 | fonts, so it does not work. | |
2280 | ||
2281 | This is caused by the file /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/ScoTerm, which is | |
2282 | the application-specific resource file for the `scoterm' terminal | |
2283 | emulator program. It contains several extremely general X resources | |
2284 | that affect other programs besides `scoterm'. In particular, these | |
2285 | resources affect Emacs also: | |
2286 | ||
2287 | *Font: -*-helvetica-medium-r-*--12-*-p-* | |
2288 | *Background: scoBackground | |
2289 | *Foreground: scoForeground | |
2290 | ||
2291 | The best solution is to create an application-specific resource file for | |
2292 | Emacs, /usr/lib/X11/sco/startup/Emacs, with the following contents: | |
2293 | ||
2294 | Emacs*Font: -*-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-120-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1 | |
2295 | Emacs*Background: white | |
2296 | Emacs*Foreground: black | |
2297 | ||
2298 | (These settings mimic the Emacs defaults, but you can change them to | |
2299 | suit your needs.) This resource file is only read when the X server | |
2300 | starts up, so you should restart it by logging out of the Open Desktop | |
2301 | environment or by running `scologin stop; scologin start` from the shell | |
2302 | as root. Alternatively, you can put these settings in the | |
2303 | /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/Emacs resource file and simply restart Emacs, | |
2304 | but then they will not affect remote invocations of Emacs that use the | |
2305 | Open Desktop display. | |
2306 | ||
2307 | These resource files are not normally shared across a network of SCO | |
2308 | machines; you must create the file on each machine individually. | |
2309 | ||
2310 | * rcs2log gives you the awk error message "too many fields". | |
2311 | ||
2312 | This is due to an arbitrary limit in certain versions of awk. | |
2313 | The solution is to use gawk (GNU awk). | |
2314 | ||
2315 | * Emacs is slow using X11R5 on HP/UX. | |
2316 | ||
2317 | This happens if you use the MIT versions of the X libraries--it | |
2318 | doesn't run as fast as HP's version. People sometimes use the version | |
2319 | because they see the HP version doesn't have the libraries libXaw.a, | |
2320 | libXmu.a, libXext.a and others. HP/UX normally doesn't come with | |
2321 | those libraries installed. To get good performance, you need to | |
2322 | install them and rebuild Emacs. | |
2323 | ||
2324 | * Loading fonts is very slow. | |
2325 | ||
2326 | You might be getting scalable fonts instead of precomputed bitmaps. | |
2327 | Known scalable font directories are "Type1" and "Speedo". A font | |
2328 | directory contains scalable fonts if it contains the file | |
2329 | "fonts.scale". | |
2330 | ||
2331 | If this is so, re-order your X windows font path to put the scalable | |
2332 | font directories last. See the documentation of `xset' for details. | |
2333 | ||
2334 | With some X servers, it may be necessary to take the scalable font | |
2335 | directories out of your path entirely, at least for Emacs 19.26. | |
2336 | Changes in the future may make this unnecessary. | |
2337 | ||
2338 | * On AIX 3.2.4, releasing Ctrl/Act key has no effect, if Shift is down. | |
2339 | ||
2340 | Due to a feature of AIX, pressing or releasing the Ctrl/Act key is | |
2341 | ignored when the Shift, Alt or AltGr keys are held down. This can | |
2342 | lead to the keyboard being "control-locked"--ordinary letters are | |
2343 | treated as control characters. | |
2344 | ||
2345 | You can get out of this "control-locked" state by pressing and | |
2346 | releasing Ctrl/Act while not pressing or holding any other keys. | |
2347 | ||
2348 | * display-time causes kernel problems on ISC systems. | |
2349 | ||
2350 | Under Interactive Unix versions 3.0.1 and 4.0 (and probably other | |
177c0ea7 | 2351 | versions), display-time causes the loss of large numbers of STREVENT |
a933dad1 | 2352 | cells. Eventually the kernel's supply of these cells is exhausted. |
177c0ea7 | 2353 | This makes emacs and the whole system run slow, and can make other |
a933dad1 | 2354 | processes die, in particular pcnfsd. |
177c0ea7 JB |
2355 | |
2356 | Other emacs functions that communicate with remote processes may have | |
a933dad1 DL |
2357 | the same problem. Display-time seems to be far the worst. |
2358 | ||
2359 | The only known fix: Don't run display-time. | |
2360 | ||
2361 | * On Solaris, C-x doesn't get through to Emacs when you use the console. | |
2362 | ||
2363 | This is a Solaris feature (at least on Intel x86 cpus). Type C-r | |
2364 | C-r C-t, to toggle whether C-x gets through to Emacs. | |
2365 | ||
2366 | * Error message `Symbol's value as variable is void: x', followed by | |
2367 | segmentation fault and core dump. | |
2368 | ||
2369 | This has been tracked to a bug in tar! People report that tar erroneously | |
2370 | added a line like this at the beginning of files of Lisp code: | |
2371 | ||
2372 | x FILENAME, N bytes, B tape blocks | |
2373 | ||
2374 | If your tar has this problem, install GNU tar--if you can manage to | |
2375 | untar it :-). | |
2376 | ||
2377 | * Link failure when using acc on a Sun. | |
2378 | ||
2379 | To use acc, you need additional options just before the libraries, such as | |
2380 | ||
2381 | /usr/lang/SC2.0.1/values-Xt.o -L/usr/lang/SC2.0.1/cg87 -L/usr/lang/SC2.0.1 | |
2382 | ||
2383 | and you need to add -lansi just before -lc. | |
2384 | ||
2385 | The precise file names depend on the compiler version, so we | |
2386 | cannot easily arrange to supply them. | |
2387 | ||
2388 | * Link failure on IBM AIX 1.3 ptf 0013. | |
2389 | ||
2390 | There is a real duplicate definition of the function `_slibc_free' in | |
2391 | the library /lib/libc_s.a (just do nm on it to verify). The | |
2392 | workaround/fix is: | |
2393 | ||
2394 | cd /lib | |
2395 | ar xv libc_s.a NLtmtime.o | |
2396 | ar dv libc_s.a NLtmtime.o | |
2397 | ||
2398 | * Undefined symbols _dlopen, _dlsym and/or _dlclose on a Sun. | |
2399 | ||
2400 | If you see undefined symbols _dlopen, _dlsym, or _dlclose when linking | |
2401 | with -lX11, compile and link against the file mit/util/misc/dlsym.c in | |
2402 | the MIT X11R5 distribution. Alternatively, link temacs using shared | |
2403 | libraries with s/sunos4shr.h. (This doesn't work if you use the X | |
2404 | toolkit.) | |
2405 | ||
2406 | If you get the additional error that the linker could not find | |
2407 | lib_version.o, try extracting it from X11/usr/lib/X11/libvim.a in | |
2408 | X11R4, then use it in the link. | |
2409 | ||
2410 | * Error messages `Wrong number of arguments: #<subr where-is-internal>, 5' | |
2411 | ||
2412 | This typically results from having the powerkey library loaded. | |
2413 | Powerkey was designed for Emacs 19.22. It is obsolete now because | |
2414 | Emacs 19 now has this feature built in; and powerkey also calls | |
2415 | where-is-internal in an obsolete way. | |
2416 | ||
2417 | So the fix is to arrange not to load powerkey. | |
2418 | ||
2419 | * In Shell mode, you get a ^M at the end of every line. | |
2420 | ||
2421 | This happens to people who use tcsh, because it is trying to be too | |
2422 | smart. It sees that the Shell uses terminal type `unknown' and turns | |
2423 | on the flag to output ^M at the end of each line. You can fix the | |
2424 | problem by adding this to your .cshrc file: | |
2425 | ||
2426 | if ($?EMACS) then | |
2427 | if ($EMACS == "t") then | |
177c0ea7 | 2428 | unset edit |
a933dad1 DL |
2429 | stty -icrnl -onlcr -echo susp ^Z |
2430 | endif | |
2431 | endif | |
2432 | ||
2433 | * An error message such as `X protocol error: BadMatch (invalid | |
2434 | parameter attributes) on protocol request 93'. | |
2435 | ||
2436 | This comes from having an invalid X resource, such as | |
2437 | emacs*Cursor: black | |
2438 | (which is invalid because it specifies a color name for something | |
2439 | that isn't a color.) | |
2440 | ||
2441 | The fix is to correct your X resources. | |
2442 | ||
2443 | * Undefined symbols when linking on Sunos 4.1 using --with-x-toolkit. | |
2444 | ||
2445 | If you get the undefined symbols _atowc _wcslen, _iswprint, _iswspace, | |
2446 | _iswcntrl, _wcscpy, and _wcsncpy, then you need to add -lXwchar after | |
2447 | -lXaw in the command that links temacs. | |
2448 | ||
2449 | This problem seems to arise only when the international language | |
2450 | extensions to X11R5 are installed. | |
2451 | ||
2452 | * Typing C-c C-c in Shell mode kills your X server. | |
2453 | ||
2454 | This happens with Linux kernel 1.0 thru 1.04, approximately. The workaround is | |
2455 | to define SIGNALS_VIA_CHARACTERS in config.h and recompile Emacs. | |
2456 | Newer Linux kernel versions don't have this problem. | |
2457 | ||
2458 | * src/Makefile and lib-src/Makefile are truncated--most of the file missing. | |
2459 | ||
2460 | This can happen if configure uses GNU sed version 2.03. That version | |
2461 | had a bug. GNU sed version 2.05 works properly. | |
2462 | ||
2463 | * Slow startup on X11R6 with X windows. | |
2464 | ||
2465 | If Emacs takes two minutes to start up on X11R6, see if your X | |
2466 | resources specify any Adobe fonts. That causes the type-1 font | |
2467 | renderer to start up, even if the font you asked for is not a type-1 | |
2468 | font. | |
2469 | ||
2470 | One way to avoid this problem is to eliminate the type-1 fonts from | |
2471 | your font path, like this: | |
2472 | ||
2473 | xset -fp /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/ | |
2474 | ||
2475 | * Pull-down menus appear in the wrong place, in the toolkit version of Emacs. | |
2476 | ||
2477 | An X resource of this form can cause the problem: | |
2478 | ||
2479 | Emacs*geometry: 80x55+0+0 | |
2480 | ||
2481 | This resource is supposed to apply, and does apply, to the menus | |
2482 | individually as well as to Emacs frames. If that is not what you | |
2483 | want, rewrite the resource. | |
2484 | ||
2485 | To check thoroughly for such resource specifications, use `xrdb | |
2486 | -query' to see what resources the X server records, and also look at | |
2487 | the user's ~/.Xdefaults and ~/.Xdefaults-* files. | |
2488 | ||
2489 | * --with-x-toolkit version crashes when used with shared libraries. | |
2490 | ||
2491 | On some systems, including Sunos 4 and DGUX 5.4.2 and perhaps others, | |
2492 | unexec doesn't work properly with the shared library for the X | |
2493 | toolkit. You might be able to work around this by using a nonshared | |
2494 | libXt.a library. The real fix is to upgrade the various versions of | |
2495 | unexec and/or ralloc. We think this has been fixed on Sunos 4 | |
2496 | and Solaris in version 19.29. | |
2497 | ||
2498 | * `make install' fails on install-doc with `Error 141'. | |
2499 | ||
2500 | This happens on Ultrix 4.2 due to failure of a pipeline of tar | |
2501 | commands. We don't know why they fail, but the bug seems not to be in | |
2502 | Emacs. The workaround is to run the shell command in install-doc by | |
2503 | hand. | |
2504 | ||
2505 | * --with-x-toolkit option configures wrong on BSD/386. | |
2506 | ||
2507 | This problem is due to bugs in the shell in version 1.0 of BSD/386. | |
2508 | The workaround is to edit the configure file to use some other shell, | |
2509 | such as bash. | |
2510 | ||
2511 | * Subprocesses remain, hanging but not zombies, on Sunos 5.3. | |
2512 | ||
2513 | A bug in Sunos 5.3 causes Emacs subprocesses to remain after Emacs | |
2514 | exits. Sun patch # 101415-02 is part of the fix for this, but it only | |
2515 | applies to ptys, and doesn't fix the problem with subprocesses | |
2516 | communicating through pipes. | |
2517 | ||
2518 | * Mail is lost when sent to local aliases. | |
2519 | ||
2520 | Many emacs mail user agents (VM and rmail, for instance) use the | |
2521 | sendmail.el library. This library can arrange for mail to be | |
2522 | delivered by passing messages to the /usr/lib/sendmail (usually) | |
2523 | program . In doing so, it passes the '-t' flag to sendmail, which | |
2524 | means that the name of the recipient of the message is not on the | |
2525 | command line and, therefore, that sendmail must parse the message to | |
2526 | obtain the destination address. | |
2527 | ||
2528 | There is a bug in the SunOS4.1.1 and SunOS4.1.3 versions of sendmail. | |
2529 | In short, when given the -t flag, the SunOS sendmail won't recognize | |
2530 | non-local (i.e. NIS) aliases. It has been reported that the Solaris | |
2531 | 2.x versions of sendmail do not have this bug. For those using SunOS | |
2532 | 4.1, the best fix is to install sendmail V8 or IDA sendmail (which | |
2533 | have other advantages over the regular sendmail as well). At the time | |
2534 | of this writing, these official versions are available: | |
2535 | ||
2536 | Sendmail V8 on ftp.cs.berkeley.edu in /ucb/sendmail: | |
2537 | sendmail.8.6.9.base.tar.Z (the base system source & documentation) | |
2538 | sendmail.8.6.9.cf.tar.Z (configuration files) | |
2539 | sendmail.8.6.9.misc.tar.Z (miscellaneous support programs) | |
2540 | sendmail.8.6.9.xdoc.tar.Z (extended documentation, with postscript) | |
2541 | ||
2542 | IDA sendmail on vixen.cso.uiuc.edu in /pub: | |
2543 | sendmail-5.67b+IDA-1.5.tar.gz | |
2544 | ||
2545 | * On AIX, you get this message when running Emacs: | |
2546 | ||
2547 | Could not load program emacs | |
2548 | Symbol smtcheckinit in csh is undefined | |
2549 | Error was: Exec format error | |
2550 | ||
2551 | or this one: | |
2552 | ||
2553 | Could not load program .emacs | |
2554 | Symbol _system_con in csh is undefined | |
2555 | Symbol _fp_trapsta in csh is undefined | |
2556 | Error was: Exec format error | |
2557 | ||
2558 | These can happen when you try to run on AIX 3.2.5 a program that was | |
2559 | compiled with 3.2.4. The fix is to recompile. | |
2560 | ||
2561 | * On AIX, you get this compiler error message: | |
2562 | ||
2563 | Processing include file ./XMenuInt.h | |
2564 | 1501-106: (S) Include file X11/Xlib.h not found. | |
2565 | ||
2566 | This means your system was installed with only the X11 runtime i.d | |
2567 | libraries. You have to find your sipo (bootable tape) and install | |
2568 | X11Dev... with smit. | |
2569 | ||
2570 | * You "lose characters" after typing Compose Character key. | |
2571 | ||
2572 | This is because the Compose Character key is defined as the keysym | |
2573 | Multi_key, and Emacs (seeing that) does the proper X11 | |
2574 | character-composition processing. If you don't want your Compose key | |
2575 | to do that, you can redefine it with xmodmap. | |
2576 | ||
2577 | For example, here's one way to turn it into a Meta key: | |
2578 | ||
2579 | xmodmap -e "keysym Multi_key = Meta_L" | |
2580 | ||
2581 | If all users at your site of a particular keyboard prefer Meta to | |
2582 | Compose, you can make the remapping happen automatically by adding the | |
2583 | xmodmap command to the xdm setup script for that display. | |
2584 | ||
2585 | * C-z just refreshes the screen instead of suspending Emacs. | |
2586 | ||
2587 | You are probably using a shell that doesn't support job control, even | |
2588 | though the system itself is capable of it. Either use a different shell, | |
2589 | or set the variable `cannot-suspend' to a non-nil value. | |
2590 | ||
2591 | * Watch out for .emacs files and EMACSLOADPATH environment vars | |
2592 | ||
2593 | These control the actions of Emacs. | |
2594 | ~/.emacs is your Emacs init file. | |
2595 | EMACSLOADPATH overrides which directories the function | |
2596 | "load" will search. | |
2597 | ||
2598 | If you observe strange problems, check for these and get rid | |
2599 | of them, then try again. | |
2600 | ||
2601 | * After running emacs once, subsequent invocations crash. | |
2602 | ||
2603 | Some versions of SVR4 have a serious bug in the implementation of the | |
2604 | mmap () system call in the kernel; this causes emacs to run correctly | |
2605 | the first time, and then crash when run a second time. | |
2606 | ||
2607 | Contact your vendor and ask for the mmap bug fix; in the mean time, | |
2608 | you may be able to work around the problem by adding a line to your | |
2609 | operating system description file (whose name is reported by the | |
2610 | configure script) that reads: | |
2611 | #define SYSTEM_MALLOC | |
2612 | This makes Emacs use memory less efficiently, but seems to work around | |
2613 | the kernel bug. | |
2614 | ||
2615 | * Inability to send an Alt-modified key, when Emacs is communicating | |
2616 | directly with an X server. | |
2617 | ||
2618 | If you have tried to bind an Alt-modified key as a command, and it | |
2619 | does not work to type the command, the first thing you should check is | |
2620 | whether the key is getting through to Emacs. To do this, type C-h c | |
2621 | followed by the Alt-modified key. C-h c should say what kind of event | |
2622 | it read. If it says it read an Alt-modified key, then make sure you | |
2623 | have made the key binding correctly. | |
2624 | ||
2625 | If C-h c reports an event that doesn't have the Alt modifier, it may | |
2626 | be because your X server has no key for the Alt modifier. The X | |
2627 | server that comes from MIT does not set up the Alt modifier by | |
2628 | default. | |
2629 | ||
2630 | If your keyboard has keys named Alt, you can enable them as follows: | |
2631 | ||
2632 | xmodmap -e 'add mod2 = Alt_L' | |
2633 | xmodmap -e 'add mod2 = Alt_R' | |
2634 | ||
2635 | If the keyboard has just one key named Alt, then only one of those | |
2636 | commands is needed. The modifier `mod2' is a reasonable choice if you | |
2637 | are using an unmodified MIT version of X. Otherwise, choose any | |
2638 | modifier bit not otherwise used. | |
2639 | ||
2640 | If your keyboard does not have keys named Alt, you can use some other | |
2641 | keys. Use the keysym command in xmodmap to turn a function key (or | |
2642 | some other 'spare' key) into Alt_L or into Alt_R, and then use the | |
2643 | commands show above to make them modifier keys. | |
2644 | ||
2645 | Note that if you have Alt keys but no Meta keys, Emacs translates Alt | |
2646 | into Meta. This is because of the great importance of Meta in Emacs. | |
2647 | ||
2648 | * `Pid xxx killed due to text modification or page I/O error' | |
2649 | ||
2650 | On HP/UX, you can get that error when the Emacs executable is on an NFS | |
2651 | file system. HP/UX responds this way if it tries to swap in a page and | |
2652 | does not get a response from the server within a timeout whose default | |
2653 | value is just ten seconds. | |
2654 | ||
2655 | If this happens to you, extend the timeout period. | |
2656 | ||
2657 | * `expand-file-name' fails to work on any but the machine you dumped Emacs on. | |
2658 | ||
2659 | On Ultrix, if you use any of the functions which look up information | |
2660 | in the passwd database before dumping Emacs (say, by using | |
2661 | expand-file-name in site-init.el), then those functions will not work | |
2662 | in the dumped Emacs on any host but the one Emacs was dumped on. | |
2663 | ||
2664 | The solution? Don't use expand-file-name in site-init.el, or in | |
2665 | anything it loads. Yuck - some solution. | |
2666 | ||
2667 | I'm not sure why this happens; if you can find out exactly what is | |
2668 | going on, and perhaps find a fix or a workaround, please let us know. | |
2669 | Perhaps the YP functions cache some information, the cache is included | |
2670 | in the dumped Emacs, and is then inaccurate on any other host. | |
2671 | ||
2672 | * On some variants of SVR4, Emacs does not work at all with X. | |
2673 | ||
2674 | Try defining BROKEN_FIONREAD in your config.h file. If this solves | |
2675 | the problem, please send a bug report to tell us this is needed; be | |
2676 | sure to say exactly what type of machine and system you are using. | |
2677 | ||
2678 | * Linking says that the functions insque and remque are undefined. | |
2679 | ||
2680 | Change oldXMenu/Makefile by adding insque.o to the variable OBJS. | |
2681 | ||
2682 | * Emacs fails to understand most Internet host names, even though | |
2683 | the names work properly with other programs on the same system. | |
2684 | * Emacs won't work with X-windows if the value of DISPLAY is HOSTNAME:0. | |
2685 | * GNUs can't make contact with the specified host for nntp. | |
2686 | ||
2687 | This typically happens on Suns and other systems that use shared | |
2688 | libraries. The cause is that the site has installed a version of the | |
2689 | shared library which uses a name server--but has not installed a | |
2690 | similar version of the unshared library which Emacs uses. | |
2691 | ||
2692 | The result is that most programs, using the shared library, work with | |
2693 | the nameserver, but Emacs does not. | |
2694 | ||
2695 | The fix is to install an unshared library that corresponds to what you | |
2696 | installed in the shared library, and then relink Emacs. | |
2697 | ||
2698 | On SunOS 4.1, simply define HAVE_RES_INIT. | |
2699 | ||
2700 | If you have already installed the name resolver in the file libresolv.a, | |
2701 | then you need to compile Emacs to use that library. The easiest way to | |
2702 | do this is to add to config.h a definition of LIBS_SYSTEM, LIBS_MACHINE | |
2703 | or LIB_STANDARD which uses -lresolv. Watch out! If you redefine a macro | |
2704 | that is already in use in your configuration to supply some other libraries, | |
2705 | be careful not to lose the others. | |
2706 | ||
2707 | Thus, you could start by adding this to config.h: | |
2708 | ||
2709 | #define LIBS_SYSTEM -lresolv | |
2710 | ||
2711 | Then if this gives you an error for redefining a macro, and you see that | |
2712 | the s- file defines LIBS_SYSTEM as -lfoo -lbar, you could change config.h | |
2713 | again to say this: | |
2714 | ||
2715 | #define LIBS_SYSTEM -lresolv -lfoo -lbar | |
2716 | ||
2717 | * On a Sun running SunOS 4.1.1, you get this error message from GNU ld: | |
2718 | ||
177c0ea7 | 2719 | /lib/libc.a(_Q_sub.o): Undefined symbol __Q_get_rp_rd referenced from text segment |
a933dad1 DL |
2720 | |
2721 | The problem is in the Sun shared C library, not in GNU ld. | |
2722 | ||
2723 | The solution is to install Patch-ID# 100267-03 from Sun. | |
2724 | ||
2725 | * Self documentation messages are garbled. | |
2726 | ||
2727 | This means that the file `etc/DOC-...' doesn't properly correspond | |
2728 | with the Emacs executable. Redumping Emacs and then installing the | |
2729 | corresponding pair of files should fix the problem. | |
2730 | ||
2731 | * Trouble using ptys on AIX. | |
2732 | ||
2733 | People often install the pty devices on AIX incorrectly. | |
2734 | Use `smit pty' to reinstall them properly. | |
2735 | ||
2736 | * Shell mode on HP/UX gives the message, "`tty`: Ambiguous". | |
2737 | ||
2738 | christos@theory.tn.cornell.edu says: | |
2739 | ||
2740 | The problem is that in your .cshrc you have something that tries to | |
177c0ea7 JB |
2741 | execute `tty`. If you are not running the shell on a real tty then |
2742 | tty will print "not a tty". Csh expects one word in some places, | |
a933dad1 DL |
2743 | but tty is giving it back 3. |
2744 | ||
2745 | The solution is to add a pair of quotes around `tty` to make it a single | |
177c0ea7 | 2746 | word: |
a933dad1 | 2747 | |
177c0ea7 | 2748 | if (`tty` == "/dev/console") |
a933dad1 DL |
2749 | |
2750 | should be changed to: | |
2751 | ||
177c0ea7 | 2752 | if ("`tty`" == "/dev/console") |
a933dad1 DL |
2753 | |
2754 | Even better, move things that set up terminal sections out of .cshrc | |
2755 | and into .login. | |
2756 | ||
2757 | * Using X Windows, control-shift-leftbutton makes Emacs hang. | |
2758 | ||
2759 | Use the shell command `xset bc' to make the old X Menu package work. | |
2760 | ||
2761 | * Emacs running under X Windows does not handle mouse clicks. | |
2762 | * `emacs -geometry 80x20' finds a file named `80x20'. | |
2763 | ||
2764 | One cause of such problems is having (setq term-file-prefix nil) in | |
2765 | your .emacs file. Another cause is a bad value of EMACSLOADPATH in | |
2766 | the environment. | |
2767 | ||
2768 | * Emacs gets error message from linker on Sun. | |
2769 | ||
2770 | If the error message says that a symbol such as `f68881_used' or | |
2771 | `ffpa_used' or `start_float' is undefined, this probably indicates | |
177c0ea7 | 2772 | that you have compiled some libraries, such as the X libraries, |
a933dad1 DL |
2773 | with a floating point option other than the default. |
2774 | ||
2775 | It's not terribly hard to make this work with small changes in | |
2776 | crt0.c together with linking with Fcrt1.o, Wcrt1.o or Mcrt1.o. | |
2777 | However, the easiest approach is to build Xlib with the default | |
2778 | floating point option: -fsoft. | |
2779 | ||
2780 | * Emacs fails to get default settings from X Windows server. | |
2781 | ||
2782 | The X library in X11R4 has a bug; it interchanges the 2nd and 3rd | |
2783 | arguments to XGetDefaults. Define the macro XBACKWARDS in config.h to | |
2784 | tell Emacs to compensate for this. | |
2785 | ||
2786 | I don't believe there is any way Emacs can determine for itself | |
2787 | whether this problem is present on a given system. | |
2788 | ||
2789 | * Keyboard input gets confused after a beep when using a DECserver | |
2790 | as a concentrator. | |
2791 | ||
2792 | This problem seems to be a matter of configuring the DECserver to use | |
2793 | 7 bit characters rather than 8 bit characters. | |
2794 | ||
2795 | * M-x shell persistently reports "Process shell exited abnormally with code 1". | |
2796 | ||
2797 | This happened on Suns as a result of what is said to be a bug in Sunos | |
177c0ea7 | 2798 | version 4.0.x. The only fix was to reboot the machine. |
a933dad1 DL |
2799 | |
2800 | * Programs running under terminal emulator do not recognize `emacs' | |
2801 | terminal type. | |
2802 | ||
2803 | The cause of this is a shell startup file that sets the TERMCAP | |
2804 | environment variable. The terminal emulator uses that variable to | |
2805 | provide the information on the special terminal type that Emacs | |
2806 | emulates. | |
2807 | ||
2808 | Rewrite your shell startup file so that it does not change TERMCAP | |
2809 | in such a case. You could use the following conditional which sets | |
2810 | it only if it is undefined. | |
2811 | ||
2812 | if ( ! ${?TERMCAP} ) setenv TERMCAP ~/my-termcap-file | |
2813 | ||
2814 | Or you could set TERMCAP only when you set TERM--which should not | |
2815 | happen in a non-login shell. | |
2816 | ||
2817 | * X Windows doesn't work if DISPLAY uses a hostname. | |
2818 | ||
2819 | People have reported kernel bugs in certain systems that cause Emacs | |
2820 | not to work with X Windows if DISPLAY is set using a host name. But | |
2821 | the problem does not occur if DISPLAY is set to `unix:0.0'. I think | |
2822 | the bug has to do with SIGIO or FIONREAD. | |
2823 | ||
2824 | You may be able to compensate for the bug by doing (set-input-mode nil nil). | |
2825 | However, that has the disadvantage of turning off interrupts, so that | |
2826 | you are unable to quit out of a Lisp program by typing C-g. | |
2827 | ||
177c0ea7 | 2828 | The easy way to do this is to put |
a933dad1 DL |
2829 | |
2830 | (setq x-sigio-bug t) | |
2831 | ||
2832 | in your site-init.el file. | |
2833 | ||
2834 | * Problem with remote X server on Suns. | |
2835 | ||
2836 | On a Sun, running Emacs on one machine with the X server on another | |
2837 | may not work if you have used the unshared system libraries. This | |
2838 | is because the unshared libraries fail to use YP for host name lookup. | |
2839 | As a result, the host name you specify may not be recognized. | |
2840 | ||
2841 | * Shell mode ignores interrupts on Apollo Domain | |
2842 | ||
2843 | You may find that M-x shell prints the following message: | |
2844 | ||
2845 | Warning: no access to tty; thus no job control in this shell... | |
2846 | ||
2847 | This can happen if there are not enough ptys on your system. | |
2848 | Here is how to make more of them. | |
2849 | ||
2850 | % cd /dev | |
2851 | % ls pty* | |
2852 | # shows how many pty's you have. I had 8, named pty0 to pty7) | |
2853 | % /etc/crpty 8 | |
2854 | # creates eight new pty's | |
2855 | ||
2856 | * Fatal signal in the command temacs -l loadup inc dump | |
2857 | ||
2858 | This command is the final stage of building Emacs. It is run by the | |
2859 | Makefile in the src subdirectory, or by build.com on VMS. | |
2860 | ||
2861 | It has been known to get fatal errors due to insufficient swapping | |
2862 | space available on the machine. | |
2863 | ||
2864 | On 68000's, it has also happened because of bugs in the | |
2865 | subroutine `alloca'. Verify that `alloca' works right, even | |
2866 | for large blocks (many pages). | |
2867 | ||
2868 | * test-distrib says that the distribution has been clobbered | |
2869 | * or, temacs prints "Command key out of range 0-127" | |
2870 | * or, temacs runs and dumps emacs, but emacs totally fails to work. | |
2871 | * or, temacs gets errors dumping emacs | |
2872 | ||
2873 | This can be because the .elc files have been garbled. Do not be | |
2874 | fooled by the fact that most of a .elc file is text: these are | |
2875 | binary files and can contain all 256 byte values. | |
2876 | ||
2877 | In particular `shar' cannot be used for transmitting GNU Emacs. | |
2878 | It typically truncates "lines". What appear to be "lines" in | |
2879 | a binary file can of course be of any length. Even once `shar' | |
2880 | itself is made to work correctly, `sh' discards null characters | |
2881 | when unpacking the shell archive. | |
2882 | ||
2883 | I have also seen character \177 changed into \377. I do not know | |
2884 | what transfer means caused this problem. Various network | |
2885 | file transfer programs are suspected of clobbering the high bit. | |
2886 | ||
2887 | If you have a copy of Emacs that has been damaged in its | |
2888 | nonprinting characters, you can fix them: | |
2889 | ||
2890 | 1) Record the names of all the .elc files. | |
2891 | 2) Delete all the .elc files. | |
2892 | 3) Recompile alloc.c with a value of PURESIZE twice as large. | |
2893 | (See puresize.h.) You might as well save the old alloc.o. | |
2894 | 4) Remake emacs. It should work now. | |
2895 | 5) Running emacs, do Meta-x byte-compile-file repeatedly | |
2896 | to recreate all the .elc files that used to exist. | |
2897 | You may need to increase the value of the variable | |
2898 | max-lisp-eval-depth to succeed in running the compiler interpreted | |
2899 | on certain .el files. 400 was sufficient as of last report. | |
2900 | 6) Reinstall the old alloc.o (undoing changes to alloc.c if any) | |
2901 | and remake temacs. | |
2902 | 7) Remake emacs. It should work now, with valid .elc files. | |
2903 | ||
2904 | * temacs prints "Pure Lisp storage exhausted" | |
2905 | ||
2906 | This means that the Lisp code loaded from the .elc and .el | |
2907 | files during temacs -l loadup inc dump took up more | |
2908 | space than was allocated. | |
2909 | ||
2910 | This could be caused by | |
2911 | 1) adding code to the preloaded Lisp files | |
2912 | 2) adding more preloaded files in loadup.el | |
2913 | 3) having a site-init.el or site-load.el which loads files. | |
2914 | Note that ANY site-init.el or site-load.el is nonstandard; | |
2915 | if you have received Emacs from some other site | |
2916 | and it contains a site-init.el or site-load.el file, consider | |
2917 | deleting that file. | |
2918 | 4) getting the wrong .el or .elc files | |
2919 | (not from the directory you expected). | |
2920 | 5) deleting some .elc files that are supposed to exist. | |
2921 | This would cause the source files (.el files) to be | |
2922 | loaded instead. They take up more room, so you lose. | |
2923 | 6) a bug in the Emacs distribution which underestimates | |
2924 | the space required. | |
2925 | ||
2926 | If the need for more space is legitimate, change the definition | |
2927 | of PURESIZE in puresize.h. | |
2928 | ||
2929 | But in some of the cases listed above, this problem is a consequence | |
2930 | of something else that is wrong. Be sure to check and fix the real | |
2931 | problem. | |
2932 | ||
2933 | * Changes made to .el files do not take effect. | |
2934 | ||
2935 | You may have forgotten to recompile them into .elc files. | |
2936 | Then the old .elc files will be loaded, and your changes | |
2937 | will not be seen. To fix this, do M-x byte-recompile-directory | |
2938 | and specify the directory that contains the Lisp files. | |
2939 | ||
2940 | Emacs should print a warning when loading a .elc file which is older | |
2941 | than the corresponding .el file. | |
2942 | ||
2943 | * The dumped Emacs crashes when run, trying to write pure data. | |
2944 | ||
2945 | Two causes have been seen for such problems. | |
2946 | ||
2947 | 1) On a system where getpagesize is not a system call, it is defined | |
2948 | as a macro. If the definition (in both unexec.c and malloc.c) is wrong, | |
2949 | it can cause problems like this. You might be able to find the correct | |
2950 | value in the man page for a.out (5). | |
2951 | ||
2952 | 2) Some systems allocate variables declared static among the | |
2953 | initialized variables. Emacs makes all initialized variables in most | |
2954 | of its files pure after dumping, but the variables declared static and | |
2955 | not initialized are not supposed to be pure. On these systems you | |
2956 | may need to add "#define static" to the m- or the s- file. | |
2957 | ||
2958 | * Compilation errors on VMS. | |
2959 | ||
2960 | You will get warnings when compiling on VMS because there are | |
2961 | variable names longer than 32 (or whatever it is) characters. | |
2962 | This is not an error. Ignore it. | |
2963 | ||
2964 | VAX C does not support #if defined(foo). Uses of this construct | |
2965 | were removed, but some may have crept back in. They must be rewritten. | |
2966 | ||
2967 | There is a bug in the C compiler which fails to sign extend characters | |
2968 | in conditional expressions. The bug is: | |
2969 | char c = -1, d = 1; | |
2970 | int i; | |
2971 | ||
2972 | i = d ? c : d; | |
2973 | The result is i == 255; the fix is to typecast the char in the | |
2974 | conditional expression as an (int). Known occurrences of such | |
2975 | constructs in Emacs have been fixed. | |
2976 | ||
2977 | * rmail gets error getting new mail | |
2978 | ||
2979 | rmail gets new mail from /usr/spool/mail/$USER using a program | |
2980 | called `movemail'. This program interlocks with /bin/mail using | |
2981 | the protocol defined by /bin/mail. | |
2982 | ||
2983 | There are two different protocols in general use. One of them uses | |
2984 | the `flock' system call. The other involves creating a lock file; | |
2985 | `movemail' must be able to write in /usr/spool/mail in order to do | |
2986 | this. You control which one is used by defining, or not defining, | |
2987 | the macro MAIL_USE_FLOCK in config.h or the m- or s- file it includes. | |
2988 | IF YOU DON'T USE THE FORM OF INTERLOCKING THAT IS NORMAL ON YOUR | |
2989 | SYSTEM, YOU CAN LOSE MAIL! | |
2990 | ||
2991 | If your system uses the lock file protocol, and fascist restrictions | |
2992 | prevent ordinary users from writing the lock files in /usr/spool/mail, | |
2993 | you may need to make `movemail' setgid to a suitable group such as | |
2994 | `mail'. You can use these commands (as root): | |
2995 | ||
2996 | chgrp mail movemail | |
2997 | chmod 2755 movemail | |
2998 | ||
2999 | If your system uses the lock file protocol, and fascist restrictions | |
3000 | prevent ordinary users from writing the lock files in /usr/spool/mail, | |
3001 | you may need to make `movemail' setgid to a suitable group such as | |
3002 | `mail'. To do this, use the following commands (as root) after doing the | |
3003 | make install. | |
3004 | ||
3005 | chgrp mail movemail | |
3006 | chmod 2755 movemail | |
3007 | ||
3008 | Installation normally copies movemail from the build directory to an | |
3009 | installation directory which is usually under /usr/local/lib. The | |
3010 | installed copy of movemail is usually in the directory | |
3011 | /usr/local/lib/emacs/VERSION/TARGET. You must change the group and | |
3012 | mode of the installed copy; changing the group and mode of the build | |
3013 | directory copy is ineffective. | |
3014 | ||
3015 | * Emacs spontaneously displays "I-search: " at the bottom of the screen. | |
3016 | ||
3017 | This means that Control-S/Control-Q (XON/XOFF) "flow control" is being | |
3018 | used. C-s/C-q flow control is bad for Emacs editors because it takes | |
3019 | away C-s and C-q as user commands. Since editors do not output long | |
3020 | streams of text without user commands, there is no need for a | |
3021 | user-issuable "stop output" command in an editor; therefore, a | |
3022 | properly designed flow control mechanism would transmit all possible | |
3023 | input characters without interference. Designing such a mechanism is | |
3024 | easy, for a person with at least half a brain. | |
3025 | ||
3026 | There are three possible reasons why flow control could be taking place: | |
3027 | ||
3028 | 1) Terminal has not been told to disable flow control | |
3029 | 2) Insufficient padding for the terminal in use | |
3030 | 3) Some sort of terminal concentrator or line switch is responsible | |
3031 | ||
3032 | First of all, many terminals have a set-up mode which controls whether | |
3033 | they generate XON/XOFF flow control characters. This must be set to | |
3034 | "no XON/XOFF" in order for Emacs to work. Sometimes there is an | |
3035 | escape sequence that the computer can send to turn flow control off | |
3036 | and on. If so, perhaps the termcap `ti' string should turn flow | |
3037 | control off, and the `te' string should turn it on. | |
3038 | ||
3039 | Once the terminal has been told "no flow control", you may find it | |
3040 | needs more padding. The amount of padding Emacs sends is controlled | |
3041 | by the termcap entry for the terminal in use, and by the output baud | |
3042 | rate as known by the kernel. The shell command `stty' will print | |
3043 | your output baud rate; `stty' with suitable arguments will set it if | |
3044 | it is wrong. Setting to a higher speed causes increased padding. If | |
3045 | the results are wrong for the correct speed, there is probably a | |
3046 | problem in the termcap entry. You must speak to a local Unix wizard | |
3047 | to fix this. Perhaps you are just using the wrong terminal type. | |
3048 | ||
3049 | For terminals that lack a "no flow control" mode, sometimes just | |
3050 | giving lots of padding will prevent actual generation of flow control | |
3051 | codes. You might as well try it. | |
3052 | ||
3053 | If you are really unlucky, your terminal is connected to the computer | |
3054 | through a concentrator which sends XON/XOFF flow control to the | |
3055 | computer, or it insists on sending flow control itself no matter how | |
3056 | much padding you give it. Unless you can figure out how to turn flow | |
3057 | control off on this concentrator (again, refer to your local wizard), | |
3058 | you are screwed! You should have the terminal or concentrator | |
3059 | replaced with a properly designed one. In the mean time, some drastic | |
3060 | measures can make Emacs semi-work. | |
3061 | ||
3062 | You can make Emacs ignore C-s and C-q and let the operating system | |
3063 | handle them. To do this on a per-session basis, just type M-x | |
3064 | enable-flow-control RET. You will see a message that C-\ and C-^ are | |
3065 | now translated to C-s and C-q. (Use the same command M-x | |
3066 | enable-flow-control to turn *off* this special mode. It toggles flow | |
3067 | control handling.) | |
3068 | ||
3069 | If C-\ and C-^ are inconvenient for you (for example, if one of them | |
3070 | is the escape character of your terminal concentrator), you can choose | |
3071 | other characters by setting the variables flow-control-c-s-replacement | |
3072 | and flow-control-c-q-replacement. But choose carefully, since all | |
3073 | other control characters are already used by emacs. | |
3074 | ||
3075 | IMPORTANT: if you type C-s by accident while flow control is enabled, | |
3076 | Emacs output will freeze, and you will have to remember to type C-q in | |
3077 | order to continue. | |
3078 | ||
3079 | If you work in an environment where a majority of terminals of a | |
3080 | certain type are flow control hobbled, you can use the function | |
3081 | `enable-flow-control-on' to turn on this flow control avoidance scheme | |
3082 | automatically. Here is an example: | |
3083 | ||
3084 | (enable-flow-control-on "vt200" "vt300" "vt101" "vt131") | |
3085 | ||
3086 | If this isn't quite correct (e.g. you have a mixture of flow-control hobbled | |
3087 | and good vt200 terminals), you can still run enable-flow-control | |
3088 | manually. | |
3089 | ||
3090 | I have no intention of ever redesigning the Emacs command set for the | |
3091 | assumption that terminals use C-s/C-q flow control. XON/XOFF flow | |
3092 | control technique is a bad design, and terminals that need it are bad | |
3093 | merchandise and should not be purchased. Now that X is becoming | |
3094 | widespread, XON/XOFF seems to be on the way out. If you can get some | |
3095 | use out of GNU Emacs on inferior terminals, more power to you, but I | |
3096 | will not make Emacs worse for properly designed systems for the sake | |
3097 | of inferior systems. | |
3098 | ||
3099 | * Control-S and Control-Q commands are ignored completely. | |
3100 | ||
3101 | For some reason, your system is using brain-damaged C-s/C-q flow | |
3102 | control despite Emacs's attempts to turn it off. Perhaps your | |
3103 | terminal is connected to the computer through a concentrator | |
3104 | that wants to use flow control. | |
3105 | ||
3106 | You should first try to tell the concentrator not to use flow control. | |
3107 | If you succeed in this, try making the terminal work without | |
3108 | flow control, as described in the preceding section. | |
3109 | ||
3110 | If that line of approach is not successful, map some other characters | |
3111 | into C-s and C-q using keyboard-translate-table. The example above | |
3112 | shows how to do this with C-^ and C-\. | |
3113 | ||
3114 | * Control-S and Control-Q commands are ignored completely on a net connection. | |
3115 | ||
3116 | Some versions of rlogin (and possibly telnet) do not pass flow | |
3117 | control characters to the remote system to which they connect. | |
3118 | On such systems, emacs on the remote system cannot disable flow | |
3119 | control on the local system. | |
3120 | ||
3121 | One way to cure this is to disable flow control on the local host | |
3122 | (the one running rlogin, not the one running rlogind) using the | |
3123 | stty command, before starting the rlogin process. On many systems, | |
3124 | "stty start u stop u" will do this. | |
3125 | ||
3126 | Some versions of tcsh will prevent even this from working. One way | |
3127 | around this is to start another shell before starting rlogin, and | |
3128 | issue the stty command to disable flow control from that shell. | |
3129 | ||
3130 | If none of these methods work, the best solution is to type | |
3131 | M-x enable-flow-control at the beginning of your emacs session, or | |
3132 | if you expect the problem to continue, add a line such as the | |
3133 | following to your .emacs (on the host running rlogind): | |
3134 | ||
3135 | (enable-flow-control-on "vt200" "vt300" "vt101" "vt131") | |
3136 | ||
3137 | See the entry about spontaneous display of I-search (above) for more | |
3138 | info. | |
3139 | ||
3140 | * Screen is updated wrong, but only on one kind of terminal. | |
3141 | ||
3142 | This could mean that the termcap entry you are using for that | |
3143 | terminal is wrong, or it could mean that Emacs has a bug handing | |
3144 | the combination of features specified for that terminal. | |
3145 | ||
3146 | The first step in tracking this down is to record what characters | |
3147 | Emacs is sending to the terminal. Execute the Lisp expression | |
3148 | (open-termscript "./emacs-script") to make Emacs write all | |
3149 | terminal output into the file ~/emacs-script as well; then do | |
3150 | what makes the screen update wrong, and look at the file | |
3151 | and decode the characters using the manual for the terminal. | |
3152 | There are several possibilities: | |
3153 | ||
3154 | 1) The characters sent are correct, according to the terminal manual. | |
3155 | ||
3156 | In this case, there is no obvious bug in Emacs, and most likely you | |
3157 | need more padding, or possibly the terminal manual is wrong. | |
3158 | ||
3159 | 2) The characters sent are incorrect, due to an obscure aspect | |
3160 | of the terminal behavior not described in an obvious way | |
3161 | by termcap. | |
3162 | ||
3163 | This case is hard. It will be necessary to think of a way for | |
3164 | Emacs to distinguish between terminals with this kind of behavior | |
3165 | and other terminals that behave subtly differently but are | |
3166 | classified the same by termcap; or else find an algorithm for | |
3167 | Emacs to use that avoids the difference. Such changes must be | |
3168 | tested on many kinds of terminals. | |
3169 | ||
3170 | 3) The termcap entry is wrong. | |
3171 | ||
3172 | See the file etc/TERMS for information on changes | |
3173 | that are known to be needed in commonly used termcap entries | |
3174 | for certain terminals. | |
3175 | ||
3176 | 4) The characters sent are incorrect, and clearly cannot be | |
3177 | right for any terminal with the termcap entry you were using. | |
3178 | ||
3179 | This is unambiguously an Emacs bug, and can probably be fixed | |
3180 | in termcap.c, tparam.c, term.c, scroll.c, cm.c or dispnew.c. | |
3181 | ||
3182 | * Output from Control-V is slow. | |
3183 | ||
3184 | On many bit-map terminals, scrolling operations are fairly slow. | |
3185 | Often the termcap entry for the type of terminal in use fails | |
3186 | to inform Emacs of this. The two lines at the bottom of the screen | |
3187 | before a Control-V command are supposed to appear at the top after | |
3188 | the Control-V command. If Emacs thinks scrolling the lines is fast, | |
3189 | it will scroll them to the top of the screen. | |
3190 | ||
3191 | If scrolling is slow but Emacs thinks it is fast, the usual reason is | |
3192 | that the termcap entry for the terminal you are using does not | |
3193 | specify any padding time for the `al' and `dl' strings. Emacs | |
3194 | concludes that these operations take only as much time as it takes to | |
3195 | send the commands at whatever line speed you are using. You must | |
3196 | fix the termcap entry to specify, for the `al' and `dl', as much | |
3197 | time as the operations really take. | |
3198 | ||
3199 | Currently Emacs thinks in terms of serial lines which send characters | |
3200 | at a fixed rate, so that any operation which takes time for the | |
3201 | terminal to execute must also be padded. With bit-map terminals | |
3202 | operated across networks, often the network provides some sort of | |
3203 | flow control so that padding is never needed no matter how slow | |
3204 | an operation is. You must still specify a padding time if you want | |
3205 | Emacs to realize that the operation takes a long time. This will | |
3206 | cause padding characters to be sent unnecessarily, but they do | |
3207 | not really cost much. They will be transmitted while the scrolling | |
3208 | is happening and then discarded quickly by the terminal. | |
3209 | ||
3210 | Most bit-map terminals provide commands for inserting or deleting | |
3211 | multiple lines at once. Define the `AL' and `DL' strings in the | |
3212 | termcap entry to say how to do these things, and you will have | |
3213 | fast output without wasted padding characters. These strings should | |
3214 | each contain a single %-spec saying how to send the number of lines | |
3215 | to be scrolled. These %-specs are like those in the termcap | |
3216 | `cm' string. | |
3217 | ||
3218 | You should also define the `IC' and `DC' strings if your terminal | |
3219 | has a command to insert or delete multiple characters. These | |
3220 | take the number of positions to insert or delete as an argument. | |
3221 | ||
3222 | A `cs' string to set the scrolling region will reduce the amount | |
3223 | of motion you see on the screen when part of the screen is scrolled. | |
3224 | ||
3225 | * Your Delete key sends a Backspace to the terminal, using an AIXterm. | |
3226 | ||
3227 | The solution is to include in your .Xdefaults the lines: | |
3228 | ||
3229 | *aixterm.Translations: #override <Key>BackSpace: string(0x7f) | |
3230 | aixterm*ttyModes: erase ^? | |
3231 | ||
3232 | This makes your Backspace key send DEL (ASCII 127). | |
3233 | ||
3234 | * You type Control-H (Backspace) expecting to delete characters. | |
3235 | ||
3236 | Put `stty dec' in your .login file and your problems will disappear | |
3237 | after a day or two. | |
3238 | ||
3239 | The choice of Backspace for erasure was based on confusion, caused by | |
3240 | the fact that backspacing causes erasure (later, when you type another | |
3241 | character) on most display terminals. But it is a mistake. Deletion | |
3242 | of text is not the same thing as backspacing followed by failure to | |
3243 | overprint. I do not wish to propagate this confusion by conforming | |
3244 | to it. | |
3245 | ||
3246 | For this reason, I believe `stty dec' is the right mode to use, | |
3247 | and I have designed Emacs to go with that. If there were a thousand | |
3248 | other control characters, I would define Control-h to delete as well; | |
3249 | but there are not very many other control characters, and I think | |
3250 | that providing the most mnemonic possible Help character is more | |
3251 | important than adapting to people who don't use `stty dec'. | |
3252 | ||
3253 | If you are obstinate about confusing buggy overprinting with deletion, | |
3254 | you can redefine Backspace in your .emacs file: | |
3255 | (global-set-key "\b" 'delete-backward-char) | |
3256 | You can probably access help-command via f1. | |
3257 | ||
3258 | * Editing files through RFS gives spurious "file has changed" warnings. | |
3259 | It is possible that a change in Emacs 18.37 gets around this problem, | |
3260 | but in case not, here is a description of how to fix the RFS bug that | |
3261 | causes it. | |
3262 | ||
3263 | There was a serious pair of bugs in the handling of the fsync() system | |
3264 | call in the RFS server. | |
3265 | ||
3266 | The first is that the fsync() call is handled as another name for the | |
3267 | close() system call (!!). It appears that fsync() is not used by very | |
3268 | many programs; Emacs version 18 does an fsync() before closing files | |
3269 | to make sure that the bits are on the disk. | |
3270 | ||
3271 | This is fixed by the enclosed patch to the RFS server. | |
3272 | ||
3273 | The second, more serious problem, is that fsync() is treated as a | |
3274 | non-blocking system call (i.e., it's implemented as a message that | |
3275 | gets sent to the remote system without waiting for a reply). Fsync is | |
3276 | a useful tool for building atomic file transactions. Implementing it | |
3277 | as a non-blocking RPC call (when the local call blocks until the sync | |
3278 | is done) is a bad idea; unfortunately, changing it will break the RFS | |
3279 | protocol. No fix was supplied for this problem. | |
3280 | ||
3281 | (as always, your line numbers may vary) | |
3282 | ||
3283 | % rcsdiff -c -r1.2 serversyscall.c | |
3284 | RCS file: RCS/serversyscall.c,v | |
3285 | retrieving revision 1.2 | |
3286 | diff -c -r1.2 serversyscall.c | |
3287 | *** /tmp/,RCSt1003677 Wed Jan 28 15:15:02 1987 | |
3288 | --- serversyscall.c Wed Jan 28 15:14:48 1987 | |
3289 | *************** | |
3290 | *** 163,169 **** | |
3291 | /* | |
3292 | * No return sent for close or fsync! | |
3293 | */ | |
3294 | ! if (syscall == RSYS_close || syscall == RSYS_fsync) | |
3295 | proc->p_returnval = deallocate_fd(proc, msg->m_args[0]); | |
3296 | else | |
3297 | { | |
3298 | --- 166,172 ---- | |
3299 | /* | |
3300 | * No return sent for close or fsync! | |
3301 | */ | |
3302 | ! if (syscall == RSYS_close) | |
3303 | proc->p_returnval = deallocate_fd(proc, msg->m_args[0]); | |
3304 | else | |
3305 | { | |
3306 | ||
3307 | * Vax C compiler bugs affecting Emacs. | |
3308 | ||
3309 | You may get one of these problems compiling Emacs: | |
3310 | ||
3311 | foo.c line nnn: compiler error: no table entry for op STASG | |
3312 | foo.c: fatal error in /lib/ccom | |
3313 | ||
3314 | These are due to bugs in the C compiler; the code is valid C. | |
3315 | Unfortunately, the bugs are unpredictable: the same construct | |
3316 | may compile properly or trigger one of these bugs, depending | |
3317 | on what else is in the source file being compiled. Even changes | |
3318 | in header files that should not affect the file being compiled | |
3319 | can affect whether the bug happens. In addition, sometimes files | |
3320 | that compile correctly on one machine get this bug on another machine. | |
3321 | ||
3322 | As a result, it is hard for me to make sure this bug will not affect | |
3323 | you. I have attempted to find and alter these constructs, but more | |
3324 | can always appear. However, I can tell you how to deal with it if it | |
3325 | should happen. The bug comes from having an indexed reference to an | |
3326 | array of Lisp_Objects, as an argument in a function call: | |
3327 | Lisp_Object *args; | |
3328 | ... | |
3329 | ... foo (5, args[i], ...)... | |
3330 | putting the argument into a temporary variable first, as in | |
3331 | Lisp_Object *args; | |
3332 | Lisp_Object tem; | |
3333 | ... | |
3334 | tem = args[i]; | |
3335 | ... foo (r, tem, ...)... | |
3336 | causes the problem to go away. | |
3337 | The `contents' field of a Lisp vector is an array of Lisp_Objects, | |
3338 | so you may see the problem happening with indexed references to that. | |
3339 | ||
3340 | * 68000 C compiler problems | |
3341 | ||
3342 | Various 68000 compilers have different problems. | |
3343 | These are some that have been observed. | |
3344 | ||
3345 | ** Using value of assignment expression on union type loses. | |
3346 | This means that x = y = z; or foo (x = z); does not work | |
3347 | if x is of type Lisp_Object. | |
3348 | ||
3349 | ** "cannot reclaim" error. | |
3350 | ||
3351 | This means that an expression is too complicated. You get the correct | |
3352 | line number in the error message. The code must be rewritten with | |
3353 | simpler expressions. | |
3354 | ||
3355 | ** XCONS, XSTRING, etc macros produce incorrect code. | |
3356 | ||
3357 | If temacs fails to run at all, this may be the cause. | |
3358 | Compile this test program and look at the assembler code: | |
3359 | ||
3360 | struct foo { char x; unsigned int y : 24; }; | |
3361 | ||
3362 | lose (arg) | |
3363 | struct foo arg; | |
3364 | { | |
3365 | test ((int *) arg.y); | |
3366 | } | |
3367 | ||
3368 | If the code is incorrect, your compiler has this problem. | |
3369 | In the XCONS, etc., macros in lisp.h you must replace (a).u.val with | |
3370 | ((a).u.val + coercedummy) where coercedummy is declared as int. | |
3371 | ||
3372 | This problem will not happen if the m-...h file for your type | |
3373 | of machine defines NO_UNION_TYPE. That is the recommended setting now. | |
3374 | ||
3375 | * C compilers lose on returning unions | |
3376 | ||
3377 | I hear that some C compilers cannot handle returning a union type. | |
3378 | Most of the functions in GNU Emacs return type Lisp_Object, which is | |
3379 | defined as a union on some rare architectures. | |
3380 | ||
3381 | This problem will not happen if the m-...h file for your type | |
3382 | of machine defines NO_UNION_TYPE. | |
3383 | ||
53854552 | 3384 | \f |
fe6b4873 RS |
3385 | Copyright 1987,88,89,93,94,95,96,97,98,1999,2001,2002 |
3386 | Free Software Foundation, Inc. | |
3387 | ||
3388 | Copying and redistribution of this file with or without modification | |
3389 | are permitted without royalty provided this notice is preserved. | |
3390 | ||
53854552 EZ |
3391 | Local variables: |
3392 | mode: outline | |
3393 | paragraph-separate: "[ \f]*$" | |
3394 | end: |