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1 Known Problems with GNU Emacs
2
3 Copyright (C) 1987, 1988, 1989, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999,
4 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009
5 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
6 See the end of the file for license conditions.
7
8
9 This file describes various problems that have been encountered
10 in compiling, installing and running GNU Emacs. Try doing Ctl-C Ctl-t
11 and browsing through the outline headers.
12
13 * Mule-UCS doesn't work in Emacs 23.
14
15 It's completely redundant now, as far as we know.
16
17 * Emacs startup failures
18
19 ** Emacs fails to start, complaining about missing fonts.
20
21 A typical error message might be something like
22
23 No fonts match `-*-fixed-medium-r-*--6-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1'
24
25 This happens because some X resource specifies a bad font family for
26 Emacs to use. The possible places where this specification might be
27 are:
28
29 - in your ~/.Xdefaults file
30
31 - client-side X resource file, such as ~/Emacs or
32 /usr/X11R6/lib/app-defaults/Emacs or
33 /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/app-defaults/Emacs
34
35 One of these files might have bad or malformed specification of a
36 fontset that Emacs should use. To fix the problem, you need to find
37 the problematic line(s) and correct them.
38
39 ** Emacs aborts while starting up, only when run without X.
40
41 This problem often results from compiling Emacs with GCC when GCC was
42 installed incorrectly. The usual error in installing GCC is to
43 specify --includedir=/usr/include. Installation of GCC makes
44 corrected copies of the system header files. GCC is supposed to use
45 the corrected copies in preference to the original system headers.
46 Specifying --includedir=/usr/include causes the original system header
47 files to be used. On some systems, the definition of ioctl in the
48 original system header files is invalid for ANSI C and causes Emacs
49 not to work.
50
51 The fix is to reinstall GCC, and this time do not specify --includedir
52 when you configure it. Then recompile Emacs. Specifying --includedir
53 is appropriate only in very special cases and it should *never* be the
54 same directory where system header files are kept.
55
56 ** Emacs does not start, complaining that it cannot open termcap database file.
57
58 If your system uses Terminfo rather than termcap (most modern
59 systems do), this could happen if the proper version of
60 ncurses is not visible to the Emacs configure script (i.e. it
61 cannot be found along the usual path the linker looks for
62 libraries). It can happen because your version of ncurses is
63 obsolete, or is available only in form of binaries.
64
65 The solution is to install an up-to-date version of ncurses in
66 the developer's form (header files, static libraries and
67 symbolic links); in some GNU/Linux distributions (e.g. Debian)
68 it constitutes a separate package.
69
70 ** Emacs 20 and later fails to load Lisp files at startup.
71
72 The typical error message might be like this:
73
74 "Cannot open load file: fontset"
75
76 This could happen if you compress the file lisp/subdirs.el. That file
77 tells Emacs what are the directories where it should look for Lisp
78 files. Emacs cannot work with subdirs.el compressed, since the
79 Auto-compress mode it needs for this will not be loaded until later,
80 when your .emacs file is processed. (The package `fontset.el' is
81 required to set up fonts used to display text on window systems, and
82 it's loaded very early in the startup procedure.)
83
84 Similarly, any other .el file for which there's no corresponding .elc
85 file could fail to load if it is compressed.
86
87 The solution is to uncompress all .el files which don't have a .elc
88 file.
89
90 Another possible reason for such failures is stale *.elc files
91 lurking somewhere on your load-path. The following command will
92 print any duplicate Lisp files that are present in load-path:
93
94 emacs -q -batch -f list-load-path-shadows
95
96 If this command prints any file names, some of these files are stale,
97 and should be deleted or their directories removed from your
98 load-path.
99
100 ** Emacs prints an error at startup after upgrading from an earlier version.
101
102 An example of such an error is:
103
104 x-complement-fontset-spec: "Wrong type argument: stringp, nil"
105
106 This can be another symptom of stale *.elc files in your load-path.
107 The following command will print any duplicate Lisp files that are
108 present in load-path:
109
110 emacs -q -batch -f list-load-path-shadows
111
112 If this command prints any file names, some of these files are stale,
113 and should be deleted or their directories removed from your
114 load-path.
115
116 ** With X11R6.4, public-patch-3, Emacs crashes at startup.
117
118 Reportedly this patch in X fixes the problem.
119
120 --- xc/lib/X11/imInt.c~ Wed Jun 30 13:31:56 1999
121 +++ xc/lib/X11/imInt.c Thu Jul 1 15:10:27 1999
122 @@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
123 -/* $TOG: imInt.c /main/5 1998/05/30 21:11:16 kaleb $ */
124 +/* $TOG: imInt.c /main/5 1998/05/30 21:11:16 kaleb $ */
125 /******************************************************************
126
127 Copyright 1992, 1993, 1994 by FUJITSU LIMITED
128 @@ -166,8 +166,8 @@
129 _XimMakeImName(lcd)
130 XLCd lcd;
131 {
132 - char* begin;
133 - char* end;
134 + char* begin = NULL;
135 + char* end = NULL;
136 char* ret;
137 int i = 0;
138 char* ximmodifier = XIMMODIFIER;
139 @@ -182,7 +182,11 @@
140 }
141 ret = Xmalloc(end - begin + 2);
142 if (ret != NULL) {
143 - (void)strncpy(ret, begin, end - begin + 1);
144 + if (begin != NULL) {
145 + (void)strncpy(ret, begin, end - begin + 1);
146 + } else {
147 + ret[0] = '\0';
148 + }
149 ret[end - begin + 1] = '\0';
150 }
151 return ret;
152
153 ** Emacs crashes on startup after a glibc upgrade.
154
155 This is caused by a binary incompatible change to the malloc
156 implementation in glibc 2.5.90-22. As a result, Emacs binaries built
157 using prior versions of glibc crash when run under 2.5.90-22.
158
159 This problem was first seen in pre-release versions of Fedora 7, and
160 may be fixed in the final Fedora 7 release. To stop the crash from
161 happening, first try upgrading to the newest version of glibc; if this
162 does not work, rebuild Emacs with the same version of glibc that you
163 will run it under. For details, see
164
165 https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=239344
166
167 * Crash bugs
168
169 ** Emacs crashes in x-popup-dialog.
170
171 This can happen if the dialog widget cannot find the font it wants to
172 use. You can work around the problem by specifying another font with
173 an X resource--for example, `Emacs.dialog*.font: 9x15' (or any font that
174 happens to exist on your X server).
175
176 ** Emacs crashes when you use Bibtex mode.
177
178 This happens if your system puts a small limit on stack size. You can
179 prevent the problem by using a suitable shell command (often `ulimit')
180 to raise the stack size limit before you run Emacs.
181
182 Patches to raise the stack size limit automatically in `main'
183 (src/emacs.c) on various systems would be greatly appreciated.
184
185 ** Error message `Symbol's value as variable is void: x', followed by
186 a segmentation fault and core dump.
187
188 This has been tracked to a bug in tar! People report that tar erroneously
189 added a line like this at the beginning of files of Lisp code:
190
191 x FILENAME, N bytes, B tape blocks
192
193 If your tar has this problem, install GNU tar--if you can manage to
194 untar it :-).
195
196 ** Crashes when displaying GIF images in Emacs built with version
197 libungif-4.1.0 are resolved by using version libungif-4.1.0b1.
198 Configure checks for the correct version, but this problem could occur
199 if a binary built against a shared libungif is run on a system with an
200 older version.
201
202 ** Emacs aborts inside the function `tparam1'.
203
204 This can happen if Emacs was built without terminfo support, but the
205 terminal's capabilities use format that is only supported by terminfo.
206 If your system has ncurses installed, this might happen if your
207 version of ncurses is broken; upgrading to a newer version of ncurses
208 and reconfiguring and rebuilding Emacs should solve this.
209
210 All modern systems support terminfo, so even if ncurses is not the
211 problem, you should look for a way to configure Emacs so that it uses
212 terminfo when built.
213
214 ** Emacs crashes when using the Exceed 6.0 X server.
215
216 If you are using Exceed 6.1, upgrade to a later version. This was
217 reported to prevent the crashes.
218
219 ** Emacs crashes with SIGSEGV in XtInitializeWidgetClass.
220
221 It crashes on X, but runs fine when called with option "-nw".
222
223 This has been observed when Emacs is linked with GNU ld but without passing
224 the -z nocombreloc flag. Emacs normally knows to pass the -z nocombreloc
225 flag when needed, so if you come across a situation where the flag is
226 necessary but missing, please report it via M-x report-emacs-bug.
227
228 On platforms such as Solaris, you can also work around this problem by
229 configuring your compiler to use the native linker instead of GNU ld.
230
231 ** Emacs compiled with Gtk+ crashes when closing a display (x-close-connection).
232
233 This happens because of bugs in Gtk+. Gtk+ 2.10 seems to be OK. See bug
234 http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=85715.
235
236 ** Emacs compiled with Gtk+ may loop forever if a display crashes.
237
238 This is related to the bug above. A scenario for this is when emacs is run
239 as a server, and an X frame is created. If the X server for the frame
240 crashes or exits unexpectedly and an attempt is made to create a new
241 frame on another X display, then a Gtk+ error happens in the emacs
242 server that results in an endless loop. This is not fixed in any known
243 Gtk+ version (2.14.4 being current).
244
245 ** Emacs compiled with Gtk+ crashes on startup on Cygwin.
246
247 A typical error message is
248 ***MEMORY-ERROR***: emacs[5172]: GSlice: failed to allocate 504 bytes
249 (alignment: 512): Function not implemented
250
251 Emacs supplies its own malloc, but glib (part of Gtk+) calls memalign and on
252 Cygwin, that becomes the Cygwin supplied memalign. As malloc is not the
253 Cygwin malloc, the Cygwin memalign always returns ENOSYS. A fix for this
254 problem would be welcome.
255
256 * General runtime problems
257
258 ** Lisp problems
259
260 *** Changes made to .el files do not take effect.
261
262 You may have forgotten to recompile them into .elc files.
263 Then the old .elc files will be loaded, and your changes
264 will not be seen. To fix this, do M-x byte-recompile-directory
265 and specify the directory that contains the Lisp files.
266
267 Emacs should print a warning when loading a .elc file which is older
268 than the corresponding .el file.
269
270 *** Watch out for .emacs files and EMACSLOADPATH environment vars.
271
272 These control the actions of Emacs.
273 ~/.emacs is your Emacs init file.
274 EMACSLOADPATH overrides which directories the function
275 "load" will search.
276
277 If you observe strange problems, check for these and get rid
278 of them, then try again.
279
280 *** Using epop3.el package causes Emacs to signal an error.
281
282 The error message might be something like this:
283
284 "Lisp nesting exceeds max-lisp-eval-depth"
285
286 This happens because epop3 redefines the function gethash, which is a
287 built-in primitive beginning with Emacs 21.1. We don't have a patch
288 for epop3 that fixes this, but perhaps a newer version of epop3
289 corrects that.
290
291 *** Buffers from `with-output-to-temp-buffer' get set up in Help mode.
292
293 Changes in Emacs 20.4 to the hooks used by that function cause
294 problems for some packages, specifically BBDB. See the function's
295 documentation for the hooks involved. BBDB 2.00.06 fixes the problem.
296
297 *** The Hyperbole package causes *Help* buffers not to be displayed in
298 Help mode due to setting `temp-buffer-show-hook' rather than using
299 `add-hook'. Using `(add-hook 'temp-buffer-show-hook
300 'help-mode-maybe)' after loading Hyperbole should fix this.
301
302 ** Keyboard problems
303
304 *** "Compose Character" key does strange things when used as a Meta key.
305
306 If you define one key to serve as both Meta and Compose Character, you
307 will get strange results. In previous Emacs versions, this "worked"
308 in that the key acted as Meta--that's because the older Emacs versions
309 did not try to support Compose Character. Now Emacs tries to do
310 character composition in the standard X way. This means that you
311 must pick one meaning or the other for any given key.
312
313 You can use both functions (Meta, and Compose Character) if you assign
314 them to two different keys.
315
316 *** C-z just refreshes the screen instead of suspending Emacs.
317
318 You are probably using a shell that doesn't support job control, even
319 though the system itself is capable of it. Either use a different shell,
320 or set the variable `cannot-suspend' to a non-nil value.
321
322 *** With M-x enable-flow-control, you need to type C-\ twice
323 to do incremental search--a single C-\ gets no response.
324
325 This has been traced to communicating with your machine via kermit,
326 with C-\ as the kermit escape character. One solution is to use
327 another escape character in kermit. One user did
328
329 set escape-character 17
330
331 in his .kermrc file, to make C-q the kermit escape character.
332
333 ** Mailers and other helper programs
334
335 *** movemail compiled with POP support can't connect to the POP server.
336
337 Make sure that the `pop' entry in /etc/services, or in the services
338 NIS map if your machine uses NIS, has the same port number as the
339 entry on the POP server. A common error is for the POP server to be
340 listening on port 110, the assigned port for the POP3 protocol, while
341 the client is trying to connect on port 109, the assigned port for the
342 old POP protocol.
343
344 *** RMAIL gets error getting new mail.
345
346 RMAIL gets new mail from /usr/spool/mail/$USER using a program
347 called `movemail'. This program interlocks with /bin/mail using
348 the protocol defined by /bin/mail.
349
350 There are two different protocols in general use. One of them uses
351 the `flock' system call. The other involves creating a lock file;
352 `movemail' must be able to write in /usr/spool/mail in order to do
353 this. You control which one is used by defining, or not defining,
354 the macro MAIL_USE_FLOCK in config.h or the m- or s- file it includes.
355 IF YOU DON'T USE THE FORM OF INTERLOCKING THAT IS NORMAL ON YOUR
356 SYSTEM, YOU CAN LOSE MAIL!
357
358 If your system uses the lock file protocol, and fascist restrictions
359 prevent ordinary users from writing the lock files in /usr/spool/mail,
360 you may need to make `movemail' setgid to a suitable group such as
361 `mail'. To do this, use the following commands (as root) after doing the
362 make install.
363
364 chgrp mail movemail
365 chmod 2755 movemail
366
367 Installation normally copies movemail from the build directory to an
368 installation directory which is usually under /usr/local/lib. The
369 installed copy of movemail is usually in the directory
370 /usr/local/lib/emacs/VERSION/TARGET. You must change the group and
371 mode of the installed copy; changing the group and mode of the build
372 directory copy is ineffective.
373
374 *** rcs2log gives you the awk error message "too many fields".
375
376 This is due to an arbitrary limit in certain versions of awk.
377 The solution is to use gawk (GNU awk).
378
379 ** Problems with hostname resolution
380
381 *** Emacs fails to understand most Internet host names, even though
382 the names work properly with other programs on the same system.
383 *** Emacs won't work with X-windows if the value of DISPLAY is HOSTNAME:0.
384 *** Gnus can't make contact with the specified host for nntp.
385
386 This typically happens on Suns and other systems that use shared
387 libraries. The cause is that the site has installed a version of the
388 shared library which uses a name server--but has not installed a
389 similar version of the unshared library which Emacs uses.
390
391 The result is that most programs, using the shared library, work with
392 the nameserver, but Emacs does not.
393
394 The fix is to install an unshared library that corresponds to what you
395 installed in the shared library, and then relink Emacs.
396
397 If you have already installed the name resolver in the file libresolv.a,
398 then you need to compile Emacs to use that library. The easiest way to
399 do this is to add to config.h a definition of LIBS_SYSTEM, LIBS_MACHINE
400 or LIB_STANDARD which uses -lresolv. Watch out! If you redefine a macro
401 that is already in use in your configuration to supply some other libraries,
402 be careful not to lose the others.
403
404 Thus, you could start by adding this to config.h:
405
406 #define LIBS_SYSTEM -lresolv
407
408 Then if this gives you an error for redefining a macro, and you see that
409 the s- file defines LIBS_SYSTEM as -lfoo -lbar, you could change config.h
410 again to say this:
411
412 #define LIBS_SYSTEM -lresolv -lfoo -lbar
413
414 *** Emacs does not know your host's fully-qualified domain name.
415
416 For example, (system-name) returns some variation on
417 "localhost.localdomain", rather the name you were expecting.
418
419 You need to configure your machine with a fully qualified domain name,
420 (i.e. a name with at least one ".") either in /etc/hosts,
421 /etc/hostname, the NIS, or wherever your system calls for specifying
422 this.
423
424 If you cannot fix the configuration, you can set the Lisp variable
425 mail-host-address to the value you want.
426
427 ** NFS and RFS
428
429 *** Emacs says it has saved a file, but the file does not actually
430 appear on disk.
431
432 This can happen on certain systems when you are using NFS, if the
433 remote disk is full. It is due to a bug in NFS (or certain NFS
434 implementations), and there is apparently nothing Emacs can do to
435 detect the problem. Emacs checks the failure codes of all the system
436 calls involved in writing a file, including `close'; but in the case
437 where the problem occurs, none of those system calls fails.
438
439 *** Editing files through RFS gives spurious "file has changed" warnings.
440 It is possible that a change in Emacs 18.37 gets around this problem,
441 but in case not, here is a description of how to fix the RFS bug that
442 causes it.
443
444 There was a serious pair of bugs in the handling of the fsync() system
445 call in the RFS server.
446
447 The first is that the fsync() call is handled as another name for the
448 close() system call (!!). It appears that fsync() is not used by very
449 many programs; Emacs version 18 does an fsync() before closing files
450 to make sure that the bits are on the disk.
451
452 This is fixed by the enclosed patch to the RFS server.
453
454 The second, more serious problem, is that fsync() is treated as a
455 non-blocking system call (i.e., it's implemented as a message that
456 gets sent to the remote system without waiting for a reply). Fsync is
457 a useful tool for building atomic file transactions. Implementing it
458 as a non-blocking RPC call (when the local call blocks until the sync
459 is done) is a bad idea; unfortunately, changing it will break the RFS
460 protocol. No fix was supplied for this problem.
461
462 (as always, your line numbers may vary)
463
464 % rcsdiff -c -r1.2 serversyscall.c
465 RCS file: RCS/serversyscall.c,v
466 retrieving revision 1.2
467 diff -c -r1.2 serversyscall.c
468 *** /tmp/,RCSt1003677 Wed Jan 28 15:15:02 1987
469 --- serversyscall.c Wed Jan 28 15:14:48 1987
470 ***************
471 *** 163,169 ****
472 /*
473 * No return sent for close or fsync!
474 */
475 ! if (syscall == RSYS_close || syscall == RSYS_fsync)
476 proc->p_returnval = deallocate_fd(proc, msg->m_args[0]);
477 else
478 {
479 --- 166,172 ----
480 /*
481 * No return sent for close or fsync!
482 */
483 ! if (syscall == RSYS_close)
484 proc->p_returnval = deallocate_fd(proc, msg->m_args[0]);
485 else
486 {
487
488 ** PSGML
489
490 *** Old versions of the PSGML package use the obsolete variables
491 `before-change-function' and `after-change-function', which are no
492 longer used by Emacs. Please use PSGML 1.2.3 or later.
493
494 *** PSGML conflicts with sgml-mode.
495
496 PSGML package uses the same names of some variables (like keymap)
497 as built-in sgml-mode.el because it was created as a replacement
498 of that package. The conflict will be shown if you load
499 sgml-mode.el before psgml.el. E.g. this could happen if you edit
500 HTML page and then start to work with SGML or XML file. html-mode
501 (from sgml-mode.el) is used for HTML file and loading of psgml.el
502 (for sgml-mode or xml-mode) will cause an error.
503
504 *** Versions of the PSGML package earlier than 1.0.3 (stable) or 1.1.2
505 (alpha) fail to parse DTD files correctly in Emacs 20.3 and later.
506 Here is a patch for psgml-parse.el from PSGML 1.0.1 and, probably,
507 earlier versions.
508
509 --- psgml-parse.el 1998/08/21 19:18:18 1.1
510 +++ psgml-parse.el 1998/08/21 19:20:00
511 @@ -2383,7 +2383,7 @@ (defun sgml-push-to-entity (entity &opti
512 (setq sgml-buffer-parse-state nil))
513 (cond
514 ((stringp entity) ; a file name
515 - (save-excursion (insert-file-contents entity))
516 + (insert-file-contents entity)
517 (setq default-directory (file-name-directory entity)))
518 ((consp (sgml-entity-text entity)) ; external id?
519 (let* ((extid (sgml-entity-text entity))
520
521 ** AUCTeX
522
523 You should not be using a version older than 11.52 if you can avoid
524 it.
525
526 *** Emacs 21 freezes when visiting a TeX file with AUCTeX installed.
527
528 Emacs 21 needs version 10 or later of AUCTeX; upgrading should solve
529 these problems.
530
531 *** No colors in AUCTeX with Emacs 21.
532
533 Upgrade to AUC TeX version 10 or later, and make sure it is
534 byte-compiled with Emacs 21.
535
536 ** PCL-CVS
537
538 *** Lines are not updated or new lines are added in the buffer upon commit.
539
540 When committing files located higher in the hierarchy than the examined
541 directory, some versions of the CVS program return an ambiguous message
542 from which PCL-CVS cannot extract the full location of the committed
543 files. As a result, the corresponding lines in the PCL-CVS buffer are
544 not updated with the new revision of these files, and new lines are
545 added to the top-level directory.
546
547 This can happen with CVS versions 1.12.8 and 1.12.9. Upgrade to CVS
548 1.12.10 or newer to fix this problem.
549
550 ** Miscellaneous problems
551
552 *** Emacs uses 100% of CPU time
553
554 This is a known problem with some versions of the Semantic package.
555 The solution is to upgrade Semantic to version 2.0pre4 (distributed
556 with CEDET 1.0pre4) or later.
557
558 *** Self-documentation messages are garbled.
559
560 This means that the file `etc/DOC-...' doesn't properly correspond
561 with the Emacs executable. Redumping Emacs and then installing the
562 corresponding pair of files should fix the problem.
563
564 *** Programs running under terminal emulator do not recognize `emacs'
565 terminal type.
566
567 The cause of this is a shell startup file that sets the TERMCAP
568 environment variable. The terminal emulator uses that variable to
569 provide the information on the special terminal type that Emacs
570 emulates.
571
572 Rewrite your shell startup file so that it does not change TERMCAP
573 in such a case. You could use the following conditional which sets
574 it only if it is undefined.
575
576 if ( ! ${?TERMCAP} ) setenv TERMCAP ~/my-termcap-file
577
578 Or you could set TERMCAP only when you set TERM--which should not
579 happen in a non-login shell.
580
581 *** In Shell mode, you get a ^M at the end of every line.
582
583 This happens to people who use tcsh, because it is trying to be too
584 smart. It sees that the Shell uses terminal type `unknown' and turns
585 on the flag to output ^M at the end of each line. You can fix the
586 problem by adding this to your .cshrc file:
587
588 if ($?EMACS) then
589 if ("$EMACS" =~ /*) then
590 unset edit
591 stty -icrnl -onlcr -echo susp ^Z
592 endif
593 endif
594
595 *** Emacs startup on GNU/Linux systems (and possibly other systems) is slow.
596
597 This can happen if the system is misconfigured and Emacs can't get the
598 full qualified domain name, FQDN. You should have your FQDN in the
599 /etc/hosts file, something like this:
600
601 127.0.0.1 localhost
602 129.187.137.82 nuc04.t30.physik.tu-muenchen.de nuc04
603
604 The way to set this up may vary on non-GNU systems.
605
606 *** Attempting to visit remote files via ange-ftp fails.
607
608 If the error message is "ange-ftp-file-modtime: Specified time is not
609 representable", then this could happen when `lukemftp' is used as the
610 ftp client. This was reported to happen on Debian GNU/Linux, kernel
611 version 2.4.3, with `lukemftp' 1.5-5, but might happen on other
612 systems as well. To avoid this problem, switch to using the standard
613 ftp client. On a Debian system, type
614
615 update-alternatives --config ftp
616
617 and then choose /usr/bin/netkit-ftp.
618
619 *** JPEG images aren't displayed.
620
621 This has been reported when Emacs is built with jpeg-6a library.
622 Upgrading to jpeg-6b solves the problem. Configure checks for the
623 correct version, but this problem could occur if a binary built
624 against a shared libjpeg is run on a system with an older version.
625
626 *** Dired is very slow.
627
628 This could happen if invocation of the `df' program takes a long
629 time. Possible reasons for this include:
630
631 - ClearCase mounted filesystems (VOBs) that sometimes make `df'
632 response time extremely slow (dozens of seconds);
633
634 - slow automounters on some old versions of Unix;
635
636 - slow operation of some versions of `df'.
637
638 To work around the problem, you could either (a) set the variable
639 `directory-free-space-program' to nil, and thus prevent Emacs from
640 invoking `df'; (b) use `df' from the GNU Fileutils package; or
641 (c) use CVS, which is Free Software, instead of ClearCase.
642
643 *** Versions of the W3 package released before Emacs 21.1 don't run
644 under Emacs 21. This fixed in W3 version 4.0pre.47.
645
646 *** The LDAP support rely on ldapsearch program from OpenLDAP version 2.
647
648 It can fail to work with ldapsearch program from OpenLDAP version 1.
649 Version 1 of OpenLDAP is now deprecated. If you are still using it,
650 please upgrade to version 2. As a temporary workaround, remove
651 argument "-x" from the variable `ldap-ldapsearch-args'.
652
653 *** ps-print commands fail to find prologue files ps-prin*.ps.
654
655 This can happen if you use an old version of X-Symbol package: it
656 defines compatibility functions which trick ps-print into thinking it
657 runs in XEmacs, and look for the prologue files in a wrong directory.
658
659 The solution is to upgrade X-Symbol to a later version.
660
661 *** On systems with shared libraries you might encounter run-time errors
662 from the dynamic linker telling you that it is unable to find some
663 shared libraries, for instance those for Xaw3d or image support.
664 These errors mean Emacs has been linked with a library whose shared
665 library is not in the default search path of the dynamic linker.
666
667 Similar problems could prevent Emacs from building, since the build
668 process invokes Emacs several times.
669
670 On many systems, it is possible to set LD_LIBRARY_PATH in your
671 environment to specify additional directories where shared libraries
672 can be found.
673
674 Other systems allow to set LD_RUN_PATH in a similar way, but before
675 Emacs is linked. With LD_RUN_PATH set, the linker will include a
676 specified run-time search path in the executable.
677
678 On some systems, Emacs can crash due to problems with dynamic
679 linking. Specifically, on SGI Irix 6.5, crashes were reported with
680 backtraces like this:
681
682 (dbx) where
683 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]
684 1 general_find_symbol(0xf49239d, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0xf0000000, 0xf4923aa, 0x0, 0x492ddb2)
685 ["/comp2/mtibuild/v73/workarea/v7.3/rld/rld.c":2140, 0xfb65a98]
686 2 resolve_symbol(0xf49239d, 0x4031184, 0x0, 0xfbdd438, 0x0, 0xf4923aa, 0x0, 0x492ddb2)
687 ["/comp2/mtibuild/v73/workarea/v7.3/rld/rld.c":1947, 0xfb657e4]
688 3 lazy_text_resolve(0xd18, 0x1a3, 0x40302b4, 0x12, 0xf0000000, 0xf4923aa, 0x0, 0x492ddb2)
689 ["/comp2/mtibuild/v73/workarea/v7.3/rld/rld.c":997, 0xfb64d44]
690 4 _rld_text_resolve(0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0)
691 ["/comp2/mtibuild/v73/workarea/v7.3/rld/rld_bridge.s":175, 0xfb6032c]
692
693 (`rld' is the dynamic linker.) We don't know yet why this
694 happens, but setting the environment variable LD_BIND_NOW to 1 (which
695 forces the dynamic linker to bind all shared objects early on) seems
696 to work around the problem.
697
698 Please refer to the documentation of your dynamic linker for details.
699
700 *** You request inverse video, and the first Emacs frame is in inverse
701 video, but later frames are not in inverse video.
702
703 This can happen if you have an old version of the custom library in
704 your search path for Lisp packages. Use M-x list-load-path-shadows to
705 check whether this is true. If it is, delete the old custom library.
706
707 *** When you run Ispell from Emacs, it reports a "misalignment" error.
708
709 This can happen if you compiled the Ispell program to use ASCII
710 characters only and then try to use it from Emacs with non-ASCII
711 characters, like Latin-1. The solution is to recompile Ispell with
712 support for 8-bit characters.
713
714 To see whether your Ispell program supports 8-bit characters, type
715 this at your shell's prompt:
716
717 ispell -vv
718
719 and look in the output for the string "NO8BIT". If Ispell says
720 "!NO8BIT (8BIT)", your speller supports 8-bit characters; otherwise it
721 does not.
722
723 To rebuild Ispell with 8-bit character support, edit the local.h file
724 in the Ispell distribution and make sure it does _not_ define NO8BIT.
725 Then rebuild the speller.
726
727 Another possible cause for "misalignment" error messages is that the
728 version of Ispell installed on your machine is old. Upgrade.
729
730 Yet another possibility is that you are trying to spell-check a word
731 in a language that doesn't fit the dictionary you choose for use by
732 Ispell. (Ispell can only spell-check one language at a time, because
733 it uses a single dictionary.) Make sure that the text you are
734 spelling and the dictionary used by Ispell conform to each other.
735
736 If your spell-checking program is Aspell, it has been reported that if
737 you have a personal configuration file (normally ~/.aspell.conf), it
738 can cause this error. Remove that file, execute `ispell-kill-ispell'
739 in Emacs, and then try spell-checking again.
740
741 * Runtime problems related to font handling
742
743 ** Characters are displayed as empty boxes or with wrong font under X.
744
745 *** This can occur when two different versions of FontConfig are used.
746 For example, XFree86 4.3.0 has one version and Gnome usually comes
747 with a newer version. Emacs compiled with Gtk+ will then use the
748 newer version. In most cases the problem can be temporarily fixed by
749 stopping the application that has the error (it can be Emacs or any
750 other application), removing ~/.fonts.cache-1, and then start the
751 application again. If removing ~/.fonts.cache-1 and restarting
752 doesn't help, the application with problem must be recompiled with the
753 same version of FontConfig as the rest of the system uses. For KDE,
754 it is sufficient to recompile Qt.
755
756 *** Some fonts have a missing glyph and no default character. This is
757 known to occur for character number 160 (no-break space) in some
758 fonts, such as Lucida but Emacs sets the display table for the unibyte
759 and Latin-1 version of this character to display a space.
760
761 *** Some of the fonts called for in your fontset may not exist on your
762 X server.
763
764 Each X11 font covers just a fraction of the characters that Emacs
765 supports. To display the whole range of Emacs characters requires
766 many different fonts, collected into a fontset. You can remedy the
767 problem by installing additional fonts.
768
769 The intlfonts distribution includes a full spectrum of fonts that can
770 display all the characters Emacs supports. The etl-unicode collection
771 of fonts (available from <URL:ftp://ftp.x.org/contrib/fonts/> and
772 <URL:ftp://ftp.xfree86.org/pub/mirror/X.Org/contrib/fonts/>) includes
773 fonts that can display many Unicode characters; they can also be used
774 by ps-print and ps-mule to print Unicode characters.
775
776 ** Under X11, some characters appear improperly aligned in their lines.
777
778 You may have bad X11 fonts; try installing the intlfonts distribution
779 or the etl-unicode collection (see above).
780
781 ** Under X, an unexpected monospace font is used as the default font.
782
783 When compiled with XFT, Emacs tries to use a default font named
784 "monospace". This is a "virtual font", which the operating system
785 (Fontconfig) redirects to a suitable font such as DejaVu Sans Mono.
786 On some systems, there exists a font that is actually named Monospace,
787 which takes over the virtual font. This is considered an operating
788 system bug; see
789
790 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2008-10/msg00696.html
791
792 If you encounter this problem, set the default font to a specific font
793 in your .Xresources or initialization file. For instance, you can put
794 the following in your .Xresources:
795
796 Emacs.font: DejaVu Sans Mono 12
797
798 ** Certain fonts make each line take one pixel more than it should.
799
800 This is because these fonts contain characters a little taller than
801 the font's nominal height. Emacs needs to make sure that lines do not
802 overlap.
803
804 ** Loading fonts is very slow.
805
806 You might be getting scalable fonts instead of precomputed bitmaps.
807 Known scalable font directories are "Type1" and "Speedo". A font
808 directory contains scalable fonts if it contains the file
809 "fonts.scale".
810
811 If this is so, re-order your X windows font path to put the scalable
812 font directories last. See the documentation of `xset' for details.
813
814 With some X servers, it may be necessary to take the scalable font
815 directories out of your path entirely, at least for Emacs 19.26.
816 Changes in the future may make this unnecessary.
817
818 ** Font Lock displays portions of the buffer in incorrect faces.
819
820 By far the most frequent cause of this is a parenthesis `(' or a brace
821 `{' in column zero. Font Lock assumes that such a paren is outside of
822 any comment or string. This is of course not true in general, but the
823 vast majority of well-formatted program source files don't have such
824 parens, and therefore this assumption is used to allow optimizations
825 in Font Lock's syntactical analysis. These optimizations avoid some
826 pathological cases where jit-lock, the Just-in-Time fontification
827 introduced with Emacs 21.1, could significantly slow down scrolling
828 through the buffer, especially scrolling backwards, and also jumping
829 to the end of a very large buffer.
830
831 Beginning with version 22.1, a parenthesis or a brace in column zero
832 is highlighted in bold-red face if it is inside a string or a comment,
833 to indicate that it could interfere with Font Lock (and also with
834 indentation) and should be moved or escaped with a backslash.
835
836 If you don't use large buffers, or have a very fast machine which
837 makes the delays insignificant, you can avoid the incorrect
838 fontification by setting the variable
839 `font-lock-beginning-of-syntax-function' to a nil value. (This must
840 be done _after_ turning on Font Lock.)
841
842 Another alternative is to avoid a paren in column zero. For example,
843 in a Lisp string you could precede the paren with a backslash.
844
845 ** With certain fonts, when the cursor appears on a character, the
846 character doesn't appear--you get a solid box instead.
847
848 One user on a Linux-based GNU system reported that this problem went
849 away with installation of a new X server. The failing server was
850 XFree86 3.1.1. XFree86 3.1.2 works.
851
852 ** Emacs pauses for several seconds when changing the default font.
853
854 This has been reported for fvwm 2.2.5 and the window manager of KDE
855 2.1. The reason for the pause is Xt waiting for a ConfigureNotify
856 event from the window manager, which the window manager doesn't send.
857 Xt stops waiting after a default timeout of usually 5 seconds.
858
859 A workaround for this is to add something like
860
861 emacs.waitForWM: false
862
863 to your X resources. Alternatively, add `(wait-for-wm . nil)' to a
864 frame's parameter list, like this:
865
866 (modify-frame-parameters nil '((wait-for-wm . nil)))
867
868 (this should go into your `.emacs' file).
869
870 ** Underlines appear at the wrong position.
871
872 This is caused by fonts having a wrong UNDERLINE_POSITION property.
873 Examples are the font 7x13 on XFree prior to version 4.1, or the jmk
874 neep font from the Debian xfonts-jmk package prior to version 3.0.17.
875 To circumvent this problem, set x-use-underline-position-properties
876 to nil in your `.emacs'.
877
878 To see what is the value of UNDERLINE_POSITION defined by the font,
879 type `xlsfonts -lll FONT' and look at the font's UNDERLINE_POSITION
880 property.
881
882 ** When using Exceed, fonts sometimes appear too tall.
883
884 When the display is set to an Exceed X-server and fonts are specified
885 (either explicitly with the -fn option or implicitly with X resources)
886 then the fonts may appear "too tall". The actual character sizes are
887 correct but there is too much vertical spacing between rows, which
888 gives the appearance of "double spacing".
889
890 To prevent this, turn off the Exceed's "automatic font substitution"
891 feature (in the font part of the configuration window).
892
893 ** Subscript/superscript text in TeX is hard to read.
894
895 If `tex-fontify-script' is non-nil, tex-mode displays
896 subscript/superscript text in the faces subscript/superscript, which
897 are smaller than the normal font and lowered/raised. With some fonts,
898 nested superscripts (say) can be hard to read. Switching to a
899 different font, or changing your antialiasing setting (on an LCD
900 screen), can both make the problem disappear. Alternatively, customize
901 the following variables: tex-font-script-display (how much to
902 lower/raise); tex-suscript-height-ratio (how much smaller than
903 normal); tex-suscript-height-minimum (minimum height).
904
905 * Internationalization problems
906
907 ** M-{ does not work on a Spanish PC keyboard.
908
909 Many Spanish keyboards seem to ignore that combination. Emacs can't
910 do anything about it.
911
912 ** Characters from the mule-unicode charsets aren't displayed under X.
913
914 XFree86 4 contains many fonts in iso10646-1 encoding which have
915 minimal character repertoires (whereas the encoding part of the font
916 name is meant to be a reasonable indication of the repertoire
917 according to the XLFD spec). Emacs may choose one of these to display
918 characters from the mule-unicode charsets and then typically won't be
919 able to find the glyphs to display many characters. (Check with C-u
920 C-x = .) To avoid this, you may need to use a fontset which sets the
921 font for the mule-unicode sets explicitly. E.g. to use GNU unifont,
922 include in the fontset spec:
923
924 mule-unicode-2500-33ff:-gnu-unifont-*-iso10646-1,\
925 mule-unicode-e000-ffff:-gnu-unifont-*-iso10646-1,\
926 mule-unicode-0100-24ff:-gnu-unifont-*-iso10646-1
927
928 ** The UTF-8/16/7 coding systems don't encode CJK (Far Eastern) characters.
929
930 Emacs directly supports the Unicode BMP whose code points are in the
931 ranges 0000-33ff and e000-ffff, and indirectly supports the parts of
932 CJK characters belonging to these legacy charsets:
933
934 GB2312, Big5, JISX0208, JISX0212, JISX0213-1, JISX0213-2, KSC5601
935
936 The latter support is done in Utf-Translate-Cjk mode (turned on by
937 default). Which Unicode CJK characters are decoded into which Emacs
938 charset is decided by the current language environment. For instance,
939 in Chinese-GB, most of them are decoded into chinese-gb2312.
940
941 If you read UTF-8 data with code points outside these ranges, the
942 characters appear in the buffer as raw bytes of the original UTF-8
943 (composed into a single quasi-character) and they will be written back
944 correctly as UTF-8, assuming you don't break the composed sequences.
945 If you read such characters from UTF-16 or UTF-7 data, they are
946 substituted with the Unicode `replacement character', and you lose
947 information.
948
949 ** Mule-UCS loads very slowly.
950
951 Changes to Emacs internals interact badly with Mule-UCS's `un-define'
952 library, which is the usual interface to Mule-UCS. Apply the
953 following patch to Mule-UCS 0.84 and rebuild it. That will help,
954 though loading will still be slower than in Emacs 20. (Some
955 distributions, such as Debian, may already have applied such a patch.)
956
957 --- lisp/un-define.el 6 Mar 2001 22:41:38 -0000 1.30
958 +++ lisp/un-define.el 19 Apr 2002 18:34:26 -0000
959 @@ -610,13 +624,21 @@ by calling post-read-conversion and pre-
960
961 (mapcar
962 (lambda (x)
963 - (mapcar
964 - (lambda (y)
965 - (mucs-define-coding-system
966 - (nth 0 y) (nth 1 y) (nth 2 y)
967 - (nth 3 y) (nth 4 y) (nth 5 y) (nth 6 y))
968 - (coding-system-put (car y) 'alias-coding-systems (list (car x))))
969 - (cdr x)))
970 + (if (fboundp 'register-char-codings)
971 + ;; Mule 5, where we don't need the eol-type specified and
972 + ;; register-char-codings may be very slow for these coding
973 + ;; system definitions.
974 + (let ((y (cadr x)))
975 + (mucs-define-coding-system
976 + (car x) (nth 1 y) (nth 2 y)
977 + (nth 3 y) (nth 4 y) (nth 5 y)))
978 + (mapcar
979 + (lambda (y)
980 + (mucs-define-coding-system
981 + (nth 0 y) (nth 1 y) (nth 2 y)
982 + (nth 3 y) (nth 4 y) (nth 5 y) (nth 6 y))
983 + (coding-system-put (car y) 'alias-coding-systems (list (car x)))))
984 + (cdr x)))
985 `((utf-8
986 (utf-8-unix
987 ?u "UTF-8 coding system"
988
989 Note that Emacs has native support for Unicode, roughly equivalent to
990 Mule-UCS's, so you may not need it.
991
992 ** Mule-UCS compilation problem.
993
994 Emacs of old versions and XEmacs byte-compile the form `(progn progn
995 ...)' the same way as `(progn ...)', but Emacs of version 21.3 and the
996 later process that form just as interpreter does, that is, as `progn'
997 variable reference. Apply the following patch to Mule-UCS 0.84 to
998 make it compiled by the latest Emacs.
999
1000 --- mucs-ccl.el 2 Sep 2005 00:42:23 -0000 1.1.1.1
1001 +++ mucs-ccl.el 2 Sep 2005 01:31:51 -0000 1.3
1002 @@ -639,10 +639,14 @@
1003 (mucs-notify-embedment 'mucs-ccl-required name)
1004 (setq ccl-pgm-list (cdr ccl-pgm-list)))
1005 ; (message "MCCLREGFIN:%S" result)
1006 - `(progn
1007 - (setq mucs-ccl-facility-alist
1008 - (quote ,mucs-ccl-facility-alist))
1009 - ,@result)))
1010 + ;; The only way the function is used in this package is included
1011 + ;; in `mucs-package-definition-end-hook' value, where it must
1012 + ;; return (possibly empty) *list* of forms. Do this. Do not rely
1013 + ;; on byte compiler to remove extra `progn's in `(progn ...)'
1014 + ;; form.
1015 + `((setq mucs-ccl-facility-alist
1016 + (quote ,mucs-ccl-facility-alist))
1017 + ,@result)))
1018
1019 ;;; Add hook for embedding translation informations to a package.
1020 (add-hook 'mucs-package-definition-end-hook
1021
1022 ** Accented ISO-8859-1 characters are displayed as | or _.
1023
1024 Try other font set sizes (S-mouse-1). If the problem persists with
1025 other sizes as well, your text is corrupted, probably through software
1026 that is not 8-bit clean. If the problem goes away with another font
1027 size, it's probably because some fonts pretend to be ISO-8859-1 fonts
1028 when they are really ASCII fonts. In particular the schumacher-clean
1029 fonts have this bug in some versions of X.
1030
1031 To see what glyphs are included in a font, use `xfd', like this:
1032
1033 xfd -fn -schumacher-clean-medium-r-normal--12-120-75-75-c-60-iso8859-1
1034
1035 If this shows only ASCII glyphs, the font is indeed the source of the
1036 problem.
1037
1038 The solution is to remove the corresponding lines from the appropriate
1039 `fonts.alias' file, then run `mkfontdir' in that directory, and then run
1040 `xset fp rehash'.
1041
1042 ** The `oc-unicode' package doesn't work with Emacs 21.
1043
1044 This package tries to define more private charsets than there are free
1045 slots now. The current built-in Unicode support is actually more
1046 flexible. (Use option `utf-translate-cjk-mode' if you need CJK
1047 support.) Files encoded as emacs-mule using oc-unicode aren't
1048 generally read correctly by Emacs 21.
1049
1050 ** After a while, Emacs slips into unibyte mode.
1051
1052 The VM mail package, which is not part of Emacs, sometimes does
1053 (standard-display-european t)
1054 That should be changed to
1055 (standard-display-european 1 t)
1056
1057 * X runtime problems
1058
1059 ** X keyboard problems
1060
1061 *** You "lose characters" after typing Compose Character key.
1062
1063 This is because the Compose Character key is defined as the keysym
1064 Multi_key, and Emacs (seeing that) does the proper X11
1065 character-composition processing. If you don't want your Compose key
1066 to do that, you can redefine it with xmodmap.
1067
1068 For example, here's one way to turn it into a Meta key:
1069
1070 xmodmap -e "keysym Multi_key = Meta_L"
1071
1072 If all users at your site of a particular keyboard prefer Meta to
1073 Compose, you can make the remapping happen automatically by adding the
1074 xmodmap command to the xdm setup script for that display.
1075
1076 *** Using X Windows, control-shift-leftbutton makes Emacs hang.
1077
1078 Use the shell command `xset bc' to make the old X Menu package work.
1079
1080 *** C-SPC fails to work on Fedora GNU/Linux (or with fcitx input method).
1081
1082 Fedora Core 4 steals the C-SPC key by default for the `iiimx' program
1083 which is the input method for some languages. It blocks Emacs users
1084 from using the C-SPC key for `set-mark-command'.
1085
1086 One solutions is to remove the `<Ctrl>space' from the `Iiimx' file
1087 which can be found in the `/usr/lib/X11/app-defaults' directory.
1088 However, that requires root access.
1089
1090 Another is to specify `Emacs*useXIM: false' in your X resources.
1091
1092 Another is to build Emacs with the `--without-xim' configure option.
1093
1094 The same problem happens on any other system if you are using fcitx
1095 (Chinese input method) which by default use C-SPC for toggling. If
1096 you want to use fcitx with Emacs, you have two choices. Toggle fcitx
1097 by another key (e.g. C-\) by modifying ~/.fcitx/config, or be
1098 accustomed to use C-@ for `set-mark-command'.
1099
1100 *** M-SPC seems to be ignored as input.
1101
1102 See if your X server is set up to use this as a command
1103 for character composition.
1104
1105 *** The S-C-t key combination doesn't get passed to Emacs on X.
1106
1107 This happens because some X configurations assign the Ctrl-Shift-t
1108 combination the same meaning as the Multi_key. The offending
1109 definition is in the file `...lib/X11/locale/iso8859-1/Compose'; there
1110 might be other similar combinations which are grabbed by X for similar
1111 purposes.
1112
1113 We think that this can be countermanded with the `xmodmap' utility, if
1114 you want to be able to bind one of these key sequences within Emacs.
1115
1116 *** Under X, C-v and/or other keys don't work.
1117
1118 These may have been intercepted by your window manager. In
1119 particular, AfterStep 1.6 is reported to steal C-v in its default
1120 configuration. Various Meta keys are also likely to be taken by the
1121 configuration of the `feel'. See the WM's documentation for how to
1122 change this.
1123
1124 *** Clicking C-mouse-2 in the scroll bar doesn't split the window.
1125
1126 This currently doesn't work with scroll-bar widgets (and we don't know
1127 a good way of implementing it with widgets). If Emacs is configured
1128 --without-toolkit-scroll-bars, C-mouse-2 on the scroll bar does work.
1129
1130 *** Inability to send an Alt-modified key, when Emacs is communicating
1131 directly with an X server.
1132
1133 If you have tried to bind an Alt-modified key as a command, and it
1134 does not work to type the command, the first thing you should check is
1135 whether the key is getting through to Emacs. To do this, type C-h c
1136 followed by the Alt-modified key. C-h c should say what kind of event
1137 it read. If it says it read an Alt-modified key, then make sure you
1138 have made the key binding correctly.
1139
1140 If C-h c reports an event that doesn't have the Alt modifier, it may
1141 be because your X server has no key for the Alt modifier. The X
1142 server that comes from MIT does not set up the Alt modifier by
1143 default.
1144
1145 If your keyboard has keys named Alt, you can enable them as follows:
1146
1147 xmodmap -e 'add mod2 = Alt_L'
1148 xmodmap -e 'add mod2 = Alt_R'
1149
1150 If the keyboard has just one key named Alt, then only one of those
1151 commands is needed. The modifier `mod2' is a reasonable choice if you
1152 are using an unmodified MIT version of X. Otherwise, choose any
1153 modifier bit not otherwise used.
1154
1155 If your keyboard does not have keys named Alt, you can use some other
1156 keys. Use the keysym command in xmodmap to turn a function key (or
1157 some other 'spare' key) into Alt_L or into Alt_R, and then use the
1158 commands show above to make them modifier keys.
1159
1160 Note that if you have Alt keys but no Meta keys, Emacs translates Alt
1161 into Meta. This is because of the great importance of Meta in Emacs.
1162
1163 ** Window-manager and toolkit-related problems
1164
1165 *** Gnome: Emacs receives input directly from the keyboard, bypassing XIM.
1166
1167 This seems to happen when gnome-settings-daemon version 2.12 or later
1168 is running. If gnome-settings-daemon is not running, Emacs receives
1169 input through XIM without any problem. Furthermore, this seems only
1170 to happen in *.UTF-8 locales; zh_CN.GB2312 and zh_CN.GBK locales, for
1171 example, work fine. A bug report has been filed in the Gnome
1172 bugzilla: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=357032
1173
1174 *** Gnome: Emacs' xterm-mouse-mode doesn't work on the Gnome terminal.
1175
1176 A symptom of this bug is that double-clicks insert a control sequence
1177 into the buffer. The reason this happens is an apparent
1178 incompatibility of the Gnome terminal with Xterm, which also affects
1179 other programs using the Xterm mouse interface. A problem report has
1180 been filed.
1181
1182 *** KDE: When running on KDE, colors or fonts are not as specified for Emacs,
1183 or messed up.
1184
1185 For example, you could see background you set for Emacs only in the
1186 empty portions of the Emacs display, while characters have some other
1187 background.
1188
1189 This happens because KDE's defaults apply its color and font
1190 definitions even to applications that weren't compiled for KDE. The
1191 solution is to uncheck the "Apply fonts and colors to non-KDE apps"
1192 option in Preferences->Look&Feel->Style (KDE 2). In KDE 3, this option
1193 is in the "Colors" section, rather than "Style".
1194
1195 Alternatively, if you do want the KDE defaults to apply to other
1196 applications, but not to Emacs, you could modify the file `Emacs.ad'
1197 (should be in the `/usr/share/apps/kdisplay/app-defaults/' directory)
1198 so that it doesn't set the default background and foreground only for
1199 Emacs. For example, make sure the following resources are either not
1200 present or commented out:
1201
1202 Emacs.default.attributeForeground
1203 Emacs.default.attributeBackground
1204 Emacs*Foreground
1205 Emacs*Background
1206
1207 It is also reported that a bug in the gtk-engines-qt engine can cause this if
1208 Emacs is compiled with Gtk+.
1209 The bug is fixed in version 0.7 or newer of gtk-engines-qt.
1210
1211 *** KDE: Emacs hangs on KDE when a large portion of text is killed.
1212
1213 This is caused by a bug in the KDE applet `klipper' which periodically
1214 requests the X clipboard contents from applications. Early versions
1215 of klipper don't implement the ICCCM protocol for large selections,
1216 which leads to Emacs being flooded with selection requests. After a
1217 while, Emacs may print a message:
1218
1219 Timed out waiting for property-notify event
1220
1221 A workaround is to not use `klipper'. An upgrade to the `klipper' that
1222 comes with KDE 3.3 or later also solves the problem.
1223
1224 *** CDE: Frames may cover dialogs they created when using CDE.
1225
1226 This can happen if you have "Allow Primary Windows On Top" enabled which
1227 seems to be the default in the Common Desktop Environment.
1228 To change, go in to "Desktop Controls" -> "Window Style Manager"
1229 and uncheck "Allow Primary Windows On Top".
1230
1231 *** Xaw3d : When using Xaw3d scroll bars without arrows, the very first mouse
1232 click in a scroll bar might be ignored by the scroll bar widget. This
1233 is probably a bug in Xaw3d; when Xaw3d is compiled with arrows, the
1234 problem disappears.
1235
1236 *** Xaw: There are known binary incompatibilities between Xaw, Xaw3d, neXtaw,
1237 XawM and the few other derivatives of Xaw. So when you compile with
1238 one of these, it may not work to dynamically link with another one.
1239 For example, strange problems, such as Emacs exiting when you type
1240 "C-x 1", were reported when Emacs compiled with Xaw3d and libXaw was
1241 used with neXtaw at run time.
1242
1243 The solution is to rebuild Emacs with the toolkit version you actually
1244 want to use, or set LD_PRELOAD to preload the same toolkit version you
1245 built Emacs with.
1246
1247 *** Open Motif: Problems with file dialogs in Emacs built with Open Motif.
1248
1249 When Emacs 21 is built with Open Motif 2.1, it can happen that the
1250 graphical file dialog boxes do not work properly. The "OK", "Filter"
1251 and "Cancel" buttons do not respond to mouse clicks. Dragging the
1252 file dialog window usually causes the buttons to work again.
1253
1254 The solution is to use LessTif instead. LessTif is a free replacement
1255 for Motif. See the file INSTALL for information on how to do this.
1256
1257 Another workaround is not to use the mouse to trigger file prompts,
1258 but to use the keyboard. This way, you will be prompted for a file in
1259 the minibuffer instead of a graphical file dialog.
1260
1261 *** LessTif: Problems in Emacs built with LessTif.
1262
1263 The problems seem to depend on the version of LessTif and the Motif
1264 emulation for which it is set up.
1265
1266 Only the Motif 1.2 emulation seems to be stable enough in LessTif.
1267 LessTif 0.92-17's Motif 1.2 emulation seems to work okay on FreeBSD.
1268 On GNU/Linux systems, lesstif-0.92.6 configured with "./configure
1269 --enable-build-12 --enable-default-12" is reported to be the most
1270 successful. The binary GNU/Linux package
1271 lesstif-devel-0.92.0-1.i386.rpm was reported to have problems with
1272 menu placement.
1273
1274 On some systems, even with Motif 1.2 emulation, Emacs occasionally
1275 locks up, grabbing all mouse and keyboard events. We still don't know
1276 what causes these problems; they are not reproducible by Emacs
1277 developers.
1278
1279 *** Motif: The Motif version of Emacs paints the screen a solid color.
1280
1281 This has been observed to result from the following X resource:
1282
1283 Emacs*default.attributeFont: -*-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-140-*-*-*-*-iso8859-*
1284
1285 That the resource has this effect indicates a bug in something, but we
1286 do not yet know what. If it is an Emacs bug, we hope someone can
1287 explain what the bug is so we can fix it. In the mean time, removing
1288 the resource prevents the problem.
1289
1290 ** General X problems
1291
1292 *** Redisplay using X11 is much slower than previous Emacs versions.
1293
1294 We've noticed that certain X servers draw the text much slower when
1295 scroll bars are on the left. We don't know why this happens. If this
1296 happens to you, you can work around it by putting the scroll bars
1297 on the right (as they were in Emacs 19).
1298
1299 Here's how to do this:
1300
1301 (set-scroll-bar-mode 'right)
1302
1303 If you're not sure whether (or how much) this problem affects you,
1304 try that and see how much difference it makes. To set things back
1305 to normal, do
1306
1307 (set-scroll-bar-mode 'left)
1308
1309 *** Error messages about undefined colors on X.
1310
1311 The messages might say something like this:
1312
1313 Unable to load color "grey95"
1314
1315 (typically, in the `*Messages*' buffer), or something like this:
1316
1317 Error while displaying tooltip: (error Undefined color lightyellow)
1318
1319 These problems could happen if some other X program has used up too
1320 many colors of the X palette, leaving Emacs with insufficient system
1321 resources to load all the colors it needs.
1322
1323 A solution is to exit the offending X programs before starting Emacs.
1324
1325 "undefined color" messages can also occur if the RgbPath entry in the
1326 X configuration file is incorrect, or the rgb.txt file is not where
1327 X expects to find it.
1328
1329 *** Improving performance with slow X connections.
1330
1331 There are several ways to improve this performance, any subset of which can
1332 be carried out at the same time:
1333
1334 1) If you don't need X Input Methods (XIM) for entering text in some
1335 language you use, you can improve performance on WAN links by using
1336 the X resource useXIM to turn off use of XIM. This does not affect
1337 the use of Emacs' own input methods, which are part of the Leim
1338 package.
1339
1340 2) If the connection is very slow, you might also want to consider
1341 switching off scroll bars, menu bar, and tool bar. Adding the
1342 following forms to your .emacs file will accomplish that, but only
1343 after the the initial frame is displayed:
1344
1345 (scroll-bar-mode -1)
1346 (menu-bar-mode -1)
1347 (tool-bar-mode -1)
1348
1349 For still quicker startup, put these X resources in your .Xdefaults
1350 file:
1351
1352 Emacs.verticalScrollBars: off
1353 Emacs.menuBar: off
1354 Emacs.toolBar: off
1355
1356 3) Use ssh to forward the X connection, and enable compression on this
1357 forwarded X connection (ssh -XC remotehostname emacs ...).
1358
1359 4) Use lbxproxy on the remote end of the connection. This is an interface
1360 to the low bandwidth X extension in most modern X servers, which
1361 improves performance dramatically, at the slight expense of correctness
1362 of the X protocol. lbxproxy acheives the performance gain by grouping
1363 several X requests in one TCP packet and sending them off together,
1364 instead of requiring a round-trip for each X request in a separate
1365 packet. The switches that seem to work best for emacs are:
1366 -noatomsfile -nowinattr -cheaterrors -cheatevents
1367 Note that the -nograbcmap option is known to cause problems.
1368 For more about lbxproxy, see:
1369 http://www.xfree86.org/4.3.0/lbxproxy.1.html
1370
1371 5) If copying and killing is slow, try to disable the interaction with the
1372 native system's clipboard by adding these lines to your .emacs file:
1373 (setq interprogram-cut-function nil)
1374 (setq interprogram-paste-function nil)
1375
1376 *** Emacs gives the error, Couldn't find per display information.
1377
1378 This can result if the X server runs out of memory because Emacs uses
1379 a large number of fonts. On systems where this happens, C-h h is
1380 likely to cause it.
1381
1382 We do not know of a way to prevent the problem.
1383
1384 *** Emacs does not notice when you release the mouse.
1385
1386 There are reports that this happened with (some) Microsoft mice and
1387 that replacing the mouse made it stop.
1388
1389 *** You can't select from submenus (in the X toolkit version).
1390
1391 On certain systems, mouse-tracking and selection in top-level menus
1392 works properly with the X toolkit, but neither of them works when you
1393 bring up a submenu (such as Bookmarks or Compare or Apply Patch, in
1394 the Files menu).
1395
1396 This works on most systems. There is speculation that the failure is
1397 due to bugs in old versions of X toolkit libraries, but no one really
1398 knows. If someone debugs this and finds the precise cause, perhaps a
1399 workaround can be found.
1400
1401 *** An error message such as `X protocol error: BadMatch (invalid
1402 parameter attributes) on protocol request 93'.
1403
1404 This comes from having an invalid X resource, such as
1405 emacs*Cursor: black
1406 (which is invalid because it specifies a color name for something
1407 that isn't a color.)
1408
1409 The fix is to correct your X resources.
1410
1411 *** Slow startup on X11R6 with X windows.
1412
1413 If Emacs takes two minutes to start up on X11R6, see if your X
1414 resources specify any Adobe fonts. That causes the type-1 font
1415 renderer to start up, even if the font you asked for is not a type-1
1416 font.
1417
1418 One way to avoid this problem is to eliminate the type-1 fonts from
1419 your font path, like this:
1420
1421 xset -fp /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/
1422
1423 *** Pull-down menus appear in the wrong place, in the toolkit version of Emacs.
1424
1425 An X resource of this form can cause the problem:
1426
1427 Emacs*geometry: 80x55+0+0
1428
1429 This resource is supposed to apply, and does apply, to the menus
1430 individually as well as to Emacs frames. If that is not what you
1431 want, rewrite the resource.
1432
1433 To check thoroughly for such resource specifications, use `xrdb
1434 -query' to see what resources the X server records, and also look at
1435 the user's ~/.Xdefaults and ~/.Xdefaults-* files.
1436
1437 *** Emacs running under X Windows does not handle mouse clicks.
1438 *** `emacs -geometry 80x20' finds a file named `80x20'.
1439
1440 One cause of such problems is having (setq term-file-prefix nil) in
1441 your .emacs file. Another cause is a bad value of EMACSLOADPATH in
1442 the environment.
1443
1444 *** Emacs fails to get default settings from X Windows server.
1445
1446 The X library in X11R4 has a bug; it interchanges the 2nd and 3rd
1447 arguments to XGetDefaults. Define the macro XBACKWARDS in config.h to
1448 tell Emacs to compensate for this.
1449
1450 I don't believe there is any way Emacs can determine for itself
1451 whether this problem is present on a given system.
1452
1453 *** X Windows doesn't work if DISPLAY uses a hostname.
1454
1455 People have reported kernel bugs in certain systems that cause Emacs
1456 not to work with X Windows if DISPLAY is set using a host name. But
1457 the problem does not occur if DISPLAY is set to `unix:0.0'. I think
1458 the bug has to do with SIGIO or FIONREAD.
1459
1460 You may be able to compensate for the bug by doing (set-input-mode nil nil).
1461 However, that has the disadvantage of turning off interrupts, so that
1462 you are unable to quit out of a Lisp program by typing C-g.
1463
1464 The easy way to do this is to put
1465
1466 (setq x-sigio-bug t)
1467
1468 in your site-init.el file.
1469
1470 *** Prevent double pastes in X
1471
1472 The problem: a region, such as a command, is pasted twice when you copy
1473 it with your mouse from GNU Emacs to an xterm or an RXVT shell in X.
1474 The solution: try the following in your X configuration file,
1475 /etc/X11/xorg.conf This should enable both PS/2 and USB mice for
1476 single copies. You do not need any other drivers or options.
1477
1478 Section "InputDevice"
1479 Identifier "Generic Mouse"
1480 Driver "mousedev"
1481 Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
1482 EndSection
1483
1484 * Runtime problems on character terminals
1485
1486 ** Emacs spontaneously displays "I-search: " at the bottom of the screen.
1487
1488 This means that Control-S/Control-Q (XON/XOFF) "flow control" is being
1489 used. C-s/C-q flow control is bad for Emacs editors because it takes
1490 away C-s and C-q as user commands. Since editors do not output long
1491 streams of text without user commands, there is no need for a
1492 user-issuable "stop output" command in an editor; therefore, a
1493 properly designed flow control mechanism would transmit all possible
1494 input characters without interference. Designing such a mechanism is
1495 easy, for a person with at least half a brain.
1496
1497 There are three possible reasons why flow control could be taking place:
1498
1499 1) Terminal has not been told to disable flow control
1500 2) Insufficient padding for the terminal in use
1501 3) Some sort of terminal concentrator or line switch is responsible
1502
1503 First of all, many terminals have a set-up mode which controls whether
1504 they generate XON/XOFF flow control characters. This must be set to
1505 "no XON/XOFF" in order for Emacs to work. Sometimes there is an
1506 escape sequence that the computer can send to turn flow control off
1507 and on. If so, perhaps the termcap `ti' string should turn flow
1508 control off, and the `te' string should turn it on.
1509
1510 Once the terminal has been told "no flow control", you may find it
1511 needs more padding. The amount of padding Emacs sends is controlled
1512 by the termcap entry for the terminal in use, and by the output baud
1513 rate as known by the kernel. The shell command `stty' will print
1514 your output baud rate; `stty' with suitable arguments will set it if
1515 it is wrong. Setting to a higher speed causes increased padding. If
1516 the results are wrong for the correct speed, there is probably a
1517 problem in the termcap entry. You must speak to a local Unix wizard
1518 to fix this. Perhaps you are just using the wrong terminal type.
1519
1520 For terminals that lack a "no flow control" mode, sometimes just
1521 giving lots of padding will prevent actual generation of flow control
1522 codes. You might as well try it.
1523
1524 If you are really unlucky, your terminal is connected to the computer
1525 through a concentrator which sends XON/XOFF flow control to the
1526 computer, or it insists on sending flow control itself no matter how
1527 much padding you give it. Unless you can figure out how to turn flow
1528 control off on this concentrator (again, refer to your local wizard),
1529 you are screwed! You should have the terminal or concentrator
1530 replaced with a properly designed one. In the mean time, some drastic
1531 measures can make Emacs semi-work.
1532
1533 You can make Emacs ignore C-s and C-q and let the operating system
1534 handle them. To do this on a per-session basis, just type M-x
1535 enable-flow-control RET. You will see a message that C-\ and C-^ are
1536 now translated to C-s and C-q. (Use the same command M-x
1537 enable-flow-control to turn *off* this special mode. It toggles flow
1538 control handling.)
1539
1540 If C-\ and C-^ are inconvenient for you (for example, if one of them
1541 is the escape character of your terminal concentrator), you can choose
1542 other characters by setting the variables flow-control-c-s-replacement
1543 and flow-control-c-q-replacement. But choose carefully, since all
1544 other control characters are already used by emacs.
1545
1546 IMPORTANT: if you type C-s by accident while flow control is enabled,
1547 Emacs output will freeze, and you will have to remember to type C-q in
1548 order to continue.
1549
1550 If you work in an environment where a majority of terminals of a
1551 certain type are flow control hobbled, you can use the function
1552 `enable-flow-control-on' to turn on this flow control avoidance scheme
1553 automatically. Here is an example:
1554
1555 (enable-flow-control-on "vt200" "vt300" "vt101" "vt131")
1556
1557 If this isn't quite correct (e.g. you have a mixture of flow-control hobbled
1558 and good vt200 terminals), you can still run enable-flow-control
1559 manually.
1560
1561 I have no intention of ever redesigning the Emacs command set for the
1562 assumption that terminals use C-s/C-q flow control. XON/XOFF flow
1563 control technique is a bad design, and terminals that need it are bad
1564 merchandise and should not be purchased. Now that X is becoming
1565 widespread, XON/XOFF seems to be on the way out. If you can get some
1566 use out of GNU Emacs on inferior terminals, more power to you, but I
1567 will not make Emacs worse for properly designed systems for the sake
1568 of inferior systems.
1569
1570 ** Control-S and Control-Q commands are ignored completely.
1571
1572 For some reason, your system is using brain-damaged C-s/C-q flow
1573 control despite Emacs's attempts to turn it off. Perhaps your
1574 terminal is connected to the computer through a concentrator
1575 that wants to use flow control.
1576
1577 You should first try to tell the concentrator not to use flow control.
1578 If you succeed in this, try making the terminal work without
1579 flow control, as described in the preceding section.
1580
1581 If that line of approach is not successful, map some other characters
1582 into C-s and C-q using keyboard-translate-table. The example above
1583 shows how to do this with C-^ and C-\.
1584
1585 ** Screen is updated wrong, but only on one kind of terminal.
1586
1587 This could mean that the termcap entry you are using for that
1588 terminal is wrong, or it could mean that Emacs has a bug handing
1589 the combination of features specified for that terminal.
1590
1591 The first step in tracking this down is to record what characters
1592 Emacs is sending to the terminal. Execute the Lisp expression
1593 (open-termscript "./emacs-script") to make Emacs write all
1594 terminal output into the file ~/emacs-script as well; then do
1595 what makes the screen update wrong, and look at the file
1596 and decode the characters using the manual for the terminal.
1597 There are several possibilities:
1598
1599 1) The characters sent are correct, according to the terminal manual.
1600
1601 In this case, there is no obvious bug in Emacs, and most likely you
1602 need more padding, or possibly the terminal manual is wrong.
1603
1604 2) The characters sent are incorrect, due to an obscure aspect
1605 of the terminal behavior not described in an obvious way
1606 by termcap.
1607
1608 This case is hard. It will be necessary to think of a way for
1609 Emacs to distinguish between terminals with this kind of behavior
1610 and other terminals that behave subtly differently but are
1611 classified the same by termcap; or else find an algorithm for
1612 Emacs to use that avoids the difference. Such changes must be
1613 tested on many kinds of terminals.
1614
1615 3) The termcap entry is wrong.
1616
1617 See the file etc/TERMS for information on changes
1618 that are known to be needed in commonly used termcap entries
1619 for certain terminals.
1620
1621 4) The characters sent are incorrect, and clearly cannot be
1622 right for any terminal with the termcap entry you were using.
1623
1624 This is unambiguously an Emacs bug, and can probably be fixed
1625 in termcap.c, tparam.c, term.c, scroll.c, cm.c or dispnew.c.
1626
1627 ** Control-S and Control-Q commands are ignored completely on a net connection.
1628
1629 Some versions of rlogin (and possibly telnet) do not pass flow
1630 control characters to the remote system to which they connect.
1631 On such systems, emacs on the remote system cannot disable flow
1632 control on the local system.
1633
1634 One way to cure this is to disable flow control on the local host
1635 (the one running rlogin, not the one running rlogind) using the
1636 stty command, before starting the rlogin process. On many systems,
1637 "stty start u stop u" will do this.
1638
1639 Some versions of tcsh will prevent even this from working. One way
1640 around this is to start another shell before starting rlogin, and
1641 issue the stty command to disable flow control from that shell.
1642
1643 If none of these methods work, the best solution is to type
1644 M-x enable-flow-control at the beginning of your emacs session, or
1645 if you expect the problem to continue, add a line such as the
1646 following to your .emacs (on the host running rlogind):
1647
1648 (enable-flow-control-on "vt200" "vt300" "vt101" "vt131")
1649
1650 See the entry about spontaneous display of I-search (above) for more
1651 info.
1652
1653 ** Output from Control-V is slow.
1654
1655 On many bit-map terminals, scrolling operations are fairly slow.
1656 Often the termcap entry for the type of terminal in use fails
1657 to inform Emacs of this. The two lines at the bottom of the screen
1658 before a Control-V command are supposed to appear at the top after
1659 the Control-V command. If Emacs thinks scrolling the lines is fast,
1660 it will scroll them to the top of the screen.
1661
1662 If scrolling is slow but Emacs thinks it is fast, the usual reason is
1663 that the termcap entry for the terminal you are using does not
1664 specify any padding time for the `al' and `dl' strings. Emacs
1665 concludes that these operations take only as much time as it takes to
1666 send the commands at whatever line speed you are using. You must
1667 fix the termcap entry to specify, for the `al' and `dl', as much
1668 time as the operations really take.
1669
1670 Currently Emacs thinks in terms of serial lines which send characters
1671 at a fixed rate, so that any operation which takes time for the
1672 terminal to execute must also be padded. With bit-map terminals
1673 operated across networks, often the network provides some sort of
1674 flow control so that padding is never needed no matter how slow
1675 an operation is. You must still specify a padding time if you want
1676 Emacs to realize that the operation takes a long time. This will
1677 cause padding characters to be sent unnecessarily, but they do
1678 not really cost much. They will be transmitted while the scrolling
1679 is happening and then discarded quickly by the terminal.
1680
1681 Most bit-map terminals provide commands for inserting or deleting
1682 multiple lines at once. Define the `AL' and `DL' strings in the
1683 termcap entry to say how to do these things, and you will have
1684 fast output without wasted padding characters. These strings should
1685 each contain a single %-spec saying how to send the number of lines
1686 to be scrolled. These %-specs are like those in the termcap
1687 `cm' string.
1688
1689 You should also define the `IC' and `DC' strings if your terminal
1690 has a command to insert or delete multiple characters. These
1691 take the number of positions to insert or delete as an argument.
1692
1693 A `cs' string to set the scrolling region will reduce the amount
1694 of motion you see on the screen when part of the screen is scrolled.
1695
1696 ** You type Control-H (Backspace) expecting to delete characters.
1697
1698 Put `stty dec' in your .login file and your problems will disappear
1699 after a day or two.
1700
1701 The choice of Backspace for erasure was based on confusion, caused by
1702 the fact that backspacing causes erasure (later, when you type another
1703 character) on most display terminals. But it is a mistake. Deletion
1704 of text is not the same thing as backspacing followed by failure to
1705 overprint. I do not wish to propagate this confusion by conforming
1706 to it.
1707
1708 For this reason, I believe `stty dec' is the right mode to use,
1709 and I have designed Emacs to go with that. If there were a thousand
1710 other control characters, I would define Control-h to delete as well;
1711 but there are not very many other control characters, and I think
1712 that providing the most mnemonic possible Help character is more
1713 important than adapting to people who don't use `stty dec'.
1714
1715 If you are obstinate about confusing buggy overprinting with deletion,
1716 you can redefine Backspace in your .emacs file:
1717 (global-set-key "\b" 'delete-backward-char)
1718 You can probably access help-command via f1.
1719
1720 ** Colors are not available on a tty or in xterm.
1721
1722 Emacs 21 supports colors on character terminals and terminal
1723 emulators, but this support relies on the terminfo or termcap database
1724 entry to specify that the display supports color. Emacs looks at the
1725 "Co" capability for the terminal to find out how many colors are
1726 supported; it should be non-zero to activate the color support within
1727 Emacs. (Most color terminals support 8 or 16 colors.) If your system
1728 uses terminfo, the name of the capability equivalent to "Co" is
1729 "colors".
1730
1731 In addition to the "Co" capability, Emacs needs the "op" (for
1732 ``original pair'') capability, which tells how to switch the terminal
1733 back to the default foreground and background colors. Emacs will not
1734 use colors if this capability is not defined. If your terminal entry
1735 doesn't provide such a capability, try using the ANSI standard escape
1736 sequence \E[00m (that is, define a new termcap/terminfo entry and make
1737 it use your current terminal's entry plus \E[00m for the "op"
1738 capability).
1739
1740 Finally, the "NC" capability (terminfo name: "ncv") tells Emacs which
1741 attributes cannot be used with colors. Setting this capability
1742 incorrectly might have the effect of disabling colors; try setting
1743 this capability to `0' (zero) and see if that helps.
1744
1745 Emacs uses the database entry for the terminal whose name is the value
1746 of the environment variable TERM. With `xterm', a common terminal
1747 entry that supports color is `xterm-color', so setting TERM's value to
1748 `xterm-color' might activate the color support on an xterm-compatible
1749 emulator.
1750
1751 Beginning with version 22.1, Emacs supports the --color command-line
1752 option which may be used to force Emacs to use one of a few popular
1753 modes for getting colors on a tty. For example, --color=ansi8 sets up
1754 for using the ANSI-standard escape sequences that support 8 colors.
1755
1756 Some modes do not use colors unless you turn on the Font-lock mode.
1757 Some people have long ago set their `~/.emacs' files to turn on
1758 Font-lock on X only, so they won't see colors on a tty. The
1759 recommended way of turning on Font-lock is by typing "M-x
1760 global-font-lock-mode RET" or by customizing the variable
1761 `global-font-lock-mode'.
1762
1763 * Runtime problems specific to individual Unix variants
1764
1765 ** GNU/Linux
1766
1767 *** GNU/Linux: Process output is corrupted.
1768
1769 There is a bug in Linux kernel 2.6.10 PTYs that can cause emacs to
1770 read corrupted process output.
1771
1772 *** GNU/Linux: Remote access to CVS with SSH causes file corruption.
1773
1774 If you access a remote CVS repository via SSH, files may be corrupted
1775 due to bad interaction between CVS, SSH, and libc.
1776
1777 To fix the problem, save the following script into a file, make it
1778 executable, and set CVS_RSH environment variable to the file name of
1779 the script:
1780
1781 #!/bin/bash
1782 exec 2> >(exec cat >&2 2>/dev/null)
1783 exec ssh "$@"
1784
1785 *** GNU/Linux: On Linux-based GNU systems using libc versions 5.4.19 through
1786 5.4.22, Emacs crashes at startup with a segmentation fault.
1787
1788 This problem happens if libc defines the symbol __malloc_initialized.
1789 One known solution is to upgrade to a newer libc version. 5.4.33 is
1790 known to work.
1791
1792 *** GNU/Linux: After upgrading to a newer version of Emacs,
1793 the Meta key stops working.
1794
1795 This was reported to happen on a GNU/Linux system distributed by
1796 Mandrake. The reason is that the previous version of Emacs was
1797 modified by Mandrake to make the Alt key act as the Meta key, on a
1798 keyboard where the Windows key is the one which produces the Meta
1799 modifier. A user who started using a newer version of Emacs, which
1800 was not hacked by Mandrake, expected the Alt key to continue to act as
1801 Meta, and was astonished when that didn't happen.
1802
1803 The solution is to find out what key on your keyboard produces the Meta
1804 modifier, and use that key instead. Try all of the keys to the left
1805 and to the right of the space bar, together with the `x' key, and see
1806 which combination produces "M-x" in the echo area. You can also use
1807 the `xmodmap' utility to show all the keys which produce a Meta
1808 modifier:
1809
1810 xmodmap -pk | egrep -i "meta|alt"
1811
1812 A more convenient way of finding out which keys produce a Meta modifier
1813 is to use the `xkbprint' utility, if it's available on your system:
1814
1815 xkbprint 0:0 /tmp/k.ps
1816
1817 This produces a PostScript file `/tmp/k.ps' with a picture of your
1818 keyboard; printing that file on a PostScript printer will show what
1819 keys can serve as Meta.
1820
1821 The `xkeycaps' also shows a visual representation of the current
1822 keyboard settings. It also allows to modify them.
1823
1824 *** GNU/Linux: slow startup on Linux-based GNU systems.
1825
1826 People using systems based on the Linux kernel sometimes report that
1827 startup takes 10 to 15 seconds longer than `usual'.
1828
1829 This is because Emacs looks up the host name when it starts.
1830 Normally, this takes negligible time; the extra delay is due to
1831 improper system configuration. This problem can occur for both
1832 networked and non-networked machines.
1833
1834 Here is how to fix the configuration. It requires being root.
1835
1836 **** Networked Case.
1837
1838 First, make sure the files `/etc/hosts' and `/etc/host.conf' both
1839 exist. The first line in the `/etc/hosts' file should look like this
1840 (replace HOSTNAME with your host name):
1841
1842 127.0.0.1 HOSTNAME
1843
1844 Also make sure that the `/etc/host.conf' files contains the following
1845 lines:
1846
1847 order hosts, bind
1848 multi on
1849
1850 Any changes, permanent and temporary, to the host name should be
1851 indicated in the `/etc/hosts' file, since it acts a limited local
1852 database of addresses and names (e.g., some SLIP connections
1853 dynamically allocate ip addresses).
1854
1855 **** Non-Networked Case.
1856
1857 The solution described in the networked case applies here as well.
1858 However, if you never intend to network your machine, you can use a
1859 simpler solution: create an empty `/etc/host.conf' file. The command
1860 `touch /etc/host.conf' suffices to create the file. The `/etc/hosts'
1861 file is not necessary with this approach.
1862
1863 *** GNU/Linux: Emacs on a tty switches the cursor to large blinking block.
1864
1865 This was reported to happen on some GNU/Linux systems which use
1866 ncurses version 5.0, but could be relevant for other versions as well.
1867 These versions of ncurses come with a `linux' terminfo entry, where
1868 the "cvvis" capability (termcap "vs") is defined as "\E[?25h\E[?8c"
1869 (show cursor, change size). This escape sequence switches on a
1870 blinking hardware text-mode cursor whose size is a full character
1871 cell. This blinking cannot be stopped, since a hardware cursor
1872 always blinks.
1873
1874 A work-around is to redefine the "cvvis" capability so that it
1875 enables a *software* cursor. The software cursor works by inverting
1876 the colors of the character at point, so what you see is a block
1877 cursor that doesn't blink. For this to work, you need to redefine
1878 the "cnorm" capability as well, so that it operates on the software
1879 cursor instead of the hardware cursor.
1880
1881 To this end, run "infocmp linux > linux-term", edit the file
1882 `linux-term' to make both the "cnorm" and "cvvis" capabilities send
1883 the sequence "\E[?25h\E[?17;0;64c", and then run "tic linux-term" to
1884 produce a modified terminfo entry.
1885
1886 Alternatively, if you want a blinking underscore as your Emacs cursor,
1887 change the "cvvis" capability to send the "\E[?25h\E[?0c" command.
1888
1889 *** GNU/Linux: Error messages `internal facep []' happen on GNU/Linux systems.
1890
1891 There is a report that replacing libc.so.5.0.9 with libc.so.5.2.16
1892 caused this to start happening. People are not sure why, but the
1893 problem seems unlikely to be in Emacs itself. Some suspect that it
1894 is actually Xlib which won't work with libc.so.5.2.16.
1895
1896 Using the old library version is a workaround.
1897
1898 ** FreeBSD
1899
1900 *** FreeBSD 2.1.5: useless symbolic links remain in /tmp or other
1901 directories that have the +t bit.
1902
1903 This is because of a kernel bug in FreeBSD 2.1.5 (fixed in 2.2).
1904 Emacs uses symbolic links to implement file locks. In a directory
1905 with +t bit, the directory owner becomes the owner of the symbolic
1906 link, so that it cannot be removed by anyone else.
1907
1908 If you don't like those useless links, you can let Emacs not to using
1909 file lock by adding #undef CLASH_DETECTION to config.h.
1910
1911 *** FreeBSD: Getting a Meta key on the console.
1912
1913 By default, neither Alt nor any other key acts as a Meta key on
1914 FreeBSD, but this can be changed using kbdcontrol(1). Dump the
1915 current keymap to a file with the command
1916
1917 $ kbdcontrol -d >emacs.kbd
1918
1919 Edit emacs.kbd, and give the key you want to be the Meta key the
1920 definition `meta'. For instance, if your keyboard has a ``Windows''
1921 key with scan code 105, change the line for scan code 105 in emacs.kbd
1922 to look like this
1923
1924 105 meta meta meta meta meta meta meta meta O
1925
1926 to make the Windows key the Meta key. Load the new keymap with
1927
1928 $ kbdcontrol -l emacs.kbd
1929
1930 ** HP-UX
1931
1932 *** HP/UX : Shell mode gives the message, "`tty`: Ambiguous".
1933
1934 christos@theory.tn.cornell.edu says:
1935
1936 The problem is that in your .cshrc you have something that tries to
1937 execute `tty`. If you are not running the shell on a real tty then
1938 tty will print "not a tty". Csh expects one word in some places,
1939 but tty is giving it back 3.
1940
1941 The solution is to add a pair of quotes around `tty` to make it a single
1942 word:
1943
1944 if (`tty` == "/dev/console")
1945
1946 should be changed to:
1947
1948 if ("`tty`" == "/dev/console")
1949
1950 Even better, move things that set up terminal sections out of .cshrc
1951 and into .login.
1952
1953 *** HP/UX: `Pid xxx killed due to text modification or page I/O error'.
1954
1955 On HP/UX, you can get that error when the Emacs executable is on an NFS
1956 file system. HP/UX responds this way if it tries to swap in a page and
1957 does not get a response from the server within a timeout whose default
1958 value is just ten seconds.
1959
1960 If this happens to you, extend the timeout period.
1961
1962 *** HP/UX: The right Alt key works wrong on German HP keyboards (and perhaps
1963 other non-English HP keyboards too).
1964
1965 This is because HP-UX defines the modifiers wrong in X. Here is a
1966 shell script to fix the problem; be sure that it is run after VUE
1967 configures the X server.
1968
1969 xmodmap 2> /dev/null - << EOF
1970 keysym Alt_L = Meta_L
1971 keysym Alt_R = Meta_R
1972 EOF
1973
1974 xmodmap - << EOF
1975 clear mod1
1976 keysym Mode_switch = NoSymbol
1977 add mod1 = Meta_L
1978 keysym Meta_R = Mode_switch
1979 add mod2 = Mode_switch
1980 EOF
1981
1982 *** HP/UX: "Cannot find callback list" messages from dialog boxes in
1983 Emacs built with Motif.
1984
1985 This problem resulted from a bug in GCC 2.4.5. Newer GCC versions
1986 such as 2.7.0 fix the problem.
1987
1988 *** HP/UX: Emacs does not recognize the AltGr key.
1989
1990 To fix this, set up a file ~/.dt/sessions/sessionetc with executable
1991 rights, containing this text:
1992
1993 --------------------------------
1994 xmodmap 2> /dev/null - << EOF
1995 keysym Alt_L = Meta_L
1996 keysym Alt_R = Meta_R
1997 EOF
1998
1999 xmodmap - << EOF
2000 clear mod1
2001 keysym Mode_switch = NoSymbol
2002 add mod1 = Meta_L
2003 keysym Meta_R = Mode_switch
2004 add mod2 = Mode_switch
2005 EOF
2006 --------------------------------
2007
2008 *** HP/UX 11.0: Emacs makes HP/UX 11.0 crash.
2009
2010 This is a bug in HPUX; HPUX patch PHKL_16260 is said to fix it.
2011
2012 ** AIX
2013
2014 *** AIX: Trouble using ptys.
2015
2016 People often install the pty devices on AIX incorrectly.
2017 Use `smit pty' to reinstall them properly.
2018
2019 *** AIXterm: Your Delete key sends a Backspace to the terminal.
2020
2021 The solution is to include in your .Xdefaults the lines:
2022
2023 *aixterm.Translations: #override <Key>BackSpace: string(0x7f)
2024 aixterm*ttyModes: erase ^?
2025
2026 This makes your Backspace key send DEL (ASCII 127).
2027
2028 *** AIX: If linking fails because libXbsd isn't found, check if you
2029 are compiling with the system's `cc' and CFLAGS containing `-O5'. If
2030 so, you have hit a compiler bug. Please make sure to re-configure
2031 Emacs so that it isn't compiled with `-O5'.
2032
2033 *** AIX 4.3.x or 4.4: Compiling fails.
2034
2035 This could happen if you use /bin/c89 as your compiler, instead of
2036 the default `cc'. /bin/c89 treats certain warnings, such as benign
2037 redefinitions of macros, as errors, and fails the build. A solution
2038 is to use the default compiler `cc'.
2039
2040 *** AIX 4: Some programs fail when run in a Shell buffer
2041 with an error message like No terminfo entry for "unknown".
2042
2043 On AIX, many terminal type definitions are not installed by default.
2044 `unknown' is one of them. Install the "Special Generic Terminal
2045 Definitions" to make them defined.
2046
2047 ** Solaris
2048
2049 We list bugs in current versions here. Solaris 2.x and 4.x are covered in the
2050 section on legacy systems.
2051
2052 *** On Solaris, C-x doesn't get through to Emacs when you use the console.
2053
2054 This is a Solaris feature (at least on Intel x86 cpus). Type C-r
2055 C-r C-t, to toggle whether C-x gets through to Emacs.
2056
2057 *** Problem with remote X server on Suns.
2058
2059 On a Sun, running Emacs on one machine with the X server on another
2060 may not work if you have used the unshared system libraries. This
2061 is because the unshared libraries fail to use YP for host name lookup.
2062 As a result, the host name you specify may not be recognized.
2063
2064 *** Solaris 2,6: Emacs crashes with SIGBUS or SIGSEGV on Solaris after you delete a frame.
2065
2066 We suspect that this is a bug in the X libraries provided by
2067 Sun. There is a report that one of these patches fixes the bug and
2068 makes the problem stop:
2069
2070 105216-01 105393-01 105518-01 105621-01 105665-01 105615-02 105216-02
2071 105667-01 105401-08 105615-03 105621-02 105686-02 105736-01 105755-03
2072 106033-01 105379-01 105786-01 105181-04 105379-03 105786-04 105845-01
2073 105284-05 105669-02 105837-01 105837-02 105558-01 106125-02 105407-01
2074
2075 Another person using a newer system (kernel patch level Generic_105181-06)
2076 suspects that the bug was fixed by one of these more recent patches:
2077
2078 106040-07 SunOS 5.6: X Input & Output Method patch
2079 106222-01 OpenWindows 3.6: filemgr (ff.core) fixes
2080 105284-12 Motif 1.2.7: sparc Runtime library patch
2081
2082 *** Solaris 7 or 8: Emacs reports a BadAtom error (from X)
2083
2084 This happens when Emacs was built on some other version of Solaris.
2085 Rebuild it on Solaris 8.
2086
2087 *** When using M-x dbx with the SparcWorks debugger, the `up' and `down'
2088 commands do not move the arrow in Emacs.
2089
2090 You can fix this by adding the following line to `~/.dbxinit':
2091
2092 dbxenv output_short_file_name off
2093
2094 *** On Solaris, CTRL-t is ignored by Emacs when you use
2095 the fr.ISO-8859-15 locale (and maybe other related locales).
2096
2097 You can fix this by editing the file:
2098
2099 /usr/openwin/lib/locale/iso8859-15/Compose
2100
2101 Near the bottom there is a line that reads:
2102
2103 Ctrl<t> <quotedbl> <Y> : "\276" threequarters
2104
2105 that should read:
2106
2107 Ctrl<T> <quotedbl> <Y> : "\276" threequarters
2108
2109 Note the lower case <t>. Changing this line should make C-t work.
2110
2111 *** On Solaris, Emacs fails to set menu-bar-update-hook on startup, with error
2112 "Error in menu-bar-update-hook: (error Point before start of properties)".
2113 This seems to be a GCC optimization bug that occurs for GCC 4.1.2 (-g
2114 and -g -O2) and GCC 4.2.3 (-g -O and -g -O2). You can fix this by
2115 compiling with GCC 4.2.3 or CC 5.7, with no optimizations.
2116
2117 ** Irix
2118
2119 *** Irix 6.5: Emacs crashes on the SGI R10K, when compiled with GCC.
2120
2121 This seems to be fixed in GCC 2.95.
2122
2123 *** Irix: Trouble using ptys, or running out of ptys.
2124
2125 The program mkpts (which may be in `/usr/adm' or `/usr/sbin') needs to
2126 be set-UID to root, or non-root programs like Emacs will not be able
2127 to allocate ptys reliably.
2128
2129 * Runtime problems specific to MS-Windows
2130
2131 ** Windows 95 and networking.
2132
2133 To support server sockets, Emacs 22.1 loads ws2_32.dll. If this file
2134 is missing, all Emacs networking features are disabled.
2135
2136 Old versions of Windows 95 may not have the required DLL. To use
2137 Emacs' networking features on Windows 95, you must install the
2138 "Windows Socket 2" update available from MicroSoft's support Web.
2139
2140 ** Emacs exits with "X protocol error" when run with an X server for MS-Windows.
2141
2142 A certain X server for Windows had a bug which caused this.
2143 Supposedly the newer 32-bit version of this server doesn't have the
2144 problem.
2145
2146 ** Emacs crashes when opening a file with a UNC path and rails-mode is loaded.
2147
2148 Loading rails-mode seems to interfere with UNC path handling. This has been
2149 reported as a bug against both Emacs and rails-mode, so look for an updated
2150 rails-mode that avoids this crash, or avoid using UNC paths if using
2151 rails-mode.
2152
2153 ** Known problems with the MS-Windows port of Emacs 22.3
2154
2155 M-x term does not work on MS-Windows. TTY emulation on Windows is
2156 undocumented, and programs such as stty which are used on posix platforms
2157 to control tty emulation do not exist for native windows terminals.
2158
2159 Using create-fontset-from-ascii-font or the --font startup parameter
2160 with a Chinese, Japanese or Korean font leads to display problems.
2161 Use a Latin-only font as your default font. If you want control over
2162 which font is used to display Chinese, Japanese or Korean character,
2163 use create-fontset-from-fontset-spec to define a fontset.
2164
2165 Frames are not refreshed while the File or Font dialog or a pop-up menu
2166 is displayed. This also means help text for pop-up menus is not
2167 displayed at all. This is because message handling under Windows is
2168 synchronous, so we cannot handle repaint (or any other) messages while
2169 waiting for a system function to return the result of the dialog or
2170 pop-up menu interaction.
2171
2172 Windows 95 and Windows NT up to version 4.0 do not support help text
2173 for menus. Help text is only available in later versions of Windows.
2174
2175 When "ClearType" method is selected as the "method to smooth edges of
2176 screen fonts" (in Display Properties, Appearance tab, under
2177 "Effects"), there are various problems related to display of
2178 characters: Bold fonts can be hard to read, small portions of some
2179 characters could appear chopped, etc. This happens because, under
2180 ClearType, characters are drawn outside their advertised bounding box.
2181 Emacs 21 disabled the use of ClearType, whereas Emacs 22 allows it and
2182 has some code to enlarge the width of the bounding box. Apparently,
2183 this display feature needs more changes to get it 100% right. A
2184 workaround is to disable ClearType.
2185
2186 There are problems with display if mouse-tracking is enabled and the
2187 mouse is moved off a frame, over another frame then back over the first
2188 frame. A workaround is to click the left mouse button inside the frame
2189 after moving back into it.
2190
2191 Some minor flickering still persists during mouse-tracking, although
2192 not as severely as in 21.1.
2193
2194 An inactive cursor remains in an active window after the Windows
2195 Manager driven switch of the focus, until a key is pressed.
2196
2197 Windows input methods are not recognized by Emacs. However, some
2198 of these input methods cause the keyboard to send characters encoded
2199 in the appropriate coding system (e.g., ISO 8859-1 for Latin-1
2200 characters, ISO 8859-8 for Hebrew characters, etc.). To make these
2201 input methods work with Emacs, set the keyboard coding system to the
2202 appropriate value after you activate the Windows input method. For
2203 example, if you activate the Hebrew input method, type this:
2204
2205 C-x RET k hebrew-iso-8bit RET
2206
2207 (Emacs ought to recognize the Windows language-change event and set up
2208 the appropriate keyboard encoding automatically, but it doesn't do
2209 that yet.) In addition, to use these Windows input methods, you
2210 should set your "Language for non-Unicode programs" (on Windows XP,
2211 this is on the Advanced tab of Regional Settings) to the language of
2212 the input method.
2213
2214 To bind keys that produce non-ASCII characters with modifiers, you
2215 must specify raw byte codes. For instance, if you want to bind
2216 META-a-grave to a command, you need to specify this in your `~/.emacs':
2217
2218 (global-set-key [?\M-\340] ...)
2219
2220 The above example is for the Latin-1 environment where the byte code
2221 of the encoded a-grave is 340 octal. For other environments, use the
2222 encoding appropriate to that environment.
2223
2224 The %b specifier for format-time-string does not produce abbreviated
2225 month names with consistent widths for some locales on some versions
2226 of Windows. This is caused by a deficiency in the underlying system
2227 library function.
2228
2229 The function set-time-zone-rule gives incorrect results for many
2230 non-US timezones. This is due to over-simplistic handling of
2231 daylight savings switchovers by the Windows libraries.
2232
2233 Files larger than 4GB cause overflow in the size (represented as a
2234 32-bit integer) reported by `file-attributes'. This affects Dired as
2235 well, since the Windows port uses a Lisp emulation of `ls' that relies
2236 on `file-attributes'.
2237
2238 Sound playing is not supported with the `:data DATA' key-value pair.
2239 You _must_ use the `:file FILE' method.
2240
2241 ** Typing Alt-Shift has strange effects on MS-Windows.
2242
2243 This combination of keys is a command to change keyboard layout. If
2244 you proceed to type another non-modifier key before you let go of Alt
2245 and Shift, the Alt and Shift act as modifiers in the usual way. A
2246 more permanent work around is to change it to another key combination,
2247 or disable it in the "Regional and Language Options" applet of the
2248 Control Panel. (The exact sequence of mouse clicks in the "Regional
2249 and Language Options" applet needed to find the key combination that
2250 changes the keyboard layout depends on your Windows version; for XP,
2251 in the Languages tab, click "Details" and then "Key Settings".)
2252
2253 ** Cygwin build of Emacs hangs after rebasing Cygwin DLLs
2254
2255 Usually, on Cygwin, one needs to rebase the DLLs if an application
2256 aborts with a message like this:
2257
2258 C:\cygwin\bin\python.exe: *** unable to remap C:\cygwin\bin\cygssl.dll to
2259 same address as parent(0xDF0000) != 0xE00000
2260
2261 However, since Cygwin DLL 1.5.17 was released, after such rebasing,
2262 Emacs hangs.
2263
2264 This was reported to happen for Emacs 21.2 and also for the pretest of
2265 Emacs 22.1 on Cygwin.
2266
2267 To work around this, build Emacs like this:
2268
2269 LDFLAGS='-Wl,--enable-auto-import -Wl,--enable-auto-image-base' ./configure
2270 make LD='$(CC)'
2271 make LD='$(CC)' install
2272
2273 This produces an Emacs binary that is independent of rebasing.
2274
2275 Note that you _must_ use LD='$(CC)' in the last two commands above, to
2276 prevent GCC from passing the "--image-base 0x20000000" option to the
2277 linker, which is what it does by default. That option produces an
2278 Emacs binary with the base address 0x20000000, which will cause Emacs
2279 to hang after Cygwin DLLs are rebased.
2280
2281 ** Interrupting Cygwin port of Bash from Emacs doesn't work.
2282
2283 Cygwin 1.x builds of the ported Bash cannot be interrupted from the
2284 MS-Windows version of Emacs. This is due to some change in the Bash
2285 port or in the Cygwin library which apparently make Bash ignore the
2286 keyboard interrupt event sent by Emacs to Bash. (Older Cygwin ports
2287 of Bash, up to b20.1, did receive SIGINT from Emacs.)
2288
2289 ** Accessing remote files with ange-ftp hangs the MS-Windows version of Emacs.
2290
2291 If the FTP client is the Cygwin port of GNU `ftp', this appears to be
2292 due to some bug in the Cygwin DLL or some incompatibility between it
2293 and the implementation of asynchronous subprocesses in the Windows
2294 port of Emacs. Specifically, some parts of the FTP server responses
2295 are not flushed out, apparently due to buffering issues, which
2296 confuses ange-ftp.
2297
2298 The solution is to downgrade to an older version of the Cygwin DLL
2299 (version 1.3.2 was reported to solve the problem), or use the stock
2300 Windows FTP client, usually found in the `C:\WINDOWS' or 'C:\WINNT'
2301 directory. To force ange-ftp use the stock Windows client, set the
2302 variable `ange-ftp-ftp-program-name' to the absolute file name of the
2303 client's executable. For example:
2304
2305 (setq ange-ftp-ftp-program-name "c:/windows/ftp.exe")
2306
2307 If you want to stick with the Cygwin FTP client, you can work around
2308 this problem by putting this in your `.emacs' file:
2309
2310 (setq ange-ftp-ftp-program-args '("-i" "-n" "-g" "-v" "--prompt" "")
2311
2312 ** lpr commands don't work on MS-Windows with some cheap printers.
2313
2314 This problem may also strike other platforms, but the solution is
2315 likely to be a global one, and not Emacs specific.
2316
2317 Many cheap inkjet, and even some cheap laser printers, do not
2318 print plain text anymore, they will only print through graphical
2319 printer drivers. A workaround on MS-Windows is to use Windows' basic
2320 built in editor to print (this is possibly the only useful purpose it
2321 has):
2322
2323 (setq printer-name "") ;; notepad takes the default
2324 (setq lpr-command "notepad") ;; notepad
2325 (setq lpr-switches nil) ;; not needed
2326 (setq lpr-printer-switch "/P") ;; run notepad as batch printer
2327
2328 ** Antivirus software interacts badly with the MS-Windows version of Emacs.
2329
2330 The usual manifestation of these problems is that subprocesses don't
2331 work or even wedge the entire system. In particular, "M-x shell RET"
2332 was reported to fail to work. But other commands also sometimes don't
2333 work when an antivirus package is installed.
2334
2335 The solution is to switch the antivirus software to a less aggressive
2336 mode (e.g., disable the ``auto-protect'' feature), or even uninstall
2337 or disable it entirely.
2338
2339 ** Pressing the mouse button on MS-Windows does not give a mouse-2 event.
2340
2341 This is usually a problem with the mouse driver. Because most Windows
2342 programs do not do anything useful with the middle mouse button, many
2343 mouse drivers allow you to define the wheel press to do something
2344 different. Some drivers do not even have the option to generate a
2345 middle button press. In such cases, setting the wheel press to
2346 "scroll" sometimes works if you press the button twice. Trying a
2347 generic mouse driver might help.
2348
2349 ** Scrolling the mouse wheel on MS-Windows always scrolls the top window.
2350
2351 This is another common problem with mouse drivers. Instead of
2352 generating scroll events, some mouse drivers try to fake scroll bar
2353 movement. But they are not intelligent enough to handle multiple
2354 scroll bars within a frame. Trying a generic mouse driver might help.
2355
2356 ** Mail sent through Microsoft Exchange in some encodings appears to be
2357 mangled and is not seen correctly in Rmail or Gnus. We don't know
2358 exactly what happens, but it isn't an Emacs problem in cases we've
2359 seen.
2360
2361 ** On MS-Windows, you cannot use the right-hand ALT key and the left-hand
2362 CTRL key together to type a Control-Meta character.
2363
2364 This is a consequence of a misfeature beyond Emacs's control.
2365
2366 Under Windows, the AltGr key on international keyboards generates key
2367 events with the modifiers Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl. Since Emacs cannot
2368 distinguish AltGr from an explicit Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl
2369 combination, whenever it sees Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl it assumes that
2370 AltGr has been pressed. The variable `w32-recognize-altgr' can be set
2371 to nil to tell Emacs that AltGr is really Ctrl and Alt.
2372
2373 ** Under some X-servers running on MS-Windows, Emacs' display is incorrect.
2374
2375 The symptoms are that Emacs does not completely erase blank areas of the
2376 screen during scrolling or some other screen operations (e.g., selective
2377 display or when killing a region). M-x recenter will cause the screen
2378 to be completely redisplayed and the "extra" characters will disappear.
2379
2380 This is known to occur under Exceed 6, and possibly earlier versions
2381 as well; it is reportedly solved in version 6.2.0.16 and later. The
2382 problem lies in the X-server settings.
2383
2384 There are reports that you can solve the problem with Exceed by
2385 running `Xconfig' from within NT, choosing "X selection", then
2386 un-checking the boxes "auto-copy X selection" and "auto-paste to X
2387 selection".
2388
2389 Of this does not work, please inform bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org. Then
2390 please call support for your X-server and see if you can get a fix.
2391 If you do, please send it to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org so we can list it
2392 here.
2393
2394 * Build-time problems
2395
2396 ** Configuration
2397
2398 *** The `configure' script doesn't find the jpeg library.
2399
2400 There are reports that this happens on some systems because the linker
2401 by default only looks for shared libraries, but jpeg distribution by
2402 default only installs a nonshared version of the library, `libjpeg.a'.
2403
2404 If this is the problem, you can configure the jpeg library with the
2405 `--enable-shared' option and then rebuild libjpeg. This produces a
2406 shared version of libjpeg, which you need to install. Finally, rerun
2407 the Emacs configure script, which should now find the jpeg library.
2408 Alternatively, modify the generated src/Makefile to link the .a file
2409 explicitly, and edit src/config.h to define HAVE_JPEG.
2410
2411 *** `configure' warns ``accepted by the compiler, rejected by the preprocessor''.
2412
2413 This indicates a mismatch between the C compiler and preprocessor that
2414 configure is using. For example, on Solaris 10 trying to use
2415 CC=/opt/SUNWspro/bin/cc (the Sun Studio compiler) together with
2416 CPP=/usr/ccs/lib/cpp can result in errors of this form (you may also
2417 see the error ``"/usr/include/sys/isa_defs.h", line 500: undefined control'').
2418
2419 The solution is to tell configure to use the correct C preprocessor
2420 for your C compiler (CPP="/opt/SUNWspro/bin/cc -E" in the above
2421 example).
2422
2423 *** `configure' fails with ``"junk.c", line 660: invalid input token: 8.elc''
2424
2425 The final stage of the Emacs configure process uses the C preprocessor
2426 to generate the Makefiles. Errors of this form can occur if the C
2427 preprocessor inserts extra whitespace into its output. The solution
2428 is to find the switches that stop your preprocessor from inserting extra
2429 whitespace, add them to CPPFLAGS, and re-run configure. For example,
2430 this error can occur on Solaris 10 when using the Sun Studio compiler
2431 ``Sun C 5.8'' with its preprocessor CPP="/opt/SUNWspro/bin/cc -E".
2432 The relevant switch in this case is "-Xs" (``compile assuming
2433 (pre-ANSI) K & R C style code'').
2434
2435 ** Compilation
2436
2437 *** Building Emacs over NFS fails with ``Text file busy''.
2438
2439 This was reported to happen when building Emacs on a GNU/Linux system
2440 (Red Hat Linux 6.2) using a build directory automounted from Solaris
2441 (SunOS 5.6) file server, but it might not be limited to that
2442 configuration alone. Presumably, the NFS server doesn't commit the
2443 files' data to disk quickly enough, and the Emacs executable file is
2444 left ``busy'' for several seconds after Emacs has finished dumping
2445 itself. This causes the subsequent commands which invoke the dumped
2446 Emacs executable to fail with the above message.
2447
2448 In some of these cases, a time skew between the NFS server and the
2449 machine where Emacs is built is detected and reported by GNU Make
2450 (it says that some of the files have modification time in the future).
2451 This might be a symptom of NFS-related problems.
2452
2453 If the NFS server runs on Solaris, apply the Solaris patch 105379-05
2454 (Sunos 5.6: /kernel/misc/nfssrv patch). If that doesn't work, or if
2455 you have a different version of the OS or the NFS server, you can
2456 force the NFS server to use 1KB blocks, which was reported to fix the
2457 problem albeit at a price of slowing down file I/O. You can force 1KB
2458 blocks by specifying the "-o rsize=1024,wsize=1024" options to the
2459 `mount' command, or by adding ",rsize=1024,wsize=1024" to the mount
2460 options in the appropriate system configuration file, such as
2461 `/etc/auto.home'.
2462
2463 Alternatively, when Make fails due to this problem, you could wait for
2464 a few seconds and then invoke Make again. In one particular case,
2465 waiting for 10 or more seconds between the two Make invocations seemed
2466 to work around the problem.
2467
2468 Similar problems can happen if your machine NFS-mounts a directory
2469 onto itself. Suppose the Emacs sources live in `/usr/local/src' and
2470 you are working on the host called `marvin'. Then an entry in the
2471 `/etc/fstab' file like the following is asking for trouble:
2472
2473 marvin:/usr/local/src /usr/local/src ...options.omitted...
2474
2475 The solution is to remove this line from `etc/fstab'.
2476
2477 *** Building Emacs with GCC 2.9x fails in the `src' directory.
2478
2479 This may happen if you use a development version of GNU `cpp' from one
2480 of the GCC snapshots between Oct 2000 and Feb 2001, or from a released
2481 version of GCC newer than 2.95.2 which was prepared around those
2482 dates; similar problems were reported with some snapshots of GCC 3.1
2483 around Sep 30 2001. The preprocessor in those versions is
2484 incompatible with a traditional Unix cpp (e.g., it expands ".." into
2485 ". .", which breaks relative file names that reference the parent
2486 directory; or inserts TAB characters before lines that set Make
2487 variables).
2488
2489 The solution is to make sure the preprocessor is run with the
2490 `-traditional' option. The `configure' script does that automatically
2491 when it detects the known problems in your cpp, but you might hit some
2492 unknown ones. To force the `configure' script to use `-traditional',
2493 run the script like this:
2494
2495 CPP='gcc -E -traditional' ./configure ...
2496
2497 (replace the ellipsis "..." with any additional arguments you pass to
2498 the script).
2499
2500 Note that this problem does not pertain to the MS-Windows port of
2501 Emacs, since it doesn't use the preprocessor to generate Makefiles.
2502
2503 *** src/Makefile and lib-src/Makefile are truncated--most of the file missing.
2504 *** Compiling wakeup, in lib-src, says it can't make wakeup.c.
2505
2506 This can happen if configure uses GNU sed version 2.03. That version
2507 had a bug. GNU sed version 2.05 works properly.To solve the
2508 problem, install the current version of GNU Sed, then rerun Emacs's
2509 configure script.
2510
2511 *** Compiling lib-src says there is no rule to make test-distrib.c.
2512
2513 This results from a bug in a VERY old version of GNU Sed. To solve
2514 the problem, install the current version of GNU Sed, then rerun
2515 Emacs's configure script.
2516
2517 *** Building a 32-bit executable on a 64-bit GNU/Linux architecture.
2518
2519 First ensure that the necessary 32-bit system libraries and include
2520 files are installed. Then use:
2521
2522 env CC="gcc -m32" ./configure --build=i386-linux-gnu \
2523 --x-libraries=/usr/X11R6/lib
2524
2525 (using the location of the 32-bit X libraries on your system).
2526
2527 *** Building the Cygwin port for MS-Windows can fail with some GCC versions
2528
2529 Building Emacs 22 with Cygwin builds of GCC 3.4.4-1 and 3.4.4-2 is
2530 reported to either fail or cause Emacs to segfault at run time. In
2531 addition, the Cygwin GCC 3.4.4-2 has problems with generating debug
2532 info. Cygwin users are advised not to use these versions of GCC for
2533 compiling Emacs. GCC versions 4.0.3, 4.0.4, 4.1.1, and 4.1.2
2534 reportedly build a working Cygwin binary of Emacs, so we recommend
2535 these GCC versions. Note that these versions of GCC, 4.0.3, 4.0.4,
2536 4.1.1, and 4.1.2, are currently the _only_ versions known to succeed
2537 in building Emacs (as of v22.1).
2538
2539 *** Building the native MS-Windows port with Cygwin GCC can fail.
2540
2541 Emacs may not build using some Cygwin builds of GCC, such as Cygwin
2542 version 1.1.8, using the default configure settings. It appears to be
2543 necessary to specify the -mwin32 flag when compiling, and define
2544 __MSVCRT__, like so:
2545
2546 configure --with-gcc --cflags -mwin32 --cflags -D__MSVCRT__
2547
2548 *** Building the MS-Windows port fails with a CreateProcess failure.
2549
2550 Some versions of mingw32 make on some versions of Windows do not seem
2551 to detect the shell correctly. Try "make SHELL=cmd.exe", or if that
2552 fails, try running make from Cygwin bash instead.
2553
2554 *** Building `ctags' for MS-Windows with the MinGW port of GCC fails.
2555
2556 This might happen due to a bug in the MinGW header assert.h, which
2557 defines the `assert' macro with a trailing semi-colon. The following
2558 patch to assert.h should solve this:
2559
2560 *** include/assert.h.orig Sun Nov 7 02:41:36 1999
2561 --- include/assert.h Mon Jan 29 11:49:10 2001
2562 ***************
2563 *** 41,47 ****
2564 /*
2565 * If not debugging, assert does nothing.
2566 */
2567 ! #define assert(x) ((void)0);
2568
2569 #else /* debugging enabled */
2570
2571 --- 41,47 ----
2572 /*
2573 * If not debugging, assert does nothing.
2574 */
2575 ! #define assert(x) ((void)0)
2576
2577 #else /* debugging enabled */
2578
2579
2580 *** Building the MS-Windows port with Visual Studio 2005 fails.
2581
2582 Microsoft no longer ships the single threaded version of the C library
2583 with their compiler, and the multithreaded static library is missing
2584 some functions that Microsoft have deemed non-threadsafe. The
2585 dynamically linked C library has all the functions, but there is a
2586 conflict between the versions of malloc in the DLL and in Emacs, which
2587 is not resolvable due to the way Windows does dynamic linking.
2588
2589 We recommend the use of the MingW port of GCC for compiling Emacs, as
2590 not only does it not suffer these problems, but it is also Free
2591 software like Emacs.
2592
2593 ** Linking
2594
2595 *** Building Emacs with a system compiler fails to link because of an
2596 undefined symbol such as __eprintf which does not appear in Emacs.
2597
2598 This can happen if some of the libraries linked into Emacs were built
2599 with GCC, but Emacs itself is being linked with a compiler other than
2600 GCC. Object files compiled with GCC might need some helper functions
2601 from libgcc.a, the library which comes with GCC, but the system
2602 compiler does not instruct the linker to search libgcc.a during the
2603 link stage.
2604
2605 A solution is to link with GCC, like this:
2606
2607 make CC=gcc
2608
2609 Since the .o object files already exist, this will not recompile Emacs
2610 with GCC, but just restart by trying again to link temacs.
2611
2612 *** AIX 1.3 ptf 0013: Link failure.
2613
2614 There is a real duplicate definition of the function `_slibc_free' in
2615 the library /lib/libc_s.a (just do nm on it to verify). The
2616 workaround/fix is:
2617
2618 cd /lib
2619 ar xv libc_s.a NLtmtime.o
2620 ar dv libc_s.a NLtmtime.o
2621
2622 *** AIX 4.1.2: Linker error messages such as
2623 ld: 0711-212 SEVERE ERROR: Symbol .__quous, found in the global symbol table
2624 of archive /usr/lib/libIM.a, was not defined in archive member shr.o.
2625
2626 This is a problem in libIM.a. You can work around it by executing
2627 these shell commands in the src subdirectory of the directory where
2628 you build Emacs:
2629
2630 cp /usr/lib/libIM.a .
2631 chmod 664 libIM.a
2632 ranlib libIM.a
2633
2634 Then change -lIM to ./libIM.a in the command to link temacs (in
2635 Makefile).
2636
2637 *** Sun with acc: Link failure when using acc on a Sun.
2638
2639 To use acc, you need additional options just before the libraries, such as
2640
2641 /usr/lang/SC2.0.1/values-Xt.o -L/usr/lang/SC2.0.1/cg87 -L/usr/lang/SC2.0.1
2642
2643 and you need to add -lansi just before -lc.
2644
2645 The precise file names depend on the compiler version, so we
2646 cannot easily arrange to supply them.
2647
2648 *** Linking says that the functions insque and remque are undefined.
2649
2650 Change oldXMenu/Makefile by adding insque.o to the variable OBJS.
2651
2652 *** `tparam' reported as a multiply-defined symbol when linking with ncurses.
2653
2654 This problem results from an incompatible change in ncurses, in
2655 version 1.9.9e approximately. This version is unable to provide a
2656 definition of tparm without also defining tparam. This is also
2657 incompatible with Terminfo; as a result, the Emacs Terminfo support
2658 does not work with this version of ncurses.
2659
2660 The fix is to install a newer version of ncurses, such as version 4.2.
2661
2662 ** Bootstrapping
2663
2664 Bootstrapping (compiling the .el files) is normally only necessary
2665 with CVS builds, since they the .elc files are pre-compiled in releases.
2666
2667 *** "No rule to make target" with Ubuntu 8.04 make 3.81-3build1
2668
2669 Compiling the lisp files fails at random places, complaining:
2670 "No rule to make target `/path/to/some/lisp.elc'".
2671 The causes of this problem are not understood. Using GNU make 3.81 compiled
2672 from source, rather than the Ubuntu version, worked. See Bug#327,821.
2673
2674 ** Dumping
2675
2676 *** Linux: Segfault during `make bootstrap' under certain recent versions of the Linux kernel.
2677
2678 With certain recent Linux kernels (like the one of Red Hat Fedora Core
2679 1 and newer), the new "Exec-shield" functionality is enabled by default, which
2680 creates a different memory layout that breaks the emacs dumper. Emacs tries
2681 to handle this at build time, but if the workaround used fails, these
2682 instructions can be useful.
2683 The work-around explained here is not enough on Fedora Core 4 (and possible
2684 newer). Read the next item.
2685
2686 Configure can overcome the problem of exec-shield if the architecture is
2687 x86 and the program setarch is present. On other architectures no
2688 workaround is known.
2689
2690 You can check the Exec-shield state like this:
2691
2692 cat /proc/sys/kernel/exec-shield
2693
2694 It returns non-zero when Exec-shield is enabled, 0 otherwise. Please
2695 read your system documentation for more details on Exec-shield and
2696 associated commands. Exec-shield can be turned off with this command:
2697
2698 echo "0" > /proc/sys/kernel/exec-shield
2699
2700 When Exec-shield is enabled, building Emacs will segfault during the
2701 execution of this command:
2702
2703 ./temacs --batch --load loadup [dump|bootstrap]
2704
2705 To work around this problem, it is necessary to temporarily disable
2706 Exec-shield while building Emacs, or, on x86, by using the `setarch'
2707 command when running temacs like this:
2708
2709 setarch i386 ./temacs --batch --load loadup [dump|bootstrap]
2710
2711
2712 *** Fedora Core 4 GNU/Linux: Segfault during dumping.
2713
2714 In addition to exec-shield explained above "Linux: Segfault during
2715 `make bootstrap' under certain recent versions of the Linux kernel"
2716 item, Linux kernel shipped with Fedora Core 4 randomizes the virtual
2717 address space of a process. As the result dumping may fail even if
2718 you turn off exec-shield. In this case, use the -R option to the setarch
2719 command:
2720
2721 setarch i386 -R ./temacs --batch --load loadup [dump|bootstrap]
2722
2723 or
2724
2725 setarch i386 -R make bootstrap
2726
2727 *** Fatal signal in the command temacs -l loadup inc dump.
2728
2729 This command is the final stage of building Emacs. It is run by the
2730 Makefile in the src subdirectory.
2731
2732 It has been known to get fatal errors due to insufficient swapping
2733 space available on the machine.
2734
2735 On 68000s, it has also happened because of bugs in the
2736 subroutine `alloca'. Verify that `alloca' works right, even
2737 for large blocks (many pages).
2738
2739 *** test-distrib says that the distribution has been clobbered.
2740 *** or, temacs prints "Command key out of range 0-127".
2741 *** or, temacs runs and dumps emacs, but emacs totally fails to work.
2742 *** or, temacs gets errors dumping emacs.
2743
2744 This can be because the .elc files have been garbled. Do not be
2745 fooled by the fact that most of a .elc file is text: these are
2746 binary files and can contain all 256 byte values.
2747
2748 In particular `shar' cannot be used for transmitting GNU Emacs.
2749 It typically truncates "lines". What appear to be "lines" in
2750 a binary file can of course be of any length. Even once `shar'
2751 itself is made to work correctly, `sh' discards null characters
2752 when unpacking the shell archive.
2753
2754 I have also seen character \177 changed into \377. I do not know
2755 what transfer means caused this problem. Various network
2756 file transfer programs are suspected of clobbering the high bit.
2757
2758 If you have a copy of Emacs that has been damaged in its
2759 nonprinting characters, you can fix them:
2760
2761 1) Record the names of all the .elc files.
2762 2) Delete all the .elc files.
2763 3) Recompile alloc.c with a value of PURESIZE twice as large.
2764 (See puresize.h.) You might as well save the old alloc.o.
2765 4) Remake emacs. It should work now.
2766 5) Running emacs, do Meta-x byte-compile-file repeatedly
2767 to recreate all the .elc files that used to exist.
2768 You may need to increase the value of the variable
2769 max-lisp-eval-depth to succeed in running the compiler interpreted
2770 on certain .el files. 400 was sufficient as of last report.
2771 6) Reinstall the old alloc.o (undoing changes to alloc.c if any)
2772 and remake temacs.
2773 7) Remake emacs. It should work now, with valid .elc files.
2774
2775 *** temacs prints "Pure Lisp storage exhausted".
2776
2777 This means that the Lisp code loaded from the .elc and .el
2778 files during temacs -l loadup inc dump took up more
2779 space than was allocated.
2780
2781 This could be caused by
2782 1) adding code to the preloaded Lisp files
2783 2) adding more preloaded files in loadup.el
2784 3) having a site-init.el or site-load.el which loads files.
2785 Note that ANY site-init.el or site-load.el is nonstandard;
2786 if you have received Emacs from some other site
2787 and it contains a site-init.el or site-load.el file, consider
2788 deleting that file.
2789 4) getting the wrong .el or .elc files
2790 (not from the directory you expected).
2791 5) deleting some .elc files that are supposed to exist.
2792 This would cause the source files (.el files) to be
2793 loaded instead. They take up more room, so you lose.
2794 6) a bug in the Emacs distribution which underestimates
2795 the space required.
2796
2797 If the need for more space is legitimate, change the definition
2798 of PURESIZE in puresize.h.
2799
2800 But in some of the cases listed above, this problem is a consequence
2801 of something else that is wrong. Be sure to check and fix the real
2802 problem.
2803
2804 *** Linux: Emacs crashes when dumping itself on Mac PPC running Yellow Dog GNU/Linux.
2805
2806 The crashes happen inside the function Fmake_symbol; here's a typical
2807 C backtrace printed by GDB:
2808
2809 0x190c0c0 in Fmake_symbol ()
2810 (gdb) where
2811 #0 0x190c0c0 in Fmake_symbol ()
2812 #1 0x1942ca4 in init_obarray ()
2813 #2 0x18b3500 in main ()
2814 #3 0x114371c in __libc_start_main (argc=5, argv=0x7ffff5b4, envp=0x7ffff5cc,
2815
2816 This could happen because GCC version 2.95 and later changed the base
2817 of the load address to 0x10000000. Emacs needs to be told about this,
2818 but we currently cannot do that automatically, because that breaks
2819 other versions of GNU/Linux on the MacPPC. Until we find a way to
2820 distinguish between the Yellow Dog and the other varieties of
2821 GNU/Linux systems on the PPC, you will have to manually uncomment the
2822 following section near the end of the file src/m/macppc.h in the Emacs
2823 distribution:
2824
2825 #if 0 /* This breaks things on PPC GNU/Linux except for Yellowdog,
2826 even with identical GCC, as, ld. Let's take it out until we
2827 know what's really going on here. */
2828 /* GCC 2.95 and newer on GNU/Linux PPC changed the load address to
2829 0x10000000. */
2830 #if defined __linux__
2831 #if __GNUC__ > 2 || (__GNUC__ == 2 && __GNUC_MINOR__ >= 95)
2832 #define DATA_SEG_BITS 0x10000000
2833 #endif
2834 #endif
2835 #endif /* 0 */
2836
2837 Remove the "#if 0" and "#endif" directives which surround this, save
2838 the file, and then reconfigure and rebuild Emacs. The dumping process
2839 should now succeed.
2840
2841 *** OpenBSD 4.0 macppc: Segfault during dumping.
2842
2843 The build aborts with signal 11 when the command `./temacs --batch
2844 --load loadup bootstrap' tries to load files.el. A workaround seems
2845 to be to reduce the level of compiler optimization used during the
2846 build (from -O2 to -O1). It is possible this is an OpenBSD
2847 GCC problem specific to the macppc architecture, possibly only
2848 occurring with older versions of GCC (e.g. 3.3.5).
2849
2850 *** openSUSE 10.3: Segfault in bcopy during dumping.
2851
2852 This is due to a bug in the bcopy implementation in openSUSE 10.3.
2853 It is/will be fixed in an openSUSE update.
2854
2855 ** Installation
2856
2857 *** Installing Emacs gets an error running `install-info'.
2858
2859 You need to install a recent version of Texinfo; that package
2860 supplies the `install-info' command.
2861
2862 *** Installing to a directory with spaces in the name fails.
2863
2864 For example, if you call configure with a directory-related option
2865 with spaces in the value, eg --enable-locallisppath='/path/with\ spaces'.
2866 Using directory paths with spaces is not supported at this time: you
2867 must re-configure without using spaces.
2868
2869 *** Installing to a directory with non-ASCII characters in the name fails.
2870
2871 Installation may fail, or the Emacs executable may not start
2872 correctly, if a directory name containing non-ASCII characters is used
2873 as a `configure' argument (e.g. `--prefix'). The problem can also
2874 occur if a non-ASCII directory is specified in the EMACSLOADPATH
2875 envvar.
2876
2877 *** On Solaris, use GNU Make when installing an out-of-tree build
2878
2879 The Emacs configuration process allows you to configure the
2880 build environment so that you can build emacs in a directory
2881 outside of the distribution tree. When installing Emacs from an
2882 out-of-tree build directory on Solaris, you may need to use GNU
2883 make. The make programs bundled with Solaris support the VPATH
2884 macro but use it differently from the way the VPATH macro is
2885 used by GNU make. The differences will cause the "make install"
2886 step to fail, leaving you with an incomplete emacs
2887 installation. GNU make is available in /usr/sfw/bin on Solaris
2888 10 and can be installed as /opt/sfw/bin/gmake from the Solaris 9
2889 Software Companion CDROM.
2890
2891 The problems due to the VPATH processing differences affect only
2892 out of tree builds so, if you are on a Solaris installation
2893 without GNU make, you can install Emacs completely by installing
2894 from a build environment using the original emacs distribution tree.
2895
2896 ** First execution
2897
2898 *** Emacs binary is not in executable format, and cannot be run.
2899
2900 This was reported to happen when Emacs is built in a directory mounted
2901 via NFS, for some combinations of NFS client and NFS server.
2902 Usually, the file `emacs' produced in these cases is full of
2903 binary null characters, and the `file' utility says:
2904
2905 emacs: ASCII text, with no line terminators
2906
2907 We don't know what exactly causes this failure. A work-around is to
2908 build Emacs in a directory on a local disk.
2909
2910 *** The dumped Emacs crashes when run, trying to write pure data.
2911
2912 Two causes have been seen for such problems.
2913
2914 1) On a system where getpagesize is not a system call, it is defined
2915 as a macro. If the definition (in both unexec.c and malloc.c) is wrong,
2916 it can cause problems like this. You might be able to find the correct
2917 value in the man page for a.out (5).
2918
2919 2) Some systems allocate variables declared static among the
2920 initialized variables. Emacs makes all initialized variables in most
2921 of its files pure after dumping, but the variables declared static and
2922 not initialized are not supposed to be pure. On these systems you
2923 may need to add "#define static" to the m- or the s- file.
2924
2925 * Emacs 19 problems
2926
2927 ** Error messages `Wrong number of arguments: #<subr where-is-internal>, 5'.
2928
2929 This typically results from having the powerkey library loaded.
2930 Powerkey was designed for Emacs 19.22. It is obsolete now because
2931 Emacs 19 now has this feature built in; and powerkey also calls
2932 where-is-internal in an obsolete way.
2933
2934 So the fix is to arrange not to load powerkey.
2935
2936 * Runtime problems on legacy systems
2937
2938 This section covers bugs reported on very old hardware or software.
2939 If you are using hardware and an operating system shipped after 2000,
2940 it is unlikely you will see any of these.
2941
2942 ** Ancient operating systems
2943
2944 AIX 4.2 was end-of-lifed on Dec 31st, 1999.
2945
2946 *** AIX: You get this compiler error message:
2947
2948 Processing include file ./XMenuInt.h
2949 1501-106: (S) Include file X11/Xlib.h not found.
2950
2951 This means your system was installed with only the X11 runtime i.d
2952 libraries. You have to find your sipo (bootable tape) and install
2953 X11Dev... with smit.
2954
2955 (This report must be ancient. Bootable tapes are long dead.)
2956
2957 *** AIX 3.2.4: Releasing Ctrl/Act key has no effect, if Shift is down.
2958
2959 Due to a feature of AIX, pressing or releasing the Ctrl/Act key is
2960 ignored when the Shift, Alt or AltGr keys are held down. This can
2961 lead to the keyboard being "control-locked"--ordinary letters are
2962 treated as control characters.
2963
2964 You can get out of this "control-locked" state by pressing and
2965 releasing Ctrl/Act while not pressing or holding any other keys.
2966
2967 *** AIX 3.2.5: You get this message when running Emacs:
2968
2969 Could not load program emacs
2970 Symbol smtcheckinit in csh is undefined
2971 Error was: Exec format error
2972
2973 or this one:
2974
2975 Could not load program .emacs
2976 Symbol _system_con in csh is undefined
2977 Symbol _fp_trapsta in csh is undefined
2978 Error was: Exec format error
2979
2980 These can happen when you try to run on AIX 3.2.5 a program that was
2981 compiled with 3.2.4. The fix is to recompile.
2982
2983 *** AIX 4.2: Emacs gets a segmentation fault at startup.
2984
2985 If you are using IBM's xlc compiler, compile emacs.c
2986 without optimization; that should avoid the problem.
2987
2988 *** ISC Unix
2989
2990 **** ISC: display-time causes kernel problems on ISC systems.
2991
2992 Under Interactive Unix versions 3.0.1 and 4.0 (and probably other
2993 versions), display-time causes the loss of large numbers of STREVENT
2994 cells. Eventually the kernel's supply of these cells is exhausted.
2995 This makes emacs and the whole system run slow, and can make other
2996 processes die, in particular pcnfsd.
2997
2998 Other emacs functions that communicate with remote processes may have
2999 the same problem. Display-time seems to be far the worst.
3000
3001 The only known fix: Don't run display-time.
3002
3003 **** Sunos 5.3: Subprocesses remain, hanging but not zombies.
3004
3005 A bug in Sunos 5.3 causes Emacs subprocesses to remain after Emacs
3006 exits. Sun patch # 101415-02 is part of the fix for this, but it only
3007 applies to ptys, and doesn't fix the problem with subprocesses
3008 communicating through pipes.
3009
3010 *** Irix
3011
3012 *** Irix 6.2: No visible display on mips-sgi-irix6.2 when compiling with GCC 2.8.1.
3013
3014 This problem went away after installing the latest IRIX patches
3015 as of 8 Dec 1998.
3016
3017 The same problem has been reported on Irix 6.3.
3018
3019 *** Irix 6.3: substituting environment variables in file names
3020 in the minibuffer gives peculiar error messages such as
3021
3022 Substituting nonexistent environment variable ""
3023
3024 This is not an Emacs bug; it is caused by something in SGI patch
3025 003082 August 11, 1998.
3026
3027 *** OPENSTEP
3028
3029 **** OPENSTEP 4.2: Compiling syntax.c with gcc 2.7.2.1 fails.
3030
3031 The compiler was reported to crash while compiling syntax.c with the
3032 following message:
3033
3034 cc: Internal compiler error: program cc1obj got fatal signal 11
3035
3036 To work around this, replace the macros UPDATE_SYNTAX_TABLE_FORWARD,
3037 INC_BOTH, and INC_FROM with functions. To this end, first define 3
3038 functions, one each for every macro. Here's an example:
3039
3040 static int update_syntax_table_forward(int from)
3041 {
3042 return(UPDATE_SYNTAX_TABLE_FORWARD(from));
3043 }/*update_syntax_table_forward*/
3044
3045 Then replace all references to UPDATE_SYNTAX_TABLE_FORWARD in syntax.c
3046 with a call to the function update_syntax_table_forward.
3047
3048 *** Solaris 2.x
3049
3050 **** Strange results from format %d in a few cases, on a Sun.
3051
3052 Sun compiler version SC3.0 has been found to miscompile part of
3053 editfns.c. The workaround is to compile with some other compiler such
3054 as GCC.
3055
3056 **** On Solaris, Emacs dumps core if lisp-complete-symbol is called.
3057
3058 If you compile Emacs with the -fast or -xO4 option with version 3.0.2
3059 of the Sun C compiler, Emacs dumps core when lisp-complete-symbol is
3060 called. The problem does not happen if you compile with GCC.
3061
3062 **** On Solaris, Emacs crashes if you use (display-time).
3063
3064 This can happen if you configure Emacs without specifying the precise
3065 version of Solaris that you are using.
3066
3067 **** Solaris 2.3 and 2.4: Unpredictable segmentation faults.
3068
3069 A user reported that this happened in 19.29 when it was compiled with
3070 the Sun compiler, but not when he recompiled with GCC 2.7.0.
3071
3072 We do not know whether something in Emacs is partly to blame for this.
3073
3074 **** Solaris 2.4: Emacs dumps core on startup.
3075
3076 Bill Sebok says that the cause of this is Solaris 2.4 vendor patch
3077 102303-05, which extends the Solaris linker to deal with the Solaris
3078 Common Desktop Environment's linking needs. You can fix the problem
3079 by removing this patch and installing patch 102049-02 instead.
3080 However, that linker version won't work with CDE.
3081
3082 Solaris 2.5 comes with a linker that has this bug. It is reported that if
3083 you install all the latest patches (as of June 1996), the bug is fixed.
3084 We suspect the crucial patch is one of these, but we don't know
3085 for certain.
3086
3087 103093-03: [README] SunOS 5.5: kernel patch (2140557 bytes)
3088 102832-01: [README] OpenWindows 3.5: Xview Jumbo Patch (4181613 bytes)
3089 103242-04: [README] SunOS 5.5: linker patch (595363 bytes)
3090
3091 (One user reports that the bug was fixed by those patches together
3092 with patches 102980-04, 103279-01, 103300-02, and 103468-01.)
3093
3094 If you can determine which patch does fix the bug, please tell
3095 bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
3096
3097 Meanwhile, the GNU linker links Emacs properly on both Solaris 2.4 and
3098 Solaris 2.5.
3099
3100 **** Solaris 2.4: Dired hangs and C-g does not work. Or Emacs hangs
3101 forever waiting for termination of a subprocess that is a zombie.
3102
3103 casper@fwi.uva.nl says the problem is in X11R6. Rebuild libX11.so
3104 after changing the file xc/config/cf/sunLib.tmpl. Change the lines
3105
3106 #if ThreadedX
3107 #define SharedX11Reqs -lthread
3108 #endif
3109
3110 to:
3111
3112 #if OSMinorVersion < 4
3113 #if ThreadedX
3114 #define SharedX11Reqs -lthread
3115 #endif
3116 #endif
3117
3118 Be sure also to edit x/config/cf/sun.cf so that OSMinorVersion is 4
3119 (as it should be for Solaris 2.4). The file has three definitions for
3120 OSMinorVersion: the first is for x86, the second for SPARC under
3121 Solaris, and the third for SunOS 4. Make sure to update the
3122 definition for your type of machine and system.
3123
3124 Then do `make Everything' in the top directory of X11R6, to rebuild
3125 the makefiles and rebuild X. The X built this way work only on
3126 Solaris 2.4, not on 2.3.
3127
3128 For multithreaded X to work it is necessary to install patch
3129 101925-02 to fix problems in header files [2.4]. You need
3130 to reinstall gcc or re-run just-fixinc after installing that
3131 patch.
3132
3133 However, Frank Rust <frust@iti.cs.tu-bs.de> used a simpler solution:
3134 he changed
3135 #define ThreadedX YES
3136 to
3137 #define ThreadedX NO
3138 in sun.cf and did `make World' to rebuild X11R6. Removing all
3139 `-DXTHREAD*' flags and `-lthread' entries from lib/X11/Makefile and
3140 typing 'make install' in that directory also seemed to work.
3141
3142 **** Solaris 2.x: GCC complains "64 bit integer types not supported".
3143
3144 This suggests that GCC is not installed correctly. Most likely you
3145 are using GCC 2.7.2.3 (or earlier) on Solaris 2.6 (or later); this
3146 does not work without patching. To run GCC 2.7.2.3 on Solaris 2.6 or
3147 later, you must patch fixinc.svr4 and reinstall GCC from scratch as
3148 described in the Solaris FAQ
3149 <http://www.wins.uva.nl/pub/solaris/solaris2.html>. A better fix is
3150 to upgrade to GCC 2.8.1 or later.
3151
3152 **** Solaris 2.7: Building Emacs with WorkShop Compilers 5.0 98/12/15
3153 C 5.0 failed, apparently with non-default CFLAGS, most probably due to
3154 compiler bugs. Using Sun Solaris 2.7 Sun WorkShop 6 update 1 C
3155 release was reported to work without problems. It worked OK on
3156 another system with Solaris 8 using apparently the same 5.0 compiler
3157 and the default CFLAGS.
3158
3159 **** Solaris 2.x: Emacs dumps core when built with Motif.
3160
3161 The Solaris Motif libraries are buggy, at least up through Solaris 2.5.1.
3162 Install the current Motif runtime library patch appropriate for your host.
3163 (Make sure the patch is current; some older patch versions still have the bug.)
3164 You should install the other patches recommended by Sun for your host, too.
3165 You can obtain Sun patches from ftp://sunsolve.sun.com/pub/patches/;
3166 look for files with names ending in `.PatchReport' to see which patches
3167 are currently recommended for your host.
3168
3169 On Solaris 2.6, Emacs is said to work with Motif when Solaris patch
3170 105284-12 is installed, but fail when 105284-15 is installed.
3171 105284-18 might fix it again.
3172
3173 **** Solaris 2.6 and 7: the Compose key does not work.
3174
3175 This is a bug in Motif in Solaris. Supposedly it has been fixed for
3176 the next major release of Solaris. However, if someone with Sun
3177 support complains to Sun about the bug, they may release a patch.
3178 If you do this, mention Sun bug #4188711.
3179
3180 One workaround is to use a locale that allows non-ASCII characters.
3181 For example, before invoking emacs, set the LC_ALL environment
3182 variable to "en_US" (American English). The directory /usr/lib/locale
3183 lists the supported locales; any locale other than "C" or "POSIX"
3184 should do.
3185
3186 pen@lysator.liu.se says (Feb 1998) that the Compose key does work
3187 if you link with the MIT X11 libraries instead of the Solaris X11
3188 libraries.
3189
3190 *** HP/UX versions before 11.0
3191
3192 HP/UX 9 was end-of-lifed in December 1998.
3193 HP/UX 10 was end-of-lifed in May 1999.
3194
3195 **** HP/UX 9: Emacs crashes with SIGBUS or SIGSEGV after you delete a frame.
3196
3197 We think this is due to a bug in the X libraries provided by HP. With
3198 the alternative X libraries in /usr/contrib/mitX11R5/lib, the problem
3199 does not happen.
3200
3201 *** HP/UX 10: Large file support is disabled.
3202
3203 See the comments in src/s/hpux10.h.
3204
3205 *** HP/UX: Emacs is slow using X11R5.
3206
3207 This happens if you use the MIT versions of the X libraries--it
3208 doesn't run as fast as HP's version. People sometimes use the version
3209 because they see the HP version doesn't have the libraries libXaw.a,
3210 libXmu.a, libXext.a and others. HP/UX normally doesn't come with
3211 those libraries installed. To get good performance, you need to
3212 install them and rebuild Emacs.
3213
3214 *** Ultrix and Digital Unix
3215
3216 **** Ultrix 4.2: `make install' fails on install-doc with `Error 141'.
3217
3218 This happens on Ultrix 4.2 due to failure of a pipeline of tar
3219 commands. We don't know why they fail, but the bug seems not to be in
3220 Emacs. The workaround is to run the shell command in install-doc by
3221 hand.
3222
3223 **** Digital Unix 4.0: Garbled display on non-X terminals when Emacs runs.
3224
3225 So far it appears that running `tset' triggers this problem (when TERM
3226 is vt100, at least). If you do not run `tset', then Emacs displays
3227 properly. If someone can tell us precisely which effect of running
3228 `tset' actually causes the problem, we may be able to implement a fix
3229 in Emacs.
3230
3231 **** Ultrix: `expand-file-name' fails to work on any but the machine you dumped Emacs on.
3232
3233 On Ultrix, if you use any of the functions which look up information
3234 in the passwd database before dumping Emacs (say, by using
3235 expand-file-name in site-init.el), then those functions will not work
3236 in the dumped Emacs on any host but the one Emacs was dumped on.
3237
3238 The solution? Don't use expand-file-name in site-init.el, or in
3239 anything it loads. Yuck - some solution.
3240
3241 I'm not sure why this happens; if you can find out exactly what is
3242 going on, and perhaps find a fix or a workaround, please let us know.
3243 Perhaps the YP functions cache some information, the cache is included
3244 in the dumped Emacs, and is then inaccurate on any other host.
3245
3246 *** SVr4
3247
3248 **** SVr4: On some variants of SVR4, Emacs does not work at all with X.
3249
3250 Try defining BROKEN_FIONREAD in your config.h file. If this solves
3251 the problem, please send a bug report to tell us this is needed; be
3252 sure to say exactly what type of machine and system you are using.
3253
3254 **** SVr4: After running emacs once, subsequent invocations crash.
3255
3256 Some versions of SVR4 have a serious bug in the implementation of the
3257 mmap () system call in the kernel; this causes emacs to run correctly
3258 the first time, and then crash when run a second time.
3259
3260 Contact your vendor and ask for the mmap bug fix; in the mean time,
3261 you may be able to work around the problem by adding a line to your
3262 operating system description file (whose name is reported by the
3263 configure script) that reads:
3264 #define SYSTEM_MALLOC
3265 This makes Emacs use memory less efficiently, but seems to work around
3266 the kernel bug.
3267
3268 *** Irix 5 and earlier
3269
3270 Exactly when Irix-5 end-of-lifed is obscure. But since Irix 6.0
3271 shipped in 1994, it has been some years.
3272
3273 **** Irix 5.2: unexelfsgi.c can't find cmplrs/stsupport.h.
3274
3275 The file cmplrs/stsupport.h was included in the wrong file set in the
3276 Irix 5.2 distribution. You can find it in the optional fileset
3277 compiler_dev, or copy it from some other Irix 5.2 system. A kludgy
3278 workaround is to change unexelfsgi.c to include sym.h instead of
3279 syms.h.
3280
3281 **** Irix 5.3: "out of virtual swap space".
3282
3283 This message occurs when the system runs out of swap space due to too
3284 many large programs running. The solution is either to provide more
3285 swap space or to reduce the number of large programs being run. You
3286 can check the current status of the swap space by executing the
3287 command `swap -l'.
3288
3289 You can increase swap space by changing the file /etc/fstab. Adding a
3290 line like this:
3291
3292 /usr/swap/swap.more swap swap pri=3 0 0
3293
3294 where /usr/swap/swap.more is a file previously created (for instance
3295 by using /etc/mkfile), will increase the swap space by the size of
3296 that file. Execute `swap -m' or reboot the machine to activate the
3297 new swap area. See the manpages for `swap' and `fstab' for further
3298 information.
3299
3300 The objectserver daemon can use up lots of memory because it can be
3301 swamped with NIS information. It collects information about all users
3302 on the network that can log on to the host.
3303
3304 If you want to disable the objectserver completely, you can execute
3305 the command `chkconfig objectserver off' and reboot. That may disable
3306 some of the window system functionality, such as responding CDROM
3307 icons.
3308
3309 You can also remove NIS support from the objectserver. The SGI `admin'
3310 FAQ has a detailed description on how to do that; see question 35
3311 ("Why isn't the objectserver working?"). The admin FAQ can be found at
3312 ftp://viz.tamu.edu/pub/sgi/faq/.
3313
3314 **** Irix 5.3: Emacs crashes in utmpname.
3315
3316 This problem is fixed in Patch 3175 for Irix 5.3.
3317 It is also fixed in Irix versions 6.2 and up.
3318
3319 **** Irix 6.0: Make tries (and fails) to build a program named unexelfsgi.
3320
3321 A compiler bug inserts spaces into the string "unexelfsgi . o"
3322 in src/Makefile. Edit src/Makefile, after configure is run,
3323 find that string, and take out the spaces.
3324
3325 Compiler fixes in Irix 6.0.1 should eliminate this problem.
3326
3327 *** SCO Unix and UnixWare
3328
3329 **** SCO 3.2v4: Unusable default font.
3330
3331 The Open Desktop environment comes with default X resource settings
3332 that tell Emacs to use a variable-width font. Emacs cannot use such
3333 fonts, so it does not work.
3334
3335 This is caused by the file /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/ScoTerm, which is
3336 the application-specific resource file for the `scoterm' terminal
3337 emulator program. It contains several extremely general X resources
3338 that affect other programs besides `scoterm'. In particular, these
3339 resources affect Emacs also:
3340
3341 *Font: -*-helvetica-medium-r-*--12-*-p-*
3342 *Background: scoBackground
3343 *Foreground: scoForeground
3344
3345 The best solution is to create an application-specific resource file for
3346 Emacs, /usr/lib/X11/sco/startup/Emacs, with the following contents:
3347
3348 Emacs*Font: -*-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-120-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1
3349 Emacs*Background: white
3350 Emacs*Foreground: black
3351
3352 (These settings mimic the Emacs defaults, but you can change them to
3353 suit your needs.) This resource file is only read when the X server
3354 starts up, so you should restart it by logging out of the Open Desktop
3355 environment or by running `scologin stop; scologin start` from the shell
3356 as root. Alternatively, you can put these settings in the
3357 /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/Emacs resource file and simply restart Emacs,
3358 but then they will not affect remote invocations of Emacs that use the
3359 Open Desktop display.
3360
3361 These resource files are not normally shared across a network of SCO
3362 machines; you must create the file on each machine individually.
3363
3364 **** SCO 4.2.0: Regular expressions matching bugs on SCO systems.
3365
3366 On SCO, there are problems in regexp matching when Emacs is compiled
3367 with the system compiler. The compiler version is "Microsoft C
3368 version 6", SCO 4.2.0h Dev Sys Maintenance Supplement 01/06/93; Quick
3369 C Compiler Version 1.00.46 (Beta). The solution is to compile with
3370 GCC.
3371
3372 **** UnixWare 2.1: Error 12 (virtual memory exceeded) when dumping Emacs.
3373
3374 Paul Abrahams (abrahams@acm.org) reports that with the installed
3375 virtual memory settings for UnixWare 2.1.2, an Error 12 occurs during
3376 the "make" that builds Emacs, when running temacs to dump emacs. That
3377 error indicates that the per-process virtual memory limit has been
3378 exceeded. The default limit is probably 32MB. Raising the virtual
3379 memory limit to 40MB should make it possible to finish building Emacs.
3380
3381 You can do this with the command `ulimit' (sh) or `limit' (csh).
3382 But you have to be root to do it.
3383
3384 According to Martin Sohnius, you can also retune this in the kernel:
3385
3386 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune SDATLIM 33554432 ## soft data size limit
3387 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune HDATLIM 33554432 ## hard "
3388 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune SVMMSIZE unlimited ## soft process size limit
3389 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune HVMMSIZE unlimited ## hard "
3390 # /etc/conf/bin/idbuild -B
3391
3392 (He recommends you not change the stack limit, though.)
3393 These changes take effect when you reboot.
3394
3395 *** Linux 1.x
3396
3397 **** Linux 1.0-1.04: Typing C-c C-c in Shell mode kills your X server.
3398
3399 This happens with Linux kernel 1.0 thru 1.04, approximately. The workaround is
3400 to define SIGNALS_VIA_CHARACTERS in config.h and recompile Emacs.
3401 Newer Linux kernel versions don't have this problem.
3402
3403 **** Linux 1.3: Output from subprocess (such as man or diff) is randomly
3404 truncated on GNU/Linux systems.
3405
3406 This is due to a kernel bug which seems to be fixed in Linux version
3407 1.3.75.
3408
3409 ** Windows 3.1, 95, 98, and ME
3410
3411 *** MS-Windows NT/95: Problems running Perl under Emacs
3412
3413 `perl -de 0' just hangs when executed in an Emacs subshell.
3414 The fault lies with Perl (indirectly with Windows NT/95).
3415
3416 The problem is that the Perl debugger explicitly opens a connection to
3417 "CON", which is the DOS/NT equivalent of "/dev/tty", for interacting
3418 with the user.
3419
3420 On Unix, this is okay, because Emacs (or the shell?) creates a
3421 pseudo-tty so that /dev/tty is really the pipe Emacs is using to
3422 communicate with the subprocess.
3423
3424 On NT, this fails because CON always refers to the handle for the
3425 relevant console (approximately equivalent to a tty), and cannot be
3426 redirected to refer to the pipe Emacs assigned to the subprocess as
3427 stdin.
3428
3429 A workaround is to modify perldb.pl to use STDIN/STDOUT instead of CON.
3430
3431 For Perl 4:
3432
3433 *** PERL/LIB/PERLDB.PL.orig Wed May 26 08:24:18 1993
3434 --- PERL/LIB/PERLDB.PL Mon Jul 01 15:28:16 1996
3435 ***************
3436 *** 68,74 ****
3437 $rcfile=".perldb";
3438 }
3439 else {
3440 ! $console = "con";
3441 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
3442 }
3443
3444 --- 68,74 ----
3445 $rcfile=".perldb";
3446 }
3447 else {
3448 ! $console = "";
3449 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
3450 }
3451
3452
3453 For Perl 5:
3454 *** perl/5.001/lib/perl5db.pl.orig Sun Jun 04 21:13:40 1995
3455 --- perl/5.001/lib/perl5db.pl Mon Jul 01 17:00:08 1996
3456 ***************
3457 *** 22,28 ****
3458 $rcfile=".perldb";
3459 }
3460 elsif (-e "con") {
3461 ! $console = "con";
3462 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
3463 }
3464 else {
3465 --- 22,28 ----
3466 $rcfile=".perldb";
3467 }
3468 elsif (-e "con") {
3469 ! $console = "";
3470 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
3471 }
3472 else {
3473
3474 *** MS-Windows 95: Alt-f6 does not get through to Emacs.
3475
3476 This character seems to be trapped by the kernel in Windows 95.
3477 You can enter M-f6 by typing ESC f6.
3478
3479 *** MS-Windows 95/98/ME: subprocesses do not terminate properly.
3480
3481 This is a limitation of the Operating System, and can cause problems
3482 when shutting down Windows. Ensure that all subprocesses are exited
3483 cleanly before exiting Emacs. For more details, see the FAQ at
3484 http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/windows/.
3485
3486 *** MS-Windows 95/98/ME: crashes when Emacs invokes non-existent programs.
3487
3488 When a program you are trying to run is not found on the PATH,
3489 Windows might respond by crashing or locking up your system. In
3490 particular, this has been reported when trying to compile a Java
3491 program in JDEE when javac.exe is installed, but not on the system
3492 PATH.
3493
3494 ** MS-DOS
3495
3496 *** When compiling with DJGPP on MS-Windows NT or later, "config msdos" fails.
3497
3498 If the error message is "VDM has been already loaded", this is because
3499 Windows has a program called `redir.exe' that is incompatible with a
3500 program by the same name supplied with DJGPP, which is used by
3501 config.bat. To resolve this, move the DJGPP's `bin' subdirectory to
3502 the front of your PATH environment variable.
3503
3504 *** When Emacs compiled with DJGPP runs on Vista, it runs out of memory.
3505
3506 If Emacs running on Vista displays "!MEM FULL!" in the mode line, you
3507 are hitting the memory allocation bugs in the Vista DPMI server. See
3508 msdos/INSTALL for how to work around these bugs (search for "Vista").
3509
3510 *** When compiling with DJGPP on MS-Windows 95, Make fails for some targets
3511 like make-docfile.
3512
3513 This can happen if long file name support (the setting of environment
3514 variable LFN) when Emacs distribution was unpacked and during
3515 compilation are not the same. See msdos/INSTALL for the explanation
3516 of how to avoid this problem.
3517
3518 *** Emacs compiled with DJGPP complains at startup:
3519
3520 "Wrong type of argument: internal-facep, msdos-menu-active-face"
3521
3522 This can happen if you define an environment variable `TERM'. Emacs
3523 on MSDOS uses an internal terminal emulator which is disabled if the
3524 value of `TERM' is anything but the string "internal". Emacs then
3525 works as if its terminal were a dumb glass teletype that doesn't
3526 support faces. To work around this, arrange for `TERM' to be
3527 undefined when Emacs runs. The best way to do that is to add an
3528 [emacs] section to the DJGPP.ENV file which defines an empty value for
3529 `TERM'; this way, only Emacs gets the empty value, while the rest of
3530 your system works as before.
3531
3532 *** MS-DOS: Emacs crashes at startup.
3533
3534 Some users report that Emacs 19.29 requires dpmi memory management,
3535 and crashes on startup if the system does not have it. We don't yet
3536 know why this happens--perhaps these machines don't have enough real
3537 memory, or perhaps something is wrong in Emacs or the compiler.
3538 However, arranging to use dpmi support is a workaround.
3539
3540 You can find out if you have a dpmi host by running go32 without
3541 arguments; it will tell you if it uses dpmi memory. For more
3542 information about dpmi memory, consult the djgpp FAQ. (djgpp
3543 is the GNU C compiler as packaged for MSDOS.)
3544
3545 Compiling Emacs under MSDOS is extremely sensitive for proper memory
3546 configuration. If you experience problems during compilation, consider
3547 removing some or all memory resident programs (notably disk caches)
3548 and make sure that your memory managers are properly configured. See
3549 the djgpp faq for configuration hints.
3550
3551 *** Emacs compiled with DJGPP for MS-DOS/MS-Windows cannot access files
3552 in the directory with the special name `dev' under the root of any
3553 drive, e.g. `c:/dev'.
3554
3555 This is an unfortunate side-effect of the support for Unix-style
3556 device names such as /dev/null in the DJGPP runtime library. A
3557 work-around is to rename the problem directory to another name.
3558
3559 *** MS-DOS+DJGPP: Problems on MS-DOG if DJGPP v2.0 is used to compile Emacs.
3560
3561 There are two DJGPP library bugs which cause problems:
3562
3563 * Running `shell-command' (or `compile', or `grep') you get
3564 `Searching for program: permission denied (EACCES), c:/command.com';
3565 * After you shell to DOS, Ctrl-Break kills Emacs.
3566
3567 To work around these bugs, you can use two files in the msdos
3568 subdirectory: `is_exec.c' and `sigaction.c'. Compile them and link
3569 them into the Emacs executable `temacs'; then they will replace the
3570 incorrect library functions.
3571
3572 *** MS-DOS: Emacs compiled for MSDOS cannot find some Lisp files, or other
3573 run-time support files, when long filename support is enabled.
3574
3575 Usually, this problem will manifest itself when Emacs exits
3576 immediately after flashing the startup screen, because it cannot find
3577 the Lisp files it needs to load at startup. Redirect Emacs stdout
3578 and stderr to a file to see the error message printed by Emacs.
3579
3580 Another manifestation of this problem is that Emacs is unable to load
3581 the support for editing program sources in languages such as C and
3582 Lisp.
3583
3584 This can happen if the Emacs distribution was unzipped without LFN
3585 support, thus causing long filenames to be truncated to the first 6
3586 characters and a numeric tail that Windows 95 normally attaches to it.
3587 You should unzip the files again with a utility that supports long
3588 filenames (such as djtar from DJGPP or InfoZip's UnZip program
3589 compiled with DJGPP v2). The file msdos/INSTALL explains this issue
3590 in more detail.
3591
3592 Another possible reason for such failures is that Emacs compiled for
3593 MSDOS is used on Windows NT, where long file names are not supported
3594 by this version of Emacs, but the distribution was unpacked by an
3595 unzip program that preserved the long file names instead of truncating
3596 them to DOS 8+3 limits. To be useful on NT, the MSDOS port of Emacs
3597 must be unzipped by a DOS utility, so that long file names are
3598 properly truncated.
3599
3600 ** Archaic window managers and toolkits
3601
3602 *** OpenLook: Under OpenLook, the Emacs window disappears when you type M-q.
3603
3604 Some versions of the Open Look window manager interpret M-q as a quit
3605 command for whatever window you are typing at. If you want to use
3606 Emacs with that window manager, you should try to configure the window
3607 manager to use some other command. You can disable the
3608 shortcut keys entirely by adding this line to ~/.OWdefaults:
3609
3610 OpenWindows.WindowMenuAccelerators: False
3611
3612 **** twm: A position you specified in .Xdefaults is ignored, using twm.
3613
3614 twm normally ignores "program-specified" positions.
3615 You can tell it to obey them with this command in your `.twmrc' file:
3616
3617 UsePPosition "on" #allow clients to request a position
3618
3619 ** Bugs related to old DEC hardware
3620
3621 *** The Compose key on a DEC keyboard does not work as Meta key.
3622
3623 This shell command should fix it:
3624
3625 xmodmap -e 'keycode 0xb1 = Meta_L'
3626
3627 *** Keyboard input gets confused after a beep when using a DECserver
3628 as a concentrator.
3629
3630 This problem seems to be a matter of configuring the DECserver to use
3631 7 bit characters rather than 8 bit characters.
3632
3633 * Build problems on legacy systems
3634
3635 ** BSD/386 1.0: --with-x-toolkit option configures wrong.
3636
3637 This problem is due to bugs in the shell in version 1.0 of BSD/386.
3638 The workaround is to edit the configure file to use some other shell,
3639 such as bash.
3640
3641 ** Digital Unix 4.0: Emacs fails to build, giving error message
3642 Invalid dimension for the charset-ID 160
3643
3644 This is due to a bug or an installation problem in GCC 2.8.0.
3645 Installing a more recent version of GCC fixes the problem.
3646
3647 ** Digital Unix 4.0: Failure in unexec while dumping emacs.
3648
3649 This problem manifests itself as an error message
3650
3651 unexec: Bad address, writing data section to ...
3652
3653 The user suspects that this happened because his X libraries
3654 were built for an older system version,
3655
3656 ./configure --x-includes=/usr/include --x-libraries=/usr/shlib
3657
3658 made the problem go away.
3659
3660 ** Sunos 4.1.1: there are errors compiling sysdep.c.
3661
3662 If you get errors such as
3663
3664 "sysdep.c", line 2017: undefined structure or union
3665 "sysdep.c", line 2017: undefined structure or union
3666 "sysdep.c", line 2019: nodename undefined
3667
3668 This can result from defining LD_LIBRARY_PATH. It is very tricky
3669 to use that environment variable with Emacs. The Emacs configure
3670 script links many test programs with the system libraries; you must
3671 make sure that the libraries available to configure are the same
3672 ones available when you build Emacs.
3673
3674 ** SunOS 4.1.1: You get this error message from GNU ld:
3675
3676 /lib/libc.a(_Q_sub.o): Undefined symbol __Q_get_rp_rd referenced from text segment
3677
3678 The problem is in the Sun shared C library, not in GNU ld.
3679
3680 The solution is to install Patch-ID# 100267-03 from Sun.
3681
3682 ** Sunos 4.1: Undefined symbols when linking using --with-x-toolkit.
3683
3684 If you get the undefined symbols _atowc _wcslen, _iswprint, _iswspace,
3685 _iswcntrl, _wcscpy, and _wcsncpy, then you need to add -lXwchar after
3686 -lXaw in the command that links temacs.
3687
3688 This problem seems to arise only when the international language
3689 extensions to X11R5 are installed.
3690
3691 ** SunOS: Emacs gets error message from linker on Sun.
3692
3693 If the error message says that a symbol such as `f68881_used' or
3694 `ffpa_used' or `start_float' is undefined, this probably indicates
3695 that you have compiled some libraries, such as the X libraries,
3696 with a floating point option other than the default.
3697
3698 It's not terribly hard to make this work with small changes in
3699 crt0.c together with linking with Fcrt1.o, Wcrt1.o or Mcrt1.o.
3700 However, the easiest approach is to build Xlib with the default
3701 floating point option: -fsoft.
3702
3703 ** HPUX 10.20: Emacs crashes during dumping on the HPPA machine.
3704
3705 This seems to be due to a GCC bug; it is fixed in GCC 2.8.1.
3706
3707 ** Vax C compiler bugs affecting Emacs.
3708
3709 You may get one of these problems compiling Emacs:
3710
3711 foo.c line nnn: compiler error: no table entry for op STASG
3712 foo.c: fatal error in /lib/ccom
3713
3714 These are due to bugs in the C compiler; the code is valid C.
3715 Unfortunately, the bugs are unpredictable: the same construct
3716 may compile properly or trigger one of these bugs, depending
3717 on what else is in the source file being compiled. Even changes
3718 in header files that should not affect the file being compiled
3719 can affect whether the bug happens. In addition, sometimes files
3720 that compile correctly on one machine get this bug on another machine.
3721
3722 As a result, it is hard for me to make sure this bug will not affect
3723 you. I have attempted to find and alter these constructs, but more
3724 can always appear. However, I can tell you how to deal with it if it
3725 should happen. The bug comes from having an indexed reference to an
3726 array of Lisp_Objects, as an argument in a function call:
3727 Lisp_Object *args;
3728 ...
3729 ... foo (5, args[i], ...)...
3730 putting the argument into a temporary variable first, as in
3731 Lisp_Object *args;
3732 Lisp_Object tem;
3733 ...
3734 tem = args[i];
3735 ... foo (r, tem, ...)...
3736 causes the problem to go away.
3737 The `contents' field of a Lisp vector is an array of Lisp_Objects,
3738 so you may see the problem happening with indexed references to that.
3739
3740 ** 68000 C compiler problems
3741
3742 Various 68000 compilers have different problems.
3743 These are some that have been observed.
3744
3745 *** Using value of assignment expression on union type loses.
3746 This means that x = y = z; or foo (x = z); does not work
3747 if x is of type Lisp_Object.
3748
3749 *** "cannot reclaim" error.
3750
3751 This means that an expression is too complicated. You get the correct
3752 line number in the error message. The code must be rewritten with
3753 simpler expressions.
3754
3755 *** XCONS, XSTRING, etc macros produce incorrect code.
3756
3757 If temacs fails to run at all, this may be the cause.
3758 Compile this test program and look at the assembler code:
3759
3760 struct foo { char x; unsigned int y : 24; };
3761
3762 lose (arg)
3763 struct foo arg;
3764 {
3765 test ((int *) arg.y);
3766 }
3767
3768 If the code is incorrect, your compiler has this problem.
3769 In the XCONS, etc., macros in lisp.h you must replace (a).u.val with
3770 ((a).u.val + coercedummy) where coercedummy is declared as int.
3771
3772 This problem will only happen if USE_LISP_UNION_TYPE is manually
3773 defined in lisp.h.
3774
3775 *** C compilers lose on returning unions.
3776
3777 I hear that some C compilers cannot handle returning a union type.
3778 Most of the functions in GNU Emacs return type Lisp_Object, which is
3779 defined as a union on some rare architectures.
3780
3781 This problem will only happen if USE_LISP_UNION_TYPE is manually
3782 defined in lisp.h.
3783
3784 \f
3785 This file is part of GNU Emacs.
3786
3787 GNU Emacs is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
3788 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
3789 the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
3790 (at your option) any later version.
3791
3792 GNU Emacs is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
3793 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
3794 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
3795 GNU General Public License for more details.
3796
3797 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
3798 along with GNU Emacs. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
3799
3800 \f
3801 Local variables:
3802 mode: outline
3803 paragraph-separate: "[ \f]*$"
3804 end:
3805
3806 arch-tag: 49fc0d95-88cb-4715-b21c-f27fb5a4764a