Fix typo.
[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* Building Emacs with GCC 2.9x fails in the `src' directory.
5
6This may happen if you use a development version of GNU `cpp' from one
7of the GCC snapshots between Oct 2000 and Feb 2001, or from a released
8version of GCC newer than 2.95.2 which was prepared around those
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9dates; similar problems were reported with some snapshots of GCC 3.1
10around Sep 30 2001. The preprocessor in those versions is
11incompatible with a traditional Unix cpp (e.g., it expands ".." into
12". .", which breaks relative file names that reference the parent
13directory; or inserts TAB characters before lines that set Make
14variables).
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15
16The solution is to make sure the preprocessor is run with the
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17`-traditional' option. The `configure' script does that automatically
18when it detects the known problems in your cpp, but you might hit some
19unknown ones. To force the `configure' script to use `-traditional',
20run the script like this:
21
173de997 22 CPP='gcc -E -traditional' ./configure ...
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23
24(replace the ellipsis "..." with any additional arguments you pass to
25the script).
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26
27Note that this problem does not pertain to the MS-Windows port of
28Emacs, since it doesn't use the preprocessor to generate Makefiles.
29
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30* Building the MS-Windows port with Cygwin GCC can fail.
31
32Emacs may not build using recent Cygwin builds of GCC, such as Cygwin
33version 1.1.8, using the default configure settings. It appears to be
34necessary to specify the -mwin32 flag when compiling, and define
35__MSVCRT__, like so:
36
37 configure --with-gcc --cflags -mwin32 --cflags -D__MSVCRT__
38
39* Building the MS-Windows port with Leim fails in the `leim' directory.
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40
41The error message might be something like this:
42
43 Converting d:/emacs-21.1/leim/CXTERM-DIC/4Corner.tit to quail-package...
44 Invalid ENCODE: value in TIT dictionary
45 NMAKE : fatal error U1077: '"../src/obj-spd/i386/emacs.exe"' : return code
46 '0xffffffff'
47 Stop.
48
49This can happen if the Leim distribution is unpacked with a program
50which converts the `*.tit' files to DOS-style CR-LF text format. The
51`*.tit' files in the leim/CXTERM-DIC directory require Unix-style line
52endings to compile properly, because Emacs reads them without any code
53or EOL conversions.
54
55The solution is to make sure the program used to unpack Leim does not
56change the files' line endings behind your back. The GNU FTP site has
57in the `/gnu/emacs/windows' directory a program called `djtarnt.exe'
58which can be used to unpack `.tar.gz' and `.zip' archives without
59mangling them.
60
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61* Emacs crashes when dumping itself on Mac PPC running Yellow Dog GNU/Linux.
62
63The crashes happen inside the function Fmake_symbol; here's a typical
64C backtrace printed by GDB:
65
66 0x190c0c0 in Fmake_symbol ()
67 (gdb) where
68 #0 0x190c0c0 in Fmake_symbol ()
69 #1 0x1942ca4 in init_obarray ()
70 #2 0x18b3500 in main ()
71 #3 0x114371c in __libc_start_main (argc=5, argv=0x7ffff5b4, envp=0x7ffff5cc,
72
73This could happen because GCC version 2.95 and later changed the base
74of the load address to 0x10000000. Emacs needs to be told about this,
75but we currently cannot do that automatically, because that breaks
76other versions of GNU/Linux on the MacPPC. Until we find a way to
77distinguish between the Yellow Dog and the other varieties of
78GNU/Linux systems on the PPC, you will have to manually uncomment the
79following section near the end of the file src/m/macppc.h in the Emacs
80distribution:
81
cbfe0252 82 #if 0 /* This breaks things on PPC GNU/Linux except for Yellowdog,
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83 even with identical GCC, as, ld. Let's take it out until we
84 know what's really going on here. */
85 /* GCC 2.95 and newer on GNU/Linux PPC changed the load address to
86 0x10000000. */
87 #if defined __linux__
88 #if __GNUC__ > 2 || (__GNUC__ == 2 && __GNUC_MINOR__ >= 95)
89 #define DATA_SEG_BITS 0x10000000
90 #endif
91 #endif
92 #endif /* 0 */
93
94Remove the "#if 0" and "#endif" directives which surround this, save
95the file, and then reconfigure and rebuild Emacs. The dumping process
96should now succeed.
97
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98* JPEG images aren't displayed.
99
100This has been reported when Emacs is built with jpeg-6a library.
101Upgrading to jpeg-6b solves the problem.
102
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103* Building `ctags' for MS-Windows with the MinGW port of GCC fails.
104
105This might happen due to a bug in the MinGW header assert.h, which
106defines the `assert' macro with a trailing semi-colon. The following
107patch to assert.h should solve this:
108
109*** include/assert.h.orig Sun Nov 7 02:41:36 1999
110--- include/assert.h Mon Jan 29 11:49:10 2001
111***************
112*** 41,47 ****
113 /*
114 * If not debugging, assert does nothing.
115 */
116! #define assert(x) ((void)0);
117
118 #else /* debugging enabled */
119
120--- 41,47 ----
121 /*
122 * If not debugging, assert does nothing.
123 */
124! #define assert(x) ((void)0)
125
126 #else /* debugging enabled */
127
128
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129
130* Improving performance with slow X connections
131
132If you don't need X Input Methods (XIM) for entering text in some
133language you use, you can improve performance on WAN links by
134configuring Emacs with option `--without-xim'. Configuring Emacs
135without XIM does not affect the use of Emacs' own input methods, which
136are part of the Leim package.
137
138If the connection is very slow, you might also want to consider
139switching off scroll bars, menu bar, and tool bar.
140
141* Getting a Meta key on the FreeBSD console
142
143By default, neither Alt nor any other key acts as a Meta key on
144FreeBSD, but this can be changed using kbdcontrol(1). Dump the
145current keymap to a file with the command
146
147 $ kbdcontrol -d >emacs.kbd
148
149Edit emacs.kbd, and give the key you want to be the Meta key the
150definition `meta'. For instance, if your keyboard has a ``Windows''
151key with scan code 105, change the line for scan code 105 in emacs.kbd
152to look like this
153
154 105 meta meta meta meta meta meta meta meta O
155
156to make the Windows key the Meta key. Load the new keymap with
157
158 $ kbdcontrol -l emacs.kbd
159
160* Emacs' xterm-mouse-mode doesn't work on the Gnome terminal.
161
162A symptom of this bug is that double-clicks insert a control sequence
163into the buffer. The reason this happens is an apparent
164incompatibility of the Gnome terminal with Xterm, which also affects
165other programs using the Xterm mouse interface. A problem report has
166been filed.
167
168* Emacs pauses for several seconds when changing the default font
169
170This has been reported for fvwm 2.2.5 and the window manager of KDE
1712.1. The reason for the pause is Xt waiting for a ConfigureNotify
172event from the window manager, which the window manager doesn't send.
173Xt stops waiting after a default timeout of usually 5 seconds.
174
175A workaround for this is to add something like
176
177emacs.waitForWM: false
178
179to your X resources. Alternatively, add `(wait-for-wm . nil)' to a
180frame's parameter list, like this:
181
182 (modify-frame-parameters nil '((wait-for-wm . nil)))
183
184(this should go into your `.emacs' file).
185
186* Underlines appear at the wrong position.
187
188This is caused by fonts having a wrong UNDERLINE_POSITION property.
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189Examples are the font 7x13 on XFree prior to version 4.1, or the jmk
190neep font from the Debian xfonts-jmk package. To circumvent this
191problem, set x-use-underline-position-properties to nil in your
192`.emacs'.
193
194To see what is the value of UNDERLINE_POSITION defined by the font,
195type `xlsfonts -lll FONT' and look at the font's UNDERLINE_POSITION
196property.
61638355 197
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198* When using Xaw3d scroll bars without arrows, the very first mouse
199click in a scroll bar might be ignored by the scroll bar widget. This
200is probably a bug in Xaw3d; when Xaw3d is compiled with arrows, the
201problem disappears.
202
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203* There are known binary incompatibilities between Xaw, Xaw3d, neXtaw,
204XawM and the few other derivatives of Xaw. So when you compile with
205one of these, it may not work to dynamically link with another one.
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206For example, strange problems, such as Emacs exiting when you type
207"C-x 1", were reported when Emacs compiled with Xaw3d and libXaw was
208used with neXtaw at run time.
209
210The solution is to rebuild Emacs with the toolkit version you actually
211want to use, or set LD_PRELOAD to preload the same toolkit version you
212built Emacs with.
ed0d1d91 213
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214* Clicking C-mouse-2 in the scroll bar doesn't split the window.
215
216This currently doesn't work with scroll-bar widgets (and we don't know
217a good way of implementing it with widgets). If Emacs is configured
218--without-toolkit-scroll-bars, C-mouse-2 on the scroll bar does work.
219
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220* Emacs aborts inside the function `tparam1'.
221
222This can happen if Emacs was built without terminfo support, but the
223terminal's capabilities use format that is only supported by terminfo.
224If your system has ncurses installed, this might happen if your
225version of ncurses is broken; upgrading to a newer version of ncurses
226and reconfiguring and rebuilding Emacs should solve this.
227
228All modern systems support terminfo, so even if ncurses is not the
229problem, you should look for a way to configure Emacs so that it uses
230terminfo when built.
231
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232* Colors are not available on a tty or in xterm.
233
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234Emacs 21 supports colors on character terminals and terminal
235emulators, but this support relies on the terminfo or termcap database
236entry to specify that the display supports color. Emacs looks at the
237"Co" capability for the terminal to find out how many colors are
238supported; it should be non-zero to activate the color support within
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239Emacs. (Most color terminals support 8 or 16 colors.) If your system
240uses terminfo, the name of the capability equivalent to "Co" is
241"colors".
242
243In addition to the "Co" capability, Emacs needs the "op" (for
244``original pair'') capability, which tells how to switch the terminal
245back to the default foreground and background colors. Emacs will not
246use colors if this capability is not defined. If your terminal entry
247doesn't provide such a capability, try using the ANSI standard escape
248sequence \E[00m (that is, define a new termcap/terminfo entry and make
249it use your current terminal's entry plus \E[00m for the "op"
250capability).
251
252Finally, the "NC" capability (terminfo name: "ncv") tells Emacs which
253attributes cannot be used with colors. Setting this capability
254incorrectly might have the effect of disabling colors; try setting
255this capability to `0' (zero) and see if that helps.
ed85f61d 256
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257Emacs uses the database entry for the terminal whose name is the value
258of the environment variable TERM. With `xterm', a common terminal
ed85f61d 259entry that supports color is `xterm-color', so setting TERM's value to
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260`xterm-color' might activate the color support on an xterm-compatible
261emulator.
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263Beginning with version 21.3, Emacs supports the --color command-line
264option which may be used to force Emacs to use one of a few popular
265modes for getting colors on a tty. For example, --color=ansi8 sets up
266for using the ANSI-standard escape sequences that support 8 colors.
267
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268Some modes do not use colors unless you turn on the Font-lock mode.
269Some people have long ago set their `~/.emacs' files to turn on
270Font-lock on X only, so they won't see colors on a tty. The
271recommended way of turning on Font-lock is by typing "M-x
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272global-font-lock-mode RET" or by customizing the variable
273`global-font-lock-mode'.
ed85f61d 274
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275* Emacs on a tty switches the cursor to large blinking block.
276
277This was reported to happen on some GNU/Linux systems which use
278ncurses version 5.0, but could be relevant for other versions as well.
279These versions of ncurses come with a `linux' terminfo entry, where
280the "cvvis" capability (termcap "vs") is defined as "\E[?25h\E[?8c"
281(show cursor, change size). This escape sequence switches on a
282blinking hardware text-mode cursor whose size is a full character
283cell. This blinking cannot be stopped, since a hardware cursor
284always blinks.
285
286A work-around is to redefine the "cvvis" capability so that it
287enables a *software* cursor. The software cursor works by inverting
288the colors of the character at point, so what you see is a block
289cursor that doesn't blink. For this to work, you need to redefine
290the "cnorm" capability as well, so that it operates on the software
291cursor instead of the hardware cursor.
292
293To this end, run "infocmp linux > linux-term", edit the file
294`linux-term' to make both the "cnorm" and "cvvis" capabilities send
295the sequence "\E[?25h\E[?17;0;64c", and then run "tic linux-term" to
296produce a modified terminfo entry.
297
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298Alternatively, if you want a blinking underscore as your Emacs cursor,
299change the "cvvis" capability to send the "\E[?25h\E[?0c" command.
300
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301* Problems in Emacs built with LessTif.
302
303The problems seem to depend on the version of LessTif and the Motif
304emulation for which it is set up.
305
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306Only the Motif 1.2 emulation seems to be stable enough in LessTif.
307Lesstif 0.92-17's Motif 1.2 emulation seems to work okay on FreeBSD.
308On GNU/Linux systems, lesstif-0.92.6 configured with "./configure
309--enable-build-12 --enable-default-12" is reported to be the most
310successful. The binary GNU/Linux package
311lesstif-devel-0.92.0-1.i386.rpm was reported to have problems with
312menu placement.
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313
314On some systems, even with Motif 1.2 emulation, Emacs occasionally
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315locks up, grabbing all mouse and keyboard events. We still don't know
316what causes these problems; they are not reproducible by Emacs
317developers.
339b95d5 318
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319* Known problems with the MS-Windows port of Emacs 21.1.
320
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321Emacs 21.1 built for MS-Windows doesn't support images and the tool bar.
322Support for these will be added in future versions.
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324Frames are not refreshed while the File or Font dialog or a pop-up menu
325is displayed. This also means help text for pop-up menu items is not
326displayed at all. This is because message handling under Windows is
327synchronous, so we cannot handle repaint (or any other) messages while
328waiting for a system function to return the result of the dialog or
329pop-up menu interaction.
f936978f 330
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331There are problems with display if mouse-tracking is enabled and the
332mouse is moved off a frame, over another frame then back over the first
333frame. A workaround is to click the left mouse button inside the frame
334after moving back into it.
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336Some minor flickering still persists during mouse-tracking, although
337not as severely as in 21.1.
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338
339Emacs can sometimes abort when non-ASCII text, possibly with null
340characters, is copied and pasted into a buffer.
341
342An inactive cursor remains in an active window after the Windows
343Manager driven switch of the focus, until a key is pressed.
344
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345Windows 2000 input methods are not recognized by Emacs (as of v21.1).
346These input methods cause the keyboard to send characters encoded in
347the appropriate coding system (e.g., ISO 8859-1 for Latin-1
348characters, ISO 8859-8 for Hebrew characters, etc.). To make this
349work, set the keyboard coding system to the appropriate value after
350you activate the Windows input method. For example, if you activate
351the Hebrew input method, type "C-x RET k iso-8859-8 RET". (Emacs
352ought to recognize the Windows language-change event and set up the
353appropriate keyboard encoding automatically, but it doesn't do that
354yet.)
355
356Multilingual text put into the Windows 2000 clipboard by Windows
357applications cannot be safely pasted into Emacs (as of v21.1). This
358is because Windows 2000 uses Unicode to represent multilingual text,
359but Emacs does not yet support Unicode well enough to decode it. This
360means that Emacs can only interchange non-ASCII text with other
361Windows 2000 programs if the characters are in the system codepage.
362Reportedly, a partial solution is to install the Mule-UCS package and
363set selection-coding-system to utf-16-le-dos.
364
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365* The `configure' script doesn't find the jpeg library.
366
367This can happen because the linker by default only looks for shared
368libraries, but jpeg distribution by default doesn't build and doesn't
369install a shared version of the library, `libjpeg.so'. One system
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370where this is known to happen is Compaq OSF/1 (`Tru64'), but it
371probably isn't limited to that system.
c8d9b4ee 372
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373You can configure the jpeg library with the `--enable-shared' option
374and then rebuild libjpeg. This produces a shared version of libjpeg,
375which you need to install. Finally, rerun the Emacs configure script,
376which should now find the jpeg library. Alternatively, modify the
377generated src/Makefile to link the .a file explicitly.
c8d9b4ee 378
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379(If you need the static version of the jpeg library as well, configure
380libjpeg with both `--enable-static' and `--enable-shared' options.)
c8d9b4ee 381
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382* Building Emacs over NFS fails with ``Text file busy''.
383
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384This was reported to happen when building Emacs on a GNU/Linux system
385(RedHat Linux 6.2) using a build directory automounted from Solaris
386(SunOS 5.6) file server, but it might not be limited to that
387configuration alone. Presumably, the NFS server doesn't commit the
388files' data to disk quickly enough, and the Emacs executable file is
389left ``busy'' for several seconds after Emacs has finished dumping
390itself. This causes the subsequent commands which invoke the dumped
cbfe0252 391Emacs executable to fail with the above message.
d9810886 392
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393In some of these cases, a time skew between the NFS server and the
394machine where Emacs is built is detected and reported by GNU Make
395(it says that some of the files have modification time in the future).
396This might be a symptom of NFS-related problems.
397
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398If the NFS server runs on Solaris, apply the Solaris patch 105379-05
399(Sunos 5.6: /kernel/misc/nfssrv patch). If that doesn't work, or if
400you have a different version of the OS or the NFS server, you can
401force the NFS server to use 1KB blocks, which was reported to fix the
402problem albeit at a price of slowing down file I/O. You can force 1KB
403blocks by specifying the "-o rsize=1024,wsize=1024" options to the
404`mount' command, or by adding ",rsize=1024,wsize=1024" to the mount
405options in the appropriate system configuration file, such as
406`/etc/auto.home'.
407
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408Alternatively, when Make fails due to this problem, you could wait for
409a few seconds and then invoke Make again. In one particular case,
410waiting for 10 or more seconds between the two Make invocations seemed
411to work around the problem.
d9810886 412
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413Similar problems can happen if your machine NFS-mounts a directory
414onto itself. Suppose the Emacs sources live in `/usr/local/src' and
415you are working on the host called `marvin'. Then an entry in the
416`/etc/fstab' file like the following is asking for trouble:
417
418 marvin:/usr/local/src /usr/local/src ...options.omitted...
419
420The solution is to remove this line from `etc/fstab'.
421
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422* Emacs binary is not in executable format, and cannot be run.
423
424This was reported to happen when Emacs is built in a directory mounted
425via NFS. Usually, the file `emacs' produced in these cases is full of
426binary null characters, and the `file' utility says:
427
428 emacs: ASCII text, with no line terminators
429
430We don't know what exactly causes this failure. A work-around is to
431build Emacs in a directory on a local disk.
432
9ed04369 433* Accented ISO-8859-1 characters are displayed as | or _.
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434
435Try other font set sizes (S-mouse-1). If the problem persists with
436other sizes as well, your text is corrupted, probably through software
437that is not 8-bit clean. If the problem goes away with another font
438size, it's probably because some fonts pretend to be ISO-8859-1 fonts
439when they are really ASCII fonts. In particular the schumacher-clean
440fonts have this bug in some versions of X.
441
442To see what glyphs are included in a font, use `xfd', like this:
443
444 xfd -fn -schumacher-clean-medium-r-normal--12-120-75-75-c-60-iso8859-1
445
446If this shows only ASCII glyphs, the font is indeed the source of the
447problem.
448
449The solution is to remove the corresponding lines from the appropriate
450`fonts.alias' file, then run `mkfontdir' in that directory, and then run
451`xset fp rehash'.
452
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453* Large file support is disabled on HP-UX. See the comments in
454src/s/hpux10.h.
455
456* Crashes when displaying uncompressed GIFs with version
457libungif-4.1.0 are resolved by using version libungif-4.1.0b1.
458
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459* Font Lock displays portions of the bufefr in incorrect faces.
460
461By far the most frequent cause of this is a parenthesis `(' or a brace
462`{' in column zero. Font Lock assumes that such a paren is outside of
463any comment or string. This is of course not true in general, but the
464vast majority of well-formatted program source files don't have such
465parens, and therefore this assumption is used to allow optimizations
466in Font Lock's syntactical analysis. These optimizations avoid some
cbfe0252 467pathological cases where jit-lock, the Just-in-Time fontification
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468introduced with Emacs 21.1, could significantly slow down scrolling
469through the buffer, especially scrolling backwards, and also jumping
470to the end of a very large buffer.
471
472If you don't use large buffers, or have a very fast machine which
473makes the delays insignificant, you can avoid the incorrect
474fontification by setting the variable
475`font-lock-beginning-of-syntax-function' to a nil value. (This must
476be done _after_ turning on Font Lock.)
477
478Another alternative is to avoid a paren in column zero. For example,
479in a Lisp string you could precede the paren with a backslash.
480
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481* When running on KDE, colors or fonts are not as specified for Emacs,
482or messed up.
483
cbfe0252 484For example, you could see background you set for Emacs only in the
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485empty portions of the Emacs display, while characters have some other
486background.
487
488This happens because KDE's defaults apply its color and font
489definitions even to applications that weren't compiled for KDE. The
490solution is to uncheck the "Apply fonts and colors to non-KDE apps"
491option in Preferences->Look&Feel->Style.
492
493Alternatively, if you do want the KDE defaults to apply to other
494applications, but not to Emacs, you could modify the file `Emacs.ad'
495(should be in the `/usr/share/apps/kdisplay/app-defaults/' directory)
496so that it doesn't set the default background and foreground only for
497Emacs. For example, make sure the following resources are either not
498present or commented out:
499
500 Emacs.default.attributeForeground
501 Emacs.default.attributeBackground
502 Emacs*Foreground
503 Emacs*Background
504
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505* Interrupting Cygwin port of Bash from Emacs doesn't work.
506
507Cygwin 1.x builds of the ported Bash cannot be interrupted from the
508MS-Windows version of Emacs. This is due to some change in the Bash
509port or in the Cygwin library which apparently make Bash ignore the
510keyboard interrupt event sent by Emacs to Bash. (Older Cygwin ports
511of Bash, up to b20.1, did receive SIGINT from Emacs.)
512
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513* Accessing remote files with ange-ftp hangs the MS-Windows version of Emacs.
514
515If the FTP client is the Cygwin port of GNU `ftp', this appears to be
516due to some bug in the Cygwin DLL or some incompatibility between it
517and the implementation of asynchronous subprocesses in the Windows
518port of Emacs. Specifically, some parts of the FTP server responses
519are not flushed out, apparently due to buffering issues, which
520confuses ange-ftp.
521
522The solution is to downgrade to an older version of the Cygwin DLL
523(version 1.3.2 was reported to solve the problem), or use the stock
524Windows FTP client, usually found in the `C:\WINDOWS' directory. To
525force ange-ftp use the stock Windows client, set the variable
526`ange-ftp-ftp-program-name' to the absolute file name of the client's
527executable. For example:
528
529 (setq ange-ftp-ftp-program-name "c:/windows/ftp.exe")
530
531If you want to stick with the Cygwin FTP client, you can work around
532this problem by putting this in your `.emacs' file:
533
534 (setq ange-ftp-ftp-program-args '("-i" "-n" "-g" "-v" "--prompt" "")
535
536
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537* The latest released version of the W3 package doesn't run properly
538with Emacs 21 and needs work. However, these problems are already
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539fixed in W3's CVS. The patch below is reported to make w3-4.0pre.46
540work.
541
542Some users report they are unable to byte-compile W3 with Emacs 21.
543If the patches below don't help to resolve your problems, install the
544CVS version of W3, which should be compatible with Emacs 21.
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545
546diff -aur --new-file w3-4.0pre.46-orig/lisp/w3-display.el w3-4.0pre.46-new/lisp/w3-display.el
547--- w3-4.0pre.46-orig/lisp/w3-display.el Sun Nov 14 22:00:12 1999
548+++ w3-4.0pre.46-new/lisp/w3-display.el Thu Dec 14 14:59:15 2000
549@@ -181,7 +181,8 @@
550 (dispatch-event (next-command-event)))
551 (error nil))))
552 (t
553- (if (and (not (sit-for 0)) (input-pending-p))
554+ ;; modified for GNU Emacs 21 by bob@rattlesnake.com on 2000 Dec 14
555+ (if (and (not (sit-for 0)) nil)
556 (condition-case ()
557 (progn
558 (setq w3-pause-keystroke
559diff -aur --new-file w3-4.0pre.46-orig/lisp/w3-e21.el w3-4.0pre.46-new/lisp/w3-e21.el
560--- w3-4.0pre.46-orig/lisp/w3-e21.el Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970
561+++ w3-4.0pre.46-new/lisp/w3-e21.el Thu Dec 14 14:54:58 2000
562@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
563+;;; w3-e21.el --- ** required for GNU Emacs 21 **
564+;; Added by bob@rattlesnake.com on 2000 Dec 14
565+
566+(require 'w3-e19)
567+(provide 'w3-e21)
568
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569* On AIX, if linking fails because libXbsd isn't found, check if you
570are compiling with the system's `cc' and CFLAGS containing `-O5'. If
571so, you have hit a compiler bug. Please make sure to re-configure
572Emacs so that it isn't compiled with `-O5'.
573
cc2f2825 574* Compiling on AIX 4.3.x or 4.4 fails.
ec383c7d 575
9e2305c3 576This could happen if you use /bin/c89 as your compiler, instead of
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577the default `cc'. /bin/c89 treats certain warnings, such as benign
578redefinitions of macros, as errors, and fails the build. A solution
579is to use the default compiler `cc'.
580
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581* The PSGML package uses the obsolete variables
582`before-change-function' and `after-change-function', which are no
9ec9d3d2 583longer used by Emacs. Please use PSGML 1.2.3 or later.
1d297d9b 584
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585* Unicode characters are not unified with other Mule charsets.
586
587As of v21.1, Emacs charsets are still not unified. This means that
588characters which belong to charsets such as Latin-2, Greek, Hebrew,
589etc. and the same characters in the `mule-unicode-*' charsets are
590different characters, as far as Emacs is concerned. For example, text
591which includes Unicode characters from the Latin-2 locale cannot be
592encoded by Emacs with ISO 8859-2 coding system; and if you yank Greek
593text from a buffer whose buffer-file-coding-system is greek-iso-8bit
594into a mule-unicode-0100-24ff buffer, Emacs won't be able to save that
595buffer neither as ISO 8859-7 nor as UTF-8.
596
597To work around this, install some add-on package such as Mule-UCS.
598
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599* Problems when using Emacs with UTF-8 locales
600
601Some systems, including recent versions of GNU/Linux, have terminals
602or X11 subsystems that can be configured to provide Unicode/UTF-8
603input and display. Normally, such a system sets environment variables
604such as LANG, LC_CTYPE, or LC_ALL to a string which ends with a
605`.UTF-8'. For example, a system like this in a French locale might
606use `fr_FR.UTF-8' as the value of LANG.
607
608Since Unicode support in Emacs, as of v21.1, is not yet complete (see
609the previous entry in this file), UTF-8 support is not enabled by
610default, even in UTF-8 locales. Thus, some Emacs features, such as
611non-ASCII keyboard input, might appear to be broken in these locales.
612To solve these problems, you need to turn on some options in your
613`.emacs' file. Specifically, the following customizations should make
614Emacs work correctly with UTF-8 input and text:
615
616 (setq locale-coding-system 'utf-8)
617 (set-terminal-coding-system 'utf-8)
618 (set-keyboard-coding-system 'utf-8)
619 (set-selection-coding-system 'utf-8)
620 (prefer-coding-system 'utf-8)
621
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622* The `oc-unicode' package doesn't work with Emacs 21.
623
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624This package tries to define more private charsets than there are free
625slots now. If the built-in Unicode/UTF-8 support is insufficient,
626e.g. if you need more CJK coverage, use the current Mule-UCS package.
627Any files encoded as emacs-mule using oc-unicode won't be read
628correctly by Emacs 21.
224a0b4d 629
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630* Using epop3.el package causes Emacs to signal an error.
631
632The error message might be something like this:
633
634 "Lisp nesting exceeds max-lisp-eval-depth"
635
636This happens because epop3 redefines the function gethash, which is a
637built-in primitive beginning with Emacs 21.1. We don't have a patch
638for epop3 that fixes this, but perhaps a newer version of epop3
639corrects that.
640
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641* ps-print commands fail to find prologue files ps-prin*.ps.
642
643This can happen if you use an old version of X-Symbol package: it
644defines compatibility functions which trick ps-print into thinking it
645runs in XEmacs, and look for the prologue files in a wrong directory.
646
647The solution is to upgrade X-Symbol to a later version.
648
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649* On systems with shared libraries you might encounter run-time errors
650from the dynamic linker telling you that it is unable to find some
651shared libraries, for instance those for Xaw3d or image support.
652These errors mean Emacs has been linked with a library whose shared
653library is not in the default search path of the dynamic linker.
654
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655Similar problems could prevent Emacs from building, since the build
656process invokes Emacs several times.
657
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658On many systems, it is possible to set LD_LIBRARY_PATH in your
659environment to specify additional directories where shared libraries
660can be found.
661
662Other systems allow to set LD_RUN_PATH in a similar way, but before
663Emacs is linked. With LD_RUN_PATH set, the linker will include a
664specified run-time search path in the executable.
665
666Please refer to the documentation of your dynamic linker for details.
667
0c6456ad 668* On Solaris 2.7, building Emacs with WorkShop Compilers 5.0 98/12/15
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669C 5.0 failed, apparently with non-default CFLAGS, most probably due to
670compiler bugs. Using Sun Solaris 2.7 Sun WorkShop 6 update 1 C
671release was reported to work without problems. It worked OK on
672another system with Solaris 8 using apparently the same 5.0 compiler
673and the default CFLAGS.
0c6456ad 674
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675* Compiling syntax.c with the OPENSTEP 4.2 compiler gcc 2.7.2.1 fails.
676
677The compiler was reported to crash while compiling syntax.c with the
678following message:
679
680 cc: Internal compiler error: program cc1obj got fatal signal 11
681
682To work around this, replace the macros UPDATE_SYNTAX_TABLE_FORWARD,
683INC_BOTH, and INC_FROM with functions. To this end, first define 3
684functions, one each for every macro. Here's an example:
685
686 static int update_syntax_table_forward(int from)
687 {
688 return(UPDATE_SYNTAX_TABLE_FORWARD(from));
689 }/*update_syntax_table_forward*/
690
691Then replace all references to UPDATE_SYNTAX_TABLE_FORWARD in syntax.c
692with a call to the function update_syntax_table_forward.
693
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694* Emacs fails to start, complaining about missing fonts.
695
696A typical error message might be something like
697
698 No fonts match `-*-fixed-medium-r-*--6-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1'
699
700This happens because some X resource specifies a bad font family for
701Emacs to use. The possible places where this specification might be
702are:
703
704 - in your ~/.Xdefaults file
705
706 - client-side X resource file, such as ~/Emacs or
707 /usr/X11R6/lib/app-defaults/Emacs or
708 /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/app-defaults/Emacs
709
710One of these files might have bad or malformed specification of a
711fontset that Emacs should use. To fix the problem, you need to find
712the problematic line(s) and correct them.
713
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714* Emacs 20 and later fails to load Lisp files at startup.
715
716The typical error message might be like this:
717
718 "Cannot open load file: fontset"
719
720This could happen if you compress the file lisp/subdirs.el. That file
721tells Emacs what are the directories where it should look for Lisp
722files. Emacs cannot work with subdirs.el compressed, since the
723Auto-compress mode it needs for this will not be loaded until later,
724when your .emacs file is processed. (The package `fontset.el' is
725required to set up fonts used to display text on window systems, and
726its loaded very early in the startup procedure.)
727
728Similarly, any other .el file for which there's no corresponding .elc
729file could fail to load if it is compressed.
730
731The solution is to uncompress all .el files which don't have a .elc
732file.
733
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734Another possible reason for such failures is stale *.elc files
735lurking somewhere on your load-path. The following command will
736print any duplicate Lisp files that are present in load-path:
737
738 emacs -q -batch -f list-load-path-shadows
739
740If this command prints any file names, some of these files are stale,
741and should be deleted or their directories removed from your
742load-path.
743
42303132
JR
744* Emacs prints an error at startup after upgrading from an earlier version.
745
746An example of such an error is:
747
748 x-complement-fontset-spec: "Wrong type argument: stringp, nil"
749
750This can be another symptom of stale *.elc files in your classpath.
751The following command will print any duplicate Lisp files that are
752present in load-path:
753
754 emacs -q -batch -f list-load-path-shadows
755
756If this command prints any file names, some of these files are stale,
757and should be deleted or their directories removed from your
758load-path.
759
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760* Attempting to visit remote files via ange-ftp fails.
761
762If the error message is "ange-ftp-file-modtime: Specified time is not
763representable", then this could happen when `lukemftp' is used as the
f2d176f2
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764ftp client. This was reported to happen on Debian GNU/Linux, kernel
765version 2.4.3, with `lukemftp' 1.5-5, but might happen on other
766systems as well. To avoid this problem, switch to using the standard
767ftp client. On a Debian system, type
f3d6f4ee 768
f2d176f2 769 update-alternatives --config ftp
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770
771and then choose /usr/bin/netkit-ftp.
772
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773* Antivirus software interacts badly with the MS-Windows version of Emacs.
774
775The usual manifestation of these problems is that subprocesses don't
776work or even wedge the entire system. In particular, "M-x shell RET"
777was reported to fail to work. But other commands also sometimes don't
778work when an antivirus package is installed.
779
780The solution is to switch the antivirus software to a less aggressive
781mode (e.g., disable the ``auto-protect'' feature), or even uninstall
782or disable it entirely.
783
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JR
784* On Windows 95/98/ME, subprocesses do not terminate properly.
785
786This is a limitation of the Operating System, and can cause problems
787when shutting down Windows. Ensure that all subprocesses are exited
788cleanly before exiting Emacs. For more details, see the FAQ at
cbfe0252 789http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/windows/.
f29d1e75 790
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791* Mail sent through Microsoft Exchange in some encodings appears to be
792mangled and is not seen correctly in Rmail or Gnus. We don't know
793exactly what happens, but it isn't an Emacs problem in cases we've
794seen.
795
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796* After upgrading to a newer version of Emacs, the Meta key stops working.
797
798This was reported to happen on a GNU/Linux system distributed by
799Mandrake. The reason is that the previous version of Emacs was
800modified by Mandrake to make the Alt key act as the Meta key, on a
801keyboard where the Windows key is the one which produces the Meta
802modifier. A user who started using a newer version of Emacs, which
803was not hacked by Mandrake, expected the Alt key to continue to act as
804Meta, and was astonished when that didn't happen.
805
806The solution is to find out what key on your keyboard produces the Meta
807modifier, and use that key instead. Try all of the keys to the left
808and to the right of the space bar, together with the `x' key, and see
809which combination produces "M-x" in the echo area. You can also use
810the `xmodmap' utility to show all the keys which produce a Meta
811modifier:
812
813 xmodmap -pk | egrep -i "meta|alt"
814
815A more convenient way of finding out which keys produce a Meta modifier
816is to use the `xkbprint' utility, if it's available on your system:
817
818 xkbprint 0:0 /tmp/k.ps
819
820This produces a PostScript file `/tmp/k.ps' with a picture of your
821keyboard; printing that file on a PostScript printer will show what
822keys can serve as Meta.
823
824The `xkeycaps' also shows a visual representation of the current
825keyboard settings. It also allows to modify them.
826
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827* On OSF/Dec Unix/Tru64/<whatever it is this year> under X locally or
828remotely, M-SPC acts as a `compose' key with strange results. See
829keyboard(5).
830
831Changing Alt_L to Meta_L fixes it:
832% xmodmap -e 'keysym Alt_L = Meta_L Alt_L'
833% xmodmap -e 'keysym Alt_R = Meta_R Alt_R'
834
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835* Error "conflicting types for `initstate'" compiling with GCC on Irix 6.
836
837Install GCC 2.95 or a newer version, and this problem should go away.
838It is possible that this problem results from upgrading the operating
839system without reinstalling GCC; so you could also try reinstalling
840the same version of GCC, and telling us whether that fixes the problem.
841
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842* Emacs dumps core on Solaris in function IMCheckWindow.
843
844This was reported to happen when Emacs runs with more than one frame,
845and one of them is closed, either with "C-x 5 0" or from the window
846manager.
847
848This bug was reported to Sun as
849
850 Gtk apps dump core in ximlocal.so.2:IMCheckIMWindow()
851 Bug Reports: 4463537
852
2aa82bcf 853Installing Solaris 8 patch 108773-12 for Sparc and 108774-12 for x86
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854reportedly fixes the bug, which appears to be inside the shared
855library xiiimp.so.
856
857Alternatively, you can configure Emacs with `--with-xim=no' to prevent
858the core dump, but will loose X input method support, of course. (You
859can use Emacs's own input methods instead, if you install Leim.)
860
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861* On Solaris 7, Emacs gets a segmentation fault when starting up using X.
862
863This results from Sun patch 107058-01 (SunOS 5.7: Patch for
3156909f
PE
864assembler) if you use GCC version 2.7 or later.
865To work around it, either install patch 106950-03 or later,
866or uninstall patch 107058-01, or install the GNU Binutils.
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867Then recompile Emacs, and it should work.
868
869* With X11R6.4, public-patch-3, Emacs crashes at startup.
870
871Reportedly this patch in X fixes the problem.
872
873 --- xc/lib/X11/imInt.c~ Wed Jun 30 13:31:56 1999
874 +++ xc/lib/X11/imInt.c Thu Jul 1 15:10:27 1999
875 @@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
876 -/* $TOG: imInt.c /main/5 1998/05/30 21:11:16 kaleb $ */
877 +/* $TOG: imInt.c /main/5 1998/05/30 21:11:16 kaleb $ */
878 /******************************************************************
879
880 Copyright 1992, 1993, 1994 by FUJITSU LIMITED
881 @@ -166,8 +166,8 @@
882 _XimMakeImName(lcd)
883 XLCd lcd;
884 {
885 - char* begin;
886 - char* end;
887 + char* begin = NULL;
888 + char* end = NULL;
889 char* ret;
890 int i = 0;
891 char* ximmodifier = XIMMODIFIER;
892 @@ -182,7 +182,11 @@
893 }
894 ret = Xmalloc(end - begin + 2);
895 if (ret != NULL) {
896 - (void)strncpy(ret, begin, end - begin + 1);
897 + if (begin != NULL) {
898 + (void)strncpy(ret, begin, end - begin + 1);
899 + } else {
900 + ret[0] = '\0';
901 + }
902 ret[end - begin + 1] = '\0';
903 }
904 return ret;
905
906
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907* Emacs crashes on Irix 6.5 on the SGI R10K, when compiled with GCC.
908
909This seems to be fixed in GCC 2.95.
910
911* Emacs crashes in utmpname on Irix 5.3.
912
913This problem is fixed in Patch 3175 for Irix 5.3.
914It is also fixed in Irix versions 6.2 and up.
915
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916* The S-C-t key combination doesn't get passed to Emacs on X.
917
918This happens because some X configurations assign the Ctrl-Shift-t
919combination the same meaning as the Multi_key. The offending
920definition is in the file `...lib/X11/locale/iso8859-1/Compose'; there
921might be other similar combinations which are grabbed by X for similar
922purposes.
923
924We think that this can be countermanded with the `xmodmap' utility, if
925you want to be able to bind one of these key sequences within Emacs.
926
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927* On Solaris, CTRL-t is ignored by Emacs when you use
928the fr.ISO-8859-15 locale (and maybe other related locales).
929
930You can fix this by editing the file:
931
932 /usr/openwin/lib/locale/iso8859-15/Compose
933
934Near the bottom there is a line that reads:
935
936 Ctrl<t> <quotedbl> <Y> : "\276" threequarters
937
938that should read:
939
940 Ctrl<T> <quotedbl> <Y> : "\276" threequarters
941
942Note the lower case <t>. Changing this line should make C-t work.
943
944* Emacs on Digital Unix 4.0 fails to build, giving error message
945 Invalid dimension for the charset-ID 160
946
947This is due to a bug or an installation problem in GCC 2.8.0.
948Installing a more recent version of GCC fixes the problem.
949
950* Buffers from `with-output-to-temp-buffer' get set up in Help mode.
951
952Changes in Emacs 20.4 to the hooks used by that function cause
953problems for some packages, specifically BBDB. See the function's
954documentation for the hooks involved. BBDB 2.00.06 fixes the problem.
955
956* Under X, C-v and/or other keys don't work.
957
958These may have been intercepted by your window manager. In
959particular, AfterStep 1.6 is reported to steal C-v in its default
960configuration. Various Meta keys are also likely to be taken by the
961configuration of the `feel'. See the WM's documentation for how to
962change this.
963
964* When using Exceed, fonts sometimes appear too tall.
965
966When the display is set to an Exceed X-server and fonts are specified
967(either explicitly with the -fn option or implicitly with X resources)
968then the fonts may appear "too tall". The actual character sizes are
969correct but there is too much vertical spacing between rows, which
970gives the appearance of "double spacing".
971
972To prevent this, turn off the Exceed's "automatic font substitution"
973feature (in the font part of the configuration window).
974
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975* Failure in unexec while dumping emacs on Digital Unix 4.0
976
977This problem manifests itself as an error message
978
979 unexec: Bad address, writing data section to ...
980
981The user suspects that this happened because his X libraries
982were built for an older system version,
983
984 ./configure --x-includes=/usr/include --x-libraries=/usr/shlib
985
986made the problem go away.
987
988* No visible display on mips-sgi-irix6.2 when compiling with GCC 2.8.1.
989
990This problem went away after installing the latest IRIX patches
991as of 8 Dec 1998.
992
993The same problem has been reported on Irix 6.3.
994
995* As of version 20.4, Emacs doesn't work properly if configured for
996the Motif toolkit and linked against the free LessTif library. The
997next Emacs release is expected to work with LessTif.
998
999* Emacs gives the error, Couldn't find per display information.
1000
1001This can result if the X server runs out of memory because Emacs uses
1002a large number of fonts. On systems where this happens, C-h h is
1003likely to cause it.
1004
1005We do not know of a way to prevent the problem.
1006
1007* Emacs makes HPUX 11.0 crash.
1008
1009This is a bug in HPUX; HPUX patch PHKL_16260 is said to fix it.
1010
1011* Emacs crashes during dumping on the HPPA machine (HPUX 10.20).
1012
1013This seems to be due to a GCC bug; it is fixed in GCC 2.8.1.
1014
1015* The Hyperbole package causes *Help* buffers not to be displayed in
1016Help mode due to setting `temp-buffer-show-hook' rather than using
1017`add-hook'. Using `(add-hook 'temp-buffer-show-hook
1018'help-mode-maybe)' after loading Hyperbole should fix this.
1019
1020* Versions of the PSGML package earlier than 1.0.3 (stable) or 1.1.2
1021(alpha) fail to parse DTD files correctly in Emacs 20.3 and later.
1022Here is a patch for psgml-parse.el from PSGML 1.0.1 and, probably,
1023earlier versions.
1024
1025--- psgml-parse.el 1998/08/21 19:18:18 1.1
1026+++ psgml-parse.el 1998/08/21 19:20:00
1027@@ -2383,7 +2383,7 @@ (defun sgml-push-to-entity (entity &opti
1028 (setq sgml-buffer-parse-state nil))
1029 (cond
1030 ((stringp entity) ; a file name
1031- (save-excursion (insert-file-contents entity))
1032+ (insert-file-contents entity)
1033 (setq default-directory (file-name-directory entity)))
1034 ((consp (sgml-entity-text entity)) ; external id?
1035 (let* ((extid (sgml-entity-text entity))
1036
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1037* Emacs 21 freezes when visiting a TeX file with AUC TeX installed.
1038
1039Emacs 21 needs version 10 or later of AUC TeX; upgrading should solve
1040these problems.
1041
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1042* No colors in AUC TeX with Emacs 21.
1043
1044Upgrade to AUC TeX version 10 or later, and make sure it is
1045byte-compiled with Emacs 21.
1046
d238f982 1047* Running TeX from AUC TeX package with Emacs 20.3 gives a Lisp error
a933dad1
DL
1048about a read-only tex output buffer.
1049
1050This problem appeared for AUC TeX version 9.9j and some earlier
1051versions. Here is a patch for the file tex-buf.el in the AUC TeX
1052package.
1053
1054diff -c auctex/tex-buf.el~ auctex/tex-buf.el
1055*** auctex/tex-buf.el~ Wed Jul 29 18:35:32 1998
1056--- auctex/tex-buf.el Sat Sep 5 15:20:38 1998
1057***************
1058*** 545,551 ****
1059 (dir (TeX-master-directory)))
1060 (TeX-process-check file) ; Check that no process is running
1061 (setq TeX-command-buffer (current-buffer))
1062! (with-output-to-temp-buffer buffer)
1063 (set-buffer buffer)
1064 (if dir (cd dir))
1065 (insert "Running `" name "' on `" file "' with ``" command "''\n")
1066- --- 545,552 ----
1067 (dir (TeX-master-directory)))
1068 (TeX-process-check file) ; Check that no process is running
1069 (setq TeX-command-buffer (current-buffer))
1070! (let (temp-buffer-show-function temp-buffer-show-hook)
1071! (with-output-to-temp-buffer buffer))
1072 (set-buffer buffer)
1073 (if dir (cd dir))
1074 (insert "Running `" name "' on `" file "' with ``" command "''\n")
1075
1076* On Irix 6.3, substituting environment variables in file names
1077in the minibuffer gives peculiar error messages such as
1078
1079 Substituting nonexistent environment variable ""
1080
1081This is not an Emacs bug; it is caused by something in SGI patch
1082003082 August 11, 1998.
1083
1084* After a while, Emacs slips into unibyte mode.
1085
1086The VM mail package, which is not part of Emacs, sometimes does
1087 (standard-display-european t)
1088That should be changed to
1089 (standard-display-european 1 t)
1090
1091* Installing Emacs gets an error running `install-info'.
1092
1093You need to install a recent version of Texinfo; that package
1094supplies the `install-info' command.
1095
1096* Emacs does not recognize the AltGr key, on HPUX.
1097
1098To fix this, set up a file ~/.dt/sessions/sessionetc with executable
1099rights, containing this text:
1100
1101--------------------------------
1102xmodmap 2> /dev/null - << EOF
1103keysym Alt_L = Meta_L
1104keysym Alt_R = Meta_R
1105EOF
1106
1107xmodmap - << EOF
1108clear mod1
1109keysym Mode_switch = NoSymbol
1110add mod1 = Meta_L
1111keysym Meta_R = Mode_switch
1112add mod2 = Mode_switch
1113EOF
1114--------------------------------
1115
17a37d87
EZ
1116* Emacs hangs on KDE when a large portion of text is killed.
1117
62c485d2
GM
1118This is caused by a bug in the KDE applet `klipper' which periodically
1119requests the X clipboard contents from applications. Early versions
1120of klipper don't implement the ICCM protocol for large selections,
1121which leads to Emacs being flooded with selection requests. After a
1122while, Emacs will print a message:
17a37d87
EZ
1123
1124 Timed out waiting for property-notify event
1125
62c485d2 1126A workaround is to not use `klipper'.
17a37d87 1127
a933dad1
DL
1128* Emacs compiled with DJGPP for MS-DOS/MS-Windows cannot access files
1129in the directory with the special name `dev' under the root of any
1130drive, e.g. `c:/dev'.
1131
1132This is an unfortunate side-effect of the support for Unix-style
1133device names such as /dev/null in the DJGPP runtime library. A
1134work-around is to rename the problem directory to another name.
1135
1136* M-SPC seems to be ignored as input.
1137
1138See if your X server is set up to use this as a command
1139for character composition.
1140
1141* Emacs startup on GNU/Linux systems (and possibly other systems) is slow.
1142
1143This can happen if the system is misconfigured and Emacs can't get the
1144full qualified domain name, FQDN. You should have your FQDN in the
1145/etc/hosts file, something like this:
1146
1147127.0.0.1 localhost
1148129.187.137.82 nuc04.t30.physik.tu-muenchen.de nuc04
1149
1150The way to set this up may vary on non-GNU systems.
1151
1152* Garbled display on non-X terminals when Emacs runs on Digital Unix 4.0.
1153
1154So far it appears that running `tset' triggers this problem (when TERM
1155is vt100, at least). If you do not run `tset', then Emacs displays
1156properly. If someone can tell us precisely which effect of running
1157`tset' actually causes the problem, we may be able to implement a fix
1158in Emacs.
1159
1160* When you run Ispell from Emacs, it reports a "misalignment" error.
1161
3d00585e
EZ
1162This can happen if you compiled the Ispell program to use ASCII
1163characters only and then try to use it from Emacs with non-ASCII
1164characters, like Latin-1. The solution is to recompile Ispell with
1165support for 8-bit characters.
a933dad1 1166
3d00585e
EZ
1167To see whether your Ispell program supports 8-bit characters, type
1168this at your shell's prompt:
1169
1170 ispell -vv
1171
1172and look in the output for the string "NO8BIT". If Ispell says
1173"!NO8BIT (8BIT)", your speller supports 8-bit characters; otherwise it
1174does not.
1175
1176To rebuild Ispell with 8-bit character support, edit the local.h file
1177in the Ispell distribution and make sure it does _not_ define NO8BIT.
1178Then rebuild the speller.
1179
1180Another possible cause for "misalignment" error messages is that the
1181version of Ispell installed on your machine is old. Upgrade.
1182
1183Yet another possibility is that you are trying to spell-check a word
1184in a language that doesn't fit the dictionary you choose for use by
1185Ispell. (Ispell can only spell-check one language at a time, because
1186it uses a single dictionary.) Make sure that the text you are
1187spelling and the dictionary used by Ispell conform to each other.
a933dad1
DL
1188
1189* On Linux-based GNU systems using libc versions 5.4.19 through
11905.4.22, Emacs crashes at startup with a segmentation fault.
1191
1192This problem happens if libc defines the symbol __malloc_initialized.
1193One known solution is to upgrade to a newer libc version. 5.4.33 is
1194known to work.
1195
1196* On Windows, you cannot use the right-hand ALT key and the left-hand
1197CTRL key together to type a Control-Meta character.
1198
1199This is a consequence of a misfeature beyond Emacs's control.
1200
1201Under Windows, the AltGr key on international keyboards generates key
1202events with the modifiers Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl. Since Emacs cannot
1203distinguish AltGr from an explicit Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl
1204combination, whenever it sees Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl it assumes that
1205AltGr has been pressed.
1206
1207* Under some Windows X-servers, Emacs' display is incorrect
1208
1209The symptoms are that Emacs does not completely erase blank areas of the
1210screen during scrolling or some other screen operations (e.g., selective
1211display or when killing a region). M-x recenter will cause the screen
1212to be completely redisplayed and the "extra" characters will disappear.
1213
1214This is known to occur under Exceed 6, and possibly earlier versions as
1215well. The problem lies in the X-server settings.
1216
1217There are reports that you can solve the problem with Exceed by
1218running `Xconfig' from within NT, choosing "X selection", then
1219un-checking the boxes "auto-copy X selection" and "auto-paste to X
1220selection".
1221
1222Of this does not work, please inform bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org. Then
1223please call support for your X-server and see if you can get a fix.
1224If you do, please send it to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org so we can list it
1225here.
1226
1227* On Solaris 2, Emacs dumps core when built with Motif.
1228
1229The Solaris Motif libraries are buggy, at least up through Solaris 2.5.1.
1230Install the current Motif runtime library patch appropriate for your host.
1231(Make sure the patch is current; some older patch versions still have the bug.)
1232You should install the other patches recommended by Sun for your host, too.
1233You can obtain Sun patches from ftp://sunsolve.sun.com/pub/patches/;
1234look for files with names ending in `.PatchReport' to see which patches
1235are currently recommended for your host.
1236
1237On Solaris 2.6, Emacs is said to work with Motif when Solaris patch
1238105284-12 is installed, but fail when 105284-15 is installed.
1239105284-18 might fix it again.
1240
3156909f
PE
1241* On Solaris 2.6 and 7, the Compose key does not work.
1242
1243This is a bug in Motif in Solaris. Supposedly it has been fixed for
1244the next major release of Solaris. However, if someone with Sun
1245support complains to Sun about the bug, they may release a patch.
1246If you do this, mention Sun bug #4188711.
a933dad1
DL
1247
1248One workaround is to use a locale that allows non-ASCII characters.
1249For example, before invoking emacs, set the LC_ALL environment
1250variable to "en_US" (American English). The directory /usr/lib/locale
1251lists the supported locales; any locale other than "C" or "POSIX"
1252should do.
1253
3156909f
PE
1254pen@lysator.liu.se says (Feb 1998) that the Compose key does work
1255if you link with the MIT X11 libraries instead of the Solaris X11
1256libraries.
a933dad1
DL
1257
1258* Emacs does not know your host's fully-qualified domain name.
1259
1260You need to configure your machine with a fully qualified domain name,
1261either in /etc/hosts, /etc/hostname, the NIS, or wherever your system
1262calls for specifying this.
1263
1264If you cannot fix the configuration, you can set the Lisp variable
1265mail-host-address to the value you want.
1266
1267* Error 12 (virtual memory exceeded) when dumping Emacs, on UnixWare 2.1
1268
1269Paul Abrahams (abrahams@acm.org) reports that with the installed
1270virtual memory settings for UnixWare 2.1.2, an Error 12 occurs during
1271the "make" that builds Emacs, when running temacs to dump emacs. That
1272error indicates that the per-process virtual memory limit has been
1273exceeded. The default limit is probably 32MB. Raising the virtual
1274memory limit to 40MB should make it possible to finish building Emacs.
1275
1276You can do this with the command `ulimit' (sh) or `limit' (csh).
1277But you have to be root to do it.
1278
1279According to Martin Sohnius, you can also retune this in the kernel:
1280
1281 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune SDATLIM 33554432 ## soft data size limit
1282 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune HDATLIM 33554432 ## hard "
1283 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune SVMMSIZE unlimited ## soft process size limit
1284 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune HVMMSIZE unlimited ## hard "
1285 # /etc/conf/bin/idbuild -B
1286
1287(He recommends you not change the stack limit, though.)
1288These changes take effect when you reboot.
1289
1290* Redisplay using X11 is much slower than previous Emacs versions.
1291
1292We've noticed that certain X servers draw the text much slower when
1293scroll bars are on the left. We don't know why this happens. If this
1294happens to you, you can work around it by putting the scroll bars
1295on the right (as they were in Emacs 19).
1296
1297Here's how to do this:
1298
1299 (set-scroll-bar-mode 'right)
1300
1301If you're not sure whether (or how much) this problem affects you,
1302try that and see how much difference it makes. To set things back
1303to normal, do
1304
1305 (set-scroll-bar-mode 'left)
1306
1307* Under X11, some characters appear as hollow boxes.
1308
1309Each X11 font covers just a fraction of the characters that Emacs
1310supports. To display the whole range of Emacs characters requires
1311many different fonts, collected into a fontset.
1312
1313If some of the fonts called for in your fontset do not exist on your X
1314server, then the characters that have no font appear as hollow boxes.
1315You can remedy the problem by installing additional fonts.
1316
1317The intlfonts distribution includes a full spectrum of fonts that can
1318display all the characters Emacs supports.
1319
4c635a29
DL
1320Another cause of this for specific characters is fonts which have a
1321missing glyph and no default character. This is known ot occur for
1322character number 160 (no-break space) in some fonts, such as Lucida
1323but Emacs sets the display table for the unibyte and Latin-1 version
1324of this character to display a space.
1325
a933dad1
DL
1326* Under X11, some characters appear improperly aligned in their lines.
1327
1328You may have bad X11 fonts; try installing the intlfonts distribution.
1329
1330* Certain fonts make each line take one pixel more than it "should".
1331
1332This is because these fonts contain characters a little taller
1333than the font's nominal height. Emacs needs to make sure that
1334lines do not overlap.
1335
1336* You request inverse video, and the first Emacs frame is in inverse
1337video, but later frames are not in inverse video.
1338
1339This can happen if you have an old version of the custom library in
1340your search path for Lisp packages. Use M-x list-load-path-shadows to
1341check whether this is true. If it is, delete the old custom library.
1342
1343* In FreeBSD 2.1.5, useless symbolic links remain in /tmp or other
1344directories that have the +t bit.
1345
1346This is because of a kernel bug in FreeBSD 2.1.5 (fixed in 2.2).
1347Emacs uses symbolic links to implement file locks. In a directory
1348with +t bit, the directory owner becomes the owner of the symbolic
1349link, so that it cannot be removed by anyone else.
1350
1351If you don't like those useless links, you can let Emacs not to using
1352file lock by adding #undef CLASH_DETECTION to config.h.
1353
1354* When using M-x dbx with the SparcWorks debugger, the `up' and `down'
1355commands do not move the arrow in Emacs.
1356
1357You can fix this by adding the following line to `~/.dbxinit':
1358
1359 dbxenv output_short_file_name off
1360
1361* Emacs says it has saved a file, but the file does not actually
1362appear on disk.
1363
1364This can happen on certain systems when you are using NFS, if the
1365remote disk is full. It is due to a bug in NFS (or certain NFS
1366implementations), and there is apparently nothing Emacs can do to
1367detect the problem. Emacs checks the failure codes of all the system
1368calls involved in writing a file, including `close'; but in the case
1369where the problem occurs, none of those system calls fails.
1370
1371* "Compose Character" key does strange things when used as a Meta key.
1372
1373If you define one key to serve as both Meta and Compose Character, you
1374will get strange results. In previous Emacs versions, this "worked"
1375in that the key acted as Meta--that's because the older Emacs versions
1376did not try to support Compose Character. Now Emacs tries to do
1377character composition in the standard X way. This means that you
1378must pick one meaning or the other for any given key.
1379
1380You can use both functions (Meta, and Compose Character) if you assign
1381them to two different keys.
1382
1383* Emacs gets a segmentation fault at startup, on AIX4.2.
1384
1385If you are using IBM's xlc compiler, compile emacs.c
1386without optimization; that should avoid the problem.
1387
1388* movemail compiled with POP support can't connect to the POP server.
1389
1390Make sure that the `pop' entry in /etc/services, or in the services
1391NIS map if your machine uses NIS, has the same port number as the
1392entry on the POP server. A common error is for the POP server to be
1393listening on port 110, the assigned port for the POP3 protocol, while
1394the client is trying to connect on port 109, the assigned port for the
1395old POP protocol.
1396
1397* Emacs crashes in x-popup-dialog.
1398
1399This can happen if the dialog widget cannot find the font it wants to
1400use. You can work around the problem by specifying another font with
1401an X resource--for example, `Emacs.dialog*.font: 9x15' (or any font that
1402happens to exist on your X server).
1403
1404* Emacs crashes when you use Bibtex mode.
1405
1406This happens if your system puts a small limit on stack size. You can
1407prevent the problem by using a suitable shell command (often `ulimit')
1408to raise the stack size limit before you run Emacs.
1409
1410Patches to raise the stack size limit automatically in `main'
1411(src/emacs.c) on various systems would be greatly appreciated.
1412
1413* Emacs crashes with SIGBUS or SIGSEGV on HPUX 9 after you delete a frame.
1414
1415We think this is due to a bug in the X libraries provided by HP. With
1416the alternative X libraries in /usr/contrib/mitX11R5/lib, the problem
1417does not happen.
1418
1419* Emacs crashes with SIGBUS or SIGSEGV on Solaris after you delete a frame.
1420
1421We suspect that this is a similar bug in the X libraries provided by
1422Sun. There is a report that one of these patches fixes the bug and
1423makes the problem stop:
1424
1425105216-01 105393-01 105518-01 105621-01 105665-01 105615-02 105216-02
1426105667-01 105401-08 105615-03 105621-02 105686-02 105736-01 105755-03
1427106033-01 105379-01 105786-01 105181-04 105379-03 105786-04 105845-01
1428105284-05 105669-02 105837-01 105837-02 105558-01 106125-02 105407-01
1429
1430Another person using a newer system (kernel patch level Generic_105181-06)
1431suspects that the bug was fixed by one of these more recent patches:
1432
1433106040-07 SunOS 5.6: X Input & Output Method patch
1434106222-01 OpenWindows 3.6: filemgr (ff.core) fixes
1435105284-12 Motif 1.2.7: sparc Runtime library patch
1436
1437* Problems running Perl under Emacs on Windows NT/95.
1438
1439`perl -de 0' just hangs when executed in an Emacs subshell.
1440The fault lies with Perl (indirectly with Windows NT/95).
1441
1442The problem is that the Perl debugger explicitly opens a connection to
1443"CON", which is the DOS/NT equivalent of "/dev/tty", for interacting
1444with the user.
1445
1446On Unix, this is okay, because Emacs (or the shell?) creates a
1447pseudo-tty so that /dev/tty is really the pipe Emacs is using to
1448communicate with the subprocess.
1449
1450On NT, this fails because CON always refers to the handle for the
1451relevant console (approximately equivalent to a tty), and cannot be
1452redirected to refer to the pipe Emacs assigned to the subprocess as
1453stdin.
1454
1455A workaround is to modify perldb.pl to use STDIN/STDOUT instead of CON.
1456
1457For Perl 4:
1458
1459 *** PERL/LIB/PERLDB.PL.orig Wed May 26 08:24:18 1993
1460 --- PERL/LIB/PERLDB.PL Mon Jul 01 15:28:16 1996
1461 ***************
1462 *** 68,74 ****
1463 $rcfile=".perldb";
1464 }
1465 else {
1466 ! $console = "con";
1467 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
1468 }
1469
1470 --- 68,74 ----
1471 $rcfile=".perldb";
1472 }
1473 else {
1474 ! $console = "";
1475 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
1476 }
1477
1478
1479 For Perl 5:
1480 *** perl/5.001/lib/perl5db.pl.orig Sun Jun 04 21:13:40 1995
1481 --- perl/5.001/lib/perl5db.pl Mon Jul 01 17:00:08 1996
1482 ***************
1483 *** 22,28 ****
1484 $rcfile=".perldb";
1485 }
1486 elsif (-e "con") {
1487 ! $console = "con";
1488 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
1489 }
1490 else {
1491 --- 22,28 ----
1492 $rcfile=".perldb";
1493 }
1494 elsif (-e "con") {
1495 ! $console = "";
1496 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
1497 }
1498 else {
1499
1500* Problems running DOS programs on Windows NT versions earlier than 3.51.
1501
1502Some DOS programs, such as pkzip/pkunzip will not work at all, while
1503others will only work if their stdin is redirected from a file or NUL.
1504
1505When a DOS program does not work, a new process is actually created, but
1506hangs. It cannot be interrupted from Emacs, and might need to be killed
1507by an external program if Emacs is hung waiting for the process to
1508finish. If Emacs is not waiting for it, you should be able to kill the
1509instance of ntvdm that is running the hung process from Emacs, if you
1510can find out the process id.
1511
1512It is safe to run most DOS programs using call-process (eg. M-! and
1513M-|) since stdin is then redirected from a file, but not with
1514start-process since that redirects stdin to a pipe. Also, running DOS
1515programs in a shell buffer prompt without redirecting stdin does not
1516work.
1517
1518* Problems on MS-DOG if DJGPP v2.0 is used to compile Emacs:
1519
1520There are two DJGPP library bugs which cause problems:
1521
1522 * Running `shell-command' (or `compile', or `grep') you get
1523 `Searching for program: permission denied (EACCES), c:/command.com';
1524 * After you shell to DOS, Ctrl-Break kills Emacs.
1525
1526To work around these bugs, you can use two files in the msdos
1527subdirectory: `is_exec.c' and `sigaction.c'. Compile them and link
1528them into the Emacs executable `temacs'; then they will replace the
1529incorrect library functions.
1530
f1e54ce1
EZ
1531* When compiling with DJGPP on Windows NT, "config msdos" fails.
1532
1533If the error message is "VDM has been already loaded", this is because
1534Windows has a program called `redir.exe' that is incompatible with a
1535program by the same name supplied with DJGPP, which is used by
1536config.bat. To resolve this, move the DJGPP's `bin' subdirectory to
1537the front of your PATH environment variable.
1538
a933dad1
DL
1539* When compiling with DJGPP on Windows 95, Make fails for some targets
1540like make-docfile.
1541
1542This can happen if long file name support (the setting of environment
1543variable LFN) when Emacs distribution was unpacked and during
1544compilation are not the same. See the MSDOG section of INSTALL for
1545the explanation of how to avoid this problem.
1546
1547* Emacs compiled for MSDOS cannot find some Lisp files, or other
1548run-time support files, when long filename support is enabled.
a01325b8
EZ
1549
1550Usually, this problem will manifest itself when Emacs exits
a933dad1
DL
1551immediately after flashing the startup screen, because it cannot find
1552the Lisp files it needs to load at startup. Redirect Emacs stdout
a01325b8
EZ
1553and stderr to a file to see the error message printed by Emacs.
1554
1555Another manifestation of this problem is that Emacs is unable to load
1556the support for editing program sources in languages such as C and
1557Lisp.
a933dad1
DL
1558
1559This can happen if the Emacs distribution was unzipped without LFN
1560support, thus causing long filenames to be truncated to the first 6
1561characters and a numeric tail that Windows 95 normally attaches to it.
1562You should unzip the files again with a utility that supports long
1563filenames (such as djtar from DJGPP or InfoZip's UnZip program
1564compiled with DJGPP v2). The MSDOG section of the file INSTALL
1565explains this issue in more detail.
1566
a01325b8
EZ
1567Another possible reason for such failures is that Emacs compiled for
1568MSDOS is used on Windows NT, where long file names are not supported
1569by this version of Emacs, but the distribution was unpacked by an
1570unzip program that preserved the long file names instead of truncating
1571them to DOS 8+3 limits. To be useful on NT, the MSDOS port of Emacs
1572must be unzipped by a DOS utility, so that long file names are
1573properly truncated.
1574
a933dad1
DL
1575* Emacs compiled with DJGPP complains at startup:
1576
1577 "Wrong type of argument: internal-facep, msdos-menu-active-face"
1578
1579This can happen if you define an environment variable `TERM'. Emacs
1580on MSDOS uses an internal terminal emulator which is disabled if the
1581value of `TERM' is anything but the string "internal". Emacs then
1582works as if its terminal were a dumb glass teletype that doesn't
1583support faces. To work around this, arrange for `TERM' to be
1584undefined when Emacs runs. The best way to do that is to add an
1585[emacs] section to the DJGPP.ENV file which defines an empty value for
1586`TERM'; this way, only Emacs gets the empty value, while the rest of
1587your system works as before.
1588
1589* On Windows 95, Alt-f6 does not get through to Emacs.
1590
1591This character seems to be trapped by the kernel in Windows 95.
1592You can enter M-f6 by typing ESC f6.
1593
1594* Typing Alt-Shift has strange effects on Windows 95.
1595
1596This combination of keys is a command to change keyboard layout. If
1597you proceed to type another non-modifier key before you let go of Alt
1598and Shift, the Alt and Shift act as modifiers in the usual way.
1599
1600* `tparam' reported as a multiply-defined symbol when linking with ncurses.
1601
1602This problem results from an incompatible change in ncurses, in
1603version 1.9.9e approximately. This version is unable to provide a
1604definition of tparm without also defining tparam. This is also
1605incompatible with Terminfo; as a result, the Emacs Terminfo support
1606does not work with this version of ncurses.
1607
1608The fix is to install a newer version of ncurses, such as version 4.2.
1609
1610* Strange results from format %d in a few cases, on a Sun.
1611
1612Sun compiler version SC3.0 has been found to miscompile part of
1613editfns.c. The workaround is to compile with some other compiler such
1614as GCC.
1615
1616* Output from subprocess (such as man or diff) is randomly truncated
1617on GNU/Linux systems.
1618
1619This is due to a kernel bug which seems to be fixed in Linux version
16201.3.75.
1621
1622* Error messages `internal facep []' happen on GNU/Linux systems.
1623
1624There is a report that replacing libc.so.5.0.9 with libc.so.5.2.16
1625caused this to start happening. People are not sure why, but the
1626problem seems unlikely to be in Emacs itself. Some suspect that it
1627is actually Xlib which won't work with libc.so.5.2.16.
1628
1629Using the old library version is a workaround.
1630
1631* On Solaris, Emacs crashes if you use (display-time).
1632
1633This can happen if you configure Emacs without specifying the precise
1634version of Solaris that you are using.
1635
1636* Emacs dumps core on startup, on Solaris.
1637
1638Bill Sebok says that the cause of this is Solaris 2.4 vendor patch
1639102303-05, which extends the Solaris linker to deal with the Solaris
1640Common Desktop Environment's linking needs. You can fix the problem
1641by removing this patch and installing patch 102049-02 instead.
1642However, that linker version won't work with CDE.
1643
1644Solaris 2.5 comes with a linker that has this bug. It is reported that if
1645you install all the latest patches (as of June 1996), the bug is fixed.
1646We suspect the crucial patch is one of these, but we don't know
1647for certain.
1648
1649 103093-03: [README] SunOS 5.5: kernel patch (2140557 bytes)
1650 102832-01: [README] OpenWindows 3.5: Xview Jumbo Patch (4181613 bytes)
1651 103242-04: [README] SunOS 5.5: linker patch (595363 bytes)
1652
1653(One user reports that the bug was fixed by those patches together
1654with patches 102980-04, 103279-01, 103300-02, and 103468-01.)
1655
1656If you can determine which patch does fix the bug, please tell
1657bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
1658
1659Meanwhile, the GNU linker links Emacs properly on both Solaris 2.4 and
1660Solaris 2.5.
1661
1662* Emacs dumps core if lisp-complete-symbol is called, on Solaris.
1663
1664If you compile Emacs with the -fast or -xO4 option with version 3.0.2
1665of the Sun C compiler, Emacs dumps core when lisp-complete-symbol is
1666called. The problem does not happen if you compile with GCC.
1667
1668* "Cannot find callback list" messages from dialog boxes on HPUX, in
1669Emacs built with Motif.
1670
1671This problem resulted from a bug in GCC 2.4.5. Newer GCC versions
1672such as 2.7.0 fix the problem.
1673
1674* On Irix 6.0, make tries (and fails) to build a program named unexelfsgi
1675
1676A compiler bug inserts spaces into the string "unexelfsgi . o"
1677in src/Makefile. Edit src/Makefile, after configure is run,
1678find that string, and take out the spaces.
1679
1680Compiler fixes in Irix 6.0.1 should eliminate this problem.
1681
1682* "out of virtual swap space" on Irix 5.3
1683
1684This message occurs when the system runs out of swap space due to too
1685many large programs running. The solution is either to provide more
1686swap space or to reduce the number of large programs being run. You
1687can check the current status of the swap space by executing the
1688command `swap -l'.
1689
1690You can increase swap space by changing the file /etc/fstab. Adding a
1691line like this:
1692
1693/usr/swap/swap.more swap swap pri=3 0 0
1694
1695where /usr/swap/swap.more is a file previously created (for instance
1696by using /etc/mkfile), will increase the swap space by the size of
1697that file. Execute `swap -m' or reboot the machine to activate the
1698new swap area. See the manpages for `swap' and `fstab' for further
1699information.
1700
1701The objectserver daemon can use up lots of memory because it can be
1702swamped with NIS information. It collects information about all users
1703on the network that can log on to the host.
1704
1705If you want to disable the objectserver completely, you can execute
1706the command `chkconfig objectserver off' and reboot. That may disable
1707some of the window system functionality, such as responding CDROM
1708icons.
1709
1710You can also remove NIS support from the objectserver. The SGI `admin'
1711FAQ has a detailed description on how to do that; see question 35
1712("Why isn't the objectserver working?"). The admin FAQ can be found at
1713ftp://viz.tamu.edu/pub/sgi/faq/.
1714
1715* With certain fonts, when the cursor appears on a character, the
1716character doesn't appear--you get a solid box instead.
1717
1718One user on a Linux-based GNU system reported that this problem went
1719away with installation of a new X server. The failing server was
1720XFree86 3.1.1. XFree86 3.1.2 works.
1721
1722* On SunOS 4.1.3, Emacs unpredictably crashes in _yp_dobind_soft.
1723
1724This happens if you configure Emacs specifying just `sparc-sun-sunos4'
1725on a system that is version 4.1.3. You must specify the precise
1726version number (or let configure figure out the configuration, which
1727it can do perfectly well for SunOS).
1728
1729* On SunOS 4, Emacs processes keep going after you kill the X server
1730(or log out, if you logged in using X).
1731
1732Someone reported that recompiling with GCC 2.7.0 fixed this problem.
1733
1734* On AIX 4, some programs fail when run in a Shell buffer
1735with an error message like No terminfo entry for "unknown".
1736
1737On AIX, many terminal type definitions are not installed by default.
1738`unknown' is one of them. Install the "Special Generic Terminal
1739Definitions" to make them defined.
1740
1741* On SunOS, you get linker errors
1742 ld: Undefined symbol
1743 _get_wmShellWidgetClass
1744 _get_applicationShellWidgetClass
1745
1746The fix to this is to install patch 100573 for OpenWindows 3.0
1747or link libXmu statically.
1748
1749* On AIX 4.1.2, linker error messages such as
1750 ld: 0711-212 SEVERE ERROR: Symbol .__quous, found in the global symbol table
1751 of archive /usr/lib/libIM.a, was not defined in archive member shr.o.
1752
1753This is a problem in libIM.a. You can work around it by executing
1754these shell commands in the src subdirectory of the directory where
1755you build Emacs:
1756
1757 cp /usr/lib/libIM.a .
1758 chmod 664 libIM.a
1759 ranlib libIM.a
1760
1761Then change -lIM to ./libIM.a in the command to link temacs (in
1762Makefile).
1763
1764* Unpredictable segmentation faults on Solaris 2.3 and 2.4.
1765
1766A user reported that this happened in 19.29 when it was compiled with
1767the Sun compiler, but not when he recompiled with GCC 2.7.0.
1768
1769We do not know whether something in Emacs is partly to blame for this.
1770
1771* Emacs exits with "X protocol error" when run with an X server for
1772Windows.
1773
1774A certain X server for Windows had a bug which caused this.
1775Supposedly the newer 32-bit version of this server doesn't have the
1776problem.
1777
1778* Emacs crashes at startup on MSDOS.
1779
1780Some users report that Emacs 19.29 requires dpmi memory management,
1781and crashes on startup if the system does not have it. We don't yet
1782know why this happens--perhaps these machines don't have enough real
1783memory, or perhaps something is wrong in Emacs or the compiler.
1784However, arranging to use dpmi support is a workaround.
1785
1786You can find out if you have a dpmi host by running go32 without
1787arguments; it will tell you if it uses dpmi memory. For more
1788information about dpmi memory, consult the djgpp FAQ. (djgpp
1789is the GNU C compiler as packaged for MSDOS.)
1790
1791Compiling Emacs under MSDOS is extremely sensitive for proper memory
1792configuration. If you experience problems during compilation, consider
1793removing some or all memory resident programs (notably disk caches)
1794and make sure that your memory managers are properly configured. See
1795the djgpp faq for configuration hints.
1796
1797* A position you specified in .Xdefaults is ignored, using twm.
1798
1799twm normally ignores "program-specified" positions.
1800You can tell it to obey them with this command in your `.twmrc' file:
1801
1802 UsePPosition "on" #allow clients to request a position
1803
1804* Compiling lib-src says there is no rule to make test-distrib.c.
1805
1806This results from a bug in a VERY old version of GNU Sed. To solve
1807the problem, install the current version of GNU Sed, then rerun
1808Emacs's configure script.
1809
1810* Compiling wakeup, in lib-src, says it can't make wakeup.c.
1811
1812This results from a bug in GNU Sed version 2.03. To solve the
1813problem, install the current version of GNU Sed, then rerun Emacs's
1814configure script.
1815
1816* On Sunos 4.1.1, there are errors compiling sysdep.c.
1817
1818If you get errors such as
1819
1820 "sysdep.c", line 2017: undefined structure or union
1821 "sysdep.c", line 2017: undefined structure or union
1822 "sysdep.c", line 2019: nodename undefined
1823
1824This can result from defining LD_LIBRARY_PATH. It is very tricky
1825to use that environment variable with Emacs. The Emacs configure
1826script links many test programs with the system libraries; you must
1827make sure that the libraries available to configure are the same
1828ones available when you build Emacs.
1829
1830* The right Alt key works wrong on German HP keyboards (and perhaps
1831other non-English HP keyboards too).
1832
1833This is because HPUX defines the modifiers wrong in X. Here is a
1834shell script to fix the problem; be sure that it is run after VUE
1835configures the X server.
1836
1837 xmodmap 2> /dev/null - << EOF
1838 keysym Alt_L = Meta_L
1839 keysym Alt_R = Meta_R
1840 EOF
1841
1842 xmodmap - << EOF
1843 clear mod1
1844 keysym Mode_switch = NoSymbol
1845 add mod1 = Meta_L
1846 keysym Meta_R = Mode_switch
1847 add mod2 = Mode_switch
1848 EOF
1849
1850* The Emacs window disappears when you type M-q.
1851
1852Some versions of the Open Look window manager interpret M-q as a quit
1853command for whatever window you are typing at. If you want to use
1854Emacs with that window manager, you should try to configure the window
1855manager to use some other command. You can disable the
1856shortcut keys entirely by adding this line to ~/.OWdefaults:
1857
1858 OpenWindows.WindowMenuAccelerators: False
1859
1860* Emacs does not notice when you release the mouse.
1861
1862There are reports that this happened with (some) Microsoft mice and
1863that replacing the mouse made it stop.
1864
1865* Trouble using ptys on IRIX, or running out of ptys.
1866
1867The program mkpts (which may be in `/usr/adm' or `/usr/sbin') needs to
1868be set-UID to root, or non-root programs like Emacs will not be able
1869to allocate ptys reliably.
1870
1871* On Irix 5.2, unexelfsgi.c can't find cmplrs/stsupport.h.
1872
1873The file cmplrs/stsupport.h was included in the wrong file set in the
1874Irix 5.2 distribution. You can find it in the optional fileset
1875compiler_dev, or copy it from some other Irix 5.2 system. A kludgy
1876workaround is to change unexelfsgi.c to include sym.h instead of
1877syms.h.
1878
1879* Slow startup on Linux-based GNU systems.
1880
1881People using systems based on the Linux kernel sometimes report that
1882startup takes 10 to 15 seconds longer than `usual'.
1883
1884This is because Emacs looks up the host name when it starts.
1885Normally, this takes negligible time; the extra delay is due to
1886improper system configuration. This problem can occur for both
1887networked and non-networked machines.
1888
1889Here is how to fix the configuration. It requires being root.
1890
1891** Networked Case
1892
1893First, make sure the files `/etc/hosts' and `/etc/host.conf' both
1894exist. The first line in the `/etc/hosts' file should look like this
1895(replace HOSTNAME with your host name):
1896
1897 127.0.0.1 HOSTNAME
1898
1899Also make sure that the `/etc/host.conf' files contains the following
1900lines:
1901
1902 order hosts, bind
1903 multi on
1904
1905Any changes, permanent and temporary, to the host name should be
1906indicated in the `/etc/hosts' file, since it acts a limited local
1907database of addresses and names (e.g., some SLIP connections
1908dynamically allocate ip addresses).
1909
1910** Non-Networked Case
1911
1912The solution described in the networked case applies here as well.
1913However, if you never intend to network your machine, you can use a
1914simpler solution: create an empty `/etc/host.conf' file. The command
1915`touch /etc/host.conf' suffices to create the file. The `/etc/hosts'
1916file is not necessary with this approach.
1917
1918* On Solaris 2.4, Dired hangs and C-g does not work. Or Emacs hangs
1919forever waiting for termination of a subprocess that is a zombie.
1920
1921casper@fwi.uva.nl says the problem is in X11R6. Rebuild libX11.so
1922after changing the file xc/config/cf/sunLib.tmpl. Change the lines
1923
1924 #if ThreadedX
1925 #define SharedX11Reqs -lthread
1926 #endif
1927
1928to:
1929
1930 #if OSMinorVersion < 4
1931 #if ThreadedX
1932 #define SharedX11Reqs -lthread
1933 #endif
1934 #endif
1935
1936Be sure also to edit x/config/cf/sun.cf so that OSMinorVersion is 4
1937(as it should be for Solaris 2.4). The file has three definitions for
1938OSMinorVersion: the first is for x86, the second for SPARC under
1939Solaris, and the third for SunOS 4. Make sure to update the
1940definition for your type of machine and system.
1941
1942Then do `make Everything' in the top directory of X11R6, to rebuild
1943the makefiles and rebuild X. The X built this way work only on
1944Solaris 2.4, not on 2.3.
1945
1946For multithreaded X to work it is necessary to install patch
1947101925-02 to fix problems in header files [2.4]. You need
1948to reinstall gcc or re-run just-fixinc after installing that
1949patch.
1950
1951However, Frank Rust <frust@iti.cs.tu-bs.de> used a simpler solution:
1952he changed
1953 #define ThreadedX YES
1954to
1955 #define ThreadedX NO
1956in sun.cf and did `make World' to rebuild X11R6. Removing all
1957`-DXTHREAD*' flags and `-lthread' entries from lib/X11/Makefile and
1958typing 'make install' in that directory also seemed to work.
1959
1960* With M-x enable-flow-control, you need to type C-\ twice
1961 to do incremental search--a single C-\ gets no response.
1962
1963This has been traced to communicating with your machine via kermit,
1964with C-\ as the kermit escape character. One solution is to use
1965another escape character in kermit. One user did
1966
1967 set escape-character 17
1968
1969in his .kermrc file, to make C-q the kermit escape character.
1970
1971* The Motif version of Emacs paints the screen a solid color.
1972
1973This has been observed to result from the following X resource:
1974
1975 Emacs*default.attributeFont: -*-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-140-*-*-*-*-iso8859-*
1976
1977That the resource has this effect indicates a bug in something, but we
1978do not yet know what. If it is an Emacs bug, we hope someone can
1979explain what the bug is so we can fix it. In the mean time, removing
1980the resource prevents the problem.
1981
1982* Emacs gets hung shortly after startup, on Sunos 4.1.3.
1983
1984We think this is due to a bug in Sunos. The word is that
1985one of these Sunos patches fixes the bug:
1986
1987100075-11 100224-06 100347-03 100482-05 100557-02 100623-03 100804-03 101080-01
1988100103-12 100249-09 100496-02 100564-07 100630-02 100891-10 101134-01
1989100170-09 100296-04 100377-09 100507-04 100567-04 100650-02 101070-01 101145-01
1990100173-10 100305-15 100383-06 100513-04 100570-05 100689-01 101071-03 101200-02
1991100178-09 100338-05 100421-03 100536-02 100584-05 100784-01 101072-01 101207-01
1992
1993We don't know which of these patches really matter. If you find out
1994which ones, please inform bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
1995
1996* Emacs aborts while starting up, only when run without X.
1997
1998This problem often results from compiling Emacs with GCC when GCC was
1999installed incorrectly. The usual error in installing GCC is to
2000specify --includedir=/usr/include. Installation of GCC makes
2001corrected copies of the system header files. GCC is supposed to use
2002the corrected copies in preference to the original system headers.
2003Specifying --includedir=/usr/include causes the original system header
2004files to be used. On some systems, the definition of ioctl in the
2005original system header files is invalid for ANSI C and causes Emacs
2006not to work.
2007
2008The fix is to reinstall GCC, and this time do not specify --includedir
2009when you configure it. Then recompile Emacs. Specifying --includedir
2010is appropriate only in very special cases and it should *never* be the
2011same directory where system header files are kept.
2012
2013* On Solaris 2.x, GCC complains "64 bit integer types not supported"
2014
2015This suggests that GCC is not installed correctly. Most likely you
2016are using GCC 2.7.2.3 (or earlier) on Solaris 2.6 (or later); this
2017does not work without patching. To run GCC 2.7.2.3 on Solaris 2.6 or
2018later, you must patch fixinc.svr4 and reinstall GCC from scratch as
2019described in the Solaris FAQ
2020<http://www.wins.uva.nl/pub/solaris/solaris2.html>. A better fix is
2021to upgrade to GCC 2.8.1 or later.
2022
2023* The Compose key on a DEC keyboard does not work as Meta key.
2024
2025This shell command should fix it:
2026
2027 xmodmap -e 'keycode 0xb1 = Meta_L'
2028
2029* Regular expressions matching bugs on SCO systems.
2030
2031On SCO, there are problems in regexp matching when Emacs is compiled
2032with the system compiler. The compiler version is "Microsoft C
2033version 6", SCO 4.2.0h Dev Sys Maintenance Supplement 01/06/93; Quick
2034C Compiler Version 1.00.46 (Beta). The solution is to compile with
2035GCC.
2036
2037* On Sunos 4, you get the error ld: Undefined symbol __lib_version.
2038
2039This is the result of using cc or gcc with the shared library meant
2040for acc (the Sunpro compiler). Check your LD_LIBRARY_PATH and delete
2041/usr/lang/SC2.0.1 or some similar directory.
2042
2043* You can't select from submenus (in the X toolkit version).
2044
2045On certain systems, mouse-tracking and selection in top-level menus
2046works properly with the X toolkit, but neither of them works when you
2047bring up a submenu (such as Bookmarks or Compare or Apply Patch, in
2048the Files menu).
2049
2050This works on most systems. There is speculation that the failure is
2051due to bugs in old versions of X toolkit libraries, but no one really
2052knows. If someone debugs this and finds the precise cause, perhaps a
2053workaround can be found.
2054
2055* Unusable default font on SCO 3.2v4.
2056
2057The Open Desktop environment comes with default X resource settings
2058that tell Emacs to use a variable-width font. Emacs cannot use such
2059fonts, so it does not work.
2060
2061This is caused by the file /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/ScoTerm, which is
2062the application-specific resource file for the `scoterm' terminal
2063emulator program. It contains several extremely general X resources
2064that affect other programs besides `scoterm'. In particular, these
2065resources affect Emacs also:
2066
2067 *Font: -*-helvetica-medium-r-*--12-*-p-*
2068 *Background: scoBackground
2069 *Foreground: scoForeground
2070
2071The best solution is to create an application-specific resource file for
2072Emacs, /usr/lib/X11/sco/startup/Emacs, with the following contents:
2073
2074 Emacs*Font: -*-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-120-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1
2075 Emacs*Background: white
2076 Emacs*Foreground: black
2077
2078(These settings mimic the Emacs defaults, but you can change them to
2079suit your needs.) This resource file is only read when the X server
2080starts up, so you should restart it by logging out of the Open Desktop
2081environment or by running `scologin stop; scologin start` from the shell
2082as root. Alternatively, you can put these settings in the
2083/usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/Emacs resource file and simply restart Emacs,
2084but then they will not affect remote invocations of Emacs that use the
2085Open Desktop display.
2086
2087These resource files are not normally shared across a network of SCO
2088machines; you must create the file on each machine individually.
2089
2090* rcs2log gives you the awk error message "too many fields".
2091
2092This is due to an arbitrary limit in certain versions of awk.
2093The solution is to use gawk (GNU awk).
2094
2095* Emacs is slow using X11R5 on HP/UX.
2096
2097This happens if you use the MIT versions of the X libraries--it
2098doesn't run as fast as HP's version. People sometimes use the version
2099because they see the HP version doesn't have the libraries libXaw.a,
2100libXmu.a, libXext.a and others. HP/UX normally doesn't come with
2101those libraries installed. To get good performance, you need to
2102install them and rebuild Emacs.
2103
2104* Loading fonts is very slow.
2105
2106You might be getting scalable fonts instead of precomputed bitmaps.
2107Known scalable font directories are "Type1" and "Speedo". A font
2108directory contains scalable fonts if it contains the file
2109"fonts.scale".
2110
2111If this is so, re-order your X windows font path to put the scalable
2112font directories last. See the documentation of `xset' for details.
2113
2114With some X servers, it may be necessary to take the scalable font
2115directories out of your path entirely, at least for Emacs 19.26.
2116Changes in the future may make this unnecessary.
2117
2118* On AIX 3.2.4, releasing Ctrl/Act key has no effect, if Shift is down.
2119
2120Due to a feature of AIX, pressing or releasing the Ctrl/Act key is
2121ignored when the Shift, Alt or AltGr keys are held down. This can
2122lead to the keyboard being "control-locked"--ordinary letters are
2123treated as control characters.
2124
2125You can get out of this "control-locked" state by pressing and
2126releasing Ctrl/Act while not pressing or holding any other keys.
2127
2128* display-time causes kernel problems on ISC systems.
2129
2130Under Interactive Unix versions 3.0.1 and 4.0 (and probably other
2131versions), display-time causes the loss of large numbers of STREVENT
2132cells. Eventually the kernel's supply of these cells is exhausted.
2133This makes emacs and the whole system run slow, and can make other
2134processes die, in particular pcnfsd.
2135
2136Other emacs functions that communicate with remote processes may have
2137the same problem. Display-time seems to be far the worst.
2138
2139The only known fix: Don't run display-time.
2140
2141* On Solaris, C-x doesn't get through to Emacs when you use the console.
2142
2143This is a Solaris feature (at least on Intel x86 cpus). Type C-r
2144C-r C-t, to toggle whether C-x gets through to Emacs.
2145
2146* Error message `Symbol's value as variable is void: x', followed by
2147 segmentation fault and core dump.
2148
2149This has been tracked to a bug in tar! People report that tar erroneously
2150added a line like this at the beginning of files of Lisp code:
2151
2152 x FILENAME, N bytes, B tape blocks
2153
2154If your tar has this problem, install GNU tar--if you can manage to
2155untar it :-).
2156
2157* Link failure when using acc on a Sun.
2158
2159To use acc, you need additional options just before the libraries, such as
2160
2161 /usr/lang/SC2.0.1/values-Xt.o -L/usr/lang/SC2.0.1/cg87 -L/usr/lang/SC2.0.1
2162
2163and you need to add -lansi just before -lc.
2164
2165The precise file names depend on the compiler version, so we
2166cannot easily arrange to supply them.
2167
2168* Link failure on IBM AIX 1.3 ptf 0013.
2169
2170There is a real duplicate definition of the function `_slibc_free' in
2171the library /lib/libc_s.a (just do nm on it to verify). The
2172workaround/fix is:
2173
2174 cd /lib
2175 ar xv libc_s.a NLtmtime.o
2176 ar dv libc_s.a NLtmtime.o
2177
2178* Undefined symbols _dlopen, _dlsym and/or _dlclose on a Sun.
2179
2180If you see undefined symbols _dlopen, _dlsym, or _dlclose when linking
2181with -lX11, compile and link against the file mit/util/misc/dlsym.c in
2182the MIT X11R5 distribution. Alternatively, link temacs using shared
2183libraries with s/sunos4shr.h. (This doesn't work if you use the X
2184toolkit.)
2185
2186If you get the additional error that the linker could not find
2187lib_version.o, try extracting it from X11/usr/lib/X11/libvim.a in
2188X11R4, then use it in the link.
2189
2190* Error messages `Wrong number of arguments: #<subr where-is-internal>, 5'
2191
2192This typically results from having the powerkey library loaded.
2193Powerkey was designed for Emacs 19.22. It is obsolete now because
2194Emacs 19 now has this feature built in; and powerkey also calls
2195where-is-internal in an obsolete way.
2196
2197So the fix is to arrange not to load powerkey.
2198
2199* In Shell mode, you get a ^M at the end of every line.
2200
2201This happens to people who use tcsh, because it is trying to be too
2202smart. It sees that the Shell uses terminal type `unknown' and turns
2203on the flag to output ^M at the end of each line. You can fix the
2204problem by adding this to your .cshrc file:
2205
2206 if ($?EMACS) then
2207 if ($EMACS == "t") then
2208 unset edit
2209 stty -icrnl -onlcr -echo susp ^Z
2210 endif
2211 endif
2212
2213* An error message such as `X protocol error: BadMatch (invalid
2214parameter attributes) on protocol request 93'.
2215
2216This comes from having an invalid X resource, such as
2217 emacs*Cursor: black
2218(which is invalid because it specifies a color name for something
2219that isn't a color.)
2220
2221The fix is to correct your X resources.
2222
2223* Undefined symbols when linking on Sunos 4.1 using --with-x-toolkit.
2224
2225If you get the undefined symbols _atowc _wcslen, _iswprint, _iswspace,
2226_iswcntrl, _wcscpy, and _wcsncpy, then you need to add -lXwchar after
2227-lXaw in the command that links temacs.
2228
2229This problem seems to arise only when the international language
2230extensions to X11R5 are installed.
2231
2232* Typing C-c C-c in Shell mode kills your X server.
2233
2234This happens with Linux kernel 1.0 thru 1.04, approximately. The workaround is
2235to define SIGNALS_VIA_CHARACTERS in config.h and recompile Emacs.
2236Newer Linux kernel versions don't have this problem.
2237
2238* src/Makefile and lib-src/Makefile are truncated--most of the file missing.
2239
2240This can happen if configure uses GNU sed version 2.03. That version
2241had a bug. GNU sed version 2.05 works properly.
2242
2243* Slow startup on X11R6 with X windows.
2244
2245If Emacs takes two minutes to start up on X11R6, see if your X
2246resources specify any Adobe fonts. That causes the type-1 font
2247renderer to start up, even if the font you asked for is not a type-1
2248font.
2249
2250One way to avoid this problem is to eliminate the type-1 fonts from
2251your font path, like this:
2252
2253 xset -fp /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/
2254
2255* Pull-down menus appear in the wrong place, in the toolkit version of Emacs.
2256
2257An X resource of this form can cause the problem:
2258
2259 Emacs*geometry: 80x55+0+0
2260
2261This resource is supposed to apply, and does apply, to the menus
2262individually as well as to Emacs frames. If that is not what you
2263want, rewrite the resource.
2264
2265To check thoroughly for such resource specifications, use `xrdb
2266-query' to see what resources the X server records, and also look at
2267the user's ~/.Xdefaults and ~/.Xdefaults-* files.
2268
2269* --with-x-toolkit version crashes when used with shared libraries.
2270
2271On some systems, including Sunos 4 and DGUX 5.4.2 and perhaps others,
2272unexec doesn't work properly with the shared library for the X
2273toolkit. You might be able to work around this by using a nonshared
2274libXt.a library. The real fix is to upgrade the various versions of
2275unexec and/or ralloc. We think this has been fixed on Sunos 4
2276and Solaris in version 19.29.
2277
2278* `make install' fails on install-doc with `Error 141'.
2279
2280This happens on Ultrix 4.2 due to failure of a pipeline of tar
2281commands. We don't know why they fail, but the bug seems not to be in
2282Emacs. The workaround is to run the shell command in install-doc by
2283hand.
2284
2285* --with-x-toolkit option configures wrong on BSD/386.
2286
2287This problem is due to bugs in the shell in version 1.0 of BSD/386.
2288The workaround is to edit the configure file to use some other shell,
2289such as bash.
2290
2291* Subprocesses remain, hanging but not zombies, on Sunos 5.3.
2292
2293A bug in Sunos 5.3 causes Emacs subprocesses to remain after Emacs
2294exits. Sun patch # 101415-02 is part of the fix for this, but it only
2295applies to ptys, and doesn't fix the problem with subprocesses
2296communicating through pipes.
2297
2298* Mail is lost when sent to local aliases.
2299
2300Many emacs mail user agents (VM and rmail, for instance) use the
2301sendmail.el library. This library can arrange for mail to be
2302delivered by passing messages to the /usr/lib/sendmail (usually)
2303program . In doing so, it passes the '-t' flag to sendmail, which
2304means that the name of the recipient of the message is not on the
2305command line and, therefore, that sendmail must parse the message to
2306obtain the destination address.
2307
2308There is a bug in the SunOS4.1.1 and SunOS4.1.3 versions of sendmail.
2309In short, when given the -t flag, the SunOS sendmail won't recognize
2310non-local (i.e. NIS) aliases. It has been reported that the Solaris
23112.x versions of sendmail do not have this bug. For those using SunOS
23124.1, the best fix is to install sendmail V8 or IDA sendmail (which
2313have other advantages over the regular sendmail as well). At the time
2314of this writing, these official versions are available:
2315
2316 Sendmail V8 on ftp.cs.berkeley.edu in /ucb/sendmail:
2317 sendmail.8.6.9.base.tar.Z (the base system source & documentation)
2318 sendmail.8.6.9.cf.tar.Z (configuration files)
2319 sendmail.8.6.9.misc.tar.Z (miscellaneous support programs)
2320 sendmail.8.6.9.xdoc.tar.Z (extended documentation, with postscript)
2321
2322 IDA sendmail on vixen.cso.uiuc.edu in /pub:
2323 sendmail-5.67b+IDA-1.5.tar.gz
2324
2325* On AIX, you get this message when running Emacs:
2326
2327 Could not load program emacs
2328 Symbol smtcheckinit in csh is undefined
2329 Error was: Exec format error
2330
2331or this one:
2332
2333 Could not load program .emacs
2334 Symbol _system_con in csh is undefined
2335 Symbol _fp_trapsta in csh is undefined
2336 Error was: Exec format error
2337
2338These can happen when you try to run on AIX 3.2.5 a program that was
2339compiled with 3.2.4. The fix is to recompile.
2340
2341* On AIX, you get this compiler error message:
2342
2343 Processing include file ./XMenuInt.h
2344 1501-106: (S) Include file X11/Xlib.h not found.
2345
2346This means your system was installed with only the X11 runtime i.d
2347libraries. You have to find your sipo (bootable tape) and install
2348X11Dev... with smit.
2349
2350* You "lose characters" after typing Compose Character key.
2351
2352This is because the Compose Character key is defined as the keysym
2353Multi_key, and Emacs (seeing that) does the proper X11
2354character-composition processing. If you don't want your Compose key
2355to do that, you can redefine it with xmodmap.
2356
2357For example, here's one way to turn it into a Meta key:
2358
2359 xmodmap -e "keysym Multi_key = Meta_L"
2360
2361If all users at your site of a particular keyboard prefer Meta to
2362Compose, you can make the remapping happen automatically by adding the
2363xmodmap command to the xdm setup script for that display.
2364
2365* C-z just refreshes the screen instead of suspending Emacs.
2366
2367You are probably using a shell that doesn't support job control, even
2368though the system itself is capable of it. Either use a different shell,
2369or set the variable `cannot-suspend' to a non-nil value.
2370
2371* Watch out for .emacs files and EMACSLOADPATH environment vars
2372
2373These control the actions of Emacs.
2374~/.emacs is your Emacs init file.
2375EMACSLOADPATH overrides which directories the function
2376"load" will search.
2377
2378If you observe strange problems, check for these and get rid
2379of them, then try again.
2380
2381* After running emacs once, subsequent invocations crash.
2382
2383Some versions of SVR4 have a serious bug in the implementation of the
2384mmap () system call in the kernel; this causes emacs to run correctly
2385the first time, and then crash when run a second time.
2386
2387Contact your vendor and ask for the mmap bug fix; in the mean time,
2388you may be able to work around the problem by adding a line to your
2389operating system description file (whose name is reported by the
2390configure script) that reads:
2391#define SYSTEM_MALLOC
2392This makes Emacs use memory less efficiently, but seems to work around
2393the kernel bug.
2394
2395* Inability to send an Alt-modified key, when Emacs is communicating
2396directly with an X server.
2397
2398If you have tried to bind an Alt-modified key as a command, and it
2399does not work to type the command, the first thing you should check is
2400whether the key is getting through to Emacs. To do this, type C-h c
2401followed by the Alt-modified key. C-h c should say what kind of event
2402it read. If it says it read an Alt-modified key, then make sure you
2403have made the key binding correctly.
2404
2405If C-h c reports an event that doesn't have the Alt modifier, it may
2406be because your X server has no key for the Alt modifier. The X
2407server that comes from MIT does not set up the Alt modifier by
2408default.
2409
2410If your keyboard has keys named Alt, you can enable them as follows:
2411
2412 xmodmap -e 'add mod2 = Alt_L'
2413 xmodmap -e 'add mod2 = Alt_R'
2414
2415If the keyboard has just one key named Alt, then only one of those
2416commands is needed. The modifier `mod2' is a reasonable choice if you
2417are using an unmodified MIT version of X. Otherwise, choose any
2418modifier bit not otherwise used.
2419
2420If your keyboard does not have keys named Alt, you can use some other
2421keys. Use the keysym command in xmodmap to turn a function key (or
2422some other 'spare' key) into Alt_L or into Alt_R, and then use the
2423commands show above to make them modifier keys.
2424
2425Note that if you have Alt keys but no Meta keys, Emacs translates Alt
2426into Meta. This is because of the great importance of Meta in Emacs.
2427
2428* `Pid xxx killed due to text modification or page I/O error'
2429
2430On HP/UX, you can get that error when the Emacs executable is on an NFS
2431file system. HP/UX responds this way if it tries to swap in a page and
2432does not get a response from the server within a timeout whose default
2433value is just ten seconds.
2434
2435If this happens to you, extend the timeout period.
2436
2437* `expand-file-name' fails to work on any but the machine you dumped Emacs on.
2438
2439On Ultrix, if you use any of the functions which look up information
2440in the passwd database before dumping Emacs (say, by using
2441expand-file-name in site-init.el), then those functions will not work
2442in the dumped Emacs on any host but the one Emacs was dumped on.
2443
2444The solution? Don't use expand-file-name in site-init.el, or in
2445anything it loads. Yuck - some solution.
2446
2447I'm not sure why this happens; if you can find out exactly what is
2448going on, and perhaps find a fix or a workaround, please let us know.
2449Perhaps the YP functions cache some information, the cache is included
2450in the dumped Emacs, and is then inaccurate on any other host.
2451
2452* On some variants of SVR4, Emacs does not work at all with X.
2453
2454Try defining BROKEN_FIONREAD in your config.h file. If this solves
2455the problem, please send a bug report to tell us this is needed; be
2456sure to say exactly what type of machine and system you are using.
2457
2458* Linking says that the functions insque and remque are undefined.
2459
2460Change oldXMenu/Makefile by adding insque.o to the variable OBJS.
2461
2462* Emacs fails to understand most Internet host names, even though
2463the names work properly with other programs on the same system.
2464* Emacs won't work with X-windows if the value of DISPLAY is HOSTNAME:0.
2465* GNUs can't make contact with the specified host for nntp.
2466
2467This typically happens on Suns and other systems that use shared
2468libraries. The cause is that the site has installed a version of the
2469shared library which uses a name server--but has not installed a
2470similar version of the unshared library which Emacs uses.
2471
2472The result is that most programs, using the shared library, work with
2473the nameserver, but Emacs does not.
2474
2475The fix is to install an unshared library that corresponds to what you
2476installed in the shared library, and then relink Emacs.
2477
2478On SunOS 4.1, simply define HAVE_RES_INIT.
2479
2480If you have already installed the name resolver in the file libresolv.a,
2481then you need to compile Emacs to use that library. The easiest way to
2482do this is to add to config.h a definition of LIBS_SYSTEM, LIBS_MACHINE
2483or LIB_STANDARD which uses -lresolv. Watch out! If you redefine a macro
2484that is already in use in your configuration to supply some other libraries,
2485be careful not to lose the others.
2486
2487Thus, you could start by adding this to config.h:
2488
2489#define LIBS_SYSTEM -lresolv
2490
2491Then if this gives you an error for redefining a macro, and you see that
2492the s- file defines LIBS_SYSTEM as -lfoo -lbar, you could change config.h
2493again to say this:
2494
2495#define LIBS_SYSTEM -lresolv -lfoo -lbar
2496
2497* On a Sun running SunOS 4.1.1, you get this error message from GNU ld:
2498
2499 /lib/libc.a(_Q_sub.o): Undefined symbol __Q_get_rp_rd referenced from text segment
2500
2501The problem is in the Sun shared C library, not in GNU ld.
2502
2503The solution is to install Patch-ID# 100267-03 from Sun.
2504
2505* Self documentation messages are garbled.
2506
2507This means that the file `etc/DOC-...' doesn't properly correspond
2508with the Emacs executable. Redumping Emacs and then installing the
2509corresponding pair of files should fix the problem.
2510
2511* Trouble using ptys on AIX.
2512
2513People often install the pty devices on AIX incorrectly.
2514Use `smit pty' to reinstall them properly.
2515
2516* Shell mode on HP/UX gives the message, "`tty`: Ambiguous".
2517
2518christos@theory.tn.cornell.edu says:
2519
2520The problem is that in your .cshrc you have something that tries to
2521execute `tty`. If you are not running the shell on a real tty then
2522tty will print "not a tty". Csh expects one word in some places,
2523but tty is giving it back 3.
2524
2525The solution is to add a pair of quotes around `tty` to make it a single
2526word:
2527
2528if (`tty` == "/dev/console")
2529
2530should be changed to:
2531
2532if ("`tty`" == "/dev/console")
2533
2534Even better, move things that set up terminal sections out of .cshrc
2535and into .login.
2536
2537* Using X Windows, control-shift-leftbutton makes Emacs hang.
2538
2539Use the shell command `xset bc' to make the old X Menu package work.
2540
2541* Emacs running under X Windows does not handle mouse clicks.
2542* `emacs -geometry 80x20' finds a file named `80x20'.
2543
2544One cause of such problems is having (setq term-file-prefix nil) in
2545your .emacs file. Another cause is a bad value of EMACSLOADPATH in
2546the environment.
2547
2548* Emacs gets error message from linker on Sun.
2549
2550If the error message says that a symbol such as `f68881_used' or
2551`ffpa_used' or `start_float' is undefined, this probably indicates
2552that you have compiled some libraries, such as the X libraries,
2553with a floating point option other than the default.
2554
2555It's not terribly hard to make this work with small changes in
2556crt0.c together with linking with Fcrt1.o, Wcrt1.o or Mcrt1.o.
2557However, the easiest approach is to build Xlib with the default
2558floating point option: -fsoft.
2559
2560* Emacs fails to get default settings from X Windows server.
2561
2562The X library in X11R4 has a bug; it interchanges the 2nd and 3rd
2563arguments to XGetDefaults. Define the macro XBACKWARDS in config.h to
2564tell Emacs to compensate for this.
2565
2566I don't believe there is any way Emacs can determine for itself
2567whether this problem is present on a given system.
2568
2569* Keyboard input gets confused after a beep when using a DECserver
2570 as a concentrator.
2571
2572This problem seems to be a matter of configuring the DECserver to use
25737 bit characters rather than 8 bit characters.
2574
2575* M-x shell persistently reports "Process shell exited abnormally with code 1".
2576
2577This happened on Suns as a result of what is said to be a bug in Sunos
2578version 4.0.x. The only fix was to reboot the machine.
2579
2580* Programs running under terminal emulator do not recognize `emacs'
2581 terminal type.
2582
2583The cause of this is a shell startup file that sets the TERMCAP
2584environment variable. The terminal emulator uses that variable to
2585provide the information on the special terminal type that Emacs
2586emulates.
2587
2588Rewrite your shell startup file so that it does not change TERMCAP
2589in such a case. You could use the following conditional which sets
2590it only if it is undefined.
2591
2592 if ( ! ${?TERMCAP} ) setenv TERMCAP ~/my-termcap-file
2593
2594Or you could set TERMCAP only when you set TERM--which should not
2595happen in a non-login shell.
2596
2597* X Windows doesn't work if DISPLAY uses a hostname.
2598
2599People have reported kernel bugs in certain systems that cause Emacs
2600not to work with X Windows if DISPLAY is set using a host name. But
2601the problem does not occur if DISPLAY is set to `unix:0.0'. I think
2602the bug has to do with SIGIO or FIONREAD.
2603
2604You may be able to compensate for the bug by doing (set-input-mode nil nil).
2605However, that has the disadvantage of turning off interrupts, so that
2606you are unable to quit out of a Lisp program by typing C-g.
2607
2608The easy way to do this is to put
2609
2610 (setq x-sigio-bug t)
2611
2612in your site-init.el file.
2613
2614* Problem with remote X server on Suns.
2615
2616On a Sun, running Emacs on one machine with the X server on another
2617may not work if you have used the unshared system libraries. This
2618is because the unshared libraries fail to use YP for host name lookup.
2619As a result, the host name you specify may not be recognized.
2620
2621* Shell mode ignores interrupts on Apollo Domain
2622
2623You may find that M-x shell prints the following message:
2624
2625 Warning: no access to tty; thus no job control in this shell...
2626
2627This can happen if there are not enough ptys on your system.
2628Here is how to make more of them.
2629
2630 % cd /dev
2631 % ls pty*
2632 # shows how many pty's you have. I had 8, named pty0 to pty7)
2633 % /etc/crpty 8
2634 # creates eight new pty's
2635
2636* Fatal signal in the command temacs -l loadup inc dump
2637
2638This command is the final stage of building Emacs. It is run by the
2639Makefile in the src subdirectory, or by build.com on VMS.
2640
2641It has been known to get fatal errors due to insufficient swapping
2642space available on the machine.
2643
2644On 68000's, it has also happened because of bugs in the
2645subroutine `alloca'. Verify that `alloca' works right, even
2646for large blocks (many pages).
2647
2648* test-distrib says that the distribution has been clobbered
2649* or, temacs prints "Command key out of range 0-127"
2650* or, temacs runs and dumps emacs, but emacs totally fails to work.
2651* or, temacs gets errors dumping emacs
2652
2653This can be because the .elc files have been garbled. Do not be
2654fooled by the fact that most of a .elc file is text: these are
2655binary files and can contain all 256 byte values.
2656
2657In particular `shar' cannot be used for transmitting GNU Emacs.
2658It typically truncates "lines". What appear to be "lines" in
2659a binary file can of course be of any length. Even once `shar'
2660itself is made to work correctly, `sh' discards null characters
2661when unpacking the shell archive.
2662
2663I have also seen character \177 changed into \377. I do not know
2664what transfer means caused this problem. Various network
2665file transfer programs are suspected of clobbering the high bit.
2666
2667If you have a copy of Emacs that has been damaged in its
2668nonprinting characters, you can fix them:
2669
2670 1) Record the names of all the .elc files.
2671 2) Delete all the .elc files.
2672 3) Recompile alloc.c with a value of PURESIZE twice as large.
2673 (See puresize.h.) You might as well save the old alloc.o.
2674 4) Remake emacs. It should work now.
2675 5) Running emacs, do Meta-x byte-compile-file repeatedly
2676 to recreate all the .elc files that used to exist.
2677 You may need to increase the value of the variable
2678 max-lisp-eval-depth to succeed in running the compiler interpreted
2679 on certain .el files. 400 was sufficient as of last report.
2680 6) Reinstall the old alloc.o (undoing changes to alloc.c if any)
2681 and remake temacs.
2682 7) Remake emacs. It should work now, with valid .elc files.
2683
2684* temacs prints "Pure Lisp storage exhausted"
2685
2686This means that the Lisp code loaded from the .elc and .el
2687files during temacs -l loadup inc dump took up more
2688space than was allocated.
2689
2690This could be caused by
2691 1) adding code to the preloaded Lisp files
2692 2) adding more preloaded files in loadup.el
2693 3) having a site-init.el or site-load.el which loads files.
2694 Note that ANY site-init.el or site-load.el is nonstandard;
2695 if you have received Emacs from some other site
2696 and it contains a site-init.el or site-load.el file, consider
2697 deleting that file.
2698 4) getting the wrong .el or .elc files
2699 (not from the directory you expected).
2700 5) deleting some .elc files that are supposed to exist.
2701 This would cause the source files (.el files) to be
2702 loaded instead. They take up more room, so you lose.
2703 6) a bug in the Emacs distribution which underestimates
2704 the space required.
2705
2706If the need for more space is legitimate, change the definition
2707of PURESIZE in puresize.h.
2708
2709But in some of the cases listed above, this problem is a consequence
2710of something else that is wrong. Be sure to check and fix the real
2711problem.
2712
2713* Changes made to .el files do not take effect.
2714
2715You may have forgotten to recompile them into .elc files.
2716Then the old .elc files will be loaded, and your changes
2717will not be seen. To fix this, do M-x byte-recompile-directory
2718and specify the directory that contains the Lisp files.
2719
2720Emacs should print a warning when loading a .elc file which is older
2721than the corresponding .el file.
2722
2723* The dumped Emacs crashes when run, trying to write pure data.
2724
2725Two causes have been seen for such problems.
2726
27271) On a system where getpagesize is not a system call, it is defined
2728as a macro. If the definition (in both unexec.c and malloc.c) is wrong,
2729it can cause problems like this. You might be able to find the correct
2730value in the man page for a.out (5).
2731
27322) Some systems allocate variables declared static among the
2733initialized variables. Emacs makes all initialized variables in most
2734of its files pure after dumping, but the variables declared static and
2735not initialized are not supposed to be pure. On these systems you
2736may need to add "#define static" to the m- or the s- file.
2737
2738* Compilation errors on VMS.
2739
2740You will get warnings when compiling on VMS because there are
2741variable names longer than 32 (or whatever it is) characters.
2742This is not an error. Ignore it.
2743
2744VAX C does not support #if defined(foo). Uses of this construct
2745were removed, but some may have crept back in. They must be rewritten.
2746
2747There is a bug in the C compiler which fails to sign extend characters
2748in conditional expressions. The bug is:
2749 char c = -1, d = 1;
2750 int i;
2751
2752 i = d ? c : d;
2753The result is i == 255; the fix is to typecast the char in the
2754conditional expression as an (int). Known occurrences of such
2755constructs in Emacs have been fixed.
2756
2757* rmail gets error getting new mail
2758
2759rmail gets new mail from /usr/spool/mail/$USER using a program
2760called `movemail'. This program interlocks with /bin/mail using
2761the protocol defined by /bin/mail.
2762
2763There are two different protocols in general use. One of them uses
2764the `flock' system call. The other involves creating a lock file;
2765`movemail' must be able to write in /usr/spool/mail in order to do
2766this. You control which one is used by defining, or not defining,
2767the macro MAIL_USE_FLOCK in config.h or the m- or s- file it includes.
2768IF YOU DON'T USE THE FORM OF INTERLOCKING THAT IS NORMAL ON YOUR
2769SYSTEM, YOU CAN LOSE MAIL!
2770
2771If your system uses the lock file protocol, and fascist restrictions
2772prevent ordinary users from writing the lock files in /usr/spool/mail,
2773you may need to make `movemail' setgid to a suitable group such as
2774`mail'. You can use these commands (as root):
2775
2776 chgrp mail movemail
2777 chmod 2755 movemail
2778
2779If your system uses the lock file protocol, and fascist restrictions
2780prevent ordinary users from writing the lock files in /usr/spool/mail,
2781you may need to make `movemail' setgid to a suitable group such as
2782`mail'. To do this, use the following commands (as root) after doing the
2783make install.
2784
2785 chgrp mail movemail
2786 chmod 2755 movemail
2787
2788Installation normally copies movemail from the build directory to an
2789installation directory which is usually under /usr/local/lib. The
2790installed copy of movemail is usually in the directory
2791/usr/local/lib/emacs/VERSION/TARGET. You must change the group and
2792mode of the installed copy; changing the group and mode of the build
2793directory copy is ineffective.
2794
2795* Emacs spontaneously displays "I-search: " at the bottom of the screen.
2796
2797This means that Control-S/Control-Q (XON/XOFF) "flow control" is being
2798used. C-s/C-q flow control is bad for Emacs editors because it takes
2799away C-s and C-q as user commands. Since editors do not output long
2800streams of text without user commands, there is no need for a
2801user-issuable "stop output" command in an editor; therefore, a
2802properly designed flow control mechanism would transmit all possible
2803input characters without interference. Designing such a mechanism is
2804easy, for a person with at least half a brain.
2805
2806There are three possible reasons why flow control could be taking place:
2807
2808 1) Terminal has not been told to disable flow control
2809 2) Insufficient padding for the terminal in use
2810 3) Some sort of terminal concentrator or line switch is responsible
2811
2812First of all, many terminals have a set-up mode which controls whether
2813they generate XON/XOFF flow control characters. This must be set to
2814"no XON/XOFF" in order for Emacs to work. Sometimes there is an
2815escape sequence that the computer can send to turn flow control off
2816and on. If so, perhaps the termcap `ti' string should turn flow
2817control off, and the `te' string should turn it on.
2818
2819Once the terminal has been told "no flow control", you may find it
2820needs more padding. The amount of padding Emacs sends is controlled
2821by the termcap entry for the terminal in use, and by the output baud
2822rate as known by the kernel. The shell command `stty' will print
2823your output baud rate; `stty' with suitable arguments will set it if
2824it is wrong. Setting to a higher speed causes increased padding. If
2825the results are wrong for the correct speed, there is probably a
2826problem in the termcap entry. You must speak to a local Unix wizard
2827to fix this. Perhaps you are just using the wrong terminal type.
2828
2829For terminals that lack a "no flow control" mode, sometimes just
2830giving lots of padding will prevent actual generation of flow control
2831codes. You might as well try it.
2832
2833If you are really unlucky, your terminal is connected to the computer
2834through a concentrator which sends XON/XOFF flow control to the
2835computer, or it insists on sending flow control itself no matter how
2836much padding you give it. Unless you can figure out how to turn flow
2837control off on this concentrator (again, refer to your local wizard),
2838you are screwed! You should have the terminal or concentrator
2839replaced with a properly designed one. In the mean time, some drastic
2840measures can make Emacs semi-work.
2841
2842You can make Emacs ignore C-s and C-q and let the operating system
2843handle them. To do this on a per-session basis, just type M-x
2844enable-flow-control RET. You will see a message that C-\ and C-^ are
2845now translated to C-s and C-q. (Use the same command M-x
2846enable-flow-control to turn *off* this special mode. It toggles flow
2847control handling.)
2848
2849If C-\ and C-^ are inconvenient for you (for example, if one of them
2850is the escape character of your terminal concentrator), you can choose
2851other characters by setting the variables flow-control-c-s-replacement
2852and flow-control-c-q-replacement. But choose carefully, since all
2853other control characters are already used by emacs.
2854
2855IMPORTANT: if you type C-s by accident while flow control is enabled,
2856Emacs output will freeze, and you will have to remember to type C-q in
2857order to continue.
2858
2859If you work in an environment where a majority of terminals of a
2860certain type are flow control hobbled, you can use the function
2861`enable-flow-control-on' to turn on this flow control avoidance scheme
2862automatically. Here is an example:
2863
2864(enable-flow-control-on "vt200" "vt300" "vt101" "vt131")
2865
2866If this isn't quite correct (e.g. you have a mixture of flow-control hobbled
2867and good vt200 terminals), you can still run enable-flow-control
2868manually.
2869
2870I have no intention of ever redesigning the Emacs command set for the
2871assumption that terminals use C-s/C-q flow control. XON/XOFF flow
2872control technique is a bad design, and terminals that need it are bad
2873merchandise and should not be purchased. Now that X is becoming
2874widespread, XON/XOFF seems to be on the way out. If you can get some
2875use out of GNU Emacs on inferior terminals, more power to you, but I
2876will not make Emacs worse for properly designed systems for the sake
2877of inferior systems.
2878
2879* Control-S and Control-Q commands are ignored completely.
2880
2881For some reason, your system is using brain-damaged C-s/C-q flow
2882control despite Emacs's attempts to turn it off. Perhaps your
2883terminal is connected to the computer through a concentrator
2884that wants to use flow control.
2885
2886You should first try to tell the concentrator not to use flow control.
2887If you succeed in this, try making the terminal work without
2888flow control, as described in the preceding section.
2889
2890If that line of approach is not successful, map some other characters
2891into C-s and C-q using keyboard-translate-table. The example above
2892shows how to do this with C-^ and C-\.
2893
2894* Control-S and Control-Q commands are ignored completely on a net connection.
2895
2896Some versions of rlogin (and possibly telnet) do not pass flow
2897control characters to the remote system to which they connect.
2898On such systems, emacs on the remote system cannot disable flow
2899control on the local system.
2900
2901One way to cure this is to disable flow control on the local host
2902(the one running rlogin, not the one running rlogind) using the
2903stty command, before starting the rlogin process. On many systems,
2904"stty start u stop u" will do this.
2905
2906Some versions of tcsh will prevent even this from working. One way
2907around this is to start another shell before starting rlogin, and
2908issue the stty command to disable flow control from that shell.
2909
2910If none of these methods work, the best solution is to type
2911M-x enable-flow-control at the beginning of your emacs session, or
2912if you expect the problem to continue, add a line such as the
2913following to your .emacs (on the host running rlogind):
2914
2915(enable-flow-control-on "vt200" "vt300" "vt101" "vt131")
2916
2917See the entry about spontaneous display of I-search (above) for more
2918info.
2919
2920* Screen is updated wrong, but only on one kind of terminal.
2921
2922This could mean that the termcap entry you are using for that
2923terminal is wrong, or it could mean that Emacs has a bug handing
2924the combination of features specified for that terminal.
2925
2926The first step in tracking this down is to record what characters
2927Emacs is sending to the terminal. Execute the Lisp expression
2928(open-termscript "./emacs-script") to make Emacs write all
2929terminal output into the file ~/emacs-script as well; then do
2930what makes the screen update wrong, and look at the file
2931and decode the characters using the manual for the terminal.
2932There are several possibilities:
2933
29341) The characters sent are correct, according to the terminal manual.
2935
2936In this case, there is no obvious bug in Emacs, and most likely you
2937need more padding, or possibly the terminal manual is wrong.
2938
29392) The characters sent are incorrect, due to an obscure aspect
2940 of the terminal behavior not described in an obvious way
2941 by termcap.
2942
2943This case is hard. It will be necessary to think of a way for
2944Emacs to distinguish between terminals with this kind of behavior
2945and other terminals that behave subtly differently but are
2946classified the same by termcap; or else find an algorithm for
2947Emacs to use that avoids the difference. Such changes must be
2948tested on many kinds of terminals.
2949
29503) The termcap entry is wrong.
2951
2952See the file etc/TERMS for information on changes
2953that are known to be needed in commonly used termcap entries
2954for certain terminals.
2955
29564) The characters sent are incorrect, and clearly cannot be
2957 right for any terminal with the termcap entry you were using.
2958
2959This is unambiguously an Emacs bug, and can probably be fixed
2960in termcap.c, tparam.c, term.c, scroll.c, cm.c or dispnew.c.
2961
2962* Output from Control-V is slow.
2963
2964On many bit-map terminals, scrolling operations are fairly slow.
2965Often the termcap entry for the type of terminal in use fails
2966to inform Emacs of this. The two lines at the bottom of the screen
2967before a Control-V command are supposed to appear at the top after
2968the Control-V command. If Emacs thinks scrolling the lines is fast,
2969it will scroll them to the top of the screen.
2970
2971If scrolling is slow but Emacs thinks it is fast, the usual reason is
2972that the termcap entry for the terminal you are using does not
2973specify any padding time for the `al' and `dl' strings. Emacs
2974concludes that these operations take only as much time as it takes to
2975send the commands at whatever line speed you are using. You must
2976fix the termcap entry to specify, for the `al' and `dl', as much
2977time as the operations really take.
2978
2979Currently Emacs thinks in terms of serial lines which send characters
2980at a fixed rate, so that any operation which takes time for the
2981terminal to execute must also be padded. With bit-map terminals
2982operated across networks, often the network provides some sort of
2983flow control so that padding is never needed no matter how slow
2984an operation is. You must still specify a padding time if you want
2985Emacs to realize that the operation takes a long time. This will
2986cause padding characters to be sent unnecessarily, but they do
2987not really cost much. They will be transmitted while the scrolling
2988is happening and then discarded quickly by the terminal.
2989
2990Most bit-map terminals provide commands for inserting or deleting
2991multiple lines at once. Define the `AL' and `DL' strings in the
2992termcap entry to say how to do these things, and you will have
2993fast output without wasted padding characters. These strings should
2994each contain a single %-spec saying how to send the number of lines
2995to be scrolled. These %-specs are like those in the termcap
2996`cm' string.
2997
2998You should also define the `IC' and `DC' strings if your terminal
2999has a command to insert or delete multiple characters. These
3000take the number of positions to insert or delete as an argument.
3001
3002A `cs' string to set the scrolling region will reduce the amount
3003of motion you see on the screen when part of the screen is scrolled.
3004
3005* Your Delete key sends a Backspace to the terminal, using an AIXterm.
3006
3007The solution is to include in your .Xdefaults the lines:
3008
3009 *aixterm.Translations: #override <Key>BackSpace: string(0x7f)
3010 aixterm*ttyModes: erase ^?
3011
3012This makes your Backspace key send DEL (ASCII 127).
3013
3014* You type Control-H (Backspace) expecting to delete characters.
3015
3016Put `stty dec' in your .login file and your problems will disappear
3017after a day or two.
3018
3019The choice of Backspace for erasure was based on confusion, caused by
3020the fact that backspacing causes erasure (later, when you type another
3021character) on most display terminals. But it is a mistake. Deletion
3022of text is not the same thing as backspacing followed by failure to
3023overprint. I do not wish to propagate this confusion by conforming
3024to it.
3025
3026For this reason, I believe `stty dec' is the right mode to use,
3027and I have designed Emacs to go with that. If there were a thousand
3028other control characters, I would define Control-h to delete as well;
3029but there are not very many other control characters, and I think
3030that providing the most mnemonic possible Help character is more
3031important than adapting to people who don't use `stty dec'.
3032
3033If you are obstinate about confusing buggy overprinting with deletion,
3034you can redefine Backspace in your .emacs file:
3035 (global-set-key "\b" 'delete-backward-char)
3036You can probably access help-command via f1.
3037
3038* Editing files through RFS gives spurious "file has changed" warnings.
3039It is possible that a change in Emacs 18.37 gets around this problem,
3040but in case not, here is a description of how to fix the RFS bug that
3041causes it.
3042
3043 There was a serious pair of bugs in the handling of the fsync() system
3044 call in the RFS server.
3045
3046 The first is that the fsync() call is handled as another name for the
3047 close() system call (!!). It appears that fsync() is not used by very
3048 many programs; Emacs version 18 does an fsync() before closing files
3049 to make sure that the bits are on the disk.
3050
3051 This is fixed by the enclosed patch to the RFS server.
3052
3053 The second, more serious problem, is that fsync() is treated as a
3054 non-blocking system call (i.e., it's implemented as a message that
3055 gets sent to the remote system without waiting for a reply). Fsync is
3056 a useful tool for building atomic file transactions. Implementing it
3057 as a non-blocking RPC call (when the local call blocks until the sync
3058 is done) is a bad idea; unfortunately, changing it will break the RFS
3059 protocol. No fix was supplied for this problem.
3060
3061 (as always, your line numbers may vary)
3062
3063 % rcsdiff -c -r1.2 serversyscall.c
3064 RCS file: RCS/serversyscall.c,v
3065 retrieving revision 1.2
3066 diff -c -r1.2 serversyscall.c
3067 *** /tmp/,RCSt1003677 Wed Jan 28 15:15:02 1987
3068 --- serversyscall.c Wed Jan 28 15:14:48 1987
3069 ***************
3070 *** 163,169 ****
3071 /*
3072 * No return sent for close or fsync!
3073 */
3074 ! if (syscall == RSYS_close || syscall == RSYS_fsync)
3075 proc->p_returnval = deallocate_fd(proc, msg->m_args[0]);
3076 else
3077 {
3078 --- 166,172 ----
3079 /*
3080 * No return sent for close or fsync!
3081 */
3082 ! if (syscall == RSYS_close)
3083 proc->p_returnval = deallocate_fd(proc, msg->m_args[0]);
3084 else
3085 {
3086
3087* Vax C compiler bugs affecting Emacs.
3088
3089You may get one of these problems compiling Emacs:
3090
3091 foo.c line nnn: compiler error: no table entry for op STASG
3092 foo.c: fatal error in /lib/ccom
3093
3094These are due to bugs in the C compiler; the code is valid C.
3095Unfortunately, the bugs are unpredictable: the same construct
3096may compile properly or trigger one of these bugs, depending
3097on what else is in the source file being compiled. Even changes
3098in header files that should not affect the file being compiled
3099can affect whether the bug happens. In addition, sometimes files
3100that compile correctly on one machine get this bug on another machine.
3101
3102As a result, it is hard for me to make sure this bug will not affect
3103you. I have attempted to find and alter these constructs, but more
3104can always appear. However, I can tell you how to deal with it if it
3105should happen. The bug comes from having an indexed reference to an
3106array of Lisp_Objects, as an argument in a function call:
3107 Lisp_Object *args;
3108 ...
3109 ... foo (5, args[i], ...)...
3110putting the argument into a temporary variable first, as in
3111 Lisp_Object *args;
3112 Lisp_Object tem;
3113 ...
3114 tem = args[i];
3115 ... foo (r, tem, ...)...
3116causes the problem to go away.
3117The `contents' field of a Lisp vector is an array of Lisp_Objects,
3118so you may see the problem happening with indexed references to that.
3119
3120* 68000 C compiler problems
3121
3122Various 68000 compilers have different problems.
3123These are some that have been observed.
3124
3125** Using value of assignment expression on union type loses.
3126This means that x = y = z; or foo (x = z); does not work
3127if x is of type Lisp_Object.
3128
3129** "cannot reclaim" error.
3130
3131This means that an expression is too complicated. You get the correct
3132line number in the error message. The code must be rewritten with
3133simpler expressions.
3134
3135** XCONS, XSTRING, etc macros produce incorrect code.
3136
3137If temacs fails to run at all, this may be the cause.
3138Compile this test program and look at the assembler code:
3139
3140struct foo { char x; unsigned int y : 24; };
3141
3142lose (arg)
3143 struct foo arg;
3144{
3145 test ((int *) arg.y);
3146}
3147
3148If the code is incorrect, your compiler has this problem.
3149In the XCONS, etc., macros in lisp.h you must replace (a).u.val with
3150((a).u.val + coercedummy) where coercedummy is declared as int.
3151
3152This problem will not happen if the m-...h file for your type
3153of machine defines NO_UNION_TYPE. That is the recommended setting now.
3154
3155* C compilers lose on returning unions
3156
3157I hear that some C compilers cannot handle returning a union type.
3158Most of the functions in GNU Emacs return type Lisp_Object, which is
3159defined as a union on some rare architectures.
3160
3161This problem will not happen if the m-...h file for your type
3162of machine defines NO_UNION_TYPE.
3163
53854552
EZ
3164\f
3165Local variables:
3166mode: outline
3167paragraph-separate: "[ \f]*$"
3168end: