(unidata.txt): Use ARGQUOTE and DQUOTE macros.
[bpt/emacs.git] / etc / PROBLEMS
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5b87ad55 1Copyright (C) 1987, 1988, 1989, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999,
8cabe764 2 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008
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3 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
4See the end of the file for license conditions.
5
6
a933dad1 7This file describes various problems that have been encountered
0a4dd4e4 8in compiling, installing and running GNU Emacs. Try doing Ctl-C Ctl-t
9dc15871 9and browsing through the outline headers.
a933dad1 10
8589dc17 11* Mule-UCS doesn't work in Emacs 23.
2c311b39
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12
13It's completely redundant now, as far as we know.
14
9dc15871 15* Emacs startup failures
32364f49 16
9dc15871 17** Emacs fails to start, complaining about missing fonts.
32364f49 18
9dc15871 19A typical error message might be something like
32364f49 20
9dc15871 21 No fonts match `-*-fixed-medium-r-*--6-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1'
6b61353c 22
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23This happens because some X resource specifies a bad font family for
24Emacs to use. The possible places where this specification might be
25are:
6b61353c 26
9dc15871 27 - in your ~/.Xdefaults file
6b61353c 28
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29 - client-side X resource file, such as ~/Emacs or
30 /usr/X11R6/lib/app-defaults/Emacs or
31 /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/app-defaults/Emacs
6b61353c 32
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33One of these files might have bad or malformed specification of a
34fontset that Emacs should use. To fix the problem, you need to find
35the problematic line(s) and correct them.
6b61353c 36
9dc15871 37** Emacs aborts while starting up, only when run without X.
6b61353c 38
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39This problem often results from compiling Emacs with GCC when GCC was
40installed incorrectly. The usual error in installing GCC is to
41specify --includedir=/usr/include. Installation of GCC makes
42corrected copies of the system header files. GCC is supposed to use
43the corrected copies in preference to the original system headers.
44Specifying --includedir=/usr/include causes the original system header
45files to be used. On some systems, the definition of ioctl in the
46original system header files is invalid for ANSI C and causes Emacs
47not to work.
6b61353c 48
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49The fix is to reinstall GCC, and this time do not specify --includedir
50when you configure it. Then recompile Emacs. Specifying --includedir
51is appropriate only in very special cases and it should *never* be the
52same directory where system header files are kept.
6b61353c 53
9dc15871 54** Emacs does not start, complaining that it cannot open termcap database file.
6b61353c 55
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56If your system uses Terminfo rather than termcap (most modern
57systems do), this could happen if the proper version of
58ncurses is not visible to the Emacs configure script (i.e. it
59cannot be found along the usual path the linker looks for
60libraries). It can happen because your version of ncurses is
61obsolete, or is available only in form of binaries.
6b61353c 62
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63The solution is to install an up-to-date version of ncurses in
64the developer's form (header files, static libraries and
65symbolic links); in some GNU/Linux distributions (e.g. Debian)
66it constitutes a separate package.
6b61353c 67
9dc15871 68** Emacs 20 and later fails to load Lisp files at startup.
5b4ffca2 69
9dc15871 70The typical error message might be like this:
5b4ffca2 71
9dc15871 72 "Cannot open load file: fontset"
c763d515 73
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74This could happen if you compress the file lisp/subdirs.el. That file
75tells Emacs what are the directories where it should look for Lisp
76files. Emacs cannot work with subdirs.el compressed, since the
77Auto-compress mode it needs for this will not be loaded until later,
78when your .emacs file is processed. (The package `fontset.el' is
79required to set up fonts used to display text on window systems, and
80it's loaded very early in the startup procedure.)
f1c231c4 81
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82Similarly, any other .el file for which there's no corresponding .elc
83file could fail to load if it is compressed.
fc2938d1 84
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85The solution is to uncompress all .el files which don't have a .elc
86file.
6b61353c 87
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88Another possible reason for such failures is stale *.elc files
89lurking somewhere on your load-path. The following command will
90print any duplicate Lisp files that are present in load-path:
6b61353c 91
9dc15871 92 emacs -q -batch -f list-load-path-shadows
6b61353c 93
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94If this command prints any file names, some of these files are stale,
95and should be deleted or their directories removed from your
96load-path.
f0f62f71 97
9dc15871 98** Emacs prints an error at startup after upgrading from an earlier version.
f0f62f71 99
9dc15871 100An example of such an error is:
f0f62f71 101
9dc15871 102 x-complement-fontset-spec: "Wrong type argument: stringp, nil"
fc1bfc2a 103
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104This can be another symptom of stale *.elc files in your load-path.
105The following command will print any duplicate Lisp files that are
106present in load-path:
fc1bfc2a 107
9dc15871 108 emacs -q -batch -f list-load-path-shadows
fc1bfc2a 109
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110If this command prints any file names, some of these files are stale,
111and should be deleted or their directories removed from your
112load-path.
60f553d2 113
9dc15871 114** With X11R6.4, public-patch-3, Emacs crashes at startup.
3f82efb4 115
9dc15871 116Reportedly this patch in X fixes the problem.
3f82efb4 117
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118 --- xc/lib/X11/imInt.c~ Wed Jun 30 13:31:56 1999
119 +++ xc/lib/X11/imInt.c Thu Jul 1 15:10:27 1999
120 @@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
121 -/* $TOG: imInt.c /main/5 1998/05/30 21:11:16 kaleb $ */
122 +/* $TOG: imInt.c /main/5 1998/05/30 21:11:16 kaleb $ */
123 /******************************************************************
3f82efb4 124
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125 Copyright 1992, 1993, 1994 by FUJITSU LIMITED
126 @@ -166,8 +166,8 @@
127 _XimMakeImName(lcd)
128 XLCd lcd;
129 {
130 - char* begin;
131 - char* end;
132 + char* begin = NULL;
133 + char* end = NULL;
134 char* ret;
135 int i = 0;
136 char* ximmodifier = XIMMODIFIER;
137 @@ -182,7 +182,11 @@
138 }
139 ret = Xmalloc(end - begin + 2);
140 if (ret != NULL) {
141 - (void)strncpy(ret, begin, end - begin + 1);
142 + if (begin != NULL) {
143 + (void)strncpy(ret, begin, end - begin + 1);
144 + } else {
145 + ret[0] = '\0';
146 + }
147 ret[end - begin + 1] = '\0';
148 }
149 return ret;
3f82efb4 150
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151** Emacs crashes on startup after a glibc upgrade.
152
153This is caused by a binary incompatible change to the malloc
154implementation in glibc 2.5.90-22. As a result, Emacs binaries built
155using prior versions of glibc crash when run under 2.5.90-22.
156
0a7aab83 157This problem was first seen in pre-release versions of Fedora 7, and
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158may be fixed in the final Fedora 7 release. To stop the crash from
159happening, first try upgrading to the newest version of glibc; if this
160does not work, rebuild Emacs with the same version of glibc that you
161will run it under. For details, see
162
163https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=239344
164
9dc15871 165* Crash bugs
cc305a60 166
9dc15871 167** Emacs crashes in x-popup-dialog.
cc305a60 168
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169This can happen if the dialog widget cannot find the font it wants to
170use. You can work around the problem by specifying another font with
171an X resource--for example, `Emacs.dialog*.font: 9x15' (or any font that
172happens to exist on your X server).
fc2938d1 173
9dc15871 174** Emacs crashes when you use Bibtex mode.
fc2938d1 175
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176This happens if your system puts a small limit on stack size. You can
177prevent the problem by using a suitable shell command (often `ulimit')
178to raise the stack size limit before you run Emacs.
177c0ea7 179
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180Patches to raise the stack size limit automatically in `main'
181(src/emacs.c) on various systems would be greatly appreciated.
fc2938d1 182
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183** Error message `Symbol's value as variable is void: x', followed by
184a segmentation fault and core dump.
c93bdf05 185
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186This has been tracked to a bug in tar! People report that tar erroneously
187added a line like this at the beginning of files of Lisp code:
c93bdf05 188
9dc15871 189 x FILENAME, N bytes, B tape blocks
c93bdf05 190
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191If your tar has this problem, install GNU tar--if you can manage to
192untar it :-).
c93bdf05 193
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194** Crashes when displaying GIF images in Emacs built with version
195libungif-4.1.0 are resolved by using version libungif-4.1.0b1.
196Configure checks for the correct version, but this problem could occur
197if a binary built against a shared libungif is run on a system with an
198older version.
4593687f 199
9dc15871 200** Emacs aborts inside the function `tparam1'.
9272ccfc 201
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202This can happen if Emacs was built without terminfo support, but the
203terminal's capabilities use format that is only supported by terminfo.
204If your system has ncurses installed, this might happen if your
205version of ncurses is broken; upgrading to a newer version of ncurses
206and reconfiguring and rebuilding Emacs should solve this.
9272ccfc 207
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208All modern systems support terminfo, so even if ncurses is not the
209problem, you should look for a way to configure Emacs so that it uses
210terminfo when built.
9272ccfc 211
9dc15871 212** Emacs crashes when using the Exceed 6.0 X server.
7aa70236 213
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214If you are using Exceed 6.1, upgrade to a later version. This was
215reported to prevent the crashes.
7aa70236 216
9dc15871 217** Emacs crashes with SIGSEGV in XtInitializeWidgetClass.
7c22dc9d 218
9dc15871 219It crashes on X, but runs fine when called with option "-nw".
7c22dc9d 220
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221This has been observed when Emacs is linked with GNU ld but without passing
222the -z nocombreloc flag. Emacs normally knows to pass the -z nocombreloc
223flag when needed, so if you come across a situation where the flag is
224necessary but missing, please report it via M-x report-emacs-bug.
7c22dc9d 225
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226On platforms such as Solaris, you can also work around this problem by
227configuring your compiler to use the native linker instead of GNU ld.
7c22dc9d 228
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229** Emacs compiled with Gtk+ crashes when closing a display (x-close-connection).
230
231This happens because of bugs in Gtk+. Gtk+ 2.10 seems to be OK. See bug
232http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=85715.
233
1020d879 234** Emacs compiled with Gtk+ crashes on startup on Cygwin.
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235
236A typical error message is
dc13f3f5 237 ***MEMORY-ERROR***: emacs[5172]: GSlice: failed to allocate 504 bytes
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238 (alignment: 512): Function not implemented
239
240Emacs supplies its own malloc, but glib (part of Gtk+) calls memalign and on
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241Cygwin, that becomes the Cygwin supplied memalign. As malloc is not the
242Cygwin malloc, the Cygwin memalign always returns ENOSYS. A fix for this
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243problem would be welcome.
244
9dc15871 245* General runtime problems
7c22dc9d 246
9dc15871 247** Lisp problems
677e7496 248
9dc15871 249*** Changes made to .el files do not take effect.
677e7496 250
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251You may have forgotten to recompile them into .elc files.
252Then the old .elc files will be loaded, and your changes
253will not be seen. To fix this, do M-x byte-recompile-directory
254and specify the directory that contains the Lisp files.
677e7496 255
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256Emacs should print a warning when loading a .elc file which is older
257than the corresponding .el file.
677e7496 258
9dc15871 259*** Watch out for .emacs files and EMACSLOADPATH environment vars.
677e7496 260
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261These control the actions of Emacs.
262~/.emacs is your Emacs init file.
263EMACSLOADPATH overrides which directories the function
264"load" will search.
677e7496 265
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266If you observe strange problems, check for these and get rid
267of them, then try again.
9ed04369 268
9dc15871 269*** Using epop3.el package causes Emacs to signal an error.
9ed04369 270
9dc15871 271The error message might be something like this:
b87207a0 272
9dc15871 273 "Lisp nesting exceeds max-lisp-eval-depth"
b87207a0 274
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275This happens because epop3 redefines the function gethash, which is a
276built-in primitive beginning with Emacs 21.1. We don't have a patch
277for epop3 that fixes this, but perhaps a newer version of epop3
278corrects that.
177c0ea7 279
9dc15871 280*** Buffers from `with-output-to-temp-buffer' get set up in Help mode.
177c0ea7 281
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282Changes in Emacs 20.4 to the hooks used by that function cause
283problems for some packages, specifically BBDB. See the function's
284documentation for the hooks involved. BBDB 2.00.06 fixes the problem.
177c0ea7 285
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286*** The Hyperbole package causes *Help* buffers not to be displayed in
287Help mode due to setting `temp-buffer-show-hook' rather than using
288`add-hook'. Using `(add-hook 'temp-buffer-show-hook
289'help-mode-maybe)' after loading Hyperbole should fix this.
177c0ea7 290
9dc15871 291** Keyboard problems
b87207a0 292
9dc15871 293*** "Compose Character" key does strange things when used as a Meta key.
61638355 294
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295If you define one key to serve as both Meta and Compose Character, you
296will get strange results. In previous Emacs versions, this "worked"
297in that the key acted as Meta--that's because the older Emacs versions
298did not try to support Compose Character. Now Emacs tries to do
299character composition in the standard X way. This means that you
300must pick one meaning or the other for any given key.
61638355 301
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302You can use both functions (Meta, and Compose Character) if you assign
303them to two different keys.
a47a639f 304
9dc15871 305*** C-z just refreshes the screen instead of suspending Emacs.
a47a639f 306
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307You are probably using a shell that doesn't support job control, even
308though the system itself is capable of it. Either use a different shell,
309or set the variable `cannot-suspend' to a non-nil value.
a47a639f 310
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311*** With M-x enable-flow-control, you need to type C-\ twice
312to do incremental search--a single C-\ gets no response.
a47a639f 313
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314This has been traced to communicating with your machine via kermit,
315with C-\ as the kermit escape character. One solution is to use
316another escape character in kermit. One user did
61638355 317
9dc15871 318 set escape-character 17
61638355 319
9dc15871 320in his .kermrc file, to make C-q the kermit escape character.
61638355 321
9dc15871 322** Mailers and other helper programs
61638355 323
9dc15871 324*** movemail compiled with POP support can't connect to the POP server.
61638355 325
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326Make sure that the `pop' entry in /etc/services, or in the services
327NIS map if your machine uses NIS, has the same port number as the
328entry on the POP server. A common error is for the POP server to be
329listening on port 110, the assigned port for the POP3 protocol, while
330the client is trying to connect on port 109, the assigned port for the
331old POP protocol.
61638355 332
9dc15871 333*** RMAIL gets error getting new mail.
61638355 334
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335RMAIL gets new mail from /usr/spool/mail/$USER using a program
336called `movemail'. This program interlocks with /bin/mail using
337the protocol defined by /bin/mail.
61638355 338
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339There are two different protocols in general use. One of them uses
340the `flock' system call. The other involves creating a lock file;
341`movemail' must be able to write in /usr/spool/mail in order to do
342this. You control which one is used by defining, or not defining,
343the macro MAIL_USE_FLOCK in config.h or the m- or s- file it includes.
344IF YOU DON'T USE THE FORM OF INTERLOCKING THAT IS NORMAL ON YOUR
345SYSTEM, YOU CAN LOSE MAIL!
61638355 346
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347If your system uses the lock file protocol, and fascist restrictions
348prevent ordinary users from writing the lock files in /usr/spool/mail,
349you may need to make `movemail' setgid to a suitable group such as
350`mail'. To do this, use the following commands (as root) after doing the
351make install.
61638355 352
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353 chgrp mail movemail
354 chmod 2755 movemail
61638355 355
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356Installation normally copies movemail from the build directory to an
357installation directory which is usually under /usr/local/lib. The
358installed copy of movemail is usually in the directory
359/usr/local/lib/emacs/VERSION/TARGET. You must change the group and
360mode of the installed copy; changing the group and mode of the build
361directory copy is ineffective.
61638355 362
9dc15871 363*** rcs2log gives you the awk error message "too many fields".
61638355 364
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365This is due to an arbitrary limit in certain versions of awk.
366The solution is to use gawk (GNU awk).
61638355 367
9dc15871 368** Problems with hostname resolution
61638355 369
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370*** Emacs fails to understand most Internet host names, even though
371the names work properly with other programs on the same system.
372*** Emacs won't work with X-windows if the value of DISPLAY is HOSTNAME:0.
20dc2215 373*** Gnus can't make contact with the specified host for nntp.
61638355 374
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375This typically happens on Suns and other systems that use shared
376libraries. The cause is that the site has installed a version of the
377shared library which uses a name server--but has not installed a
378similar version of the unshared library which Emacs uses.
556a9fad 379
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380The result is that most programs, using the shared library, work with
381the nameserver, but Emacs does not.
61638355 382
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383The fix is to install an unshared library that corresponds to what you
384installed in the shared library, and then relink Emacs.
49172314 385
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386If you have already installed the name resolver in the file libresolv.a,
387then you need to compile Emacs to use that library. The easiest way to
388do this is to add to config.h a definition of LIBS_SYSTEM, LIBS_MACHINE
389or LIB_STANDARD which uses -lresolv. Watch out! If you redefine a macro
390that is already in use in your configuration to supply some other libraries,
391be careful not to lose the others.
ed0d1d91 392
9dc15871 393Thus, you could start by adding this to config.h:
6e1a66dc 394
9dc15871 395#define LIBS_SYSTEM -lresolv
6e1a66dc 396
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397Then if this gives you an error for redefining a macro, and you see that
398the s- file defines LIBS_SYSTEM as -lfoo -lbar, you could change config.h
399again to say this:
3c418e54 400
9dc15871 401#define LIBS_SYSTEM -lresolv -lfoo -lbar
3c418e54 402
9dc15871 403*** Emacs does not know your host's fully-qualified domain name.
3c418e54 404
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405For example, (system-name) returns some variation on
406"localhost.localdomain", rather the name you were expecting.
407
9dc15871 408You need to configure your machine with a fully qualified domain name,
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409(i.e. a name with at least one ".") either in /etc/hosts,
410/etc/hostname, the NIS, or wherever your system calls for specifying
411this.
f9130829 412
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413If you cannot fix the configuration, you can set the Lisp variable
414mail-host-address to the value you want.
f9130829 415
9dc15871 416** NFS and RFS
f9130829 417
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418*** Emacs says it has saved a file, but the file does not actually
419appear on disk.
f9130829 420
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421This can happen on certain systems when you are using NFS, if the
422remote disk is full. It is due to a bug in NFS (or certain NFS
423implementations), and there is apparently nothing Emacs can do to
424detect the problem. Emacs checks the failure codes of all the system
425calls involved in writing a file, including `close'; but in the case
426where the problem occurs, none of those system calls fails.
f9130829 427
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428*** Editing files through RFS gives spurious "file has changed" warnings.
429It is possible that a change in Emacs 18.37 gets around this problem,
430but in case not, here is a description of how to fix the RFS bug that
431causes it.
f9130829 432
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433 There was a serious pair of bugs in the handling of the fsync() system
434 call in the RFS server.
f9130829 435
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436 The first is that the fsync() call is handled as another name for the
437 close() system call (!!). It appears that fsync() is not used by very
438 many programs; Emacs version 18 does an fsync() before closing files
439 to make sure that the bits are on the disk.
ed85f61d 440
9dc15871 441 This is fixed by the enclosed patch to the RFS server.
b300fd77 442
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443 The second, more serious problem, is that fsync() is treated as a
444 non-blocking system call (i.e., it's implemented as a message that
445 gets sent to the remote system without waiting for a reply). Fsync is
446 a useful tool for building atomic file transactions. Implementing it
447 as a non-blocking RPC call (when the local call blocks until the sync
448 is done) is a bad idea; unfortunately, changing it will break the RFS
449 protocol. No fix was supplied for this problem.
b300fd77 450
9dc15871 451 (as always, your line numbers may vary)
ed85f61d 452
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453 % rcsdiff -c -r1.2 serversyscall.c
454 RCS file: RCS/serversyscall.c,v
455 retrieving revision 1.2
456 diff -c -r1.2 serversyscall.c
457 *** /tmp/,RCSt1003677 Wed Jan 28 15:15:02 1987
458 --- serversyscall.c Wed Jan 28 15:14:48 1987
459 ***************
460 *** 163,169 ****
461 /*
462 * No return sent for close or fsync!
463 */
464 ! if (syscall == RSYS_close || syscall == RSYS_fsync)
465 proc->p_returnval = deallocate_fd(proc, msg->m_args[0]);
466 else
467 {
468 --- 166,172 ----
469 /*
470 * No return sent for close or fsync!
471 */
472 ! if (syscall == RSYS_close)
473 proc->p_returnval = deallocate_fd(proc, msg->m_args[0]);
474 else
475 {
ed85f61d 476
9dc15871 477** PSGML
fa2301bf 478
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479*** Old versions of the PSGML package use the obsolete variables
480`before-change-function' and `after-change-function', which are no
481longer used by Emacs. Please use PSGML 1.2.3 or later.
ed85f61d 482
9dc15871 483*** PSGML conflicts with sgml-mode.
d0cf6c7d 484
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485PSGML package uses the same names of some variables (like keymap)
486as built-in sgml-mode.el because it was created as a replacement
487of that package. The conflict will be shown if you load
488sgml-mode.el before psgml.el. E.g. this could happen if you edit
489HTML page and then start to work with SGML or XML file. html-mode
490(from sgml-mode.el) is used for HTML file and loading of psgml.el
491(for sgml-mode or xml-mode) will cause an error.
d0cf6c7d 492
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493*** Versions of the PSGML package earlier than 1.0.3 (stable) or 1.1.2
494(alpha) fail to parse DTD files correctly in Emacs 20.3 and later.
495Here is a patch for psgml-parse.el from PSGML 1.0.1 and, probably,
496earlier versions.
d0cf6c7d 497
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498--- psgml-parse.el 1998/08/21 19:18:18 1.1
499+++ psgml-parse.el 1998/08/21 19:20:00
500@@ -2383,7 +2383,7 @@ (defun sgml-push-to-entity (entity &opti
501 (setq sgml-buffer-parse-state nil))
502 (cond
503 ((stringp entity) ; a file name
504- (save-excursion (insert-file-contents entity))
505+ (insert-file-contents entity)
506 (setq default-directory (file-name-directory entity)))
507 ((consp (sgml-entity-text entity)) ; external id?
508 (let* ((extid (sgml-entity-text entity))
d0cf6c7d 509
90a02640 510** AUCTeX
c289e7f0 511
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512You should not be using a version older than 11.52 if you can avoid
513it.
339b95d5 514
90a02640 515*** Emacs 21 freezes when visiting a TeX file with AUCTeX installed.
339b95d5 516
90a02640 517Emacs 21 needs version 10 or later of AUCTeX; upgrading should solve
9dc15871 518these problems.
339b95d5 519
90a02640 520*** No colors in AUCTeX with Emacs 21.
339b95d5 521
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522Upgrade to AUC TeX version 10 or later, and make sure it is
523byte-compiled with Emacs 21.
b87207a0 524
73639601
EZ
525** PCL-CVS
526
527*** Lines are not updated or new lines are added in the buffer upon commit.
528
529When committing files located higher in the hierarchy than the examined
530directory, some versions of the CVS program return an ambiguous message
531from which PCL-CVS cannot extract the full location of the committed
532files. As a result, the corresponding lines in the PCL-CVS buffer are
533not updated with the new revision of these files, and new lines are
534added to the top-level directory.
535
536This can happen with CVS versions 1.12.8 and 1.12.9. Upgrade to CVS
5371.12.10 or newer to fix this problem.
538
9dc15871 539** Miscellaneous problems
f936978f 540
f5578c7f
EZ
541*** Emacs uses 100% of CPU time
542
543This is a known problem with some versions of the Semantic package.
3f37e604
GM
544The solution is to upgrade Semantic to version 2.0pre4 (distributed
545with CEDET 1.0pre4) or later.
f5578c7f 546
9dc15871 547*** Self-documentation messages are garbled.
6fb6f3ac 548
9dc15871
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549This means that the file `etc/DOC-...' doesn't properly correspond
550with the Emacs executable. Redumping Emacs and then installing the
551corresponding pair of files should fix the problem.
b87207a0 552
9dc15871
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553*** Programs running under terminal emulator do not recognize `emacs'
554terminal type.
b87207a0 555
9dc15871
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556The cause of this is a shell startup file that sets the TERMCAP
557environment variable. The terminal emulator uses that variable to
558provide the information on the special terminal type that Emacs
559emulates.
b87207a0 560
9dc15871
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561Rewrite your shell startup file so that it does not change TERMCAP
562in such a case. You could use the following conditional which sets
563it only if it is undefined.
b87207a0 564
9dc15871 565 if ( ! ${?TERMCAP} ) setenv TERMCAP ~/my-termcap-file
e085efdb 566
9dc15871
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567Or you could set TERMCAP only when you set TERM--which should not
568happen in a non-login shell.
fa99e2a4 569
9dc15871 570*** In Shell mode, you get a ^M at the end of every line.
c8d9b4ee 571
9dc15871
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572This happens to people who use tcsh, because it is trying to be too
573smart. It sees that the Shell uses terminal type `unknown' and turns
574on the flag to output ^M at the end of each line. You can fix the
575problem by adding this to your .cshrc file:
fe445893 576
9dc15871 577 if ($?EMACS) then
4b1aaa8b 578 if ("$EMACS" =~ /*) then
9dc15871
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579 unset edit
580 stty -icrnl -onlcr -echo susp ^Z
581 endif
582 endif
c8d9b4ee 583
9dc15871 584*** Emacs startup on GNU/Linux systems (and possibly other systems) is slow.
d9810886 585
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586This can happen if the system is misconfigured and Emacs can't get the
587full qualified domain name, FQDN. You should have your FQDN in the
588/etc/hosts file, something like this:
a408ce18 589
9dc15871
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590127.0.0.1 localhost
591129.187.137.82 nuc04.t30.physik.tu-muenchen.de nuc04
a408ce18 592
9dc15871 593The way to set this up may vary on non-GNU systems.
a38f41c4 594
9dc15871 595*** Attempting to visit remote files via ange-ftp fails.
a38f41c4 596
9dc15871
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597If the error message is "ange-ftp-file-modtime: Specified time is not
598representable", then this could happen when `lukemftp' is used as the
599ftp client. This was reported to happen on Debian GNU/Linux, kernel
600version 2.4.3, with `lukemftp' 1.5-5, but might happen on other
601systems as well. To avoid this problem, switch to using the standard
602ftp client. On a Debian system, type
a38f41c4 603
9dc15871 604 update-alternatives --config ftp
a38f41c4 605
9dc15871 606and then choose /usr/bin/netkit-ftp.
a38f41c4 607
9dc15871 608*** JPEG images aren't displayed.
b87207a0 609
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610This has been reported when Emacs is built with jpeg-6a library.
611Upgrading to jpeg-6b solves the problem. Configure checks for the
612correct version, but this problem could occur if a binary built
613against a shared libjpeg is run on a system with an older version.
b87207a0 614
9dc15871 615*** Dired is very slow.
4e0bd469
EZ
616
617This could happen if invocation of the `df' program takes a long
618time. Possible reasons for this include:
619
620 - ClearCase mounted filesystems (VOBs) that sometimes make `df'
621 response time extremely slow (dozens of seconds);
622
623 - slow automounters on some old versions of Unix;
624
625 - slow operation of some versions of `df'.
626
627To work around the problem, you could either (a) set the variable
628`directory-free-space-program' to nil, and thus prevent Emacs from
629invoking `df'; (b) use `df' from the GNU Fileutils package; or
630(c) use CVS, which is Free Software, instead of ClearCase.
631
9dc15871 632*** Versions of the W3 package released before Emacs 21.1 don't run
fc2938d1 633under Emacs 21. This fixed in W3 version 4.0pre.47.
a953a8d3 634
9dc15871 635*** The LDAP support rely on ldapsearch program from OpenLDAP version 2.
8f4df059
PJ
636
637It can fail to work with ldapsearch program from OpenLDAP version 1.
638Version 1 of OpenLDAP is now deprecated. If you are still using it,
639please upgrade to version 2. As a temporary workaround, remove
640argument "-x" from the variable `ldap-ldapsearch-args'.
641
9dc15871 642*** ps-print commands fail to find prologue files ps-prin*.ps.
cc2f2825
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643
644This can happen if you use an old version of X-Symbol package: it
645defines compatibility functions which trick ps-print into thinking it
646runs in XEmacs, and look for the prologue files in a wrong directory.
647
648The solution is to upgrade X-Symbol to a later version.
649
9dc15871 650*** On systems with shared libraries you might encounter run-time errors
f4f4ee4d
GM
651from the dynamic linker telling you that it is unable to find some
652shared libraries, for instance those for Xaw3d or image support.
653These errors mean Emacs has been linked with a library whose shared
654library is not in the default search path of the dynamic linker.
655
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656Similar problems could prevent Emacs from building, since the build
657process invokes Emacs several times.
658
f4f4ee4d
GM
659On many systems, it is possible to set LD_LIBRARY_PATH in your
660environment to specify additional directories where shared libraries
661can be found.
662
663Other systems allow to set LD_RUN_PATH in a similar way, but before
664Emacs is linked. With LD_RUN_PATH set, the linker will include a
665specified run-time search path in the executable.
666
8643647c 667On some systems, Emacs can crash due to problems with dynamic
c31138a1
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668linking. Specifically, on SGI Irix 6.5, crashes were reported with
669backtraces like this:
670
671 (dbx) where
672 0 strcmp(0xf49239d, 0x4031184, 0x40302b4, 0x12, 0xf0000000, 0xf4923aa, 0x0, 0x492ddb2) ["/xlv22/ficus-jan23/work/irix/lib/libc/libc_n32_M3_ns/strings/strcmp.s":35, 0xfb7e480]
673 1 general_find_symbol(0xf49239d, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0xf0000000, 0xf4923aa, 0x0, 0x492ddb2)
674 ["/comp2/mtibuild/v73/workarea/v7.3/rld/rld.c":2140, 0xfb65a98]
675 2 resolve_symbol(0xf49239d, 0x4031184, 0x0, 0xfbdd438, 0x0, 0xf4923aa, 0x0, 0x492ddb2)
676 ["/comp2/mtibuild/v73/workarea/v7.3/rld/rld.c":1947, 0xfb657e4]
677 3 lazy_text_resolve(0xd18, 0x1a3, 0x40302b4, 0x12, 0xf0000000, 0xf4923aa, 0x0, 0x492ddb2)
678 ["/comp2/mtibuild/v73/workarea/v7.3/rld/rld.c":997, 0xfb64d44]
679 4 _rld_text_resolve(0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0)
680 ["/comp2/mtibuild/v73/workarea/v7.3/rld/rld_bridge.s":175, 0xfb6032c]
681
8643647c
RS
682(`rld' is the dynamic linker.) We don't know yet why this
683happens, but setting the environment variable LD_BIND_NOW to 1 (which
c31138a1
EZ
684forces the dynamic linker to bind all shared objects early on) seems
685to work around the problem.
686
f4f4ee4d
GM
687Please refer to the documentation of your dynamic linker for details.
688
9dc15871
EZ
689*** You request inverse video, and the first Emacs frame is in inverse
690video, but later frames are not in inverse video.
b1739b51 691
9dc15871
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692This can happen if you have an old version of the custom library in
693your search path for Lisp packages. Use M-x list-load-path-shadows to
694check whether this is true. If it is, delete the old custom library.
b1739b51 695
9dc15871 696*** When you run Ispell from Emacs, it reports a "misalignment" error.
b1739b51 697
9dc15871
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698This can happen if you compiled the Ispell program to use ASCII
699characters only and then try to use it from Emacs with non-ASCII
700characters, like Latin-1. The solution is to recompile Ispell with
701support for 8-bit characters.
b1739b51 702
9dc15871
EZ
703To see whether your Ispell program supports 8-bit characters, type
704this at your shell's prompt:
b1739b51 705
9dc15871 706 ispell -vv
b1739b51 707
9dc15871
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708and look in the output for the string "NO8BIT". If Ispell says
709"!NO8BIT (8BIT)", your speller supports 8-bit characters; otherwise it
710does not.
e9a52cfe 711
9dc15871
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712To rebuild Ispell with 8-bit character support, edit the local.h file
713in the Ispell distribution and make sure it does _not_ define NO8BIT.
714Then rebuild the speller.
e9a52cfe 715
9dc15871
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716Another possible cause for "misalignment" error messages is that the
717version of Ispell installed on your machine is old. Upgrade.
e9a52cfe 718
9dc15871
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719Yet another possibility is that you are trying to spell-check a word
720in a language that doesn't fit the dictionary you choose for use by
721Ispell. (Ispell can only spell-check one language at a time, because
722it uses a single dictionary.) Make sure that the text you are
723spelling and the dictionary used by Ispell conform to each other.
e9a52cfe 724
9dc15871
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725If your spell-checking program is Aspell, it has been reported that if
726you have a personal configuration file (normally ~/.aspell.conf), it
727can cause this error. Remove that file, execute `ispell-kill-ispell'
728in Emacs, and then try spell-checking again.
e9a52cfe 729
9dc15871 730* Runtime problems related to font handling
e9a52cfe 731
9dc15871 732** Under X11, some characters appear as hollow boxes.
e9a52cfe 733
9dc15871
EZ
734Each X11 font covers just a fraction of the characters that Emacs
735supports. To display the whole range of Emacs characters requires
736many different fonts, collected into a fontset.
f25eb4f7 737
9dc15871
EZ
738If some of the fonts called for in your fontset do not exist on your X
739server, then the characters that have no font appear as hollow boxes.
740You can remedy the problem by installing additional fonts.
f25eb4f7 741
9dc15871 742The intlfonts distribution includes a full spectrum of fonts that can
9222ba5e
EZ
743display all the characters Emacs supports. The etl-unicode collection
744of fonts (available from <URL:ftp://ftp.x.org/contrib/fonts/> and
745<URL:ftp://ftp.xfree86.org/pub/mirror/X.Org/contrib/fonts/>) includes
746fonts that can display many Unicode characters; they can also be used
747by ps-print and ps-mule to print Unicode characters.
f25eb4f7 748
9dc15871
EZ
749Another cause of this for specific characters is fonts which have a
750missing glyph and no default character. This is known to occur for
751character number 160 (no-break space) in some fonts, such as Lucida
752but Emacs sets the display table for the unibyte and Latin-1 version
753of this character to display a space.
f25eb4f7 754
9dc15871 755** Under X11, some characters appear improperly aligned in their lines.
f25eb4f7 756
9222ba5e
EZ
757You may have bad X11 fonts; try installing the intlfonts distribution
758or the etl-unicode collection (see the previous entry).
f25eb4f7 759
9dc15871 760** Certain fonts make each line take one pixel more than it "should".
edd7d3be 761
9dc15871
EZ
762This is because these fonts contain characters a little taller
763than the font's nominal height. Emacs needs to make sure that
764lines do not overlap.
edd7d3be 765
9dc15871 766** Loading fonts is very slow.
edd7d3be 767
9dc15871
EZ
768You might be getting scalable fonts instead of precomputed bitmaps.
769Known scalable font directories are "Type1" and "Speedo". A font
770directory contains scalable fonts if it contains the file
771"fonts.scale".
42303132 772
9dc15871
EZ
773If this is so, re-order your X windows font path to put the scalable
774font directories last. See the documentation of `xset' for details.
42303132 775
9dc15871
EZ
776With some X servers, it may be necessary to take the scalable font
777directories out of your path entirely, at least for Emacs 19.26.
778Changes in the future may make this unnecessary.
42303132 779
9dc15871 780** Font Lock displays portions of the buffer in incorrect faces.
42303132 781
9dc15871
EZ
782By far the most frequent cause of this is a parenthesis `(' or a brace
783`{' in column zero. Font Lock assumes that such a paren is outside of
784any comment or string. This is of course not true in general, but the
785vast majority of well-formatted program source files don't have such
786parens, and therefore this assumption is used to allow optimizations
787in Font Lock's syntactical analysis. These optimizations avoid some
788pathological cases where jit-lock, the Just-in-Time fontification
789introduced with Emacs 21.1, could significantly slow down scrolling
790through the buffer, especially scrolling backwards, and also jumping
791to the end of a very large buffer.
42303132 792
bf247b6e 793Beginning with version 22.1, a parenthesis or a brace in column zero
9dc15871
EZ
794is highlighted in bold-red face if it is inside a string or a comment,
795to indicate that it could interfere with Font Lock (and also with
796indentation) and should be moved or escaped with a backslash.
42303132 797
9dc15871
EZ
798If you don't use large buffers, or have a very fast machine which
799makes the delays insignificant, you can avoid the incorrect
800fontification by setting the variable
801`font-lock-beginning-of-syntax-function' to a nil value. (This must
802be done _after_ turning on Font Lock.)
f3d6f4ee 803
9dc15871
EZ
804Another alternative is to avoid a paren in column zero. For example,
805in a Lisp string you could precede the paren with a backslash.
f3d6f4ee 806
9dc15871
EZ
807** With certain fonts, when the cursor appears on a character, the
808character doesn't appear--you get a solid box instead.
f3d6f4ee 809
9dc15871
EZ
810One user on a Linux-based GNU system reported that this problem went
811away with installation of a new X server. The failing server was
812XFree86 3.1.1. XFree86 3.1.2 works.
f3d6f4ee 813
9dc15871 814** Characters are displayed as empty boxes or with wrong font under X.
9f83d8b3 815
9dc15871
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816This can occur when two different versions of FontConfig are used.
817For example, XFree86 4.3.0 has one version and Gnome usually comes
818with a newer version. Emacs compiled with --with-gtk will then use
819the newer version. In most cases the problem can be temporarily
820fixed by stopping the application that has the error (it can be
821Emacs or any other application), removing ~/.fonts.cache-1,
822and then start the application again.
823If removing ~/.fonts.cache-1 and restarting doesn't help, the
824application with problem must be recompiled with the same version
825of FontConfig as the rest of the system uses. For KDE, it is
826sufficient to recompile Qt.
9f83d8b3 827
9dc15871 828** Emacs pauses for several seconds when changing the default font.
9f83d8b3 829
9dc15871
EZ
830This has been reported for fvwm 2.2.5 and the window manager of KDE
8312.1. The reason for the pause is Xt waiting for a ConfigureNotify
832event from the window manager, which the window manager doesn't send.
833Xt stops waiting after a default timeout of usually 5 seconds.
f29d1e75 834
9dc15871 835A workaround for this is to add something like
f29d1e75 836
9dc15871 837emacs.waitForWM: false
c24be289 838
9dc15871
EZ
839to your X resources. Alternatively, add `(wait-for-wm . nil)' to a
840frame's parameter list, like this:
c24be289 841
9dc15871 842 (modify-frame-parameters nil '((wait-for-wm . nil)))
b35319bf 843
9dc15871 844(this should go into your `.emacs' file).
b35319bf 845
9dc15871 846** Underlines appear at the wrong position.
b35319bf 847
9dc15871
EZ
848This is caused by fonts having a wrong UNDERLINE_POSITION property.
849Examples are the font 7x13 on XFree prior to version 4.1, or the jmk
850neep font from the Debian xfonts-jmk package. To circumvent this
851problem, set x-use-underline-position-properties to nil in your
852`.emacs'.
b35319bf 853
9dc15871
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854To see what is the value of UNDERLINE_POSITION defined by the font,
855type `xlsfonts -lll FONT' and look at the font's UNDERLINE_POSITION
856property.
787994b7 857
9dc15871 858** When using Exceed, fonts sometimes appear too tall.
0a2eeca1 859
9dc15871
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860When the display is set to an Exceed X-server and fonts are specified
861(either explicitly with the -fn option or implicitly with X resources)
862then the fonts may appear "too tall". The actual character sizes are
863correct but there is too much vertical spacing between rows, which
864gives the appearance of "double spacing".
0a2eeca1 865
9dc15871
EZ
866To prevent this, turn off the Exceed's "automatic font substitution"
867feature (in the font part of the configuration window).
0a2eeca1 868
405b495f
GM
869** Subscript/superscript text in TeX is hard to read.
870
871If `tex-fontify-script' is non-nil, tex-mode displays
872subscript/superscript text in the faces subscript/superscript, which
873are smaller than the normal font and lowered/raised. With some fonts,
874nested superscripts (say) can be hard to read. Switching to a
875different font, or changing your antialiasing setting (on an LCD
876screen), can both make the problem disappear. Alternatively, customize
877the following variables: tex-font-script-display (how much to
878lower/raise); tex-suscript-height-ratio (how much smaller than
879normal); tex-suscript-height-minimum (minimum height).
880
9dc15871 881* Internationalization problems
0a2eeca1 882
de25ebb8
RS
883** M-{ does not work on a Spanish PC keyboard.
884
885Many Spanish keyboards seem to ignore that combination. Emacs can't
886do anything about it.
887
9dc15871 888** Characters from the mule-unicode charsets aren't displayed under X.
0a2eeca1 889
9dc15871
EZ
890XFree86 4 contains many fonts in iso10646-1 encoding which have
891minimal character repertoires (whereas the encoding part of the font
892name is meant to be a reasonable indication of the repertoire
893according to the XLFD spec). Emacs may choose one of these to display
894characters from the mule-unicode charsets and then typically won't be
895able to find the glyphs to display many characters. (Check with C-u
896C-x = .) To avoid this, you may need to use a fontset which sets the
897font for the mule-unicode sets explicitly. E.g. to use GNU unifont,
898include in the fontset spec:
0a2eeca1 899
9dc15871
EZ
900mule-unicode-2500-33ff:-gnu-unifont-*-iso10646-1,\
901mule-unicode-e000-ffff:-gnu-unifont-*-iso10646-1,\
902mule-unicode-0100-24ff:-gnu-unifont-*-iso10646-1
0a2eeca1 903
9dc15871 904** The UTF-8/16/7 coding systems don't encode CJK (Far Eastern) characters.
0a2eeca1 905
ce9b56fe
KH
906Emacs directly supports the Unicode BMP whose code points are in the
907ranges 0000-33ff and e000-ffff, and indirectly supports the parts of
908CJK characters belonging to these legacy charsets:
909
910 GB2312, Big5, JISX0208, JISX0212, JISX0213-1, JISX0213-2, KSC5601
911
912The latter support is done in Utf-Translate-Cjk mode (turned on by
913default). Which Unicode CJK characters are decoded into which Emacs
914charset is decided by the current language environment. For instance,
915in Chinese-GB, most of them are decoded into chinese-gb2312.
119d3665 916
9dc15871
EZ
917If you read UTF-8 data with code points outside these ranges, the
918characters appear in the buffer as raw bytes of the original UTF-8
919(composed into a single quasi-character) and they will be written back
920correctly as UTF-8, assuming you don't break the composed sequences.
921If you read such characters from UTF-16 or UTF-7 data, they are
922substituted with the Unicode `replacement character', and you lose
923information.
119d3665 924
9dc15871 925** Mule-UCS loads very slowly.
a933dad1 926
9dc15871
EZ
927Changes to Emacs internals interact badly with Mule-UCS's `un-define'
928library, which is the usual interface to Mule-UCS. Apply the
929following patch to Mule-UCS 0.84 and rebuild it. That will help,
930though loading will still be slower than in Emacs 20. (Some
931distributions, such as Debian, may already have applied such a patch.)
0de9f9a8 932
9dc15871
EZ
933--- lisp/un-define.el 6 Mar 2001 22:41:38 -0000 1.30
934+++ lisp/un-define.el 19 Apr 2002 18:34:26 -0000
935@@ -610,13 +624,21 @@ by calling post-read-conversion and pre-
0de9f9a8 936
9dc15871
EZ
937 (mapcar
938 (lambda (x)
939- (mapcar
940- (lambda (y)
941- (mucs-define-coding-system
942- (nth 0 y) (nth 1 y) (nth 2 y)
943- (nth 3 y) (nth 4 y) (nth 5 y) (nth 6 y))
944- (coding-system-put (car y) 'alias-coding-systems (list (car x))))
945- (cdr x)))
946+ (if (fboundp 'register-char-codings)
947+ ;; Mule 5, where we don't need the eol-type specified and
948+ ;; register-char-codings may be very slow for these coding
949+ ;; system definitions.
950+ (let ((y (cadr x)))
951+ (mucs-define-coding-system
952+ (car x) (nth 1 y) (nth 2 y)
953+ (nth 3 y) (nth 4 y) (nth 5 y)))
954+ (mapcar
955+ (lambda (y)
956+ (mucs-define-coding-system
957+ (nth 0 y) (nth 1 y) (nth 2 y)
958+ (nth 3 y) (nth 4 y) (nth 5 y) (nth 6 y))
959+ (coding-system-put (car y) 'alias-coding-systems (list (car x)))))
960+ (cdr x)))
961 `((utf-8
962 (utf-8-unix
963 ?u "UTF-8 coding system"
0de9f9a8 964
9dc15871
EZ
965Note that Emacs has native support for Unicode, roughly equivalent to
966Mule-UCS's, so you may not need it.
a933dad1 967
d87ceee0
KH
968** Mule-UCS compilation problem.
969
970Emacs of old versions and XEmacs byte-compile the form `(progn progn
971...)' the same way as `(progn ...)', but Emacs of version 21.3 and the
972later process that form just as interpreter does, that is, as `progn'
973variable reference. Apply the following patch to Mule-UCS 0.84 to
974make it compiled by the latest Emacs.
975
976--- mucs-ccl.el 2 Sep 2005 00:42:23 -0000 1.1.1.1
977+++ mucs-ccl.el 2 Sep 2005 01:31:51 -0000 1.3
978@@ -639,10 +639,14 @@
979 (mucs-notify-embedment 'mucs-ccl-required name)
980 (setq ccl-pgm-list (cdr ccl-pgm-list)))
981 ; (message "MCCLREGFIN:%S" result)
982- `(progn
983- (setq mucs-ccl-facility-alist
984- (quote ,mucs-ccl-facility-alist))
985- ,@result)))
986+ ;; The only way the function is used in this package is included
987+ ;; in `mucs-package-definition-end-hook' value, where it must
988+ ;; return (possibly empty) *list* of forms. Do this. Do not rely
ade79051 989+ ;; on byte compiler to remove extra `progn's in `(progn ...)'
d87ceee0
KH
990+ ;; form.
991+ `((setq mucs-ccl-facility-alist
992+ (quote ,mucs-ccl-facility-alist))
993+ ,@result)))
ade79051 994
d87ceee0
KH
995 ;;; Add hook for embedding translation informations to a package.
996 (add-hook 'mucs-package-definition-end-hook
997
9dc15871 998** Accented ISO-8859-1 characters are displayed as | or _.
a933dad1 999
d6b7de9b
EZ
1000Try other font set sizes (S-mouse-1). If the problem persists with
1001other sizes as well, your text is corrupted, probably through software
1002that is not 8-bit clean. If the problem goes away with another font
1003size, it's probably because some fonts pretend to be ISO-8859-1 fonts
1004when they are really ASCII fonts. In particular the schumacher-clean
1005fonts have this bug in some versions of X.
a933dad1 1006
d6b7de9b 1007To see what glyphs are included in a font, use `xfd', like this:
a933dad1 1008
d6b7de9b 1009 xfd -fn -schumacher-clean-medium-r-normal--12-120-75-75-c-60-iso8859-1
a933dad1 1010
d6b7de9b
EZ
1011If this shows only ASCII glyphs, the font is indeed the source of the
1012problem.
a933dad1 1013
d6b7de9b
EZ
1014The solution is to remove the corresponding lines from the appropriate
1015`fonts.alias' file, then run `mkfontdir' in that directory, and then run
1016`xset fp rehash'.
177c0ea7 1017
9dc15871 1018** The `oc-unicode' package doesn't work with Emacs 21.
a933dad1 1019
9dc15871
EZ
1020This package tries to define more private charsets than there are free
1021slots now. The current built-in Unicode support is actually more
1022flexible. (Use option `utf-translate-cjk-mode' if you need CJK
1023support.) Files encoded as emacs-mule using oc-unicode aren't
1024generally read correctly by Emacs 21.
a933dad1 1025
9dc15871 1026** After a while, Emacs slips into unibyte mode.
a933dad1 1027
9dc15871
EZ
1028The VM mail package, which is not part of Emacs, sometimes does
1029 (standard-display-european t)
1030That should be changed to
1031 (standard-display-european 1 t)
de121241 1032
9dc15871 1033* X runtime problems
de121241 1034
9dc15871 1035** X keyboard problems
de121241 1036
9dc15871 1037*** You "lose characters" after typing Compose Character key.
a933dad1 1038
9dc15871
EZ
1039This is because the Compose Character key is defined as the keysym
1040Multi_key, and Emacs (seeing that) does the proper X11
1041character-composition processing. If you don't want your Compose key
1042to do that, you can redefine it with xmodmap.
a933dad1 1043
9dc15871 1044For example, here's one way to turn it into a Meta key:
177c0ea7 1045
9dc15871 1046 xmodmap -e "keysym Multi_key = Meta_L"
a933dad1 1047
9dc15871
EZ
1048If all users at your site of a particular keyboard prefer Meta to
1049Compose, you can make the remapping happen automatically by adding the
1050xmodmap command to the xdm setup script for that display.
a933dad1 1051
9dc15871 1052*** Using X Windows, control-shift-leftbutton makes Emacs hang.
a933dad1 1053
9dc15871 1054Use the shell command `xset bc' to make the old X Menu package work.
a933dad1 1055
9f4f9273 1056*** C-SPC fails to work on Fedora GNU/Linux (or with fcitx input method).
09352e8f
RS
1057
1058Fedora Core 4 steals the C-SPC key by default for the `iiimx' program
1059which is the input method for some languages. It blocks Emacs users
1060from using the C-SPC key for `set-mark-command'.
1061
1062One solutions is to remove the `<Ctrl>space' from the `Iiimx' file
1063which can be found in the `/usr/lib/X11/app-defaults' directory.
1064However, that requires root access.
1065
1066Another is to specify `Emacs*useXIM: false' in your X resources.
1067
1068Another is to build Emacs with the `--without-xim' configure option.
1069
2fb18d13
KH
1070The same problem happens on any other system if you are using fcitx
1071(Chinese input method) which by default use C-SPC for toggling. If
1072you want to use fcitx with Emacs, you have two choices. Toggle fcitx
1073by another key (e.g. C-\) by modifying ~/.fcitx/config, or be
1074accustomed to use C-@ for `set-mark-command'.
1075
9dc15871 1076*** M-SPC seems to be ignored as input.
a933dad1 1077
9dc15871
EZ
1078See if your X server is set up to use this as a command
1079for character composition.
a933dad1 1080
9dc15871 1081*** The S-C-t key combination doesn't get passed to Emacs on X.
a933dad1 1082
9dc15871
EZ
1083This happens because some X configurations assign the Ctrl-Shift-t
1084combination the same meaning as the Multi_key. The offending
1085definition is in the file `...lib/X11/locale/iso8859-1/Compose'; there
1086might be other similar combinations which are grabbed by X for similar
1087purposes.
a933dad1 1088
9dc15871
EZ
1089We think that this can be countermanded with the `xmodmap' utility, if
1090you want to be able to bind one of these key sequences within Emacs.
a933dad1 1091
9dc15871 1092*** Under X, C-v and/or other keys don't work.
a933dad1
DL
1093
1094These may have been intercepted by your window manager. In
1095particular, AfterStep 1.6 is reported to steal C-v in its default
1096configuration. Various Meta keys are also likely to be taken by the
1097configuration of the `feel'. See the WM's documentation for how to
1098change this.
1099
9dc15871 1100*** Clicking C-mouse-2 in the scroll bar doesn't split the window.
a933dad1 1101
9dc15871
EZ
1102This currently doesn't work with scroll-bar widgets (and we don't know
1103a good way of implementing it with widgets). If Emacs is configured
1104--without-toolkit-scroll-bars, C-mouse-2 on the scroll bar does work.
a933dad1 1105
9dc15871
EZ
1106*** Inability to send an Alt-modified key, when Emacs is communicating
1107directly with an X server.
a933dad1 1108
9dc15871
EZ
1109If you have tried to bind an Alt-modified key as a command, and it
1110does not work to type the command, the first thing you should check is
1111whether the key is getting through to Emacs. To do this, type C-h c
1112followed by the Alt-modified key. C-h c should say what kind of event
1113it read. If it says it read an Alt-modified key, then make sure you
1114have made the key binding correctly.
a933dad1 1115
9dc15871
EZ
1116If C-h c reports an event that doesn't have the Alt modifier, it may
1117be because your X server has no key for the Alt modifier. The X
1118server that comes from MIT does not set up the Alt modifier by
1119default.
a933dad1 1120
9dc15871 1121If your keyboard has keys named Alt, you can enable them as follows:
a933dad1 1122
9dc15871
EZ
1123 xmodmap -e 'add mod2 = Alt_L'
1124 xmodmap -e 'add mod2 = Alt_R'
a933dad1 1125
9dc15871
EZ
1126If the keyboard has just one key named Alt, then only one of those
1127commands is needed. The modifier `mod2' is a reasonable choice if you
1128are using an unmodified MIT version of X. Otherwise, choose any
1129modifier bit not otherwise used.
a933dad1 1130
9dc15871
EZ
1131If your keyboard does not have keys named Alt, you can use some other
1132keys. Use the keysym command in xmodmap to turn a function key (or
1133some other 'spare' key) into Alt_L or into Alt_R, and then use the
1134commands show above to make them modifier keys.
a933dad1 1135
9dc15871
EZ
1136Note that if you have Alt keys but no Meta keys, Emacs translates Alt
1137into Meta. This is because of the great importance of Meta in Emacs.
a933dad1 1138
9dc15871 1139** Window-manager and toolkit-related problems
a933dad1 1140
0e71e4a8
CY
1141*** Gnome: Emacs receives input directly from the keyboard, bypassing XIM.
1142
1143This seems to happen when gnome-settings-daemon version 2.12 or later
1144is running. If gnome-settings-daemon is not running, Emacs receives
1145input through XIM without any problem. Furthermore, this seems only
1146to happen in *.UTF-8 locales; zh_CN.GB2312 and zh_CN.GBK locales, for
1147example, work fine. A bug report has been filed in the Gnome
1148bugzilla: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=357032
1149
9dc15871 1150*** Gnome: Emacs' xterm-mouse-mode doesn't work on the Gnome terminal.
a933dad1 1151
9dc15871
EZ
1152A symptom of this bug is that double-clicks insert a control sequence
1153into the buffer. The reason this happens is an apparent
1154incompatibility of the Gnome terminal with Xterm, which also affects
1155other programs using the Xterm mouse interface. A problem report has
1156been filed.
a933dad1 1157
9dc15871
EZ
1158*** KDE: When running on KDE, colors or fonts are not as specified for Emacs,
1159or messed up.
a933dad1 1160
9dc15871
EZ
1161For example, you could see background you set for Emacs only in the
1162empty portions of the Emacs display, while characters have some other
1163background.
a933dad1 1164
9dc15871
EZ
1165This happens because KDE's defaults apply its color and font
1166definitions even to applications that weren't compiled for KDE. The
1167solution is to uncheck the "Apply fonts and colors to non-KDE apps"
1168option in Preferences->Look&Feel->Style (KDE 2). In KDE 3, this option
1169is in the "Colors" section, rather than "Style".
a933dad1 1170
9dc15871
EZ
1171Alternatively, if you do want the KDE defaults to apply to other
1172applications, but not to Emacs, you could modify the file `Emacs.ad'
1173(should be in the `/usr/share/apps/kdisplay/app-defaults/' directory)
1174so that it doesn't set the default background and foreground only for
1175Emacs. For example, make sure the following resources are either not
1176present or commented out:
a933dad1 1177
9dc15871
EZ
1178 Emacs.default.attributeForeground
1179 Emacs.default.attributeBackground
1180 Emacs*Foreground
1181 Emacs*Background
a933dad1 1182
a3475659
JD
1183It is also reported that a bug in the gtk-engines-qt engine can cause this if
1184Emacs is compiled with Gtk+.
1185The bug is fixed in version 0.7 or newer of gtk-engines-qt.
1186
9dc15871 1187*** KDE: Emacs hangs on KDE when a large portion of text is killed.
a933dad1 1188
9dc15871
EZ
1189This is caused by a bug in the KDE applet `klipper' which periodically
1190requests the X clipboard contents from applications. Early versions
8576f724 1191of klipper don't implement the ICCCM protocol for large selections,
9dc15871 1192which leads to Emacs being flooded with selection requests. After a
b11e8823 1193while, Emacs may print a message:
a933dad1 1194
9dc15871 1195 Timed out waiting for property-notify event
a933dad1 1196
b11e8823
JD
1197A workaround is to not use `klipper'. An upgrade to the `klipper' that
1198comes with KDE 3.3 or later also solves the problem.
a933dad1 1199
9dc15871 1200*** CDE: Frames may cover dialogs they created when using CDE.
a933dad1 1201
9dc15871
EZ
1202This can happen if you have "Allow Primary Windows On Top" enabled which
1203seems to be the default in the Common Desktop Environment.
1204To change, go in to "Desktop Controls" -> "Window Style Manager"
1205and uncheck "Allow Primary Windows On Top".
d238f982 1206
9dc15871
EZ
1207*** Xaw3d : When using Xaw3d scroll bars without arrows, the very first mouse
1208click in a scroll bar might be ignored by the scroll bar widget. This
1209is probably a bug in Xaw3d; when Xaw3d is compiled with arrows, the
1210problem disappears.
d238f982 1211
9dc15871
EZ
1212*** Xaw: There are known binary incompatibilities between Xaw, Xaw3d, neXtaw,
1213XawM and the few other derivatives of Xaw. So when you compile with
1214one of these, it may not work to dynamically link with another one.
1215For example, strange problems, such as Emacs exiting when you type
1216"C-x 1", were reported when Emacs compiled with Xaw3d and libXaw was
1217used with neXtaw at run time.
d7185f9d 1218
9dc15871
EZ
1219The solution is to rebuild Emacs with the toolkit version you actually
1220want to use, or set LD_PRELOAD to preload the same toolkit version you
1221built Emacs with.
d7185f9d 1222
9dc15871 1223*** Open Motif: Problems with file dialogs in Emacs built with Open Motif.
a933dad1 1224
9dc15871
EZ
1225When Emacs 21 is built with Open Motif 2.1, it can happen that the
1226graphical file dialog boxes do not work properly. The "OK", "Filter"
1227and "Cancel" buttons do not respond to mouse clicks. Dragging the
1228file dialog window usually causes the buttons to work again.
a933dad1 1229
9dc15871
EZ
1230The solution is to use LessTif instead. LessTif is a free replacement
1231for Motif. See the file INSTALL for information on how to do this.
a933dad1 1232
9dc15871
EZ
1233Another workaround is not to use the mouse to trigger file prompts,
1234but to use the keyboard. This way, you will be prompted for a file in
1235the minibuffer instead of a graphical file dialog.
a933dad1 1236
9dc15871 1237*** LessTif: Problems in Emacs built with LessTif.
a933dad1 1238
9dc15871
EZ
1239The problems seem to depend on the version of LessTif and the Motif
1240emulation for which it is set up.
a933dad1 1241
9dc15871 1242Only the Motif 1.2 emulation seems to be stable enough in LessTif.
880ea925 1243LessTif 0.92-17's Motif 1.2 emulation seems to work okay on FreeBSD.
9dc15871
EZ
1244On GNU/Linux systems, lesstif-0.92.6 configured with "./configure
1245--enable-build-12 --enable-default-12" is reported to be the most
1246successful. The binary GNU/Linux package
1247lesstif-devel-0.92.0-1.i386.rpm was reported to have problems with
1248menu placement.
a933dad1 1249
9dc15871
EZ
1250On some systems, even with Motif 1.2 emulation, Emacs occasionally
1251locks up, grabbing all mouse and keyboard events. We still don't know
1252what causes these problems; they are not reproducible by Emacs
1253developers.
a933dad1 1254
9dc15871 1255*** Motif: The Motif version of Emacs paints the screen a solid color.
a933dad1 1256
9dc15871 1257This has been observed to result from the following X resource:
a933dad1 1258
9dc15871 1259 Emacs*default.attributeFont: -*-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-140-*-*-*-*-iso8859-*
a933dad1 1260
9dc15871
EZ
1261That the resource has this effect indicates a bug in something, but we
1262do not yet know what. If it is an Emacs bug, we hope someone can
1263explain what the bug is so we can fix it. In the mean time, removing
1264the resource prevents the problem.
a933dad1 1265
9dc15871 1266** General X problems
17a37d87 1267
9dc15871 1268*** Redisplay using X11 is much slower than previous Emacs versions.
17a37d87 1269
9dc15871
EZ
1270We've noticed that certain X servers draw the text much slower when
1271scroll bars are on the left. We don't know why this happens. If this
1272happens to you, you can work around it by putting the scroll bars
1273on the right (as they were in Emacs 19).
17a37d87 1274
9dc15871 1275Here's how to do this:
17a37d87 1276
9dc15871 1277 (set-scroll-bar-mode 'right)
a933dad1 1278
9dc15871
EZ
1279If you're not sure whether (or how much) this problem affects you,
1280try that and see how much difference it makes. To set things back
1281to normal, do
a933dad1 1282
9dc15871 1283 (set-scroll-bar-mode 'left)
a933dad1 1284
9dc15871 1285*** Error messages about undefined colors on X.
a933dad1 1286
9dc15871 1287The messages might say something like this:
a933dad1 1288
9dc15871 1289 Unable to load color "grey95"
a933dad1 1290
9dc15871 1291(typically, in the `*Messages*' buffer), or something like this:
a933dad1 1292
9dc15871 1293 Error while displaying tooltip: (error Undefined color lightyellow)
a933dad1 1294
9dc15871
EZ
1295These problems could happen if some other X program has used up too
1296many colors of the X palette, leaving Emacs with insufficient system
1297resources to load all the colors it needs.
a933dad1 1298
9dc15871 1299A solution is to exit the offending X programs before starting Emacs.
a933dad1 1300
9257b627
EZ
1301"undefined color" messages can also occur if the RgbPath entry in the
1302X configuration file is incorrect, or the rgb.txt file is not where
1303X expects to find it.
1304
9dc15871 1305*** Improving performance with slow X connections.
a933dad1 1306
9dc15871
EZ
1307There are several ways to improve this performance, any subset of which can
1308be carried out at the same time:
a933dad1 1309
9dc15871
EZ
13101) If you don't need X Input Methods (XIM) for entering text in some
1311 language you use, you can improve performance on WAN links by using
1312 the X resource useXIM to turn off use of XIM. This does not affect
1313 the use of Emacs' own input methods, which are part of the Leim
1314 package.
3d00585e 1315
9dc15871 13162) If the connection is very slow, you might also want to consider
634e516b
EZ
1317 switching off scroll bars, menu bar, and tool bar. Adding the
1318 following forms to your .emacs file will accomplish that, but only
1319 after the the initial frame is displayed:
1320
1321 (scroll-bar-mode -1)
1322 (menu-bar-mode -1)
1323 (tool-bar-mode -1)
1324
1325 For still quicker startup, put these X resources in your .Xdefaults
1326 file:
1327
1328 Emacs.verticalScrollBars: off
1329 Emacs.menuBar: off
1330 Emacs.toolBar: off
3d00585e 1331
9dc15871
EZ
13323) Use ssh to forward the X connection, and enable compression on this
1333 forwarded X connection (ssh -XC remotehostname emacs ...).
3d00585e 1334
9dc15871
EZ
13354) Use lbxproxy on the remote end of the connection. This is an interface
1336 to the low bandwidth X extension in most modern X servers, which
1337 improves performance dramatically, at the slight expense of correctness
1338 of the X protocol. lbxproxy acheives the performance gain by grouping
1339 several X requests in one TCP packet and sending them off together,
880ea925 1340 instead of requiring a round-trip for each X request in a separate
9dc15871
EZ
1341 packet. The switches that seem to work best for emacs are:
1342 -noatomsfile -nowinattr -cheaterrors -cheatevents
1343 Note that the -nograbcmap option is known to cause problems.
1344 For more about lbxproxy, see:
1345 http://www.xfree86.org/4.3.0/lbxproxy.1.html
3d00585e 1346
34431988
KS
13475) If copying and killing is slow, try to disable the interaction with the
1348 native system's clipboard by adding these lines to your .emacs file:
1349 (setq interprogram-cut-function nil)
1350 (setq interprogram-paste-function nil)
1351
9dc15871 1352*** Emacs gives the error, Couldn't find per display information.
3d00585e 1353
9dc15871
EZ
1354This can result if the X server runs out of memory because Emacs uses
1355a large number of fonts. On systems where this happens, C-h h is
1356likely to cause it.
a933dad1 1357
9dc15871 1358We do not know of a way to prevent the problem.
7838ea1b 1359
9dc15871 1360*** Emacs does not notice when you release the mouse.
a933dad1 1361
9dc15871
EZ
1362There are reports that this happened with (some) Microsoft mice and
1363that replacing the mouse made it stop.
a933dad1 1364
9dc15871 1365*** You can't select from submenus (in the X toolkit version).
a933dad1 1366
9dc15871
EZ
1367On certain systems, mouse-tracking and selection in top-level menus
1368works properly with the X toolkit, but neither of them works when you
1369bring up a submenu (such as Bookmarks or Compare or Apply Patch, in
1370the Files menu).
a933dad1 1371
9dc15871
EZ
1372This works on most systems. There is speculation that the failure is
1373due to bugs in old versions of X toolkit libraries, but no one really
1374knows. If someone debugs this and finds the precise cause, perhaps a
1375workaround can be found.
a933dad1 1376
9dc15871
EZ
1377*** An error message such as `X protocol error: BadMatch (invalid
1378parameter attributes) on protocol request 93'.
b5cb4652 1379
9dc15871
EZ
1380This comes from having an invalid X resource, such as
1381 emacs*Cursor: black
1382(which is invalid because it specifies a color name for something
1383that isn't a color.)
b5cb4652 1384
9dc15871 1385The fix is to correct your X resources.
a933dad1 1386
9dc15871 1387*** Slow startup on X11R6 with X windows.
a933dad1 1388
9dc15871
EZ
1389If Emacs takes two minutes to start up on X11R6, see if your X
1390resources specify any Adobe fonts. That causes the type-1 font
1391renderer to start up, even if the font you asked for is not a type-1
1392font.
a933dad1 1393
9dc15871
EZ
1394One way to avoid this problem is to eliminate the type-1 fonts from
1395your font path, like this:
a933dad1 1396
9dc15871 1397 xset -fp /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/
a933dad1 1398
9dc15871 1399*** Pull-down menus appear in the wrong place, in the toolkit version of Emacs.
a933dad1 1400
9dc15871 1401An X resource of this form can cause the problem:
a933dad1 1402
9dc15871 1403 Emacs*geometry: 80x55+0+0
a933dad1 1404
9dc15871
EZ
1405This resource is supposed to apply, and does apply, to the menus
1406individually as well as to Emacs frames. If that is not what you
1407want, rewrite the resource.
3156909f 1408
9dc15871
EZ
1409To check thoroughly for such resource specifications, use `xrdb
1410-query' to see what resources the X server records, and also look at
1411the user's ~/.Xdefaults and ~/.Xdefaults-* files.
a933dad1 1412
9dc15871
EZ
1413*** Emacs running under X Windows does not handle mouse clicks.
1414*** `emacs -geometry 80x20' finds a file named `80x20'.
e96c5c69 1415
9dc15871
EZ
1416One cause of such problems is having (setq term-file-prefix nil) in
1417your .emacs file. Another cause is a bad value of EMACSLOADPATH in
1418the environment.
e96c5c69 1419
9dc15871 1420*** Emacs fails to get default settings from X Windows server.
a933dad1 1421
9dc15871
EZ
1422The X library in X11R4 has a bug; it interchanges the 2nd and 3rd
1423arguments to XGetDefaults. Define the macro XBACKWARDS in config.h to
1424tell Emacs to compensate for this.
a933dad1 1425
9dc15871
EZ
1426I don't believe there is any way Emacs can determine for itself
1427whether this problem is present on a given system.
a933dad1 1428
9dc15871 1429*** X Windows doesn't work if DISPLAY uses a hostname.
a933dad1 1430
9dc15871
EZ
1431People have reported kernel bugs in certain systems that cause Emacs
1432not to work with X Windows if DISPLAY is set using a host name. But
1433the problem does not occur if DISPLAY is set to `unix:0.0'. I think
1434the bug has to do with SIGIO or FIONREAD.
a933dad1 1435
9dc15871
EZ
1436You may be able to compensate for the bug by doing (set-input-mode nil nil).
1437However, that has the disadvantage of turning off interrupts, so that
1438you are unable to quit out of a Lisp program by typing C-g.
a933dad1 1439
9dc15871 1440The easy way to do this is to put
a933dad1 1441
9dc15871 1442 (setq x-sigio-bug t)
a933dad1 1443
9dc15871 1444in your site-init.el file.
a933dad1 1445
880ea925 1446* Runtime problems on character terminals
a933dad1 1447
9dc15871 1448** Emacs spontaneously displays "I-search: " at the bottom of the screen.
a933dad1 1449
9dc15871
EZ
1450This means that Control-S/Control-Q (XON/XOFF) "flow control" is being
1451used. C-s/C-q flow control is bad for Emacs editors because it takes
1452away C-s and C-q as user commands. Since editors do not output long
1453streams of text without user commands, there is no need for a
1454user-issuable "stop output" command in an editor; therefore, a
1455properly designed flow control mechanism would transmit all possible
1456input characters without interference. Designing such a mechanism is
1457easy, for a person with at least half a brain.
a933dad1 1458
9dc15871 1459There are three possible reasons why flow control could be taking place:
a933dad1 1460
9dc15871
EZ
1461 1) Terminal has not been told to disable flow control
1462 2) Insufficient padding for the terminal in use
1463 3) Some sort of terminal concentrator or line switch is responsible
a933dad1 1464
9dc15871
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1465First of all, many terminals have a set-up mode which controls whether
1466they generate XON/XOFF flow control characters. This must be set to
1467"no XON/XOFF" in order for Emacs to work. Sometimes there is an
1468escape sequence that the computer can send to turn flow control off
1469and on. If so, perhaps the termcap `ti' string should turn flow
1470control off, and the `te' string should turn it on.
a933dad1 1471
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1472Once the terminal has been told "no flow control", you may find it
1473needs more padding. The amount of padding Emacs sends is controlled
1474by the termcap entry for the terminal in use, and by the output baud
1475rate as known by the kernel. The shell command `stty' will print
1476your output baud rate; `stty' with suitable arguments will set it if
1477it is wrong. Setting to a higher speed causes increased padding. If
1478the results are wrong for the correct speed, there is probably a
1479problem in the termcap entry. You must speak to a local Unix wizard
1480to fix this. Perhaps you are just using the wrong terminal type.
a933dad1 1481
9dc15871
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1482For terminals that lack a "no flow control" mode, sometimes just
1483giving lots of padding will prevent actual generation of flow control
1484codes. You might as well try it.
a933dad1 1485
9dc15871
EZ
1486If you are really unlucky, your terminal is connected to the computer
1487through a concentrator which sends XON/XOFF flow control to the
1488computer, or it insists on sending flow control itself no matter how
1489much padding you give it. Unless you can figure out how to turn flow
1490control off on this concentrator (again, refer to your local wizard),
1491you are screwed! You should have the terminal or concentrator
1492replaced with a properly designed one. In the mean time, some drastic
1493measures can make Emacs semi-work.
4c635a29 1494
9dc15871
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1495You can make Emacs ignore C-s and C-q and let the operating system
1496handle them. To do this on a per-session basis, just type M-x
1497enable-flow-control RET. You will see a message that C-\ and C-^ are
1498now translated to C-s and C-q. (Use the same command M-x
1499enable-flow-control to turn *off* this special mode. It toggles flow
1500control handling.)
a933dad1 1501
9dc15871
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1502If C-\ and C-^ are inconvenient for you (for example, if one of them
1503is the escape character of your terminal concentrator), you can choose
1504other characters by setting the variables flow-control-c-s-replacement
1505and flow-control-c-q-replacement. But choose carefully, since all
1506other control characters are already used by emacs.
a933dad1 1507
9dc15871
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1508IMPORTANT: if you type C-s by accident while flow control is enabled,
1509Emacs output will freeze, and you will have to remember to type C-q in
1510order to continue.
a933dad1 1511
9dc15871
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1512If you work in an environment where a majority of terminals of a
1513certain type are flow control hobbled, you can use the function
1514`enable-flow-control-on' to turn on this flow control avoidance scheme
1515automatically. Here is an example:
a933dad1 1516
9dc15871 1517(enable-flow-control-on "vt200" "vt300" "vt101" "vt131")
a933dad1 1518
9dc15871
EZ
1519If this isn't quite correct (e.g. you have a mixture of flow-control hobbled
1520and good vt200 terminals), you can still run enable-flow-control
1521manually.
a933dad1 1522
9dc15871
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1523I have no intention of ever redesigning the Emacs command set for the
1524assumption that terminals use C-s/C-q flow control. XON/XOFF flow
1525control technique is a bad design, and terminals that need it are bad
1526merchandise and should not be purchased. Now that X is becoming
1527widespread, XON/XOFF seems to be on the way out. If you can get some
1528use out of GNU Emacs on inferior terminals, more power to you, but I
1529will not make Emacs worse for properly designed systems for the sake
1530of inferior systems.
a933dad1 1531
9dc15871 1532** Control-S and Control-Q commands are ignored completely.
a933dad1 1533
9dc15871
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1534For some reason, your system is using brain-damaged C-s/C-q flow
1535control despite Emacs's attempts to turn it off. Perhaps your
1536terminal is connected to the computer through a concentrator
1537that wants to use flow control.
a933dad1 1538
9dc15871
EZ
1539You should first try to tell the concentrator not to use flow control.
1540If you succeed in this, try making the terminal work without
1541flow control, as described in the preceding section.
a933dad1 1542
9dc15871
EZ
1543If that line of approach is not successful, map some other characters
1544into C-s and C-q using keyboard-translate-table. The example above
1545shows how to do this with C-^ and C-\.
a933dad1 1546
9dc15871 1547** Screen is updated wrong, but only on one kind of terminal.
a933dad1 1548
9dc15871
EZ
1549This could mean that the termcap entry you are using for that
1550terminal is wrong, or it could mean that Emacs has a bug handing
1551the combination of features specified for that terminal.
a933dad1 1552
9dc15871
EZ
1553The first step in tracking this down is to record what characters
1554Emacs is sending to the terminal. Execute the Lisp expression
1555(open-termscript "./emacs-script") to make Emacs write all
1556terminal output into the file ~/emacs-script as well; then do
1557what makes the screen update wrong, and look at the file
1558and decode the characters using the manual for the terminal.
1559There are several possibilities:
a933dad1 1560
9dc15871 15611) The characters sent are correct, according to the terminal manual.
a933dad1 1562
9dc15871
EZ
1563In this case, there is no obvious bug in Emacs, and most likely you
1564need more padding, or possibly the terminal manual is wrong.
a933dad1 1565
9dc15871
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15662) The characters sent are incorrect, due to an obscure aspect
1567 of the terminal behavior not described in an obvious way
1568 by termcap.
a933dad1 1569
9dc15871
EZ
1570This case is hard. It will be necessary to think of a way for
1571Emacs to distinguish between terminals with this kind of behavior
1572and other terminals that behave subtly differently but are
1573classified the same by termcap; or else find an algorithm for
1574Emacs to use that avoids the difference. Such changes must be
1575tested on many kinds of terminals.
a933dad1 1576
9dc15871 15773) The termcap entry is wrong.
a933dad1 1578
9dc15871
EZ
1579See the file etc/TERMS for information on changes
1580that are known to be needed in commonly used termcap entries
1581for certain terminals.
a933dad1 1582
9dc15871
EZ
15834) The characters sent are incorrect, and clearly cannot be
1584 right for any terminal with the termcap entry you were using.
a933dad1 1585
9dc15871
EZ
1586This is unambiguously an Emacs bug, and can probably be fixed
1587in termcap.c, tparam.c, term.c, scroll.c, cm.c or dispnew.c.
a933dad1 1588
9dc15871 1589** Control-S and Control-Q commands are ignored completely on a net connection.
a933dad1 1590
9dc15871
EZ
1591Some versions of rlogin (and possibly telnet) do not pass flow
1592control characters to the remote system to which they connect.
1593On such systems, emacs on the remote system cannot disable flow
1594control on the local system.
a933dad1 1595
9dc15871
EZ
1596One way to cure this is to disable flow control on the local host
1597(the one running rlogin, not the one running rlogind) using the
1598stty command, before starting the rlogin process. On many systems,
1599"stty start u stop u" will do this.
a933dad1 1600
9dc15871
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1601Some versions of tcsh will prevent even this from working. One way
1602around this is to start another shell before starting rlogin, and
1603issue the stty command to disable flow control from that shell.
a933dad1 1604
9dc15871
EZ
1605If none of these methods work, the best solution is to type
1606M-x enable-flow-control at the beginning of your emacs session, or
1607if you expect the problem to continue, add a line such as the
1608following to your .emacs (on the host running rlogind):
a933dad1 1609
9dc15871 1610(enable-flow-control-on "vt200" "vt300" "vt101" "vt131")
a933dad1 1611
9dc15871
EZ
1612See the entry about spontaneous display of I-search (above) for more
1613info.
a933dad1 1614
9dc15871 1615** Output from Control-V is slow.
a933dad1 1616
9dc15871
EZ
1617On many bit-map terminals, scrolling operations are fairly slow.
1618Often the termcap entry for the type of terminal in use fails
1619to inform Emacs of this. The two lines at the bottom of the screen
1620before a Control-V command are supposed to appear at the top after
1621the Control-V command. If Emacs thinks scrolling the lines is fast,
1622it will scroll them to the top of the screen.
a933dad1 1623
9dc15871
EZ
1624If scrolling is slow but Emacs thinks it is fast, the usual reason is
1625that the termcap entry for the terminal you are using does not
1626specify any padding time for the `al' and `dl' strings. Emacs
1627concludes that these operations take only as much time as it takes to
1628send the commands at whatever line speed you are using. You must
1629fix the termcap entry to specify, for the `al' and `dl', as much
1630time as the operations really take.
a933dad1 1631
9dc15871
EZ
1632Currently Emacs thinks in terms of serial lines which send characters
1633at a fixed rate, so that any operation which takes time for the
1634terminal to execute must also be padded. With bit-map terminals
1635operated across networks, often the network provides some sort of
1636flow control so that padding is never needed no matter how slow
1637an operation is. You must still specify a padding time if you want
1638Emacs to realize that the operation takes a long time. This will
1639cause padding characters to be sent unnecessarily, but they do
1640not really cost much. They will be transmitted while the scrolling
1641is happening and then discarded quickly by the terminal.
a933dad1 1642
9dc15871
EZ
1643Most bit-map terminals provide commands for inserting or deleting
1644multiple lines at once. Define the `AL' and `DL' strings in the
1645termcap entry to say how to do these things, and you will have
1646fast output without wasted padding characters. These strings should
1647each contain a single %-spec saying how to send the number of lines
1648to be scrolled. These %-specs are like those in the termcap
1649`cm' string.
a933dad1 1650
9dc15871
EZ
1651You should also define the `IC' and `DC' strings if your terminal
1652has a command to insert or delete multiple characters. These
1653take the number of positions to insert or delete as an argument.
a933dad1 1654
9dc15871
EZ
1655A `cs' string to set the scrolling region will reduce the amount
1656of motion you see on the screen when part of the screen is scrolled.
a933dad1 1657
9dc15871 1658** You type Control-H (Backspace) expecting to delete characters.
a933dad1 1659
9dc15871
EZ
1660Put `stty dec' in your .login file and your problems will disappear
1661after a day or two.
a933dad1 1662
9dc15871
EZ
1663The choice of Backspace for erasure was based on confusion, caused by
1664the fact that backspacing causes erasure (later, when you type another
1665character) on most display terminals. But it is a mistake. Deletion
1666of text is not the same thing as backspacing followed by failure to
1667overprint. I do not wish to propagate this confusion by conforming
1668to it.
a933dad1 1669
9dc15871
EZ
1670For this reason, I believe `stty dec' is the right mode to use,
1671and I have designed Emacs to go with that. If there were a thousand
1672other control characters, I would define Control-h to delete as well;
1673but there are not very many other control characters, and I think
1674that providing the most mnemonic possible Help character is more
1675important than adapting to people who don't use `stty dec'.
a933dad1 1676
9dc15871
EZ
1677If you are obstinate about confusing buggy overprinting with deletion,
1678you can redefine Backspace in your .emacs file:
1679 (global-set-key "\b" 'delete-backward-char)
1680You can probably access help-command via f1.
a933dad1 1681
9dc15871 1682** Colors are not available on a tty or in xterm.
a933dad1 1683
9dc15871
EZ
1684Emacs 21 supports colors on character terminals and terminal
1685emulators, but this support relies on the terminfo or termcap database
1686entry to specify that the display supports color. Emacs looks at the
1687"Co" capability for the terminal to find out how many colors are
1688supported; it should be non-zero to activate the color support within
1689Emacs. (Most color terminals support 8 or 16 colors.) If your system
1690uses terminfo, the name of the capability equivalent to "Co" is
1691"colors".
a933dad1 1692
9dc15871
EZ
1693In addition to the "Co" capability, Emacs needs the "op" (for
1694``original pair'') capability, which tells how to switch the terminal
1695back to the default foreground and background colors. Emacs will not
1696use colors if this capability is not defined. If your terminal entry
1697doesn't provide such a capability, try using the ANSI standard escape
1698sequence \E[00m (that is, define a new termcap/terminfo entry and make
1699it use your current terminal's entry plus \E[00m for the "op"
1700capability).
a933dad1 1701
9dc15871
EZ
1702Finally, the "NC" capability (terminfo name: "ncv") tells Emacs which
1703attributes cannot be used with colors. Setting this capability
1704incorrectly might have the effect of disabling colors; try setting
1705this capability to `0' (zero) and see if that helps.
a933dad1 1706
9dc15871
EZ
1707Emacs uses the database entry for the terminal whose name is the value
1708of the environment variable TERM. With `xterm', a common terminal
1709entry that supports color is `xterm-color', so setting TERM's value to
1710`xterm-color' might activate the color support on an xterm-compatible
1711emulator.
a933dad1 1712
bf247b6e 1713Beginning with version 22.1, Emacs supports the --color command-line
9dc15871
EZ
1714option which may be used to force Emacs to use one of a few popular
1715modes for getting colors on a tty. For example, --color=ansi8 sets up
1716for using the ANSI-standard escape sequences that support 8 colors.
a933dad1 1717
9dc15871
EZ
1718Some modes do not use colors unless you turn on the Font-lock mode.
1719Some people have long ago set their `~/.emacs' files to turn on
1720Font-lock on X only, so they won't see colors on a tty. The
1721recommended way of turning on Font-lock is by typing "M-x
1722global-font-lock-mode RET" or by customizing the variable
1723`global-font-lock-mode'.
a933dad1 1724
9dc15871 1725* Runtime problems specific to individual Unix variants
f1e54ce1 1726
9dc15871 1727** GNU/Linux
f1e54ce1 1728
f77e4514
KS
1729*** GNU/Linux: Process output is corrupted.
1730
1731There is a bug in Linux kernel 2.6.10 PTYs that can cause emacs to
1732read corrupted process output.
1733
1734*** GNU/Linux: Remote access to CVS with SSH causes file corruption.
1735
1736If you access a remote CVS repository via SSH, files may be corrupted
1737due to bad interaction between CVS, SSH, and libc.
1738
1739To fix the problem, save the following script into a file, make it
1740executable, and set CVS_RSH environment variable to the file name of
1741the script:
1742
1743#!/bin/bash
1744exec 2> >(exec cat >&2 2>/dev/null)
1745exec ssh "$@"
1746
9dc15871
EZ
1747*** GNU/Linux: On Linux-based GNU systems using libc versions 5.4.19 through
17485.4.22, Emacs crashes at startup with a segmentation fault.
a933dad1 1749
9dc15871
EZ
1750This problem happens if libc defines the symbol __malloc_initialized.
1751One known solution is to upgrade to a newer libc version. 5.4.33 is
1752known to work.
a933dad1 1753
9dc15871
EZ
1754*** GNU/Linux: After upgrading to a newer version of Emacs,
1755the Meta key stops working.
a01325b8 1756
9dc15871
EZ
1757This was reported to happen on a GNU/Linux system distributed by
1758Mandrake. The reason is that the previous version of Emacs was
1759modified by Mandrake to make the Alt key act as the Meta key, on a
1760keyboard where the Windows key is the one which produces the Meta
1761modifier. A user who started using a newer version of Emacs, which
1762was not hacked by Mandrake, expected the Alt key to continue to act as
1763Meta, and was astonished when that didn't happen.
a01325b8 1764
9dc15871
EZ
1765The solution is to find out what key on your keyboard produces the Meta
1766modifier, and use that key instead. Try all of the keys to the left
1767and to the right of the space bar, together with the `x' key, and see
1768which combination produces "M-x" in the echo area. You can also use
1769the `xmodmap' utility to show all the keys which produce a Meta
1770modifier:
a933dad1 1771
9dc15871 1772 xmodmap -pk | egrep -i "meta|alt"
a933dad1 1773
9dc15871
EZ
1774A more convenient way of finding out which keys produce a Meta modifier
1775is to use the `xkbprint' utility, if it's available on your system:
a01325b8 1776
9dc15871 1777 xkbprint 0:0 /tmp/k.ps
a933dad1 1778
9dc15871
EZ
1779This produces a PostScript file `/tmp/k.ps' with a picture of your
1780keyboard; printing that file on a PostScript printer will show what
1781keys can serve as Meta.
a933dad1 1782
9dc15871
EZ
1783The `xkeycaps' also shows a visual representation of the current
1784keyboard settings. It also allows to modify them.
a933dad1 1785
ff3e9dbc 1786*** GNU/Linux: slow startup on Linux-based GNU systems.
a933dad1 1787
9dc15871
EZ
1788People using systems based on the Linux kernel sometimes report that
1789startup takes 10 to 15 seconds longer than `usual'.
a933dad1 1790
9dc15871
EZ
1791This is because Emacs looks up the host name when it starts.
1792Normally, this takes negligible time; the extra delay is due to
1793improper system configuration. This problem can occur for both
1794networked and non-networked machines.
a933dad1 1795
9dc15871 1796Here is how to fix the configuration. It requires being root.
a933dad1 1797
9dc15871 1798**** Networked Case.
a933dad1 1799
9dc15871
EZ
1800First, make sure the files `/etc/hosts' and `/etc/host.conf' both
1801exist. The first line in the `/etc/hosts' file should look like this
1802(replace HOSTNAME with your host name):
a933dad1 1803
9dc15871 1804 127.0.0.1 HOSTNAME
a933dad1 1805
9dc15871
EZ
1806Also make sure that the `/etc/host.conf' files contains the following
1807lines:
1dd8b979 1808
9dc15871
EZ
1809 order hosts, bind
1810 multi on
10a763e5 1811
9dc15871
EZ
1812Any changes, permanent and temporary, to the host name should be
1813indicated in the `/etc/hosts' file, since it acts a limited local
1814database of addresses and names (e.g., some SLIP connections
1815dynamically allocate ip addresses).
1dd8b979 1816
9dc15871 1817**** Non-Networked Case.
a933dad1 1818
9dc15871
EZ
1819The solution described in the networked case applies here as well.
1820However, if you never intend to network your machine, you can use a
1821simpler solution: create an empty `/etc/host.conf' file. The command
1822`touch /etc/host.conf' suffices to create the file. The `/etc/hosts'
1823file is not necessary with this approach.
a933dad1 1824
9dc15871 1825*** GNU/Linux: Emacs on a tty switches the cursor to large blinking block.
a933dad1 1826
9dc15871
EZ
1827This was reported to happen on some GNU/Linux systems which use
1828ncurses version 5.0, but could be relevant for other versions as well.
1829These versions of ncurses come with a `linux' terminfo entry, where
1830the "cvvis" capability (termcap "vs") is defined as "\E[?25h\E[?8c"
1831(show cursor, change size). This escape sequence switches on a
1832blinking hardware text-mode cursor whose size is a full character
1833cell. This blinking cannot be stopped, since a hardware cursor
1834always blinks.
3d00585e 1835
9dc15871
EZ
1836A work-around is to redefine the "cvvis" capability so that it
1837enables a *software* cursor. The software cursor works by inverting
1838the colors of the character at point, so what you see is a block
1839cursor that doesn't blink. For this to work, you need to redefine
1840the "cnorm" capability as well, so that it operates on the software
1841cursor instead of the hardware cursor.
3d00585e 1842
9dc15871
EZ
1843To this end, run "infocmp linux > linux-term", edit the file
1844`linux-term' to make both the "cnorm" and "cvvis" capabilities send
1845the sequence "\E[?25h\E[?17;0;64c", and then run "tic linux-term" to
1846produce a modified terminfo entry.
3d00585e 1847
9dc15871
EZ
1848Alternatively, if you want a blinking underscore as your Emacs cursor,
1849change the "cvvis" capability to send the "\E[?25h\E[?0c" command.
a933dad1 1850
9dc15871 1851*** GNU/Linux: Error messages `internal facep []' happen on GNU/Linux systems.
a933dad1
DL
1852
1853There is a report that replacing libc.so.5.0.9 with libc.so.5.2.16
1854caused this to start happening. People are not sure why, but the
1855problem seems unlikely to be in Emacs itself. Some suspect that it
1856is actually Xlib which won't work with libc.so.5.2.16.
1857
1858Using the old library version is a workaround.
1859
9dc15871 1860** Mac OS X
a933dad1 1861
9dc15871 1862*** Mac OS X (Carbon): Environment Variables from dotfiles are ignored.
a933dad1 1863
9dc15871
EZ
1864When starting Emacs from the Dock or the Finder on Mac OS X, the
1865environment variables that are set up in dotfiles, such as .cshrc or
1866.profile, are ignored. This is because the Finder and Dock are not
1867started from a shell, but instead from the Window Manager itself.
a933dad1 1868
9dc15871
EZ
1869The workaround for this is to create a .MacOSX/environment.plist file to
1870setup these environment variables. These environment variables will
1871apply to all processes regardless of where they are started.
1872For me information, see http://developer.apple.com/qa/qa2001/qa1067.html.
a933dad1 1873
9dc15871 1874*** Mac OS X (Carbon): Process output truncated when using ptys.
a933dad1 1875
9dc15871
EZ
1876There appears to be a problem with the implementation of pty's on the
1877Mac OS X that causes process output to be truncated. To avoid this,
1878leave process-connection-type set to its default value of nil.
a933dad1 1879
4b340319
YM
1880*** Mac OS X 10.3.9 (Carbon): QuickTime updater breaks build.
1881
1882Some QuickTime updaters such as 7.0.4 and 7.2.0 are known to break
1883build at the link stage with the message like "Undefined symbols:
1884_HICopyAccessibilityActionDescription referenced from QuickTime
1885expected to be defined in Carbon". A workaround is to use a QuickTime
1886reinstaller. Alternatively, you can link with the frameworks in the
1887corresponding SDK by specifying LDFLAGS as
1888"-Wl,-F/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.3.0.sdk/System/Library/Frameworks".
e9452469 1889
9dc15871 1890** FreeBSD
a933dad1 1891
9dc15871
EZ
1892*** FreeBSD 2.1.5: useless symbolic links remain in /tmp or other
1893directories that have the +t bit.
a933dad1 1894
9dc15871
EZ
1895This is because of a kernel bug in FreeBSD 2.1.5 (fixed in 2.2).
1896Emacs uses symbolic links to implement file locks. In a directory
1897with +t bit, the directory owner becomes the owner of the symbolic
1898link, so that it cannot be removed by anyone else.
a933dad1 1899
9dc15871
EZ
1900If you don't like those useless links, you can let Emacs not to using
1901file lock by adding #undef CLASH_DETECTION to config.h.
a933dad1 1902
9dc15871 1903*** FreeBSD: Getting a Meta key on the console.
a933dad1 1904
9dc15871
EZ
1905By default, neither Alt nor any other key acts as a Meta key on
1906FreeBSD, but this can be changed using kbdcontrol(1). Dump the
1907current keymap to a file with the command
a933dad1 1908
9dc15871 1909 $ kbdcontrol -d >emacs.kbd
a933dad1 1910
9dc15871
EZ
1911Edit emacs.kbd, and give the key you want to be the Meta key the
1912definition `meta'. For instance, if your keyboard has a ``Windows''
1913key with scan code 105, change the line for scan code 105 in emacs.kbd
1914to look like this
a933dad1 1915
9dc15871 1916 105 meta meta meta meta meta meta meta meta O
a933dad1 1917
9dc15871 1918to make the Windows key the Meta key. Load the new keymap with
a933dad1 1919
9dc15871 1920 $ kbdcontrol -l emacs.kbd
a933dad1 1921
9dc15871 1922** HP-UX
a933dad1 1923
9dc15871 1924*** HP/UX : Shell mode gives the message, "`tty`: Ambiguous".
a933dad1 1925
9dc15871 1926christos@theory.tn.cornell.edu says:
a933dad1 1927
9dc15871
EZ
1928The problem is that in your .cshrc you have something that tries to
1929execute `tty`. If you are not running the shell on a real tty then
1930tty will print "not a tty". Csh expects one word in some places,
1931but tty is giving it back 3.
a933dad1 1932
9dc15871
EZ
1933The solution is to add a pair of quotes around `tty` to make it a single
1934word:
a933dad1 1935
9dc15871 1936if (`tty` == "/dev/console")
a933dad1 1937
9dc15871 1938should be changed to:
a933dad1 1939
9dc15871 1940if ("`tty`" == "/dev/console")
a933dad1 1941
9dc15871
EZ
1942Even better, move things that set up terminal sections out of .cshrc
1943and into .login.
a933dad1 1944
9dc15871 1945*** HP/UX: `Pid xxx killed due to text modification or page I/O error'.
a933dad1 1946
9dc15871
EZ
1947On HP/UX, you can get that error when the Emacs executable is on an NFS
1948file system. HP/UX responds this way if it tries to swap in a page and
1949does not get a response from the server within a timeout whose default
1950value is just ten seconds.
a933dad1 1951
9dc15871 1952If this happens to you, extend the timeout period.
a933dad1 1953
9dc15871
EZ
1954*** HP/UX: The right Alt key works wrong on German HP keyboards (and perhaps
1955other non-English HP keyboards too).
a933dad1 1956
9dc15871
EZ
1957This is because HP-UX defines the modifiers wrong in X. Here is a
1958shell script to fix the problem; be sure that it is run after VUE
1959configures the X server.
a933dad1 1960
9dc15871
EZ
1961 xmodmap 2> /dev/null - << EOF
1962 keysym Alt_L = Meta_L
1963 keysym Alt_R = Meta_R
1964 EOF
a933dad1 1965
9dc15871
EZ
1966 xmodmap - << EOF
1967 clear mod1
1968 keysym Mode_switch = NoSymbol
1969 add mod1 = Meta_L
1970 keysym Meta_R = Mode_switch
1971 add mod2 = Mode_switch
1972 EOF
a933dad1 1973
9dc15871
EZ
1974*** HP/UX: "Cannot find callback list" messages from dialog boxes in
1975Emacs built with Motif.
a933dad1 1976
9dc15871
EZ
1977This problem resulted from a bug in GCC 2.4.5. Newer GCC versions
1978such as 2.7.0 fix the problem.
a933dad1 1979
9dc15871 1980*** HP/UX: Emacs does not recognize the AltGr key.
a933dad1 1981
9dc15871
EZ
1982To fix this, set up a file ~/.dt/sessions/sessionetc with executable
1983rights, containing this text:
a933dad1 1984
9dc15871
EZ
1985--------------------------------
1986xmodmap 2> /dev/null - << EOF
1987keysym Alt_L = Meta_L
1988keysym Alt_R = Meta_R
1989EOF
a933dad1 1990
9dc15871
EZ
1991xmodmap - << EOF
1992clear mod1
1993keysym Mode_switch = NoSymbol
1994add mod1 = Meta_L
1995keysym Meta_R = Mode_switch
1996add mod2 = Mode_switch
1997EOF
1998--------------------------------
a933dad1 1999
9dc15871 2000*** HP/UX 11.0: Emacs makes HP/UX 11.0 crash.
a933dad1 2001
9dc15871 2002This is a bug in HPUX; HPUX patch PHKL_16260 is said to fix it.
a933dad1 2003
9dc15871 2004** AIX
a933dad1 2005
9dc15871 2006*** AIX: Trouble using ptys.
a933dad1 2007
9dc15871
EZ
2008People often install the pty devices on AIX incorrectly.
2009Use `smit pty' to reinstall them properly.
a933dad1 2010
9dc15871 2011*** AIXterm: Your Delete key sends a Backspace to the terminal.
a933dad1 2012
9dc15871 2013The solution is to include in your .Xdefaults the lines:
a933dad1 2014
9dc15871
EZ
2015 *aixterm.Translations: #override <Key>BackSpace: string(0x7f)
2016 aixterm*ttyModes: erase ^?
a933dad1 2017
9dc15871 2018This makes your Backspace key send DEL (ASCII 127).
a933dad1 2019
9dc15871
EZ
2020*** AIX: If linking fails because libXbsd isn't found, check if you
2021are compiling with the system's `cc' and CFLAGS containing `-O5'. If
2022so, you have hit a compiler bug. Please make sure to re-configure
2023Emacs so that it isn't compiled with `-O5'.
a933dad1 2024
9dc15871 2025*** AIX 4.3.x or 4.4: Compiling fails.
a933dad1 2026
9dc15871
EZ
2027This could happen if you use /bin/c89 as your compiler, instead of
2028the default `cc'. /bin/c89 treats certain warnings, such as benign
2029redefinitions of macros, as errors, and fails the build. A solution
2030is to use the default compiler `cc'.
a933dad1 2031
9dc15871
EZ
2032*** AIX 4: Some programs fail when run in a Shell buffer
2033with an error message like No terminfo entry for "unknown".
a933dad1 2034
9dc15871
EZ
2035On AIX, many terminal type definitions are not installed by default.
2036`unknown' is one of them. Install the "Special Generic Terminal
2037Definitions" to make them defined.
a933dad1 2038
9dc15871 2039** Solaris
a933dad1 2040
9dc15871
EZ
2041We list bugs in current versions here. Solaris 2.x and 4.x are covered in the
2042section on legacy systems.
a933dad1 2043
9dc15871 2044*** On Solaris, C-x doesn't get through to Emacs when you use the console.
a933dad1 2045
9dc15871
EZ
2046This is a Solaris feature (at least on Intel x86 cpus). Type C-r
2047C-r C-t, to toggle whether C-x gets through to Emacs.
a933dad1 2048
9dc15871 2049*** Problem with remote X server on Suns.
a933dad1 2050
9dc15871
EZ
2051On a Sun, running Emacs on one machine with the X server on another
2052may not work if you have used the unshared system libraries. This
2053is because the unshared libraries fail to use YP for host name lookup.
2054As a result, the host name you specify may not be recognized.
a933dad1 2055
0a4dd4e4 2056*** Solaris 2,6: Emacs crashes with SIGBUS or SIGSEGV on Solaris after you delete a frame.
a933dad1 2057
0a4dd4e4
EZ
2058We suspect that this is a bug in the X libraries provided by
2059Sun. There is a report that one of these patches fixes the bug and
2060makes the problem stop:
a933dad1 2061
0a4dd4e4
EZ
2062105216-01 105393-01 105518-01 105621-01 105665-01 105615-02 105216-02
2063105667-01 105401-08 105615-03 105621-02 105686-02 105736-01 105755-03
2064106033-01 105379-01 105786-01 105181-04 105379-03 105786-04 105845-01
2065105284-05 105669-02 105837-01 105837-02 105558-01 106125-02 105407-01
a933dad1 2066
0a4dd4e4
EZ
2067Another person using a newer system (kernel patch level Generic_105181-06)
2068suspects that the bug was fixed by one of these more recent patches:
a933dad1 2069
0a4dd4e4
EZ
2070106040-07 SunOS 5.6: X Input & Output Method patch
2071106222-01 OpenWindows 3.6: filemgr (ff.core) fixes
2072105284-12 Motif 1.2.7: sparc Runtime library patch
a933dad1 2073
0a4dd4e4 2074*** Solaris 7 or 8: Emacs reports a BadAtom error (from X)
a933dad1 2075
0a4dd4e4
EZ
2076This happens when Emacs was built on some other version of Solaris.
2077Rebuild it on Solaris 8.
a933dad1 2078
9dc15871
EZ
2079*** When using M-x dbx with the SparcWorks debugger, the `up' and `down'
2080commands do not move the arrow in Emacs.
a933dad1 2081
9dc15871 2082You can fix this by adding the following line to `~/.dbxinit':
a933dad1 2083
9dc15871 2084 dbxenv output_short_file_name off
a933dad1 2085
0a4dd4e4
EZ
2086*** On Solaris, CTRL-t is ignored by Emacs when you use
2087the fr.ISO-8859-15 locale (and maybe other related locales).
a933dad1 2088
0a4dd4e4 2089You can fix this by editing the file:
a933dad1 2090
0a4dd4e4 2091 /usr/openwin/lib/locale/iso8859-15/Compose
a933dad1 2092
0a4dd4e4 2093Near the bottom there is a line that reads:
a933dad1 2094
0a4dd4e4 2095 Ctrl<t> <quotedbl> <Y> : "\276" threequarters
a933dad1 2096
0a4dd4e4 2097that should read:
a933dad1 2098
0a4dd4e4 2099 Ctrl<T> <quotedbl> <Y> : "\276" threequarters
a933dad1 2100
0a4dd4e4 2101Note the lower case <t>. Changing this line should make C-t work.
a933dad1 2102
0a4dd4e4 2103** Irix
a933dad1 2104
9dc15871 2105*** Irix 6.5: Emacs crashes on the SGI R10K, when compiled with GCC.
a933dad1 2106
9dc15871 2107This seems to be fixed in GCC 2.95.
a933dad1 2108
0a4dd4e4 2109*** Irix: Trouble using ptys, or running out of ptys.
a933dad1 2110
9dc15871
EZ
2111The program mkpts (which may be in `/usr/adm' or `/usr/sbin') needs to
2112be set-UID to root, or non-root programs like Emacs will not be able
2113to allocate ptys reliably.
a933dad1 2114
9dc15871 2115* Runtime problems specific to MS-Windows
a933dad1 2116
ade79051
KS
2117** Windows 95 and networking.
2118
2119To support server sockets, Emacs 22.1 loads ws2_32.dll. If this file
2120is missing, all Emacs networking features are disabled.
2121
2122Old versions of Windows 95 may not have the required DLL. To use
2123Emacs' networking features on Windows 95, you must install the
2124"Windows Socket 2" update available from MicroSoft's support Web.
2125
9dc15871 2126** Emacs exits with "X protocol error" when run with an X server for MS-Windows.
a933dad1 2127
9dc15871
EZ
2128A certain X server for Windows had a bug which caused this.
2129Supposedly the newer 32-bit version of this server doesn't have the
2130problem.
177c0ea7 2131
de66e883
JR
2132** Known problems with the MS-Windows port of Emacs 22.1
2133
2134Using create-fontset-from-ascii-font or the --font startup parameter
2135with a Chinese, Japanese or Korean font leads to display problems.
2136Use a Latin-only font as your default font. If you want control over
2137which font is used to display Chinese, Japanese or Korean character,
2138use create-fontset-from-fontset-spec to define a fontset.
a933dad1 2139
9dc15871
EZ
2140Frames are not refreshed while the File or Font dialog or a pop-up menu
2141is displayed. This also means help text for pop-up menus is not
2142displayed at all. This is because message handling under Windows is
2143synchronous, so we cannot handle repaint (or any other) messages while
2144waiting for a system function to return the result of the dialog or
2145pop-up menu interaction.
a933dad1 2146
9dc15871
EZ
2147Windows 95 and Windows NT up to version 4.0 do not support help text
2148for menus. Help text is only available in later versions of Windows.
a933dad1 2149
af71f3ce
EZ
2150When "ClearType" method is selected as the "method to smooth edges of
2151screen fonts" (in Display Properties, Appearance tab, under
2152"Effects"), there are various problems related to display of
2153characters: 2-pixel trace is left behind when moving overlays, bold
2154fonts can be hard to read, small portions of some characters could
2155appear chopped, etc. This happens because, under ClearType,
2156characters are drawn outside their advertised bounding box. Emacs 21
2157disabled the use of ClearType, whereas Emacs 22 allows it and has some
2158code to enlarge the width of the bounding box. Apparently, this
2159display feature needs more changes to get it 100% right. A workaround
2160is to disable ClearType.
2161
9dc15871
EZ
2162There are problems with display if mouse-tracking is enabled and the
2163mouse is moved off a frame, over another frame then back over the first
2164frame. A workaround is to click the left mouse button inside the frame
2165after moving back into it.
a933dad1 2166
9dc15871
EZ
2167Some minor flickering still persists during mouse-tracking, although
2168not as severely as in 21.1.
a933dad1 2169
9dc15871
EZ
2170An inactive cursor remains in an active window after the Windows
2171Manager driven switch of the focus, until a key is pressed.
a933dad1 2172
4ed1bce5 2173Windows input methods are not recognized by Emacs. However, some
9dc15871
EZ
2174of these input methods cause the keyboard to send characters encoded
2175in the appropriate coding system (e.g., ISO 8859-1 for Latin-1
4ed1bce5
EZ
2176characters, ISO 8859-8 for Hebrew characters, etc.). To make these
2177input methods work with Emacs, set the keyboard coding system to the
2178appropriate value after you activate the Windows input method. For
2179example, if you activate the Hebrew input method, type this:
2180
2181 C-x RET k hebrew-iso-8bit RET
2182
2183(Emacs ought to recognize the Windows language-change event and set up
2184the appropriate keyboard encoding automatically, but it doesn't do
2185that yet.) In addition, to use these Windows input methods, you
2186should set your "Language for non-Unicode programs" (on Windows XP,
2187this is on the Advanced tab of Regional Settings) to the language of
2188the input method.
a933dad1 2189
868c31fe
EZ
2190To bind keys that produce non-ASCII characters with modifiers, you
2191must specify raw byte codes. For instance, if you want to bind
2192META-a-grave to a command, you need to specify this in your `~/.emacs':
2193
2194 (global-set-key [?\M-\340] ...)
2195
2196The above example is for the Latin-1 environment where the byte code
2197of the encoded a-grave is 340 octal. For other environments, use the
2198encoding appropriate to that environment.
a933dad1 2199
9dc15871
EZ
2200The %b specifier for format-time-string does not produce abbreviated
2201month names with consistent widths for some locales on some versions
2202of Windows. This is caused by a deficiency in the underlying system
2203library function.
a933dad1 2204
cdc9f5c2
JR
2205The function set-time-zone-rule gives incorrect results for many
2206non-US timezones. This is due to over-simplistic handling of
2207daylight savings switchovers by the Windows libraries.
9f1bc31f 2208
365b9257
EZ
2209Files larger than 4GB cause overflow in the size (represented as a
221032-bit integer) reported by `file-attributes'. This affects Dired as
2211well, since the Windows port uses a Lisp emulation of `ls' that relies
2212on `file-attributes'.
2213
56dc0646
EZ
2214Sound playing is not supported with the `:data DATA' key-value pair.
2215You _must_ use the `:file FILE' method.
2216
0a4dd4e4 2217** Typing Alt-Shift has strange effects on MS-Windows.
a933dad1 2218
0a4dd4e4
EZ
2219This combination of keys is a command to change keyboard layout. If
2220you proceed to type another non-modifier key before you let go of Alt
2221and Shift, the Alt and Shift act as modifiers in the usual way. A
2222more permanent work around is to change it to another key combination,
d169ccbd
EZ
2223or disable it in the "Regional and Language Options" applet of the
2224Control Panel. (The exact sequence of mouse clicks in the "Regional
2225and Language Options" applet needed to find the key combination that
2226changes the keyboard layout depends on your Windows version; for XP,
2227in the Languages tab, click "Details" and then "Key Settings".)
a933dad1 2228
651f8172
EZ
2229** Cygwin build of Emacs hangs after rebasing Cygwin DLLs
2230
2231Usually, on Cygwin, one needs to rebase the DLLs if an application
2232aborts with a message like this:
2233
2234 C:\cygwin\bin\python.exe: *** unable to remap C:\cygwin\bin\cygssl.dll to
2235 same address as parent(0xDF0000) != 0xE00000
2236
2237However, since Cygwin DLL 1.5.17 was released, after such rebasing,
2238Emacs hangs.
2239
2240This was reported to happen for Emacs 21.2 and also for the pretest of
2241Emacs 22.1 on Cygwin.
2242
2243To work around this, build Emacs like this:
2244
2245 LDFLAGS='-Wl,--enable-auto-import -Wl,--enable-auto-image-base' ./configure
2246 make LD='$(CC)'
2247 make LD='$(CC)' install
2248
2249This produces an Emacs binary that is independent of rebasing.
2250
2251Note that you _must_ use LD='$(CC)' in the last two commands above, to
2252prevent GCC from passing the "--image-base 0x20000000" option to the
2253linker, which is what it does by default. That option produces an
2254Emacs binary with the base address 0x20000000, which will cause Emacs
2255to hang after Cygwin DLLs are rebased.
2256
0a4dd4e4 2257** Interrupting Cygwin port of Bash from Emacs doesn't work.
a933dad1 2258
0a4dd4e4
EZ
2259Cygwin 1.x builds of the ported Bash cannot be interrupted from the
2260MS-Windows version of Emacs. This is due to some change in the Bash
2261port or in the Cygwin library which apparently make Bash ignore the
2262keyboard interrupt event sent by Emacs to Bash. (Older Cygwin ports
2263of Bash, up to b20.1, did receive SIGINT from Emacs.)
a933dad1 2264
0a4dd4e4 2265** Accessing remote files with ange-ftp hangs the MS-Windows version of Emacs.
a933dad1 2266
0a4dd4e4
EZ
2267If the FTP client is the Cygwin port of GNU `ftp', this appears to be
2268due to some bug in the Cygwin DLL or some incompatibility between it
2269and the implementation of asynchronous subprocesses in the Windows
2270port of Emacs. Specifically, some parts of the FTP server responses
2271are not flushed out, apparently due to buffering issues, which
2272confuses ange-ftp.
a933dad1 2273
0a4dd4e4
EZ
2274The solution is to downgrade to an older version of the Cygwin DLL
2275(version 1.3.2 was reported to solve the problem), or use the stock
2276Windows FTP client, usually found in the `C:\WINDOWS' or 'C:\WINNT'
2277directory. To force ange-ftp use the stock Windows client, set the
2278variable `ange-ftp-ftp-program-name' to the absolute file name of the
2279client's executable. For example:
a933dad1 2280
9dc15871 2281 (setq ange-ftp-ftp-program-name "c:/windows/ftp.exe")
a933dad1 2282
9dc15871
EZ
2283If you want to stick with the Cygwin FTP client, you can work around
2284this problem by putting this in your `.emacs' file:
a933dad1 2285
9dc15871 2286 (setq ange-ftp-ftp-program-args '("-i" "-n" "-g" "-v" "--prompt" "")
a933dad1 2287
9dc15871 2288** lpr commands don't work on MS-Windows with some cheap printers.
a933dad1 2289
9dc15871
EZ
2290This problem may also strike other platforms, but the solution is
2291likely to be a global one, and not Emacs specific.
a933dad1 2292
9dc15871
EZ
2293Many cheap inkjet, and even some cheap laser printers, do not
2294print plain text anymore, they will only print through graphical
2295printer drivers. A workaround on MS-Windows is to use Windows' basic
2296built in editor to print (this is possibly the only useful purpose it
2297has):
a933dad1 2298
9dc15871
EZ
2299(setq printer-name "") ;; notepad takes the default
2300(setq lpr-command "notepad") ;; notepad
2301(setq lpr-switches nil) ;; not needed
2302(setq lpr-printer-switch "/P") ;; run notepad as batch printer
a933dad1 2303
9dc15871 2304** Antivirus software interacts badly with the MS-Windows version of Emacs.
a933dad1 2305
9dc15871
EZ
2306The usual manifestation of these problems is that subprocesses don't
2307work or even wedge the entire system. In particular, "M-x shell RET"
2308was reported to fail to work. But other commands also sometimes don't
2309work when an antivirus package is installed.
a933dad1 2310
9dc15871
EZ
2311The solution is to switch the antivirus software to a less aggressive
2312mode (e.g., disable the ``auto-protect'' feature), or even uninstall
2313or disable it entirely.
a933dad1 2314
9dc15871 2315** Pressing the mouse button on MS-Windows does not give a mouse-2 event.
a933dad1 2316
9dc15871
EZ
2317This is usually a problem with the mouse driver. Because most Windows
2318programs do not do anything useful with the middle mouse button, many
2319mouse drivers allow you to define the wheel press to do something
2320different. Some drivers do not even have the option to generate a
2321middle button press. In such cases, setting the wheel press to
2322"scroll" sometimes works if you press the button twice. Trying a
2323generic mouse driver might help.
a933dad1 2324
9dc15871 2325** Scrolling the mouse wheel on MS-Windows always scrolls the top window.
a933dad1 2326
9dc15871
EZ
2327This is another common problem with mouse drivers. Instead of
2328generating scroll events, some mouse drivers try to fake scroll bar
2329movement. But they are not intelligent enough to handle multiple
2330scroll bars within a frame. Trying a generic mouse driver might help.
a933dad1 2331
9dc15871
EZ
2332** Mail sent through Microsoft Exchange in some encodings appears to be
2333mangled and is not seen correctly in Rmail or Gnus. We don't know
2334exactly what happens, but it isn't an Emacs problem in cases we've
2335seen.
a933dad1 2336
9dc15871
EZ
2337** On MS-Windows, you cannot use the right-hand ALT key and the left-hand
2338CTRL key together to type a Control-Meta character.
a933dad1 2339
9dc15871 2340This is a consequence of a misfeature beyond Emacs's control.
a933dad1 2341
9dc15871
EZ
2342Under Windows, the AltGr key on international keyboards generates key
2343events with the modifiers Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl. Since Emacs cannot
2344distinguish AltGr from an explicit Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl
2345combination, whenever it sees Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl it assumes that
2346AltGr has been pressed. The variable `w32-recognize-altgr' can be set
2347to nil to tell Emacs that AltGr is really Ctrl and Alt.
a933dad1 2348
9dc15871 2349** Under some X-servers running on MS-Windows, Emacs' display is incorrect.
a933dad1 2350
9dc15871
EZ
2351The symptoms are that Emacs does not completely erase blank areas of the
2352screen during scrolling or some other screen operations (e.g., selective
2353display or when killing a region). M-x recenter will cause the screen
2354to be completely redisplayed and the "extra" characters will disappear.
a933dad1 2355
9dc15871
EZ
2356This is known to occur under Exceed 6, and possibly earlier versions
2357as well; it is reportedly solved in version 6.2.0.16 and later. The
2358problem lies in the X-server settings.
a933dad1 2359
9dc15871
EZ
2360There are reports that you can solve the problem with Exceed by
2361running `Xconfig' from within NT, choosing "X selection", then
2362un-checking the boxes "auto-copy X selection" and "auto-paste to X
2363selection".
a933dad1 2364
9dc15871
EZ
2365Of this does not work, please inform bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org. Then
2366please call support for your X-server and see if you can get a fix.
2367If you do, please send it to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org so we can list it
2368here.
a933dad1 2369
9dc15871 2370* Build-time problems
a933dad1 2371
9dc15871 2372** Configuration
a933dad1 2373
9dc15871 2374*** The `configure' script doesn't find the jpeg library.
a933dad1 2375
9dc15871
EZ
2376There are reports that this happens on some systems because the linker
2377by default only looks for shared libraries, but jpeg distribution by
2378default only installs a nonshared version of the library, `libjpeg.a'.
a933dad1 2379
9dc15871
EZ
2380If this is the problem, you can configure the jpeg library with the
2381`--enable-shared' option and then rebuild libjpeg. This produces a
2382shared version of libjpeg, which you need to install. Finally, rerun
2383the Emacs configure script, which should now find the jpeg library.
2384Alternatively, modify the generated src/Makefile to link the .a file
2385explicitly, and edit src/config.h to define HAVE_JPEG.
a933dad1 2386
f4b84ef4
GM
2387*** `configure' warns ``accepted by the compiler, rejected by the preprocessor''.
2388
2389This indicates a mismatch between the C compiler and preprocessor that
2390configure is using. For example, on Solaris 10 trying to use
2391CC=/opt/SUNWspro/bin/cc (the Sun Studio compiler) together with
2392CPP=/usr/ccs/lib/cpp can result in errors of this form (you may also
2393see the error ``"/usr/include/sys/isa_defs.h", line 500: undefined control'').
2394
2395The solution is to tell configure to use the correct C preprocessor
2396for your C compiler (CPP="/opt/SUNWspro/bin/cc -E" in the above
2397example).
2398
2399*** `configure' fails with ``"junk.c", line 660: invalid input token: 8.elc''
2400
2401The final stage of the Emacs configure process uses the C preprocessor
2402to generate the Makefiles. Errors of this form can occur if the C
2403preprocessor inserts extra whitespace into its output. The solution
2404is to find the switches that stop your preprocessor from inserting extra
2405whitespace, add them to CPPFLAGS, and re-run configure. For example,
2406this error can occur on Solaris 10 when using the Sun Studio compiler
2407``Sun C 5.8'' with its preprocessor CPP="/opt/SUNWspro/bin/cc -E".
2408The relevant switch in this case is "-Xs" (``compile assuming
2409(pre-ANSI) K & R C style code'').
2410
9dc15871 2411** Compilation
a933dad1 2412
9dc15871 2413*** Building Emacs over NFS fails with ``Text file busy''.
a933dad1 2414
9dc15871 2415This was reported to happen when building Emacs on a GNU/Linux system
880ea925 2416(Red Hat Linux 6.2) using a build directory automounted from Solaris
9dc15871
EZ
2417(SunOS 5.6) file server, but it might not be limited to that
2418configuration alone. Presumably, the NFS server doesn't commit the
2419files' data to disk quickly enough, and the Emacs executable file is
2420left ``busy'' for several seconds after Emacs has finished dumping
2421itself. This causes the subsequent commands which invoke the dumped
2422Emacs executable to fail with the above message.
a933dad1 2423
9dc15871
EZ
2424In some of these cases, a time skew between the NFS server and the
2425machine where Emacs is built is detected and reported by GNU Make
2426(it says that some of the files have modification time in the future).
2427This might be a symptom of NFS-related problems.
a933dad1 2428
9dc15871
EZ
2429If the NFS server runs on Solaris, apply the Solaris patch 105379-05
2430(Sunos 5.6: /kernel/misc/nfssrv patch). If that doesn't work, or if
2431you have a different version of the OS or the NFS server, you can
2432force the NFS server to use 1KB blocks, which was reported to fix the
2433problem albeit at a price of slowing down file I/O. You can force 1KB
2434blocks by specifying the "-o rsize=1024,wsize=1024" options to the
2435`mount' command, or by adding ",rsize=1024,wsize=1024" to the mount
2436options in the appropriate system configuration file, such as
2437`/etc/auto.home'.
a933dad1 2438
9dc15871
EZ
2439Alternatively, when Make fails due to this problem, you could wait for
2440a few seconds and then invoke Make again. In one particular case,
2441waiting for 10 or more seconds between the two Make invocations seemed
2442to work around the problem.
a933dad1 2443
9dc15871
EZ
2444Similar problems can happen if your machine NFS-mounts a directory
2445onto itself. Suppose the Emacs sources live in `/usr/local/src' and
2446you are working on the host called `marvin'. Then an entry in the
2447`/etc/fstab' file like the following is asking for trouble:
a933dad1 2448
9dc15871 2449 marvin:/usr/local/src /usr/local/src ...options.omitted...
a933dad1 2450
9dc15871 2451The solution is to remove this line from `etc/fstab'.
a933dad1 2452
9dc15871 2453*** Building Emacs with GCC 2.9x fails in the `src' directory.
a933dad1 2454
9dc15871
EZ
2455This may happen if you use a development version of GNU `cpp' from one
2456of the GCC snapshots between Oct 2000 and Feb 2001, or from a released
2457version of GCC newer than 2.95.2 which was prepared around those
2458dates; similar problems were reported with some snapshots of GCC 3.1
2459around Sep 30 2001. The preprocessor in those versions is
2460incompatible with a traditional Unix cpp (e.g., it expands ".." into
2461". .", which breaks relative file names that reference the parent
2462directory; or inserts TAB characters before lines that set Make
2463variables).
a933dad1 2464
9dc15871
EZ
2465The solution is to make sure the preprocessor is run with the
2466`-traditional' option. The `configure' script does that automatically
2467when it detects the known problems in your cpp, but you might hit some
2468unknown ones. To force the `configure' script to use `-traditional',
2469run the script like this:
a933dad1 2470
9dc15871 2471 CPP='gcc -E -traditional' ./configure ...
a933dad1 2472
9dc15871
EZ
2473(replace the ellipsis "..." with any additional arguments you pass to
2474the script).
a933dad1 2475
9dc15871
EZ
2476Note that this problem does not pertain to the MS-Windows port of
2477Emacs, since it doesn't use the preprocessor to generate Makefiles.
a933dad1 2478
9dc15871
EZ
2479*** src/Makefile and lib-src/Makefile are truncated--most of the file missing.
2480*** Compiling wakeup, in lib-src, says it can't make wakeup.c.
a933dad1 2481
9dc15871
EZ
2482This can happen if configure uses GNU sed version 2.03. That version
2483had a bug. GNU sed version 2.05 works properly.To solve the
2484problem, install the current version of GNU Sed, then rerun Emacs's
2485configure script.
a933dad1 2486
9dc15871 2487*** Compiling lib-src says there is no rule to make test-distrib.c.
a933dad1 2488
9dc15871
EZ
2489This results from a bug in a VERY old version of GNU Sed. To solve
2490the problem, install the current version of GNU Sed, then rerun
2491Emacs's configure script.
a933dad1 2492
745377e8
GM
2493*** Building a 32-bit executable on a 64-bit GNU/Linux architecture.
2494
2495First ensure that the necessary 32-bit system libraries and include
2496files are installed. Then use:
2497
2498 env CC="gcc -m32" ./configure --build=i386-linux-gnu \
2499 --x-libraries=/usr/X11R6/lib
2500
2501(using the location of the 32-bit X libraries on your system).
2502
1020d879 2503*** Building the Cygwin port for MS-Windows can fail with some GCC versions
9c9f0081
EZ
2504
2505Building Emacs 22 with Cygwin builds of GCC 3.4.4-1 and 3.4.4-2 is
2506reported to either fail or cause Emacs to segfault at run time. In
2507addition, the Cygwin GCC 3.4.4-2 has problems with generating debug
2508info. Cygwin users are advised not to use these versions of GCC for
485a6c18
EZ
2509compiling Emacs. GCC versions 4.0.3, 4.0.4, 4.1.1, and 4.1.2
2510reportedly build a working Cygwin binary of Emacs, so we recommend
2511these GCC versions. Note that these versions of GCC, 4.0.3, 4.0.4,
25124.1.1, and 4.1.2, are currently the _only_ versions known to succeed
2513in building Emacs (as of v22.1).
9c9f0081
EZ
2514
2515*** Building the native MS-Windows port with Cygwin GCC can fail.
a933dad1 2516
9dc15871
EZ
2517Emacs may not build using recent Cygwin builds of GCC, such as Cygwin
2518version 1.1.8, using the default configure settings. It appears to be
2519necessary to specify the -mwin32 flag when compiling, and define
2520__MSVCRT__, like so:
a933dad1 2521
9dc15871 2522 configure --with-gcc --cflags -mwin32 --cflags -D__MSVCRT__
a933dad1 2523
9dc15871 2524*** Building the MS-Windows port fails with a CreateProcess failure.
a933dad1 2525
9dc15871
EZ
2526Some versions of mingw32 make on some versions of Windows do not seem
2527to detect the shell correctly. Try "make SHELL=cmd.exe", or if that
2528fails, try running make from Cygwin bash instead.
a933dad1 2529
9dc15871 2530*** Building the MS-Windows port with Leim fails in the `leim' directory.
a933dad1 2531
9dc15871 2532The error message might be something like this:
a933dad1 2533
9dc15871
EZ
2534 Converting d:/emacs-21.3/leim/CXTERM-DIC/4Corner.tit to quail-package...
2535 Invalid ENCODE: value in TIT dictionary
2536 NMAKE : fatal error U1077: '"../src/obj-spd/i386/emacs.exe"' : return code
2537 '0xffffffff'
2538 Stop.
a933dad1 2539
9dc15871
EZ
2540This can happen if the Leim distribution is unpacked with a program
2541which converts the `*.tit' files to DOS-style CR-LF text format. The
2542`*.tit' files in the leim/CXTERM-DIC directory require Unix-style line
2543endings to compile properly, because Emacs reads them without any code
2544or EOL conversions.
a933dad1 2545
9dc15871
EZ
2546The solution is to make sure the program used to unpack Leim does not
2547change the files' line endings behind your back. The GNU FTP site has
2548in the `/gnu/emacs/windows' directory a program called `djtarnt.exe'
2549which can be used to unpack `.tar.gz' and `.zip' archives without
2550mangling them.
a933dad1 2551
9dc15871 2552*** Building `ctags' for MS-Windows with the MinGW port of GCC fails.
a933dad1 2553
9dc15871
EZ
2554This might happen due to a bug in the MinGW header assert.h, which
2555defines the `assert' macro with a trailing semi-colon. The following
2556patch to assert.h should solve this:
a933dad1 2557
0cc69e7d
EZ
2558 *** include/assert.h.orig Sun Nov 7 02:41:36 1999
2559 --- include/assert.h Mon Jan 29 11:49:10 2001
2560 ***************
2561 *** 41,47 ****
2562 /*
2563 * If not debugging, assert does nothing.
2564 */
2565 ! #define assert(x) ((void)0);
2566
2567 #else /* debugging enabled */
2568
2569 --- 41,47 ----
2570 /*
2571 * If not debugging, assert does nothing.
2572 */
2573 ! #define assert(x) ((void)0)
2574
2575 #else /* debugging enabled */
a933dad1 2576
a933dad1 2577
3e7c244e 2578*** Building the MS-Windows port with Visual Studio 2005 fails.
a933dad1 2579
3e7c244e
JR
2580Microsoft no longer ships the single threaded version of the C library
2581with their compiler, and the multithreaded static library is missing
0cc69e7d 2582some functions that Microsoft have deemed non-threadsafe. The
3e7c244e
JR
2583dynamically linked C library has all the functions, but there is a
2584conflict between the versions of malloc in the DLL and in Emacs, which
2585is not resolvable due to the way Windows does dynamic linking.
a933dad1 2586
3e7c244e
JR
2587We recommend the use of the MingW port of GCC for compiling Emacs, as
2588not only does it not suffer these problems, but it is also Free
2589software like Emacs.
a933dad1 2590
9dc15871 2591** Linking
a933dad1 2592
9dc15871
EZ
2593*** Building Emacs with a system compiler fails to link because of an
2594undefined symbol such as __eprintf which does not appear in Emacs.
a933dad1 2595
9dc15871
EZ
2596This can happen if some of the libraries linked into Emacs were built
2597with GCC, but Emacs itself is being linked with a compiler other than
2598GCC. Object files compiled with GCC might need some helper functions
2599from libgcc.a, the library which comes with GCC, but the system
2600compiler does not instruct the linker to search libgcc.a during the
2601link stage.
a933dad1 2602
9dc15871 2603A solution is to link with GCC, like this:
a933dad1 2604
9dc15871 2605 make CC=gcc
a933dad1 2606
9dc15871
EZ
2607Since the .o object files already exist, this will not recompile Emacs
2608with GCC, but just restart by trying again to link temacs.
a933dad1 2609
9dc15871 2610*** AIX 1.3 ptf 0013: Link failure.
a933dad1 2611
9dc15871
EZ
2612There is a real duplicate definition of the function `_slibc_free' in
2613the library /lib/libc_s.a (just do nm on it to verify). The
2614workaround/fix is:
a933dad1 2615
9dc15871
EZ
2616 cd /lib
2617 ar xv libc_s.a NLtmtime.o
2618 ar dv libc_s.a NLtmtime.o
a933dad1 2619
9dc15871
EZ
2620*** AIX 4.1.2: Linker error messages such as
2621 ld: 0711-212 SEVERE ERROR: Symbol .__quous, found in the global symbol table
2622 of archive /usr/lib/libIM.a, was not defined in archive member shr.o.
a933dad1 2623
9dc15871
EZ
2624This is a problem in libIM.a. You can work around it by executing
2625these shell commands in the src subdirectory of the directory where
2626you build Emacs:
a933dad1 2627
9dc15871
EZ
2628 cp /usr/lib/libIM.a .
2629 chmod 664 libIM.a
2630 ranlib libIM.a
a933dad1 2631
9dc15871
EZ
2632Then change -lIM to ./libIM.a in the command to link temacs (in
2633Makefile).
a933dad1 2634
9dc15871 2635*** Sun with acc: Link failure when using acc on a Sun.
a933dad1 2636
9dc15871 2637To use acc, you need additional options just before the libraries, such as
a933dad1 2638
9dc15871 2639 /usr/lang/SC2.0.1/values-Xt.o -L/usr/lang/SC2.0.1/cg87 -L/usr/lang/SC2.0.1
a933dad1 2640
9dc15871 2641and you need to add -lansi just before -lc.
a933dad1 2642
9dc15871
EZ
2643The precise file names depend on the compiler version, so we
2644cannot easily arrange to supply them.
a933dad1 2645
9dc15871 2646*** Linking says that the functions insque and remque are undefined.
a933dad1 2647
9dc15871 2648Change oldXMenu/Makefile by adding insque.o to the variable OBJS.
a933dad1 2649
9dc15871 2650*** `tparam' reported as a multiply-defined symbol when linking with ncurses.
a933dad1 2651
9dc15871
EZ
2652This problem results from an incompatible change in ncurses, in
2653version 1.9.9e approximately. This version is unable to provide a
2654definition of tparm without also defining tparam. This is also
2655incompatible with Terminfo; as a result, the Emacs Terminfo support
2656does not work with this version of ncurses.
a933dad1 2657
9dc15871 2658The fix is to install a newer version of ncurses, such as version 4.2.
a933dad1 2659
9dc15871 2660** Dumping
a933dad1 2661
9dc15871 2662*** Linux: Segfault during `make bootstrap' under certain recent versions of the Linux kernel.
a933dad1 2663
880ea925 2664With certain recent Linux kernels (like the one of Red Hat Fedora Core
cf14a51c 26651 and newer), the new "Exec-shield" functionality is enabled by default, which
ed214edf
JD
2666creates a different memory layout that breaks the emacs dumper. Emacs tries
2667to handle this at build time, but if the workaround used fails, these
2668instructions can be useful.
cf14a51c
JD
2669The work-around explained here is not enough on Fedora Core 4 (and possible
2670newer). Read the next item.
a933dad1 2671
1f02a4ba
JD
2672Configure can overcome the problem of exec-shield if the architecture is
2673x86 and the program setarch is present. On other architectures no
2674workaround is known.
2675
9dc15871 2676You can check the Exec-shield state like this:
a933dad1 2677
9dc15871 2678 cat /proc/sys/kernel/exec-shield
a933dad1 2679
1f02a4ba 2680It returns non-zero when Exec-shield is enabled, 0 otherwise. Please
9dc15871 2681read your system documentation for more details on Exec-shield and
1f02a4ba
JD
2682associated commands. Exec-shield can be turned off with this command:
2683
2684 echo "0" > /proc/sys/kernel/exec-shield
a933dad1 2685
9dc15871
EZ
2686When Exec-shield is enabled, building Emacs will segfault during the
2687execution of this command:
a933dad1 2688
1f02a4ba 2689 ./temacs --batch --load loadup [dump|bootstrap]
a933dad1 2690
9dc15871 2691To work around this problem, it is necessary to temporarily disable
1f02a4ba
JD
2692Exec-shield while building Emacs, or, on x86, by using the `setarch'
2693command when running temacs like this:
2694
2695 setarch i386 ./temacs --batch --load loadup [dump|bootstrap]
a933dad1 2696
ade79051 2697
ff0ab406
RS
2698*** Fedora Core 4 GNU/Linux: Segfault during dumping.
2699
2700In addition to exec-shield explained above "Linux: Segfault during
2701`make bootstrap' under certain recent versions of the Linux kernel"
2702item, Linux kernel shipped with Fedora Core 4 randomizes the virtual
cf14a51c
JD
2703address space of a process. As the result dumping may fail even if
2704you turn off exec-shield. In this case, use the -R option to the setarch
ff0ab406
RS
2705command:
2706
25fd144d 2707 setarch i386 -R ./temacs --batch --load loadup [dump|bootstrap]
ff0ab406
RS
2708
2709or
2710
ade79051 2711 setarch i386 -R make bootstrap
a933dad1 2712
9dc15871 2713*** Fatal signal in the command temacs -l loadup inc dump.
a933dad1
DL
2714
2715This command is the final stage of building Emacs. It is run by the
2716Makefile in the src subdirectory, or by build.com on VMS.
2717
2718It has been known to get fatal errors due to insufficient swapping
2719space available on the machine.
2720
9dc15871 2721On 68000s, it has also happened because of bugs in the
a933dad1
DL
2722subroutine `alloca'. Verify that `alloca' works right, even
2723for large blocks (many pages).
2724
9dc15871
EZ
2725*** test-distrib says that the distribution has been clobbered.
2726*** or, temacs prints "Command key out of range 0-127".
2727*** or, temacs runs and dumps emacs, but emacs totally fails to work.
2728*** or, temacs gets errors dumping emacs.
a933dad1
DL
2729
2730This can be because the .elc files have been garbled. Do not be
2731fooled by the fact that most of a .elc file is text: these are
2732binary files and can contain all 256 byte values.
2733
2734In particular `shar' cannot be used for transmitting GNU Emacs.
2735It typically truncates "lines". What appear to be "lines" in
2736a binary file can of course be of any length. Even once `shar'
2737itself is made to work correctly, `sh' discards null characters
2738when unpacking the shell archive.
2739
2740I have also seen character \177 changed into \377. I do not know
2741what transfer means caused this problem. Various network
2742file transfer programs are suspected of clobbering the high bit.
2743
2744If you have a copy of Emacs that has been damaged in its
2745nonprinting characters, you can fix them:
2746
2747 1) Record the names of all the .elc files.
2748 2) Delete all the .elc files.
2749 3) Recompile alloc.c with a value of PURESIZE twice as large.
2750 (See puresize.h.) You might as well save the old alloc.o.
2751 4) Remake emacs. It should work now.
2752 5) Running emacs, do Meta-x byte-compile-file repeatedly
2753 to recreate all the .elc files that used to exist.
2754 You may need to increase the value of the variable
2755 max-lisp-eval-depth to succeed in running the compiler interpreted
2756 on certain .el files. 400 was sufficient as of last report.
2757 6) Reinstall the old alloc.o (undoing changes to alloc.c if any)
2758 and remake temacs.
2759 7) Remake emacs. It should work now, with valid .elc files.
2760
9dc15871 2761*** temacs prints "Pure Lisp storage exhausted".
a933dad1
DL
2762
2763This means that the Lisp code loaded from the .elc and .el
2764files during temacs -l loadup inc dump took up more
2765space than was allocated.
2766
2767This could be caused by
2768 1) adding code to the preloaded Lisp files
2769 2) adding more preloaded files in loadup.el
2770 3) having a site-init.el or site-load.el which loads files.
2771 Note that ANY site-init.el or site-load.el is nonstandard;
2772 if you have received Emacs from some other site
2773 and it contains a site-init.el or site-load.el file, consider
2774 deleting that file.
2775 4) getting the wrong .el or .elc files
2776 (not from the directory you expected).
2777 5) deleting some .elc files that are supposed to exist.
2778 This would cause the source files (.el files) to be
2779 loaded instead. They take up more room, so you lose.
2780 6) a bug in the Emacs distribution which underestimates
2781 the space required.
2782
2783If the need for more space is legitimate, change the definition
2784of PURESIZE in puresize.h.
2785
2786But in some of the cases listed above, this problem is a consequence
2787of something else that is wrong. Be sure to check and fix the real
2788problem.
2789
9dc15871 2790*** Linux: Emacs crashes when dumping itself on Mac PPC running Yellow Dog GNU/Linux.
a933dad1 2791
9dc15871
EZ
2792The crashes happen inside the function Fmake_symbol; here's a typical
2793C backtrace printed by GDB:
a933dad1 2794
9dc15871
EZ
2795 0x190c0c0 in Fmake_symbol ()
2796 (gdb) where
2797 #0 0x190c0c0 in Fmake_symbol ()
2798 #1 0x1942ca4 in init_obarray ()
2799 #2 0x18b3500 in main ()
2800 #3 0x114371c in __libc_start_main (argc=5, argv=0x7ffff5b4, envp=0x7ffff5cc,
a933dad1 2801
9dc15871
EZ
2802This could happen because GCC version 2.95 and later changed the base
2803of the load address to 0x10000000. Emacs needs to be told about this,
2804but we currently cannot do that automatically, because that breaks
2805other versions of GNU/Linux on the MacPPC. Until we find a way to
2806distinguish between the Yellow Dog and the other varieties of
2807GNU/Linux systems on the PPC, you will have to manually uncomment the
2808following section near the end of the file src/m/macppc.h in the Emacs
2809distribution:
a933dad1 2810
9dc15871
EZ
2811 #if 0 /* This breaks things on PPC GNU/Linux except for Yellowdog,
2812 even with identical GCC, as, ld. Let's take it out until we
2813 know what's really going on here. */
2814 /* GCC 2.95 and newer on GNU/Linux PPC changed the load address to
2815 0x10000000. */
2816 #if defined __linux__
2817 #if __GNUC__ > 2 || (__GNUC__ == 2 && __GNUC_MINOR__ >= 95)
2818 #define DATA_SEG_BITS 0x10000000
2819 #endif
2820 #endif
2821 #endif /* 0 */
a933dad1 2822
9dc15871
EZ
2823Remove the "#if 0" and "#endif" directives which surround this, save
2824the file, and then reconfigure and rebuild Emacs. The dumping process
2825should now succeed.
a933dad1 2826
0bce976c
GM
2827*** OpenBSD 4.0 macppc: Segfault during dumping.
2828
2829The build aborts with signal 11 when the command `./temacs --batch
14395431 2830--load loadup bootstrap' tries to load files.el. A workaround seems
464df798 2831to be to reduce the level of compiler optimization used during the
14395431
GM
2832build (from -O2 to -O1). It is possible this is an OpenBSD
2833GCC problem specific to the macppc architecture, possibly only
2834occurring with older versions of GCC (e.g. 3.3.5).
0bce976c 2835
ce46543c
GM
2836*** openSUSE 10.3: Segfault in bcopy during dumping.
2837
2838This is due to a bug in the bcopy implementation in openSUSE 10.3.
2839It is/will be fixed in an openSUSE update.
2840
9dc15871 2841** Installation
a933dad1 2842
9dc15871 2843*** Installing Emacs gets an error running `install-info'.
a933dad1 2844
9dc15871
EZ
2845You need to install a recent version of Texinfo; that package
2846supplies the `install-info' command.
a933dad1 2847
6afdff63
GM
2848*** Installing to a directory with spaces in the name fails.
2849
2850For example, if you call configure with a directory-related option
2851with spaces in the value, eg --enable-locallisppath='/path/with\ spaces'.
2852Using directory paths with spaces is not supported at this time: you
2853must re-configure without using spaces.
2854
6c06422c
CY
2855*** Installing to a directory with non-ASCII characters in the name fails.
2856
2857Installation may fail, or the Emacs executable may not start
2858correctly, if a directory name containing non-ASCII characters is used
2859as a `configure' argument (e.g. `--prefix'). The problem can also
2860occur if a non-ASCII directory is specified in the EMACSLOADPATH
2861envvar.
2862
2f6e7d3f
GM
2863*** On Solaris, use GNU Make when installing an out-of-tree build
2864
2865The Emacs configuration process allows you to configure the
2866build environment so that you can build emacs in a directory
2867outside of the distribution tree. When installing Emacs from an
2868out-of-tree build directory on Solaris, you may need to use GNU
2869make. The make programs bundled with Solaris support the VPATH
2870macro but use it differently from the way the VPATH macro is
2871used by GNU make. The differences will cause the "make install"
2872step to fail, leaving you with an incomplete emacs
2873installation. GNU make is available in /usr/sfw/bin on Solaris
287410 and can be installed as /opt/sfw/bin/gmake from the Solaris 9
2875Software Companion CDROM.
2876
2877The problems due to the VPATH processing differences affect only
2878out of tree builds so, if you are on a Solaris installation
2879without GNU make, you can install Emacs completely by installing
2880from a build environment using the original emacs distribution tree.
2881
9dc15871 2882** First execution
a933dad1 2883
9dc15871 2884*** Emacs binary is not in executable format, and cannot be run.
a933dad1 2885
9dc15871
EZ
2886This was reported to happen when Emacs is built in a directory mounted
2887via NFS, for some combinations of NFS client and NFS server.
2888Usually, the file `emacs' produced in these cases is full of
2889binary null characters, and the `file' utility says:
a933dad1 2890
9dc15871 2891 emacs: ASCII text, with no line terminators
a933dad1 2892
9dc15871
EZ
2893We don't know what exactly causes this failure. A work-around is to
2894build Emacs in a directory on a local disk.
a933dad1 2895
9dc15871 2896*** The dumped Emacs crashes when run, trying to write pure data.
a933dad1
DL
2897
2898Two causes have been seen for such problems.
2899
29001) On a system where getpagesize is not a system call, it is defined
2901as a macro. If the definition (in both unexec.c and malloc.c) is wrong,
2902it can cause problems like this. You might be able to find the correct
2903value in the man page for a.out (5).
2904
29052) Some systems allocate variables declared static among the
2906initialized variables. Emacs makes all initialized variables in most
2907of its files pure after dumping, but the variables declared static and
2908not initialized are not supposed to be pure. On these systems you
2909may need to add "#define static" to the m- or the s- file.
2910
9dc15871 2911* Emacs 19 problems
a933dad1 2912
9dc15871 2913** Error messages `Wrong number of arguments: #<subr where-is-internal>, 5'.
a933dad1 2914
9dc15871
EZ
2915This typically results from having the powerkey library loaded.
2916Powerkey was designed for Emacs 19.22. It is obsolete now because
2917Emacs 19 now has this feature built in; and powerkey also calls
2918where-is-internal in an obsolete way.
a933dad1 2919
9dc15871 2920So the fix is to arrange not to load powerkey.
a933dad1 2921
9dc15871 2922* Runtime problems on legacy systems
a933dad1 2923
9dc15871
EZ
2924This section covers bugs reported on very old hardware or software.
2925If you are using hardware and an operating system shipped after 2000,
2926it is unlikely you will see any of these.
a933dad1 2927
9dc15871 2928** Ancient operating systems
a933dad1 2929
0a4dd4e4
EZ
2930AIX 4.2 was end-of-lifed on Dec 31st, 1999.
2931
2932*** AIX: You get this compiler error message:
2933
2934 Processing include file ./XMenuInt.h
2935 1501-106: (S) Include file X11/Xlib.h not found.
2936
2937This means your system was installed with only the X11 runtime i.d
2938libraries. You have to find your sipo (bootable tape) and install
2939X11Dev... with smit.
2940
2941(This report must be ancient. Bootable tapes are long dead.)
2942
2943*** AIX 3.2.4: Releasing Ctrl/Act key has no effect, if Shift is down.
2944
2945Due to a feature of AIX, pressing or releasing the Ctrl/Act key is
2946ignored when the Shift, Alt or AltGr keys are held down. This can
2947lead to the keyboard being "control-locked"--ordinary letters are
2948treated as control characters.
2949
2950You can get out of this "control-locked" state by pressing and
2951releasing Ctrl/Act while not pressing or holding any other keys.
2952
2953*** AIX 3.2.5: You get this message when running Emacs:
2954
2955 Could not load program emacs
2956 Symbol smtcheckinit in csh is undefined
2957 Error was: Exec format error
2958
2959or this one:
2960
2961 Could not load program .emacs
2962 Symbol _system_con in csh is undefined
2963 Symbol _fp_trapsta in csh is undefined
2964 Error was: Exec format error
2965
2966These can happen when you try to run on AIX 3.2.5 a program that was
2967compiled with 3.2.4. The fix is to recompile.
2968
2969*** AIX 4.2: Emacs gets a segmentation fault at startup.
2970
2971If you are using IBM's xlc compiler, compile emacs.c
2972without optimization; that should avoid the problem.
2973
9dc15871 2974*** ISC Unix
a933dad1 2975
9dc15871 2976**** ISC: display-time causes kernel problems on ISC systems.
a933dad1 2977
9dc15871
EZ
2978Under Interactive Unix versions 3.0.1 and 4.0 (and probably other
2979versions), display-time causes the loss of large numbers of STREVENT
2980cells. Eventually the kernel's supply of these cells is exhausted.
2981This makes emacs and the whole system run slow, and can make other
2982processes die, in particular pcnfsd.
a933dad1 2983
9dc15871
EZ
2984Other emacs functions that communicate with remote processes may have
2985the same problem. Display-time seems to be far the worst.
a933dad1 2986
9dc15871 2987The only known fix: Don't run display-time.
a933dad1 2988
0a4dd4e4
EZ
2989**** Sunos 5.3: Subprocesses remain, hanging but not zombies.
2990
2991A bug in Sunos 5.3 causes Emacs subprocesses to remain after Emacs
2992exits. Sun patch # 101415-02 is part of the fix for this, but it only
2993applies to ptys, and doesn't fix the problem with subprocesses
2994communicating through pipes.
2995
9dc15871 2996*** Irix
a933dad1 2997
9dc15871 2998*** Irix 6.2: No visible display on mips-sgi-irix6.2 when compiling with GCC 2.8.1.
a933dad1 2999
9dc15871
EZ
3000This problem went away after installing the latest IRIX patches
3001as of 8 Dec 1998.
a933dad1 3002
9dc15871 3003The same problem has been reported on Irix 6.3.
a933dad1 3004
9dc15871
EZ
3005*** Irix 6.3: substituting environment variables in file names
3006in the minibuffer gives peculiar error messages such as
a933dad1 3007
9dc15871 3008 Substituting nonexistent environment variable ""
a933dad1 3009
9dc15871
EZ
3010This is not an Emacs bug; it is caused by something in SGI patch
3011003082 August 11, 1998.
a933dad1 3012
9dc15871 3013*** OPENSTEP
a933dad1 3014
9dc15871 3015**** OPENSTEP 4.2: Compiling syntax.c with gcc 2.7.2.1 fails.
a933dad1 3016
9dc15871
EZ
3017The compiler was reported to crash while compiling syntax.c with the
3018following message:
a933dad1 3019
9dc15871 3020 cc: Internal compiler error: program cc1obj got fatal signal 11
a933dad1 3021
9dc15871
EZ
3022To work around this, replace the macros UPDATE_SYNTAX_TABLE_FORWARD,
3023INC_BOTH, and INC_FROM with functions. To this end, first define 3
3024functions, one each for every macro. Here's an example:
a933dad1 3025
9dc15871
EZ
3026 static int update_syntax_table_forward(int from)
3027 {
3028 return(UPDATE_SYNTAX_TABLE_FORWARD(from));
3029 }/*update_syntax_table_forward*/
a933dad1 3030
9dc15871
EZ
3031Then replace all references to UPDATE_SYNTAX_TABLE_FORWARD in syntax.c
3032with a call to the function update_syntax_table_forward.
a933dad1 3033
9dc15871 3034*** Solaris 2.x
a933dad1 3035
9dc15871 3036**** Strange results from format %d in a few cases, on a Sun.
a933dad1 3037
9dc15871
EZ
3038Sun compiler version SC3.0 has been found to miscompile part of
3039editfns.c. The workaround is to compile with some other compiler such
3040as GCC.
a933dad1 3041
9dc15871 3042**** On Solaris, Emacs dumps core if lisp-complete-symbol is called.
a933dad1 3043
9dc15871
EZ
3044If you compile Emacs with the -fast or -xO4 option with version 3.0.2
3045of the Sun C compiler, Emacs dumps core when lisp-complete-symbol is
3046called. The problem does not happen if you compile with GCC.
a933dad1 3047
9dc15871 3048**** On Solaris, Emacs crashes if you use (display-time).
a933dad1 3049
9dc15871
EZ
3050This can happen if you configure Emacs without specifying the precise
3051version of Solaris that you are using.
a933dad1 3052
9dc15871 3053**** Solaris 2.3 and 2.4: Unpredictable segmentation faults.
a933dad1 3054
9dc15871
EZ
3055A user reported that this happened in 19.29 when it was compiled with
3056the Sun compiler, but not when he recompiled with GCC 2.7.0.
a933dad1 3057
9dc15871 3058We do not know whether something in Emacs is partly to blame for this.
a933dad1 3059
9dc15871 3060**** Solaris 2.4: Emacs dumps core on startup.
a933dad1 3061
9dc15871
EZ
3062Bill Sebok says that the cause of this is Solaris 2.4 vendor patch
3063102303-05, which extends the Solaris linker to deal with the Solaris
3064Common Desktop Environment's linking needs. You can fix the problem
3065by removing this patch and installing patch 102049-02 instead.
3066However, that linker version won't work with CDE.
a933dad1 3067
9dc15871
EZ
3068Solaris 2.5 comes with a linker that has this bug. It is reported that if
3069you install all the latest patches (as of June 1996), the bug is fixed.
3070We suspect the crucial patch is one of these, but we don't know
3071for certain.
a933dad1 3072
9dc15871
EZ
3073 103093-03: [README] SunOS 5.5: kernel patch (2140557 bytes)
3074 102832-01: [README] OpenWindows 3.5: Xview Jumbo Patch (4181613 bytes)
3075 103242-04: [README] SunOS 5.5: linker patch (595363 bytes)
a933dad1 3076
9dc15871
EZ
3077(One user reports that the bug was fixed by those patches together
3078with patches 102980-04, 103279-01, 103300-02, and 103468-01.)
a933dad1 3079
9dc15871
EZ
3080If you can determine which patch does fix the bug, please tell
3081bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
a933dad1 3082
9dc15871
EZ
3083Meanwhile, the GNU linker links Emacs properly on both Solaris 2.4 and
3084Solaris 2.5.
a933dad1 3085
9dc15871
EZ
3086**** Solaris 2.4: Dired hangs and C-g does not work. Or Emacs hangs
3087forever waiting for termination of a subprocess that is a zombie.
a933dad1 3088
9dc15871
EZ
3089casper@fwi.uva.nl says the problem is in X11R6. Rebuild libX11.so
3090after changing the file xc/config/cf/sunLib.tmpl. Change the lines
a933dad1 3091
9dc15871
EZ
3092 #if ThreadedX
3093 #define SharedX11Reqs -lthread
3094 #endif
a933dad1 3095
9dc15871 3096to:
a933dad1 3097
9dc15871
EZ
3098 #if OSMinorVersion < 4
3099 #if ThreadedX
3100 #define SharedX11Reqs -lthread
3101 #endif
3102 #endif
3103
3104Be sure also to edit x/config/cf/sun.cf so that OSMinorVersion is 4
3105(as it should be for Solaris 2.4). The file has three definitions for
3106OSMinorVersion: the first is for x86, the second for SPARC under
3107Solaris, and the third for SunOS 4. Make sure to update the
3108definition for your type of machine and system.
a933dad1 3109
9dc15871
EZ
3110Then do `make Everything' in the top directory of X11R6, to rebuild
3111the makefiles and rebuild X. The X built this way work only on
3112Solaris 2.4, not on 2.3.
a933dad1 3113
9dc15871
EZ
3114For multithreaded X to work it is necessary to install patch
3115101925-02 to fix problems in header files [2.4]. You need
3116to reinstall gcc or re-run just-fixinc after installing that
3117patch.
a933dad1 3118
9dc15871
EZ
3119However, Frank Rust <frust@iti.cs.tu-bs.de> used a simpler solution:
3120he changed
3121 #define ThreadedX YES
3122to
3123 #define ThreadedX NO
3124in sun.cf and did `make World' to rebuild X11R6. Removing all
3125`-DXTHREAD*' flags and `-lthread' entries from lib/X11/Makefile and
3126typing 'make install' in that directory also seemed to work.
a933dad1 3127
9dc15871 3128**** Solaris 2.x: GCC complains "64 bit integer types not supported".
a933dad1 3129
9dc15871
EZ
3130This suggests that GCC is not installed correctly. Most likely you
3131are using GCC 2.7.2.3 (or earlier) on Solaris 2.6 (or later); this
3132does not work without patching. To run GCC 2.7.2.3 on Solaris 2.6 or
3133later, you must patch fixinc.svr4 and reinstall GCC from scratch as
3134described in the Solaris FAQ
3135<http://www.wins.uva.nl/pub/solaris/solaris2.html>. A better fix is
3136to upgrade to GCC 2.8.1 or later.
a933dad1 3137
9dc15871
EZ
3138**** Solaris 2.7: Building Emacs with WorkShop Compilers 5.0 98/12/15
3139C 5.0 failed, apparently with non-default CFLAGS, most probably due to
3140compiler bugs. Using Sun Solaris 2.7 Sun WorkShop 6 update 1 C
3141release was reported to work without problems. It worked OK on
3142another system with Solaris 8 using apparently the same 5.0 compiler
3143and the default CFLAGS.
a933dad1 3144
9dc15871 3145**** Solaris 2.x: Emacs dumps core when built with Motif.
a933dad1 3146
9dc15871
EZ
3147The Solaris Motif libraries are buggy, at least up through Solaris 2.5.1.
3148Install the current Motif runtime library patch appropriate for your host.
3149(Make sure the patch is current; some older patch versions still have the bug.)
3150You should install the other patches recommended by Sun for your host, too.
3151You can obtain Sun patches from ftp://sunsolve.sun.com/pub/patches/;
3152look for files with names ending in `.PatchReport' to see which patches
3153are currently recommended for your host.
a933dad1 3154
9dc15871
EZ
3155On Solaris 2.6, Emacs is said to work with Motif when Solaris patch
3156105284-12 is installed, but fail when 105284-15 is installed.
3157105284-18 might fix it again.
a933dad1 3158
0a4dd4e4 3159**** Solaris 2.6 and 7: the Compose key does not work.
a933dad1 3160
9dc15871
EZ
3161This is a bug in Motif in Solaris. Supposedly it has been fixed for
3162the next major release of Solaris. However, if someone with Sun
3163support complains to Sun about the bug, they may release a patch.
3164If you do this, mention Sun bug #4188711.
a933dad1 3165
9dc15871
EZ
3166One workaround is to use a locale that allows non-ASCII characters.
3167For example, before invoking emacs, set the LC_ALL environment
3168variable to "en_US" (American English). The directory /usr/lib/locale
3169lists the supported locales; any locale other than "C" or "POSIX"
3170should do.
a933dad1 3171
9dc15871
EZ
3172pen@lysator.liu.se says (Feb 1998) that the Compose key does work
3173if you link with the MIT X11 libraries instead of the Solaris X11
3174libraries.
a933dad1 3175
0a4dd4e4
EZ
3176*** HP/UX versions before 11.0
3177
bf247b6e 3178HP/UX 9 was end-of-lifed in December 1998.
0a4dd4e4
EZ
3179HP/UX 10 was end-of-lifed in May 1999.
3180
3181**** HP/UX 9: Emacs crashes with SIGBUS or SIGSEGV after you delete a frame.
3182
3183We think this is due to a bug in the X libraries provided by HP. With
3184the alternative X libraries in /usr/contrib/mitX11R5/lib, the problem
3185does not happen.
3186
3187*** HP/UX 10: Large file support is disabled.
3188
3189See the comments in src/s/hpux10.h.
3190
3191*** HP/UX: Emacs is slow using X11R5.
3192
3193This happens if you use the MIT versions of the X libraries--it
3194doesn't run as fast as HP's version. People sometimes use the version
3195because they see the HP version doesn't have the libraries libXaw.a,
3196libXmu.a, libXext.a and others. HP/UX normally doesn't come with
3197those libraries installed. To get good performance, you need to
3198install them and rebuild Emacs.
3199
9dc15871 3200*** Ultrix and Digital Unix
a933dad1 3201
9dc15871 3202**** Ultrix 4.2: `make install' fails on install-doc with `Error 141'.
a933dad1 3203
9dc15871
EZ
3204This happens on Ultrix 4.2 due to failure of a pipeline of tar
3205commands. We don't know why they fail, but the bug seems not to be in
3206Emacs. The workaround is to run the shell command in install-doc by
3207hand.
a933dad1 3208
9dc15871 3209**** Digital Unix 4.0: Garbled display on non-X terminals when Emacs runs.
a933dad1 3210
9dc15871
EZ
3211So far it appears that running `tset' triggers this problem (when TERM
3212is vt100, at least). If you do not run `tset', then Emacs displays
3213properly. If someone can tell us precisely which effect of running
3214`tset' actually causes the problem, we may be able to implement a fix
3215in Emacs.
a933dad1 3216
9dc15871 3217**** Ultrix: `expand-file-name' fails to work on any but the machine you dumped Emacs on.
a933dad1 3218
9dc15871
EZ
3219On Ultrix, if you use any of the functions which look up information
3220in the passwd database before dumping Emacs (say, by using
3221expand-file-name in site-init.el), then those functions will not work
3222in the dumped Emacs on any host but the one Emacs was dumped on.
a933dad1 3223
9dc15871
EZ
3224The solution? Don't use expand-file-name in site-init.el, or in
3225anything it loads. Yuck - some solution.
a933dad1 3226
9dc15871
EZ
3227I'm not sure why this happens; if you can find out exactly what is
3228going on, and perhaps find a fix or a workaround, please let us know.
3229Perhaps the YP functions cache some information, the cache is included
3230in the dumped Emacs, and is then inaccurate on any other host.
a933dad1 3231
9dc15871 3232*** SVr4
a933dad1 3233
9dc15871 3234**** SVr4: On some variants of SVR4, Emacs does not work at all with X.
a933dad1 3235
9dc15871
EZ
3236Try defining BROKEN_FIONREAD in your config.h file. If this solves
3237the problem, please send a bug report to tell us this is needed; be
3238sure to say exactly what type of machine and system you are using.
a933dad1 3239
9dc15871 3240**** SVr4: After running emacs once, subsequent invocations crash.
a933dad1 3241
9dc15871
EZ
3242Some versions of SVR4 have a serious bug in the implementation of the
3243mmap () system call in the kernel; this causes emacs to run correctly
3244the first time, and then crash when run a second time.
a933dad1 3245
9dc15871
EZ
3246Contact your vendor and ask for the mmap bug fix; in the mean time,
3247you may be able to work around the problem by adding a line to your
3248operating system description file (whose name is reported by the
3249configure script) that reads:
3250#define SYSTEM_MALLOC
3251This makes Emacs use memory less efficiently, but seems to work around
3252the kernel bug.
a933dad1 3253
0a4dd4e4
EZ
3254*** Irix 5 and earlier
3255
bf247b6e 3256Exactly when Irix-5 end-of-lifed is obscure. But since Irix 6.0
0a4dd4e4
EZ
3257shipped in 1994, it has been some years.
3258
3259**** Irix 5.2: unexelfsgi.c can't find cmplrs/stsupport.h.
3260
3261The file cmplrs/stsupport.h was included in the wrong file set in the
3262Irix 5.2 distribution. You can find it in the optional fileset
3263compiler_dev, or copy it from some other Irix 5.2 system. A kludgy
3264workaround is to change unexelfsgi.c to include sym.h instead of
3265syms.h.
3266
3267**** Irix 5.3: "out of virtual swap space".
3268
3269This message occurs when the system runs out of swap space due to too
3270many large programs running. The solution is either to provide more
3271swap space or to reduce the number of large programs being run. You
3272can check the current status of the swap space by executing the
3273command `swap -l'.
3274
3275You can increase swap space by changing the file /etc/fstab. Adding a
3276line like this:
3277
3278/usr/swap/swap.more swap swap pri=3 0 0
3279
3280where /usr/swap/swap.more is a file previously created (for instance
3281by using /etc/mkfile), will increase the swap space by the size of
3282that file. Execute `swap -m' or reboot the machine to activate the
3283new swap area. See the manpages for `swap' and `fstab' for further
3284information.
3285
3286The objectserver daemon can use up lots of memory because it can be
3287swamped with NIS information. It collects information about all users
3288on the network that can log on to the host.
3289
3290If you want to disable the objectserver completely, you can execute
3291the command `chkconfig objectserver off' and reboot. That may disable
3292some of the window system functionality, such as responding CDROM
3293icons.
3294
3295You can also remove NIS support from the objectserver. The SGI `admin'
3296FAQ has a detailed description on how to do that; see question 35
3297("Why isn't the objectserver working?"). The admin FAQ can be found at
3298ftp://viz.tamu.edu/pub/sgi/faq/.
3299
3300**** Irix 5.3: Emacs crashes in utmpname.
3301
3302This problem is fixed in Patch 3175 for Irix 5.3.
3303It is also fixed in Irix versions 6.2 and up.
3304
3305**** Irix 6.0: Make tries (and fails) to build a program named unexelfsgi.
3306
3307A compiler bug inserts spaces into the string "unexelfsgi . o"
3308in src/Makefile. Edit src/Makefile, after configure is run,
3309find that string, and take out the spaces.
3310
3311Compiler fixes in Irix 6.0.1 should eliminate this problem.
3312
3313*** SCO Unix and UnixWare
3314
3315**** SCO 3.2v4: Unusable default font.
3316
3317The Open Desktop environment comes with default X resource settings
3318that tell Emacs to use a variable-width font. Emacs cannot use such
3319fonts, so it does not work.
3320
3321This is caused by the file /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/ScoTerm, which is
3322the application-specific resource file for the `scoterm' terminal
3323emulator program. It contains several extremely general X resources
3324that affect other programs besides `scoterm'. In particular, these
3325resources affect Emacs also:
3326
3327 *Font: -*-helvetica-medium-r-*--12-*-p-*
3328 *Background: scoBackground
3329 *Foreground: scoForeground
3330
3331The best solution is to create an application-specific resource file for
3332Emacs, /usr/lib/X11/sco/startup/Emacs, with the following contents:
3333
3334 Emacs*Font: -*-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-120-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1
3335 Emacs*Background: white
3336 Emacs*Foreground: black
3337
3338(These settings mimic the Emacs defaults, but you can change them to
3339suit your needs.) This resource file is only read when the X server
3340starts up, so you should restart it by logging out of the Open Desktop
3341environment or by running `scologin stop; scologin start` from the shell
3342as root. Alternatively, you can put these settings in the
3343/usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/Emacs resource file and simply restart Emacs,
3344but then they will not affect remote invocations of Emacs that use the
3345Open Desktop display.
3346
3347These resource files are not normally shared across a network of SCO
3348machines; you must create the file on each machine individually.
3349
3350**** SCO 4.2.0: Regular expressions matching bugs on SCO systems.
3351
3352On SCO, there are problems in regexp matching when Emacs is compiled
3353with the system compiler. The compiler version is "Microsoft C
3354version 6", SCO 4.2.0h Dev Sys Maintenance Supplement 01/06/93; Quick
3355C Compiler Version 1.00.46 (Beta). The solution is to compile with
3356GCC.
3357
3358**** UnixWare 2.1: Error 12 (virtual memory exceeded) when dumping Emacs.
3359
3360Paul Abrahams (abrahams@acm.org) reports that with the installed
3361virtual memory settings for UnixWare 2.1.2, an Error 12 occurs during
3362the "make" that builds Emacs, when running temacs to dump emacs. That
3363error indicates that the per-process virtual memory limit has been
3364exceeded. The default limit is probably 32MB. Raising the virtual
3365memory limit to 40MB should make it possible to finish building Emacs.
3366
3367You can do this with the command `ulimit' (sh) or `limit' (csh).
3368But you have to be root to do it.
3369
3370According to Martin Sohnius, you can also retune this in the kernel:
3371
3372 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune SDATLIM 33554432 ## soft data size limit
3373 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune HDATLIM 33554432 ## hard "
3374 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune SVMMSIZE unlimited ## soft process size limit
3375 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune HVMMSIZE unlimited ## hard "
3376 # /etc/conf/bin/idbuild -B
3377
3378(He recommends you not change the stack limit, though.)
3379These changes take effect when you reboot.
3380
9dc15871 3381*** Linux 1.x
a933dad1 3382
9dc15871 3383**** Linux 1.0-1.04: Typing C-c C-c in Shell mode kills your X server.
a933dad1 3384
9dc15871
EZ
3385This happens with Linux kernel 1.0 thru 1.04, approximately. The workaround is
3386to define SIGNALS_VIA_CHARACTERS in config.h and recompile Emacs.
3387Newer Linux kernel versions don't have this problem.
a933dad1 3388
9dc15871
EZ
3389**** Linux 1.3: Output from subprocess (such as man or diff) is randomly
3390truncated on GNU/Linux systems.
a933dad1 3391
9dc15871
EZ
3392This is due to a kernel bug which seems to be fixed in Linux version
33931.3.75.
a933dad1 3394
0a4dd4e4
EZ
3395** Windows 3.1, 95, 98, and ME
3396
3397*** MS-Windows NT/95: Problems running Perl under Emacs
3398
3399`perl -de 0' just hangs when executed in an Emacs subshell.
3400The fault lies with Perl (indirectly with Windows NT/95).
3401
3402The problem is that the Perl debugger explicitly opens a connection to
3403"CON", which is the DOS/NT equivalent of "/dev/tty", for interacting
3404with the user.
3405
3406On Unix, this is okay, because Emacs (or the shell?) creates a
3407pseudo-tty so that /dev/tty is really the pipe Emacs is using to
3408communicate with the subprocess.
3409
3410On NT, this fails because CON always refers to the handle for the
3411relevant console (approximately equivalent to a tty), and cannot be
3412redirected to refer to the pipe Emacs assigned to the subprocess as
3413stdin.
3414
3415A workaround is to modify perldb.pl to use STDIN/STDOUT instead of CON.
3416
3417For Perl 4:
3418
3419 *** PERL/LIB/PERLDB.PL.orig Wed May 26 08:24:18 1993
3420 --- PERL/LIB/PERLDB.PL Mon Jul 01 15:28:16 1996
3421 ***************
3422 *** 68,74 ****
3423 $rcfile=".perldb";
3424 }
3425 else {
3426 ! $console = "con";
3427 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
3428 }
3429
3430 --- 68,74 ----
3431 $rcfile=".perldb";
3432 }
3433 else {
3434 ! $console = "";
3435 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
3436 }
3437
3438
3439 For Perl 5:
3440 *** perl/5.001/lib/perl5db.pl.orig Sun Jun 04 21:13:40 1995
3441 --- perl/5.001/lib/perl5db.pl Mon Jul 01 17:00:08 1996
3442 ***************
3443 *** 22,28 ****
3444 $rcfile=".perldb";
3445 }
3446 elsif (-e "con") {
3447 ! $console = "con";
3448 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
3449 }
3450 else {
3451 --- 22,28 ----
3452 $rcfile=".perldb";
3453 }
3454 elsif (-e "con") {
3455 ! $console = "";
3456 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
3457 }
3458 else {
3459
3460*** MS-Windows 95: Alt-f6 does not get through to Emacs.
3461
3462This character seems to be trapped by the kernel in Windows 95.
3463You can enter M-f6 by typing ESC f6.
3464
3465*** MS-Windows 95/98/ME: subprocesses do not terminate properly.
3466
3467This is a limitation of the Operating System, and can cause problems
3468when shutting down Windows. Ensure that all subprocesses are exited
3469cleanly before exiting Emacs. For more details, see the FAQ at
3470http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/windows/.
3471
3472*** MS-Windows 95/98/ME: crashes when Emacs invokes non-existent programs.
3473
3474When a program you are trying to run is not found on the PATH,
3475Windows might respond by crashing or locking up your system. In
3476particular, this has been reported when trying to compile a Java
3477program in JDEE when javac.exe is installed, but not on the system
3478PATH.
3479
9dc15871 3480** MS-DOS
a933dad1 3481
9dc15871 3482*** When compiling with DJGPP on MS-Windows NT, "config msdos" fails.
a933dad1 3483
9dc15871
EZ
3484If the error message is "VDM has been already loaded", this is because
3485Windows has a program called `redir.exe' that is incompatible with a
3486program by the same name supplied with DJGPP, which is used by
3487config.bat. To resolve this, move the DJGPP's `bin' subdirectory to
3488the front of your PATH environment variable.
a933dad1 3489
9dc15871
EZ
3490*** When compiling with DJGPP on MS-Windows 95, Make fails for some targets
3491like make-docfile.
a933dad1 3492
9dc15871
EZ
3493This can happen if long file name support (the setting of environment
3494variable LFN) when Emacs distribution was unpacked and during
3495compilation are not the same. See the MSDOG section of INSTALL for
3496the explanation of how to avoid this problem.
a933dad1 3497
9dc15871 3498*** Emacs compiled with DJGPP complains at startup:
a933dad1 3499
9dc15871 3500 "Wrong type of argument: internal-facep, msdos-menu-active-face"
a933dad1 3501
9dc15871
EZ
3502This can happen if you define an environment variable `TERM'. Emacs
3503on MSDOS uses an internal terminal emulator which is disabled if the
3504value of `TERM' is anything but the string "internal". Emacs then
3505works as if its terminal were a dumb glass teletype that doesn't
3506support faces. To work around this, arrange for `TERM' to be
3507undefined when Emacs runs. The best way to do that is to add an
3508[emacs] section to the DJGPP.ENV file which defines an empty value for
3509`TERM'; this way, only Emacs gets the empty value, while the rest of
3510your system works as before.
a933dad1 3511
9dc15871 3512*** MS-DOS: Emacs crashes at startup.
a933dad1 3513
9dc15871
EZ
3514Some users report that Emacs 19.29 requires dpmi memory management,
3515and crashes on startup if the system does not have it. We don't yet
3516know why this happens--perhaps these machines don't have enough real
3517memory, or perhaps something is wrong in Emacs or the compiler.
3518However, arranging to use dpmi support is a workaround.
a933dad1 3519
9dc15871
EZ
3520You can find out if you have a dpmi host by running go32 without
3521arguments; it will tell you if it uses dpmi memory. For more
3522information about dpmi memory, consult the djgpp FAQ. (djgpp
3523is the GNU C compiler as packaged for MSDOS.)
a933dad1 3524
9dc15871
EZ
3525Compiling Emacs under MSDOS is extremely sensitive for proper memory
3526configuration. If you experience problems during compilation, consider
3527removing some or all memory resident programs (notably disk caches)
3528and make sure that your memory managers are properly configured. See
3529the djgpp faq for configuration hints.
a933dad1 3530
9dc15871
EZ
3531*** Emacs compiled with DJGPP for MS-DOS/MS-Windows cannot access files
3532in the directory with the special name `dev' under the root of any
3533drive, e.g. `c:/dev'.
a933dad1 3534
9dc15871
EZ
3535This is an unfortunate side-effect of the support for Unix-style
3536device names such as /dev/null in the DJGPP runtime library. A
3537work-around is to rename the problem directory to another name.
a933dad1 3538
9dc15871 3539*** MS-DOS+DJGPP: Problems on MS-DOG if DJGPP v2.0 is used to compile Emacs.
a933dad1 3540
9dc15871 3541There are two DJGPP library bugs which cause problems:
a933dad1 3542
9dc15871
EZ
3543 * Running `shell-command' (or `compile', or `grep') you get
3544 `Searching for program: permission denied (EACCES), c:/command.com';
3545 * After you shell to DOS, Ctrl-Break kills Emacs.
a933dad1 3546
9dc15871
EZ
3547To work around these bugs, you can use two files in the msdos
3548subdirectory: `is_exec.c' and `sigaction.c'. Compile them and link
3549them into the Emacs executable `temacs'; then they will replace the
3550incorrect library functions.
a933dad1 3551
9dc15871
EZ
3552*** MS-DOS: Emacs compiled for MSDOS cannot find some Lisp files, or other
3553run-time support files, when long filename support is enabled.
a933dad1 3554
9dc15871
EZ
3555Usually, this problem will manifest itself when Emacs exits
3556immediately after flashing the startup screen, because it cannot find
3557the Lisp files it needs to load at startup. Redirect Emacs stdout
3558and stderr to a file to see the error message printed by Emacs.
a933dad1 3559
9dc15871
EZ
3560Another manifestation of this problem is that Emacs is unable to load
3561the support for editing program sources in languages such as C and
3562Lisp.
a933dad1 3563
9dc15871
EZ
3564This can happen if the Emacs distribution was unzipped without LFN
3565support, thus causing long filenames to be truncated to the first 6
3566characters and a numeric tail that Windows 95 normally attaches to it.
3567You should unzip the files again with a utility that supports long
3568filenames (such as djtar from DJGPP or InfoZip's UnZip program
3569compiled with DJGPP v2). The MSDOG section of the file INSTALL
3570explains this issue in more detail.
a933dad1 3571
9dc15871
EZ
3572Another possible reason for such failures is that Emacs compiled for
3573MSDOS is used on Windows NT, where long file names are not supported
3574by this version of Emacs, but the distribution was unpacked by an
3575unzip program that preserved the long file names instead of truncating
3576them to DOS 8+3 limits. To be useful on NT, the MSDOS port of Emacs
3577must be unzipped by a DOS utility, so that long file names are
3578properly truncated.
a933dad1 3579
9dc15871 3580** Archaic window managers and toolkits
a933dad1 3581
9dc15871 3582*** OpenLook: Under OpenLook, the Emacs window disappears when you type M-q.
a933dad1 3583
9dc15871
EZ
3584Some versions of the Open Look window manager interpret M-q as a quit
3585command for whatever window you are typing at. If you want to use
3586Emacs with that window manager, you should try to configure the window
3587manager to use some other command. You can disable the
3588shortcut keys entirely by adding this line to ~/.OWdefaults:
a933dad1 3589
9dc15871 3590 OpenWindows.WindowMenuAccelerators: False
a933dad1 3591
9dc15871 3592**** twm: A position you specified in .Xdefaults is ignored, using twm.
a933dad1 3593
9dc15871
EZ
3594twm normally ignores "program-specified" positions.
3595You can tell it to obey them with this command in your `.twmrc' file:
a933dad1 3596
9dc15871 3597 UsePPosition "on" #allow clients to request a position
a933dad1 3598
9dc15871 3599** Bugs related to old DEC hardware
a933dad1 3600
9dc15871 3601*** The Compose key on a DEC keyboard does not work as Meta key.
a933dad1 3602
9dc15871 3603This shell command should fix it:
a933dad1 3604
9dc15871 3605 xmodmap -e 'keycode 0xb1 = Meta_L'
a933dad1 3606
9dc15871
EZ
3607*** Keyboard input gets confused after a beep when using a DECserver
3608as a concentrator.
a933dad1 3609
9dc15871
EZ
3610This problem seems to be a matter of configuring the DECserver to use
36117 bit characters rather than 8 bit characters.
a933dad1 3612
9dc15871 3613* Build problems on legacy systems
a933dad1 3614
9dc15871 3615** BSD/386 1.0: --with-x-toolkit option configures wrong.
a933dad1 3616
9dc15871
EZ
3617This problem is due to bugs in the shell in version 1.0 of BSD/386.
3618The workaround is to edit the configure file to use some other shell,
3619such as bash.
a933dad1 3620
9dc15871
EZ
3621** Digital Unix 4.0: Emacs fails to build, giving error message
3622 Invalid dimension for the charset-ID 160
a933dad1 3623
9dc15871
EZ
3624This is due to a bug or an installation problem in GCC 2.8.0.
3625Installing a more recent version of GCC fixes the problem.
a933dad1 3626
9dc15871 3627** Digital Unix 4.0: Failure in unexec while dumping emacs.
a933dad1 3628
9dc15871 3629This problem manifests itself as an error message
a933dad1 3630
9dc15871 3631 unexec: Bad address, writing data section to ...
a933dad1 3632
9dc15871
EZ
3633The user suspects that this happened because his X libraries
3634were built for an older system version,
a933dad1 3635
9dc15871 3636 ./configure --x-includes=/usr/include --x-libraries=/usr/shlib
a933dad1 3637
9dc15871 3638made the problem go away.
a933dad1 3639
9dc15871 3640** Sunos 4.1.1: there are errors compiling sysdep.c.
a933dad1 3641
9dc15871 3642If you get errors such as
a933dad1 3643
9dc15871
EZ
3644 "sysdep.c", line 2017: undefined structure or union
3645 "sysdep.c", line 2017: undefined structure or union
3646 "sysdep.c", line 2019: nodename undefined
a933dad1 3647
9dc15871
EZ
3648This can result from defining LD_LIBRARY_PATH. It is very tricky
3649to use that environment variable with Emacs. The Emacs configure
3650script links many test programs with the system libraries; you must
3651make sure that the libraries available to configure are the same
3652ones available when you build Emacs.
a933dad1 3653
9dc15871 3654** SunOS 4.1.1: You get this error message from GNU ld:
a933dad1 3655
9dc15871 3656 /lib/libc.a(_Q_sub.o): Undefined symbol __Q_get_rp_rd referenced from text segment
a933dad1 3657
9dc15871 3658The problem is in the Sun shared C library, not in GNU ld.
a933dad1 3659
9dc15871 3660The solution is to install Patch-ID# 100267-03 from Sun.
a933dad1 3661
9dc15871 3662** Sunos 4.1: Undefined symbols when linking using --with-x-toolkit.
a933dad1 3663
9dc15871
EZ
3664If you get the undefined symbols _atowc _wcslen, _iswprint, _iswspace,
3665_iswcntrl, _wcscpy, and _wcsncpy, then you need to add -lXwchar after
3666-lXaw in the command that links temacs.
a933dad1 3667
9dc15871
EZ
3668This problem seems to arise only when the international language
3669extensions to X11R5 are installed.
a933dad1 3670
9dc15871 3671** SunOS: Emacs gets error message from linker on Sun.
a933dad1 3672
9dc15871
EZ
3673If the error message says that a symbol such as `f68881_used' or
3674`ffpa_used' or `start_float' is undefined, this probably indicates
3675that you have compiled some libraries, such as the X libraries,
3676with a floating point option other than the default.
a933dad1 3677
9dc15871
EZ
3678It's not terribly hard to make this work with small changes in
3679crt0.c together with linking with Fcrt1.o, Wcrt1.o or Mcrt1.o.
3680However, the easiest approach is to build Xlib with the default
3681floating point option: -fsoft.
a933dad1 3682
0a4dd4e4
EZ
3683** HPUX 10.20: Emacs crashes during dumping on the HPPA machine.
3684
3685This seems to be due to a GCC bug; it is fixed in GCC 2.8.1.
3686
9dc15871 3687** VMS: Compilation errors on VMS.
a933dad1 3688
9dc15871
EZ
3689You will get warnings when compiling on VMS because there are
3690variable names longer than 32 (or whatever it is) characters.
3691This is not an error. Ignore it.
a933dad1 3692
9dc15871
EZ
3693VAX C does not support #if defined(foo). Uses of this construct
3694were removed, but some may have crept back in. They must be rewritten.
a933dad1 3695
9dc15871
EZ
3696There is a bug in the C compiler which fails to sign extend characters
3697in conditional expressions. The bug is:
3698 char c = -1, d = 1;
3699 int i;
a933dad1 3700
9dc15871
EZ
3701 i = d ? c : d;
3702The result is i == 255; the fix is to typecast the char in the
3703conditional expression as an (int). Known occurrences of such
3704constructs in Emacs have been fixed.
a933dad1 3705
9dc15871 3706** Vax C compiler bugs affecting Emacs.
a933dad1
DL
3707
3708You may get one of these problems compiling Emacs:
3709
3710 foo.c line nnn: compiler error: no table entry for op STASG
3711 foo.c: fatal error in /lib/ccom
3712
3713These are due to bugs in the C compiler; the code is valid C.
3714Unfortunately, the bugs are unpredictable: the same construct
3715may compile properly or trigger one of these bugs, depending
3716on what else is in the source file being compiled. Even changes
3717in header files that should not affect the file being compiled
3718can affect whether the bug happens. In addition, sometimes files
3719that compile correctly on one machine get this bug on another machine.
3720
3721As a result, it is hard for me to make sure this bug will not affect
3722you. I have attempted to find and alter these constructs, but more
3723can always appear. However, I can tell you how to deal with it if it
3724should happen. The bug comes from having an indexed reference to an
3725array of Lisp_Objects, as an argument in a function call:
3726 Lisp_Object *args;
3727 ...
3728 ... foo (5, args[i], ...)...
3729putting the argument into a temporary variable first, as in
3730 Lisp_Object *args;
3731 Lisp_Object tem;
3732 ...
3733 tem = args[i];
3734 ... foo (r, tem, ...)...
3735causes the problem to go away.
3736The `contents' field of a Lisp vector is an array of Lisp_Objects,
3737so you may see the problem happening with indexed references to that.
3738
9dc15871 3739** 68000 C compiler problems
a933dad1
DL
3740
3741Various 68000 compilers have different problems.
3742These are some that have been observed.
3743
9dc15871 3744*** Using value of assignment expression on union type loses.
a933dad1
DL
3745This means that x = y = z; or foo (x = z); does not work
3746if x is of type Lisp_Object.
3747
9dc15871 3748*** "cannot reclaim" error.
a933dad1
DL
3749
3750This means that an expression is too complicated. You get the correct
3751line number in the error message. The code must be rewritten with
3752simpler expressions.
3753
9dc15871 3754*** XCONS, XSTRING, etc macros produce incorrect code.
a933dad1
DL
3755
3756If temacs fails to run at all, this may be the cause.
3757Compile this test program and look at the assembler code:
3758
3759struct foo { char x; unsigned int y : 24; };
3760
3761lose (arg)
3762 struct foo arg;
3763{
3764 test ((int *) arg.y);
3765}
3766
3767If the code is incorrect, your compiler has this problem.
3768In the XCONS, etc., macros in lisp.h you must replace (a).u.val with
3769((a).u.val + coercedummy) where coercedummy is declared as int.
3770
3771This problem will not happen if the m-...h file for your type
3772of machine defines NO_UNION_TYPE. That is the recommended setting now.
3773
9dc15871 3774*** C compilers lose on returning unions.
a933dad1
DL
3775
3776I hear that some C compilers cannot handle returning a union type.
3777Most of the functions in GNU Emacs return type Lisp_Object, which is
3778defined as a union on some rare architectures.
3779
3780This problem will not happen if the m-...h file for your type
3781of machine defines NO_UNION_TYPE.
3782
53854552 3783\f
5b87ad55 3784This file is part of GNU Emacs.
fe6b4873 3785
5b87ad55
GM
3786GNU Emacs is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
3787it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
fca4a5de 3788the Free Software Foundation; either version 3, or (at your option)
5b87ad55 3789any later version.
fe6b4873 3790
5b87ad55
GM
3791GNU Emacs is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
3792but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
3793MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
3794GNU General Public License for more details.
3795
3796You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
3797along with GNU Emacs; see the file COPYING. If not, write to the
3798Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor,
3799Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.
3800
3801\f
53854552
EZ
3802Local variables:
3803mode: outline
3804paragraph-separate: "[ \f]*$"
3805end:
6b61353c
KH
3806
3807arch-tag: 49fc0d95-88cb-4715-b21c-f27fb5a4764a