Support Tooltips with the Carbon emacs port.
[bpt/emacs.git] / etc / PROBLEMS
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1This file describes various problems that have been encountered
2in compiling, installing and running GNU Emacs.
3
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4* Segfault on GNU/Linux using certain recent versions of the Linux kernel.
5
6With certain recent Linux kernels (like the one of Redhat Fedora Core
71), the new "Exec-shield" functionality is enabled by default, which
8creates a different memory layout that breaks the emacs dumper.
9
10You can check the Exec-shield state like this:
11
12 cat /proc/sys/kernel/exec-shield
13
14It returns 1 or 2 when Exec-shield is enabled, 0 otherwise. Please
15read your system documentation for more details on Exec-shield and
16associated commands.
17
18When Exec-shield is enabled, building Emacs will segfault during the
19execution of this command:
20
21temacs --batch --load loadup [dump|bootstrap]
22
23To work around this problem, it is necessary to temporarily disable
24Exec-shield while building Emacs, using the `setarch' command like
25this:
26
27 setarch i386 ./configure <configure parameters>
28 setarch i386 make <make parameters>
29
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30* Characters are displayed as empty boxes or with wrong font under X.
31
32This can occur when two different versions of FontConfig are used.
33For example, XFree86 4.3.0 has one version and Gnome usually comes
34with a newer version. Emacs compiled with --with-gtk will then use
35the newer version. In most cases the problem can be temporarily
36fixed by stopping the application that has the error (it can be
37Emacs or any other application), removing ~/.fonts.cache-1,
38and then start the application again.
39If removing ~/.fonts.cache-1 and restarting doesn't help, the
40application with problem must be recompiled with the same version
41of FontConfig as the rest of the system uses. For KDE, it is
42sufficient to recompile Qt.
43
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44* Process output truncated on Mac OS X (Carbon) when using pty's.
45
46There appears to be a problem with the implementation of pty's on the
47Mac OS X that causes process output to be truncated. To avoid this,
48leave process-connection-type set to its default value of nil.
49
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50* Emacs crashes on Mac OS X (Carbon) after system software upgrade.
51
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52This problem seems to be now solved by Steven Tamm's patch to
53unexmacosx.c on Nov 24, 2002.
54
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55Between Mac OS X release 10.2.1 and 10.2.2 there was an incompatible
56change in the memory allocator that causes a EXC_BAD_ACCESS error near
57xrealloc(). Relinking the application (by deleting src/temacs and
58running make) will solve the problem. It appears to be caused by some
59problems with the unexec code and its interaction with libSystem.B.
fc2938d1 60
d08c4c28 61* Emacs crashes with SIGSEGV in XtInitializeWidgetClass
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62
63It crashes on X, but runs fine when called with option "-nw".
64
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65This has been observed when Emacs is linked with GNU ld but without passing
66the -z nocombreloc flag. Emacs normally knows to pass the -z nocombreloc
67flag when needed, so if you come across a situation where the flag is
68necessary but missing, please report it via M-x report-emacs-bug.
24efe898 69
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70On platforms such as Solaris, you can also work around this problem by
71configuring your compiler to use the native linker instead of GNU ld.
72
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73* Characters from the mule-unicode charsets aren't displayed under X.
74
75XFree86 4 contains many fonts in iso10646-1 encoding which have
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76minimal character repertoires (whereas the encoding part of the font
77name is meant to be a reasonable indication of the repertoire
78according to the XLFD spec). Emacs may choose one of these to display
79characters from the mule-unicode charsets and then typically won't be
80able to find the glyphs to display many characters. (Check with C-u
81C-x = .) To avoid this, you may need to use a fontset which sets the
82font for the mule-unicode sets explicitly. E.g. to use GNU unifont,
83include in the fontset spec:
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84
85mule-unicode-2500-33ff:-gnu-unifont-*-iso10646-1,\
86mule-unicode-e000-ffff:-gnu-unifont-*-iso10646-1,\
87mule-unicode-0100-24ff:-gnu-unifont-*-iso10646-1
88
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89* The UTF-8/16/7 coding systems don't encode CJK (Far Eastern) characters.
90
91Emacs by default only supports the parts of the Unicode BMP whose code
92points are in the ranges 0000-33ff and e000-ffff. This excludes: most
93of CJK, Yi and Hangul, as well as everything outside the BMP.
94
95If you read UTF-8 data with code points outside these ranges, the
96characters appear in the buffer as raw bytes of the original UTF-8
97(composed into a single quasi-character) and they will be written back
98correctly as UTF-8, assuming you don't break the composed sequences.
99If you read such characters from UTF-16 or UTF-7 data, they are
100substituted with the Unicode `replacement character', and you lose
101information.
102
103To edit such UTF data, turn on Utf-Translate-Cjk mode, which makes
104many common CJK characters available for encoding and decoding and can
105be extended by updating the tables it uses. This also allows you to
106save as UTF buffers containing characters decoded by the chinese-,
107japanese- and korean- coding systems, e.g. cut and pasted from
108elsewhere.
60f553d2 109
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110* Problems with file dialogs in Emacs built with Open Motif.
111
112When Emacs 21 is built with Open Motif 2.1, it can happen that the
113graphical file dialog boxes do not work properly. The "OK", "Filter"
114and "Cancel" buttons do not respond to mouse clicks. Dragging the
115file dialog window usually causes the buttons to work again.
116
4af77d9f 117The solution is to use LessTif instead. LessTif is a free replacement
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118for Motif. See the file INSTALL for information on how to do this.
119
120Another workaround is not to use the mouse to trigger file prompts,
121but to use the keyboard. This way, you will be prompted for a file in
122the minibuffer instead of a graphical file dialog.
123
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124* Emacs reports a BadAtom error (from X) running on Solaris 7 or 8.
125
126This happens when Emacs was built on some other version of Solaris.
127Rebuild it on Solaris 8.
128
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129* Mule-UCS loads very slowly.
130
131Changes to Emacs internals interact badly with Mule-UCS's `un-define'
132library, which is the usual interface to Mule-UCS. Apply the
133following patch to Mule-UCS 0.84 and rebuild it. That will help,
134though loading will still be slower than in Emacs 20. (Some
135distributions, such as Debian, may already have applied such a patch.)
136
137--- lisp/un-define.el 6 Mar 2001 22:41:38 -0000 1.30
138+++ lisp/un-define.el 19 Apr 2002 18:34:26 -0000
139@@ -610,13 +624,21 @@ by calling post-read-conversion and pre-
177c0ea7 140
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141 (mapcar
142 (lambda (x)
143- (mapcar
144- (lambda (y)
145- (mucs-define-coding-system
146- (nth 0 y) (nth 1 y) (nth 2 y)
147- (nth 3 y) (nth 4 y) (nth 5 y) (nth 6 y))
148- (coding-system-put (car y) 'alias-coding-systems (list (car x))))
149- (cdr x)))
150+ (if (fboundp 'register-char-codings)
151+ ;; Mule 5, where we don't need the eol-type specified and
152+ ;; register-char-codings may be very slow for these coding
153+ ;; system definitions.
154+ (let ((y (cadr x)))
155+ (mucs-define-coding-system
156+ (car x) (nth 1 y) (nth 2 y)
157+ (nth 3 y) (nth 4 y) (nth 5 y)))
158+ (mapcar
159+ (lambda (y)
160+ (mucs-define-coding-system
161+ (nth 0 y) (nth 1 y) (nth 2 y)
162+ (nth 3 y) (nth 4 y) (nth 5 y) (nth 6 y))
163+ (coding-system-put (car y) 'alias-coding-systems (list (car x)))))
164+ (cdr x)))
165 `((utf-8
166 (utf-8-unix
167 ?u "UTF-8 coding system"
168
169Note that Emacs has native support for Unicode, roughly equivalent to
170Mule-UCS's, so you may not need it.
171
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172* Building Emacs with GCC 2.9x fails in the `src' directory.
173
174This may happen if you use a development version of GNU `cpp' from one
175of the GCC snapshots between Oct 2000 and Feb 2001, or from a released
176version of GCC newer than 2.95.2 which was prepared around those
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177dates; similar problems were reported with some snapshots of GCC 3.1
178around Sep 30 2001. The preprocessor in those versions is
179incompatible with a traditional Unix cpp (e.g., it expands ".." into
180". .", which breaks relative file names that reference the parent
181directory; or inserts TAB characters before lines that set Make
182variables).
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183
184The solution is to make sure the preprocessor is run with the
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185`-traditional' option. The `configure' script does that automatically
186when it detects the known problems in your cpp, but you might hit some
187unknown ones. To force the `configure' script to use `-traditional',
188run the script like this:
189
173de997 190 CPP='gcc -E -traditional' ./configure ...
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191
192(replace the ellipsis "..." with any additional arguments you pass to
193the script).
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194
195Note that this problem does not pertain to the MS-Windows port of
196Emacs, since it doesn't use the preprocessor to generate Makefiles.
197
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198* Building Emacs with a system compiler fails to link because of an
199undefined symbol such as __eprintf which does not appear in Emacs.
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200
201This can happen if some of the libraries linked into Emacs were built
202with GCC, but Emacs itself is being linked with a compiler other than
203GCC. Object files compiled with GCC might need some helper functions
204from libgcc.a, the library which comes with GCC, but the system
205compiler does not instruct the linker to search libgcc.a during the
206link stage.
207
208A solution is to link with GCC, like this:
209
210 make CC=gcc
211
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212Since the .o object files already exist, this will not recompile Emacs
213with GCC, but just restart by trying again to link temacs.
214
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215* Building the MS-Windows port with Cygwin GCC can fail.
216
217Emacs may not build using recent Cygwin builds of GCC, such as Cygwin
218version 1.1.8, using the default configure settings. It appears to be
219necessary to specify the -mwin32 flag when compiling, and define
220__MSVCRT__, like so:
221
222 configure --with-gcc --cflags -mwin32 --cflags -D__MSVCRT__
223
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224* Building the MS-Windows port fails with a CreateProcess failure.
225
226Some versions of mingw32 make on some versions of Windows do not seem
227to detect the shell correctly. Try "make SHELL=cmd.exe", or if that
228fails, try running make from Cygwin bash instead.
229
9272ccfc 230* Building the MS-Windows port with Leim fails in the `leim' directory.
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231
232The error message might be something like this:
233
c24be289 234 Converting d:/emacs-21.3/leim/CXTERM-DIC/4Corner.tit to quail-package...
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235 Invalid ENCODE: value in TIT dictionary
236 NMAKE : fatal error U1077: '"../src/obj-spd/i386/emacs.exe"' : return code
237 '0xffffffff'
238 Stop.
239
240This can happen if the Leim distribution is unpacked with a program
241which converts the `*.tit' files to DOS-style CR-LF text format. The
242`*.tit' files in the leim/CXTERM-DIC directory require Unix-style line
243endings to compile properly, because Emacs reads them without any code
244or EOL conversions.
245
246The solution is to make sure the program used to unpack Leim does not
247change the files' line endings behind your back. The GNU FTP site has
248in the `/gnu/emacs/windows' directory a program called `djtarnt.exe'
249which can be used to unpack `.tar.gz' and `.zip' archives without
250mangling them.
251
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252* Emacs crashes when dumping itself on Mac PPC running Yellow Dog GNU/Linux.
253
254The crashes happen inside the function Fmake_symbol; here's a typical
255C backtrace printed by GDB:
256
257 0x190c0c0 in Fmake_symbol ()
258 (gdb) where
259 #0 0x190c0c0 in Fmake_symbol ()
260 #1 0x1942ca4 in init_obarray ()
261 #2 0x18b3500 in main ()
262 #3 0x114371c in __libc_start_main (argc=5, argv=0x7ffff5b4, envp=0x7ffff5cc,
263
264This could happen because GCC version 2.95 and later changed the base
265of the load address to 0x10000000. Emacs needs to be told about this,
266but we currently cannot do that automatically, because that breaks
267other versions of GNU/Linux on the MacPPC. Until we find a way to
268distinguish between the Yellow Dog and the other varieties of
269GNU/Linux systems on the PPC, you will have to manually uncomment the
270following section near the end of the file src/m/macppc.h in the Emacs
271distribution:
272
cbfe0252 273 #if 0 /* This breaks things on PPC GNU/Linux except for Yellowdog,
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274 even with identical GCC, as, ld. Let's take it out until we
275 know what's really going on here. */
276 /* GCC 2.95 and newer on GNU/Linux PPC changed the load address to
277 0x10000000. */
278 #if defined __linux__
279 #if __GNUC__ > 2 || (__GNUC__ == 2 && __GNUC_MINOR__ >= 95)
280 #define DATA_SEG_BITS 0x10000000
281 #endif
282 #endif
283 #endif /* 0 */
284
285Remove the "#if 0" and "#endif" directives which surround this, save
286the file, and then reconfigure and rebuild Emacs. The dumping process
287should now succeed.
288
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289* JPEG images aren't displayed.
290
291This has been reported when Emacs is built with jpeg-6a library.
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292Upgrading to jpeg-6b solves the problem. Configure checks for the
293correct version, but this problem could occur if a binary built
294against a shared libjpeg is run on a system with an older version.
9ed04369 295
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296* Building `ctags' for MS-Windows with the MinGW port of GCC fails.
297
298This might happen due to a bug in the MinGW header assert.h, which
299defines the `assert' macro with a trailing semi-colon. The following
300patch to assert.h should solve this:
301
302*** include/assert.h.orig Sun Nov 7 02:41:36 1999
303--- include/assert.h Mon Jan 29 11:49:10 2001
304***************
305*** 41,47 ****
306 /*
307 * If not debugging, assert does nothing.
308 */
309! #define assert(x) ((void)0);
177c0ea7 310
b87207a0 311 #else /* debugging enabled */
177c0ea7 312
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313--- 41,47 ----
314 /*
315 * If not debugging, assert does nothing.
316 */
317! #define assert(x) ((void)0)
177c0ea7 318
b87207a0 319 #else /* debugging enabled */
177c0ea7 320
b87207a0 321
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322
323* Improving performance with slow X connections
324
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325There are several ways to improve this performance, any subset of which can
326be carried out at the same time:
327
3281) If you don't need X Input Methods (XIM) for entering text in some
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329 language you use, you can improve performance on WAN links by using
330 the X resource useXIM to turn off use of XIM. This does not affect
331 the use of Emacs' own input methods, which are part of the Leim
332 package.
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333
3342) If the connection is very slow, you might also want to consider
335 switching off scroll bars, menu bar, and tool bar.
336
3373) Use ssh to forward the X connection, and enable compression on this
338 forwarded X connection (ssh -XC remotehostname emacs ...).
339
3404) Use lbxproxy on the remote end of the connection. This is an interface
341 to the low bandwidth X extension in most modern X servers, which
342 improves performance dramatically, at the slight expense of correctness
343 of the X protocol. lbxproxy acheives the performance gain by grouping
344 several X requests in one TCP packet and sending them off together,
345 instead of requiring a round-trip for each X request in a seperate
346 packet. The switches that seem to work best for emacs are:
347 -noatomsfile -nowinattr -cheaterrors -cheatevents
348 Note that the -nograbcmap option is known to cause problems.
349 For more about lbxproxy, see:
20888a62 350 http://www.xfree86.org/4.3.0/lbxproxy.1.html
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351
352* Getting a Meta key on the FreeBSD console
353
354By default, neither Alt nor any other key acts as a Meta key on
355FreeBSD, but this can be changed using kbdcontrol(1). Dump the
356current keymap to a file with the command
357
358 $ kbdcontrol -d >emacs.kbd
359
360Edit emacs.kbd, and give the key you want to be the Meta key the
361definition `meta'. For instance, if your keyboard has a ``Windows''
362key with scan code 105, change the line for scan code 105 in emacs.kbd
363to look like this
364
365 105 meta meta meta meta meta meta meta meta O
366
367to make the Windows key the Meta key. Load the new keymap with
368
369 $ kbdcontrol -l emacs.kbd
370
371* Emacs' xterm-mouse-mode doesn't work on the Gnome terminal.
372
373A symptom of this bug is that double-clicks insert a control sequence
374into the buffer. The reason this happens is an apparent
375incompatibility of the Gnome terminal with Xterm, which also affects
376other programs using the Xterm mouse interface. A problem report has
377been filed.
378
379* Emacs pauses for several seconds when changing the default font
380
381This has been reported for fvwm 2.2.5 and the window manager of KDE
3822.1. The reason for the pause is Xt waiting for a ConfigureNotify
383event from the window manager, which the window manager doesn't send.
384Xt stops waiting after a default timeout of usually 5 seconds.
385
386A workaround for this is to add something like
387
388emacs.waitForWM: false
389
390to your X resources. Alternatively, add `(wait-for-wm . nil)' to a
391frame's parameter list, like this:
392
393 (modify-frame-parameters nil '((wait-for-wm . nil)))
394
395(this should go into your `.emacs' file).
396
397* Underlines appear at the wrong position.
398
399This is caused by fonts having a wrong UNDERLINE_POSITION property.
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400Examples are the font 7x13 on XFree prior to version 4.1, or the jmk
401neep font from the Debian xfonts-jmk package. To circumvent this
402problem, set x-use-underline-position-properties to nil in your
403`.emacs'.
404
405To see what is the value of UNDERLINE_POSITION defined by the font,
406type `xlsfonts -lll FONT' and look at the font's UNDERLINE_POSITION
407property.
61638355 408
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409* When using Xaw3d scroll bars without arrows, the very first mouse
410click in a scroll bar might be ignored by the scroll bar widget. This
411is probably a bug in Xaw3d; when Xaw3d is compiled with arrows, the
412problem disappears.
413
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414* There are known binary incompatibilities between Xaw, Xaw3d, neXtaw,
415XawM and the few other derivatives of Xaw. So when you compile with
416one of these, it may not work to dynamically link with another one.
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417For example, strange problems, such as Emacs exiting when you type
418"C-x 1", were reported when Emacs compiled with Xaw3d and libXaw was
419used with neXtaw at run time.
420
421The solution is to rebuild Emacs with the toolkit version you actually
422want to use, or set LD_PRELOAD to preload the same toolkit version you
423built Emacs with.
ed0d1d91 424
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425* Clicking C-mouse-2 in the scroll bar doesn't split the window.
426
427This currently doesn't work with scroll-bar widgets (and we don't know
428a good way of implementing it with widgets). If Emacs is configured
429--without-toolkit-scroll-bars, C-mouse-2 on the scroll bar does work.
430
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431* Emacs aborts inside the function `tparam1'.
432
433This can happen if Emacs was built without terminfo support, but the
434terminal's capabilities use format that is only supported by terminfo.
435If your system has ncurses installed, this might happen if your
436version of ncurses is broken; upgrading to a newer version of ncurses
437and reconfiguring and rebuilding Emacs should solve this.
438
439All modern systems support terminfo, so even if ncurses is not the
440problem, you should look for a way to configure Emacs so that it uses
441terminfo when built.
442
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443* Error messages about undefined colors on X.
444
445The messages might say something like this:
446
447 Unable to load color "grey95"
448
449(typically, in the `*Messages*' buffer), or something like this:
450
451 Error while displaying tooltip: (error Undefined color lightyellow)
452
453These problems could happen if some other X program has used up too
454many colors of the X palette, leaving Emacs with insufficient system
455resources to load all the colors it needs.
456
457A solution is to exit the offending X programs before starting Emacs.
458
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459* Colors are not available on a tty or in xterm.
460
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461Emacs 21 supports colors on character terminals and terminal
462emulators, but this support relies on the terminfo or termcap database
463entry to specify that the display supports color. Emacs looks at the
464"Co" capability for the terminal to find out how many colors are
465supported; it should be non-zero to activate the color support within
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466Emacs. (Most color terminals support 8 or 16 colors.) If your system
467uses terminfo, the name of the capability equivalent to "Co" is
468"colors".
469
470In addition to the "Co" capability, Emacs needs the "op" (for
471``original pair'') capability, which tells how to switch the terminal
472back to the default foreground and background colors. Emacs will not
473use colors if this capability is not defined. If your terminal entry
474doesn't provide such a capability, try using the ANSI standard escape
475sequence \E[00m (that is, define a new termcap/terminfo entry and make
476it use your current terminal's entry plus \E[00m for the "op"
477capability).
478
479Finally, the "NC" capability (terminfo name: "ncv") tells Emacs which
480attributes cannot be used with colors. Setting this capability
481incorrectly might have the effect of disabling colors; try setting
482this capability to `0' (zero) and see if that helps.
ed85f61d 483
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484Emacs uses the database entry for the terminal whose name is the value
485of the environment variable TERM. With `xterm', a common terminal
ed85f61d 486entry that supports color is `xterm-color', so setting TERM's value to
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487`xterm-color' might activate the color support on an xterm-compatible
488emulator.
ed85f61d 489
f5fdfa60 490Beginning with version 21.4, Emacs supports the --color command-line
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491option which may be used to force Emacs to use one of a few popular
492modes for getting colors on a tty. For example, --color=ansi8 sets up
493for using the ANSI-standard escape sequences that support 8 colors.
494
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495Some modes do not use colors unless you turn on the Font-lock mode.
496Some people have long ago set their `~/.emacs' files to turn on
497Font-lock on X only, so they won't see colors on a tty. The
498recommended way of turning on Font-lock is by typing "M-x
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499global-font-lock-mode RET" or by customizing the variable
500`global-font-lock-mode'.
ed85f61d 501
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502* Emacs on a tty switches the cursor to large blinking block.
503
504This was reported to happen on some GNU/Linux systems which use
505ncurses version 5.0, but could be relevant for other versions as well.
506These versions of ncurses come with a `linux' terminfo entry, where
507the "cvvis" capability (termcap "vs") is defined as "\E[?25h\E[?8c"
508(show cursor, change size). This escape sequence switches on a
509blinking hardware text-mode cursor whose size is a full character
510cell. This blinking cannot be stopped, since a hardware cursor
511always blinks.
512
513A work-around is to redefine the "cvvis" capability so that it
514enables a *software* cursor. The software cursor works by inverting
515the colors of the character at point, so what you see is a block
516cursor that doesn't blink. For this to work, you need to redefine
517the "cnorm" capability as well, so that it operates on the software
518cursor instead of the hardware cursor.
519
520To this end, run "infocmp linux > linux-term", edit the file
521`linux-term' to make both the "cnorm" and "cvvis" capabilities send
522the sequence "\E[?25h\E[?17;0;64c", and then run "tic linux-term" to
523produce a modified terminfo entry.
524
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525Alternatively, if you want a blinking underscore as your Emacs cursor,
526change the "cvvis" capability to send the "\E[?25h\E[?0c" command.
527
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528* Problems in Emacs built with LessTif.
529
530The problems seem to depend on the version of LessTif and the Motif
531emulation for which it is set up.
532
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533Only the Motif 1.2 emulation seems to be stable enough in LessTif.
534Lesstif 0.92-17's Motif 1.2 emulation seems to work okay on FreeBSD.
535On GNU/Linux systems, lesstif-0.92.6 configured with "./configure
536--enable-build-12 --enable-default-12" is reported to be the most
537successful. The binary GNU/Linux package
538lesstif-devel-0.92.0-1.i386.rpm was reported to have problems with
539menu placement.
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540
541On some systems, even with Motif 1.2 emulation, Emacs occasionally
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542locks up, grabbing all mouse and keyboard events. We still don't know
543what causes these problems; they are not reproducible by Emacs
544developers.
339b95d5 545
fa99e2a4 546* Known problems with the MS-Windows port of Emacs 21.2.
b87207a0 547
d6cdfce6 548Frames are not refreshed while the File or Font dialog or a pop-up menu
6fb6f3ac 549is displayed. This also means help text for pop-up menus is not
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550displayed at all. This is because message handling under Windows is
551synchronous, so we cannot handle repaint (or any other) messages while
552waiting for a system function to return the result of the dialog or
553pop-up menu interaction.
f936978f 554
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555Windows 95 and Windows NT up to version 4.0 do not support help text
556for menus. Help text is only available in later versions of Windows.
557
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558There are problems with display if mouse-tracking is enabled and the
559mouse is moved off a frame, over another frame then back over the first
560frame. A workaround is to click the left mouse button inside the frame
561after moving back into it.
b87207a0 562
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563Some minor flickering still persists during mouse-tracking, although
564not as severely as in 21.1.
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565
566Emacs can sometimes abort when non-ASCII text, possibly with null
567characters, is copied and pasted into a buffer.
568
569An inactive cursor remains in an active window after the Windows
570Manager driven switch of the focus, until a key is pressed.
571
fa99e2a4 572Windows input methods are not recognized by Emacs (as of v21.2). Some
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573of these input methods cause the keyboard to send characters encoded
574in the appropriate coding system (e.g., ISO 8859-1 for Latin-1
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575characters, ISO 8859-8 for Hebrew characters, etc.). To make this
576work, set the keyboard coding system to the appropriate value after
577you activate the Windows input method. For example, if you activate
578the Hebrew input method, type "C-x RET k iso-8859-8 RET". (Emacs
579ought to recognize the Windows language-change event and set up the
580appropriate keyboard encoding automatically, but it doesn't do that
581yet.)
582
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583The %b specifier for format-time-string does not produce abbreviated
584month names with consistent widths for some locales on some versions
585of Windows. This is caused by a deficiency in the underlying system
586library function.
fa99e2a4 587
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588* The `configure' script doesn't find the jpeg library.
589
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590There are reports that this happens on some systems because the linker
591by default only looks for shared libraries, but jpeg distribution by
592default only installs a nonshared version of the library, `libjpeg.a'.
593
594If this is the problem, you can configure the jpeg library with the
595`--enable-shared' option and then rebuild libjpeg. This produces a
596shared version of libjpeg, which you need to install. Finally, rerun
597the Emacs configure script, which should now find the jpeg library.
598Alternatively, modify the generated src/Makefile to link the .a file
cc305a60 599explicitly, and edit src/config.h to define HAVE_JPEG.
c8d9b4ee 600
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601* Building Emacs over NFS fails with ``Text file busy''.
602
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603This was reported to happen when building Emacs on a GNU/Linux system
604(RedHat Linux 6.2) using a build directory automounted from Solaris
605(SunOS 5.6) file server, but it might not be limited to that
606configuration alone. Presumably, the NFS server doesn't commit the
607files' data to disk quickly enough, and the Emacs executable file is
608left ``busy'' for several seconds after Emacs has finished dumping
609itself. This causes the subsequent commands which invoke the dumped
cbfe0252 610Emacs executable to fail with the above message.
d9810886 611
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612In some of these cases, a time skew between the NFS server and the
613machine where Emacs is built is detected and reported by GNU Make
614(it says that some of the files have modification time in the future).
615This might be a symptom of NFS-related problems.
616
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617If the NFS server runs on Solaris, apply the Solaris patch 105379-05
618(Sunos 5.6: /kernel/misc/nfssrv patch). If that doesn't work, or if
619you have a different version of the OS or the NFS server, you can
620force the NFS server to use 1KB blocks, which was reported to fix the
621problem albeit at a price of slowing down file I/O. You can force 1KB
622blocks by specifying the "-o rsize=1024,wsize=1024" options to the
623`mount' command, or by adding ",rsize=1024,wsize=1024" to the mount
624options in the appropriate system configuration file, such as
625`/etc/auto.home'.
626
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627Alternatively, when Make fails due to this problem, you could wait for
628a few seconds and then invoke Make again. In one particular case,
629waiting for 10 or more seconds between the two Make invocations seemed
630to work around the problem.
d9810886 631
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632Similar problems can happen if your machine NFS-mounts a directory
633onto itself. Suppose the Emacs sources live in `/usr/local/src' and
634you are working on the host called `marvin'. Then an entry in the
635`/etc/fstab' file like the following is asking for trouble:
636
637 marvin:/usr/local/src /usr/local/src ...options.omitted...
638
639The solution is to remove this line from `etc/fstab'.
640
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641* Emacs binary is not in executable format, and cannot be run.
642
643This was reported to happen when Emacs is built in a directory mounted
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644via NFS, for some combinations of NFS client and NFS server.
645Usually, the file `emacs' produced in these cases is full of
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646binary null characters, and the `file' utility says:
647
648 emacs: ASCII text, with no line terminators
649
650We don't know what exactly causes this failure. A work-around is to
651build Emacs in a directory on a local disk.
652
9ed04369 653* Accented ISO-8859-1 characters are displayed as | or _.
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654
655Try other font set sizes (S-mouse-1). If the problem persists with
656other sizes as well, your text is corrupted, probably through software
657that is not 8-bit clean. If the problem goes away with another font
658size, it's probably because some fonts pretend to be ISO-8859-1 fonts
659when they are really ASCII fonts. In particular the schumacher-clean
660fonts have this bug in some versions of X.
661
662To see what glyphs are included in a font, use `xfd', like this:
663
664 xfd -fn -schumacher-clean-medium-r-normal--12-120-75-75-c-60-iso8859-1
665
666If this shows only ASCII glyphs, the font is indeed the source of the
667problem.
668
669The solution is to remove the corresponding lines from the appropriate
670`fonts.alias' file, then run `mkfontdir' in that directory, and then run
671`xset fp rehash'.
672
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673* Large file support is disabled on HP-UX. See the comments in
674src/s/hpux10.h.
675
e9a0a549 676* Crashes when displaying GIF images in Emacs built with version
ec6bd013 677libungif-4.1.0 are resolved by using version libungif-4.1.0b1.
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678Configure checks for the correct version, but this problem could occur
679if a binary built against a shared libungif is run on a system with an
680older version.
4e0bd469 681
4dea3d52 682* Font Lock displays portions of the buffer in incorrect faces.
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683
684By far the most frequent cause of this is a parenthesis `(' or a brace
685`{' in column zero. Font Lock assumes that such a paren is outside of
686any comment or string. This is of course not true in general, but the
687vast majority of well-formatted program source files don't have such
688parens, and therefore this assumption is used to allow optimizations
689in Font Lock's syntactical analysis. These optimizations avoid some
cbfe0252 690pathological cases where jit-lock, the Just-in-Time fontification
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691introduced with Emacs 21.1, could significantly slow down scrolling
692through the buffer, especially scrolling backwards, and also jumping
693to the end of a very large buffer.
694
445f98eb 695Beginning with version 21.4, a parenthesis or a brace in column zero
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696is highlighted in bold-red face if it is inside a string or a comment,
697to indicate that it could interfere with Font Lock (and also with
698indentation) and should be moved or escaped with a backslash.
473347f6 699
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700If you don't use large buffers, or have a very fast machine which
701makes the delays insignificant, you can avoid the incorrect
702fontification by setting the variable
703`font-lock-beginning-of-syntax-function' to a nil value. (This must
704be done _after_ turning on Font Lock.)
705
706Another alternative is to avoid a paren in column zero. For example,
707in a Lisp string you could precede the paren with a backslash.
708
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709* When running on KDE, colors or fonts are not as specified for Emacs,
710or messed up.
711
cbfe0252 712For example, you could see background you set for Emacs only in the
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713empty portions of the Emacs display, while characters have some other
714background.
715
716This happens because KDE's defaults apply its color and font
717definitions even to applications that weren't compiled for KDE. The
718solution is to uncheck the "Apply fonts and colors to non-KDE apps"
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GM
719option in Preferences->Look&Feel->Style (KDE 2). In KDE 3, this option
720is in the "Colors" section, rather than "Style".
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721
722Alternatively, if you do want the KDE defaults to apply to other
723applications, but not to Emacs, you could modify the file `Emacs.ad'
724(should be in the `/usr/share/apps/kdisplay/app-defaults/' directory)
725so that it doesn't set the default background and foreground only for
726Emacs. For example, make sure the following resources are either not
727present or commented out:
728
729 Emacs.default.attributeForeground
730 Emacs.default.attributeBackground
731 Emacs*Foreground
732 Emacs*Background
733
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734* Interrupting Cygwin port of Bash from Emacs doesn't work.
735
736Cygwin 1.x builds of the ported Bash cannot be interrupted from the
737MS-Windows version of Emacs. This is due to some change in the Bash
738port or in the Cygwin library which apparently make Bash ignore the
739keyboard interrupt event sent by Emacs to Bash. (Older Cygwin ports
740of Bash, up to b20.1, did receive SIGINT from Emacs.)
741
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742* Dired is very slow.
743
744This could happen if invocation of the `df' program takes a long
745time. Possible reasons for this include:
746
747 - ClearCase mounted filesystems (VOBs) that sometimes make `df'
748 response time extremely slow (dozens of seconds);
749
750 - slow automounters on some old versions of Unix;
751
752 - slow operation of some versions of `df'.
753
754To work around the problem, you could either (a) set the variable
755`directory-free-space-program' to nil, and thus prevent Emacs from
756invoking `df'; (b) use `df' from the GNU Fileutils package; or
757(c) use CVS, which is Free Software, instead of ClearCase.
758
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759* Accessing remote files with ange-ftp hangs the MS-Windows version of Emacs.
760
761If the FTP client is the Cygwin port of GNU `ftp', this appears to be
762due to some bug in the Cygwin DLL or some incompatibility between it
763and the implementation of asynchronous subprocesses in the Windows
764port of Emacs. Specifically, some parts of the FTP server responses
765are not flushed out, apparently due to buffering issues, which
766confuses ange-ftp.
767
768The solution is to downgrade to an older version of the Cygwin DLL
769(version 1.3.2 was reported to solve the problem), or use the stock
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770Windows FTP client, usually found in the `C:\WINDOWS' or 'C:\WINNT'
771directory. To force ange-ftp use the stock Windows client, set the
772variable `ange-ftp-ftp-program-name' to the absolute file name of the
773client's executable. For example:
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774
775 (setq ange-ftp-ftp-program-name "c:/windows/ftp.exe")
776
777If you want to stick with the Cygwin FTP client, you can work around
778this problem by putting this in your `.emacs' file:
779
780 (setq ange-ftp-ftp-program-args '("-i" "-n" "-g" "-v" "--prompt" "")
781
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782* Versions of the W3 package released before Emacs 21.1 don't run
783under Emacs 21. This fixed in W3 version 4.0pre.47.
a953a8d3 784
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GM
785* On AIX, if linking fails because libXbsd isn't found, check if you
786are compiling with the system's `cc' and CFLAGS containing `-O5'. If
787so, you have hit a compiler bug. Please make sure to re-configure
788Emacs so that it isn't compiled with `-O5'.
789
cc2f2825 790* Compiling on AIX 4.3.x or 4.4 fails.
ec383c7d 791
9e2305c3 792This could happen if you use /bin/c89 as your compiler, instead of
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793the default `cc'. /bin/c89 treats certain warnings, such as benign
794redefinitions of macros, as errors, and fails the build. A solution
795is to use the default compiler `cc'.
796
a14e05ac 797* Old versions of the PSGML package use the obsolete variables
e1f9a6b3 798`before-change-function' and `after-change-function', which are no
9ec9d3d2 799longer used by Emacs. Please use PSGML 1.2.3 or later.
1d297d9b 800
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801* PSGML conflicts with sgml-mode.
802
803PSGML package uses the same names of some variables (like keymap)
804as built-in sgml-mode.el because it was created as a replacement
805of that package. The conflict will be shown if you load
806sgml-mode.el before psgml.el. E.g. this could happen if you edit
807HTML page and then start to work with SGML or XML file. html-mode
808(from sgml-mode.el) is used for HTML file and loading of psgml.el
809(for sgml-mode or xml-mode) will cause an error.
810
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811* The LDAP support rely on ldapsearch program from OpenLDAP version 2.
812
813It can fail to work with ldapsearch program from OpenLDAP version 1.
814Version 1 of OpenLDAP is now deprecated. If you are still using it,
815please upgrade to version 2. As a temporary workaround, remove
816argument "-x" from the variable `ldap-ldapsearch-args'.
817
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818* The `oc-unicode' package doesn't work with Emacs 21.
819
9ed04369 820This package tries to define more private charsets than there are free
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821slots now. The current built-in Unicode support is actually more
822flexible. (Use option `utf-translate-cjk-mode' if you need CJK
823support.) Files encoded as emacs-mule using oc-unicode aren't
824generally read correctly by Emacs 21.
224a0b4d 825
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826* Using epop3.el package causes Emacs to signal an error.
827
828The error message might be something like this:
829
830 "Lisp nesting exceeds max-lisp-eval-depth"
831
832This happens because epop3 redefines the function gethash, which is a
833built-in primitive beginning with Emacs 21.1. We don't have a patch
834for epop3 that fixes this, but perhaps a newer version of epop3
835corrects that.
836
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837* ps-print commands fail to find prologue files ps-prin*.ps.
838
839This can happen if you use an old version of X-Symbol package: it
840defines compatibility functions which trick ps-print into thinking it
841runs in XEmacs, and look for the prologue files in a wrong directory.
842
843The solution is to upgrade X-Symbol to a later version.
844
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845* lpr commands don't work on MS-Windows with some cheap printers.
846
847This problem may also strike other platforms, but the solution is
848likely to be a global one, and not Emacs specific.
849
850Many cheap inkjet, and even some cheap laser printers, do not
851print plain text anymore, they will only print through graphical
852printer drivers. A workaround on MS-Windows is to use Windows' basic
853built in editor to print (this is possibly the only useful purpose it
854has):
855
856(setq printer-name "") ;; notepad takes the default
857(setq lpr-command "notepad") ;; notepad
858(setq lpr-switches nil) ;; not needed
859(setq lpr-printer-switch "/P") ;; run notepad as batch printer
860
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861* On systems with shared libraries you might encounter run-time errors
862from the dynamic linker telling you that it is unable to find some
863shared libraries, for instance those for Xaw3d or image support.
864These errors mean Emacs has been linked with a library whose shared
865library is not in the default search path of the dynamic linker.
866
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867Similar problems could prevent Emacs from building, since the build
868process invokes Emacs several times.
869
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870On many systems, it is possible to set LD_LIBRARY_PATH in your
871environment to specify additional directories where shared libraries
872can be found.
873
874Other systems allow to set LD_RUN_PATH in a similar way, but before
875Emacs is linked. With LD_RUN_PATH set, the linker will include a
876specified run-time search path in the executable.
877
8643647c 878On some systems, Emacs can crash due to problems with dynamic
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879linking. Specifically, on SGI Irix 6.5, crashes were reported with
880backtraces like this:
881
882 (dbx) where
883 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]
884 1 general_find_symbol(0xf49239d, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0xf0000000, 0xf4923aa, 0x0, 0x492ddb2)
885 ["/comp2/mtibuild/v73/workarea/v7.3/rld/rld.c":2140, 0xfb65a98]
886 2 resolve_symbol(0xf49239d, 0x4031184, 0x0, 0xfbdd438, 0x0, 0xf4923aa, 0x0, 0x492ddb2)
887 ["/comp2/mtibuild/v73/workarea/v7.3/rld/rld.c":1947, 0xfb657e4]
888 3 lazy_text_resolve(0xd18, 0x1a3, 0x40302b4, 0x12, 0xf0000000, 0xf4923aa, 0x0, 0x492ddb2)
889 ["/comp2/mtibuild/v73/workarea/v7.3/rld/rld.c":997, 0xfb64d44]
890 4 _rld_text_resolve(0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0)
891 ["/comp2/mtibuild/v73/workarea/v7.3/rld/rld_bridge.s":175, 0xfb6032c]
892
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RS
893(`rld' is the dynamic linker.) We don't know yet why this
894happens, but setting the environment variable LD_BIND_NOW to 1 (which
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895forces the dynamic linker to bind all shared objects early on) seems
896to work around the problem.
897
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898Please refer to the documentation of your dynamic linker for details.
899
0c6456ad 900* On Solaris 2.7, building Emacs with WorkShop Compilers 5.0 98/12/15
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901C 5.0 failed, apparently with non-default CFLAGS, most probably due to
902compiler bugs. Using Sun Solaris 2.7 Sun WorkShop 6 update 1 C
903release was reported to work without problems. It worked OK on
904another system with Solaris 8 using apparently the same 5.0 compiler
905and the default CFLAGS.
0c6456ad 906
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907* Compiling syntax.c with the OPENSTEP 4.2 compiler gcc 2.7.2.1 fails.
908
909The compiler was reported to crash while compiling syntax.c with the
910following message:
911
912 cc: Internal compiler error: program cc1obj got fatal signal 11
913
914To work around this, replace the macros UPDATE_SYNTAX_TABLE_FORWARD,
915INC_BOTH, and INC_FROM with functions. To this end, first define 3
916functions, one each for every macro. Here's an example:
917
918 static int update_syntax_table_forward(int from)
919 {
920 return(UPDATE_SYNTAX_TABLE_FORWARD(from));
921 }/*update_syntax_table_forward*/
922
923Then replace all references to UPDATE_SYNTAX_TABLE_FORWARD in syntax.c
924with a call to the function update_syntax_table_forward.
925
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926* Emacs fails to start, complaining about missing fonts.
927
928A typical error message might be something like
929
930 No fonts match `-*-fixed-medium-r-*--6-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1'
931
932This happens because some X resource specifies a bad font family for
933Emacs to use. The possible places where this specification might be
934are:
935
936 - in your ~/.Xdefaults file
937
938 - client-side X resource file, such as ~/Emacs or
939 /usr/X11R6/lib/app-defaults/Emacs or
940 /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/app-defaults/Emacs
941
942One of these files might have bad or malformed specification of a
943fontset that Emacs should use. To fix the problem, you need to find
944the problematic line(s) and correct them.
945
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946* Emacs 20 and later fails to load Lisp files at startup.
947
948The typical error message might be like this:
949
950 "Cannot open load file: fontset"
951
952This could happen if you compress the file lisp/subdirs.el. That file
953tells Emacs what are the directories where it should look for Lisp
954files. Emacs cannot work with subdirs.el compressed, since the
955Auto-compress mode it needs for this will not be loaded until later,
956when your .emacs file is processed. (The package `fontset.el' is
957required to set up fonts used to display text on window systems, and
b75b82ab 958it's loaded very early in the startup procedure.)
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959
960Similarly, any other .el file for which there's no corresponding .elc
961file could fail to load if it is compressed.
962
963The solution is to uncompress all .el files which don't have a .elc
964file.
965
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966Another possible reason for such failures is stale *.elc files
967lurking somewhere on your load-path. The following command will
968print any duplicate Lisp files that are present in load-path:
969
970 emacs -q -batch -f list-load-path-shadows
971
972If this command prints any file names, some of these files are stale,
973and should be deleted or their directories removed from your
974load-path.
975
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976* Emacs prints an error at startup after upgrading from an earlier version.
977
978An example of such an error is:
979
177c0ea7 980 x-complement-fontset-spec: "Wrong type argument: stringp, nil"
42303132 981
c9a20cad 982This can be another symptom of stale *.elc files in your load-path.
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JR
983The following command will print any duplicate Lisp files that are
984present in load-path:
985
986 emacs -q -batch -f list-load-path-shadows
987
988If this command prints any file names, some of these files are stale,
989and should be deleted or their directories removed from your
990load-path.
991
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992* Attempting to visit remote files via ange-ftp fails.
993
994If the error message is "ange-ftp-file-modtime: Specified time is not
995representable", then this could happen when `lukemftp' is used as the
f2d176f2
CW
996ftp client. This was reported to happen on Debian GNU/Linux, kernel
997version 2.4.3, with `lukemftp' 1.5-5, but might happen on other
998systems as well. To avoid this problem, switch to using the standard
999ftp client. On a Debian system, type
f3d6f4ee 1000
f2d176f2 1001 update-alternatives --config ftp
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1002
1003and then choose /usr/bin/netkit-ftp.
1004
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1005* Antivirus software interacts badly with the MS-Windows version of Emacs.
1006
1007The usual manifestation of these problems is that subprocesses don't
1008work or even wedge the entire system. In particular, "M-x shell RET"
1009was reported to fail to work. But other commands also sometimes don't
1010work when an antivirus package is installed.
1011
1012The solution is to switch the antivirus software to a less aggressive
1013mode (e.g., disable the ``auto-protect'' feature), or even uninstall
1014or disable it entirely.
1015
c34607fc 1016* On MS-Windows 95/98/ME, subprocesses do not terminate properly.
f29d1e75
JR
1017
1018This is a limitation of the Operating System, and can cause problems
1019when shutting down Windows. Ensure that all subprocesses are exited
1020cleanly before exiting Emacs. For more details, see the FAQ at
cbfe0252 1021http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/windows/.
f29d1e75 1022
c34607fc 1023* MS-Windows 95/98/ME crashes when Emacs invokes non-existent programs.
c24be289 1024
4593687f 1025When a program you are trying to run is not found on the PATH,
c24be289 1026Windows might respond by crashing or locking up your system. In
94e83484 1027particular, this has been reported when trying to compile a Java
5f08ab61 1028program in JDEE when javac.exe is installed, but not on the system
94e83484 1029PATH.
c24be289 1030
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JR
1031* Pressing the mouse button on MS-Windows does not give a mouse-2 event.
1032
1033This is usually a problem with the mouse driver. Because most Windows
1034programs do not do anything useful with the middle mouse button, many
1035mouse drivers allow you to define the wheel press to do something
1036different. Some drivers do not even have the option to generate a
1037middle button press. In such cases, setting the wheel press to
1038"scroll" sometimes works if you press the button twice. Trying a
1039generic mouse driver might help.
1040
1041* Scrolling the mouse wheel on MS-Windows always scrolls the top window.
1042
1043This is another common problem with mouse drivers. Instead of
1044generating scroll events, some mouse drivers try to fake scroll bar
1045movement. But they are not intelligent enough to handle multiple
1046scroll bars within a frame. Trying a generic mouse driver might help.
1047
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DL
1048* Mail sent through Microsoft Exchange in some encodings appears to be
1049mangled and is not seen correctly in Rmail or Gnus. We don't know
1050exactly what happens, but it isn't an Emacs problem in cases we've
1051seen.
1052
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EZ
1053* After upgrading to a newer version of Emacs, the Meta key stops working.
1054
1055This was reported to happen on a GNU/Linux system distributed by
1056Mandrake. The reason is that the previous version of Emacs was
1057modified by Mandrake to make the Alt key act as the Meta key, on a
1058keyboard where the Windows key is the one which produces the Meta
1059modifier. A user who started using a newer version of Emacs, which
1060was not hacked by Mandrake, expected the Alt key to continue to act as
1061Meta, and was astonished when that didn't happen.
1062
1063The solution is to find out what key on your keyboard produces the Meta
1064modifier, and use that key instead. Try all of the keys to the left
1065and to the right of the space bar, together with the `x' key, and see
1066which combination produces "M-x" in the echo area. You can also use
1067the `xmodmap' utility to show all the keys which produce a Meta
1068modifier:
1069
1070 xmodmap -pk | egrep -i "meta|alt"
1071
1072A more convenient way of finding out which keys produce a Meta modifier
1073is to use the `xkbprint' utility, if it's available on your system:
1074
1075 xkbprint 0:0 /tmp/k.ps
1076
1077This produces a PostScript file `/tmp/k.ps' with a picture of your
1078keyboard; printing that file on a PostScript printer will show what
1079keys can serve as Meta.
1080
1081The `xkeycaps' also shows a visual representation of the current
1082keyboard settings. It also allows to modify them.
1083
119d3665
DL
1084* On OSF/Dec Unix/Tru64/<whatever it is this year> under X locally or
1085remotely, M-SPC acts as a `compose' key with strange results. See
1086keyboard(5).
1087
1088Changing Alt_L to Meta_L fixes it:
1089% xmodmap -e 'keysym Alt_L = Meta_L Alt_L'
177c0ea7 1090% xmodmap -e 'keysym Alt_R = Meta_R Alt_R'
119d3665 1091
a933dad1
DL
1092* Error "conflicting types for `initstate'" compiling with GCC on Irix 6.
1093
1094Install GCC 2.95 or a newer version, and this problem should go away.
1095It is possible that this problem results from upgrading the operating
1096system without reinstalling GCC; so you could also try reinstalling
1097the same version of GCC, and telling us whether that fixes the problem.
1098
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EZ
1099* Emacs dumps core on Solaris in function IMCheckWindow.
1100
1101This was reported to happen when Emacs runs with more than one frame,
1102and one of them is closed, either with "C-x 5 0" or from the window
1103manager.
1104
1105This bug was reported to Sun as
1106
1107 Gtk apps dump core in ximlocal.so.2:IMCheckIMWindow()
1108 Bug Reports: 4463537
1109
2aa82bcf 1110Installing Solaris 8 patch 108773-12 for Sparc and 108774-12 for x86
0de9f9a8
EZ
1111reportedly fixes the bug, which appears to be inside the shared
1112library xiiimp.so.
1113
1114Alternatively, you can configure Emacs with `--with-xim=no' to prevent
1115the core dump, but will loose X input method support, of course. (You
1116can use Emacs's own input methods instead, if you install Leim.)
1117
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1118* On Solaris 7, Emacs gets a segmentation fault when starting up using X.
1119
1120This results from Sun patch 107058-01 (SunOS 5.7: Patch for
3156909f
PE
1121assembler) if you use GCC version 2.7 or later.
1122To work around it, either install patch 106950-03 or later,
1123or uninstall patch 107058-01, or install the GNU Binutils.
a933dad1
DL
1124Then recompile Emacs, and it should work.
1125
1126* With X11R6.4, public-patch-3, Emacs crashes at startup.
1127
1128Reportedly this patch in X fixes the problem.
1129
1130 --- xc/lib/X11/imInt.c~ Wed Jun 30 13:31:56 1999
1131 +++ xc/lib/X11/imInt.c Thu Jul 1 15:10:27 1999
1132 @@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
1133 -/* $TOG: imInt.c /main/5 1998/05/30 21:11:16 kaleb $ */
1134 +/* $TOG: imInt.c /main/5 1998/05/30 21:11:16 kaleb $ */
1135 /******************************************************************
1136
1137 Copyright 1992, 1993, 1994 by FUJITSU LIMITED
1138 @@ -166,8 +166,8 @@
1139 _XimMakeImName(lcd)
1140 XLCd lcd;
1141 {
1142 - char* begin;
1143 - char* end;
1144 + char* begin = NULL;
1145 + char* end = NULL;
1146 char* ret;
1147 int i = 0;
1148 char* ximmodifier = XIMMODIFIER;
1149 @@ -182,7 +182,11 @@
1150 }
1151 ret = Xmalloc(end - begin + 2);
1152 if (ret != NULL) {
1153 - (void)strncpy(ret, begin, end - begin + 1);
1154 + if (begin != NULL) {
1155 + (void)strncpy(ret, begin, end - begin + 1);
1156 + } else {
1157 + ret[0] = '\0';
1158 + }
1159 ret[end - begin + 1] = '\0';
1160 }
1161 return ret;
1162
1163
a933dad1 1164* Emacs crashes on Irix 6.5 on the SGI R10K, when compiled with GCC.
177c0ea7 1165
a933dad1
DL
1166This seems to be fixed in GCC 2.95.
1167
1168* Emacs crashes in utmpname on Irix 5.3.
1169
1170This problem is fixed in Patch 3175 for Irix 5.3.
1171It is also fixed in Irix versions 6.2 and up.
1172
de121241
EZ
1173* The S-C-t key combination doesn't get passed to Emacs on X.
1174
1175This happens because some X configurations assign the Ctrl-Shift-t
1176combination the same meaning as the Multi_key. The offending
1177definition is in the file `...lib/X11/locale/iso8859-1/Compose'; there
1178might be other similar combinations which are grabbed by X for similar
1179purposes.
1180
1181We think that this can be countermanded with the `xmodmap' utility, if
1182you want to be able to bind one of these key sequences within Emacs.
1183
a933dad1
DL
1184* On Solaris, CTRL-t is ignored by Emacs when you use
1185the fr.ISO-8859-15 locale (and maybe other related locales).
1186
1187You can fix this by editing the file:
1188
1189 /usr/openwin/lib/locale/iso8859-15/Compose
177c0ea7 1190
a933dad1
DL
1191Near the bottom there is a line that reads:
1192
1193 Ctrl<t> <quotedbl> <Y> : "\276" threequarters
1194
1195that should read:
1196
1197 Ctrl<T> <quotedbl> <Y> : "\276" threequarters
1198
1199Note the lower case <t>. Changing this line should make C-t work.
1200
1201* Emacs on Digital Unix 4.0 fails to build, giving error message
1202 Invalid dimension for the charset-ID 160
1203
1204This is due to a bug or an installation problem in GCC 2.8.0.
1205Installing a more recent version of GCC fixes the problem.
1206
1207* Buffers from `with-output-to-temp-buffer' get set up in Help mode.
1208
1209Changes in Emacs 20.4 to the hooks used by that function cause
1210problems for some packages, specifically BBDB. See the function's
1211documentation for the hooks involved. BBDB 2.00.06 fixes the problem.
1212
1213* Under X, C-v and/or other keys don't work.
1214
1215These may have been intercepted by your window manager. In
1216particular, AfterStep 1.6 is reported to steal C-v in its default
1217configuration. Various Meta keys are also likely to be taken by the
1218configuration of the `feel'. See the WM's documentation for how to
1219change this.
1220
1221* When using Exceed, fonts sometimes appear too tall.
1222
1223When the display is set to an Exceed X-server and fonts are specified
1224(either explicitly with the -fn option or implicitly with X resources)
1225then the fonts may appear "too tall". The actual character sizes are
177c0ea7
JB
1226correct but there is too much vertical spacing between rows, which
1227gives the appearance of "double spacing".
a933dad1 1228
e9a0a549 1229To prevent this, turn off the Exceed's "automatic font substitution"
a933dad1
DL
1230feature (in the font part of the configuration window).
1231
a933dad1
DL
1232* Failure in unexec while dumping emacs on Digital Unix 4.0
1233
1234This problem manifests itself as an error message
1235
1236 unexec: Bad address, writing data section to ...
1237
1238The user suspects that this happened because his X libraries
1239were built for an older system version,
1240
1241 ./configure --x-includes=/usr/include --x-libraries=/usr/shlib
1242
1243made the problem go away.
1244
1245* No visible display on mips-sgi-irix6.2 when compiling with GCC 2.8.1.
1246
1247This problem went away after installing the latest IRIX patches
1248as of 8 Dec 1998.
1249
1250The same problem has been reported on Irix 6.3.
1251
1252* As of version 20.4, Emacs doesn't work properly if configured for
1253the Motif toolkit and linked against the free LessTif library. The
1254next Emacs release is expected to work with LessTif.
1255
1256* Emacs gives the error, Couldn't find per display information.
1257
1258This can result if the X server runs out of memory because Emacs uses
1259a large number of fonts. On systems where this happens, C-h h is
1260likely to cause it.
1261
1262We do not know of a way to prevent the problem.
1263
1264* Emacs makes HPUX 11.0 crash.
1265
1266This is a bug in HPUX; HPUX patch PHKL_16260 is said to fix it.
1267
1268* Emacs crashes during dumping on the HPPA machine (HPUX 10.20).
1269
1270This seems to be due to a GCC bug; it is fixed in GCC 2.8.1.
1271
1272* The Hyperbole package causes *Help* buffers not to be displayed in
1273Help mode due to setting `temp-buffer-show-hook' rather than using
1274`add-hook'. Using `(add-hook 'temp-buffer-show-hook
1275'help-mode-maybe)' after loading Hyperbole should fix this.
1276
1277* Versions of the PSGML package earlier than 1.0.3 (stable) or 1.1.2
1278(alpha) fail to parse DTD files correctly in Emacs 20.3 and later.
1279Here is a patch for psgml-parse.el from PSGML 1.0.1 and, probably,
1280earlier versions.
1281
1282--- psgml-parse.el 1998/08/21 19:18:18 1.1
1283+++ psgml-parse.el 1998/08/21 19:20:00
1284@@ -2383,7 +2383,7 @@ (defun sgml-push-to-entity (entity &opti
1285 (setq sgml-buffer-parse-state nil))
1286 (cond
1287 ((stringp entity) ; a file name
1288- (save-excursion (insert-file-contents entity))
1289+ (insert-file-contents entity)
1290 (setq default-directory (file-name-directory entity)))
1291 ((consp (sgml-entity-text entity)) ; external id?
1292 (let* ((extid (sgml-entity-text entity))
1293
d238f982
EZ
1294* Emacs 21 freezes when visiting a TeX file with AUC TeX installed.
1295
1296Emacs 21 needs version 10 or later of AUC TeX; upgrading should solve
1297these problems.
1298
d7185f9d
EZ
1299* No colors in AUC TeX with Emacs 21.
1300
1301Upgrade to AUC TeX version 10 or later, and make sure it is
1302byte-compiled with Emacs 21.
1303
d238f982 1304* Running TeX from AUC TeX package with Emacs 20.3 gives a Lisp error
a933dad1
DL
1305about a read-only tex output buffer.
1306
1307This problem appeared for AUC TeX version 9.9j and some earlier
1308versions. Here is a patch for the file tex-buf.el in the AUC TeX
1309package.
1310
1311diff -c auctex/tex-buf.el~ auctex/tex-buf.el
1312*** auctex/tex-buf.el~ Wed Jul 29 18:35:32 1998
1313--- auctex/tex-buf.el Sat Sep 5 15:20:38 1998
1314***************
1315*** 545,551 ****
1316 (dir (TeX-master-directory)))
1317 (TeX-process-check file) ; Check that no process is running
1318 (setq TeX-command-buffer (current-buffer))
1319! (with-output-to-temp-buffer buffer)
1320 (set-buffer buffer)
1321 (if dir (cd dir))
1322 (insert "Running `" name "' on `" file "' with ``" command "''\n")
1323- --- 545,552 ----
1324 (dir (TeX-master-directory)))
1325 (TeX-process-check file) ; Check that no process is running
1326 (setq TeX-command-buffer (current-buffer))
1327! (let (temp-buffer-show-function temp-buffer-show-hook)
1328! (with-output-to-temp-buffer buffer))
1329 (set-buffer buffer)
1330 (if dir (cd dir))
1331 (insert "Running `" name "' on `" file "' with ``" command "''\n")
1332
1333* On Irix 6.3, substituting environment variables in file names
1334in the minibuffer gives peculiar error messages such as
1335
1336 Substituting nonexistent environment variable ""
1337
1338This is not an Emacs bug; it is caused by something in SGI patch
1339003082 August 11, 1998.
1340
1341* After a while, Emacs slips into unibyte mode.
1342
1343The VM mail package, which is not part of Emacs, sometimes does
1344 (standard-display-european t)
177c0ea7 1345That should be changed to
a933dad1
DL
1346 (standard-display-european 1 t)
1347
1348* Installing Emacs gets an error running `install-info'.
1349
1350You need to install a recent version of Texinfo; that package
1351supplies the `install-info' command.
1352
1353* Emacs does not recognize the AltGr key, on HPUX.
1354
1355To fix this, set up a file ~/.dt/sessions/sessionetc with executable
1356rights, containing this text:
1357
1358--------------------------------
1359xmodmap 2> /dev/null - << EOF
1360keysym Alt_L = Meta_L
1361keysym Alt_R = Meta_R
1362EOF
1363
1364xmodmap - << EOF
1365clear mod1
1366keysym Mode_switch = NoSymbol
1367add mod1 = Meta_L
1368keysym Meta_R = Mode_switch
1369add mod2 = Mode_switch
1370EOF
1371--------------------------------
1372
17a37d87
EZ
1373* Emacs hangs on KDE when a large portion of text is killed.
1374
62c485d2
GM
1375This is caused by a bug in the KDE applet `klipper' which periodically
1376requests the X clipboard contents from applications. Early versions
1377of klipper don't implement the ICCM protocol for large selections,
1378which leads to Emacs being flooded with selection requests. After a
1379while, Emacs will print a message:
17a37d87
EZ
1380
1381 Timed out waiting for property-notify event
1382
62c485d2 1383A workaround is to not use `klipper'.
17a37d87 1384
a933dad1
DL
1385* Emacs compiled with DJGPP for MS-DOS/MS-Windows cannot access files
1386in the directory with the special name `dev' under the root of any
1387drive, e.g. `c:/dev'.
1388
1389This is an unfortunate side-effect of the support for Unix-style
1390device names such as /dev/null in the DJGPP runtime library. A
1391work-around is to rename the problem directory to another name.
1392
1393* M-SPC seems to be ignored as input.
1394
1395See if your X server is set up to use this as a command
1396for character composition.
1397
1398* Emacs startup on GNU/Linux systems (and possibly other systems) is slow.
1399
1400This can happen if the system is misconfigured and Emacs can't get the
1401full qualified domain name, FQDN. You should have your FQDN in the
1402/etc/hosts file, something like this:
1403
1404127.0.0.1 localhost
1405129.187.137.82 nuc04.t30.physik.tu-muenchen.de nuc04
1406
1407The way to set this up may vary on non-GNU systems.
1408
1409* Garbled display on non-X terminals when Emacs runs on Digital Unix 4.0.
1410
1411So far it appears that running `tset' triggers this problem (when TERM
1412is vt100, at least). If you do not run `tset', then Emacs displays
1413properly. If someone can tell us precisely which effect of running
1414`tset' actually causes the problem, we may be able to implement a fix
1415in Emacs.
1416
1417* When you run Ispell from Emacs, it reports a "misalignment" error.
1418
3d00585e
EZ
1419This can happen if you compiled the Ispell program to use ASCII
1420characters only and then try to use it from Emacs with non-ASCII
1421characters, like Latin-1. The solution is to recompile Ispell with
1422support for 8-bit characters.
a933dad1 1423
3d00585e
EZ
1424To see whether your Ispell program supports 8-bit characters, type
1425this at your shell's prompt:
1426
1427 ispell -vv
1428
1429and look in the output for the string "NO8BIT". If Ispell says
1430"!NO8BIT (8BIT)", your speller supports 8-bit characters; otherwise it
1431does not.
1432
1433To rebuild Ispell with 8-bit character support, edit the local.h file
1434in the Ispell distribution and make sure it does _not_ define NO8BIT.
1435Then rebuild the speller.
1436
1437Another possible cause for "misalignment" error messages is that the
1438version of Ispell installed on your machine is old. Upgrade.
1439
1440Yet another possibility is that you are trying to spell-check a word
1441in a language that doesn't fit the dictionary you choose for use by
1442Ispell. (Ispell can only spell-check one language at a time, because
1443it uses a single dictionary.) Make sure that the text you are
1444spelling and the dictionary used by Ispell conform to each other.
a933dad1 1445
7838ea1b
GM
1446If your spell-checking program is Aspell, it has been reported that if
1447you have a personal configuration file (normally ~/.aspell.conf), it
1448can cause this error. Remove that file, execute `ispell-kill-ispell'
1449in Emacs, and then try spell-checking again.
1450
a933dad1
DL
1451* On Linux-based GNU systems using libc versions 5.4.19 through
14525.4.22, Emacs crashes at startup with a segmentation fault.
1453
1454This problem happens if libc defines the symbol __malloc_initialized.
1455One known solution is to upgrade to a newer libc version. 5.4.33 is
1456known to work.
1457
c34607fc 1458* On MS-Windows, you cannot use the right-hand ALT key and the left-hand
a933dad1
DL
1459CTRL key together to type a Control-Meta character.
1460
1461This is a consequence of a misfeature beyond Emacs's control.
1462
1463Under Windows, the AltGr key on international keyboards generates key
1464events with the modifiers Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl. Since Emacs cannot
1465distinguish AltGr from an explicit Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl
1466combination, whenever it sees Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl it assumes that
c24be289
JR
1467AltGr has been pressed. The variable `w32-recognize-altgr' can be set
1468to nil to tell Emacs that AltGr is really Ctrl and Alt.
a933dad1 1469
b5cb4652
EZ
1470* Emacs crashes when using the Exceed 6.0 X server
1471
1472If you are using Exceed 6.1, upgrade to a later version. This was
1473reported to prevent the crashes.
1474
c34607fc 1475* Under some X-servers running on MS-Windows, Emacs' display is incorrect
a933dad1
DL
1476
1477The symptoms are that Emacs does not completely erase blank areas of the
1478screen during scrolling or some other screen operations (e.g., selective
1479display or when killing a region). M-x recenter will cause the screen
1480to be completely redisplayed and the "extra" characters will disappear.
1481
e9a0a549
EZ
1482This is known to occur under Exceed 6, and possibly earlier versions
1483as well; it is reportedly solved in version 6.2.0.16 and later. The
1484problem lies in the X-server settings.
a933dad1
DL
1485
1486There are reports that you can solve the problem with Exceed by
1487running `Xconfig' from within NT, choosing "X selection", then
1488un-checking the boxes "auto-copy X selection" and "auto-paste to X
1489selection".
1490
1491Of this does not work, please inform bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org. Then
1492please call support for your X-server and see if you can get a fix.
1493If you do, please send it to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org so we can list it
1494here.
1495
1496* On Solaris 2, Emacs dumps core when built with Motif.
1497
1498The Solaris Motif libraries are buggy, at least up through Solaris 2.5.1.
1499Install the current Motif runtime library patch appropriate for your host.
1500(Make sure the patch is current; some older patch versions still have the bug.)
1501You should install the other patches recommended by Sun for your host, too.
1502You can obtain Sun patches from ftp://sunsolve.sun.com/pub/patches/;
1503look for files with names ending in `.PatchReport' to see which patches
1504are currently recommended for your host.
1505
1506On Solaris 2.6, Emacs is said to work with Motif when Solaris patch
1507105284-12 is installed, but fail when 105284-15 is installed.
1508105284-18 might fix it again.
1509
3156909f
PE
1510* On Solaris 2.6 and 7, the Compose key does not work.
1511
1512This is a bug in Motif in Solaris. Supposedly it has been fixed for
1513the next major release of Solaris. However, if someone with Sun
1514support complains to Sun about the bug, they may release a patch.
1515If you do this, mention Sun bug #4188711.
a933dad1
DL
1516
1517One workaround is to use a locale that allows non-ASCII characters.
1518For example, before invoking emacs, set the LC_ALL environment
1519variable to "en_US" (American English). The directory /usr/lib/locale
1520lists the supported locales; any locale other than "C" or "POSIX"
1521should do.
1522
3156909f
PE
1523pen@lysator.liu.se says (Feb 1998) that the Compose key does work
1524if you link with the MIT X11 libraries instead of the Solaris X11
1525libraries.
a933dad1 1526
e96c5c69
JD
1527* Frames may cover dialogs they created when using CDE.
1528
1529This can happen if you have "Allow Primary Windows On Top" enabled which
1530seems to be the default in the Common Desktop Environment.
1531To change, go in to "Desktop Controls" -> "Window Style Manager"
1532and uncheck "Allow Primary Windows On Top".
1533
a933dad1
DL
1534* Emacs does not know your host's fully-qualified domain name.
1535
1536You need to configure your machine with a fully qualified domain name,
1537either in /etc/hosts, /etc/hostname, the NIS, or wherever your system
1538calls for specifying this.
1539
1540If you cannot fix the configuration, you can set the Lisp variable
1541mail-host-address to the value you want.
1542
1543* Error 12 (virtual memory exceeded) when dumping Emacs, on UnixWare 2.1
1544
1545Paul Abrahams (abrahams@acm.org) reports that with the installed
1546virtual memory settings for UnixWare 2.1.2, an Error 12 occurs during
1547the "make" that builds Emacs, when running temacs to dump emacs. That
1548error indicates that the per-process virtual memory limit has been
1549exceeded. The default limit is probably 32MB. Raising the virtual
1550memory limit to 40MB should make it possible to finish building Emacs.
1551
1552You can do this with the command `ulimit' (sh) or `limit' (csh).
1553But you have to be root to do it.
1554
1555According to Martin Sohnius, you can also retune this in the kernel:
1556
1557 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune SDATLIM 33554432 ## soft data size limit
1558 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune HDATLIM 33554432 ## hard "
1559 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune SVMMSIZE unlimited ## soft process size limit
1560 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune HVMMSIZE unlimited ## hard "
1561 # /etc/conf/bin/idbuild -B
1562
1563(He recommends you not change the stack limit, though.)
1564These changes take effect when you reboot.
1565
1566* Redisplay using X11 is much slower than previous Emacs versions.
1567
1568We've noticed that certain X servers draw the text much slower when
1569scroll bars are on the left. We don't know why this happens. If this
1570happens to you, you can work around it by putting the scroll bars
1571on the right (as they were in Emacs 19).
1572
1573Here's how to do this:
1574
1575 (set-scroll-bar-mode 'right)
1576
1577If you're not sure whether (or how much) this problem affects you,
1578try that and see how much difference it makes. To set things back
1579to normal, do
1580
1581 (set-scroll-bar-mode 'left)
1582
1583* Under X11, some characters appear as hollow boxes.
1584
1585Each X11 font covers just a fraction of the characters that Emacs
1586supports. To display the whole range of Emacs characters requires
1587many different fonts, collected into a fontset.
1588
1589If some of the fonts called for in your fontset do not exist on your X
1590server, then the characters that have no font appear as hollow boxes.
1591You can remedy the problem by installing additional fonts.
1592
1593The intlfonts distribution includes a full spectrum of fonts that can
1594display all the characters Emacs supports.
1595
4c635a29
DL
1596Another cause of this for specific characters is fonts which have a
1597missing glyph and no default character. This is known ot occur for
1598character number 160 (no-break space) in some fonts, such as Lucida
1599but Emacs sets the display table for the unibyte and Latin-1 version
1600of this character to display a space.
1601
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1602* Under X11, some characters appear improperly aligned in their lines.
1603
1604You may have bad X11 fonts; try installing the intlfonts distribution.
1605
1606* Certain fonts make each line take one pixel more than it "should".
1607
1608This is because these fonts contain characters a little taller
1609than the font's nominal height. Emacs needs to make sure that
1610lines do not overlap.
1611
1612* You request inverse video, and the first Emacs frame is in inverse
1613video, but later frames are not in inverse video.
1614
1615This can happen if you have an old version of the custom library in
1616your search path for Lisp packages. Use M-x list-load-path-shadows to
1617check whether this is true. If it is, delete the old custom library.
1618
1619* In FreeBSD 2.1.5, useless symbolic links remain in /tmp or other
1620directories that have the +t bit.
1621
1622This is because of a kernel bug in FreeBSD 2.1.5 (fixed in 2.2).
1623Emacs uses symbolic links to implement file locks. In a directory
1624with +t bit, the directory owner becomes the owner of the symbolic
1625link, so that it cannot be removed by anyone else.
1626
1627If you don't like those useless links, you can let Emacs not to using
1628file lock by adding #undef CLASH_DETECTION to config.h.
1629
1630* When using M-x dbx with the SparcWorks debugger, the `up' and `down'
1631commands do not move the arrow in Emacs.
1632
1633You can fix this by adding the following line to `~/.dbxinit':
1634
1635 dbxenv output_short_file_name off
1636
1637* Emacs says it has saved a file, but the file does not actually
1638appear on disk.
1639
1640This can happen on certain systems when you are using NFS, if the
1641remote disk is full. It is due to a bug in NFS (or certain NFS
1642implementations), and there is apparently nothing Emacs can do to
1643detect the problem. Emacs checks the failure codes of all the system
1644calls involved in writing a file, including `close'; but in the case
1645where the problem occurs, none of those system calls fails.
1646
1647* "Compose Character" key does strange things when used as a Meta key.
1648
1649If you define one key to serve as both Meta and Compose Character, you
1650will get strange results. In previous Emacs versions, this "worked"
1651in that the key acted as Meta--that's because the older Emacs versions
1652did not try to support Compose Character. Now Emacs tries to do
1653character composition in the standard X way. This means that you
1654must pick one meaning or the other for any given key.
1655
1656You can use both functions (Meta, and Compose Character) if you assign
1657them to two different keys.
1658
1659* Emacs gets a segmentation fault at startup, on AIX4.2.
1660
1661If you are using IBM's xlc compiler, compile emacs.c
1662without optimization; that should avoid the problem.
1663
1664* movemail compiled with POP support can't connect to the POP server.
1665
1666Make sure that the `pop' entry in /etc/services, or in the services
1667NIS map if your machine uses NIS, has the same port number as the
1668entry on the POP server. A common error is for the POP server to be
1669listening on port 110, the assigned port for the POP3 protocol, while
1670the client is trying to connect on port 109, the assigned port for the
1671old POP protocol.
1672
1673* Emacs crashes in x-popup-dialog.
1674
1675This can happen if the dialog widget cannot find the font it wants to
1676use. You can work around the problem by specifying another font with
1677an X resource--for example, `Emacs.dialog*.font: 9x15' (or any font that
1678happens to exist on your X server).
1679
1680* Emacs crashes when you use Bibtex mode.
1681
1682This happens if your system puts a small limit on stack size. You can
1683prevent the problem by using a suitable shell command (often `ulimit')
1684to raise the stack size limit before you run Emacs.
1685
1686Patches to raise the stack size limit automatically in `main'
1687(src/emacs.c) on various systems would be greatly appreciated.
1688
1689* Emacs crashes with SIGBUS or SIGSEGV on HPUX 9 after you delete a frame.
1690
1691We think this is due to a bug in the X libraries provided by HP. With
1692the alternative X libraries in /usr/contrib/mitX11R5/lib, the problem
1693does not happen.
1694
1695* Emacs crashes with SIGBUS or SIGSEGV on Solaris after you delete a frame.
1696
1697We suspect that this is a similar bug in the X libraries provided by
1698Sun. There is a report that one of these patches fixes the bug and
1699makes the problem stop:
1700
1701105216-01 105393-01 105518-01 105621-01 105665-01 105615-02 105216-02
1702105667-01 105401-08 105615-03 105621-02 105686-02 105736-01 105755-03
1703106033-01 105379-01 105786-01 105181-04 105379-03 105786-04 105845-01
1704105284-05 105669-02 105837-01 105837-02 105558-01 106125-02 105407-01
1705
1706Another person using a newer system (kernel patch level Generic_105181-06)
1707suspects that the bug was fixed by one of these more recent patches:
1708
1709106040-07 SunOS 5.6: X Input & Output Method patch
1710106222-01 OpenWindows 3.6: filemgr (ff.core) fixes
1711105284-12 Motif 1.2.7: sparc Runtime library patch
1712
c34607fc 1713* Problems running Perl under Emacs on MS-Windows NT/95.
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1714
1715`perl -de 0' just hangs when executed in an Emacs subshell.
1716The fault lies with Perl (indirectly with Windows NT/95).
1717
1718The problem is that the Perl debugger explicitly opens a connection to
1719"CON", which is the DOS/NT equivalent of "/dev/tty", for interacting
1720with the user.
1721
1722On Unix, this is okay, because Emacs (or the shell?) creates a
1723pseudo-tty so that /dev/tty is really the pipe Emacs is using to
1724communicate with the subprocess.
1725
1726On NT, this fails because CON always refers to the handle for the
1727relevant console (approximately equivalent to a tty), and cannot be
1728redirected to refer to the pipe Emacs assigned to the subprocess as
1729stdin.
1730
1731A workaround is to modify perldb.pl to use STDIN/STDOUT instead of CON.
1732
1733For Perl 4:
1734
1735 *** PERL/LIB/PERLDB.PL.orig Wed May 26 08:24:18 1993
1736 --- PERL/LIB/PERLDB.PL Mon Jul 01 15:28:16 1996
1737 ***************
1738 *** 68,74 ****
1739 $rcfile=".perldb";
1740 }
1741 else {
1742 ! $console = "con";
1743 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
1744 }
1745
1746 --- 68,74 ----
1747 $rcfile=".perldb";
1748 }
1749 else {
1750 ! $console = "";
1751 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
1752 }
1753
1754
1755 For Perl 5:
1756 *** perl/5.001/lib/perl5db.pl.orig Sun Jun 04 21:13:40 1995
1757 --- perl/5.001/lib/perl5db.pl Mon Jul 01 17:00:08 1996
1758 ***************
1759 *** 22,28 ****
1760 $rcfile=".perldb";
1761 }
1762 elsif (-e "con") {
1763 ! $console = "con";
1764 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
1765 }
1766 else {
1767 --- 22,28 ----
1768 $rcfile=".perldb";
1769 }
1770 elsif (-e "con") {
1771 ! $console = "";
1772 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
1773 }
1774 else {
1775
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1776* Problems on MS-DOG if DJGPP v2.0 is used to compile Emacs:
1777
1778There are two DJGPP library bugs which cause problems:
1779
1780 * Running `shell-command' (or `compile', or `grep') you get
1781 `Searching for program: permission denied (EACCES), c:/command.com';
1782 * After you shell to DOS, Ctrl-Break kills Emacs.
1783
1784To work around these bugs, you can use two files in the msdos
1785subdirectory: `is_exec.c' and `sigaction.c'. Compile them and link
1786them into the Emacs executable `temacs'; then they will replace the
1787incorrect library functions.
1788
c34607fc 1789* When compiling with DJGPP on MS-Windows NT, "config msdos" fails.
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1790
1791If the error message is "VDM has been already loaded", this is because
1792Windows has a program called `redir.exe' that is incompatible with a
1793program by the same name supplied with DJGPP, which is used by
1794config.bat. To resolve this, move the DJGPP's `bin' subdirectory to
1795the front of your PATH environment variable.
1796
c34607fc 1797* When compiling with DJGPP on MS-Windows 95, Make fails for some targets
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1798like make-docfile.
1799
1800This can happen if long file name support (the setting of environment
1801variable LFN) when Emacs distribution was unpacked and during
1802compilation are not the same. See the MSDOG section of INSTALL for
1803the explanation of how to avoid this problem.
1804
1805* Emacs compiled for MSDOS cannot find some Lisp files, or other
1806run-time support files, when long filename support is enabled.
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1807
1808Usually, this problem will manifest itself when Emacs exits
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1809immediately after flashing the startup screen, because it cannot find
1810the Lisp files it needs to load at startup. Redirect Emacs stdout
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1811and stderr to a file to see the error message printed by Emacs.
1812
1813Another manifestation of this problem is that Emacs is unable to load
1814the support for editing program sources in languages such as C and
1815Lisp.
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1816
1817This can happen if the Emacs distribution was unzipped without LFN
1818support, thus causing long filenames to be truncated to the first 6
1819characters and a numeric tail that Windows 95 normally attaches to it.
1820You should unzip the files again with a utility that supports long
1821filenames (such as djtar from DJGPP or InfoZip's UnZip program
1822compiled with DJGPP v2). The MSDOG section of the file INSTALL
1823explains this issue in more detail.
1824
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1825Another possible reason for such failures is that Emacs compiled for
1826MSDOS is used on Windows NT, where long file names are not supported
1827by this version of Emacs, but the distribution was unpacked by an
1828unzip program that preserved the long file names instead of truncating
1829them to DOS 8+3 limits. To be useful on NT, the MSDOS port of Emacs
1830must be unzipped by a DOS utility, so that long file names are
1831properly truncated.
1832
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1833* Emacs compiled with DJGPP complains at startup:
1834
1835 "Wrong type of argument: internal-facep, msdos-menu-active-face"
1836
1837This can happen if you define an environment variable `TERM'. Emacs
1838on MSDOS uses an internal terminal emulator which is disabled if the
1839value of `TERM' is anything but the string "internal". Emacs then
1840works as if its terminal were a dumb glass teletype that doesn't
1841support faces. To work around this, arrange for `TERM' to be
1842undefined when Emacs runs. The best way to do that is to add an
1843[emacs] section to the DJGPP.ENV file which defines an empty value for
1844`TERM'; this way, only Emacs gets the empty value, while the rest of
1845your system works as before.
1846
c34607fc 1847* On MS-Windows 95, Alt-f6 does not get through to Emacs.
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1848
1849This character seems to be trapped by the kernel in Windows 95.
1850You can enter M-f6 by typing ESC f6.
1851
c34607fc 1852* Typing Alt-Shift has strange effects on MS-Windows.
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1853
1854This combination of keys is a command to change keyboard layout. If
1855you proceed to type another non-modifier key before you let go of Alt
c24be289
JR
1856and Shift, the Alt and Shift act as modifiers in the usual way. A
1857more permanent work around is to change it to another key combination,
1858or disable it in the keyboard control panel.
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1859
1860* `tparam' reported as a multiply-defined symbol when linking with ncurses.
1861
1862This problem results from an incompatible change in ncurses, in
1863version 1.9.9e approximately. This version is unable to provide a
1864definition of tparm without also defining tparam. This is also
1865incompatible with Terminfo; as a result, the Emacs Terminfo support
1866does not work with this version of ncurses.
1867
1868The fix is to install a newer version of ncurses, such as version 4.2.
1869
287890ea 1870* Emacs does not start, complaining that it cannot open termcap database file.
1dd8b979 1871
10a763e5
RS
1872If your system uses Terminfo rather than termcap (most modern
1873systems do), this could happen if the proper version of
1874ncurses is not visible to the Emacs configure script (i.e. it
1875cannot be found along the usual path the linker looks for
1876libraries). It can happen because your version of ncurses is
1877obsolete, or is available only in form of binaries.
1878
1879The solution is to install an up-to-date version of ncurses in
1880the developer's form (header files, static libraries and
1881symbolic links); in some GNU/Linux distributions (e.g. Debian)
1882it constitutes a separate package.
1dd8b979 1883
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1884* Strange results from format %d in a few cases, on a Sun.
1885
1886Sun compiler version SC3.0 has been found to miscompile part of
1887editfns.c. The workaround is to compile with some other compiler such
1888as GCC.
1889
1890* Output from subprocess (such as man or diff) is randomly truncated
1891on GNU/Linux systems.
1892
1893This is due to a kernel bug which seems to be fixed in Linux version
18941.3.75.
1895
1896* Error messages `internal facep []' happen on GNU/Linux systems.
1897
1898There is a report that replacing libc.so.5.0.9 with libc.so.5.2.16
1899caused this to start happening. People are not sure why, but the
1900problem seems unlikely to be in Emacs itself. Some suspect that it
1901is actually Xlib which won't work with libc.so.5.2.16.
1902
1903Using the old library version is a workaround.
1904
1905* On Solaris, Emacs crashes if you use (display-time).
1906
1907This can happen if you configure Emacs without specifying the precise
1908version of Solaris that you are using.
1909
1910* Emacs dumps core on startup, on Solaris.
1911
1912Bill Sebok says that the cause of this is Solaris 2.4 vendor patch
1913102303-05, which extends the Solaris linker to deal with the Solaris
1914Common Desktop Environment's linking needs. You can fix the problem
1915by removing this patch and installing patch 102049-02 instead.
1916However, that linker version won't work with CDE.
1917
1918Solaris 2.5 comes with a linker that has this bug. It is reported that if
1919you install all the latest patches (as of June 1996), the bug is fixed.
1920We suspect the crucial patch is one of these, but we don't know
1921for certain.
1922
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JB
1923 103093-03: [README] SunOS 5.5: kernel patch (2140557 bytes)
1924 102832-01: [README] OpenWindows 3.5: Xview Jumbo Patch (4181613 bytes)
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1925 103242-04: [README] SunOS 5.5: linker patch (595363 bytes)
1926
1927(One user reports that the bug was fixed by those patches together
1928with patches 102980-04, 103279-01, 103300-02, and 103468-01.)
1929
1930If you can determine which patch does fix the bug, please tell
1931bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
1932
1933Meanwhile, the GNU linker links Emacs properly on both Solaris 2.4 and
1934Solaris 2.5.
1935
1936* Emacs dumps core if lisp-complete-symbol is called, on Solaris.
1937
1938If you compile Emacs with the -fast or -xO4 option with version 3.0.2
1939of the Sun C compiler, Emacs dumps core when lisp-complete-symbol is
1940called. The problem does not happen if you compile with GCC.
1941
1942* "Cannot find callback list" messages from dialog boxes on HPUX, in
1943Emacs built with Motif.
1944
1945This problem resulted from a bug in GCC 2.4.5. Newer GCC versions
1946such as 2.7.0 fix the problem.
1947
1948* On Irix 6.0, make tries (and fails) to build a program named unexelfsgi
1949
1950A compiler bug inserts spaces into the string "unexelfsgi . o"
1951in src/Makefile. Edit src/Makefile, after configure is run,
1952find that string, and take out the spaces.
1953
1954Compiler fixes in Irix 6.0.1 should eliminate this problem.
1955
1956* "out of virtual swap space" on Irix 5.3
1957
1958This message occurs when the system runs out of swap space due to too
1959many large programs running. The solution is either to provide more
1960swap space or to reduce the number of large programs being run. You
1961can check the current status of the swap space by executing the
1962command `swap -l'.
1963
1964You can increase swap space by changing the file /etc/fstab. Adding a
1965line like this:
1966
1967/usr/swap/swap.more swap swap pri=3 0 0
1968
1969where /usr/swap/swap.more is a file previously created (for instance
1970by using /etc/mkfile), will increase the swap space by the size of
1971that file. Execute `swap -m' or reboot the machine to activate the
1972new swap area. See the manpages for `swap' and `fstab' for further
1973information.
1974
1975The objectserver daemon can use up lots of memory because it can be
1976swamped with NIS information. It collects information about all users
1977on the network that can log on to the host.
1978
1979If you want to disable the objectserver completely, you can execute
1980the command `chkconfig objectserver off' and reboot. That may disable
1981some of the window system functionality, such as responding CDROM
1982icons.
1983
1984You can also remove NIS support from the objectserver. The SGI `admin'
1985FAQ has a detailed description on how to do that; see question 35
1986("Why isn't the objectserver working?"). The admin FAQ can be found at
1987ftp://viz.tamu.edu/pub/sgi/faq/.
1988
1989* With certain fonts, when the cursor appears on a character, the
1990character doesn't appear--you get a solid box instead.
1991
1992One user on a Linux-based GNU system reported that this problem went
1993away with installation of a new X server. The failing server was
1994XFree86 3.1.1. XFree86 3.1.2 works.
1995
1996* On SunOS 4.1.3, Emacs unpredictably crashes in _yp_dobind_soft.
1997
1998This happens if you configure Emacs specifying just `sparc-sun-sunos4'
1999on a system that is version 4.1.3. You must specify the precise
2000version number (or let configure figure out the configuration, which
2001it can do perfectly well for SunOS).
2002
2003* On SunOS 4, Emacs processes keep going after you kill the X server
2004(or log out, if you logged in using X).
2005
2006Someone reported that recompiling with GCC 2.7.0 fixed this problem.
2007
2008* On AIX 4, some programs fail when run in a Shell buffer
2009with an error message like No terminfo entry for "unknown".
2010
2011On AIX, many terminal type definitions are not installed by default.
2012`unknown' is one of them. Install the "Special Generic Terminal
2013Definitions" to make them defined.
2014
2015* On SunOS, you get linker errors
177c0ea7 2016 ld: Undefined symbol
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2017 _get_wmShellWidgetClass
2018 _get_applicationShellWidgetClass
2019
2020The fix to this is to install patch 100573 for OpenWindows 3.0
2021or link libXmu statically.
2022
2023* On AIX 4.1.2, linker error messages such as
2024 ld: 0711-212 SEVERE ERROR: Symbol .__quous, found in the global symbol table
2025 of archive /usr/lib/libIM.a, was not defined in archive member shr.o.
2026
2027This is a problem in libIM.a. You can work around it by executing
2028these shell commands in the src subdirectory of the directory where
2029you build Emacs:
2030
2031 cp /usr/lib/libIM.a .
2032 chmod 664 libIM.a
2033 ranlib libIM.a
2034
2035Then change -lIM to ./libIM.a in the command to link temacs (in
2036Makefile).
2037
2038* Unpredictable segmentation faults on Solaris 2.3 and 2.4.
2039
2040A user reported that this happened in 19.29 when it was compiled with
2041the Sun compiler, but not when he recompiled with GCC 2.7.0.
2042
2043We do not know whether something in Emacs is partly to blame for this.
2044
2045* Emacs exits with "X protocol error" when run with an X server for
c34607fc 2046MS-Windows.
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2047
2048A certain X server for Windows had a bug which caused this.
2049Supposedly the newer 32-bit version of this server doesn't have the
2050problem.
2051
2052* Emacs crashes at startup on MSDOS.
2053
2054Some users report that Emacs 19.29 requires dpmi memory management,
2055and crashes on startup if the system does not have it. We don't yet
2056know why this happens--perhaps these machines don't have enough real
2057memory, or perhaps something is wrong in Emacs or the compiler.
2058However, arranging to use dpmi support is a workaround.
2059
2060You can find out if you have a dpmi host by running go32 without
2061arguments; it will tell you if it uses dpmi memory. For more
2062information about dpmi memory, consult the djgpp FAQ. (djgpp
2063is the GNU C compiler as packaged for MSDOS.)
2064
2065Compiling Emacs under MSDOS is extremely sensitive for proper memory
2066configuration. If you experience problems during compilation, consider
2067removing some or all memory resident programs (notably disk caches)
2068and make sure that your memory managers are properly configured. See
2069the djgpp faq for configuration hints.
2070
2071* A position you specified in .Xdefaults is ignored, using twm.
2072
2073twm normally ignores "program-specified" positions.
2074You can tell it to obey them with this command in your `.twmrc' file:
2075
2076 UsePPosition "on" #allow clients to request a position
2077
2078* Compiling lib-src says there is no rule to make test-distrib.c.
2079
2080This results from a bug in a VERY old version of GNU Sed. To solve
2081the problem, install the current version of GNU Sed, then rerun
2082Emacs's configure script.
2083
2084* Compiling wakeup, in lib-src, says it can't make wakeup.c.
2085
2086This results from a bug in GNU Sed version 2.03. To solve the
2087problem, install the current version of GNU Sed, then rerun Emacs's
2088configure script.
2089
2090* On Sunos 4.1.1, there are errors compiling sysdep.c.
2091
2092If you get errors such as
2093
2094 "sysdep.c", line 2017: undefined structure or union
2095 "sysdep.c", line 2017: undefined structure or union
2096 "sysdep.c", line 2019: nodename undefined
2097
2098This can result from defining LD_LIBRARY_PATH. It is very tricky
2099to use that environment variable with Emacs. The Emacs configure
2100script links many test programs with the system libraries; you must
2101make sure that the libraries available to configure are the same
2102ones available when you build Emacs.
2103
2104* The right Alt key works wrong on German HP keyboards (and perhaps
2105other non-English HP keyboards too).
2106
2107This is because HPUX defines the modifiers wrong in X. Here is a
2108shell script to fix the problem; be sure that it is run after VUE
2109configures the X server.
2110
2111 xmodmap 2> /dev/null - << EOF
2112 keysym Alt_L = Meta_L
2113 keysym Alt_R = Meta_R
2114 EOF
2115
2116 xmodmap - << EOF
2117 clear mod1
2118 keysym Mode_switch = NoSymbol
2119 add mod1 = Meta_L
2120 keysym Meta_R = Mode_switch
2121 add mod2 = Mode_switch
2122 EOF
2123
2124* The Emacs window disappears when you type M-q.
2125
2126Some versions of the Open Look window manager interpret M-q as a quit
2127command for whatever window you are typing at. If you want to use
2128Emacs with that window manager, you should try to configure the window
2129manager to use some other command. You can disable the
2130shortcut keys entirely by adding this line to ~/.OWdefaults:
2131
2132 OpenWindows.WindowMenuAccelerators: False
2133
2134* Emacs does not notice when you release the mouse.
2135
2136There are reports that this happened with (some) Microsoft mice and
2137that replacing the mouse made it stop.
2138
2139* Trouble using ptys on IRIX, or running out of ptys.
2140
2141The program mkpts (which may be in `/usr/adm' or `/usr/sbin') needs to
2142be set-UID to root, or non-root programs like Emacs will not be able
2143to allocate ptys reliably.
2144
2145* On Irix 5.2, unexelfsgi.c can't find cmplrs/stsupport.h.
2146
2147The file cmplrs/stsupport.h was included in the wrong file set in the
2148Irix 5.2 distribution. You can find it in the optional fileset
2149compiler_dev, or copy it from some other Irix 5.2 system. A kludgy
2150workaround is to change unexelfsgi.c to include sym.h instead of
2151syms.h.
2152
2153* Slow startup on Linux-based GNU systems.
2154
2155People using systems based on the Linux kernel sometimes report that
2156startup takes 10 to 15 seconds longer than `usual'.
2157
2158This is because Emacs looks up the host name when it starts.
2159Normally, this takes negligible time; the extra delay is due to
2160improper system configuration. This problem can occur for both
2161networked and non-networked machines.
2162
2163Here is how to fix the configuration. It requires being root.
2164
2165** Networked Case
2166
2167First, make sure the files `/etc/hosts' and `/etc/host.conf' both
2168exist. The first line in the `/etc/hosts' file should look like this
2169(replace HOSTNAME with your host name):
2170
2171 127.0.0.1 HOSTNAME
2172
2173Also make sure that the `/etc/host.conf' files contains the following
2174lines:
2175
177c0ea7 2176 order hosts, bind
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2177 multi on
2178
2179Any changes, permanent and temporary, to the host name should be
2180indicated in the `/etc/hosts' file, since it acts a limited local
2181database of addresses and names (e.g., some SLIP connections
2182dynamically allocate ip addresses).
2183
2184** Non-Networked Case
2185
2186The solution described in the networked case applies here as well.
2187However, if you never intend to network your machine, you can use a
2188simpler solution: create an empty `/etc/host.conf' file. The command
2189`touch /etc/host.conf' suffices to create the file. The `/etc/hosts'
2190file is not necessary with this approach.
2191
2192* On Solaris 2.4, Dired hangs and C-g does not work. Or Emacs hangs
2193forever waiting for termination of a subprocess that is a zombie.
2194
2195casper@fwi.uva.nl says the problem is in X11R6. Rebuild libX11.so
2196after changing the file xc/config/cf/sunLib.tmpl. Change the lines
2197
2198 #if ThreadedX
2199 #define SharedX11Reqs -lthread
2200 #endif
2201
2202to:
2203
2204 #if OSMinorVersion < 4
2205 #if ThreadedX
2206 #define SharedX11Reqs -lthread
2207 #endif
2208 #endif
2209
2210Be sure also to edit x/config/cf/sun.cf so that OSMinorVersion is 4
2211(as it should be for Solaris 2.4). The file has three definitions for
2212OSMinorVersion: the first is for x86, the second for SPARC under
2213Solaris, and the third for SunOS 4. Make sure to update the
2214definition for your type of machine and system.
2215
2216Then do `make Everything' in the top directory of X11R6, to rebuild
2217the makefiles and rebuild X. The X built this way work only on
2218Solaris 2.4, not on 2.3.
2219
2220For multithreaded X to work it is necessary to install patch
2221101925-02 to fix problems in header files [2.4]. You need
2222to reinstall gcc or re-run just-fixinc after installing that
2223patch.
2224
2225However, Frank Rust <frust@iti.cs.tu-bs.de> used a simpler solution:
2226he changed
2227 #define ThreadedX YES
2228to
2229 #define ThreadedX NO
2230in sun.cf and did `make World' to rebuild X11R6. Removing all
2231`-DXTHREAD*' flags and `-lthread' entries from lib/X11/Makefile and
2232typing 'make install' in that directory also seemed to work.
2233
2234* With M-x enable-flow-control, you need to type C-\ twice
2235 to do incremental search--a single C-\ gets no response.
2236
2237This has been traced to communicating with your machine via kermit,
2238with C-\ as the kermit escape character. One solution is to use
2239another escape character in kermit. One user did
2240
2241 set escape-character 17
2242
2243in his .kermrc file, to make C-q the kermit escape character.
2244
2245* The Motif version of Emacs paints the screen a solid color.
2246
2247This has been observed to result from the following X resource:
2248
2249 Emacs*default.attributeFont: -*-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-140-*-*-*-*-iso8859-*
2250
2251That the resource has this effect indicates a bug in something, but we
2252do not yet know what. If it is an Emacs bug, we hope someone can
2253explain what the bug is so we can fix it. In the mean time, removing
2254the resource prevents the problem.
2255
2256* Emacs gets hung shortly after startup, on Sunos 4.1.3.
2257
2258We think this is due to a bug in Sunos. The word is that
2259one of these Sunos patches fixes the bug:
2260
2261100075-11 100224-06 100347-03 100482-05 100557-02 100623-03 100804-03 101080-01
2262100103-12 100249-09 100496-02 100564-07 100630-02 100891-10 101134-01
2263100170-09 100296-04 100377-09 100507-04 100567-04 100650-02 101070-01 101145-01
2264100173-10 100305-15 100383-06 100513-04 100570-05 100689-01 101071-03 101200-02
2265100178-09 100338-05 100421-03 100536-02 100584-05 100784-01 101072-01 101207-01
2266
2267We don't know which of these patches really matter. If you find out
2268which ones, please inform bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
2269
2270* Emacs aborts while starting up, only when run without X.
2271
2272This problem often results from compiling Emacs with GCC when GCC was
2273installed incorrectly. The usual error in installing GCC is to
2274specify --includedir=/usr/include. Installation of GCC makes
2275corrected copies of the system header files. GCC is supposed to use
2276the corrected copies in preference to the original system headers.
2277Specifying --includedir=/usr/include causes the original system header
2278files to be used. On some systems, the definition of ioctl in the
2279original system header files is invalid for ANSI C and causes Emacs
2280not to work.
2281
2282The fix is to reinstall GCC, and this time do not specify --includedir
2283when you configure it. Then recompile Emacs. Specifying --includedir
2284is appropriate only in very special cases and it should *never* be the
2285same directory where system header files are kept.
2286
2287* On Solaris 2.x, GCC complains "64 bit integer types not supported"
2288
2289This suggests that GCC is not installed correctly. Most likely you
2290are using GCC 2.7.2.3 (or earlier) on Solaris 2.6 (or later); this
2291does not work without patching. To run GCC 2.7.2.3 on Solaris 2.6 or
2292later, you must patch fixinc.svr4 and reinstall GCC from scratch as
2293described in the Solaris FAQ
2294<http://www.wins.uva.nl/pub/solaris/solaris2.html>. A better fix is
2295to upgrade to GCC 2.8.1 or later.
2296
2297* The Compose key on a DEC keyboard does not work as Meta key.
2298
2299This shell command should fix it:
2300
2301 xmodmap -e 'keycode 0xb1 = Meta_L'
2302
2303* Regular expressions matching bugs on SCO systems.
2304
2305On SCO, there are problems in regexp matching when Emacs is compiled
2306with the system compiler. The compiler version is "Microsoft C
2307version 6", SCO 4.2.0h Dev Sys Maintenance Supplement 01/06/93; Quick
2308C Compiler Version 1.00.46 (Beta). The solution is to compile with
2309GCC.
2310
2311* On Sunos 4, you get the error ld: Undefined symbol __lib_version.
2312
2313This is the result of using cc or gcc with the shared library meant
2314for acc (the Sunpro compiler). Check your LD_LIBRARY_PATH and delete
2315/usr/lang/SC2.0.1 or some similar directory.
2316
2317* You can't select from submenus (in the X toolkit version).
2318
2319On certain systems, mouse-tracking and selection in top-level menus
2320works properly with the X toolkit, but neither of them works when you
2321bring up a submenu (such as Bookmarks or Compare or Apply Patch, in
2322the Files menu).
2323
2324This works on most systems. There is speculation that the failure is
2325due to bugs in old versions of X toolkit libraries, but no one really
2326knows. If someone debugs this and finds the precise cause, perhaps a
2327workaround can be found.
2328
2329* Unusable default font on SCO 3.2v4.
2330
2331The Open Desktop environment comes with default X resource settings
2332that tell Emacs to use a variable-width font. Emacs cannot use such
2333fonts, so it does not work.
2334
2335This is caused by the file /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/ScoTerm, which is
2336the application-specific resource file for the `scoterm' terminal
2337emulator program. It contains several extremely general X resources
2338that affect other programs besides `scoterm'. In particular, these
2339resources affect Emacs also:
2340
2341 *Font: -*-helvetica-medium-r-*--12-*-p-*
2342 *Background: scoBackground
2343 *Foreground: scoForeground
2344
2345The best solution is to create an application-specific resource file for
2346Emacs, /usr/lib/X11/sco/startup/Emacs, with the following contents:
2347
2348 Emacs*Font: -*-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-120-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1
2349 Emacs*Background: white
2350 Emacs*Foreground: black
2351
2352(These settings mimic the Emacs defaults, but you can change them to
2353suit your needs.) This resource file is only read when the X server
2354starts up, so you should restart it by logging out of the Open Desktop
2355environment or by running `scologin stop; scologin start` from the shell
2356as root. Alternatively, you can put these settings in the
2357/usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/Emacs resource file and simply restart Emacs,
2358but then they will not affect remote invocations of Emacs that use the
2359Open Desktop display.
2360
2361These resource files are not normally shared across a network of SCO
2362machines; you must create the file on each machine individually.
2363
2364* rcs2log gives you the awk error message "too many fields".
2365
2366This is due to an arbitrary limit in certain versions of awk.
2367The solution is to use gawk (GNU awk).
2368
2369* Emacs is slow using X11R5 on HP/UX.
2370
2371This happens if you use the MIT versions of the X libraries--it
2372doesn't run as fast as HP's version. People sometimes use the version
2373because they see the HP version doesn't have the libraries libXaw.a,
2374libXmu.a, libXext.a and others. HP/UX normally doesn't come with
2375those libraries installed. To get good performance, you need to
2376install them and rebuild Emacs.
2377
2378* Loading fonts is very slow.
2379
2380You might be getting scalable fonts instead of precomputed bitmaps.
2381Known scalable font directories are "Type1" and "Speedo". A font
2382directory contains scalable fonts if it contains the file
2383"fonts.scale".
2384
2385If this is so, re-order your X windows font path to put the scalable
2386font directories last. See the documentation of `xset' for details.
2387
2388With some X servers, it may be necessary to take the scalable font
2389directories out of your path entirely, at least for Emacs 19.26.
2390Changes in the future may make this unnecessary.
2391
2392* On AIX 3.2.4, releasing Ctrl/Act key has no effect, if Shift is down.
2393
2394Due to a feature of AIX, pressing or releasing the Ctrl/Act key is
2395ignored when the Shift, Alt or AltGr keys are held down. This can
2396lead to the keyboard being "control-locked"--ordinary letters are
2397treated as control characters.
2398
2399You can get out of this "control-locked" state by pressing and
2400releasing Ctrl/Act while not pressing or holding any other keys.
2401
2402* display-time causes kernel problems on ISC systems.
2403
2404Under Interactive Unix versions 3.0.1 and 4.0 (and probably other
177c0ea7 2405versions), display-time causes the loss of large numbers of STREVENT
a933dad1 2406cells. Eventually the kernel's supply of these cells is exhausted.
177c0ea7 2407This makes emacs and the whole system run slow, and can make other
a933dad1 2408processes die, in particular pcnfsd.
177c0ea7
JB
2409
2410Other emacs functions that communicate with remote processes may have
a933dad1
DL
2411the same problem. Display-time seems to be far the worst.
2412
2413The only known fix: Don't run display-time.
2414
2415* On Solaris, C-x doesn't get through to Emacs when you use the console.
2416
2417This is a Solaris feature (at least on Intel x86 cpus). Type C-r
2418C-r C-t, to toggle whether C-x gets through to Emacs.
2419
2420* Error message `Symbol's value as variable is void: x', followed by
2421 segmentation fault and core dump.
2422
2423This has been tracked to a bug in tar! People report that tar erroneously
2424added a line like this at the beginning of files of Lisp code:
2425
2426 x FILENAME, N bytes, B tape blocks
2427
2428If your tar has this problem, install GNU tar--if you can manage to
2429untar it :-).
2430
2431* Link failure when using acc on a Sun.
2432
2433To use acc, you need additional options just before the libraries, such as
2434
2435 /usr/lang/SC2.0.1/values-Xt.o -L/usr/lang/SC2.0.1/cg87 -L/usr/lang/SC2.0.1
2436
2437and you need to add -lansi just before -lc.
2438
2439The precise file names depend on the compiler version, so we
2440cannot easily arrange to supply them.
2441
2442* Link failure on IBM AIX 1.3 ptf 0013.
2443
2444There is a real duplicate definition of the function `_slibc_free' in
2445the library /lib/libc_s.a (just do nm on it to verify). The
2446workaround/fix is:
2447
2448 cd /lib
2449 ar xv libc_s.a NLtmtime.o
2450 ar dv libc_s.a NLtmtime.o
2451
2452* Undefined symbols _dlopen, _dlsym and/or _dlclose on a Sun.
2453
2454If you see undefined symbols _dlopen, _dlsym, or _dlclose when linking
2455with -lX11, compile and link against the file mit/util/misc/dlsym.c in
2456the MIT X11R5 distribution. Alternatively, link temacs using shared
2457libraries with s/sunos4shr.h. (This doesn't work if you use the X
2458toolkit.)
2459
2460If you get the additional error that the linker could not find
2461lib_version.o, try extracting it from X11/usr/lib/X11/libvim.a in
2462X11R4, then use it in the link.
2463
2464* Error messages `Wrong number of arguments: #<subr where-is-internal>, 5'
2465
2466This typically results from having the powerkey library loaded.
2467Powerkey was designed for Emacs 19.22. It is obsolete now because
2468Emacs 19 now has this feature built in; and powerkey also calls
2469where-is-internal in an obsolete way.
2470
2471So the fix is to arrange not to load powerkey.
2472
2473* In Shell mode, you get a ^M at the end of every line.
2474
2475This happens to people who use tcsh, because it is trying to be too
2476smart. It sees that the Shell uses terminal type `unknown' and turns
2477on the flag to output ^M at the end of each line. You can fix the
2478problem by adding this to your .cshrc file:
2479
2480 if ($?EMACS) then
2481 if ($EMACS == "t") then
177c0ea7 2482 unset edit
a933dad1
DL
2483 stty -icrnl -onlcr -echo susp ^Z
2484 endif
2485 endif
2486
2487* An error message such as `X protocol error: BadMatch (invalid
2488parameter attributes) on protocol request 93'.
2489
2490This comes from having an invalid X resource, such as
2491 emacs*Cursor: black
2492(which is invalid because it specifies a color name for something
2493that isn't a color.)
2494
2495The fix is to correct your X resources.
2496
2497* Undefined symbols when linking on Sunos 4.1 using --with-x-toolkit.
2498
2499If you get the undefined symbols _atowc _wcslen, _iswprint, _iswspace,
2500_iswcntrl, _wcscpy, and _wcsncpy, then you need to add -lXwchar after
2501-lXaw in the command that links temacs.
2502
2503This problem seems to arise only when the international language
2504extensions to X11R5 are installed.
2505
2506* Typing C-c C-c in Shell mode kills your X server.
2507
2508This happens with Linux kernel 1.0 thru 1.04, approximately. The workaround is
2509to define SIGNALS_VIA_CHARACTERS in config.h and recompile Emacs.
2510Newer Linux kernel versions don't have this problem.
2511
2512* src/Makefile and lib-src/Makefile are truncated--most of the file missing.
2513
2514This can happen if configure uses GNU sed version 2.03. That version
2515had a bug. GNU sed version 2.05 works properly.
2516
2517* Slow startup on X11R6 with X windows.
2518
2519If Emacs takes two minutes to start up on X11R6, see if your X
2520resources specify any Adobe fonts. That causes the type-1 font
2521renderer to start up, even if the font you asked for is not a type-1
2522font.
2523
2524One way to avoid this problem is to eliminate the type-1 fonts from
2525your font path, like this:
2526
2527 xset -fp /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/
2528
2529* Pull-down menus appear in the wrong place, in the toolkit version of Emacs.
2530
2531An X resource of this form can cause the problem:
2532
2533 Emacs*geometry: 80x55+0+0
2534
2535This resource is supposed to apply, and does apply, to the menus
2536individually as well as to Emacs frames. If that is not what you
2537want, rewrite the resource.
2538
2539To check thoroughly for such resource specifications, use `xrdb
2540-query' to see what resources the X server records, and also look at
2541the user's ~/.Xdefaults and ~/.Xdefaults-* files.
2542
2543* --with-x-toolkit version crashes when used with shared libraries.
2544
2545On some systems, including Sunos 4 and DGUX 5.4.2 and perhaps others,
2546unexec doesn't work properly with the shared library for the X
2547toolkit. You might be able to work around this by using a nonshared
2548libXt.a library. The real fix is to upgrade the various versions of
2549unexec and/or ralloc. We think this has been fixed on Sunos 4
2550and Solaris in version 19.29.
2551
2552* `make install' fails on install-doc with `Error 141'.
2553
2554This happens on Ultrix 4.2 due to failure of a pipeline of tar
2555commands. We don't know why they fail, but the bug seems not to be in
2556Emacs. The workaround is to run the shell command in install-doc by
2557hand.
2558
2559* --with-x-toolkit option configures wrong on BSD/386.
2560
2561This problem is due to bugs in the shell in version 1.0 of BSD/386.
2562The workaround is to edit the configure file to use some other shell,
2563such as bash.
2564
2565* Subprocesses remain, hanging but not zombies, on Sunos 5.3.
2566
2567A bug in Sunos 5.3 causes Emacs subprocesses to remain after Emacs
2568exits. Sun patch # 101415-02 is part of the fix for this, but it only
2569applies to ptys, and doesn't fix the problem with subprocesses
2570communicating through pipes.
2571
2572* Mail is lost when sent to local aliases.
2573
2574Many emacs mail user agents (VM and rmail, for instance) use the
2575sendmail.el library. This library can arrange for mail to be
2576delivered by passing messages to the /usr/lib/sendmail (usually)
2577program . In doing so, it passes the '-t' flag to sendmail, which
2578means that the name of the recipient of the message is not on the
2579command line and, therefore, that sendmail must parse the message to
2580obtain the destination address.
2581
2582There is a bug in the SunOS4.1.1 and SunOS4.1.3 versions of sendmail.
2583In short, when given the -t flag, the SunOS sendmail won't recognize
2584non-local (i.e. NIS) aliases. It has been reported that the Solaris
25852.x versions of sendmail do not have this bug. For those using SunOS
25864.1, the best fix is to install sendmail V8 or IDA sendmail (which
2587have other advantages over the regular sendmail as well). At the time
2588of this writing, these official versions are available:
2589
2590 Sendmail V8 on ftp.cs.berkeley.edu in /ucb/sendmail:
2591 sendmail.8.6.9.base.tar.Z (the base system source & documentation)
2592 sendmail.8.6.9.cf.tar.Z (configuration files)
2593 sendmail.8.6.9.misc.tar.Z (miscellaneous support programs)
2594 sendmail.8.6.9.xdoc.tar.Z (extended documentation, with postscript)
2595
2596 IDA sendmail on vixen.cso.uiuc.edu in /pub:
2597 sendmail-5.67b+IDA-1.5.tar.gz
2598
2599* On AIX, you get this message when running Emacs:
2600
2601 Could not load program emacs
2602 Symbol smtcheckinit in csh is undefined
2603 Error was: Exec format error
2604
2605or this one:
2606
2607 Could not load program .emacs
2608 Symbol _system_con in csh is undefined
2609 Symbol _fp_trapsta in csh is undefined
2610 Error was: Exec format error
2611
2612These can happen when you try to run on AIX 3.2.5 a program that was
2613compiled with 3.2.4. The fix is to recompile.
2614
2615* On AIX, you get this compiler error message:
2616
2617 Processing include file ./XMenuInt.h
2618 1501-106: (S) Include file X11/Xlib.h not found.
2619
2620This means your system was installed with only the X11 runtime i.d
2621libraries. You have to find your sipo (bootable tape) and install
2622X11Dev... with smit.
2623
2624* You "lose characters" after typing Compose Character key.
2625
2626This is because the Compose Character key is defined as the keysym
2627Multi_key, and Emacs (seeing that) does the proper X11
2628character-composition processing. If you don't want your Compose key
2629to do that, you can redefine it with xmodmap.
2630
2631For example, here's one way to turn it into a Meta key:
2632
2633 xmodmap -e "keysym Multi_key = Meta_L"
2634
2635If all users at your site of a particular keyboard prefer Meta to
2636Compose, you can make the remapping happen automatically by adding the
2637xmodmap command to the xdm setup script for that display.
2638
2639* C-z just refreshes the screen instead of suspending Emacs.
2640
2641You are probably using a shell that doesn't support job control, even
2642though the system itself is capable of it. Either use a different shell,
2643or set the variable `cannot-suspend' to a non-nil value.
2644
2645* Watch out for .emacs files and EMACSLOADPATH environment vars
2646
2647These control the actions of Emacs.
2648~/.emacs is your Emacs init file.
2649EMACSLOADPATH overrides which directories the function
2650"load" will search.
2651
2652If you observe strange problems, check for these and get rid
2653of them, then try again.
2654
2655* After running emacs once, subsequent invocations crash.
2656
2657Some versions of SVR4 have a serious bug in the implementation of the
2658mmap () system call in the kernel; this causes emacs to run correctly
2659the first time, and then crash when run a second time.
2660
2661Contact your vendor and ask for the mmap bug fix; in the mean time,
2662you may be able to work around the problem by adding a line to your
2663operating system description file (whose name is reported by the
2664configure script) that reads:
2665#define SYSTEM_MALLOC
2666This makes Emacs use memory less efficiently, but seems to work around
2667the kernel bug.
2668
2669* Inability to send an Alt-modified key, when Emacs is communicating
2670directly with an X server.
2671
2672If you have tried to bind an Alt-modified key as a command, and it
2673does not work to type the command, the first thing you should check is
2674whether the key is getting through to Emacs. To do this, type C-h c
2675followed by the Alt-modified key. C-h c should say what kind of event
2676it read. If it says it read an Alt-modified key, then make sure you
2677have made the key binding correctly.
2678
2679If C-h c reports an event that doesn't have the Alt modifier, it may
2680be because your X server has no key for the Alt modifier. The X
2681server that comes from MIT does not set up the Alt modifier by
2682default.
2683
2684If your keyboard has keys named Alt, you can enable them as follows:
2685
2686 xmodmap -e 'add mod2 = Alt_L'
2687 xmodmap -e 'add mod2 = Alt_R'
2688
2689If the keyboard has just one key named Alt, then only one of those
2690commands is needed. The modifier `mod2' is a reasonable choice if you
2691are using an unmodified MIT version of X. Otherwise, choose any
2692modifier bit not otherwise used.
2693
2694If your keyboard does not have keys named Alt, you can use some other
2695keys. Use the keysym command in xmodmap to turn a function key (or
2696some other 'spare' key) into Alt_L or into Alt_R, and then use the
2697commands show above to make them modifier keys.
2698
2699Note that if you have Alt keys but no Meta keys, Emacs translates Alt
2700into Meta. This is because of the great importance of Meta in Emacs.
2701
2702* `Pid xxx killed due to text modification or page I/O error'
2703
2704On HP/UX, you can get that error when the Emacs executable is on an NFS
2705file system. HP/UX responds this way if it tries to swap in a page and
2706does not get a response from the server within a timeout whose default
2707value is just ten seconds.
2708
2709If this happens to you, extend the timeout period.
2710
2711* `expand-file-name' fails to work on any but the machine you dumped Emacs on.
2712
2713On Ultrix, if you use any of the functions which look up information
2714in the passwd database before dumping Emacs (say, by using
2715expand-file-name in site-init.el), then those functions will not work
2716in the dumped Emacs on any host but the one Emacs was dumped on.
2717
2718The solution? Don't use expand-file-name in site-init.el, or in
2719anything it loads. Yuck - some solution.
2720
2721I'm not sure why this happens; if you can find out exactly what is
2722going on, and perhaps find a fix or a workaround, please let us know.
2723Perhaps the YP functions cache some information, the cache is included
2724in the dumped Emacs, and is then inaccurate on any other host.
2725
2726* On some variants of SVR4, Emacs does not work at all with X.
2727
2728Try defining BROKEN_FIONREAD in your config.h file. If this solves
2729the problem, please send a bug report to tell us this is needed; be
2730sure to say exactly what type of machine and system you are using.
2731
2732* Linking says that the functions insque and remque are undefined.
2733
2734Change oldXMenu/Makefile by adding insque.o to the variable OBJS.
2735
2736* Emacs fails to understand most Internet host names, even though
2737the names work properly with other programs on the same system.
2738* Emacs won't work with X-windows if the value of DISPLAY is HOSTNAME:0.
2739* GNUs can't make contact with the specified host for nntp.
2740
2741This typically happens on Suns and other systems that use shared
2742libraries. The cause is that the site has installed a version of the
2743shared library which uses a name server--but has not installed a
2744similar version of the unshared library which Emacs uses.
2745
2746The result is that most programs, using the shared library, work with
2747the nameserver, but Emacs does not.
2748
2749The fix is to install an unshared library that corresponds to what you
2750installed in the shared library, and then relink Emacs.
2751
2752On SunOS 4.1, simply define HAVE_RES_INIT.
2753
2754If you have already installed the name resolver in the file libresolv.a,
2755then you need to compile Emacs to use that library. The easiest way to
2756do this is to add to config.h a definition of LIBS_SYSTEM, LIBS_MACHINE
2757or LIB_STANDARD which uses -lresolv. Watch out! If you redefine a macro
2758that is already in use in your configuration to supply some other libraries,
2759be careful not to lose the others.
2760
2761Thus, you could start by adding this to config.h:
2762
2763#define LIBS_SYSTEM -lresolv
2764
2765Then if this gives you an error for redefining a macro, and you see that
2766the s- file defines LIBS_SYSTEM as -lfoo -lbar, you could change config.h
2767again to say this:
2768
2769#define LIBS_SYSTEM -lresolv -lfoo -lbar
2770
2771* On a Sun running SunOS 4.1.1, you get this error message from GNU ld:
2772
177c0ea7 2773 /lib/libc.a(_Q_sub.o): Undefined symbol __Q_get_rp_rd referenced from text segment
a933dad1
DL
2774
2775The problem is in the Sun shared C library, not in GNU ld.
2776
2777The solution is to install Patch-ID# 100267-03 from Sun.
2778
2779* Self documentation messages are garbled.
2780
2781This means that the file `etc/DOC-...' doesn't properly correspond
2782with the Emacs executable. Redumping Emacs and then installing the
2783corresponding pair of files should fix the problem.
2784
2785* Trouble using ptys on AIX.
2786
2787People often install the pty devices on AIX incorrectly.
2788Use `smit pty' to reinstall them properly.
2789
2790* Shell mode on HP/UX gives the message, "`tty`: Ambiguous".
2791
2792christos@theory.tn.cornell.edu says:
2793
2794The problem is that in your .cshrc you have something that tries to
177c0ea7
JB
2795execute `tty`. If you are not running the shell on a real tty then
2796tty will print "not a tty". Csh expects one word in some places,
a933dad1
DL
2797but tty is giving it back 3.
2798
2799The solution is to add a pair of quotes around `tty` to make it a single
177c0ea7 2800word:
a933dad1 2801
177c0ea7 2802if (`tty` == "/dev/console")
a933dad1
DL
2803
2804should be changed to:
2805
177c0ea7 2806if ("`tty`" == "/dev/console")
a933dad1
DL
2807
2808Even better, move things that set up terminal sections out of .cshrc
2809and into .login.
2810
2811* Using X Windows, control-shift-leftbutton makes Emacs hang.
2812
2813Use the shell command `xset bc' to make the old X Menu package work.
2814
2815* Emacs running under X Windows does not handle mouse clicks.
2816* `emacs -geometry 80x20' finds a file named `80x20'.
2817
2818One cause of such problems is having (setq term-file-prefix nil) in
2819your .emacs file. Another cause is a bad value of EMACSLOADPATH in
2820the environment.
2821
2822* Emacs gets error message from linker on Sun.
2823
2824If the error message says that a symbol such as `f68881_used' or
2825`ffpa_used' or `start_float' is undefined, this probably indicates
177c0ea7 2826that you have compiled some libraries, such as the X libraries,
a933dad1
DL
2827with a floating point option other than the default.
2828
2829It's not terribly hard to make this work with small changes in
2830crt0.c together with linking with Fcrt1.o, Wcrt1.o or Mcrt1.o.
2831However, the easiest approach is to build Xlib with the default
2832floating point option: -fsoft.
2833
2834* Emacs fails to get default settings from X Windows server.
2835
2836The X library in X11R4 has a bug; it interchanges the 2nd and 3rd
2837arguments to XGetDefaults. Define the macro XBACKWARDS in config.h to
2838tell Emacs to compensate for this.
2839
2840I don't believe there is any way Emacs can determine for itself
2841whether this problem is present on a given system.
2842
2843* Keyboard input gets confused after a beep when using a DECserver
2844 as a concentrator.
2845
2846This problem seems to be a matter of configuring the DECserver to use
28477 bit characters rather than 8 bit characters.
2848
2849* M-x shell persistently reports "Process shell exited abnormally with code 1".
2850
2851This happened on Suns as a result of what is said to be a bug in Sunos
177c0ea7 2852version 4.0.x. The only fix was to reboot the machine.
a933dad1
DL
2853
2854* Programs running under terminal emulator do not recognize `emacs'
2855 terminal type.
2856
2857The cause of this is a shell startup file that sets the TERMCAP
2858environment variable. The terminal emulator uses that variable to
2859provide the information on the special terminal type that Emacs
2860emulates.
2861
2862Rewrite your shell startup file so that it does not change TERMCAP
2863in such a case. You could use the following conditional which sets
2864it only if it is undefined.
2865
2866 if ( ! ${?TERMCAP} ) setenv TERMCAP ~/my-termcap-file
2867
2868Or you could set TERMCAP only when you set TERM--which should not
2869happen in a non-login shell.
2870
2871* X Windows doesn't work if DISPLAY uses a hostname.
2872
2873People have reported kernel bugs in certain systems that cause Emacs
2874not to work with X Windows if DISPLAY is set using a host name. But
2875the problem does not occur if DISPLAY is set to `unix:0.0'. I think
2876the bug has to do with SIGIO or FIONREAD.
2877
2878You may be able to compensate for the bug by doing (set-input-mode nil nil).
2879However, that has the disadvantage of turning off interrupts, so that
2880you are unable to quit out of a Lisp program by typing C-g.
2881
177c0ea7 2882The easy way to do this is to put
a933dad1
DL
2883
2884 (setq x-sigio-bug t)
2885
2886in your site-init.el file.
2887
2888* Problem with remote X server on Suns.
2889
2890On a Sun, running Emacs on one machine with the X server on another
2891may not work if you have used the unshared system libraries. This
2892is because the unshared libraries fail to use YP for host name lookup.
2893As a result, the host name you specify may not be recognized.
2894
2895* Shell mode ignores interrupts on Apollo Domain
2896
2897You may find that M-x shell prints the following message:
2898
2899 Warning: no access to tty; thus no job control in this shell...
2900
2901This can happen if there are not enough ptys on your system.
2902Here is how to make more of them.
2903
2904 % cd /dev
2905 % ls pty*
2906 # shows how many pty's you have. I had 8, named pty0 to pty7)
2907 % /etc/crpty 8
2908 # creates eight new pty's
2909
2910* Fatal signal in the command temacs -l loadup inc dump
2911
2912This command is the final stage of building Emacs. It is run by the
2913Makefile in the src subdirectory, or by build.com on VMS.
2914
2915It has been known to get fatal errors due to insufficient swapping
2916space available on the machine.
2917
2918On 68000's, it has also happened because of bugs in the
2919subroutine `alloca'. Verify that `alloca' works right, even
2920for large blocks (many pages).
2921
2922* test-distrib says that the distribution has been clobbered
2923* or, temacs prints "Command key out of range 0-127"
2924* or, temacs runs and dumps emacs, but emacs totally fails to work.
2925* or, temacs gets errors dumping emacs
2926
2927This can be because the .elc files have been garbled. Do not be
2928fooled by the fact that most of a .elc file is text: these are
2929binary files and can contain all 256 byte values.
2930
2931In particular `shar' cannot be used for transmitting GNU Emacs.
2932It typically truncates "lines". What appear to be "lines" in
2933a binary file can of course be of any length. Even once `shar'
2934itself is made to work correctly, `sh' discards null characters
2935when unpacking the shell archive.
2936
2937I have also seen character \177 changed into \377. I do not know
2938what transfer means caused this problem. Various network
2939file transfer programs are suspected of clobbering the high bit.
2940
2941If you have a copy of Emacs that has been damaged in its
2942nonprinting characters, you can fix them:
2943
2944 1) Record the names of all the .elc files.
2945 2) Delete all the .elc files.
2946 3) Recompile alloc.c with a value of PURESIZE twice as large.
2947 (See puresize.h.) You might as well save the old alloc.o.
2948 4) Remake emacs. It should work now.
2949 5) Running emacs, do Meta-x byte-compile-file repeatedly
2950 to recreate all the .elc files that used to exist.
2951 You may need to increase the value of the variable
2952 max-lisp-eval-depth to succeed in running the compiler interpreted
2953 on certain .el files. 400 was sufficient as of last report.
2954 6) Reinstall the old alloc.o (undoing changes to alloc.c if any)
2955 and remake temacs.
2956 7) Remake emacs. It should work now, with valid .elc files.
2957
2958* temacs prints "Pure Lisp storage exhausted"
2959
2960This means that the Lisp code loaded from the .elc and .el
2961files during temacs -l loadup inc dump took up more
2962space than was allocated.
2963
2964This could be caused by
2965 1) adding code to the preloaded Lisp files
2966 2) adding more preloaded files in loadup.el
2967 3) having a site-init.el or site-load.el which loads files.
2968 Note that ANY site-init.el or site-load.el is nonstandard;
2969 if you have received Emacs from some other site
2970 and it contains a site-init.el or site-load.el file, consider
2971 deleting that file.
2972 4) getting the wrong .el or .elc files
2973 (not from the directory you expected).
2974 5) deleting some .elc files that are supposed to exist.
2975 This would cause the source files (.el files) to be
2976 loaded instead. They take up more room, so you lose.
2977 6) a bug in the Emacs distribution which underestimates
2978 the space required.
2979
2980If the need for more space is legitimate, change the definition
2981of PURESIZE in puresize.h.
2982
2983But in some of the cases listed above, this problem is a consequence
2984of something else that is wrong. Be sure to check and fix the real
2985problem.
2986
2987* Changes made to .el files do not take effect.
2988
2989You may have forgotten to recompile them into .elc files.
2990Then the old .elc files will be loaded, and your changes
2991will not be seen. To fix this, do M-x byte-recompile-directory
2992and specify the directory that contains the Lisp files.
2993
2994Emacs should print a warning when loading a .elc file which is older
2995than the corresponding .el file.
2996
2997* The dumped Emacs crashes when run, trying to write pure data.
2998
2999Two causes have been seen for such problems.
3000
30011) On a system where getpagesize is not a system call, it is defined
3002as a macro. If the definition (in both unexec.c and malloc.c) is wrong,
3003it can cause problems like this. You might be able to find the correct
3004value in the man page for a.out (5).
3005
30062) Some systems allocate variables declared static among the
3007initialized variables. Emacs makes all initialized variables in most
3008of its files pure after dumping, but the variables declared static and
3009not initialized are not supposed to be pure. On these systems you
3010may need to add "#define static" to the m- or the s- file.
3011
3012* Compilation errors on VMS.
3013
3014You will get warnings when compiling on VMS because there are
3015variable names longer than 32 (or whatever it is) characters.
3016This is not an error. Ignore it.
3017
3018VAX C does not support #if defined(foo). Uses of this construct
3019were removed, but some may have crept back in. They must be rewritten.
3020
3021There is a bug in the C compiler which fails to sign extend characters
3022in conditional expressions. The bug is:
3023 char c = -1, d = 1;
3024 int i;
3025
3026 i = d ? c : d;
3027The result is i == 255; the fix is to typecast the char in the
3028conditional expression as an (int). Known occurrences of such
3029constructs in Emacs have been fixed.
3030
3031* rmail gets error getting new mail
3032
3033rmail gets new mail from /usr/spool/mail/$USER using a program
3034called `movemail'. This program interlocks with /bin/mail using
3035the protocol defined by /bin/mail.
3036
3037There are two different protocols in general use. One of them uses
3038the `flock' system call. The other involves creating a lock file;
3039`movemail' must be able to write in /usr/spool/mail in order to do
3040this. You control which one is used by defining, or not defining,
3041the macro MAIL_USE_FLOCK in config.h or the m- or s- file it includes.
3042IF YOU DON'T USE THE FORM OF INTERLOCKING THAT IS NORMAL ON YOUR
3043SYSTEM, YOU CAN LOSE MAIL!
3044
3045If your system uses the lock file protocol, and fascist restrictions
3046prevent ordinary users from writing the lock files in /usr/spool/mail,
3047you may need to make `movemail' setgid to a suitable group such as
3048`mail'. You can use these commands (as root):
3049
3050 chgrp mail movemail
3051 chmod 2755 movemail
3052
3053If your system uses the lock file protocol, and fascist restrictions
3054prevent ordinary users from writing the lock files in /usr/spool/mail,
3055you may need to make `movemail' setgid to a suitable group such as
3056`mail'. To do this, use the following commands (as root) after doing the
3057make install.
3058
3059 chgrp mail movemail
3060 chmod 2755 movemail
3061
3062Installation normally copies movemail from the build directory to an
3063installation directory which is usually under /usr/local/lib. The
3064installed copy of movemail is usually in the directory
3065/usr/local/lib/emacs/VERSION/TARGET. You must change the group and
3066mode of the installed copy; changing the group and mode of the build
3067directory copy is ineffective.
3068
3069* Emacs spontaneously displays "I-search: " at the bottom of the screen.
3070
3071This means that Control-S/Control-Q (XON/XOFF) "flow control" is being
3072used. C-s/C-q flow control is bad for Emacs editors because it takes
3073away C-s and C-q as user commands. Since editors do not output long
3074streams of text without user commands, there is no need for a
3075user-issuable "stop output" command in an editor; therefore, a
3076properly designed flow control mechanism would transmit all possible
3077input characters without interference. Designing such a mechanism is
3078easy, for a person with at least half a brain.
3079
3080There are three possible reasons why flow control could be taking place:
3081
3082 1) Terminal has not been told to disable flow control
3083 2) Insufficient padding for the terminal in use
3084 3) Some sort of terminal concentrator or line switch is responsible
3085
3086First of all, many terminals have a set-up mode which controls whether
3087they generate XON/XOFF flow control characters. This must be set to
3088"no XON/XOFF" in order for Emacs to work. Sometimes there is an
3089escape sequence that the computer can send to turn flow control off
3090and on. If so, perhaps the termcap `ti' string should turn flow
3091control off, and the `te' string should turn it on.
3092
3093Once the terminal has been told "no flow control", you may find it
3094needs more padding. The amount of padding Emacs sends is controlled
3095by the termcap entry for the terminal in use, and by the output baud
3096rate as known by the kernel. The shell command `stty' will print
3097your output baud rate; `stty' with suitable arguments will set it if
3098it is wrong. Setting to a higher speed causes increased padding. If
3099the results are wrong for the correct speed, there is probably a
3100problem in the termcap entry. You must speak to a local Unix wizard
3101to fix this. Perhaps you are just using the wrong terminal type.
3102
3103For terminals that lack a "no flow control" mode, sometimes just
3104giving lots of padding will prevent actual generation of flow control
3105codes. You might as well try it.
3106
3107If you are really unlucky, your terminal is connected to the computer
3108through a concentrator which sends XON/XOFF flow control to the
3109computer, or it insists on sending flow control itself no matter how
3110much padding you give it. Unless you can figure out how to turn flow
3111control off on this concentrator (again, refer to your local wizard),
3112you are screwed! You should have the terminal or concentrator
3113replaced with a properly designed one. In the mean time, some drastic
3114measures can make Emacs semi-work.
3115
3116You can make Emacs ignore C-s and C-q and let the operating system
3117handle them. To do this on a per-session basis, just type M-x
3118enable-flow-control RET. You will see a message that C-\ and C-^ are
3119now translated to C-s and C-q. (Use the same command M-x
3120enable-flow-control to turn *off* this special mode. It toggles flow
3121control handling.)
3122
3123If C-\ and C-^ are inconvenient for you (for example, if one of them
3124is the escape character of your terminal concentrator), you can choose
3125other characters by setting the variables flow-control-c-s-replacement
3126and flow-control-c-q-replacement. But choose carefully, since all
3127other control characters are already used by emacs.
3128
3129IMPORTANT: if you type C-s by accident while flow control is enabled,
3130Emacs output will freeze, and you will have to remember to type C-q in
3131order to continue.
3132
3133If you work in an environment where a majority of terminals of a
3134certain type are flow control hobbled, you can use the function
3135`enable-flow-control-on' to turn on this flow control avoidance scheme
3136automatically. Here is an example:
3137
3138(enable-flow-control-on "vt200" "vt300" "vt101" "vt131")
3139
3140If this isn't quite correct (e.g. you have a mixture of flow-control hobbled
3141and good vt200 terminals), you can still run enable-flow-control
3142manually.
3143
3144I have no intention of ever redesigning the Emacs command set for the
3145assumption that terminals use C-s/C-q flow control. XON/XOFF flow
3146control technique is a bad design, and terminals that need it are bad
3147merchandise and should not be purchased. Now that X is becoming
3148widespread, XON/XOFF seems to be on the way out. If you can get some
3149use out of GNU Emacs on inferior terminals, more power to you, but I
3150will not make Emacs worse for properly designed systems for the sake
3151of inferior systems.
3152
3153* Control-S and Control-Q commands are ignored completely.
3154
3155For some reason, your system is using brain-damaged C-s/C-q flow
3156control despite Emacs's attempts to turn it off. Perhaps your
3157terminal is connected to the computer through a concentrator
3158that wants to use flow control.
3159
3160You should first try to tell the concentrator not to use flow control.
3161If you succeed in this, try making the terminal work without
3162flow control, as described in the preceding section.
3163
3164If that line of approach is not successful, map some other characters
3165into C-s and C-q using keyboard-translate-table. The example above
3166shows how to do this with C-^ and C-\.
3167
3168* Control-S and Control-Q commands are ignored completely on a net connection.
3169
3170Some versions of rlogin (and possibly telnet) do not pass flow
3171control characters to the remote system to which they connect.
3172On such systems, emacs on the remote system cannot disable flow
3173control on the local system.
3174
3175One way to cure this is to disable flow control on the local host
3176(the one running rlogin, not the one running rlogind) using the
3177stty command, before starting the rlogin process. On many systems,
3178"stty start u stop u" will do this.
3179
3180Some versions of tcsh will prevent even this from working. One way
3181around this is to start another shell before starting rlogin, and
3182issue the stty command to disable flow control from that shell.
3183
3184If none of these methods work, the best solution is to type
3185M-x enable-flow-control at the beginning of your emacs session, or
3186if you expect the problem to continue, add a line such as the
3187following to your .emacs (on the host running rlogind):
3188
3189(enable-flow-control-on "vt200" "vt300" "vt101" "vt131")
3190
3191See the entry about spontaneous display of I-search (above) for more
3192info.
3193
3194* Screen is updated wrong, but only on one kind of terminal.
3195
3196This could mean that the termcap entry you are using for that
3197terminal is wrong, or it could mean that Emacs has a bug handing
3198the combination of features specified for that terminal.
3199
3200The first step in tracking this down is to record what characters
3201Emacs is sending to the terminal. Execute the Lisp expression
3202(open-termscript "./emacs-script") to make Emacs write all
3203terminal output into the file ~/emacs-script as well; then do
3204what makes the screen update wrong, and look at the file
3205and decode the characters using the manual for the terminal.
3206There are several possibilities:
3207
32081) The characters sent are correct, according to the terminal manual.
3209
3210In this case, there is no obvious bug in Emacs, and most likely you
3211need more padding, or possibly the terminal manual is wrong.
3212
32132) The characters sent are incorrect, due to an obscure aspect
3214 of the terminal behavior not described in an obvious way
3215 by termcap.
3216
3217This case is hard. It will be necessary to think of a way for
3218Emacs to distinguish between terminals with this kind of behavior
3219and other terminals that behave subtly differently but are
3220classified the same by termcap; or else find an algorithm for
3221Emacs to use that avoids the difference. Such changes must be
3222tested on many kinds of terminals.
3223
32243) The termcap entry is wrong.
3225
3226See the file etc/TERMS for information on changes
3227that are known to be needed in commonly used termcap entries
3228for certain terminals.
3229
32304) The characters sent are incorrect, and clearly cannot be
3231 right for any terminal with the termcap entry you were using.
3232
3233This is unambiguously an Emacs bug, and can probably be fixed
3234in termcap.c, tparam.c, term.c, scroll.c, cm.c or dispnew.c.
3235
3236* Output from Control-V is slow.
3237
3238On many bit-map terminals, scrolling operations are fairly slow.
3239Often the termcap entry for the type of terminal in use fails
3240to inform Emacs of this. The two lines at the bottom of the screen
3241before a Control-V command are supposed to appear at the top after
3242the Control-V command. If Emacs thinks scrolling the lines is fast,
3243it will scroll them to the top of the screen.
3244
3245If scrolling is slow but Emacs thinks it is fast, the usual reason is
3246that the termcap entry for the terminal you are using does not
3247specify any padding time for the `al' and `dl' strings. Emacs
3248concludes that these operations take only as much time as it takes to
3249send the commands at whatever line speed you are using. You must
3250fix the termcap entry to specify, for the `al' and `dl', as much
3251time as the operations really take.
3252
3253Currently Emacs thinks in terms of serial lines which send characters
3254at a fixed rate, so that any operation which takes time for the
3255terminal to execute must also be padded. With bit-map terminals
3256operated across networks, often the network provides some sort of
3257flow control so that padding is never needed no matter how slow
3258an operation is. You must still specify a padding time if you want
3259Emacs to realize that the operation takes a long time. This will
3260cause padding characters to be sent unnecessarily, but they do
3261not really cost much. They will be transmitted while the scrolling
3262is happening and then discarded quickly by the terminal.
3263
3264Most bit-map terminals provide commands for inserting or deleting
3265multiple lines at once. Define the `AL' and `DL' strings in the
3266termcap entry to say how to do these things, and you will have
3267fast output without wasted padding characters. These strings should
3268each contain a single %-spec saying how to send the number of lines
3269to be scrolled. These %-specs are like those in the termcap
3270`cm' string.
3271
3272You should also define the `IC' and `DC' strings if your terminal
3273has a command to insert or delete multiple characters. These
3274take the number of positions to insert or delete as an argument.
3275
3276A `cs' string to set the scrolling region will reduce the amount
3277of motion you see on the screen when part of the screen is scrolled.
3278
3279* Your Delete key sends a Backspace to the terminal, using an AIXterm.
3280
3281The solution is to include in your .Xdefaults the lines:
3282
3283 *aixterm.Translations: #override <Key>BackSpace: string(0x7f)
3284 aixterm*ttyModes: erase ^?
3285
3286This makes your Backspace key send DEL (ASCII 127).
3287
3288* You type Control-H (Backspace) expecting to delete characters.
3289
3290Put `stty dec' in your .login file and your problems will disappear
3291after a day or two.
3292
3293The choice of Backspace for erasure was based on confusion, caused by
3294the fact that backspacing causes erasure (later, when you type another
3295character) on most display terminals. But it is a mistake. Deletion
3296of text is not the same thing as backspacing followed by failure to
3297overprint. I do not wish to propagate this confusion by conforming
3298to it.
3299
3300For this reason, I believe `stty dec' is the right mode to use,
3301and I have designed Emacs to go with that. If there were a thousand
3302other control characters, I would define Control-h to delete as well;
3303but there are not very many other control characters, and I think
3304that providing the most mnemonic possible Help character is more
3305important than adapting to people who don't use `stty dec'.
3306
3307If you are obstinate about confusing buggy overprinting with deletion,
3308you can redefine Backspace in your .emacs file:
3309 (global-set-key "\b" 'delete-backward-char)
3310You can probably access help-command via f1.
3311
3312* Editing files through RFS gives spurious "file has changed" warnings.
3313It is possible that a change in Emacs 18.37 gets around this problem,
3314but in case not, here is a description of how to fix the RFS bug that
3315causes it.
3316
3317 There was a serious pair of bugs in the handling of the fsync() system
3318 call in the RFS server.
3319
3320 The first is that the fsync() call is handled as another name for the
3321 close() system call (!!). It appears that fsync() is not used by very
3322 many programs; Emacs version 18 does an fsync() before closing files
3323 to make sure that the bits are on the disk.
3324
3325 This is fixed by the enclosed patch to the RFS server.
3326
3327 The second, more serious problem, is that fsync() is treated as a
3328 non-blocking system call (i.e., it's implemented as a message that
3329 gets sent to the remote system without waiting for a reply). Fsync is
3330 a useful tool for building atomic file transactions. Implementing it
3331 as a non-blocking RPC call (when the local call blocks until the sync
3332 is done) is a bad idea; unfortunately, changing it will break the RFS
3333 protocol. No fix was supplied for this problem.
3334
3335 (as always, your line numbers may vary)
3336
3337 % rcsdiff -c -r1.2 serversyscall.c
3338 RCS file: RCS/serversyscall.c,v
3339 retrieving revision 1.2
3340 diff -c -r1.2 serversyscall.c
3341 *** /tmp/,RCSt1003677 Wed Jan 28 15:15:02 1987
3342 --- serversyscall.c Wed Jan 28 15:14:48 1987
3343 ***************
3344 *** 163,169 ****
3345 /*
3346 * No return sent for close or fsync!
3347 */
3348 ! if (syscall == RSYS_close || syscall == RSYS_fsync)
3349 proc->p_returnval = deallocate_fd(proc, msg->m_args[0]);
3350 else
3351 {
3352 --- 166,172 ----
3353 /*
3354 * No return sent for close or fsync!
3355 */
3356 ! if (syscall == RSYS_close)
3357 proc->p_returnval = deallocate_fd(proc, msg->m_args[0]);
3358 else
3359 {
3360
3361* Vax C compiler bugs affecting Emacs.
3362
3363You may get one of these problems compiling Emacs:
3364
3365 foo.c line nnn: compiler error: no table entry for op STASG
3366 foo.c: fatal error in /lib/ccom
3367
3368These are due to bugs in the C compiler; the code is valid C.
3369Unfortunately, the bugs are unpredictable: the same construct
3370may compile properly or trigger one of these bugs, depending
3371on what else is in the source file being compiled. Even changes
3372in header files that should not affect the file being compiled
3373can affect whether the bug happens. In addition, sometimes files
3374that compile correctly on one machine get this bug on another machine.
3375
3376As a result, it is hard for me to make sure this bug will not affect
3377you. I have attempted to find and alter these constructs, but more
3378can always appear. However, I can tell you how to deal with it if it
3379should happen. The bug comes from having an indexed reference to an
3380array of Lisp_Objects, as an argument in a function call:
3381 Lisp_Object *args;
3382 ...
3383 ... foo (5, args[i], ...)...
3384putting the argument into a temporary variable first, as in
3385 Lisp_Object *args;
3386 Lisp_Object tem;
3387 ...
3388 tem = args[i];
3389 ... foo (r, tem, ...)...
3390causes the problem to go away.
3391The `contents' field of a Lisp vector is an array of Lisp_Objects,
3392so you may see the problem happening with indexed references to that.
3393
3394* 68000 C compiler problems
3395
3396Various 68000 compilers have different problems.
3397These are some that have been observed.
3398
3399** Using value of assignment expression on union type loses.
3400This means that x = y = z; or foo (x = z); does not work
3401if x is of type Lisp_Object.
3402
3403** "cannot reclaim" error.
3404
3405This means that an expression is too complicated. You get the correct
3406line number in the error message. The code must be rewritten with
3407simpler expressions.
3408
3409** XCONS, XSTRING, etc macros produce incorrect code.
3410
3411If temacs fails to run at all, this may be the cause.
3412Compile this test program and look at the assembler code:
3413
3414struct foo { char x; unsigned int y : 24; };
3415
3416lose (arg)
3417 struct foo arg;
3418{
3419 test ((int *) arg.y);
3420}
3421
3422If the code is incorrect, your compiler has this problem.
3423In the XCONS, etc., macros in lisp.h you must replace (a).u.val with
3424((a).u.val + coercedummy) where coercedummy is declared as int.
3425
3426This problem will not happen if the m-...h file for your type
3427of machine defines NO_UNION_TYPE. That is the recommended setting now.
3428
3429* C compilers lose on returning unions
3430
3431I hear that some C compilers cannot handle returning a union type.
3432Most of the functions in GNU Emacs return type Lisp_Object, which is
3433defined as a union on some rare architectures.
3434
3435This problem will not happen if the m-...h file for your type
3436of machine defines NO_UNION_TYPE.
3437
53854552 3438\f
fe6b4873
RS
3439Copyright 1987,88,89,93,94,95,96,97,98,1999,2001,2002
3440 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
3441
3442Copying and redistribution of this file with or without modification
3443are permitted without royalty provided this notice is preserved.
3444
53854552
EZ
3445Local variables:
3446mode: outline
3447paragraph-separate: "[ \f]*$"
3448end:
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3449
3450arch-tag: 49fc0d95-88cb-4715-b21c-f27fb5a4764a