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5e14abf8 KS |
1 | Known Problems with GNU Emacs |
2 | ||
ab422c4d PE |
3 | Copyright (C) 1987-1989, 1993-1999, 2001-2013 Free Software Foundation, |
4 | Inc. | |
5b87ad55 GM |
5 | See the end of the file for license conditions. |
6 | ||
7 | ||
a933dad1 | 8 | This file describes various problems that have been encountered |
2de04022 GM |
9 | in compiling, installing and running GNU Emacs. Try doing C-c C-t |
10 | and browsing through the outline headers. (See C-h m for help on | |
f995538b GM |
11 | Outline mode.) Information about systems that are no longer supported, |
12 | and old Emacs releases, has been removed. Consult older versions of | |
13 | this file if you are interested in that information. | |
a933dad1 | 14 | |
8589dc17 | 15 | * Mule-UCS doesn't work in Emacs 23. |
2c311b39 DL |
16 | |
17 | It's completely redundant now, as far as we know. | |
18 | ||
9dc15871 | 19 | * Emacs startup failures |
32364f49 | 20 | |
9dc15871 | 21 | ** Emacs fails to start, complaining about missing fonts. |
32364f49 | 22 | |
9dc15871 | 23 | A typical error message might be something like |
32364f49 | 24 | |
9dc15871 | 25 | No fonts match `-*-fixed-medium-r-*--6-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1' |
6b61353c | 26 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
27 | This happens because some X resource specifies a bad font family for |
28 | Emacs to use. The possible places where this specification might be | |
29 | are: | |
6b61353c | 30 | |
9dc15871 | 31 | - in your ~/.Xdefaults file |
6b61353c | 32 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
33 | - client-side X resource file, such as ~/Emacs or |
34 | /usr/X11R6/lib/app-defaults/Emacs or | |
35 | /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/app-defaults/Emacs | |
6b61353c | 36 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
37 | One of these files might have bad or malformed specification of a |
38 | fontset that Emacs should use. To fix the problem, you need to find | |
39 | the problematic line(s) and correct them. | |
6b61353c | 40 | |
9dc15871 | 41 | ** Emacs aborts while starting up, only when run without X. |
6b61353c | 42 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
43 | This problem often results from compiling Emacs with GCC when GCC was |
44 | installed incorrectly. The usual error in installing GCC is to | |
45 | specify --includedir=/usr/include. Installation of GCC makes | |
46 | corrected copies of the system header files. GCC is supposed to use | |
47 | the corrected copies in preference to the original system headers. | |
48 | Specifying --includedir=/usr/include causes the original system header | |
49 | files to be used. On some systems, the definition of ioctl in the | |
50 | original system header files is invalid for ANSI C and causes Emacs | |
51 | not to work. | |
6b61353c | 52 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
53 | The fix is to reinstall GCC, and this time do not specify --includedir |
54 | when you configure it. Then recompile Emacs. Specifying --includedir | |
55 | is appropriate only in very special cases and it should *never* be the | |
56 | same directory where system header files are kept. | |
6b61353c | 57 | |
9dc15871 | 58 | ** Emacs does not start, complaining that it cannot open termcap database file. |
6b61353c | 59 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
60 | If your system uses Terminfo rather than termcap (most modern |
61 | systems do), this could happen if the proper version of | |
62 | ncurses is not visible to the Emacs configure script (i.e. it | |
63 | cannot be found along the usual path the linker looks for | |
64 | libraries). It can happen because your version of ncurses is | |
65 | obsolete, or is available only in form of binaries. | |
6b61353c | 66 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
67 | The solution is to install an up-to-date version of ncurses in |
68 | the developer's form (header files, static libraries and | |
69 | symbolic links); in some GNU/Linux distributions (e.g. Debian) | |
70 | it constitutes a separate package. | |
6b61353c | 71 | |
9dc15871 | 72 | ** Emacs 20 and later fails to load Lisp files at startup. |
5b4ffca2 | 73 | |
9dc15871 | 74 | The typical error message might be like this: |
5b4ffca2 | 75 | |
9dc15871 | 76 | "Cannot open load file: fontset" |
c763d515 | 77 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
78 | This could happen if you compress the file lisp/subdirs.el. That file |
79 | tells Emacs what are the directories where it should look for Lisp | |
80 | files. Emacs cannot work with subdirs.el compressed, since the | |
81 | Auto-compress mode it needs for this will not be loaded until later, | |
82 | when your .emacs file is processed. (The package `fontset.el' is | |
83 | required to set up fonts used to display text on window systems, and | |
84 | it's loaded very early in the startup procedure.) | |
f1c231c4 | 85 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
86 | Similarly, any other .el file for which there's no corresponding .elc |
87 | file could fail to load if it is compressed. | |
fc2938d1 | 88 | |
c64233b2 | 89 | The solution is to uncompress all .el files that don't have a .elc file. |
6b61353c | 90 | |
9dc15871 | 91 | Another possible reason for such failures is stale *.elc files |
b7bd8478 | 92 | lurking somewhere on your load-path -- see the next section. |
f0f62f71 | 93 | |
9dc15871 | 94 | ** Emacs prints an error at startup after upgrading from an earlier version. |
f0f62f71 | 95 | |
9dc15871 | 96 | An example of such an error is: |
f0f62f71 | 97 | |
9dc15871 | 98 | x-complement-fontset-spec: "Wrong type argument: stringp, nil" |
fc1bfc2a | 99 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
100 | This can be another symptom of stale *.elc files in your load-path. |
101 | The following command will print any duplicate Lisp files that are | |
102 | present in load-path: | |
fc1bfc2a | 103 | |
16eea16b | 104 | emacs -batch -f list-load-path-shadows |
fc1bfc2a | 105 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
106 | If this command prints any file names, some of these files are stale, |
107 | and should be deleted or their directories removed from your | |
108 | load-path. | |
60f553d2 | 109 | |
9dc15871 | 110 | ** With X11R6.4, public-patch-3, Emacs crashes at startup. |
3f82efb4 | 111 | |
9dc15871 | 112 | Reportedly this patch in X fixes the problem. |
3f82efb4 | 113 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
114 | --- xc/lib/X11/imInt.c~ Wed Jun 30 13:31:56 1999 |
115 | +++ xc/lib/X11/imInt.c Thu Jul 1 15:10:27 1999 | |
116 | @@ -1,4 +1,4 @@ | |
117 | -/* $TOG: imInt.c /main/5 1998/05/30 21:11:16 kaleb $ */ | |
118 | +/* $TOG: imInt.c /main/5 1998/05/30 21:11:16 kaleb $ */ | |
119 | /****************************************************************** | |
3f82efb4 | 120 | |
3256a475 | 121 | Copyright 1992, 1993, 1994 by FUJITSU LIMITED |
9dc15871 EZ |
122 | @@ -166,8 +166,8 @@ |
123 | _XimMakeImName(lcd) | |
3256a475 | 124 | XLCd lcd; |
9dc15871 EZ |
125 | { |
126 | - char* begin; | |
127 | - char* end; | |
128 | + char* begin = NULL; | |
129 | + char* end = NULL; | |
3256a475 RC |
130 | char* ret; |
131 | int i = 0; | |
132 | char* ximmodifier = XIMMODIFIER; | |
9dc15871 | 133 | @@ -182,7 +182,11 @@ |
3256a475 RC |
134 | } |
135 | ret = Xmalloc(end - begin + 2); | |
136 | if (ret != NULL) { | |
137 | - (void)strncpy(ret, begin, end - begin + 1); | |
9dc15871 | 138 | + if (begin != NULL) { |
3256a475 | 139 | + (void)strncpy(ret, begin, end - begin + 1); |
9dc15871 | 140 | + } else { |
3256a475 | 141 | + ret[0] = '\0'; |
9dc15871 | 142 | + } |
3256a475 RC |
143 | ret[end - begin + 1] = '\0'; |
144 | } | |
145 | return ret; | |
3f82efb4 | 146 | |
13673952 CY |
147 | ** Emacs crashes on startup after a glibc upgrade. |
148 | ||
149 | This is caused by a binary incompatible change to the malloc | |
150 | implementation in glibc 2.5.90-22. As a result, Emacs binaries built | |
151 | using prior versions of glibc crash when run under 2.5.90-22. | |
152 | ||
0a7aab83 | 153 | This problem was first seen in pre-release versions of Fedora 7, and |
13673952 CY |
154 | may be fixed in the final Fedora 7 release. To stop the crash from |
155 | happening, first try upgrading to the newest version of glibc; if this | |
156 | does not work, rebuild Emacs with the same version of glibc that you | |
157 | will run it under. For details, see | |
158 | ||
159 | https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=239344 | |
160 | ||
9dc15871 | 161 | * Crash bugs |
cc305a60 | 162 | |
9978c06c | 163 | ** Emacs crashes when running in a terminal, if compiled with GCC 4.5.0 |
5a7f1eb1 CY |
164 | This version of GCC is buggy: see |
165 | ||
166 | http://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=6031 | |
167 | http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=43904 | |
168 | ||
169 | You can work around this error in gcc-4.5 by omitting sibling call | |
170 | optimization. To do this, configure Emacs with | |
171 | ||
172 | CFLAGS="-g -O2 -fno-optimize-sibling-calls" ./configure | |
173 | ||
f9888580 EZ |
174 | ** Emacs compiled with GCC 4.6.1 crashes on MS-Windows when C-g is pressed |
175 | ||
176 | This is known to happen when Emacs is compiled with MinGW GCC 4.6.1 | |
177 | with the -O2 option (which is the default in the Windows build). The | |
178 | reason is a bug in MinGW GCC 4.6.1; to work around, either add the | |
179 | `-fno-omit-frame-pointer' switch to GCC or compile without | |
180 | optimizations (`--no-opt' switch to the configure.bat script). | |
181 | ||
9dc15871 | 182 | ** Emacs crashes in x-popup-dialog. |
cc305a60 | 183 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
184 | This can happen if the dialog widget cannot find the font it wants to |
185 | use. You can work around the problem by specifying another font with | |
186 | an X resource--for example, `Emacs.dialog*.font: 9x15' (or any font that | |
187 | happens to exist on your X server). | |
fc2938d1 | 188 | |
9dc15871 | 189 | ** Emacs crashes when you use Bibtex mode. |
fc2938d1 | 190 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
191 | This happens if your system puts a small limit on stack size. You can |
192 | prevent the problem by using a suitable shell command (often `ulimit') | |
193 | to raise the stack size limit before you run Emacs. | |
177c0ea7 | 194 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
195 | Patches to raise the stack size limit automatically in `main' |
196 | (src/emacs.c) on various systems would be greatly appreciated. | |
fc2938d1 | 197 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
198 | ** Error message `Symbol's value as variable is void: x', followed by |
199 | a segmentation fault and core dump. | |
c93bdf05 | 200 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
201 | This has been tracked to a bug in tar! People report that tar erroneously |
202 | added a line like this at the beginning of files of Lisp code: | |
c93bdf05 | 203 | |
9dc15871 | 204 | x FILENAME, N bytes, B tape blocks |
c93bdf05 | 205 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
206 | If your tar has this problem, install GNU tar--if you can manage to |
207 | untar it :-). | |
c93bdf05 | 208 | |
e9b4dbdc | 209 | ** Emacs can crash when displaying PNG images with transparency. |
19151a7f PE |
210 | This is due to a bug introduced in ImageMagick 6.8.2-3. The bug |
211 | should be fixed in ImageMagick 6.8.3-10. Please see Bug#13867. | |
212 | ||
9dc15871 EZ |
213 | ** Crashes when displaying GIF images in Emacs built with version |
214 | libungif-4.1.0 are resolved by using version libungif-4.1.0b1. | |
215 | Configure checks for the correct version, but this problem could occur | |
216 | if a binary built against a shared libungif is run on a system with an | |
217 | older version. | |
4593687f | 218 | |
9dc15871 | 219 | ** Emacs aborts inside the function `tparam1'. |
9272ccfc | 220 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
221 | This can happen if Emacs was built without terminfo support, but the |
222 | terminal's capabilities use format that is only supported by terminfo. | |
223 | If your system has ncurses installed, this might happen if your | |
224 | version of ncurses is broken; upgrading to a newer version of ncurses | |
225 | and reconfiguring and rebuilding Emacs should solve this. | |
9272ccfc | 226 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
227 | All modern systems support terminfo, so even if ncurses is not the |
228 | problem, you should look for a way to configure Emacs so that it uses | |
229 | terminfo when built. | |
9272ccfc | 230 | |
0d774907 | 231 | ** Emacs crashes when using some version of the Exceed X server. |
7aa70236 | 232 | |
0d774907 CY |
233 | Upgrading to a newer version of Exceed has been reported to prevent |
234 | these crashes. You should consider switching to a free X server, such | |
235 | as Xming or Cygwin/X. | |
7aa70236 | 236 | |
9dc15871 | 237 | ** Emacs crashes with SIGSEGV in XtInitializeWidgetClass. |
7c22dc9d | 238 | |
9dc15871 | 239 | It crashes on X, but runs fine when called with option "-nw". |
7c22dc9d | 240 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
241 | This has been observed when Emacs is linked with GNU ld but without passing |
242 | the -z nocombreloc flag. Emacs normally knows to pass the -z nocombreloc | |
243 | flag when needed, so if you come across a situation where the flag is | |
244 | necessary but missing, please report it via M-x report-emacs-bug. | |
7c22dc9d | 245 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
246 | On platforms such as Solaris, you can also work around this problem by |
247 | configuring your compiler to use the native linker instead of GNU ld. | |
7c22dc9d | 248 | |
365dc66c | 249 | ** When Emacs is compiled with Gtk+, closing a display kills Emacs. |
1437ec2b | 250 | |
365dc66c CY |
251 | There is a long-standing bug in GTK that prevents it from recovering |
252 | from disconnects: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=85715. | |
1437ec2b | 253 | |
365dc66c CY |
254 | Thus, for instance, when Emacs is run as a server on a text terminal, |
255 | and an X frame is created, and the X server for that frame crashes or | |
256 | exits unexpectedly, Emacs must exit to prevent a GTK error that would | |
257 | result in an endless loop. | |
c4c122cb | 258 | |
365dc66c CY |
259 | If you need Emacs to be able to recover from closing displays, compile |
260 | it with the Lucid toolkit instead of GTK. | |
c4c122cb | 261 | |
538044ed GM |
262 | ** Emacs crashes when you try to view a file with complex characters. |
263 | For example, the etc/HELLO file (as shown by C-h h). | |
264 | The message "symbol lookup error: /usr/bin/emacs: undefined symbol: OTF_open" | |
265 | is shown in the terminal from which you launched Emacs. | |
266 | This problem only happens when you use a graphical display (ie not | |
267 | with -nw) and compiled Emacs with the "libotf" library for complex | |
268 | text handling. | |
269 | ||
270 | This problem occurs because unfortunately there are two libraries | |
271 | called "libotf". One is the library for handling OpenType fonts, | |
272 | http://www.m17n.org/libotf/, which is the one that Emacs expects. | |
273 | The other is a library for Open Trace Format, and is used by some | |
274 | versions of the MPI message passing interface for parallel | |
275 | programming. | |
276 | ||
277 | For example, on RHEL6 GNU/Linux, the OpenMPI rpm provides a version | |
278 | of "libotf.so" in /usr/lib/openmpi/lib. This directory is not | |
279 | normally in the ld search path, but if you want to use OpenMPI, | |
280 | you must issue the command "module load openmpi". This adds | |
281 | /usr/lib/openmpi/lib to LD_LIBRARY_PATH. If you then start Emacs from | |
282 | the same shell, you will encounter this crash. | |
283 | Ref: <URL:https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=806031> | |
284 | ||
285 | There is no good solution to this problem if you need to use both | |
286 | OpenMPI and Emacs with libotf support. The best you can do is use a | |
287 | wrapper shell script (or function) "emacs" that removes the offending | |
288 | element from LD_LIBRARY_PATH before starting emacs proper. | |
289 | Or you could recompile Emacs with an -Wl,-rpath option that | |
290 | gives the location of the correct libotf. | |
291 | ||
9dc15871 | 292 | * General runtime problems |
7c22dc9d | 293 | |
9dc15871 | 294 | ** Lisp problems |
677e7496 | 295 | |
9dc15871 | 296 | *** Changes made to .el files do not take effect. |
677e7496 | 297 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
298 | You may have forgotten to recompile them into .elc files. |
299 | Then the old .elc files will be loaded, and your changes | |
300 | will not be seen. To fix this, do M-x byte-recompile-directory | |
301 | and specify the directory that contains the Lisp files. | |
677e7496 | 302 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
303 | Emacs should print a warning when loading a .elc file which is older |
304 | than the corresponding .el file. | |
677e7496 | 305 | |
9dc15871 | 306 | *** Watch out for .emacs files and EMACSLOADPATH environment vars. |
677e7496 | 307 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
308 | These control the actions of Emacs. |
309 | ~/.emacs is your Emacs init file. | |
c64233b2 | 310 | EMACSLOADPATH overrides which directories the function "load" will search. |
677e7496 | 311 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
312 | If you observe strange problems, check for these and get rid |
313 | of them, then try again. | |
9ed04369 | 314 | |
9dc15871 | 315 | *** Using epop3.el package causes Emacs to signal an error. |
9ed04369 | 316 | |
9dc15871 | 317 | The error message might be something like this: |
b87207a0 | 318 | |
9dc15871 | 319 | "Lisp nesting exceeds max-lisp-eval-depth" |
b87207a0 | 320 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
321 | This happens because epop3 redefines the function gethash, which is a |
322 | built-in primitive beginning with Emacs 21.1. We don't have a patch | |
323 | for epop3 that fixes this, but perhaps a newer version of epop3 | |
324 | corrects that. | |
177c0ea7 | 325 | |
9dc15871 | 326 | *** Buffers from `with-output-to-temp-buffer' get set up in Help mode. |
177c0ea7 | 327 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
328 | Changes in Emacs 20.4 to the hooks used by that function cause |
329 | problems for some packages, specifically BBDB. See the function's | |
330 | documentation for the hooks involved. BBDB 2.00.06 fixes the problem. | |
177c0ea7 | 331 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
332 | *** The Hyperbole package causes *Help* buffers not to be displayed in |
333 | Help mode due to setting `temp-buffer-show-hook' rather than using | |
334 | `add-hook'. Using `(add-hook 'temp-buffer-show-hook | |
335 | 'help-mode-maybe)' after loading Hyperbole should fix this. | |
177c0ea7 | 336 | |
9dc15871 | 337 | ** Keyboard problems |
b87207a0 | 338 | |
e1602f7b CY |
339 | *** Unable to enter the M-| key on some German keyboards. |
340 | Some users have reported that M-| suffers from "keyboard ghosting". | |
341 | This can't be fixed by Emacs, as the keypress never gets passed to it | |
342 | at all (as can be verified using "xev"). You can work around this by | |
343 | typing `ESC |' instead. | |
344 | ||
9dc15871 | 345 | *** "Compose Character" key does strange things when used as a Meta key. |
61638355 | 346 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
347 | If you define one key to serve as both Meta and Compose Character, you |
348 | will get strange results. In previous Emacs versions, this "worked" | |
349 | in that the key acted as Meta--that's because the older Emacs versions | |
350 | did not try to support Compose Character. Now Emacs tries to do | |
351 | character composition in the standard X way. This means that you | |
352 | must pick one meaning or the other for any given key. | |
61638355 | 353 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
354 | You can use both functions (Meta, and Compose Character) if you assign |
355 | them to two different keys. | |
a47a639f | 356 | |
9dc15871 | 357 | *** C-z just refreshes the screen instead of suspending Emacs. |
a47a639f | 358 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
359 | You are probably using a shell that doesn't support job control, even |
360 | though the system itself is capable of it. Either use a different shell, | |
361 | or set the variable `cannot-suspend' to a non-nil value. | |
a47a639f | 362 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
363 | *** With M-x enable-flow-control, you need to type C-\ twice |
364 | to do incremental search--a single C-\ gets no response. | |
a47a639f | 365 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
366 | This has been traced to communicating with your machine via kermit, |
367 | with C-\ as the kermit escape character. One solution is to use | |
368 | another escape character in kermit. One user did | |
61638355 | 369 | |
9dc15871 | 370 | set escape-character 17 |
61638355 | 371 | |
9dc15871 | 372 | in his .kermrc file, to make C-q the kermit escape character. |
61638355 | 373 | |
9dc15871 | 374 | ** Mailers and other helper programs |
61638355 | 375 | |
9dc15871 | 376 | *** movemail compiled with POP support can't connect to the POP server. |
61638355 | 377 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
378 | Make sure that the `pop' entry in /etc/services, or in the services |
379 | NIS map if your machine uses NIS, has the same port number as the | |
380 | entry on the POP server. A common error is for the POP server to be | |
381 | listening on port 110, the assigned port for the POP3 protocol, while | |
382 | the client is trying to connect on port 109, the assigned port for the | |
383 | old POP protocol. | |
61638355 | 384 | |
9dc15871 | 385 | *** RMAIL gets error getting new mail. |
61638355 | 386 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
387 | RMAIL gets new mail from /usr/spool/mail/$USER using a program |
388 | called `movemail'. This program interlocks with /bin/mail using | |
389 | the protocol defined by /bin/mail. | |
61638355 | 390 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
391 | There are two different protocols in general use. One of them uses |
392 | the `flock' system call. The other involves creating a lock file; | |
393 | `movemail' must be able to write in /usr/spool/mail in order to do | |
394 | this. You control which one is used by defining, or not defining, | |
611ac47b | 395 | the macro MAIL_USE_FLOCK in config.h. |
9dc15871 EZ |
396 | IF YOU DON'T USE THE FORM OF INTERLOCKING THAT IS NORMAL ON YOUR |
397 | SYSTEM, YOU CAN LOSE MAIL! | |
61638355 | 398 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
399 | If your system uses the lock file protocol, and fascist restrictions |
400 | prevent ordinary users from writing the lock files in /usr/spool/mail, | |
401 | you may need to make `movemail' setgid to a suitable group such as | |
402 | `mail'. To do this, use the following commands (as root) after doing the | |
403 | make install. | |
61638355 | 404 | |
3256a475 RC |
405 | chgrp mail movemail |
406 | chmod 2755 movemail | |
61638355 | 407 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
408 | Installation normally copies movemail from the build directory to an |
409 | installation directory which is usually under /usr/local/lib. The | |
410 | installed copy of movemail is usually in the directory | |
411 | /usr/local/lib/emacs/VERSION/TARGET. You must change the group and | |
412 | mode of the installed copy; changing the group and mode of the build | |
413 | directory copy is ineffective. | |
61638355 | 414 | |
9dc15871 | 415 | *** rcs2log gives you the awk error message "too many fields". |
61638355 | 416 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
417 | This is due to an arbitrary limit in certain versions of awk. |
418 | The solution is to use gawk (GNU awk). | |
61638355 | 419 | |
9dc15871 | 420 | ** Problems with hostname resolution |
61638355 | 421 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
422 | *** Emacs fails to understand most Internet host names, even though |
423 | the names work properly with other programs on the same system. | |
424 | *** Emacs won't work with X-windows if the value of DISPLAY is HOSTNAME:0. | |
20dc2215 | 425 | *** Gnus can't make contact with the specified host for nntp. |
61638355 | 426 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
427 | This typically happens on Suns and other systems that use shared |
428 | libraries. The cause is that the site has installed a version of the | |
429 | shared library which uses a name server--but has not installed a | |
430 | similar version of the unshared library which Emacs uses. | |
556a9fad | 431 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
432 | The result is that most programs, using the shared library, work with |
433 | the nameserver, but Emacs does not. | |
61638355 | 434 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
435 | The fix is to install an unshared library that corresponds to what you |
436 | installed in the shared library, and then relink Emacs. | |
49172314 | 437 | |
9dc15871 | 438 | If you have already installed the name resolver in the file libresolv.a, |
1ddc2bd6 | 439 | then you need to compile Emacs to use that library. |
3c418e54 | 440 | |
9dc15871 | 441 | *** Emacs does not know your host's fully-qualified domain name. |
3c418e54 | 442 | |
53b30c38 GM |
443 | For example, (system-name) returns some variation on |
444 | "localhost.localdomain", rather the name you were expecting. | |
445 | ||
9dc15871 | 446 | You need to configure your machine with a fully qualified domain name, |
53b30c38 | 447 | (i.e. a name with at least one ".") either in /etc/hosts, |
c64233b2 | 448 | /etc/hostname, the NIS, or wherever your system calls for specifying this. |
f9130829 | 449 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
450 | If you cannot fix the configuration, you can set the Lisp variable |
451 | mail-host-address to the value you want. | |
f9130829 | 452 | |
9dc15871 | 453 | ** NFS and RFS |
f9130829 | 454 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
455 | *** Emacs says it has saved a file, but the file does not actually |
456 | appear on disk. | |
f9130829 | 457 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
458 | This can happen on certain systems when you are using NFS, if the |
459 | remote disk is full. It is due to a bug in NFS (or certain NFS | |
460 | implementations), and there is apparently nothing Emacs can do to | |
461 | detect the problem. Emacs checks the failure codes of all the system | |
462 | calls involved in writing a file, including `close'; but in the case | |
463 | where the problem occurs, none of those system calls fails. | |
f9130829 | 464 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
465 | *** Editing files through RFS gives spurious "file has changed" warnings. |
466 | It is possible that a change in Emacs 18.37 gets around this problem, | |
467 | but in case not, here is a description of how to fix the RFS bug that | |
468 | causes it. | |
f9130829 | 469 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
470 | There was a serious pair of bugs in the handling of the fsync() system |
471 | call in the RFS server. | |
f9130829 | 472 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
473 | The first is that the fsync() call is handled as another name for the |
474 | close() system call (!!). It appears that fsync() is not used by very | |
475 | many programs; Emacs version 18 does an fsync() before closing files | |
476 | to make sure that the bits are on the disk. | |
ed85f61d | 477 | |
9dc15871 | 478 | This is fixed by the enclosed patch to the RFS server. |
b300fd77 | 479 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
480 | The second, more serious problem, is that fsync() is treated as a |
481 | non-blocking system call (i.e., it's implemented as a message that | |
482 | gets sent to the remote system without waiting for a reply). Fsync is | |
483 | a useful tool for building atomic file transactions. Implementing it | |
484 | as a non-blocking RPC call (when the local call blocks until the sync | |
485 | is done) is a bad idea; unfortunately, changing it will break the RFS | |
486 | protocol. No fix was supplied for this problem. | |
b300fd77 | 487 | |
9dc15871 | 488 | (as always, your line numbers may vary) |
ed85f61d | 489 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
490 | % rcsdiff -c -r1.2 serversyscall.c |
491 | RCS file: RCS/serversyscall.c,v | |
492 | retrieving revision 1.2 | |
493 | diff -c -r1.2 serversyscall.c | |
494 | *** /tmp/,RCSt1003677 Wed Jan 28 15:15:02 1987 | |
495 | --- serversyscall.c Wed Jan 28 15:14:48 1987 | |
496 | *************** | |
497 | *** 163,169 **** | |
3256a475 RC |
498 | /* |
499 | * No return sent for close or fsync! | |
500 | */ | |
9dc15871 | 501 | ! if (syscall == RSYS_close || syscall == RSYS_fsync) |
3256a475 RC |
502 | proc->p_returnval = deallocate_fd(proc, msg->m_args[0]); |
503 | else | |
504 | { | |
9dc15871 | 505 | --- 166,172 ---- |
3256a475 RC |
506 | /* |
507 | * No return sent for close or fsync! | |
508 | */ | |
9dc15871 | 509 | ! if (syscall == RSYS_close) |
3256a475 RC |
510 | proc->p_returnval = deallocate_fd(proc, msg->m_args[0]); |
511 | else | |
512 | { | |
ed85f61d | 513 | |
b7bd8478 | 514 | ** PSGML conflicts with sgml-mode. |
d0cf6c7d | 515 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
516 | PSGML package uses the same names of some variables (like keymap) |
517 | as built-in sgml-mode.el because it was created as a replacement | |
518 | of that package. The conflict will be shown if you load | |
519 | sgml-mode.el before psgml.el. E.g. this could happen if you edit | |
520 | HTML page and then start to work with SGML or XML file. html-mode | |
521 | (from sgml-mode.el) is used for HTML file and loading of psgml.el | |
522 | (for sgml-mode or xml-mode) will cause an error. | |
d0cf6c7d | 523 | |
73639601 EZ |
524 | ** PCL-CVS |
525 | ||
526 | *** Lines are not updated or new lines are added in the buffer upon commit. | |
527 | ||
528 | When committing files located higher in the hierarchy than the examined | |
529 | directory, some versions of the CVS program return an ambiguous message | |
530 | from which PCL-CVS cannot extract the full location of the committed | |
531 | files. As a result, the corresponding lines in the PCL-CVS buffer are | |
532 | not updated with the new revision of these files, and new lines are | |
533 | added to the top-level directory. | |
534 | ||
535 | This can happen with CVS versions 1.12.8 and 1.12.9. Upgrade to CVS | |
536 | 1.12.10 or newer to fix this problem. | |
537 | ||
9dc15871 | 538 | ** Miscellaneous problems |
f936978f | 539 | |
e1bf8792 GM |
540 | *** Editing files with very long lines is slow. |
541 | ||
542 | For example, simply moving through a file that contains hundreds of | |
543 | thousands of characters per line is slow, and consumes a lot of CPU. | |
544 | This is a known limitation of Emacs with no solution at this time. | |
545 | ||
f5578c7f EZ |
546 | *** Emacs uses 100% of CPU time |
547 | ||
548 | This is a known problem with some versions of the Semantic package. | |
3f37e604 GM |
549 | The solution is to upgrade Semantic to version 2.0pre4 (distributed |
550 | with CEDET 1.0pre4) or later. | |
f5578c7f | 551 | |
9dc15871 | 552 | *** Self-documentation messages are garbled. |
6fb6f3ac | 553 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
554 | This means that the file `etc/DOC-...' doesn't properly correspond |
555 | with the Emacs executable. Redumping Emacs and then installing the | |
556 | corresponding pair of files should fix the problem. | |
b87207a0 | 557 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
558 | *** Programs running under terminal emulator do not recognize `emacs' |
559 | terminal type. | |
b87207a0 | 560 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
561 | The cause of this is a shell startup file that sets the TERMCAP |
562 | environment variable. The terminal emulator uses that variable to | |
c64233b2 | 563 | provide the information on the special terminal type that Emacs emulates. |
b87207a0 | 564 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
565 | Rewrite your shell startup file so that it does not change TERMCAP |
566 | in such a case. You could use the following conditional which sets | |
567 | it only if it is undefined. | |
b87207a0 | 568 | |
9dc15871 | 569 | if ( ! ${?TERMCAP} ) setenv TERMCAP ~/my-termcap-file |
e085efdb | 570 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
571 | Or you could set TERMCAP only when you set TERM--which should not |
572 | happen in a non-login shell. | |
fa99e2a4 | 573 | |
9dc15871 | 574 | *** In Shell mode, you get a ^M at the end of every line. |
c8d9b4ee | 575 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
576 | This happens to people who use tcsh, because it is trying to be too |
577 | smart. It sees that the Shell uses terminal type `unknown' and turns | |
578 | on the flag to output ^M at the end of each line. You can fix the | |
579 | problem by adding this to your .cshrc file: | |
fe445893 | 580 | |
9dc15871 | 581 | if ($?EMACS) then |
4b1aaa8b | 582 | if ("$EMACS" =~ /*) then |
9dc15871 EZ |
583 | unset edit |
584 | stty -icrnl -onlcr -echo susp ^Z | |
585 | endif | |
586 | endif | |
c8d9b4ee | 587 | |
9dc15871 | 588 | *** Emacs startup on GNU/Linux systems (and possibly other systems) is slow. |
d9810886 | 589 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
590 | This can happen if the system is misconfigured and Emacs can't get the |
591 | full qualified domain name, FQDN. You should have your FQDN in the | |
592 | /etc/hosts file, something like this: | |
a408ce18 | 593 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
594 | 127.0.0.1 localhost |
595 | 129.187.137.82 nuc04.t30.physik.tu-muenchen.de nuc04 | |
a408ce18 | 596 | |
9dc15871 | 597 | The way to set this up may vary on non-GNU systems. |
a38f41c4 | 598 | |
9dc15871 | 599 | *** Attempting to visit remote files via ange-ftp fails. |
a38f41c4 | 600 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
601 | If the error message is "ange-ftp-file-modtime: Specified time is not |
602 | representable", then this could happen when `lukemftp' is used as the | |
603 | ftp client. This was reported to happen on Debian GNU/Linux, kernel | |
604 | version 2.4.3, with `lukemftp' 1.5-5, but might happen on other | |
605 | systems as well. To avoid this problem, switch to using the standard | |
606 | ftp client. On a Debian system, type | |
a38f41c4 | 607 | |
9dc15871 | 608 | update-alternatives --config ftp |
a38f41c4 | 609 | |
9dc15871 | 610 | and then choose /usr/bin/netkit-ftp. |
a38f41c4 | 611 | |
9dc15871 | 612 | *** JPEG images aren't displayed. |
b87207a0 | 613 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
614 | This has been reported when Emacs is built with jpeg-6a library. |
615 | Upgrading to jpeg-6b solves the problem. Configure checks for the | |
616 | correct version, but this problem could occur if a binary built | |
617 | against a shared libjpeg is run on a system with an older version. | |
b87207a0 | 618 | |
9dc15871 | 619 | *** Dired is very slow. |
4e0bd469 EZ |
620 | |
621 | This could happen if invocation of the `df' program takes a long | |
622 | time. Possible reasons for this include: | |
623 | ||
624 | - ClearCase mounted filesystems (VOBs) that sometimes make `df' | |
625 | response time extremely slow (dozens of seconds); | |
626 | ||
627 | - slow automounters on some old versions of Unix; | |
628 | ||
629 | - slow operation of some versions of `df'. | |
630 | ||
631 | To work around the problem, you could either (a) set the variable | |
632 | `directory-free-space-program' to nil, and thus prevent Emacs from | |
633 | invoking `df'; (b) use `df' from the GNU Fileutils package; or | |
634 | (c) use CVS, which is Free Software, instead of ClearCase. | |
635 | ||
9dc15871 | 636 | *** ps-print commands fail to find prologue files ps-prin*.ps. |
cc2f2825 EZ |
637 | |
638 | This can happen if you use an old version of X-Symbol package: it | |
639 | defines compatibility functions which trick ps-print into thinking it | |
640 | runs in XEmacs, and look for the prologue files in a wrong directory. | |
641 | ||
642 | The solution is to upgrade X-Symbol to a later version. | |
643 | ||
9dc15871 | 644 | *** On systems with shared libraries you might encounter run-time errors |
f4f4ee4d GM |
645 | from the dynamic linker telling you that it is unable to find some |
646 | shared libraries, for instance those for Xaw3d or image support. | |
647 | These errors mean Emacs has been linked with a library whose shared | |
648 | library is not in the default search path of the dynamic linker. | |
649 | ||
0cb26e21 EZ |
650 | Similar problems could prevent Emacs from building, since the build |
651 | process invokes Emacs several times. | |
652 | ||
f4f4ee4d GM |
653 | On many systems, it is possible to set LD_LIBRARY_PATH in your |
654 | environment to specify additional directories where shared libraries | |
655 | can be found. | |
656 | ||
657 | Other systems allow to set LD_RUN_PATH in a similar way, but before | |
658 | Emacs is linked. With LD_RUN_PATH set, the linker will include a | |
659 | specified run-time search path in the executable. | |
660 | ||
8643647c | 661 | On some systems, Emacs can crash due to problems with dynamic |
c31138a1 EZ |
662 | linking. Specifically, on SGI Irix 6.5, crashes were reported with |
663 | backtraces like this: | |
664 | ||
665 | (dbx) where | |
666 | 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] | |
667 | 1 general_find_symbol(0xf49239d, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0xf0000000, 0xf4923aa, 0x0, 0x492ddb2) | |
668 | ["/comp2/mtibuild/v73/workarea/v7.3/rld/rld.c":2140, 0xfb65a98] | |
669 | 2 resolve_symbol(0xf49239d, 0x4031184, 0x0, 0xfbdd438, 0x0, 0xf4923aa, 0x0, 0x492ddb2) | |
670 | ["/comp2/mtibuild/v73/workarea/v7.3/rld/rld.c":1947, 0xfb657e4] | |
671 | 3 lazy_text_resolve(0xd18, 0x1a3, 0x40302b4, 0x12, 0xf0000000, 0xf4923aa, 0x0, 0x492ddb2) | |
672 | ["/comp2/mtibuild/v73/workarea/v7.3/rld/rld.c":997, 0xfb64d44] | |
673 | 4 _rld_text_resolve(0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0) | |
674 | ["/comp2/mtibuild/v73/workarea/v7.3/rld/rld_bridge.s":175, 0xfb6032c] | |
675 | ||
8643647c RS |
676 | (`rld' is the dynamic linker.) We don't know yet why this |
677 | happens, but setting the environment variable LD_BIND_NOW to 1 (which | |
c31138a1 EZ |
678 | forces the dynamic linker to bind all shared objects early on) seems |
679 | to work around the problem. | |
680 | ||
f4f4ee4d GM |
681 | Please refer to the documentation of your dynamic linker for details. |
682 | ||
9dc15871 EZ |
683 | *** You request inverse video, and the first Emacs frame is in inverse |
684 | video, but later frames are not in inverse video. | |
b1739b51 | 685 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
686 | This can happen if you have an old version of the custom library in |
687 | your search path for Lisp packages. Use M-x list-load-path-shadows to | |
688 | check whether this is true. If it is, delete the old custom library. | |
b1739b51 | 689 | |
9dc15871 | 690 | *** When you run Ispell from Emacs, it reports a "misalignment" error. |
b1739b51 | 691 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
692 | This can happen if you compiled the Ispell program to use ASCII |
693 | characters only and then try to use it from Emacs with non-ASCII | |
694 | characters, like Latin-1. The solution is to recompile Ispell with | |
695 | support for 8-bit characters. | |
b1739b51 | 696 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
697 | To see whether your Ispell program supports 8-bit characters, type |
698 | this at your shell's prompt: | |
b1739b51 | 699 | |
9dc15871 | 700 | ispell -vv |
b1739b51 | 701 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
702 | and look in the output for the string "NO8BIT". If Ispell says |
703 | "!NO8BIT (8BIT)", your speller supports 8-bit characters; otherwise it | |
704 | does not. | |
e9a52cfe | 705 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
706 | To rebuild Ispell with 8-bit character support, edit the local.h file |
707 | in the Ispell distribution and make sure it does _not_ define NO8BIT. | |
708 | Then rebuild the speller. | |
e9a52cfe | 709 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
710 | Another possible cause for "misalignment" error messages is that the |
711 | version of Ispell installed on your machine is old. Upgrade. | |
e9a52cfe | 712 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
713 | Yet another possibility is that you are trying to spell-check a word |
714 | in a language that doesn't fit the dictionary you choose for use by | |
715 | Ispell. (Ispell can only spell-check one language at a time, because | |
716 | it uses a single dictionary.) Make sure that the text you are | |
717 | spelling and the dictionary used by Ispell conform to each other. | |
e9a52cfe | 718 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
719 | If your spell-checking program is Aspell, it has been reported that if |
720 | you have a personal configuration file (normally ~/.aspell.conf), it | |
721 | can cause this error. Remove that file, execute `ispell-kill-ispell' | |
722 | in Emacs, and then try spell-checking again. | |
e9a52cfe | 723 | |
9dc15871 | 724 | * Runtime problems related to font handling |
e9a52cfe | 725 | |
b1446261 CY |
726 | ** Characters are displayed as empty boxes or with wrong font under X. |
727 | ||
728 | *** This can occur when two different versions of FontConfig are used. | |
729 | For example, XFree86 4.3.0 has one version and Gnome usually comes | |
730 | with a newer version. Emacs compiled with Gtk+ will then use the | |
731 | newer version. In most cases the problem can be temporarily fixed by | |
732 | stopping the application that has the error (it can be Emacs or any | |
733 | other application), removing ~/.fonts.cache-1, and then start the | |
734 | application again. If removing ~/.fonts.cache-1 and restarting | |
735 | doesn't help, the application with problem must be recompiled with the | |
736 | same version of FontConfig as the rest of the system uses. For KDE, | |
737 | it is sufficient to recompile Qt. | |
738 | ||
739 | *** Some fonts have a missing glyph and no default character. This is | |
740 | known to occur for character number 160 (no-break space) in some | |
741 | fonts, such as Lucida but Emacs sets the display table for the unibyte | |
742 | and Latin-1 version of this character to display a space. | |
743 | ||
744 | *** Some of the fonts called for in your fontset may not exist on your | |
745 | X server. | |
e9a52cfe | 746 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
747 | Each X11 font covers just a fraction of the characters that Emacs |
748 | supports. To display the whole range of Emacs characters requires | |
b1446261 CY |
749 | many different fonts, collected into a fontset. You can remedy the |
750 | problem by installing additional fonts. | |
f25eb4f7 | 751 | |
9dc15871 | 752 | The intlfonts distribution includes a full spectrum of fonts that can |
9222ba5e EZ |
753 | display all the characters Emacs supports. The etl-unicode collection |
754 | of fonts (available from <URL:ftp://ftp.x.org/contrib/fonts/> and | |
755 | <URL:ftp://ftp.xfree86.org/pub/mirror/X.Org/contrib/fonts/>) includes | |
756 | fonts that can display many Unicode characters; they can also be used | |
757 | by ps-print and ps-mule to print Unicode characters. | |
f25eb4f7 | 758 | |
9dc15871 | 759 | ** Under X11, some characters appear improperly aligned in their lines. |
f25eb4f7 | 760 | |
9222ba5e | 761 | You may have bad X11 fonts; try installing the intlfonts distribution |
b1446261 CY |
762 | or the etl-unicode collection (see above). |
763 | ||
764 | ** Under X, an unexpected monospace font is used as the default font. | |
765 | ||
766 | When compiled with XFT, Emacs tries to use a default font named | |
767 | "monospace". This is a "virtual font", which the operating system | |
768 | (Fontconfig) redirects to a suitable font such as DejaVu Sans Mono. | |
769 | On some systems, there exists a font that is actually named Monospace, | |
770 | which takes over the virtual font. This is considered an operating | |
771 | system bug; see | |
f25eb4f7 | 772 | |
b1446261 | 773 | http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2008-10/msg00696.html |
edd7d3be | 774 | |
b1446261 CY |
775 | If you encounter this problem, set the default font to a specific font |
776 | in your .Xresources or initialization file. For instance, you can put | |
777 | the following in your .Xresources: | |
778 | ||
779 | Emacs.font: DejaVu Sans Mono 12 | |
780 | ||
781 | ** Certain fonts make each line take one pixel more than it should. | |
782 | ||
783 | This is because these fonts contain characters a little taller than | |
784 | the font's nominal height. Emacs needs to make sure that lines do not | |
785 | overlap. | |
edd7d3be | 786 | |
9dc15871 | 787 | ** Loading fonts is very slow. |
edd7d3be | 788 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
789 | You might be getting scalable fonts instead of precomputed bitmaps. |
790 | Known scalable font directories are "Type1" and "Speedo". A font | |
791 | directory contains scalable fonts if it contains the file | |
792 | "fonts.scale". | |
42303132 | 793 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
794 | If this is so, re-order your X windows font path to put the scalable |
795 | font directories last. See the documentation of `xset' for details. | |
42303132 | 796 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
797 | With some X servers, it may be necessary to take the scalable font |
798 | directories out of your path entirely, at least for Emacs 19.26. | |
799 | Changes in the future may make this unnecessary. | |
42303132 | 800 | |
9dc15871 | 801 | ** Font Lock displays portions of the buffer in incorrect faces. |
42303132 | 802 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
803 | By far the most frequent cause of this is a parenthesis `(' or a brace |
804 | `{' in column zero. Font Lock assumes that such a paren is outside of | |
805 | any comment or string. This is of course not true in general, but the | |
806 | vast majority of well-formatted program source files don't have such | |
807 | parens, and therefore this assumption is used to allow optimizations | |
808 | in Font Lock's syntactical analysis. These optimizations avoid some | |
809 | pathological cases where jit-lock, the Just-in-Time fontification | |
810 | introduced with Emacs 21.1, could significantly slow down scrolling | |
811 | through the buffer, especially scrolling backwards, and also jumping | |
812 | to the end of a very large buffer. | |
42303132 | 813 | |
bf247b6e | 814 | Beginning with version 22.1, a parenthesis or a brace in column zero |
9dc15871 EZ |
815 | is highlighted in bold-red face if it is inside a string or a comment, |
816 | to indicate that it could interfere with Font Lock (and also with | |
817 | indentation) and should be moved or escaped with a backslash. | |
42303132 | 818 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
819 | If you don't use large buffers, or have a very fast machine which |
820 | makes the delays insignificant, you can avoid the incorrect | |
821 | fontification by setting the variable | |
822 | `font-lock-beginning-of-syntax-function' to a nil value. (This must | |
823 | be done _after_ turning on Font Lock.) | |
f3d6f4ee | 824 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
825 | Another alternative is to avoid a paren in column zero. For example, |
826 | in a Lisp string you could precede the paren with a backslash. | |
f3d6f4ee | 827 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
828 | ** With certain fonts, when the cursor appears on a character, the |
829 | character doesn't appear--you get a solid box instead. | |
f3d6f4ee | 830 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
831 | One user on a Linux-based GNU system reported that this problem went |
832 | away with installation of a new X server. The failing server was | |
833 | XFree86 3.1.1. XFree86 3.1.2 works. | |
f3d6f4ee | 834 | |
9dc15871 | 835 | ** Emacs pauses for several seconds when changing the default font. |
9f83d8b3 | 836 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
837 | This has been reported for fvwm 2.2.5 and the window manager of KDE |
838 | 2.1. The reason for the pause is Xt waiting for a ConfigureNotify | |
839 | event from the window manager, which the window manager doesn't send. | |
840 | Xt stops waiting after a default timeout of usually 5 seconds. | |
f29d1e75 | 841 | |
9dc15871 | 842 | A workaround for this is to add something like |
f29d1e75 | 843 | |
9dc15871 | 844 | emacs.waitForWM: false |
c24be289 | 845 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
846 | to your X resources. Alternatively, add `(wait-for-wm . nil)' to a |
847 | frame's parameter list, like this: | |
c24be289 | 848 | |
9dc15871 | 849 | (modify-frame-parameters nil '((wait-for-wm . nil))) |
b35319bf | 850 | |
9dc15871 | 851 | (this should go into your `.emacs' file). |
b35319bf | 852 | |
9dc15871 | 853 | ** Underlines appear at the wrong position. |
b35319bf | 854 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
855 | This is caused by fonts having a wrong UNDERLINE_POSITION property. |
856 | Examples are the font 7x13 on XFree prior to version 4.1, or the jmk | |
6fc3871e GM |
857 | neep font from the Debian xfonts-jmk package prior to version 3.0.17. |
858 | To circumvent this problem, set x-use-underline-position-properties | |
859 | to nil in your `.emacs'. | |
b35319bf | 860 | |
9dc15871 | 861 | To see what is the value of UNDERLINE_POSITION defined by the font, |
c64233b2 | 862 | type `xlsfonts -lll FONT' and look at the font's UNDERLINE_POSITION property. |
787994b7 | 863 | |
9dc15871 | 864 | ** When using Exceed, fonts sometimes appear too tall. |
0a2eeca1 | 865 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
866 | When the display is set to an Exceed X-server and fonts are specified |
867 | (either explicitly with the -fn option or implicitly with X resources) | |
868 | then the fonts may appear "too tall". The actual character sizes are | |
869 | correct but there is too much vertical spacing between rows, which | |
870 | gives the appearance of "double spacing". | |
0a2eeca1 | 871 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
872 | To prevent this, turn off the Exceed's "automatic font substitution" |
873 | feature (in the font part of the configuration window). | |
0a2eeca1 | 874 | |
405b495f GM |
875 | ** Subscript/superscript text in TeX is hard to read. |
876 | ||
877 | If `tex-fontify-script' is non-nil, tex-mode displays | |
878 | subscript/superscript text in the faces subscript/superscript, which | |
879 | are smaller than the normal font and lowered/raised. With some fonts, | |
880 | nested superscripts (say) can be hard to read. Switching to a | |
881 | different font, or changing your antialiasing setting (on an LCD | |
882 | screen), can both make the problem disappear. Alternatively, customize | |
883 | the following variables: tex-font-script-display (how much to | |
884 | lower/raise); tex-suscript-height-ratio (how much smaller than | |
885 | normal); tex-suscript-height-minimum (minimum height). | |
886 | ||
9dc15871 | 887 | * Internationalization problems |
0a2eeca1 | 888 | |
de25ebb8 RS |
889 | ** M-{ does not work on a Spanish PC keyboard. |
890 | ||
891 | Many Spanish keyboards seem to ignore that combination. Emacs can't | |
892 | do anything about it. | |
893 | ||
b2d98113 CY |
894 | ** International characters aren't displayed under X. |
895 | ||
896 | *** Missing X fonts | |
0a2eeca1 | 897 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
898 | XFree86 4 contains many fonts in iso10646-1 encoding which have |
899 | minimal character repertoires (whereas the encoding part of the font | |
900 | name is meant to be a reasonable indication of the repertoire | |
901 | according to the XLFD spec). Emacs may choose one of these to display | |
902 | characters from the mule-unicode charsets and then typically won't be | |
903 | able to find the glyphs to display many characters. (Check with C-u | |
904 | C-x = .) To avoid this, you may need to use a fontset which sets the | |
905 | font for the mule-unicode sets explicitly. E.g. to use GNU unifont, | |
906 | include in the fontset spec: | |
0a2eeca1 | 907 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
908 | mule-unicode-2500-33ff:-gnu-unifont-*-iso10646-1,\ |
909 | mule-unicode-e000-ffff:-gnu-unifont-*-iso10646-1,\ | |
910 | mule-unicode-0100-24ff:-gnu-unifont-*-iso10646-1 | |
0a2eeca1 | 911 | |
9dc15871 | 912 | ** The UTF-8/16/7 coding systems don't encode CJK (Far Eastern) characters. |
0a2eeca1 | 913 | |
ce9b56fe KH |
914 | Emacs directly supports the Unicode BMP whose code points are in the |
915 | ranges 0000-33ff and e000-ffff, and indirectly supports the parts of | |
916 | CJK characters belonging to these legacy charsets: | |
917 | ||
918 | GB2312, Big5, JISX0208, JISX0212, JISX0213-1, JISX0213-2, KSC5601 | |
919 | ||
920 | The latter support is done in Utf-Translate-Cjk mode (turned on by | |
921 | default). Which Unicode CJK characters are decoded into which Emacs | |
922 | charset is decided by the current language environment. For instance, | |
923 | in Chinese-GB, most of them are decoded into chinese-gb2312. | |
119d3665 | 924 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
925 | If you read UTF-8 data with code points outside these ranges, the |
926 | characters appear in the buffer as raw bytes of the original UTF-8 | |
927 | (composed into a single quasi-character) and they will be written back | |
928 | correctly as UTF-8, assuming you don't break the composed sequences. | |
929 | If you read such characters from UTF-16 or UTF-7 data, they are | |
930 | substituted with the Unicode `replacement character', and you lose | |
931 | information. | |
119d3665 | 932 | |
9dc15871 | 933 | ** Accented ISO-8859-1 characters are displayed as | or _. |
a933dad1 | 934 | |
d6b7de9b EZ |
935 | Try other font set sizes (S-mouse-1). If the problem persists with |
936 | other sizes as well, your text is corrupted, probably through software | |
937 | that is not 8-bit clean. If the problem goes away with another font | |
938 | size, it's probably because some fonts pretend to be ISO-8859-1 fonts | |
939 | when they are really ASCII fonts. In particular the schumacher-clean | |
940 | fonts have this bug in some versions of X. | |
a933dad1 | 941 | |
d6b7de9b | 942 | To see what glyphs are included in a font, use `xfd', like this: |
a933dad1 | 943 | |
d6b7de9b | 944 | xfd -fn -schumacher-clean-medium-r-normal--12-120-75-75-c-60-iso8859-1 |
a933dad1 | 945 | |
c64233b2 | 946 | If this shows only ASCII glyphs, the font is indeed the source of the problem. |
a933dad1 | 947 | |
d6b7de9b EZ |
948 | The solution is to remove the corresponding lines from the appropriate |
949 | `fonts.alias' file, then run `mkfontdir' in that directory, and then run | |
950 | `xset fp rehash'. | |
177c0ea7 | 951 | |
9dc15871 | 952 | ** The `oc-unicode' package doesn't work with Emacs 21. |
a933dad1 | 953 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
954 | This package tries to define more private charsets than there are free |
955 | slots now. The current built-in Unicode support is actually more | |
956 | flexible. (Use option `utf-translate-cjk-mode' if you need CJK | |
957 | support.) Files encoded as emacs-mule using oc-unicode aren't | |
958 | generally read correctly by Emacs 21. | |
a933dad1 | 959 | |
9dc15871 | 960 | ** After a while, Emacs slips into unibyte mode. |
a933dad1 | 961 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
962 | The VM mail package, which is not part of Emacs, sometimes does |
963 | (standard-display-european t) | |
964 | That should be changed to | |
965 | (standard-display-european 1 t) | |
de121241 | 966 | |
9dc15871 | 967 | * X runtime problems |
de121241 | 968 | |
9dc15871 | 969 | ** X keyboard problems |
de121241 | 970 | |
9dc15871 | 971 | *** You "lose characters" after typing Compose Character key. |
a933dad1 | 972 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
973 | This is because the Compose Character key is defined as the keysym |
974 | Multi_key, and Emacs (seeing that) does the proper X11 | |
975 | character-composition processing. If you don't want your Compose key | |
976 | to do that, you can redefine it with xmodmap. | |
a933dad1 | 977 | |
9dc15871 | 978 | For example, here's one way to turn it into a Meta key: |
177c0ea7 | 979 | |
9dc15871 | 980 | xmodmap -e "keysym Multi_key = Meta_L" |
a933dad1 | 981 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
982 | If all users at your site of a particular keyboard prefer Meta to |
983 | Compose, you can make the remapping happen automatically by adding the | |
984 | xmodmap command to the xdm setup script for that display. | |
a933dad1 | 985 | |
9dc15871 | 986 | *** Using X Windows, control-shift-leftbutton makes Emacs hang. |
a933dad1 | 987 | |
9dc15871 | 988 | Use the shell command `xset bc' to make the old X Menu package work. |
a933dad1 | 989 | |
9f4f9273 | 990 | *** C-SPC fails to work on Fedora GNU/Linux (or with fcitx input method). |
09352e8f RS |
991 | |
992 | Fedora Core 4 steals the C-SPC key by default for the `iiimx' program | |
993 | which is the input method for some languages. It blocks Emacs users | |
994 | from using the C-SPC key for `set-mark-command'. | |
995 | ||
996 | One solutions is to remove the `<Ctrl>space' from the `Iiimx' file | |
997 | which can be found in the `/usr/lib/X11/app-defaults' directory. | |
998 | However, that requires root access. | |
999 | ||
1000 | Another is to specify `Emacs*useXIM: false' in your X resources. | |
1001 | ||
1002 | Another is to build Emacs with the `--without-xim' configure option. | |
1003 | ||
2fb18d13 KH |
1004 | The same problem happens on any other system if you are using fcitx |
1005 | (Chinese input method) which by default use C-SPC for toggling. If | |
1006 | you want to use fcitx with Emacs, you have two choices. Toggle fcitx | |
1007 | by another key (e.g. C-\) by modifying ~/.fcitx/config, or be | |
1008 | accustomed to use C-@ for `set-mark-command'. | |
1009 | ||
9dc15871 | 1010 | *** M-SPC seems to be ignored as input. |
a933dad1 | 1011 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1012 | See if your X server is set up to use this as a command |
1013 | for character composition. | |
a933dad1 | 1014 | |
9dc15871 | 1015 | *** The S-C-t key combination doesn't get passed to Emacs on X. |
a933dad1 | 1016 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1017 | This happens because some X configurations assign the Ctrl-Shift-t |
1018 | combination the same meaning as the Multi_key. The offending | |
1019 | definition is in the file `...lib/X11/locale/iso8859-1/Compose'; there | |
1020 | might be other similar combinations which are grabbed by X for similar | |
1021 | purposes. | |
a933dad1 | 1022 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1023 | We think that this can be countermanded with the `xmodmap' utility, if |
1024 | you want to be able to bind one of these key sequences within Emacs. | |
a933dad1 | 1025 | |
9dc15871 | 1026 | *** Under X, C-v and/or other keys don't work. |
a933dad1 DL |
1027 | |
1028 | These may have been intercepted by your window manager. In | |
1029 | particular, AfterStep 1.6 is reported to steal C-v in its default | |
1030 | configuration. Various Meta keys are also likely to be taken by the | |
1031 | configuration of the `feel'. See the WM's documentation for how to | |
1032 | change this. | |
1033 | ||
9dc15871 | 1034 | *** Clicking C-mouse-2 in the scroll bar doesn't split the window. |
a933dad1 | 1035 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1036 | This currently doesn't work with scroll-bar widgets (and we don't know |
1037 | a good way of implementing it with widgets). If Emacs is configured | |
1038 | --without-toolkit-scroll-bars, C-mouse-2 on the scroll bar does work. | |
a933dad1 | 1039 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1040 | *** Inability to send an Alt-modified key, when Emacs is communicating |
1041 | directly with an X server. | |
a933dad1 | 1042 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1043 | If you have tried to bind an Alt-modified key as a command, and it |
1044 | does not work to type the command, the first thing you should check is | |
1045 | whether the key is getting through to Emacs. To do this, type C-h c | |
1046 | followed by the Alt-modified key. C-h c should say what kind of event | |
1047 | it read. If it says it read an Alt-modified key, then make sure you | |
1048 | have made the key binding correctly. | |
a933dad1 | 1049 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1050 | If C-h c reports an event that doesn't have the Alt modifier, it may |
1051 | be because your X server has no key for the Alt modifier. The X | |
c64233b2 | 1052 | server that comes from MIT does not set up the Alt modifier by default. |
a933dad1 | 1053 | |
9dc15871 | 1054 | If your keyboard has keys named Alt, you can enable them as follows: |
a933dad1 | 1055 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1056 | xmodmap -e 'add mod2 = Alt_L' |
1057 | xmodmap -e 'add mod2 = Alt_R' | |
a933dad1 | 1058 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1059 | If the keyboard has just one key named Alt, then only one of those |
1060 | commands is needed. The modifier `mod2' is a reasonable choice if you | |
1061 | are using an unmodified MIT version of X. Otherwise, choose any | |
1062 | modifier bit not otherwise used. | |
a933dad1 | 1063 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1064 | If your keyboard does not have keys named Alt, you can use some other |
1065 | keys. Use the keysym command in xmodmap to turn a function key (or | |
1066 | some other 'spare' key) into Alt_L or into Alt_R, and then use the | |
1067 | commands show above to make them modifier keys. | |
a933dad1 | 1068 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1069 | Note that if you have Alt keys but no Meta keys, Emacs translates Alt |
1070 | into Meta. This is because of the great importance of Meta in Emacs. | |
a933dad1 | 1071 | |
9dc15871 | 1072 | ** Window-manager and toolkit-related problems |
a933dad1 | 1073 | |
6a7ce3a2 JD |
1074 | *** Metacity: Resizing Emacs or ALT-Tab causes X to be unresponsive. |
1075 | ||
1076 | This happens sometimes when using Metacity. Resizing Emacs or ALT-Tab:bing | |
1077 | makes the system unresponsive to the mouse or the keyboard. Killing Emacs | |
0a46152e | 1078 | or shifting out from X11 and back again usually cures it (i.e. Ctrl-Alt-F1 |
6a7ce3a2 JD |
1079 | and then Alt-F7). A bug for it is here: |
1080 | https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/metacity/+bug/231034. | |
1081 | Note that a permanent fix seems to be to disable "assistive technologies". | |
1082 | ||
0e71e4a8 CY |
1083 | *** Gnome: Emacs receives input directly from the keyboard, bypassing XIM. |
1084 | ||
1085 | This seems to happen when gnome-settings-daemon version 2.12 or later | |
1086 | is running. If gnome-settings-daemon is not running, Emacs receives | |
1087 | input through XIM without any problem. Furthermore, this seems only | |
1088 | to happen in *.UTF-8 locales; zh_CN.GB2312 and zh_CN.GBK locales, for | |
1089 | example, work fine. A bug report has been filed in the Gnome | |
1090 | bugzilla: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=357032 | |
1091 | ||
9dc15871 | 1092 | *** Gnome: Emacs' xterm-mouse-mode doesn't work on the Gnome terminal. |
a933dad1 | 1093 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1094 | A symptom of this bug is that double-clicks insert a control sequence |
1095 | into the buffer. The reason this happens is an apparent | |
1096 | incompatibility of the Gnome terminal with Xterm, which also affects | |
1097 | other programs using the Xterm mouse interface. A problem report has | |
1098 | been filed. | |
a933dad1 | 1099 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1100 | *** KDE: When running on KDE, colors or fonts are not as specified for Emacs, |
1101 | or messed up. | |
a933dad1 | 1102 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1103 | For example, you could see background you set for Emacs only in the |
1104 | empty portions of the Emacs display, while characters have some other | |
1105 | background. | |
a933dad1 | 1106 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1107 | This happens because KDE's defaults apply its color and font |
1108 | definitions even to applications that weren't compiled for KDE. The | |
1109 | solution is to uncheck the "Apply fonts and colors to non-KDE apps" | |
1110 | option in Preferences->Look&Feel->Style (KDE 2). In KDE 3, this option | |
1111 | is in the "Colors" section, rather than "Style". | |
a933dad1 | 1112 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1113 | Alternatively, if you do want the KDE defaults to apply to other |
1114 | applications, but not to Emacs, you could modify the file `Emacs.ad' | |
1115 | (should be in the `/usr/share/apps/kdisplay/app-defaults/' directory) | |
1116 | so that it doesn't set the default background and foreground only for | |
1117 | Emacs. For example, make sure the following resources are either not | |
1118 | present or commented out: | |
a933dad1 | 1119 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1120 | Emacs.default.attributeForeground |
1121 | Emacs.default.attributeBackground | |
1122 | Emacs*Foreground | |
1123 | Emacs*Background | |
a933dad1 | 1124 | |
a3475659 JD |
1125 | It is also reported that a bug in the gtk-engines-qt engine can cause this if |
1126 | Emacs is compiled with Gtk+. | |
1127 | The bug is fixed in version 0.7 or newer of gtk-engines-qt. | |
1128 | ||
9dc15871 | 1129 | *** KDE: Emacs hangs on KDE when a large portion of text is killed. |
a933dad1 | 1130 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1131 | This is caused by a bug in the KDE applet `klipper' which periodically |
1132 | requests the X clipboard contents from applications. Early versions | |
8576f724 | 1133 | of klipper don't implement the ICCCM protocol for large selections, |
9dc15871 | 1134 | which leads to Emacs being flooded with selection requests. After a |
b11e8823 | 1135 | while, Emacs may print a message: |
a933dad1 | 1136 | |
9dc15871 | 1137 | Timed out waiting for property-notify event |
a933dad1 | 1138 | |
b11e8823 JD |
1139 | A workaround is to not use `klipper'. An upgrade to the `klipper' that |
1140 | comes with KDE 3.3 or later also solves the problem. | |
a933dad1 | 1141 | |
9dc15871 | 1142 | *** CDE: Frames may cover dialogs they created when using CDE. |
a933dad1 | 1143 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1144 | This can happen if you have "Allow Primary Windows On Top" enabled which |
1145 | seems to be the default in the Common Desktop Environment. | |
1146 | To change, go in to "Desktop Controls" -> "Window Style Manager" | |
1147 | and uncheck "Allow Primary Windows On Top". | |
d238f982 | 1148 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1149 | *** Xaw3d : When using Xaw3d scroll bars without arrows, the very first mouse |
1150 | click in a scroll bar might be ignored by the scroll bar widget. This | |
1151 | is probably a bug in Xaw3d; when Xaw3d is compiled with arrows, the | |
1152 | problem disappears. | |
d238f982 | 1153 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1154 | *** Xaw: There are known binary incompatibilities between Xaw, Xaw3d, neXtaw, |
1155 | XawM and the few other derivatives of Xaw. So when you compile with | |
1156 | one of these, it may not work to dynamically link with another one. | |
1157 | For example, strange problems, such as Emacs exiting when you type | |
1158 | "C-x 1", were reported when Emacs compiled with Xaw3d and libXaw was | |
1159 | used with neXtaw at run time. | |
d7185f9d | 1160 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1161 | The solution is to rebuild Emacs with the toolkit version you actually |
1162 | want to use, or set LD_PRELOAD to preload the same toolkit version you | |
1163 | built Emacs with. | |
d7185f9d | 1164 | |
9dc15871 | 1165 | *** Open Motif: Problems with file dialogs in Emacs built with Open Motif. |
a933dad1 | 1166 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1167 | When Emacs 21 is built with Open Motif 2.1, it can happen that the |
1168 | graphical file dialog boxes do not work properly. The "OK", "Filter" | |
1169 | and "Cancel" buttons do not respond to mouse clicks. Dragging the | |
1170 | file dialog window usually causes the buttons to work again. | |
a933dad1 | 1171 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1172 | The solution is to use LessTif instead. LessTif is a free replacement |
1173 | for Motif. See the file INSTALL for information on how to do this. | |
a933dad1 | 1174 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1175 | Another workaround is not to use the mouse to trigger file prompts, |
1176 | but to use the keyboard. This way, you will be prompted for a file in | |
1177 | the minibuffer instead of a graphical file dialog. | |
a933dad1 | 1178 | |
9dc15871 | 1179 | *** LessTif: Problems in Emacs built with LessTif. |
a933dad1 | 1180 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1181 | The problems seem to depend on the version of LessTif and the Motif |
1182 | emulation for which it is set up. | |
a933dad1 | 1183 | |
9dc15871 | 1184 | Only the Motif 1.2 emulation seems to be stable enough in LessTif. |
880ea925 | 1185 | LessTif 0.92-17's Motif 1.2 emulation seems to work okay on FreeBSD. |
9dc15871 EZ |
1186 | On GNU/Linux systems, lesstif-0.92.6 configured with "./configure |
1187 | --enable-build-12 --enable-default-12" is reported to be the most | |
1188 | successful. The binary GNU/Linux package | |
1189 | lesstif-devel-0.92.0-1.i386.rpm was reported to have problems with | |
1190 | menu placement. | |
a933dad1 | 1191 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1192 | On some systems, even with Motif 1.2 emulation, Emacs occasionally |
1193 | locks up, grabbing all mouse and keyboard events. We still don't know | |
c64233b2 | 1194 | what causes these problems; they are not reproducible by Emacs developers. |
a933dad1 | 1195 | |
9dc15871 | 1196 | *** Motif: The Motif version of Emacs paints the screen a solid color. |
a933dad1 | 1197 | |
9dc15871 | 1198 | This has been observed to result from the following X resource: |
a933dad1 | 1199 | |
9dc15871 | 1200 | Emacs*default.attributeFont: -*-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-140-*-*-*-*-iso8859-* |
a933dad1 | 1201 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1202 | That the resource has this effect indicates a bug in something, but we |
1203 | do not yet know what. If it is an Emacs bug, we hope someone can | |
1204 | explain what the bug is so we can fix it. In the mean time, removing | |
1205 | the resource prevents the problem. | |
a933dad1 | 1206 | |
9dc15871 | 1207 | ** General X problems |
17a37d87 | 1208 | |
9dc15871 | 1209 | *** Redisplay using X11 is much slower than previous Emacs versions. |
17a37d87 | 1210 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1211 | We've noticed that certain X servers draw the text much slower when |
1212 | scroll bars are on the left. We don't know why this happens. If this | |
1213 | happens to you, you can work around it by putting the scroll bars | |
1214 | on the right (as they were in Emacs 19). | |
17a37d87 | 1215 | |
9dc15871 | 1216 | Here's how to do this: |
17a37d87 | 1217 | |
9dc15871 | 1218 | (set-scroll-bar-mode 'right) |
a933dad1 | 1219 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1220 | If you're not sure whether (or how much) this problem affects you, |
1221 | try that and see how much difference it makes. To set things back | |
1222 | to normal, do | |
a933dad1 | 1223 | |
9dc15871 | 1224 | (set-scroll-bar-mode 'left) |
a933dad1 | 1225 | |
9dc15871 | 1226 | *** Error messages about undefined colors on X. |
a933dad1 | 1227 | |
9dc15871 | 1228 | The messages might say something like this: |
a933dad1 | 1229 | |
9dc15871 | 1230 | Unable to load color "grey95" |
a933dad1 | 1231 | |
9dc15871 | 1232 | (typically, in the `*Messages*' buffer), or something like this: |
a933dad1 | 1233 | |
9dc15871 | 1234 | Error while displaying tooltip: (error Undefined color lightyellow) |
a933dad1 | 1235 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1236 | These problems could happen if some other X program has used up too |
1237 | many colors of the X palette, leaving Emacs with insufficient system | |
1238 | resources to load all the colors it needs. | |
a933dad1 | 1239 | |
9dc15871 | 1240 | A solution is to exit the offending X programs before starting Emacs. |
a933dad1 | 1241 | |
9257b627 EZ |
1242 | "undefined color" messages can also occur if the RgbPath entry in the |
1243 | X configuration file is incorrect, or the rgb.txt file is not where | |
1244 | X expects to find it. | |
1245 | ||
9dc15871 | 1246 | *** Improving performance with slow X connections. |
a933dad1 | 1247 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1248 | There are several ways to improve this performance, any subset of which can |
1249 | be carried out at the same time: | |
a933dad1 | 1250 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1251 | 1) If you don't need X Input Methods (XIM) for entering text in some |
1252 | language you use, you can improve performance on WAN links by using | |
1253 | the X resource useXIM to turn off use of XIM. This does not affect | |
1254 | the use of Emacs' own input methods, which are part of the Leim | |
1255 | package. | |
3d00585e | 1256 | |
9dc15871 | 1257 | 2) If the connection is very slow, you might also want to consider |
634e516b EZ |
1258 | switching off scroll bars, menu bar, and tool bar. Adding the |
1259 | following forms to your .emacs file will accomplish that, but only | |
9b053e76 | 1260 | after the initial frame is displayed: |
634e516b EZ |
1261 | |
1262 | (scroll-bar-mode -1) | |
1263 | (menu-bar-mode -1) | |
1264 | (tool-bar-mode -1) | |
1265 | ||
1266 | For still quicker startup, put these X resources in your .Xdefaults | |
1267 | file: | |
1268 | ||
1269 | Emacs.verticalScrollBars: off | |
1270 | Emacs.menuBar: off | |
1271 | Emacs.toolBar: off | |
3d00585e | 1272 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1273 | 3) Use ssh to forward the X connection, and enable compression on this |
1274 | forwarded X connection (ssh -XC remotehostname emacs ...). | |
3d00585e | 1275 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1276 | 4) Use lbxproxy on the remote end of the connection. This is an interface |
1277 | to the low bandwidth X extension in most modern X servers, which | |
1278 | improves performance dramatically, at the slight expense of correctness | |
91af3942 | 1279 | of the X protocol. lbxproxy achieves the performance gain by grouping |
9dc15871 | 1280 | several X requests in one TCP packet and sending them off together, |
880ea925 | 1281 | instead of requiring a round-trip for each X request in a separate |
9dc15871 EZ |
1282 | packet. The switches that seem to work best for emacs are: |
1283 | -noatomsfile -nowinattr -cheaterrors -cheatevents | |
1284 | Note that the -nograbcmap option is known to cause problems. | |
1285 | For more about lbxproxy, see: | |
1286 | http://www.xfree86.org/4.3.0/lbxproxy.1.html | |
3d00585e | 1287 | |
34431988 KS |
1288 | 5) If copying and killing is slow, try to disable the interaction with the |
1289 | native system's clipboard by adding these lines to your .emacs file: | |
1290 | (setq interprogram-cut-function nil) | |
1291 | (setq interprogram-paste-function nil) | |
1292 | ||
9dc15871 | 1293 | *** Emacs gives the error, Couldn't find per display information. |
3d00585e | 1294 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1295 | This can result if the X server runs out of memory because Emacs uses |
1296 | a large number of fonts. On systems where this happens, C-h h is | |
1297 | likely to cause it. | |
a933dad1 | 1298 | |
9dc15871 | 1299 | We do not know of a way to prevent the problem. |
7838ea1b | 1300 | |
9dc15871 | 1301 | *** Emacs does not notice when you release the mouse. |
a933dad1 | 1302 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1303 | There are reports that this happened with (some) Microsoft mice and |
1304 | that replacing the mouse made it stop. | |
a933dad1 | 1305 | |
9dc15871 | 1306 | *** You can't select from submenus (in the X toolkit version). |
a933dad1 | 1307 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1308 | On certain systems, mouse-tracking and selection in top-level menus |
1309 | works properly with the X toolkit, but neither of them works when you | |
1310 | bring up a submenu (such as Bookmarks or Compare or Apply Patch, in | |
1311 | the Files menu). | |
a933dad1 | 1312 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1313 | This works on most systems. There is speculation that the failure is |
1314 | due to bugs in old versions of X toolkit libraries, but no one really | |
1315 | knows. If someone debugs this and finds the precise cause, perhaps a | |
1316 | workaround can be found. | |
a933dad1 | 1317 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1318 | *** An error message such as `X protocol error: BadMatch (invalid |
1319 | parameter attributes) on protocol request 93'. | |
b5cb4652 | 1320 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1321 | This comes from having an invalid X resource, such as |
1322 | emacs*Cursor: black | |
1323 | (which is invalid because it specifies a color name for something | |
1324 | that isn't a color.) | |
b5cb4652 | 1325 | |
9dc15871 | 1326 | The fix is to correct your X resources. |
a933dad1 | 1327 | |
9dc15871 | 1328 | *** Slow startup on X11R6 with X windows. |
a933dad1 | 1329 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1330 | If Emacs takes two minutes to start up on X11R6, see if your X |
1331 | resources specify any Adobe fonts. That causes the type-1 font | |
1332 | renderer to start up, even if the font you asked for is not a type-1 | |
1333 | font. | |
a933dad1 | 1334 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1335 | One way to avoid this problem is to eliminate the type-1 fonts from |
1336 | your font path, like this: | |
a933dad1 | 1337 | |
3256a475 | 1338 | xset -fp /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/ |
a933dad1 | 1339 | |
9dc15871 | 1340 | *** Pull-down menus appear in the wrong place, in the toolkit version of Emacs. |
a933dad1 | 1341 | |
9dc15871 | 1342 | An X resource of this form can cause the problem: |
a933dad1 | 1343 | |
9dc15871 | 1344 | Emacs*geometry: 80x55+0+0 |
a933dad1 | 1345 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1346 | This resource is supposed to apply, and does apply, to the menus |
1347 | individually as well as to Emacs frames. If that is not what you | |
1348 | want, rewrite the resource. | |
3156909f | 1349 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1350 | To check thoroughly for such resource specifications, use `xrdb |
1351 | -query' to see what resources the X server records, and also look at | |
1352 | the user's ~/.Xdefaults and ~/.Xdefaults-* files. | |
a933dad1 | 1353 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1354 | *** Emacs running under X Windows does not handle mouse clicks. |
1355 | *** `emacs -geometry 80x20' finds a file named `80x20'. | |
e96c5c69 | 1356 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1357 | One cause of such problems is having (setq term-file-prefix nil) in |
1358 | your .emacs file. Another cause is a bad value of EMACSLOADPATH in | |
1359 | the environment. | |
e96c5c69 | 1360 | |
9dc15871 | 1361 | *** X Windows doesn't work if DISPLAY uses a hostname. |
a933dad1 | 1362 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1363 | People have reported kernel bugs in certain systems that cause Emacs |
1364 | not to work with X Windows if DISPLAY is set using a host name. But | |
1365 | the problem does not occur if DISPLAY is set to `unix:0.0'. I think | |
1366 | the bug has to do with SIGIO or FIONREAD. | |
a933dad1 | 1367 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1368 | You may be able to compensate for the bug by doing (set-input-mode nil nil). |
1369 | However, that has the disadvantage of turning off interrupts, so that | |
1370 | you are unable to quit out of a Lisp program by typing C-g. | |
a933dad1 | 1371 | |
3256a475 RC |
1372 | *** Prevent double pastes in X |
1373 | ||
1374 | The problem: a region, such as a command, is pasted twice when you copy | |
1375 | it with your mouse from GNU Emacs to an xterm or an RXVT shell in X. | |
1376 | The solution: try the following in your X configuration file, | |
1377 | /etc/X11/xorg.conf This should enable both PS/2 and USB mice for | |
1378 | single copies. You do not need any other drivers or options. | |
1379 | ||
1380 | Section "InputDevice" | |
1381 | Identifier "Generic Mouse" | |
1382 | Driver "mousedev" | |
1383 | Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice" | |
1384 | EndSection | |
1385 | ||
833e48d3 GM |
1386 | *** Emacs is slow to exit in X |
1387 | ||
1388 | After you use e.g. C-x C-c to exit, it takes many seconds before the | |
1389 | Emacs window disappears. If Emacs was started from a terminal, you | |
1390 | see the message: | |
1391 | ||
1392 | Error saving to X clipboard manager. | |
1393 | If the problem persists, set `x-select-enable-clipboard-manager' to nil. | |
1394 | ||
1395 | As the message suggests, this problem occurs when Emacs thinks you | |
1396 | have a clipboard manager program running, but has trouble contacting it. | |
1397 | If you don't want to use a clipboard manager, you can set the | |
1398 | suggested variable. Or you can make Emacs not wait so long by | |
1399 | reducing the value of `x-selection-timeout', either in .emacs or with | |
1400 | X resources. | |
1401 | ||
1402 | Sometimes this problem is due to a bug in your clipboard manager. | |
1403 | Updating to the latest version of the manager can help. | |
1404 | For example, in the Xfce 4.8 desktop environment, the clipboard | |
1405 | manager in versions of xfce4-settings-helper before 4.8.2 is buggy; | |
1406 | https://bugzilla.xfce.org/show_bug.cgi?id=7588 . | |
1407 | ||
df4555fa JD |
1408 | *** Warning messages when running in Ubuntu |
1409 | ||
1410 | When you start Emacs you may see something like this: | |
1411 | ||
1412 | (emacs:2286): LIBDBUSMENU-GTK-CRITICAL **: watch_submenu: assertion | |
1413 | `GTK_IS_MENU_SHELL(menu)' failed | |
1414 | ||
c03cf6f1 | 1415 | This happens if the Emacs binary has been renamed. The cause is the Ubuntu |
df4555fa JD |
1416 | appmenu concept. It tries to track Emacs menus and show them in the top |
1417 | panel, instead of in each Emacs window. This is not properly implemented, | |
1418 | so it fails for Emacs. The order of menus is wrong, and things like copy/paste | |
c03cf6f1 | 1419 | that depend on what state Emacs is in are usually wrong (i.e. paste disabled |
df4555fa JD |
1420 | even if you should be able to paste, and similar). |
1421 | ||
1422 | You can get back menus on each frame by starting emacs like this: | |
1423 | % env UBUNTU_MENUPROXY= emacs | |
1424 | ||
880ea925 | 1425 | * Runtime problems on character terminals |
a933dad1 | 1426 | |
def98666 CY |
1427 | ** The meta key does not work on xterm. |
1428 | Typing M-x rings the terminal bell, and inserts a string like ";120~". | |
1429 | For recent xterm versions (>= 216), Emacs uses xterm's modifyOtherKeys | |
1430 | feature to generate strings for key combinations that are not | |
1431 | otherwise usable. One circumstance in which this can cause problems | |
1432 | is if you have specified the X resource | |
1433 | ||
1434 | xterm*VT100.Translations | |
1435 | ||
1436 | to contain translations that use the meta key. Then xterm will not | |
1437 | use meta in modified function-keys, which confuses Emacs. To fix | |
1438 | this, you can remove the X resource or put this in your init file: | |
1439 | ||
1440 | (xterm-remove-modify-other-keys) | |
1441 | ||
9dc15871 | 1442 | ** Emacs spontaneously displays "I-search: " at the bottom of the screen. |
a933dad1 | 1443 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1444 | This means that Control-S/Control-Q (XON/XOFF) "flow control" is being |
1445 | used. C-s/C-q flow control is bad for Emacs editors because it takes | |
1446 | away C-s and C-q as user commands. Since editors do not output long | |
1447 | streams of text without user commands, there is no need for a | |
1448 | user-issuable "stop output" command in an editor; therefore, a | |
1449 | properly designed flow control mechanism would transmit all possible | |
1450 | input characters without interference. Designing such a mechanism is | |
1451 | easy, for a person with at least half a brain. | |
a933dad1 | 1452 | |
9dc15871 | 1453 | There are three possible reasons why flow control could be taking place: |
a933dad1 | 1454 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1455 | 1) Terminal has not been told to disable flow control |
1456 | 2) Insufficient padding for the terminal in use | |
1457 | 3) Some sort of terminal concentrator or line switch is responsible | |
a933dad1 | 1458 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1459 | First of all, many terminals have a set-up mode which controls whether |
1460 | they generate XON/XOFF flow control characters. This must be set to | |
6e270cdb GM |
1461 | "no XON/XOFF" in order for Emacs to work. (For example, on a VT220 |
1462 | you may select "No XOFF" in the setup menu.) Sometimes there is an | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1463 | escape sequence that the computer can send to turn flow control off |
1464 | and on. If so, perhaps the termcap `ti' string should turn flow | |
1465 | control off, and the `te' string should turn it on. | |
a933dad1 | 1466 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1467 | Once the terminal has been told "no flow control", you may find it |
1468 | needs more padding. The amount of padding Emacs sends is controlled | |
1469 | by the termcap entry for the terminal in use, and by the output baud | |
1470 | rate as known by the kernel. The shell command `stty' will print | |
1471 | your output baud rate; `stty' with suitable arguments will set it if | |
1472 | it is wrong. Setting to a higher speed causes increased padding. If | |
1473 | the results are wrong for the correct speed, there is probably a | |
1474 | problem in the termcap entry. You must speak to a local Unix wizard | |
1475 | to fix this. Perhaps you are just using the wrong terminal type. | |
a933dad1 | 1476 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1477 | For terminals that lack a "no flow control" mode, sometimes just |
1478 | giving lots of padding will prevent actual generation of flow control | |
1479 | codes. You might as well try it. | |
a933dad1 | 1480 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1481 | If you are really unlucky, your terminal is connected to the computer |
1482 | through a concentrator which sends XON/XOFF flow control to the | |
1483 | computer, or it insists on sending flow control itself no matter how | |
1484 | much padding you give it. Unless you can figure out how to turn flow | |
1485 | control off on this concentrator (again, refer to your local wizard), | |
1486 | you are screwed! You should have the terminal or concentrator | |
1487 | replaced with a properly designed one. In the mean time, some drastic | |
1488 | measures can make Emacs semi-work. | |
4c635a29 | 1489 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1490 | You can make Emacs ignore C-s and C-q and let the operating system |
1491 | handle them. To do this on a per-session basis, just type M-x | |
1492 | enable-flow-control RET. You will see a message that C-\ and C-^ are | |
1493 | now translated to C-s and C-q. (Use the same command M-x | |
1494 | enable-flow-control to turn *off* this special mode. It toggles flow | |
1495 | control handling.) | |
a933dad1 | 1496 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1497 | If C-\ and C-^ are inconvenient for you (for example, if one of them |
1498 | is the escape character of your terminal concentrator), you can choose | |
1499 | other characters by setting the variables flow-control-c-s-replacement | |
1500 | and flow-control-c-q-replacement. But choose carefully, since all | |
1501 | other control characters are already used by emacs. | |
a933dad1 | 1502 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1503 | IMPORTANT: if you type C-s by accident while flow control is enabled, |
1504 | Emacs output will freeze, and you will have to remember to type C-q in | |
1505 | order to continue. | |
a933dad1 | 1506 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1507 | If you work in an environment where a majority of terminals of a |
1508 | certain type are flow control hobbled, you can use the function | |
1509 | `enable-flow-control-on' to turn on this flow control avoidance scheme | |
1510 | automatically. Here is an example: | |
a933dad1 | 1511 | |
9dc15871 | 1512 | (enable-flow-control-on "vt200" "vt300" "vt101" "vt131") |
a933dad1 | 1513 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1514 | If this isn't quite correct (e.g. you have a mixture of flow-control hobbled |
1515 | and good vt200 terminals), you can still run enable-flow-control | |
1516 | manually. | |
a933dad1 | 1517 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1518 | I have no intention of ever redesigning the Emacs command set for the |
1519 | assumption that terminals use C-s/C-q flow control. XON/XOFF flow | |
1520 | control technique is a bad design, and terminals that need it are bad | |
1521 | merchandise and should not be purchased. Now that X is becoming | |
1522 | widespread, XON/XOFF seems to be on the way out. If you can get some | |
1523 | use out of GNU Emacs on inferior terminals, more power to you, but I | |
1524 | will not make Emacs worse for properly designed systems for the sake | |
1525 | of inferior systems. | |
a933dad1 | 1526 | |
9dc15871 | 1527 | ** Control-S and Control-Q commands are ignored completely. |
a933dad1 | 1528 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1529 | For some reason, your system is using brain-damaged C-s/C-q flow |
1530 | control despite Emacs's attempts to turn it off. Perhaps your | |
1531 | terminal is connected to the computer through a concentrator | |
1532 | that wants to use flow control. | |
a933dad1 | 1533 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1534 | You should first try to tell the concentrator not to use flow control. |
1535 | If you succeed in this, try making the terminal work without | |
1536 | flow control, as described in the preceding section. | |
a933dad1 | 1537 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1538 | If that line of approach is not successful, map some other characters |
1539 | into C-s and C-q using keyboard-translate-table. The example above | |
1540 | shows how to do this with C-^ and C-\. | |
a933dad1 | 1541 | |
9dc15871 | 1542 | ** Screen is updated wrong, but only on one kind of terminal. |
a933dad1 | 1543 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1544 | This could mean that the termcap entry you are using for that |
1545 | terminal is wrong, or it could mean that Emacs has a bug handing | |
1546 | the combination of features specified for that terminal. | |
a933dad1 | 1547 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1548 | The first step in tracking this down is to record what characters |
1549 | Emacs is sending to the terminal. Execute the Lisp expression | |
1550 | (open-termscript "./emacs-script") to make Emacs write all | |
1551 | terminal output into the file ~/emacs-script as well; then do | |
1552 | what makes the screen update wrong, and look at the file | |
1553 | and decode the characters using the manual for the terminal. | |
1554 | There are several possibilities: | |
a933dad1 | 1555 | |
9dc15871 | 1556 | 1) The characters sent are correct, according to the terminal manual. |
a933dad1 | 1557 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1558 | In this case, there is no obvious bug in Emacs, and most likely you |
1559 | need more padding, or possibly the terminal manual is wrong. | |
a933dad1 | 1560 | |
9dc15871 | 1561 | 2) The characters sent are incorrect, due to an obscure aspect |
c64233b2 | 1562 | of the terminal behavior not described in an obvious way by termcap. |
a933dad1 | 1563 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1564 | This case is hard. It will be necessary to think of a way for |
1565 | Emacs to distinguish between terminals with this kind of behavior | |
1566 | and other terminals that behave subtly differently but are | |
1567 | classified the same by termcap; or else find an algorithm for | |
1568 | Emacs to use that avoids the difference. Such changes must be | |
1569 | tested on many kinds of terminals. | |
a933dad1 | 1570 | |
9dc15871 | 1571 | 3) The termcap entry is wrong. |
a933dad1 | 1572 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1573 | See the file etc/TERMS for information on changes |
1574 | that are known to be needed in commonly used termcap entries | |
1575 | for certain terminals. | |
a933dad1 | 1576 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1577 | 4) The characters sent are incorrect, and clearly cannot be |
1578 | right for any terminal with the termcap entry you were using. | |
a933dad1 | 1579 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1580 | This is unambiguously an Emacs bug, and can probably be fixed |
1581 | in termcap.c, tparam.c, term.c, scroll.c, cm.c or dispnew.c. | |
a933dad1 | 1582 | |
9dc15871 | 1583 | ** Control-S and Control-Q commands are ignored completely on a net connection. |
a933dad1 | 1584 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1585 | Some versions of rlogin (and possibly telnet) do not pass flow |
1586 | control characters to the remote system to which they connect. | |
1587 | On such systems, emacs on the remote system cannot disable flow | |
c64233b2 | 1588 | control on the local system. Sometimes `rlogin -8' will avoid this problem. |
a933dad1 | 1589 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1590 | One way to cure this is to disable flow control on the local host |
1591 | (the one running rlogin, not the one running rlogind) using the | |
1592 | stty command, before starting the rlogin process. On many systems, | |
6e270cdb | 1593 | "stty start u stop u" will do this. On some systems, use |
0a46152e | 1594 | "stty -ixon" instead. |
a933dad1 | 1595 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1596 | Some versions of tcsh will prevent even this from working. One way |
1597 | around this is to start another shell before starting rlogin, and | |
1598 | issue the stty command to disable flow control from that shell. | |
a933dad1 | 1599 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1600 | If none of these methods work, the best solution is to type |
1601 | M-x enable-flow-control at the beginning of your emacs session, or | |
1602 | if you expect the problem to continue, add a line such as the | |
1603 | following to your .emacs (on the host running rlogind): | |
a933dad1 | 1604 | |
9dc15871 | 1605 | (enable-flow-control-on "vt200" "vt300" "vt101" "vt131") |
a933dad1 | 1606 | |
c64233b2 | 1607 | See the entry about spontaneous display of I-search (above) for more info. |
a933dad1 | 1608 | |
9dc15871 | 1609 | ** Output from Control-V is slow. |
a933dad1 | 1610 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1611 | On many bit-map terminals, scrolling operations are fairly slow. |
1612 | Often the termcap entry for the type of terminal in use fails | |
1613 | to inform Emacs of this. The two lines at the bottom of the screen | |
1614 | before a Control-V command are supposed to appear at the top after | |
1615 | the Control-V command. If Emacs thinks scrolling the lines is fast, | |
1616 | it will scroll them to the top of the screen. | |
a933dad1 | 1617 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1618 | If scrolling is slow but Emacs thinks it is fast, the usual reason is |
1619 | that the termcap entry for the terminal you are using does not | |
1620 | specify any padding time for the `al' and `dl' strings. Emacs | |
1621 | concludes that these operations take only as much time as it takes to | |
1622 | send the commands at whatever line speed you are using. You must | |
1623 | fix the termcap entry to specify, for the `al' and `dl', as much | |
1624 | time as the operations really take. | |
a933dad1 | 1625 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1626 | Currently Emacs thinks in terms of serial lines which send characters |
1627 | at a fixed rate, so that any operation which takes time for the | |
1628 | terminal to execute must also be padded. With bit-map terminals | |
1629 | operated across networks, often the network provides some sort of | |
1630 | flow control so that padding is never needed no matter how slow | |
1631 | an operation is. You must still specify a padding time if you want | |
1632 | Emacs to realize that the operation takes a long time. This will | |
1633 | cause padding characters to be sent unnecessarily, but they do | |
1634 | not really cost much. They will be transmitted while the scrolling | |
1635 | is happening and then discarded quickly by the terminal. | |
a933dad1 | 1636 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1637 | Most bit-map terminals provide commands for inserting or deleting |
1638 | multiple lines at once. Define the `AL' and `DL' strings in the | |
1639 | termcap entry to say how to do these things, and you will have | |
1640 | fast output without wasted padding characters. These strings should | |
1641 | each contain a single %-spec saying how to send the number of lines | |
1642 | to be scrolled. These %-specs are like those in the termcap | |
1643 | `cm' string. | |
a933dad1 | 1644 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1645 | You should also define the `IC' and `DC' strings if your terminal |
1646 | has a command to insert or delete multiple characters. These | |
1647 | take the number of positions to insert or delete as an argument. | |
a933dad1 | 1648 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1649 | A `cs' string to set the scrolling region will reduce the amount |
1650 | of motion you see on the screen when part of the screen is scrolled. | |
a933dad1 | 1651 | |
9dc15871 | 1652 | ** You type Control-H (Backspace) expecting to delete characters. |
a933dad1 | 1653 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1654 | Put `stty dec' in your .login file and your problems will disappear |
1655 | after a day or two. | |
a933dad1 | 1656 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1657 | The choice of Backspace for erasure was based on confusion, caused by |
1658 | the fact that backspacing causes erasure (later, when you type another | |
1659 | character) on most display terminals. But it is a mistake. Deletion | |
1660 | of text is not the same thing as backspacing followed by failure to | |
1661 | overprint. I do not wish to propagate this confusion by conforming | |
1662 | to it. | |
a933dad1 | 1663 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1664 | For this reason, I believe `stty dec' is the right mode to use, |
1665 | and I have designed Emacs to go with that. If there were a thousand | |
1666 | other control characters, I would define Control-h to delete as well; | |
1667 | but there are not very many other control characters, and I think | |
1668 | that providing the most mnemonic possible Help character is more | |
1669 | important than adapting to people who don't use `stty dec'. | |
a933dad1 | 1670 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1671 | If you are obstinate about confusing buggy overprinting with deletion, |
1672 | you can redefine Backspace in your .emacs file: | |
1673 | (global-set-key "\b" 'delete-backward-char) | |
1674 | You can probably access help-command via f1. | |
a933dad1 | 1675 | |
9dc15871 | 1676 | ** Colors are not available on a tty or in xterm. |
a933dad1 | 1677 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1678 | Emacs 21 supports colors on character terminals and terminal |
1679 | emulators, but this support relies on the terminfo or termcap database | |
1680 | entry to specify that the display supports color. Emacs looks at the | |
1681 | "Co" capability for the terminal to find out how many colors are | |
1682 | supported; it should be non-zero to activate the color support within | |
1683 | Emacs. (Most color terminals support 8 or 16 colors.) If your system | |
1684 | uses terminfo, the name of the capability equivalent to "Co" is | |
1685 | "colors". | |
a933dad1 | 1686 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1687 | In addition to the "Co" capability, Emacs needs the "op" (for |
1688 | ``original pair'') capability, which tells how to switch the terminal | |
1689 | back to the default foreground and background colors. Emacs will not | |
1690 | use colors if this capability is not defined. If your terminal entry | |
1691 | doesn't provide such a capability, try using the ANSI standard escape | |
1692 | sequence \E[00m (that is, define a new termcap/terminfo entry and make | |
1693 | it use your current terminal's entry plus \E[00m for the "op" | |
1694 | capability). | |
a933dad1 | 1695 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1696 | Finally, the "NC" capability (terminfo name: "ncv") tells Emacs which |
1697 | attributes cannot be used with colors. Setting this capability | |
1698 | incorrectly might have the effect of disabling colors; try setting | |
1699 | this capability to `0' (zero) and see if that helps. | |
a933dad1 | 1700 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1701 | Emacs uses the database entry for the terminal whose name is the value |
1702 | of the environment variable TERM. With `xterm', a common terminal | |
1703 | entry that supports color is `xterm-color', so setting TERM's value to | |
1704 | `xterm-color' might activate the color support on an xterm-compatible | |
1705 | emulator. | |
a933dad1 | 1706 | |
bf247b6e | 1707 | Beginning with version 22.1, Emacs supports the --color command-line |
9dc15871 EZ |
1708 | option which may be used to force Emacs to use one of a few popular |
1709 | modes for getting colors on a tty. For example, --color=ansi8 sets up | |
1710 | for using the ANSI-standard escape sequences that support 8 colors. | |
a933dad1 | 1711 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1712 | Some modes do not use colors unless you turn on the Font-lock mode. |
1713 | Some people have long ago set their `~/.emacs' files to turn on | |
1714 | Font-lock on X only, so they won't see colors on a tty. The | |
1715 | recommended way of turning on Font-lock is by typing "M-x | |
1716 | global-font-lock-mode RET" or by customizing the variable | |
1717 | `global-font-lock-mode'. | |
a933dad1 | 1718 | |
40f86458 GM |
1719 | ** Unexpected characters inserted into the buffer when you start Emacs. |
1720 | See eg http://debbugs.gnu.org/11129 | |
1721 | ||
1722 | This can happen when you start Emacs in -nw mode in an Xterm. | |
1723 | For example, in the *scratch* buffer, you might see something like: | |
1724 | ||
1725 | 0;276;0c | |
1726 | ||
1727 | This is more likely to happen if you are using Emacs over a slow | |
1728 | connection, and begin typing before Emacs is ready to respond. | |
1729 | ||
1730 | This occurs when Emacs tries to query the terminal to see what | |
1731 | capabilities it supports, and gets confused by the answer. | |
1732 | To avoid it, set xterm-extra-capabilities to a value other than | |
1733 | `check' (the default). See that variable's documentation (in | |
1734 | term/xterm.el) for more details. | |
1735 | ||
9dc15871 | 1736 | * Runtime problems specific to individual Unix variants |
f1e54ce1 | 1737 | |
9dc15871 | 1738 | ** GNU/Linux |
f1e54ce1 | 1739 | |
f77e4514 KS |
1740 | *** GNU/Linux: Process output is corrupted. |
1741 | ||
1742 | There is a bug in Linux kernel 2.6.10 PTYs that can cause emacs to | |
1743 | read corrupted process output. | |
1744 | ||
1745 | *** GNU/Linux: Remote access to CVS with SSH causes file corruption. | |
1746 | ||
1747 | If you access a remote CVS repository via SSH, files may be corrupted | |
1748 | due to bad interaction between CVS, SSH, and libc. | |
1749 | ||
1750 | To fix the problem, save the following script into a file, make it | |
1751 | executable, and set CVS_RSH environment variable to the file name of | |
1752 | the script: | |
1753 | ||
1754 | #!/bin/bash | |
1755 | exec 2> >(exec cat >&2 2>/dev/null) | |
1756 | exec ssh "$@" | |
1757 | ||
9d760d75 GM |
1758 | *** GNU/Linux: Truncated svn annotate output with SSH. |
1759 | http://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=7791 | |
1760 | ||
1761 | The symptoms are: you are accessing a svn repository over SSH. | |
1762 | You use vc-annotate on a large (several thousand line) file, and the | |
1763 | result is truncated around the 1000 line mark. It works fine with | |
1764 | other access methods (eg http), or from outside Emacs. | |
1765 | ||
1766 | This may be a similar libc/SSH issue to the one mentioned above for CVS. | |
1767 | A similar workaround seems to be effective: create a script with the | |
1768 | same contents as the one used above for CVS_RSH, and set the SVN_SSH | |
1769 | environment variable to point to it. | |
1770 | ||
9dc15871 EZ |
1771 | *** GNU/Linux: On Linux-based GNU systems using libc versions 5.4.19 through |
1772 | 5.4.22, Emacs crashes at startup with a segmentation fault. | |
a933dad1 | 1773 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1774 | This problem happens if libc defines the symbol __malloc_initialized. |
1775 | One known solution is to upgrade to a newer libc version. 5.4.33 is | |
1776 | known to work. | |
a933dad1 | 1777 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1778 | *** GNU/Linux: After upgrading to a newer version of Emacs, |
1779 | the Meta key stops working. | |
a01325b8 | 1780 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1781 | This was reported to happen on a GNU/Linux system distributed by |
1782 | Mandrake. The reason is that the previous version of Emacs was | |
1783 | modified by Mandrake to make the Alt key act as the Meta key, on a | |
1784 | keyboard where the Windows key is the one which produces the Meta | |
1785 | modifier. A user who started using a newer version of Emacs, which | |
1786 | was not hacked by Mandrake, expected the Alt key to continue to act as | |
1787 | Meta, and was astonished when that didn't happen. | |
a01325b8 | 1788 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1789 | The solution is to find out what key on your keyboard produces the Meta |
1790 | modifier, and use that key instead. Try all of the keys to the left | |
1791 | and to the right of the space bar, together with the `x' key, and see | |
1792 | which combination produces "M-x" in the echo area. You can also use | |
1793 | the `xmodmap' utility to show all the keys which produce a Meta | |
1794 | modifier: | |
a933dad1 | 1795 | |
9dc15871 | 1796 | xmodmap -pk | egrep -i "meta|alt" |
a933dad1 | 1797 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1798 | A more convenient way of finding out which keys produce a Meta modifier |
1799 | is to use the `xkbprint' utility, if it's available on your system: | |
a01325b8 | 1800 | |
9dc15871 | 1801 | xkbprint 0:0 /tmp/k.ps |
a933dad1 | 1802 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1803 | This produces a PostScript file `/tmp/k.ps' with a picture of your |
1804 | keyboard; printing that file on a PostScript printer will show what | |
1805 | keys can serve as Meta. | |
a933dad1 | 1806 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1807 | The `xkeycaps' also shows a visual representation of the current |
1808 | keyboard settings. It also allows to modify them. | |
a933dad1 | 1809 | |
ff3e9dbc | 1810 | *** GNU/Linux: slow startup on Linux-based GNU systems. |
a933dad1 | 1811 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1812 | People using systems based on the Linux kernel sometimes report that |
1813 | startup takes 10 to 15 seconds longer than `usual'. | |
a933dad1 | 1814 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1815 | This is because Emacs looks up the host name when it starts. |
1816 | Normally, this takes negligible time; the extra delay is due to | |
1817 | improper system configuration. This problem can occur for both | |
1818 | networked and non-networked machines. | |
a933dad1 | 1819 | |
9dc15871 | 1820 | Here is how to fix the configuration. It requires being root. |
a933dad1 | 1821 | |
9dc15871 | 1822 | **** Networked Case. |
a933dad1 | 1823 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1824 | First, make sure the files `/etc/hosts' and `/etc/host.conf' both |
1825 | exist. The first line in the `/etc/hosts' file should look like this | |
1826 | (replace HOSTNAME with your host name): | |
a933dad1 | 1827 | |
9dc15871 | 1828 | 127.0.0.1 HOSTNAME |
a933dad1 | 1829 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1830 | Also make sure that the `/etc/host.conf' files contains the following |
1831 | lines: | |
1dd8b979 | 1832 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1833 | order hosts, bind |
1834 | multi on | |
10a763e5 | 1835 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1836 | Any changes, permanent and temporary, to the host name should be |
1837 | indicated in the `/etc/hosts' file, since it acts a limited local | |
1838 | database of addresses and names (e.g., some SLIP connections | |
1839 | dynamically allocate ip addresses). | |
1dd8b979 | 1840 | |
9dc15871 | 1841 | **** Non-Networked Case. |
a933dad1 | 1842 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1843 | The solution described in the networked case applies here as well. |
1844 | However, if you never intend to network your machine, you can use a | |
1845 | simpler solution: create an empty `/etc/host.conf' file. The command | |
1846 | `touch /etc/host.conf' suffices to create the file. The `/etc/hosts' | |
1847 | file is not necessary with this approach. | |
a933dad1 | 1848 | |
9dc15871 | 1849 | *** GNU/Linux: Emacs on a tty switches the cursor to large blinking block. |
a933dad1 | 1850 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1851 | This was reported to happen on some GNU/Linux systems which use |
1852 | ncurses version 5.0, but could be relevant for other versions as well. | |
1853 | These versions of ncurses come with a `linux' terminfo entry, where | |
1854 | the "cvvis" capability (termcap "vs") is defined as "\E[?25h\E[?8c" | |
1855 | (show cursor, change size). This escape sequence switches on a | |
1856 | blinking hardware text-mode cursor whose size is a full character | |
1857 | cell. This blinking cannot be stopped, since a hardware cursor | |
1858 | always blinks. | |
3d00585e | 1859 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1860 | A work-around is to redefine the "cvvis" capability so that it |
1861 | enables a *software* cursor. The software cursor works by inverting | |
1862 | the colors of the character at point, so what you see is a block | |
1863 | cursor that doesn't blink. For this to work, you need to redefine | |
1864 | the "cnorm" capability as well, so that it operates on the software | |
1865 | cursor instead of the hardware cursor. | |
3d00585e | 1866 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1867 | To this end, run "infocmp linux > linux-term", edit the file |
1868 | `linux-term' to make both the "cnorm" and "cvvis" capabilities send | |
1869 | the sequence "\E[?25h\E[?17;0;64c", and then run "tic linux-term" to | |
1870 | produce a modified terminfo entry. | |
3d00585e | 1871 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1872 | Alternatively, if you want a blinking underscore as your Emacs cursor, |
1873 | change the "cvvis" capability to send the "\E[?25h\E[?0c" command. | |
a933dad1 | 1874 | |
9dc15871 | 1875 | *** GNU/Linux: Error messages `internal facep []' happen on GNU/Linux systems. |
a933dad1 DL |
1876 | |
1877 | There is a report that replacing libc.so.5.0.9 with libc.so.5.2.16 | |
1878 | caused this to start happening. People are not sure why, but the | |
1879 | problem seems unlikely to be in Emacs itself. Some suspect that it | |
1880 | is actually Xlib which won't work with libc.so.5.2.16. | |
1881 | ||
1882 | Using the old library version is a workaround. | |
1883 | ||
9dc15871 | 1884 | ** FreeBSD |
a933dad1 | 1885 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1886 | *** FreeBSD 2.1.5: useless symbolic links remain in /tmp or other |
1887 | directories that have the +t bit. | |
a933dad1 | 1888 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1889 | This is because of a kernel bug in FreeBSD 2.1.5 (fixed in 2.2). |
1890 | Emacs uses symbolic links to implement file locks. In a directory | |
1891 | with +t bit, the directory owner becomes the owner of the symbolic | |
1892 | link, so that it cannot be removed by anyone else. | |
a933dad1 | 1893 | |
172bedef GM |
1894 | If you don't like those useless links, you can customize |
1895 | the option `create-lockfiles'. | |
a933dad1 | 1896 | |
9dc15871 | 1897 | *** FreeBSD: Getting a Meta key on the console. |
a933dad1 | 1898 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1899 | By default, neither Alt nor any other key acts as a Meta key on |
1900 | FreeBSD, but this can be changed using kbdcontrol(1). Dump the | |
1901 | current keymap to a file with the command | |
a933dad1 | 1902 | |
9dc15871 | 1903 | $ kbdcontrol -d >emacs.kbd |
a933dad1 | 1904 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1905 | Edit emacs.kbd, and give the key you want to be the Meta key the |
1906 | definition `meta'. For instance, if your keyboard has a ``Windows'' | |
1907 | key with scan code 105, change the line for scan code 105 in emacs.kbd | |
1908 | to look like this | |
a933dad1 | 1909 | |
9dc15871 | 1910 | 105 meta meta meta meta meta meta meta meta O |
a933dad1 | 1911 | |
9dc15871 | 1912 | to make the Windows key the Meta key. Load the new keymap with |
a933dad1 | 1913 | |
9dc15871 | 1914 | $ kbdcontrol -l emacs.kbd |
a933dad1 | 1915 | |
9dc15871 | 1916 | ** HP-UX |
a933dad1 | 1917 | |
9dc15871 | 1918 | *** HP/UX : Shell mode gives the message, "`tty`: Ambiguous". |
a933dad1 | 1919 | |
9dc15871 | 1920 | christos@theory.tn.cornell.edu says: |
a933dad1 | 1921 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1922 | The problem is that in your .cshrc you have something that tries to |
1923 | execute `tty`. If you are not running the shell on a real tty then | |
1924 | tty will print "not a tty". Csh expects one word in some places, | |
1925 | but tty is giving it back 3. | |
a933dad1 | 1926 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1927 | The solution is to add a pair of quotes around `tty` to make it a single |
1928 | word: | |
a933dad1 | 1929 | |
9dc15871 | 1930 | if (`tty` == "/dev/console") |
a933dad1 | 1931 | |
9dc15871 | 1932 | should be changed to: |
a933dad1 | 1933 | |
9dc15871 | 1934 | if ("`tty`" == "/dev/console") |
a933dad1 | 1935 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1936 | Even better, move things that set up terminal sections out of .cshrc |
1937 | and into .login. | |
a933dad1 | 1938 | |
9dc15871 | 1939 | *** HP/UX: `Pid xxx killed due to text modification or page I/O error'. |
a933dad1 | 1940 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1941 | On HP/UX, you can get that error when the Emacs executable is on an NFS |
1942 | file system. HP/UX responds this way if it tries to swap in a page and | |
1943 | does not get a response from the server within a timeout whose default | |
1944 | value is just ten seconds. | |
a933dad1 | 1945 | |
9dc15871 | 1946 | If this happens to you, extend the timeout period. |
a933dad1 | 1947 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1948 | *** HP/UX: The right Alt key works wrong on German HP keyboards (and perhaps |
1949 | other non-English HP keyboards too). | |
a933dad1 | 1950 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1951 | This is because HP-UX defines the modifiers wrong in X. Here is a |
1952 | shell script to fix the problem; be sure that it is run after VUE | |
1953 | configures the X server. | |
a933dad1 | 1954 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1955 | xmodmap 2> /dev/null - << EOF |
1956 | keysym Alt_L = Meta_L | |
1957 | keysym Alt_R = Meta_R | |
1958 | EOF | |
a933dad1 | 1959 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1960 | xmodmap - << EOF |
1961 | clear mod1 | |
1962 | keysym Mode_switch = NoSymbol | |
1963 | add mod1 = Meta_L | |
1964 | keysym Meta_R = Mode_switch | |
1965 | add mod2 = Mode_switch | |
1966 | EOF | |
a933dad1 | 1967 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1968 | *** HP/UX: "Cannot find callback list" messages from dialog boxes in |
1969 | Emacs built with Motif. | |
a933dad1 | 1970 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1971 | This problem resulted from a bug in GCC 2.4.5. Newer GCC versions |
1972 | such as 2.7.0 fix the problem. | |
a933dad1 | 1973 | |
9dc15871 | 1974 | *** HP/UX: Emacs does not recognize the AltGr key. |
a933dad1 | 1975 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1976 | To fix this, set up a file ~/.dt/sessions/sessionetc with executable |
1977 | rights, containing this text: | |
a933dad1 | 1978 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1979 | -------------------------------- |
1980 | xmodmap 2> /dev/null - << EOF | |
1981 | keysym Alt_L = Meta_L | |
1982 | keysym Alt_R = Meta_R | |
1983 | EOF | |
a933dad1 | 1984 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
1985 | xmodmap - << EOF |
1986 | clear mod1 | |
1987 | keysym Mode_switch = NoSymbol | |
1988 | add mod1 = Meta_L | |
1989 | keysym Meta_R = Mode_switch | |
1990 | add mod2 = Mode_switch | |
1991 | EOF | |
1992 | -------------------------------- | |
a933dad1 | 1993 | |
9dc15871 | 1994 | *** HP/UX 11.0: Emacs makes HP/UX 11.0 crash. |
a933dad1 | 1995 | |
9dc15871 | 1996 | This is a bug in HPUX; HPUX patch PHKL_16260 is said to fix it. |
a933dad1 | 1997 | |
9dc15871 | 1998 | ** AIX |
a933dad1 | 1999 | |
9dc15871 | 2000 | *** AIX: Trouble using ptys. |
a933dad1 | 2001 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
2002 | People often install the pty devices on AIX incorrectly. |
2003 | Use `smit pty' to reinstall them properly. | |
a933dad1 | 2004 | |
9dc15871 | 2005 | *** AIXterm: Your Delete key sends a Backspace to the terminal. |
a933dad1 | 2006 | |
9dc15871 | 2007 | The solution is to include in your .Xdefaults the lines: |
a933dad1 | 2008 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
2009 | *aixterm.Translations: #override <Key>BackSpace: string(0x7f) |
2010 | aixterm*ttyModes: erase ^? | |
a933dad1 | 2011 | |
9dc15871 | 2012 | This makes your Backspace key send DEL (ASCII 127). |
a933dad1 | 2013 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
2014 | *** AIX: If linking fails because libXbsd isn't found, check if you |
2015 | are compiling with the system's `cc' and CFLAGS containing `-O5'. If | |
2016 | so, you have hit a compiler bug. Please make sure to re-configure | |
2017 | Emacs so that it isn't compiled with `-O5'. | |
a933dad1 | 2018 | |
9dc15871 | 2019 | *** AIX 4.3.x or 4.4: Compiling fails. |
a933dad1 | 2020 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
2021 | This could happen if you use /bin/c89 as your compiler, instead of |
2022 | the default `cc'. /bin/c89 treats certain warnings, such as benign | |
2023 | redefinitions of macros, as errors, and fails the build. A solution | |
2024 | is to use the default compiler `cc'. | |
a933dad1 | 2025 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
2026 | *** AIX 4: Some programs fail when run in a Shell buffer |
2027 | with an error message like No terminfo entry for "unknown". | |
a933dad1 | 2028 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
2029 | On AIX, many terminal type definitions are not installed by default. |
2030 | `unknown' is one of them. Install the "Special Generic Terminal | |
2031 | Definitions" to make them defined. | |
a933dad1 | 2032 | |
9dc15871 | 2033 | ** Solaris |
a933dad1 | 2034 | |
c64233b2 GM |
2035 | We list bugs in current versions here. See also the section on legacy |
2036 | systems. | |
a933dad1 | 2037 | |
9dc15871 | 2038 | *** On Solaris, C-x doesn't get through to Emacs when you use the console. |
a933dad1 | 2039 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
2040 | This is a Solaris feature (at least on Intel x86 cpus). Type C-r |
2041 | C-r C-t, to toggle whether C-x gets through to Emacs. | |
a933dad1 | 2042 | |
9dc15871 | 2043 | *** Problem with remote X server on Suns. |
a933dad1 | 2044 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
2045 | On a Sun, running Emacs on one machine with the X server on another |
2046 | may not work if you have used the unshared system libraries. This | |
2047 | is because the unshared libraries fail to use YP for host name lookup. | |
2048 | As a result, the host name you specify may not be recognized. | |
a933dad1 | 2049 | |
c64233b2 | 2050 | *** Solaris 2.6: Emacs crashes with SIGBUS or SIGSEGV on Solaris after you delete a frame. |
a933dad1 | 2051 | |
0a4dd4e4 EZ |
2052 | We suspect that this is a bug in the X libraries provided by |
2053 | Sun. There is a report that one of these patches fixes the bug and | |
2054 | makes the problem stop: | |
a933dad1 | 2055 | |
0a4dd4e4 EZ |
2056 | 105216-01 105393-01 105518-01 105621-01 105665-01 105615-02 105216-02 |
2057 | 105667-01 105401-08 105615-03 105621-02 105686-02 105736-01 105755-03 | |
2058 | 106033-01 105379-01 105786-01 105181-04 105379-03 105786-04 105845-01 | |
2059 | 105284-05 105669-02 105837-01 105837-02 105558-01 106125-02 105407-01 | |
a933dad1 | 2060 | |
0a4dd4e4 EZ |
2061 | Another person using a newer system (kernel patch level Generic_105181-06) |
2062 | suspects that the bug was fixed by one of these more recent patches: | |
a933dad1 | 2063 | |
0a4dd4e4 EZ |
2064 | 106040-07 SunOS 5.6: X Input & Output Method patch |
2065 | 106222-01 OpenWindows 3.6: filemgr (ff.core) fixes | |
2066 | 105284-12 Motif 1.2.7: sparc Runtime library patch | |
a933dad1 | 2067 | |
0a4dd4e4 | 2068 | *** Solaris 7 or 8: Emacs reports a BadAtom error (from X) |
a933dad1 | 2069 | |
0a4dd4e4 EZ |
2070 | This happens when Emacs was built on some other version of Solaris. |
2071 | Rebuild it on Solaris 8. | |
a933dad1 | 2072 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
2073 | *** When using M-x dbx with the SparcWorks debugger, the `up' and `down' |
2074 | commands do not move the arrow in Emacs. | |
a933dad1 | 2075 | |
9dc15871 | 2076 | You can fix this by adding the following line to `~/.dbxinit': |
a933dad1 | 2077 | |
9dc15871 | 2078 | dbxenv output_short_file_name off |
a933dad1 | 2079 | |
0a4dd4e4 EZ |
2080 | *** On Solaris, CTRL-t is ignored by Emacs when you use |
2081 | the fr.ISO-8859-15 locale (and maybe other related locales). | |
a933dad1 | 2082 | |
0a4dd4e4 | 2083 | You can fix this by editing the file: |
a933dad1 | 2084 | |
3256a475 | 2085 | /usr/openwin/lib/locale/iso8859-15/Compose |
a933dad1 | 2086 | |
0a4dd4e4 | 2087 | Near the bottom there is a line that reads: |
a933dad1 | 2088 | |
3256a475 | 2089 | Ctrl<t> <quotedbl> <Y> : "\276" threequarters |
a933dad1 | 2090 | |
0a4dd4e4 | 2091 | that should read: |
a933dad1 | 2092 | |
3256a475 | 2093 | Ctrl<T> <quotedbl> <Y> : "\276" threequarters |
a933dad1 | 2094 | |
0a4dd4e4 | 2095 | Note the lower case <t>. Changing this line should make C-t work. |
a933dad1 | 2096 | |
1b6406b3 CY |
2097 | *** On Solaris, Emacs fails to set menu-bar-update-hook on startup, with error |
2098 | "Error in menu-bar-update-hook: (error Point before start of properties)". | |
2099 | This seems to be a GCC optimization bug that occurs for GCC 4.1.2 (-g | |
2100 | and -g -O2) and GCC 4.2.3 (-g -O and -g -O2). You can fix this by | |
2101 | compiling with GCC 4.2.3 or CC 5.7, with no optimizations. | |
2102 | ||
0a4dd4e4 | 2103 | ** Irix |
a933dad1 | 2104 | |
9dc15871 | 2105 | *** Irix 6.5: Emacs crashes on the SGI R10K, when compiled with GCC. |
a933dad1 | 2106 | |
9dc15871 | 2107 | This 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 |
2111 | The program mkpts (which may be in `/usr/adm' or `/usr/sbin') needs to |
2112 | be set-UID to root, or non-root programs like Emacs will not be able | |
2113 | to allocate ptys reliably. | |
a933dad1 | 2114 | |
9dc15871 | 2115 | * Runtime problems specific to MS-Windows |
a933dad1 | 2116 | |
62e466d0 JB |
2117 | ** PATH can contain unexpanded environment variables |
2118 | ||
2119 | Old releases of TCC (version 9) and 4NT (up to version 8) do not correctly | |
2120 | expand App Paths entries of type REG_EXPAND_SZ. When Emacs is run from TCC | |
2121 | and such an entry exists for emacs.exe, exec-path will contain the | |
2122 | unexpanded entry. This has been fixed in TCC 10. For more information, | |
2123 | see bug#2062. | |
2124 | ||
d9b0e161 EZ |
2125 | ** Setting w32-pass-rwindow-to-system and w32-pass-lwindow-to-system to nil |
2126 | does not prevent the Start menu from popping up when the left or right | |
2127 | ``Windows'' key is pressed. | |
2128 | ||
2129 | This was reported to happen when XKeymacs is installed. At least with | |
2130 | XKeymacs Version 3.47, deactivating XKeymacs when Emacs is active is | |
2131 | not enough to avoid its messing with the keyboard input. Exiting | |
2132 | XKeymacs completely is reported to solve the problem. | |
2133 | ||
ade79051 KS |
2134 | ** Windows 95 and networking. |
2135 | ||
2136 | To support server sockets, Emacs 22.1 loads ws2_32.dll. If this file | |
2137 | is missing, all Emacs networking features are disabled. | |
2138 | ||
2139 | Old versions of Windows 95 may not have the required DLL. To use | |
2140 | Emacs' networking features on Windows 95, you must install the | |
2141 | "Windows Socket 2" update available from MicroSoft's support Web. | |
2142 | ||
9dc15871 | 2143 | ** Emacs exits with "X protocol error" when run with an X server for MS-Windows. |
a933dad1 | 2144 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
2145 | A certain X server for Windows had a bug which caused this. |
2146 | Supposedly the newer 32-bit version of this server doesn't have the | |
2147 | problem. | |
177c0ea7 | 2148 | |
b6ec0fa0 JR |
2149 | ** Emacs crashes when opening a file with a UNC path and rails-mode is loaded. |
2150 | ||
2151 | Loading rails-mode seems to interfere with UNC path handling. This has been | |
2152 | reported as a bug against both Emacs and rails-mode, so look for an updated | |
2153 | rails-mode that avoids this crash, or avoid using UNC paths if using | |
2154 | rails-mode. | |
2155 | ||
2156 | ** Known problems with the MS-Windows port of Emacs 22.3 | |
de66e883 | 2157 | |
117402b8 JR |
2158 | M-x term does not work on MS-Windows. TTY emulation on Windows is |
2159 | undocumented, and programs such as stty which are used on posix platforms | |
2160 | to control tty emulation do not exist for native windows terminals. | |
2161 | ||
de66e883 JR |
2162 | Using create-fontset-from-ascii-font or the --font startup parameter |
2163 | with a Chinese, Japanese or Korean font leads to display problems. | |
2164 | Use a Latin-only font as your default font. If you want control over | |
2165 | which font is used to display Chinese, Japanese or Korean character, | |
2166 | use create-fontset-from-fontset-spec to define a fontset. | |
a933dad1 | 2167 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
2168 | Frames are not refreshed while the File or Font dialog or a pop-up menu |
2169 | is displayed. This also means help text for pop-up menus is not | |
2170 | displayed at all. This is because message handling under Windows is | |
2171 | synchronous, so we cannot handle repaint (or any other) messages while | |
2172 | waiting for a system function to return the result of the dialog or | |
2173 | pop-up menu interaction. | |
a933dad1 | 2174 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
2175 | Windows 95 and Windows NT up to version 4.0 do not support help text |
2176 | for menus. Help text is only available in later versions of Windows. | |
a933dad1 | 2177 | |
af71f3ce EZ |
2178 | When "ClearType" method is selected as the "method to smooth edges of |
2179 | screen fonts" (in Display Properties, Appearance tab, under | |
2180 | "Effects"), there are various problems related to display of | |
f396bf16 JR |
2181 | characters: Bold fonts can be hard to read, small portions of some |
2182 | characters could appear chopped, etc. This happens because, under | |
2183 | ClearType, characters are drawn outside their advertised bounding box. | |
2184 | Emacs 21 disabled the use of ClearType, whereas Emacs 22 allows it and | |
2185 | has some code to enlarge the width of the bounding box. Apparently, | |
2186 | this display feature needs more changes to get it 100% right. A | |
2187 | workaround is to disable ClearType. | |
af71f3ce | 2188 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
2189 | There are problems with display if mouse-tracking is enabled and the |
2190 | mouse is moved off a frame, over another frame then back over the first | |
2191 | frame. A workaround is to click the left mouse button inside the frame | |
2192 | after moving back into it. | |
a933dad1 | 2193 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
2194 | Some minor flickering still persists during mouse-tracking, although |
2195 | not as severely as in 21.1. | |
a933dad1 | 2196 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
2197 | An inactive cursor remains in an active window after the Windows |
2198 | Manager driven switch of the focus, until a key is pressed. | |
a933dad1 | 2199 | |
4ed1bce5 | 2200 | Windows input methods are not recognized by Emacs. However, some |
9dc15871 EZ |
2201 | of these input methods cause the keyboard to send characters encoded |
2202 | in the appropriate coding system (e.g., ISO 8859-1 for Latin-1 | |
4ed1bce5 EZ |
2203 | characters, ISO 8859-8 for Hebrew characters, etc.). To make these |
2204 | input methods work with Emacs, set the keyboard coding system to the | |
2205 | appropriate value after you activate the Windows input method. For | |
2206 | example, if you activate the Hebrew input method, type this: | |
2207 | ||
2208 | C-x RET k hebrew-iso-8bit RET | |
2209 | ||
2210 | (Emacs ought to recognize the Windows language-change event and set up | |
2211 | the appropriate keyboard encoding automatically, but it doesn't do | |
2212 | that yet.) In addition, to use these Windows input methods, you | |
2213 | should set your "Language for non-Unicode programs" (on Windows XP, | |
2214 | this is on the Advanced tab of Regional Settings) to the language of | |
2215 | the input method. | |
a933dad1 | 2216 | |
868c31fe EZ |
2217 | To bind keys that produce non-ASCII characters with modifiers, you |
2218 | must specify raw byte codes. For instance, if you want to bind | |
2219 | META-a-grave to a command, you need to specify this in your `~/.emacs': | |
2220 | ||
2221 | (global-set-key [?\M-\340] ...) | |
2222 | ||
2223 | The above example is for the Latin-1 environment where the byte code | |
2224 | of the encoded a-grave is 340 octal. For other environments, use the | |
2225 | encoding appropriate to that environment. | |
a933dad1 | 2226 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
2227 | The %b specifier for format-time-string does not produce abbreviated |
2228 | month names with consistent widths for some locales on some versions | |
2229 | of Windows. This is caused by a deficiency in the underlying system | |
2230 | library function. | |
a933dad1 | 2231 | |
cdc9f5c2 JR |
2232 | The function set-time-zone-rule gives incorrect results for many |
2233 | non-US timezones. This is due to over-simplistic handling of | |
2234 | daylight savings switchovers by the Windows libraries. | |
9f1bc31f | 2235 | |
365b9257 EZ |
2236 | Files larger than 4GB cause overflow in the size (represented as a |
2237 | 32-bit integer) reported by `file-attributes'. This affects Dired as | |
2238 | well, since the Windows port uses a Lisp emulation of `ls' that relies | |
2239 | on `file-attributes'. | |
2240 | ||
56dc0646 EZ |
2241 | Sound playing is not supported with the `:data DATA' key-value pair. |
2242 | You _must_ use the `:file FILE' method. | |
2243 | ||
0a4dd4e4 | 2244 | ** Typing Alt-Shift has strange effects on MS-Windows. |
a933dad1 | 2245 | |
0a4dd4e4 EZ |
2246 | This combination of keys is a command to change keyboard layout. If |
2247 | you proceed to type another non-modifier key before you let go of Alt | |
2248 | and Shift, the Alt and Shift act as modifiers in the usual way. A | |
2249 | more permanent work around is to change it to another key combination, | |
d169ccbd EZ |
2250 | or disable it in the "Regional and Language Options" applet of the |
2251 | Control Panel. (The exact sequence of mouse clicks in the "Regional | |
2252 | and Language Options" applet needed to find the key combination that | |
2253 | changes the keyboard layout depends on your Windows version; for XP, | |
2254 | in the Languages tab, click "Details" and then "Key Settings".) | |
a933dad1 | 2255 | |
0a4dd4e4 | 2256 | ** Interrupting Cygwin port of Bash from Emacs doesn't work. |
a933dad1 | 2257 | |
0a4dd4e4 EZ |
2258 | Cygwin 1.x builds of the ported Bash cannot be interrupted from the |
2259 | MS-Windows version of Emacs. This is due to some change in the Bash | |
2260 | port or in the Cygwin library which apparently make Bash ignore the | |
2261 | keyboard interrupt event sent by Emacs to Bash. (Older Cygwin ports | |
2262 | of Bash, up to b20.1, did receive SIGINT from Emacs.) | |
a933dad1 | 2263 | |
0a4dd4e4 | 2264 | ** Accessing remote files with ange-ftp hangs the MS-Windows version of Emacs. |
a933dad1 | 2265 | |
0a4dd4e4 EZ |
2266 | If the FTP client is the Cygwin port of GNU `ftp', this appears to be |
2267 | due to some bug in the Cygwin DLL or some incompatibility between it | |
2268 | and the implementation of asynchronous subprocesses in the Windows | |
2269 | port of Emacs. Specifically, some parts of the FTP server responses | |
2270 | are not flushed out, apparently due to buffering issues, which | |
2271 | confuses ange-ftp. | |
a933dad1 | 2272 | |
0a4dd4e4 EZ |
2273 | The solution is to downgrade to an older version of the Cygwin DLL |
2274 | (version 1.3.2 was reported to solve the problem), or use the stock | |
2275 | Windows FTP client, usually found in the `C:\WINDOWS' or 'C:\WINNT' | |
2276 | directory. To force ange-ftp use the stock Windows client, set the | |
2277 | variable `ange-ftp-ftp-program-name' to the absolute file name of the | |
2278 | client's executable. For example: | |
a933dad1 | 2279 | |
9dc15871 | 2280 | (setq ange-ftp-ftp-program-name "c:/windows/ftp.exe") |
a933dad1 | 2281 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
2282 | If you want to stick with the Cygwin FTP client, you can work around |
2283 | this problem by putting this in your `.emacs' file: | |
a933dad1 | 2284 | |
9dc15871 | 2285 | (setq ange-ftp-ftp-program-args '("-i" "-n" "-g" "-v" "--prompt" "") |
a933dad1 | 2286 | |
9dc15871 | 2287 | ** lpr commands don't work on MS-Windows with some cheap printers. |
a933dad1 | 2288 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
2289 | This problem may also strike other platforms, but the solution is |
2290 | likely to be a global one, and not Emacs specific. | |
a933dad1 | 2291 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
2292 | Many cheap inkjet, and even some cheap laser printers, do not |
2293 | print plain text anymore, they will only print through graphical | |
2294 | printer drivers. A workaround on MS-Windows is to use Windows' basic | |
2295 | built in editor to print (this is possibly the only useful purpose it | |
2296 | has): | |
a933dad1 | 2297 | |
251c2719 GM |
2298 | (setq printer-name "") ; notepad takes the default |
2299 | (setq lpr-command "notepad") ; notepad | |
2300 | (setq lpr-switches nil) ; not needed | |
2301 | (setq lpr-printer-switch "/P") ; run notepad as batch printer | |
a933dad1 | 2302 | |
9dc15871 | 2303 | ** Antivirus software interacts badly with the MS-Windows version of Emacs. |
a933dad1 | 2304 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
2305 | The usual manifestation of these problems is that subprocesses don't |
2306 | work or even wedge the entire system. In particular, "M-x shell RET" | |
2307 | was reported to fail to work. But other commands also sometimes don't | |
2308 | work when an antivirus package is installed. | |
a933dad1 | 2309 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
2310 | The solution is to switch the antivirus software to a less aggressive |
2311 | mode (e.g., disable the ``auto-protect'' feature), or even uninstall | |
2312 | or disable it entirely. | |
a933dad1 | 2313 | |
9dc15871 | 2314 | ** Pressing the mouse button on MS-Windows does not give a mouse-2 event. |
a933dad1 | 2315 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
2316 | This is usually a problem with the mouse driver. Because most Windows |
2317 | programs do not do anything useful with the middle mouse button, many | |
2318 | mouse drivers allow you to define the wheel press to do something | |
2319 | different. Some drivers do not even have the option to generate a | |
2320 | middle button press. In such cases, setting the wheel press to | |
2321 | "scroll" sometimes works if you press the button twice. Trying a | |
2322 | generic mouse driver might help. | |
a933dad1 | 2323 | |
9dc15871 | 2324 | ** Scrolling the mouse wheel on MS-Windows always scrolls the top window. |
a933dad1 | 2325 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
2326 | This is another common problem with mouse drivers. Instead of |
2327 | generating scroll events, some mouse drivers try to fake scroll bar | |
2328 | movement. But they are not intelligent enough to handle multiple | |
2329 | scroll bars within a frame. Trying a generic mouse driver might help. | |
a933dad1 | 2330 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
2331 | ** Mail sent through Microsoft Exchange in some encodings appears to be |
2332 | mangled and is not seen correctly in Rmail or Gnus. We don't know | |
2333 | exactly what happens, but it isn't an Emacs problem in cases we've | |
2334 | seen. | |
a933dad1 | 2335 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
2336 | ** On MS-Windows, you cannot use the right-hand ALT key and the left-hand |
2337 | CTRL key together to type a Control-Meta character. | |
a933dad1 | 2338 | |
9dc15871 | 2339 | This is a consequence of a misfeature beyond Emacs's control. |
a933dad1 | 2340 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
2341 | Under Windows, the AltGr key on international keyboards generates key |
2342 | events with the modifiers Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl. Since Emacs cannot | |
2343 | distinguish AltGr from an explicit Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl | |
2344 | combination, whenever it sees Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl it assumes that | |
2345 | AltGr has been pressed. The variable `w32-recognize-altgr' can be set | |
2346 | to nil to tell Emacs that AltGr is really Ctrl and Alt. | |
a933dad1 | 2347 | |
9dc15871 | 2348 | ** Under some X-servers running on MS-Windows, Emacs' display is incorrect. |
a933dad1 | 2349 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
2350 | The symptoms are that Emacs does not completely erase blank areas of the |
2351 | screen during scrolling or some other screen operations (e.g., selective | |
2352 | display or when killing a region). M-x recenter will cause the screen | |
2353 | to be completely redisplayed and the "extra" characters will disappear. | |
a933dad1 | 2354 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
2355 | This is known to occur under Exceed 6, and possibly earlier versions |
2356 | as well; it is reportedly solved in version 6.2.0.16 and later. The | |
2357 | problem lies in the X-server settings. | |
a933dad1 | 2358 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
2359 | There are reports that you can solve the problem with Exceed by |
2360 | running `Xconfig' from within NT, choosing "X selection", then | |
2361 | un-checking the boxes "auto-copy X selection" and "auto-paste to X | |
2362 | selection". | |
a933dad1 | 2363 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
2364 | Of this does not work, please inform bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org. Then |
2365 | please call support for your X-server and see if you can get a fix. | |
c64233b2 | 2366 | If you do, please send it to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org so we can list it here. |
a933dad1 | 2367 | |
9dc15871 | 2368 | * Build-time problems |
a933dad1 | 2369 | |
9dc15871 | 2370 | ** Configuration |
a933dad1 | 2371 | |
9dc15871 | 2372 | *** The `configure' script doesn't find the jpeg library. |
a933dad1 | 2373 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
2374 | There are reports that this happens on some systems because the linker |
2375 | by default only looks for shared libraries, but jpeg distribution by | |
2376 | default only installs a nonshared version of the library, `libjpeg.a'. | |
a933dad1 | 2377 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
2378 | If this is the problem, you can configure the jpeg library with the |
2379 | `--enable-shared' option and then rebuild libjpeg. This produces a | |
2380 | shared version of libjpeg, which you need to install. Finally, rerun | |
2381 | the Emacs configure script, which should now find the jpeg library. | |
2382 | Alternatively, modify the generated src/Makefile to link the .a file | |
2383 | explicitly, and edit src/config.h to define HAVE_JPEG. | |
a933dad1 | 2384 | |
f4b84ef4 GM |
2385 | *** `configure' warns ``accepted by the compiler, rejected by the preprocessor''. |
2386 | ||
2387 | This indicates a mismatch between the C compiler and preprocessor that | |
2388 | configure is using. For example, on Solaris 10 trying to use | |
2389 | CC=/opt/SUNWspro/bin/cc (the Sun Studio compiler) together with | |
2390 | CPP=/usr/ccs/lib/cpp can result in errors of this form (you may also | |
2391 | see the error ``"/usr/include/sys/isa_defs.h", line 500: undefined control''). | |
2392 | ||
2393 | The solution is to tell configure to use the correct C preprocessor | |
2394 | for your C compiler (CPP="/opt/SUNWspro/bin/cc -E" in the above | |
2395 | example). | |
2396 | ||
9dc15871 | 2397 | ** Compilation |
a933dad1 | 2398 | |
9dc15871 | 2399 | *** Building Emacs over NFS fails with ``Text file busy''. |
a933dad1 | 2400 | |
9dc15871 | 2401 | This was reported to happen when building Emacs on a GNU/Linux system |
880ea925 | 2402 | (Red Hat Linux 6.2) using a build directory automounted from Solaris |
9dc15871 EZ |
2403 | (SunOS 5.6) file server, but it might not be limited to that |
2404 | configuration alone. Presumably, the NFS server doesn't commit the | |
2405 | files' data to disk quickly enough, and the Emacs executable file is | |
2406 | left ``busy'' for several seconds after Emacs has finished dumping | |
2407 | itself. This causes the subsequent commands which invoke the dumped | |
2408 | Emacs executable to fail with the above message. | |
a933dad1 | 2409 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
2410 | In some of these cases, a time skew between the NFS server and the |
2411 | machine where Emacs is built is detected and reported by GNU Make | |
2412 | (it says that some of the files have modification time in the future). | |
2413 | This might be a symptom of NFS-related problems. | |
a933dad1 | 2414 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
2415 | If the NFS server runs on Solaris, apply the Solaris patch 105379-05 |
2416 | (Sunos 5.6: /kernel/misc/nfssrv patch). If that doesn't work, or if | |
2417 | you have a different version of the OS or the NFS server, you can | |
2418 | force the NFS server to use 1KB blocks, which was reported to fix the | |
2419 | problem albeit at a price of slowing down file I/O. You can force 1KB | |
2420 | blocks by specifying the "-o rsize=1024,wsize=1024" options to the | |
2421 | `mount' command, or by adding ",rsize=1024,wsize=1024" to the mount | |
2422 | options in the appropriate system configuration file, such as | |
2423 | `/etc/auto.home'. | |
a933dad1 | 2424 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
2425 | Alternatively, when Make fails due to this problem, you could wait for |
2426 | a few seconds and then invoke Make again. In one particular case, | |
2427 | waiting for 10 or more seconds between the two Make invocations seemed | |
2428 | to work around the problem. | |
a933dad1 | 2429 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
2430 | Similar problems can happen if your machine NFS-mounts a directory |
2431 | onto itself. Suppose the Emacs sources live in `/usr/local/src' and | |
2432 | you are working on the host called `marvin'. Then an entry in the | |
2433 | `/etc/fstab' file like the following is asking for trouble: | |
a933dad1 | 2434 | |
9dc15871 | 2435 | marvin:/usr/local/src /usr/local/src ...options.omitted... |
a933dad1 | 2436 | |
9dc15871 | 2437 | The solution is to remove this line from `etc/fstab'. |
a933dad1 | 2438 | |
745377e8 GM |
2439 | *** Building a 32-bit executable on a 64-bit GNU/Linux architecture. |
2440 | ||
2441 | First ensure that the necessary 32-bit system libraries and include | |
2442 | files are installed. Then use: | |
2443 | ||
2444 | env CC="gcc -m32" ./configure --build=i386-linux-gnu \ | |
2445 | --x-libraries=/usr/X11R6/lib | |
2446 | ||
2447 | (using the location of the 32-bit X libraries on your system). | |
2448 | ||
024681aa KB |
2449 | *** Building Emacs for Cygwin can fail with GCC 3 |
2450 | ||
2451 | As of Emacs 22.1, there have been stability problems with Cygwin | |
2452 | builds of Emacs using GCC 3. Cygwin users are advised to use GCC 4. | |
9c9f0081 | 2453 | |
4f35b2e8 KB |
2454 | *** Building Emacs 23.3 and later will fail under Cygwin 1.5.19 |
2455 | ||
2456 | This is a consequence of a change to src/dired.c on 2010-07-27. The | |
2457 | issue is that Cygwin 1.5.19 did not have d_ino in 'struct dirent'. | |
2458 | See | |
2459 | ||
2460 | http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2010-07/msg01266.html | |
2461 | ||
5660c0f5 EZ |
2462 | *** Building the native MS-Windows port fails due to unresolved externals |
2463 | ||
2464 | The linker error messages look like this: | |
2465 | ||
2466 | oo-spd/i386/ctags.o:ctags.c:(.text+0x156e): undefined reference to `_imp__re_set_syntax' | |
2467 | collect2: ld returned 1 exit status | |
2468 | ||
2469 | This happens because GCC finds an incompatible header regex.h | |
2470 | somewhere on the include path, before the version of regex.h supplied | |
2471 | with Emacs. One such incompatible version of regex.h is part of the | |
2472 | GnuWin32 Regex package. | |
2473 | ||
2474 | The solution is to remove the incompatible regex.h from the include | |
2475 | path, when compiling Emacs. Alternatively, re-run the configure.bat | |
2476 | script with the "-isystem C:/GnuWin32/include" switch (adapt for your | |
2477 | system's place where you keep the GnuWin32 include files) -- this will | |
2478 | cause the compiler to search headers in the directories specified by | |
2479 | the Emacs Makefile _before_ it looks in the GnuWin32 include | |
2480 | directories. | |
2481 | ||
9c9f0081 | 2482 | *** Building the native MS-Windows port with Cygwin GCC can fail. |
a933dad1 | 2483 | |
ad05a5de | 2484 | Emacs may not build using some Cygwin builds of GCC, such as Cygwin |
9dc15871 EZ |
2485 | version 1.1.8, using the default configure settings. It appears to be |
2486 | necessary to specify the -mwin32 flag when compiling, and define | |
2487 | __MSVCRT__, like so: | |
a933dad1 | 2488 | |
9dc15871 | 2489 | configure --with-gcc --cflags -mwin32 --cflags -D__MSVCRT__ |
a933dad1 | 2490 | |
9dc15871 | 2491 | *** Building the MS-Windows port fails with a CreateProcess failure. |
a933dad1 | 2492 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
2493 | Some versions of mingw32 make on some versions of Windows do not seem |
2494 | to detect the shell correctly. Try "make SHELL=cmd.exe", or if that | |
2495 | fails, try running make from Cygwin bash instead. | |
a933dad1 | 2496 | |
9dc15871 | 2497 | *** Building `ctags' for MS-Windows with the MinGW port of GCC fails. |
a933dad1 | 2498 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
2499 | This might happen due to a bug in the MinGW header assert.h, which |
2500 | defines the `assert' macro with a trailing semi-colon. The following | |
2501 | patch to assert.h should solve this: | |
a933dad1 | 2502 | |
0cc69e7d EZ |
2503 | *** include/assert.h.orig Sun Nov 7 02:41:36 1999 |
2504 | --- include/assert.h Mon Jan 29 11:49:10 2001 | |
2505 | *************** | |
2506 | *** 41,47 **** | |
2507 | /* | |
2508 | * If not debugging, assert does nothing. | |
2509 | */ | |
2510 | ! #define assert(x) ((void)0); | |
2511 | ||
2512 | #else /* debugging enabled */ | |
2513 | ||
2514 | --- 41,47 ---- | |
2515 | /* | |
2516 | * If not debugging, assert does nothing. | |
2517 | */ | |
2518 | ! #define assert(x) ((void)0) | |
2519 | ||
2520 | #else /* debugging enabled */ | |
a933dad1 | 2521 | |
a933dad1 | 2522 | |
3e7c244e | 2523 | *** Building the MS-Windows port with Visual Studio 2005 fails. |
a933dad1 | 2524 | |
3e7c244e JR |
2525 | Microsoft no longer ships the single threaded version of the C library |
2526 | with their compiler, and the multithreaded static library is missing | |
0cc69e7d | 2527 | some functions that Microsoft have deemed non-threadsafe. The |
3e7c244e JR |
2528 | dynamically linked C library has all the functions, but there is a |
2529 | conflict between the versions of malloc in the DLL and in Emacs, which | |
2530 | is not resolvable due to the way Windows does dynamic linking. | |
a933dad1 | 2531 | |
8c4fae51 | 2532 | We recommend the use of the MinGW port of GCC for compiling Emacs, as |
3e7c244e JR |
2533 | not only does it not suffer these problems, but it is also Free |
2534 | software like Emacs. | |
a933dad1 | 2535 | |
8c4fae51 JR |
2536 | *** Building the MS-Windows port with Visual Studio fails compiling emacs.rc |
2537 | ||
2538 | If the build fails with the following message then the problem | |
2539 | described here most likely applies: | |
2540 | ||
2541 | ../nt/emacs.rc(1) : error RC2176 : old DIB in icons\emacs.ico; pass it | |
2542 | through SDKPAINT | |
2543 | ||
2544 | The Emacs icon contains a high resolution PNG icon for Vista, which is | |
2545 | not recognized by older versions of the resource compiler. There are | |
2546 | several workarounds for this problem: | |
2547 | 1. Use Free MinGW tools to compile, which do not have this problem. | |
2548 | 2. Install the latest Windows SDK. | |
2549 | 3. Replace emacs.ico with an older or edited icon. | |
2550 | ||
0a46152e JB |
2551 | *** Building the MS-Windows port complains about unknown escape sequences. |
2552 | ||
2553 | Errors and warnings can look like this: | |
2554 | ||
2555 | w32.c:1959:27: error: \x used with no following hex digits | |
2556 | w32.c:1959:27: warning: unknown escape sequence '\i' | |
2557 | ||
2558 | This happens when paths using backslashes are passed to the compiler or | |
2559 | linker (via -I and possibly other compiler flags); when these paths are | |
2560 | included in source code, the backslashes are interpreted as escape sequences. | |
2561 | See http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2010-07/msg00995.html | |
2562 | ||
2563 | The fix is to use forward slashes in all paths passed to the compiler. | |
2564 | ||
9dc15871 | 2565 | ** Linking |
a933dad1 | 2566 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
2567 | *** Building Emacs with a system compiler fails to link because of an |
2568 | undefined symbol such as __eprintf which does not appear in Emacs. | |
a933dad1 | 2569 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
2570 | This can happen if some of the libraries linked into Emacs were built |
2571 | with GCC, but Emacs itself is being linked with a compiler other than | |
2572 | GCC. Object files compiled with GCC might need some helper functions | |
2573 | from libgcc.a, the library which comes with GCC, but the system | |
2574 | compiler does not instruct the linker to search libgcc.a during the | |
2575 | link stage. | |
a933dad1 | 2576 | |
9dc15871 | 2577 | A solution is to link with GCC, like this: |
a933dad1 | 2578 | |
3256a475 | 2579 | make CC=gcc |
a933dad1 | 2580 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
2581 | Since the .o object files already exist, this will not recompile Emacs |
2582 | with GCC, but just restart by trying again to link temacs. | |
a933dad1 | 2583 | |
9dc15871 | 2584 | *** Sun with acc: Link failure when using acc on a Sun. |
a933dad1 | 2585 | |
9dc15871 | 2586 | To use acc, you need additional options just before the libraries, such as |
a933dad1 | 2587 | |
9dc15871 | 2588 | /usr/lang/SC2.0.1/values-Xt.o -L/usr/lang/SC2.0.1/cg87 -L/usr/lang/SC2.0.1 |
a933dad1 | 2589 | |
9dc15871 | 2590 | and you need to add -lansi just before -lc. |
a933dad1 | 2591 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
2592 | The precise file names depend on the compiler version, so we |
2593 | cannot easily arrange to supply them. | |
a933dad1 | 2594 | |
9dc15871 | 2595 | *** Linking says that the functions insque and remque are undefined. |
a933dad1 | 2596 | |
9dc15871 | 2597 | Change oldXMenu/Makefile by adding insque.o to the variable OBJS. |
a933dad1 | 2598 | |
9dc15871 | 2599 | *** `tparam' reported as a multiply-defined symbol when linking with ncurses. |
a933dad1 | 2600 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
2601 | This problem results from an incompatible change in ncurses, in |
2602 | version 1.9.9e approximately. This version is unable to provide a | |
2603 | definition of tparm without also defining tparam. This is also | |
2604 | incompatible with Terminfo; as a result, the Emacs Terminfo support | |
2605 | does not work with this version of ncurses. | |
a933dad1 | 2606 | |
9dc15871 | 2607 | The fix is to install a newer version of ncurses, such as version 4.2. |
a933dad1 | 2608 | |
d7ef7cd4 GM |
2609 | ** Bootstrapping |
2610 | ||
2611 | Bootstrapping (compiling the .el files) is normally only necessary | |
c64233b2 | 2612 | with development builds, since the .elc files are pre-compiled in releases. |
d7ef7cd4 GM |
2613 | |
2614 | *** "No rule to make target" with Ubuntu 8.04 make 3.81-3build1 | |
2615 | ||
2616 | Compiling the lisp files fails at random places, complaining: | |
2617 | "No rule to make target `/path/to/some/lisp.elc'". | |
2618 | The causes of this problem are not understood. Using GNU make 3.81 compiled | |
2619 | from source, rather than the Ubuntu version, worked. See Bug#327,821. | |
2620 | ||
9dc15871 | 2621 | ** Dumping |
a933dad1 | 2622 | |
9dc15871 | 2623 | *** Linux: Segfault during `make bootstrap' under certain recent versions of the Linux kernel. |
a933dad1 | 2624 | |
880ea925 | 2625 | With certain recent Linux kernels (like the one of Red Hat Fedora Core |
cf14a51c | 2626 | 1 and newer), the new "Exec-shield" functionality is enabled by default, which |
ed214edf JD |
2627 | creates a different memory layout that breaks the emacs dumper. Emacs tries |
2628 | to handle this at build time, but if the workaround used fails, these | |
2629 | instructions can be useful. | |
cf14a51c JD |
2630 | The work-around explained here is not enough on Fedora Core 4 (and possible |
2631 | newer). Read the next item. | |
a933dad1 | 2632 | |
1f02a4ba JD |
2633 | Configure can overcome the problem of exec-shield if the architecture is |
2634 | x86 and the program setarch is present. On other architectures no | |
2635 | workaround is known. | |
2636 | ||
9dc15871 | 2637 | You can check the Exec-shield state like this: |
a933dad1 | 2638 | |
9dc15871 | 2639 | cat /proc/sys/kernel/exec-shield |
a933dad1 | 2640 | |
1f02a4ba | 2641 | It returns non-zero when Exec-shield is enabled, 0 otherwise. Please |
9dc15871 | 2642 | read your system documentation for more details on Exec-shield and |
1f02a4ba JD |
2643 | associated commands. Exec-shield can be turned off with this command: |
2644 | ||
2645 | echo "0" > /proc/sys/kernel/exec-shield | |
a933dad1 | 2646 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
2647 | When Exec-shield is enabled, building Emacs will segfault during the |
2648 | execution of this command: | |
a933dad1 | 2649 | |
1f02a4ba | 2650 | ./temacs --batch --load loadup [dump|bootstrap] |
a933dad1 | 2651 | |
9dc15871 | 2652 | To work around this problem, it is necessary to temporarily disable |
1f02a4ba JD |
2653 | Exec-shield while building Emacs, or, on x86, by using the `setarch' |
2654 | command when running temacs like this: | |
2655 | ||
2656 | setarch i386 ./temacs --batch --load loadup [dump|bootstrap] | |
a933dad1 | 2657 | |
ade79051 | 2658 | |
ff0ab406 RS |
2659 | *** Fedora Core 4 GNU/Linux: Segfault during dumping. |
2660 | ||
2661 | In addition to exec-shield explained above "Linux: Segfault during | |
2662 | `make bootstrap' under certain recent versions of the Linux kernel" | |
2663 | item, Linux kernel shipped with Fedora Core 4 randomizes the virtual | |
cf14a51c JD |
2664 | address space of a process. As the result dumping may fail even if |
2665 | you turn off exec-shield. In this case, use the -R option to the setarch | |
ff0ab406 RS |
2666 | command: |
2667 | ||
25fd144d | 2668 | setarch i386 -R ./temacs --batch --load loadup [dump|bootstrap] |
ff0ab406 RS |
2669 | |
2670 | or | |
2671 | ||
ade79051 | 2672 | setarch i386 -R make bootstrap |
a933dad1 | 2673 | |
9dc15871 | 2674 | *** Fatal signal in the command temacs -l loadup inc dump. |
a933dad1 DL |
2675 | |
2676 | This command is the final stage of building Emacs. It is run by the | |
7c2fb837 | 2677 | Makefile in the src subdirectory. |
a933dad1 DL |
2678 | |
2679 | It has been known to get fatal errors due to insufficient swapping | |
2680 | space available on the machine. | |
2681 | ||
9dc15871 | 2682 | On 68000s, it has also happened because of bugs in the |
a933dad1 DL |
2683 | subroutine `alloca'. Verify that `alloca' works right, even |
2684 | for large blocks (many pages). | |
2685 | ||
9dc15871 EZ |
2686 | *** test-distrib says that the distribution has been clobbered. |
2687 | *** or, temacs prints "Command key out of range 0-127". | |
2688 | *** or, temacs runs and dumps emacs, but emacs totally fails to work. | |
2689 | *** or, temacs gets errors dumping emacs. | |
a933dad1 DL |
2690 | |
2691 | This can be because the .elc files have been garbled. Do not be | |
2692 | fooled by the fact that most of a .elc file is text: these are | |
2693 | binary files and can contain all 256 byte values. | |
2694 | ||
2695 | In particular `shar' cannot be used for transmitting GNU Emacs. | |
2696 | It typically truncates "lines". What appear to be "lines" in | |
2697 | a binary file can of course be of any length. Even once `shar' | |
2698 | itself is made to work correctly, `sh' discards null characters | |
2699 | when unpacking the shell archive. | |
2700 | ||
2701 | I have also seen character \177 changed into \377. I do not know | |
2702 | what transfer means caused this problem. Various network | |
2703 | file transfer programs are suspected of clobbering the high bit. | |
2704 | ||
2705 | If you have a copy of Emacs that has been damaged in its | |
2706 | nonprinting characters, you can fix them: | |
2707 | ||
2708 | 1) Record the names of all the .elc files. | |
2709 | 2) Delete all the .elc files. | |
2710 | 3) Recompile alloc.c with a value of PURESIZE twice as large. | |
2711 | (See puresize.h.) You might as well save the old alloc.o. | |
2712 | 4) Remake emacs. It should work now. | |
2713 | 5) Running emacs, do Meta-x byte-compile-file repeatedly | |
2714 | to recreate all the .elc files that used to exist. | |
2715 | You may need to increase the value of the variable | |
2716 | max-lisp-eval-depth to succeed in running the compiler interpreted | |
2717 | on certain .el files. 400 was sufficient as of last report. | |
2718 | 6) Reinstall the old alloc.o (undoing changes to alloc.c if any) | |
2719 | and remake temacs. | |
2720 | 7) Remake emacs. It should work now, with valid .elc files. | |
2721 | ||
9dc15871 | 2722 | *** temacs prints "Pure Lisp storage exhausted". |
a933dad1 | 2723 | |
c64233b2 GM |
2724 | This means that the Lisp code loaded from the .elc and .el files |
2725 | during temacs -l loadup inc dump took up more space than was allocated. | |
a933dad1 DL |
2726 | |
2727 | This could be caused by | |
2728 | 1) adding code to the preloaded Lisp files | |
2729 | 2) adding more preloaded files in loadup.el | |
2730 | 3) having a site-init.el or site-load.el which loads files. | |
2731 | Note that ANY site-init.el or site-load.el is nonstandard; | |
c64233b2 GM |
2732 | if you have received Emacs from some other site and it contains a |
2733 | site-init.el or site-load.el file, consider deleting that file. | |
a933dad1 DL |
2734 | 4) getting the wrong .el or .elc files |
2735 | (not from the directory you expected). | |
2736 | 5) deleting some .elc files that are supposed to exist. | |
2737 | This would cause the source files (.el files) to be | |
2738 | loaded instead. They take up more room, so you lose. | |
c64233b2 | 2739 | 6) a bug in the Emacs distribution which underestimates the space required. |
a933dad1 DL |
2740 | |
2741 | If the need for more space is legitimate, change the definition | |
2742 | of PURESIZE in puresize.h. | |
2743 | ||
2744 | But in some of the cases listed above, this problem is a consequence | |
c64233b2 | 2745 | of something else that is wrong. Be sure to check and fix the real problem. |
a933dad1 | 2746 | |
0bce976c GM |
2747 | *** OpenBSD 4.0 macppc: Segfault during dumping. |
2748 | ||
2749 | The build aborts with signal 11 when the command `./temacs --batch | |
14395431 | 2750 | --load loadup bootstrap' tries to load files.el. A workaround seems |
464df798 | 2751 | to be to reduce the level of compiler optimization used during the |
14395431 GM |
2752 | build (from -O2 to -O1). It is possible this is an OpenBSD |
2753 | GCC problem specific to the macppc architecture, possibly only | |
2754 | occurring with older versions of GCC (e.g. 3.3.5). | |
0bce976c | 2755 | |
ce46543c GM |
2756 | *** openSUSE 10.3: Segfault in bcopy during dumping. |
2757 | ||
2758 | This is due to a bug in the bcopy implementation in openSUSE 10.3. | |
2759 | It is/will be fixed in an openSUSE update. | |
2760 | ||
9dc15871 | 2761 | ** Installation |
a933dad1 | 2762 | |
9dc15871 | 2763 | *** Installing Emacs gets an error running `install-info'. |
a933dad1 | 2764 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
2765 | You need to install a recent version of Texinfo; that package |
2766 | supplies the `install-info' command. | |
a933dad1 | 2767 | |
6afdff63 GM |
2768 | *** Installing to a directory with spaces in the name fails. |
2769 | ||
2770 | For example, if you call configure with a directory-related option | |
2771 | with spaces in the value, eg --enable-locallisppath='/path/with\ spaces'. | |
2772 | Using directory paths with spaces is not supported at this time: you | |
2773 | must re-configure without using spaces. | |
2774 | ||
6c06422c CY |
2775 | *** Installing to a directory with non-ASCII characters in the name fails. |
2776 | ||
2777 | Installation may fail, or the Emacs executable may not start | |
2778 | correctly, if a directory name containing non-ASCII characters is used | |
2779 | as a `configure' argument (e.g. `--prefix'). The problem can also | |
2780 | occur if a non-ASCII directory is specified in the EMACSLOADPATH | |
2781 | envvar. | |
2782 | ||
2f6e7d3f GM |
2783 | *** On Solaris, use GNU Make when installing an out-of-tree build |
2784 | ||
2785 | The Emacs configuration process allows you to configure the | |
2786 | build environment so that you can build emacs in a directory | |
2787 | outside of the distribution tree. When installing Emacs from an | |
2788 | out-of-tree build directory on Solaris, you may need to use GNU | |
2789 | make. The make programs bundled with Solaris support the VPATH | |
2790 | macro but use it differently from the way the VPATH macro is | |
2791 | used by GNU make. The differences will cause the "make install" | |
2792 | step to fail, leaving you with an incomplete emacs | |
2793 | installation. GNU make is available in /usr/sfw/bin on Solaris | |
2794 | 10 and can be installed as /opt/sfw/bin/gmake from the Solaris 9 | |
2795 | Software Companion CDROM. | |
2796 | ||
2797 | The problems due to the VPATH processing differences affect only | |
2798 | out of tree builds so, if you are on a Solaris installation | |
2799 | without GNU make, you can install Emacs completely by installing | |
2800 | from a build environment using the original emacs distribution tree. | |
2801 | ||
9dc15871 | 2802 | ** First execution |
a933dad1 | 2803 | |
9dc15871 | 2804 | *** Emacs binary is not in executable format, and cannot be run. |
a933dad1 | 2805 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
2806 | This was reported to happen when Emacs is built in a directory mounted |
2807 | via NFS, for some combinations of NFS client and NFS server. | |
2808 | Usually, the file `emacs' produced in these cases is full of | |
2809 | binary null characters, and the `file' utility says: | |
a933dad1 | 2810 | |
9dc15871 | 2811 | emacs: ASCII text, with no line terminators |
a933dad1 | 2812 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
2813 | We don't know what exactly causes this failure. A work-around is to |
2814 | build Emacs in a directory on a local disk. | |
a933dad1 | 2815 | |
9dc15871 | 2816 | *** The dumped Emacs crashes when run, trying to write pure data. |
a933dad1 | 2817 | |
ba93a187 | 2818 | On a system where getpagesize is not a system call, it is defined |
29cf3e20 | 2819 | as a macro. If the definition (in both unex*.c and malloc.c) is wrong, |
a933dad1 DL |
2820 | it can cause problems like this. You might be able to find the correct |
2821 | value in the man page for a.out (5). | |
2822 | ||
9dc15871 | 2823 | * Runtime problems on legacy systems |
a933dad1 | 2824 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
2825 | This section covers bugs reported on very old hardware or software. |
2826 | If you are using hardware and an operating system shipped after 2000, | |
2827 | it is unlikely you will see any of these. | |
a933dad1 | 2828 | |
c64233b2 | 2829 | *** OPENSTEP 4.2: Compiling syntax.c with gcc 2.7.2.1 fails. |
a933dad1 | 2830 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
2831 | The compiler was reported to crash while compiling syntax.c with the |
2832 | following message: | |
a933dad1 | 2833 | |
9dc15871 | 2834 | cc: Internal compiler error: program cc1obj got fatal signal 11 |
a933dad1 | 2835 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
2836 | To work around this, replace the macros UPDATE_SYNTAX_TABLE_FORWARD, |
2837 | INC_BOTH, and INC_FROM with functions. To this end, first define 3 | |
2838 | functions, one each for every macro. Here's an example: | |
a933dad1 | 2839 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
2840 | static int update_syntax_table_forward(int from) |
2841 | { | |
2842 | return(UPDATE_SYNTAX_TABLE_FORWARD(from)); | |
2843 | }/*update_syntax_table_forward*/ | |
a933dad1 | 2844 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
2845 | Then replace all references to UPDATE_SYNTAX_TABLE_FORWARD in syntax.c |
2846 | with a call to the function update_syntax_table_forward. | |
a933dad1 | 2847 | |
9dc15871 | 2848 | *** Solaris 2.x |
a933dad1 | 2849 | |
9dc15871 | 2850 | **** Strange results from format %d in a few cases, on a Sun. |
a933dad1 | 2851 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
2852 | Sun compiler version SC3.0 has been found to miscompile part of |
2853 | editfns.c. The workaround is to compile with some other compiler such | |
2854 | as GCC. | |
a933dad1 | 2855 | |
9dc15871 | 2856 | **** On Solaris, Emacs dumps core if lisp-complete-symbol is called. |
a933dad1 | 2857 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
2858 | If you compile Emacs with the -fast or -xO4 option with version 3.0.2 |
2859 | of the Sun C compiler, Emacs dumps core when lisp-complete-symbol is | |
2860 | called. The problem does not happen if you compile with GCC. | |
a933dad1 | 2861 | |
9dc15871 | 2862 | **** On Solaris, Emacs crashes if you use (display-time). |
a933dad1 | 2863 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
2864 | This can happen if you configure Emacs without specifying the precise |
2865 | version of Solaris that you are using. | |
a933dad1 | 2866 | |
9dc15871 | 2867 | **** Solaris 2.x: GCC complains "64 bit integer types not supported". |
a933dad1 | 2868 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
2869 | This suggests that GCC is not installed correctly. Most likely you |
2870 | are using GCC 2.7.2.3 (or earlier) on Solaris 2.6 (or later); this | |
2871 | does not work without patching. To run GCC 2.7.2.3 on Solaris 2.6 or | |
2872 | later, you must patch fixinc.svr4 and reinstall GCC from scratch as | |
2873 | described in the Solaris FAQ | |
2874 | <http://www.wins.uva.nl/pub/solaris/solaris2.html>. A better fix is | |
2875 | to upgrade to GCC 2.8.1 or later. | |
a933dad1 | 2876 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
2877 | **** Solaris 2.7: Building Emacs with WorkShop Compilers 5.0 98/12/15 |
2878 | C 5.0 failed, apparently with non-default CFLAGS, most probably due to | |
2879 | compiler bugs. Using Sun Solaris 2.7 Sun WorkShop 6 update 1 C | |
2880 | release was reported to work without problems. It worked OK on | |
2881 | another system with Solaris 8 using apparently the same 5.0 compiler | |
2882 | and the default CFLAGS. | |
a933dad1 | 2883 | |
9dc15871 | 2884 | **** Solaris 2.x: Emacs dumps core when built with Motif. |
a933dad1 | 2885 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
2886 | The Solaris Motif libraries are buggy, at least up through Solaris 2.5.1. |
2887 | Install the current Motif runtime library patch appropriate for your host. | |
2888 | (Make sure the patch is current; some older patch versions still have the bug.) | |
2889 | You should install the other patches recommended by Sun for your host, too. | |
2890 | You can obtain Sun patches from ftp://sunsolve.sun.com/pub/patches/; | |
2891 | look for files with names ending in `.PatchReport' to see which patches | |
2892 | are currently recommended for your host. | |
a933dad1 | 2893 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
2894 | On Solaris 2.6, Emacs is said to work with Motif when Solaris patch |
2895 | 105284-12 is installed, but fail when 105284-15 is installed. | |
2896 | 105284-18 might fix it again. | |
a933dad1 | 2897 | |
0a4dd4e4 | 2898 | **** Solaris 2.6 and 7: the Compose key does not work. |
a933dad1 | 2899 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
2900 | This is a bug in Motif in Solaris. Supposedly it has been fixed for |
2901 | the next major release of Solaris. However, if someone with Sun | |
2902 | support complains to Sun about the bug, they may release a patch. | |
2903 | If you do this, mention Sun bug #4188711. | |
a933dad1 | 2904 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
2905 | One workaround is to use a locale that allows non-ASCII characters. |
2906 | For example, before invoking emacs, set the LC_ALL environment | |
2907 | variable to "en_US" (American English). The directory /usr/lib/locale | |
2908 | lists the supported locales; any locale other than "C" or "POSIX" | |
2909 | should do. | |
a933dad1 | 2910 | |
9dc15871 | 2911 | pen@lysator.liu.se says (Feb 1998) that the Compose key does work |
c64233b2 | 2912 | if you link with the MIT X11 libraries instead of the Solaris X11 libraries. |
0a4dd4e4 | 2913 | |
0a4dd4e4 EZ |
2914 | *** HP/UX: Emacs is slow using X11R5. |
2915 | ||
2916 | This happens if you use the MIT versions of the X libraries--it | |
2917 | doesn't run as fast as HP's version. People sometimes use the version | |
2918 | because they see the HP version doesn't have the libraries libXaw.a, | |
2919 | libXmu.a, libXext.a and others. HP/UX normally doesn't come with | |
2920 | those libraries installed. To get good performance, you need to | |
2921 | install them and rebuild Emacs. | |
2922 | ||
c64233b2 | 2923 | *** UnixWare 2.1: Error 12 (virtual memory exceeded) when dumping Emacs. |
0a4dd4e4 EZ |
2924 | |
2925 | Paul Abrahams (abrahams@acm.org) reports that with the installed | |
2926 | virtual memory settings for UnixWare 2.1.2, an Error 12 occurs during | |
2927 | the "make" that builds Emacs, when running temacs to dump emacs. That | |
2928 | error indicates that the per-process virtual memory limit has been | |
2929 | exceeded. The default limit is probably 32MB. Raising the virtual | |
2930 | memory limit to 40MB should make it possible to finish building Emacs. | |
2931 | ||
2932 | You can do this with the command `ulimit' (sh) or `limit' (csh). | |
2933 | But you have to be root to do it. | |
2934 | ||
2935 | According to Martin Sohnius, you can also retune this in the kernel: | |
2936 | ||
2937 | # /etc/conf/bin/idtune SDATLIM 33554432 ## soft data size limit | |
2938 | # /etc/conf/bin/idtune HDATLIM 33554432 ## hard " | |
2939 | # /etc/conf/bin/idtune SVMMSIZE unlimited ## soft process size limit | |
2940 | # /etc/conf/bin/idtune HVMMSIZE unlimited ## hard " | |
2941 | # /etc/conf/bin/idbuild -B | |
2942 | ||
2943 | (He recommends you not change the stack limit, though.) | |
2944 | These changes take effect when you reboot. | |
2945 | ||
c64233b2 | 2946 | ** MS-Windows 95, 98, ME, and NT |
0a4dd4e4 EZ |
2947 | |
2948 | *** MS-Windows NT/95: Problems running Perl under Emacs | |
2949 | ||
2950 | `perl -de 0' just hangs when executed in an Emacs subshell. | |
2951 | The fault lies with Perl (indirectly with Windows NT/95). | |
2952 | ||
2953 | The problem is that the Perl debugger explicitly opens a connection to | |
2954 | "CON", which is the DOS/NT equivalent of "/dev/tty", for interacting | |
2955 | with the user. | |
2956 | ||
2957 | On Unix, this is okay, because Emacs (or the shell?) creates a | |
2958 | pseudo-tty so that /dev/tty is really the pipe Emacs is using to | |
2959 | communicate with the subprocess. | |
2960 | ||
2961 | On NT, this fails because CON always refers to the handle for the | |
2962 | relevant console (approximately equivalent to a tty), and cannot be | |
2963 | redirected to refer to the pipe Emacs assigned to the subprocess as | |
2964 | stdin. | |
2965 | ||
2966 | A workaround is to modify perldb.pl to use STDIN/STDOUT instead of CON. | |
2967 | ||
2968 | For Perl 4: | |
2969 | ||
2970 | *** PERL/LIB/PERLDB.PL.orig Wed May 26 08:24:18 1993 | |
2971 | --- PERL/LIB/PERLDB.PL Mon Jul 01 15:28:16 1996 | |
2972 | *************** | |
2973 | *** 68,74 **** | |
3256a475 | 2974 | $rcfile=".perldb"; |
0a4dd4e4 EZ |
2975 | } |
2976 | else { | |
2977 | ! $console = "con"; | |
3256a475 | 2978 | $rcfile="perldb.ini"; |
0a4dd4e4 EZ |
2979 | } |
2980 | ||
2981 | --- 68,74 ---- | |
3256a475 | 2982 | $rcfile=".perldb"; |
0a4dd4e4 EZ |
2983 | } |
2984 | else { | |
2985 | ! $console = ""; | |
3256a475 | 2986 | $rcfile="perldb.ini"; |
0a4dd4e4 EZ |
2987 | } |
2988 | ||
2989 | ||
2990 | For Perl 5: | |
2991 | *** perl/5.001/lib/perl5db.pl.orig Sun Jun 04 21:13:40 1995 | |
2992 | --- perl/5.001/lib/perl5db.pl Mon Jul 01 17:00:08 1996 | |
2993 | *************** | |
2994 | *** 22,28 **** | |
3256a475 | 2995 | $rcfile=".perldb"; |
0a4dd4e4 EZ |
2996 | } |
2997 | elsif (-e "con") { | |
2998 | ! $console = "con"; | |
3256a475 | 2999 | $rcfile="perldb.ini"; |
0a4dd4e4 EZ |
3000 | } |
3001 | else { | |
3002 | --- 22,28 ---- | |
3256a475 | 3003 | $rcfile=".perldb"; |
0a4dd4e4 EZ |
3004 | } |
3005 | elsif (-e "con") { | |
3006 | ! $console = ""; | |
3256a475 | 3007 | $rcfile="perldb.ini"; |
0a4dd4e4 EZ |
3008 | } |
3009 | else { | |
3010 | ||
3011 | *** MS-Windows 95: Alt-f6 does not get through to Emacs. | |
3012 | ||
3013 | This character seems to be trapped by the kernel in Windows 95. | |
3014 | You can enter M-f6 by typing ESC f6. | |
3015 | ||
3016 | *** MS-Windows 95/98/ME: subprocesses do not terminate properly. | |
3017 | ||
3018 | This is a limitation of the Operating System, and can cause problems | |
3019 | when shutting down Windows. Ensure that all subprocesses are exited | |
3020 | cleanly before exiting Emacs. For more details, see the FAQ at | |
3021 | http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/windows/. | |
3022 | ||
3023 | *** MS-Windows 95/98/ME: crashes when Emacs invokes non-existent programs. | |
3024 | ||
3025 | When a program you are trying to run is not found on the PATH, | |
3026 | Windows might respond by crashing or locking up your system. In | |
3027 | particular, this has been reported when trying to compile a Java | |
c64233b2 | 3028 | program in JDEE when javac.exe is installed, but not on the system PATH. |
0a4dd4e4 | 3029 | |
9dc15871 | 3030 | ** MS-DOS |
a933dad1 | 3031 | |
bde76d3e | 3032 | *** When compiling with DJGPP on MS-Windows NT or later, "config msdos" fails. |
a933dad1 | 3033 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
3034 | If the error message is "VDM has been already loaded", this is because |
3035 | Windows has a program called `redir.exe' that is incompatible with a | |
3036 | program by the same name supplied with DJGPP, which is used by | |
3037 | config.bat. To resolve this, move the DJGPP's `bin' subdirectory to | |
3038 | the front of your PATH environment variable. | |
a933dad1 | 3039 | |
dbf9702e EZ |
3040 | *** When Emacs compiled with DJGPP runs on Windows 2000 and later, it cannot |
3041 | find your HOME directory. | |
3042 | ||
3043 | This was reported to happen when you click on "Save for future | |
3044 | sessions" button in a Customize buffer. You might see an error | |
3045 | message like this one: | |
3046 | ||
3047 | basic-save-buffer-2: c:/FOO/BAR/~dosuser/: no such directory | |
3048 | ||
3049 | (The telltale sign is the "~USER" part at the end of the directory | |
3050 | Emacs complains about, where USER is your username or the literal | |
3051 | string "dosuser", which is the default username set up by the DJGPP | |
3052 | startup file DJGPP.ENV.) | |
3053 | ||
3054 | This happens when the functions `user-login-name' and | |
3055 | `user-real-login-name' return different strings for your username as | |
3056 | Emacs sees it. To correct this, make sure both USER and USERNAME | |
3057 | environment variables are set to the same value. Windows 2000 and | |
3058 | later sets USERNAME, so if you want to keep that, make sure USER is | |
3059 | set to the same value. If you don't want to set USER globally, you | |
3060 | can do it in the [emacs] section of your DJGPP.ENV file. | |
3061 | ||
bde76d3e EZ |
3062 | *** When Emacs compiled with DJGPP runs on Vista, it runs out of memory. |
3063 | ||
3064 | If Emacs running on Vista displays "!MEM FULL!" in the mode line, you | |
3065 | are hitting the memory allocation bugs in the Vista DPMI server. See | |
3066 | msdos/INSTALL for how to work around these bugs (search for "Vista"). | |
3067 | ||
9dc15871 EZ |
3068 | *** When compiling with DJGPP on MS-Windows 95, Make fails for some targets |
3069 | like make-docfile. | |
a933dad1 | 3070 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
3071 | This can happen if long file name support (the setting of environment |
3072 | variable LFN) when Emacs distribution was unpacked and during | |
bde76d3e EZ |
3073 | compilation are not the same. See msdos/INSTALL for the explanation |
3074 | of how to avoid this problem. | |
a933dad1 | 3075 | |
9dc15871 | 3076 | *** Emacs compiled with DJGPP complains at startup: |
a933dad1 | 3077 | |
9dc15871 | 3078 | "Wrong type of argument: internal-facep, msdos-menu-active-face" |
a933dad1 | 3079 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
3080 | This can happen if you define an environment variable `TERM'. Emacs |
3081 | on MSDOS uses an internal terminal emulator which is disabled if the | |
3082 | value of `TERM' is anything but the string "internal". Emacs then | |
3083 | works as if its terminal were a dumb glass teletype that doesn't | |
3084 | support faces. To work around this, arrange for `TERM' to be | |
3085 | undefined when Emacs runs. The best way to do that is to add an | |
3086 | [emacs] section to the DJGPP.ENV file which defines an empty value for | |
3087 | `TERM'; this way, only Emacs gets the empty value, while the rest of | |
3088 | your system works as before. | |
a933dad1 | 3089 | |
9dc15871 | 3090 | *** MS-DOS: Emacs crashes at startup. |
a933dad1 | 3091 | |
9dc15871 | 3092 | Some users report that Emacs 19.29 requires dpmi memory management, |
c64233b2 | 3093 | and crashes on startup if the system does not have it. We don't |
9dc15871 EZ |
3094 | know why this happens--perhaps these machines don't have enough real |
3095 | memory, or perhaps something is wrong in Emacs or the compiler. | |
3096 | However, arranging to use dpmi support is a workaround. | |
a933dad1 | 3097 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
3098 | You can find out if you have a dpmi host by running go32 without |
3099 | arguments; it will tell you if it uses dpmi memory. For more | |
3100 | information about dpmi memory, consult the djgpp FAQ. (djgpp | |
3101 | is the GNU C compiler as packaged for MSDOS.) | |
a933dad1 | 3102 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
3103 | Compiling Emacs under MSDOS is extremely sensitive for proper memory |
3104 | configuration. If you experience problems during compilation, consider | |
3105 | removing some or all memory resident programs (notably disk caches) | |
3106 | and make sure that your memory managers are properly configured. See | |
3107 | the djgpp faq for configuration hints. | |
a933dad1 | 3108 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
3109 | *** Emacs compiled with DJGPP for MS-DOS/MS-Windows cannot access files |
3110 | in the directory with the special name `dev' under the root of any | |
3111 | drive, e.g. `c:/dev'. | |
a933dad1 | 3112 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
3113 | This is an unfortunate side-effect of the support for Unix-style |
3114 | device names such as /dev/null in the DJGPP runtime library. A | |
3115 | work-around is to rename the problem directory to another name. | |
a933dad1 | 3116 | |
c64233b2 | 3117 | *** MS-DOS+DJGPP: Problems on MS-DOS if DJGPP v2.0 is used to compile Emacs. |
a933dad1 | 3118 | |
9dc15871 | 3119 | There are two DJGPP library bugs which cause problems: |
a933dad1 | 3120 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
3121 | * Running `shell-command' (or `compile', or `grep') you get |
3122 | `Searching for program: permission denied (EACCES), c:/command.com'; | |
3123 | * After you shell to DOS, Ctrl-Break kills Emacs. | |
a933dad1 | 3124 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
3125 | To work around these bugs, you can use two files in the msdos |
3126 | subdirectory: `is_exec.c' and `sigaction.c'. Compile them and link | |
3127 | them into the Emacs executable `temacs'; then they will replace the | |
3128 | incorrect library functions. | |
a933dad1 | 3129 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
3130 | *** MS-DOS: Emacs compiled for MSDOS cannot find some Lisp files, or other |
3131 | run-time support files, when long filename support is enabled. | |
a933dad1 | 3132 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
3133 | Usually, this problem will manifest itself when Emacs exits |
3134 | immediately after flashing the startup screen, because it cannot find | |
3135 | the Lisp files it needs to load at startup. Redirect Emacs stdout | |
3136 | and stderr to a file to see the error message printed by Emacs. | |
a933dad1 | 3137 | |
9dc15871 | 3138 | Another manifestation of this problem is that Emacs is unable to load |
c64233b2 | 3139 | the support for editing program sources in languages such as C and Lisp. |
a933dad1 | 3140 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
3141 | This can happen if the Emacs distribution was unzipped without LFN |
3142 | support, thus causing long filenames to be truncated to the first 6 | |
3143 | characters and a numeric tail that Windows 95 normally attaches to it. | |
3144 | You should unzip the files again with a utility that supports long | |
3145 | filenames (such as djtar from DJGPP or InfoZip's UnZip program | |
bde76d3e EZ |
3146 | compiled with DJGPP v2). The file msdos/INSTALL explains this issue |
3147 | in more detail. | |
a933dad1 | 3148 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
3149 | Another possible reason for such failures is that Emacs compiled for |
3150 | MSDOS is used on Windows NT, where long file names are not supported | |
3151 | by this version of Emacs, but the distribution was unpacked by an | |
3152 | unzip program that preserved the long file names instead of truncating | |
3153 | them to DOS 8+3 limits. To be useful on NT, the MSDOS port of Emacs | |
3154 | must be unzipped by a DOS utility, so that long file names are | |
3155 | properly truncated. | |
a933dad1 | 3156 | |
9dc15871 | 3157 | ** Archaic window managers and toolkits |
a933dad1 | 3158 | |
9dc15871 | 3159 | *** OpenLook: Under OpenLook, the Emacs window disappears when you type M-q. |
a933dad1 | 3160 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
3161 | Some versions of the Open Look window manager interpret M-q as a quit |
3162 | command for whatever window you are typing at. If you want to use | |
3163 | Emacs with that window manager, you should try to configure the window | |
3164 | manager to use some other command. You can disable the | |
3165 | shortcut keys entirely by adding this line to ~/.OWdefaults: | |
a933dad1 | 3166 | |
9dc15871 | 3167 | OpenWindows.WindowMenuAccelerators: False |
a933dad1 | 3168 | |
c64233b2 | 3169 | *** twm: A position you specified in .Xdefaults is ignored, using twm. |
a933dad1 | 3170 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
3171 | twm normally ignores "program-specified" positions. |
3172 | You can tell it to obey them with this command in your `.twmrc' file: | |
a933dad1 | 3173 | |
9dc15871 | 3174 | UsePPosition "on" #allow clients to request a position |
a933dad1 | 3175 | |
9dc15871 | 3176 | ** Bugs related to old DEC hardware |
a933dad1 | 3177 | |
9dc15871 | 3178 | *** The Compose key on a DEC keyboard does not work as Meta key. |
a933dad1 | 3179 | |
9dc15871 | 3180 | This shell command should fix it: |
a933dad1 | 3181 | |
9dc15871 | 3182 | xmodmap -e 'keycode 0xb1 = Meta_L' |
a933dad1 | 3183 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
3184 | *** Keyboard input gets confused after a beep when using a DECserver |
3185 | as a concentrator. | |
a933dad1 | 3186 | |
9dc15871 EZ |
3187 | This problem seems to be a matter of configuring the DECserver to use |
3188 | 7 bit characters rather than 8 bit characters. | |
53854552 | 3189 | \f |
5b87ad55 | 3190 | This file is part of GNU Emacs. |
fe6b4873 | 3191 | |
ab73e885 | 3192 | GNU Emacs is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify |
5b87ad55 | 3193 | it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by |
ab73e885 GM |
3194 | the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or |
3195 | (at your option) any later version. | |
fe6b4873 | 3196 | |
5b87ad55 GM |
3197 | GNU Emacs is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, |
3198 | but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of | |
3199 | MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the | |
3200 | GNU General Public License for more details. | |
3201 | ||
3202 | You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License | |
ab73e885 | 3203 | along with GNU Emacs. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>. |
5b87ad55 GM |
3204 | |
3205 | \f | |
53854552 EZ |
3206 | Local variables: |
3207 | mode: outline | |
3256a475 | 3208 | paragraph-separate: "[ \f]*$" |
53854552 | 3209 | end: |