Merge from emacs--rel--22
[bpt/emacs.git] / etc / PROBLEMS
1 Copyright (C) 1987, 1988, 1989, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999,
2 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008
3 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
4 See the end of the file for license conditions.
5
6
7 This file describes various problems that have been encountered
8 in compiling, installing and running GNU Emacs. Try doing Ctl-C Ctl-t
9 and browsing through the outline headers.
10
11 * Mule-UCS doesn't work in Emacs 23.
12
13 It's completely redundant now, as far as we know.
14
15 * Emacs startup failures
16
17 ** Emacs fails to start, complaining about missing fonts.
18
19 A typical error message might be something like
20
21 No fonts match `-*-fixed-medium-r-*--6-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1'
22
23 This happens because some X resource specifies a bad font family for
24 Emacs to use. The possible places where this specification might be
25 are:
26
27 - in your ~/.Xdefaults file
28
29 - client-side X resource file, such as ~/Emacs or
30 /usr/X11R6/lib/app-defaults/Emacs or
31 /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/app-defaults/Emacs
32
33 One of these files might have bad or malformed specification of a
34 fontset that Emacs should use. To fix the problem, you need to find
35 the problematic line(s) and correct them.
36
37 ** Emacs aborts while starting up, only when run without X.
38
39 This problem often results from compiling Emacs with GCC when GCC was
40 installed incorrectly. The usual error in installing GCC is to
41 specify --includedir=/usr/include. Installation of GCC makes
42 corrected copies of the system header files. GCC is supposed to use
43 the corrected copies in preference to the original system headers.
44 Specifying --includedir=/usr/include causes the original system header
45 files to be used. On some systems, the definition of ioctl in the
46 original system header files is invalid for ANSI C and causes Emacs
47 not to work.
48
49 The fix is to reinstall GCC, and this time do not specify --includedir
50 when you configure it. Then recompile Emacs. Specifying --includedir
51 is appropriate only in very special cases and it should *never* be the
52 same directory where system header files are kept.
53
54 ** Emacs does not start, complaining that it cannot open termcap database file.
55
56 If your system uses Terminfo rather than termcap (most modern
57 systems do), this could happen if the proper version of
58 ncurses is not visible to the Emacs configure script (i.e. it
59 cannot be found along the usual path the linker looks for
60 libraries). It can happen because your version of ncurses is
61 obsolete, or is available only in form of binaries.
62
63 The solution is to install an up-to-date version of ncurses in
64 the developer's form (header files, static libraries and
65 symbolic links); in some GNU/Linux distributions (e.g. Debian)
66 it constitutes a separate package.
67
68 ** Emacs 20 and later fails to load Lisp files at startup.
69
70 The typical error message might be like this:
71
72 "Cannot open load file: fontset"
73
74 This could happen if you compress the file lisp/subdirs.el. That file
75 tells Emacs what are the directories where it should look for Lisp
76 files. Emacs cannot work with subdirs.el compressed, since the
77 Auto-compress mode it needs for this will not be loaded until later,
78 when your .emacs file is processed. (The package `fontset.el' is
79 required to set up fonts used to display text on window systems, and
80 it's loaded very early in the startup procedure.)
81
82 Similarly, any other .el file for which there's no corresponding .elc
83 file could fail to load if it is compressed.
84
85 The solution is to uncompress all .el files which don't have a .elc
86 file.
87
88 Another possible reason for such failures is stale *.elc files
89 lurking somewhere on your load-path. The following command will
90 print any duplicate Lisp files that are present in load-path:
91
92 emacs -q -batch -f list-load-path-shadows
93
94 If this command prints any file names, some of these files are stale,
95 and should be deleted or their directories removed from your
96 load-path.
97
98 ** Emacs prints an error at startup after upgrading from an earlier version.
99
100 An example of such an error is:
101
102 x-complement-fontset-spec: "Wrong type argument: stringp, nil"
103
104 This can be another symptom of stale *.elc files in your load-path.
105 The following command will print any duplicate Lisp files that are
106 present in load-path:
107
108 emacs -q -batch -f list-load-path-shadows
109
110 If this command prints any file names, some of these files are stale,
111 and should be deleted or their directories removed from your
112 load-path.
113
114 ** With X11R6.4, public-patch-3, Emacs crashes at startup.
115
116 Reportedly this patch in X fixes the problem.
117
118 --- xc/lib/X11/imInt.c~ Wed Jun 30 13:31:56 1999
119 +++ xc/lib/X11/imInt.c Thu Jul 1 15:10:27 1999
120 @@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
121 -/* $TOG: imInt.c /main/5 1998/05/30 21:11:16 kaleb $ */
122 +/* $TOG: imInt.c /main/5 1998/05/30 21:11:16 kaleb $ */
123 /******************************************************************
124
125 Copyright 1992, 1993, 1994 by FUJITSU LIMITED
126 @@ -166,8 +166,8 @@
127 _XimMakeImName(lcd)
128 XLCd lcd;
129 {
130 - char* begin;
131 - char* end;
132 + char* begin = NULL;
133 + char* end = NULL;
134 char* ret;
135 int i = 0;
136 char* ximmodifier = XIMMODIFIER;
137 @@ -182,7 +182,11 @@
138 }
139 ret = Xmalloc(end - begin + 2);
140 if (ret != NULL) {
141 - (void)strncpy(ret, begin, end - begin + 1);
142 + if (begin != NULL) {
143 + (void)strncpy(ret, begin, end - begin + 1);
144 + } else {
145 + ret[0] = '\0';
146 + }
147 ret[end - begin + 1] = '\0';
148 }
149 return ret;
150
151 ** Emacs crashes on startup after a glibc upgrade.
152
153 This is caused by a binary incompatible change to the malloc
154 implementation in glibc 2.5.90-22. As a result, Emacs binaries built
155 using prior versions of glibc crash when run under 2.5.90-22.
156
157 This problem was first seen in pre-release versions of Fedora 7, and
158 may be fixed in the final Fedora 7 release. To stop the crash from
159 happening, first try upgrading to the newest version of glibc; if this
160 does not work, rebuild Emacs with the same version of glibc that you
161 will run it under. For details, see
162
163 https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=239344
164
165 * Crash bugs
166
167 ** Emacs crashes in x-popup-dialog.
168
169 This can happen if the dialog widget cannot find the font it wants to
170 use. You can work around the problem by specifying another font with
171 an X resource--for example, `Emacs.dialog*.font: 9x15' (or any font that
172 happens to exist on your X server).
173
174 ** Emacs crashes when you use Bibtex mode.
175
176 This happens if your system puts a small limit on stack size. You can
177 prevent the problem by using a suitable shell command (often `ulimit')
178 to raise the stack size limit before you run Emacs.
179
180 Patches to raise the stack size limit automatically in `main'
181 (src/emacs.c) on various systems would be greatly appreciated.
182
183 ** Error message `Symbol's value as variable is void: x', followed by
184 a segmentation fault and core dump.
185
186 This has been tracked to a bug in tar! People report that tar erroneously
187 added a line like this at the beginning of files of Lisp code:
188
189 x FILENAME, N bytes, B tape blocks
190
191 If your tar has this problem, install GNU tar--if you can manage to
192 untar it :-).
193
194 ** Crashes when displaying GIF images in Emacs built with version
195 libungif-4.1.0 are resolved by using version libungif-4.1.0b1.
196 Configure checks for the correct version, but this problem could occur
197 if a binary built against a shared libungif is run on a system with an
198 older version.
199
200 ** Emacs aborts inside the function `tparam1'.
201
202 This can happen if Emacs was built without terminfo support, but the
203 terminal's capabilities use format that is only supported by terminfo.
204 If your system has ncurses installed, this might happen if your
205 version of ncurses is broken; upgrading to a newer version of ncurses
206 and reconfiguring and rebuilding Emacs should solve this.
207
208 All modern systems support terminfo, so even if ncurses is not the
209 problem, you should look for a way to configure Emacs so that it uses
210 terminfo when built.
211
212 ** Emacs crashes when using the Exceed 6.0 X server.
213
214 If you are using Exceed 6.1, upgrade to a later version. This was
215 reported to prevent the crashes.
216
217 ** Emacs crashes with SIGSEGV in XtInitializeWidgetClass.
218
219 It crashes on X, but runs fine when called with option "-nw".
220
221 This has been observed when Emacs is linked with GNU ld but without passing
222 the -z nocombreloc flag. Emacs normally knows to pass the -z nocombreloc
223 flag when needed, so if you come across a situation where the flag is
224 necessary but missing, please report it via M-x report-emacs-bug.
225
226 On platforms such as Solaris, you can also work around this problem by
227 configuring your compiler to use the native linker instead of GNU ld.
228
229 ** Emacs compiled with Gtk+ crashes when closing a display (x-close-connection).
230
231 This happens because of bugs in Gtk+. Gtk+ 2.10 seems to be OK. See bug
232 http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=85715.
233
234 ** Emacs compiled with Gtk+ crashes on startup on Cygwin.
235
236 A typical error message is
237 ***MEMORY-ERROR***: emacs[5172]: GSlice: failed to allocate 504 bytes
238 (alignment: 512): Function not implemented
239
240 Emacs supplies its own malloc, but glib (part of Gtk+) calls memalign and on
241 Cygwin, that becomes the Cygwin supplied memalign. As malloc is not the
242 Cygwin malloc, the Cygwin memalign always returns ENOSYS. A fix for this
243 problem would be welcome.
244
245 * General runtime problems
246
247 ** Lisp problems
248
249 *** Changes made to .el files do not take effect.
250
251 You may have forgotten to recompile them into .elc files.
252 Then the old .elc files will be loaded, and your changes
253 will not be seen. To fix this, do M-x byte-recompile-directory
254 and specify the directory that contains the Lisp files.
255
256 Emacs should print a warning when loading a .elc file which is older
257 than the corresponding .el file.
258
259 *** Watch out for .emacs files and EMACSLOADPATH environment vars.
260
261 These control the actions of Emacs.
262 ~/.emacs is your Emacs init file.
263 EMACSLOADPATH overrides which directories the function
264 "load" will search.
265
266 If you observe strange problems, check for these and get rid
267 of them, then try again.
268
269 *** Using epop3.el package causes Emacs to signal an error.
270
271 The error message might be something like this:
272
273 "Lisp nesting exceeds max-lisp-eval-depth"
274
275 This happens because epop3 redefines the function gethash, which is a
276 built-in primitive beginning with Emacs 21.1. We don't have a patch
277 for epop3 that fixes this, but perhaps a newer version of epop3
278 corrects that.
279
280 *** Buffers from `with-output-to-temp-buffer' get set up in Help mode.
281
282 Changes in Emacs 20.4 to the hooks used by that function cause
283 problems for some packages, specifically BBDB. See the function's
284 documentation for the hooks involved. BBDB 2.00.06 fixes the problem.
285
286 *** The Hyperbole package causes *Help* buffers not to be displayed in
287 Help mode due to setting `temp-buffer-show-hook' rather than using
288 `add-hook'. Using `(add-hook 'temp-buffer-show-hook
289 'help-mode-maybe)' after loading Hyperbole should fix this.
290
291 ** Keyboard problems
292
293 *** "Compose Character" key does strange things when used as a Meta key.
294
295 If you define one key to serve as both Meta and Compose Character, you
296 will get strange results. In previous Emacs versions, this "worked"
297 in that the key acted as Meta--that's because the older Emacs versions
298 did not try to support Compose Character. Now Emacs tries to do
299 character composition in the standard X way. This means that you
300 must pick one meaning or the other for any given key.
301
302 You can use both functions (Meta, and Compose Character) if you assign
303 them to two different keys.
304
305 *** C-z just refreshes the screen instead of suspending Emacs.
306
307 You are probably using a shell that doesn't support job control, even
308 though the system itself is capable of it. Either use a different shell,
309 or set the variable `cannot-suspend' to a non-nil value.
310
311 *** With M-x enable-flow-control, you need to type C-\ twice
312 to do incremental search--a single C-\ gets no response.
313
314 This has been traced to communicating with your machine via kermit,
315 with C-\ as the kermit escape character. One solution is to use
316 another escape character in kermit. One user did
317
318 set escape-character 17
319
320 in his .kermrc file, to make C-q the kermit escape character.
321
322 ** Mailers and other helper programs
323
324 *** movemail compiled with POP support can't connect to the POP server.
325
326 Make sure that the `pop' entry in /etc/services, or in the services
327 NIS map if your machine uses NIS, has the same port number as the
328 entry on the POP server. A common error is for the POP server to be
329 listening on port 110, the assigned port for the POP3 protocol, while
330 the client is trying to connect on port 109, the assigned port for the
331 old POP protocol.
332
333 *** RMAIL gets error getting new mail.
334
335 RMAIL gets new mail from /usr/spool/mail/$USER using a program
336 called `movemail'. This program interlocks with /bin/mail using
337 the protocol defined by /bin/mail.
338
339 There are two different protocols in general use. One of them uses
340 the `flock' system call. The other involves creating a lock file;
341 `movemail' must be able to write in /usr/spool/mail in order to do
342 this. You control which one is used by defining, or not defining,
343 the macro MAIL_USE_FLOCK in config.h or the m- or s- file it includes.
344 IF YOU DON'T USE THE FORM OF INTERLOCKING THAT IS NORMAL ON YOUR
345 SYSTEM, YOU CAN LOSE MAIL!
346
347 If your system uses the lock file protocol, and fascist restrictions
348 prevent ordinary users from writing the lock files in /usr/spool/mail,
349 you may need to make `movemail' setgid to a suitable group such as
350 `mail'. To do this, use the following commands (as root) after doing the
351 make install.
352
353 chgrp mail movemail
354 chmod 2755 movemail
355
356 Installation normally copies movemail from the build directory to an
357 installation directory which is usually under /usr/local/lib. The
358 installed copy of movemail is usually in the directory
359 /usr/local/lib/emacs/VERSION/TARGET. You must change the group and
360 mode of the installed copy; changing the group and mode of the build
361 directory copy is ineffective.
362
363 *** rcs2log gives you the awk error message "too many fields".
364
365 This is due to an arbitrary limit in certain versions of awk.
366 The solution is to use gawk (GNU awk).
367
368 ** Problems with hostname resolution
369
370 *** Emacs fails to understand most Internet host names, even though
371 the names work properly with other programs on the same system.
372 *** Emacs won't work with X-windows if the value of DISPLAY is HOSTNAME:0.
373 *** Gnus can't make contact with the specified host for nntp.
374
375 This typically happens on Suns and other systems that use shared
376 libraries. The cause is that the site has installed a version of the
377 shared library which uses a name server--but has not installed a
378 similar version of the unshared library which Emacs uses.
379
380 The result is that most programs, using the shared library, work with
381 the nameserver, but Emacs does not.
382
383 The fix is to install an unshared library that corresponds to what you
384 installed in the shared library, and then relink Emacs.
385
386 If you have already installed the name resolver in the file libresolv.a,
387 then you need to compile Emacs to use that library. The easiest way to
388 do this is to add to config.h a definition of LIBS_SYSTEM, LIBS_MACHINE
389 or LIB_STANDARD which uses -lresolv. Watch out! If you redefine a macro
390 that is already in use in your configuration to supply some other libraries,
391 be careful not to lose the others.
392
393 Thus, you could start by adding this to config.h:
394
395 #define LIBS_SYSTEM -lresolv
396
397 Then if this gives you an error for redefining a macro, and you see that
398 the s- file defines LIBS_SYSTEM as -lfoo -lbar, you could change config.h
399 again to say this:
400
401 #define LIBS_SYSTEM -lresolv -lfoo -lbar
402
403 *** Emacs does not know your host's fully-qualified domain name.
404
405 For example, (system-name) returns some variation on
406 "localhost.localdomain", rather the name you were expecting.
407
408 You need to configure your machine with a fully qualified domain name,
409 (i.e. a name with at least one ".") either in /etc/hosts,
410 /etc/hostname, the NIS, or wherever your system calls for specifying
411 this.
412
413 If you cannot fix the configuration, you can set the Lisp variable
414 mail-host-address to the value you want.
415
416 ** NFS and RFS
417
418 *** Emacs says it has saved a file, but the file does not actually
419 appear on disk.
420
421 This can happen on certain systems when you are using NFS, if the
422 remote disk is full. It is due to a bug in NFS (or certain NFS
423 implementations), and there is apparently nothing Emacs can do to
424 detect the problem. Emacs checks the failure codes of all the system
425 calls involved in writing a file, including `close'; but in the case
426 where the problem occurs, none of those system calls fails.
427
428 *** Editing files through RFS gives spurious "file has changed" warnings.
429 It is possible that a change in Emacs 18.37 gets around this problem,
430 but in case not, here is a description of how to fix the RFS bug that
431 causes it.
432
433 There was a serious pair of bugs in the handling of the fsync() system
434 call in the RFS server.
435
436 The first is that the fsync() call is handled as another name for the
437 close() system call (!!). It appears that fsync() is not used by very
438 many programs; Emacs version 18 does an fsync() before closing files
439 to make sure that the bits are on the disk.
440
441 This is fixed by the enclosed patch to the RFS server.
442
443 The second, more serious problem, is that fsync() is treated as a
444 non-blocking system call (i.e., it's implemented as a message that
445 gets sent to the remote system without waiting for a reply). Fsync is
446 a useful tool for building atomic file transactions. Implementing it
447 as a non-blocking RPC call (when the local call blocks until the sync
448 is done) is a bad idea; unfortunately, changing it will break the RFS
449 protocol. No fix was supplied for this problem.
450
451 (as always, your line numbers may vary)
452
453 % rcsdiff -c -r1.2 serversyscall.c
454 RCS file: RCS/serversyscall.c,v
455 retrieving revision 1.2
456 diff -c -r1.2 serversyscall.c
457 *** /tmp/,RCSt1003677 Wed Jan 28 15:15:02 1987
458 --- serversyscall.c Wed Jan 28 15:14:48 1987
459 ***************
460 *** 163,169 ****
461 /*
462 * No return sent for close or fsync!
463 */
464 ! if (syscall == RSYS_close || syscall == RSYS_fsync)
465 proc->p_returnval = deallocate_fd(proc, msg->m_args[0]);
466 else
467 {
468 --- 166,172 ----
469 /*
470 * No return sent for close or fsync!
471 */
472 ! if (syscall == RSYS_close)
473 proc->p_returnval = deallocate_fd(proc, msg->m_args[0]);
474 else
475 {
476
477 ** PSGML
478
479 *** Old versions of the PSGML package use the obsolete variables
480 `before-change-function' and `after-change-function', which are no
481 longer used by Emacs. Please use PSGML 1.2.3 or later.
482
483 *** PSGML conflicts with sgml-mode.
484
485 PSGML package uses the same names of some variables (like keymap)
486 as built-in sgml-mode.el because it was created as a replacement
487 of that package. The conflict will be shown if you load
488 sgml-mode.el before psgml.el. E.g. this could happen if you edit
489 HTML page and then start to work with SGML or XML file. html-mode
490 (from sgml-mode.el) is used for HTML file and loading of psgml.el
491 (for sgml-mode or xml-mode) will cause an error.
492
493 *** Versions of the PSGML package earlier than 1.0.3 (stable) or 1.1.2
494 (alpha) fail to parse DTD files correctly in Emacs 20.3 and later.
495 Here is a patch for psgml-parse.el from PSGML 1.0.1 and, probably,
496 earlier versions.
497
498 --- psgml-parse.el 1998/08/21 19:18:18 1.1
499 +++ psgml-parse.el 1998/08/21 19:20:00
500 @@ -2383,7 +2383,7 @@ (defun sgml-push-to-entity (entity &opti
501 (setq sgml-buffer-parse-state nil))
502 (cond
503 ((stringp entity) ; a file name
504 - (save-excursion (insert-file-contents entity))
505 + (insert-file-contents entity)
506 (setq default-directory (file-name-directory entity)))
507 ((consp (sgml-entity-text entity)) ; external id?
508 (let* ((extid (sgml-entity-text entity))
509
510 ** AUCTeX
511
512 You should not be using a version older than 11.52 if you can avoid
513 it.
514
515 *** Emacs 21 freezes when visiting a TeX file with AUCTeX installed.
516
517 Emacs 21 needs version 10 or later of AUCTeX; upgrading should solve
518 these problems.
519
520 *** No colors in AUCTeX with Emacs 21.
521
522 Upgrade to AUC TeX version 10 or later, and make sure it is
523 byte-compiled with Emacs 21.
524
525 ** PCL-CVS
526
527 *** Lines are not updated or new lines are added in the buffer upon commit.
528
529 When committing files located higher in the hierarchy than the examined
530 directory, some versions of the CVS program return an ambiguous message
531 from which PCL-CVS cannot extract the full location of the committed
532 files. As a result, the corresponding lines in the PCL-CVS buffer are
533 not updated with the new revision of these files, and new lines are
534 added to the top-level directory.
535
536 This can happen with CVS versions 1.12.8 and 1.12.9. Upgrade to CVS
537 1.12.10 or newer to fix this problem.
538
539 ** Miscellaneous problems
540
541 *** Emacs uses 100% of CPU time
542
543 This is a known problem with some versions of the Semantic package.
544 The solution is to upgrade Semantic to version 2.0pre4 (distributed
545 with CEDET 1.0pre4) or later.
546
547 *** Self-documentation messages are garbled.
548
549 This means that the file `etc/DOC-...' doesn't properly correspond
550 with the Emacs executable. Redumping Emacs and then installing the
551 corresponding pair of files should fix the problem.
552
553 *** Programs running under terminal emulator do not recognize `emacs'
554 terminal type.
555
556 The cause of this is a shell startup file that sets the TERMCAP
557 environment variable. The terminal emulator uses that variable to
558 provide the information on the special terminal type that Emacs
559 emulates.
560
561 Rewrite your shell startup file so that it does not change TERMCAP
562 in such a case. You could use the following conditional which sets
563 it only if it is undefined.
564
565 if ( ! ${?TERMCAP} ) setenv TERMCAP ~/my-termcap-file
566
567 Or you could set TERMCAP only when you set TERM--which should not
568 happen in a non-login shell.
569
570 *** In Shell mode, you get a ^M at the end of every line.
571
572 This happens to people who use tcsh, because it is trying to be too
573 smart. It sees that the Shell uses terminal type `unknown' and turns
574 on the flag to output ^M at the end of each line. You can fix the
575 problem by adding this to your .cshrc file:
576
577 if ($?EMACS) then
578 if ("$EMACS" =~ /*) then
579 unset edit
580 stty -icrnl -onlcr -echo susp ^Z
581 endif
582 endif
583
584 *** Emacs startup on GNU/Linux systems (and possibly other systems) is slow.
585
586 This can happen if the system is misconfigured and Emacs can't get the
587 full qualified domain name, FQDN. You should have your FQDN in the
588 /etc/hosts file, something like this:
589
590 127.0.0.1 localhost
591 129.187.137.82 nuc04.t30.physik.tu-muenchen.de nuc04
592
593 The way to set this up may vary on non-GNU systems.
594
595 *** Attempting to visit remote files via ange-ftp fails.
596
597 If the error message is "ange-ftp-file-modtime: Specified time is not
598 representable", then this could happen when `lukemftp' is used as the
599 ftp client. This was reported to happen on Debian GNU/Linux, kernel
600 version 2.4.3, with `lukemftp' 1.5-5, but might happen on other
601 systems as well. To avoid this problem, switch to using the standard
602 ftp client. On a Debian system, type
603
604 update-alternatives --config ftp
605
606 and then choose /usr/bin/netkit-ftp.
607
608 *** JPEG images aren't displayed.
609
610 This has been reported when Emacs is built with jpeg-6a library.
611 Upgrading to jpeg-6b solves the problem. Configure checks for the
612 correct version, but this problem could occur if a binary built
613 against a shared libjpeg is run on a system with an older version.
614
615 *** Dired is very slow.
616
617 This could happen if invocation of the `df' program takes a long
618 time. Possible reasons for this include:
619
620 - ClearCase mounted filesystems (VOBs) that sometimes make `df'
621 response time extremely slow (dozens of seconds);
622
623 - slow automounters on some old versions of Unix;
624
625 - slow operation of some versions of `df'.
626
627 To work around the problem, you could either (a) set the variable
628 `directory-free-space-program' to nil, and thus prevent Emacs from
629 invoking `df'; (b) use `df' from the GNU Fileutils package; or
630 (c) use CVS, which is Free Software, instead of ClearCase.
631
632 *** Versions of the W3 package released before Emacs 21.1 don't run
633 under Emacs 21. This fixed in W3 version 4.0pre.47.
634
635 *** The LDAP support rely on ldapsearch program from OpenLDAP version 2.
636
637 It can fail to work with ldapsearch program from OpenLDAP version 1.
638 Version 1 of OpenLDAP is now deprecated. If you are still using it,
639 please upgrade to version 2. As a temporary workaround, remove
640 argument "-x" from the variable `ldap-ldapsearch-args'.
641
642 *** ps-print commands fail to find prologue files ps-prin*.ps.
643
644 This can happen if you use an old version of X-Symbol package: it
645 defines compatibility functions which trick ps-print into thinking it
646 runs in XEmacs, and look for the prologue files in a wrong directory.
647
648 The solution is to upgrade X-Symbol to a later version.
649
650 *** On systems with shared libraries you might encounter run-time errors
651 from the dynamic linker telling you that it is unable to find some
652 shared libraries, for instance those for Xaw3d or image support.
653 These errors mean Emacs has been linked with a library whose shared
654 library is not in the default search path of the dynamic linker.
655
656 Similar problems could prevent Emacs from building, since the build
657 process invokes Emacs several times.
658
659 On many systems, it is possible to set LD_LIBRARY_PATH in your
660 environment to specify additional directories where shared libraries
661 can be found.
662
663 Other systems allow to set LD_RUN_PATH in a similar way, but before
664 Emacs is linked. With LD_RUN_PATH set, the linker will include a
665 specified run-time search path in the executable.
666
667 On some systems, Emacs can crash due to problems with dynamic
668 linking. Specifically, on SGI Irix 6.5, crashes were reported with
669 backtraces like this:
670
671 (dbx) where
672 0 strcmp(0xf49239d, 0x4031184, 0x40302b4, 0x12, 0xf0000000, 0xf4923aa, 0x0, 0x492ddb2) ["/xlv22/ficus-jan23/work/irix/lib/libc/libc_n32_M3_ns/strings/strcmp.s":35, 0xfb7e480]
673 1 general_find_symbol(0xf49239d, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0xf0000000, 0xf4923aa, 0x0, 0x492ddb2)
674 ["/comp2/mtibuild/v73/workarea/v7.3/rld/rld.c":2140, 0xfb65a98]
675 2 resolve_symbol(0xf49239d, 0x4031184, 0x0, 0xfbdd438, 0x0, 0xf4923aa, 0x0, 0x492ddb2)
676 ["/comp2/mtibuild/v73/workarea/v7.3/rld/rld.c":1947, 0xfb657e4]
677 3 lazy_text_resolve(0xd18, 0x1a3, 0x40302b4, 0x12, 0xf0000000, 0xf4923aa, 0x0, 0x492ddb2)
678 ["/comp2/mtibuild/v73/workarea/v7.3/rld/rld.c":997, 0xfb64d44]
679 4 _rld_text_resolve(0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0)
680 ["/comp2/mtibuild/v73/workarea/v7.3/rld/rld_bridge.s":175, 0xfb6032c]
681
682 (`rld' is the dynamic linker.) We don't know yet why this
683 happens, but setting the environment variable LD_BIND_NOW to 1 (which
684 forces the dynamic linker to bind all shared objects early on) seems
685 to work around the problem.
686
687 Please refer to the documentation of your dynamic linker for details.
688
689 *** You request inverse video, and the first Emacs frame is in inverse
690 video, but later frames are not in inverse video.
691
692 This can happen if you have an old version of the custom library in
693 your search path for Lisp packages. Use M-x list-load-path-shadows to
694 check whether this is true. If it is, delete the old custom library.
695
696 *** When you run Ispell from Emacs, it reports a "misalignment" error.
697
698 This can happen if you compiled the Ispell program to use ASCII
699 characters only and then try to use it from Emacs with non-ASCII
700 characters, like Latin-1. The solution is to recompile Ispell with
701 support for 8-bit characters.
702
703 To see whether your Ispell program supports 8-bit characters, type
704 this at your shell's prompt:
705
706 ispell -vv
707
708 and look in the output for the string "NO8BIT". If Ispell says
709 "!NO8BIT (8BIT)", your speller supports 8-bit characters; otherwise it
710 does not.
711
712 To rebuild Ispell with 8-bit character support, edit the local.h file
713 in the Ispell distribution and make sure it does _not_ define NO8BIT.
714 Then rebuild the speller.
715
716 Another possible cause for "misalignment" error messages is that the
717 version of Ispell installed on your machine is old. Upgrade.
718
719 Yet another possibility is that you are trying to spell-check a word
720 in a language that doesn't fit the dictionary you choose for use by
721 Ispell. (Ispell can only spell-check one language at a time, because
722 it uses a single dictionary.) Make sure that the text you are
723 spelling and the dictionary used by Ispell conform to each other.
724
725 If your spell-checking program is Aspell, it has been reported that if
726 you have a personal configuration file (normally ~/.aspell.conf), it
727 can cause this error. Remove that file, execute `ispell-kill-ispell'
728 in Emacs, and then try spell-checking again.
729
730 * Runtime problems related to font handling
731
732 ** Under X11, some characters appear as hollow boxes.
733
734 Each X11 font covers just a fraction of the characters that Emacs
735 supports. To display the whole range of Emacs characters requires
736 many different fonts, collected into a fontset.
737
738 If some of the fonts called for in your fontset do not exist on your X
739 server, then the characters that have no font appear as hollow boxes.
740 You can remedy the problem by installing additional fonts.
741
742 The intlfonts distribution includes a full spectrum of fonts that can
743 display all the characters Emacs supports. The etl-unicode collection
744 of fonts (available from <URL:ftp://ftp.x.org/contrib/fonts/> and
745 <URL:ftp://ftp.xfree86.org/pub/mirror/X.Org/contrib/fonts/>) includes
746 fonts that can display many Unicode characters; they can also be used
747 by ps-print and ps-mule to print Unicode characters.
748
749 Another cause of this for specific characters is fonts which have a
750 missing glyph and no default character. This is known to occur for
751 character number 160 (no-break space) in some fonts, such as Lucida
752 but Emacs sets the display table for the unibyte and Latin-1 version
753 of this character to display a space.
754
755 ** Under X11, some characters appear improperly aligned in their lines.
756
757 You may have bad X11 fonts; try installing the intlfonts distribution
758 or the etl-unicode collection (see the previous entry).
759
760 ** Certain fonts make each line take one pixel more than it "should".
761
762 This is because these fonts contain characters a little taller
763 than the font's nominal height. Emacs needs to make sure that
764 lines do not overlap.
765
766 ** Loading fonts is very slow.
767
768 You might be getting scalable fonts instead of precomputed bitmaps.
769 Known scalable font directories are "Type1" and "Speedo". A font
770 directory contains scalable fonts if it contains the file
771 "fonts.scale".
772
773 If this is so, re-order your X windows font path to put the scalable
774 font directories last. See the documentation of `xset' for details.
775
776 With some X servers, it may be necessary to take the scalable font
777 directories out of your path entirely, at least for Emacs 19.26.
778 Changes in the future may make this unnecessary.
779
780 ** Font Lock displays portions of the buffer in incorrect faces.
781
782 By far the most frequent cause of this is a parenthesis `(' or a brace
783 `{' in column zero. Font Lock assumes that such a paren is outside of
784 any comment or string. This is of course not true in general, but the
785 vast majority of well-formatted program source files don't have such
786 parens, and therefore this assumption is used to allow optimizations
787 in Font Lock's syntactical analysis. These optimizations avoid some
788 pathological cases where jit-lock, the Just-in-Time fontification
789 introduced with Emacs 21.1, could significantly slow down scrolling
790 through the buffer, especially scrolling backwards, and also jumping
791 to the end of a very large buffer.
792
793 Beginning with version 22.1, a parenthesis or a brace in column zero
794 is highlighted in bold-red face if it is inside a string or a comment,
795 to indicate that it could interfere with Font Lock (and also with
796 indentation) and should be moved or escaped with a backslash.
797
798 If you don't use large buffers, or have a very fast machine which
799 makes the delays insignificant, you can avoid the incorrect
800 fontification by setting the variable
801 `font-lock-beginning-of-syntax-function' to a nil value. (This must
802 be done _after_ turning on Font Lock.)
803
804 Another alternative is to avoid a paren in column zero. For example,
805 in a Lisp string you could precede the paren with a backslash.
806
807 ** With certain fonts, when the cursor appears on a character, the
808 character doesn't appear--you get a solid box instead.
809
810 One user on a Linux-based GNU system reported that this problem went
811 away with installation of a new X server. The failing server was
812 XFree86 3.1.1. XFree86 3.1.2 works.
813
814 ** Characters are displayed as empty boxes or with wrong font under X.
815
816 This can occur when two different versions of FontConfig are used.
817 For example, XFree86 4.3.0 has one version and Gnome usually comes
818 with a newer version. Emacs compiled with Gtk+ will then use
819 the newer version. In most cases the problem can be temporarily
820 fixed by stopping the application that has the error (it can be
821 Emacs or any other application), removing ~/.fonts.cache-1,
822 and then start the application again.
823 If removing ~/.fonts.cache-1 and restarting doesn't help, the
824 application with problem must be recompiled with the same version
825 of FontConfig as the rest of the system uses. For KDE, it is
826 sufficient to recompile Qt.
827
828 ** Emacs pauses for several seconds when changing the default font.
829
830 This has been reported for fvwm 2.2.5 and the window manager of KDE
831 2.1. The reason for the pause is Xt waiting for a ConfigureNotify
832 event from the window manager, which the window manager doesn't send.
833 Xt stops waiting after a default timeout of usually 5 seconds.
834
835 A workaround for this is to add something like
836
837 emacs.waitForWM: false
838
839 to your X resources. Alternatively, add `(wait-for-wm . nil)' to a
840 frame's parameter list, like this:
841
842 (modify-frame-parameters nil '((wait-for-wm . nil)))
843
844 (this should go into your `.emacs' file).
845
846 ** Underlines appear at the wrong position.
847
848 This is caused by fonts having a wrong UNDERLINE_POSITION property.
849 Examples are the font 7x13 on XFree prior to version 4.1, or the jmk
850 neep font from the Debian xfonts-jmk package. To circumvent this
851 problem, set x-use-underline-position-properties to nil in your
852 `.emacs'.
853
854 To see what is the value of UNDERLINE_POSITION defined by the font,
855 type `xlsfonts -lll FONT' and look at the font's UNDERLINE_POSITION
856 property.
857
858 ** When using Exceed, fonts sometimes appear too tall.
859
860 When the display is set to an Exceed X-server and fonts are specified
861 (either explicitly with the -fn option or implicitly with X resources)
862 then the fonts may appear "too tall". The actual character sizes are
863 correct but there is too much vertical spacing between rows, which
864 gives the appearance of "double spacing".
865
866 To prevent this, turn off the Exceed's "automatic font substitution"
867 feature (in the font part of the configuration window).
868
869 ** Subscript/superscript text in TeX is hard to read.
870
871 If `tex-fontify-script' is non-nil, tex-mode displays
872 subscript/superscript text in the faces subscript/superscript, which
873 are smaller than the normal font and lowered/raised. With some fonts,
874 nested superscripts (say) can be hard to read. Switching to a
875 different font, or changing your antialiasing setting (on an LCD
876 screen), can both make the problem disappear. Alternatively, customize
877 the following variables: tex-font-script-display (how much to
878 lower/raise); tex-suscript-height-ratio (how much smaller than
879 normal); tex-suscript-height-minimum (minimum height).
880
881 * Internationalization problems
882
883 ** M-{ does not work on a Spanish PC keyboard.
884
885 Many Spanish keyboards seem to ignore that combination. Emacs can't
886 do anything about it.
887
888 ** Characters from the mule-unicode charsets aren't displayed under X.
889
890 XFree86 4 contains many fonts in iso10646-1 encoding which have
891 minimal character repertoires (whereas the encoding part of the font
892 name is meant to be a reasonable indication of the repertoire
893 according to the XLFD spec). Emacs may choose one of these to display
894 characters from the mule-unicode charsets and then typically won't be
895 able to find the glyphs to display many characters. (Check with C-u
896 C-x = .) To avoid this, you may need to use a fontset which sets the
897 font for the mule-unicode sets explicitly. E.g. to use GNU unifont,
898 include in the fontset spec:
899
900 mule-unicode-2500-33ff:-gnu-unifont-*-iso10646-1,\
901 mule-unicode-e000-ffff:-gnu-unifont-*-iso10646-1,\
902 mule-unicode-0100-24ff:-gnu-unifont-*-iso10646-1
903
904 ** The UTF-8/16/7 coding systems don't encode CJK (Far Eastern) characters.
905
906 Emacs directly supports the Unicode BMP whose code points are in the
907 ranges 0000-33ff and e000-ffff, and indirectly supports the parts of
908 CJK characters belonging to these legacy charsets:
909
910 GB2312, Big5, JISX0208, JISX0212, JISX0213-1, JISX0213-2, KSC5601
911
912 The latter support is done in Utf-Translate-Cjk mode (turned on by
913 default). Which Unicode CJK characters are decoded into which Emacs
914 charset is decided by the current language environment. For instance,
915 in Chinese-GB, most of them are decoded into chinese-gb2312.
916
917 If you read UTF-8 data with code points outside these ranges, the
918 characters appear in the buffer as raw bytes of the original UTF-8
919 (composed into a single quasi-character) and they will be written back
920 correctly as UTF-8, assuming you don't break the composed sequences.
921 If you read such characters from UTF-16 or UTF-7 data, they are
922 substituted with the Unicode `replacement character', and you lose
923 information.
924
925 ** Mule-UCS loads very slowly.
926
927 Changes to Emacs internals interact badly with Mule-UCS's `un-define'
928 library, which is the usual interface to Mule-UCS. Apply the
929 following patch to Mule-UCS 0.84 and rebuild it. That will help,
930 though loading will still be slower than in Emacs 20. (Some
931 distributions, such as Debian, may already have applied such a patch.)
932
933 --- lisp/un-define.el 6 Mar 2001 22:41:38 -0000 1.30
934 +++ lisp/un-define.el 19 Apr 2002 18:34:26 -0000
935 @@ -610,13 +624,21 @@ by calling post-read-conversion and pre-
936
937 (mapcar
938 (lambda (x)
939 - (mapcar
940 - (lambda (y)
941 - (mucs-define-coding-system
942 - (nth 0 y) (nth 1 y) (nth 2 y)
943 - (nth 3 y) (nth 4 y) (nth 5 y) (nth 6 y))
944 - (coding-system-put (car y) 'alias-coding-systems (list (car x))))
945 - (cdr x)))
946 + (if (fboundp 'register-char-codings)
947 + ;; Mule 5, where we don't need the eol-type specified and
948 + ;; register-char-codings may be very slow for these coding
949 + ;; system definitions.
950 + (let ((y (cadr x)))
951 + (mucs-define-coding-system
952 + (car x) (nth 1 y) (nth 2 y)
953 + (nth 3 y) (nth 4 y) (nth 5 y)))
954 + (mapcar
955 + (lambda (y)
956 + (mucs-define-coding-system
957 + (nth 0 y) (nth 1 y) (nth 2 y)
958 + (nth 3 y) (nth 4 y) (nth 5 y) (nth 6 y))
959 + (coding-system-put (car y) 'alias-coding-systems (list (car x)))))
960 + (cdr x)))
961 `((utf-8
962 (utf-8-unix
963 ?u "UTF-8 coding system"
964
965 Note that Emacs has native support for Unicode, roughly equivalent to
966 Mule-UCS's, so you may not need it.
967
968 ** Mule-UCS compilation problem.
969
970 Emacs of old versions and XEmacs byte-compile the form `(progn progn
971 ...)' the same way as `(progn ...)', but Emacs of version 21.3 and the
972 later process that form just as interpreter does, that is, as `progn'
973 variable reference. Apply the following patch to Mule-UCS 0.84 to
974 make it compiled by the latest Emacs.
975
976 --- mucs-ccl.el 2 Sep 2005 00:42:23 -0000 1.1.1.1
977 +++ mucs-ccl.el 2 Sep 2005 01:31:51 -0000 1.3
978 @@ -639,10 +639,14 @@
979 (mucs-notify-embedment 'mucs-ccl-required name)
980 (setq ccl-pgm-list (cdr ccl-pgm-list)))
981 ; (message "MCCLREGFIN:%S" result)
982 - `(progn
983 - (setq mucs-ccl-facility-alist
984 - (quote ,mucs-ccl-facility-alist))
985 - ,@result)))
986 + ;; The only way the function is used in this package is included
987 + ;; in `mucs-package-definition-end-hook' value, where it must
988 + ;; return (possibly empty) *list* of forms. Do this. Do not rely
989 + ;; on byte compiler to remove extra `progn's in `(progn ...)'
990 + ;; form.
991 + `((setq mucs-ccl-facility-alist
992 + (quote ,mucs-ccl-facility-alist))
993 + ,@result)))
994
995 ;;; Add hook for embedding translation informations to a package.
996 (add-hook 'mucs-package-definition-end-hook
997
998 ** Accented ISO-8859-1 characters are displayed as | or _.
999
1000 Try other font set sizes (S-mouse-1). If the problem persists with
1001 other sizes as well, your text is corrupted, probably through software
1002 that is not 8-bit clean. If the problem goes away with another font
1003 size, it's probably because some fonts pretend to be ISO-8859-1 fonts
1004 when they are really ASCII fonts. In particular the schumacher-clean
1005 fonts have this bug in some versions of X.
1006
1007 To see what glyphs are included in a font, use `xfd', like this:
1008
1009 xfd -fn -schumacher-clean-medium-r-normal--12-120-75-75-c-60-iso8859-1
1010
1011 If this shows only ASCII glyphs, the font is indeed the source of the
1012 problem.
1013
1014 The solution is to remove the corresponding lines from the appropriate
1015 `fonts.alias' file, then run `mkfontdir' in that directory, and then run
1016 `xset fp rehash'.
1017
1018 ** The `oc-unicode' package doesn't work with Emacs 21.
1019
1020 This package tries to define more private charsets than there are free
1021 slots now. The current built-in Unicode support is actually more
1022 flexible. (Use option `utf-translate-cjk-mode' if you need CJK
1023 support.) Files encoded as emacs-mule using oc-unicode aren't
1024 generally read correctly by Emacs 21.
1025
1026 ** After a while, Emacs slips into unibyte mode.
1027
1028 The VM mail package, which is not part of Emacs, sometimes does
1029 (standard-display-european t)
1030 That should be changed to
1031 (standard-display-european 1 t)
1032
1033 * X runtime problems
1034
1035 ** X keyboard problems
1036
1037 *** You "lose characters" after typing Compose Character key.
1038
1039 This is because the Compose Character key is defined as the keysym
1040 Multi_key, and Emacs (seeing that) does the proper X11
1041 character-composition processing. If you don't want your Compose key
1042 to do that, you can redefine it with xmodmap.
1043
1044 For example, here's one way to turn it into a Meta key:
1045
1046 xmodmap -e "keysym Multi_key = Meta_L"
1047
1048 If all users at your site of a particular keyboard prefer Meta to
1049 Compose, you can make the remapping happen automatically by adding the
1050 xmodmap command to the xdm setup script for that display.
1051
1052 *** Using X Windows, control-shift-leftbutton makes Emacs hang.
1053
1054 Use the shell command `xset bc' to make the old X Menu package work.
1055
1056 *** C-SPC fails to work on Fedora GNU/Linux (or with fcitx input method).
1057
1058 Fedora Core 4 steals the C-SPC key by default for the `iiimx' program
1059 which is the input method for some languages. It blocks Emacs users
1060 from using the C-SPC key for `set-mark-command'.
1061
1062 One solutions is to remove the `<Ctrl>space' from the `Iiimx' file
1063 which can be found in the `/usr/lib/X11/app-defaults' directory.
1064 However, that requires root access.
1065
1066 Another is to specify `Emacs*useXIM: false' in your X resources.
1067
1068 Another is to build Emacs with the `--without-xim' configure option.
1069
1070 The same problem happens on any other system if you are using fcitx
1071 (Chinese input method) which by default use C-SPC for toggling. If
1072 you want to use fcitx with Emacs, you have two choices. Toggle fcitx
1073 by another key (e.g. C-\) by modifying ~/.fcitx/config, or be
1074 accustomed to use C-@ for `set-mark-command'.
1075
1076 *** M-SPC seems to be ignored as input.
1077
1078 See if your X server is set up to use this as a command
1079 for character composition.
1080
1081 *** The S-C-t key combination doesn't get passed to Emacs on X.
1082
1083 This happens because some X configurations assign the Ctrl-Shift-t
1084 combination the same meaning as the Multi_key. The offending
1085 definition is in the file `...lib/X11/locale/iso8859-1/Compose'; there
1086 might be other similar combinations which are grabbed by X for similar
1087 purposes.
1088
1089 We think that this can be countermanded with the `xmodmap' utility, if
1090 you want to be able to bind one of these key sequences within Emacs.
1091
1092 *** Under X, C-v and/or other keys don't work.
1093
1094 These may have been intercepted by your window manager. In
1095 particular, AfterStep 1.6 is reported to steal C-v in its default
1096 configuration. Various Meta keys are also likely to be taken by the
1097 configuration of the `feel'. See the WM's documentation for how to
1098 change this.
1099
1100 *** Clicking C-mouse-2 in the scroll bar doesn't split the window.
1101
1102 This currently doesn't work with scroll-bar widgets (and we don't know
1103 a good way of implementing it with widgets). If Emacs is configured
1104 --without-toolkit-scroll-bars, C-mouse-2 on the scroll bar does work.
1105
1106 *** Inability to send an Alt-modified key, when Emacs is communicating
1107 directly with an X server.
1108
1109 If you have tried to bind an Alt-modified key as a command, and it
1110 does not work to type the command, the first thing you should check is
1111 whether the key is getting through to Emacs. To do this, type C-h c
1112 followed by the Alt-modified key. C-h c should say what kind of event
1113 it read. If it says it read an Alt-modified key, then make sure you
1114 have made the key binding correctly.
1115
1116 If C-h c reports an event that doesn't have the Alt modifier, it may
1117 be because your X server has no key for the Alt modifier. The X
1118 server that comes from MIT does not set up the Alt modifier by
1119 default.
1120
1121 If your keyboard has keys named Alt, you can enable them as follows:
1122
1123 xmodmap -e 'add mod2 = Alt_L'
1124 xmodmap -e 'add mod2 = Alt_R'
1125
1126 If the keyboard has just one key named Alt, then only one of those
1127 commands is needed. The modifier `mod2' is a reasonable choice if you
1128 are using an unmodified MIT version of X. Otherwise, choose any
1129 modifier bit not otherwise used.
1130
1131 If your keyboard does not have keys named Alt, you can use some other
1132 keys. Use the keysym command in xmodmap to turn a function key (or
1133 some other 'spare' key) into Alt_L or into Alt_R, and then use the
1134 commands show above to make them modifier keys.
1135
1136 Note that if you have Alt keys but no Meta keys, Emacs translates Alt
1137 into Meta. This is because of the great importance of Meta in Emacs.
1138
1139 ** Window-manager and toolkit-related problems
1140
1141 *** Gnome: Emacs receives input directly from the keyboard, bypassing XIM.
1142
1143 This seems to happen when gnome-settings-daemon version 2.12 or later
1144 is running. If gnome-settings-daemon is not running, Emacs receives
1145 input through XIM without any problem. Furthermore, this seems only
1146 to happen in *.UTF-8 locales; zh_CN.GB2312 and zh_CN.GBK locales, for
1147 example, work fine. A bug report has been filed in the Gnome
1148 bugzilla: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=357032
1149
1150 *** Gnome: Emacs' xterm-mouse-mode doesn't work on the Gnome terminal.
1151
1152 A symptom of this bug is that double-clicks insert a control sequence
1153 into the buffer. The reason this happens is an apparent
1154 incompatibility of the Gnome terminal with Xterm, which also affects
1155 other programs using the Xterm mouse interface. A problem report has
1156 been filed.
1157
1158 *** KDE: When running on KDE, colors or fonts are not as specified for Emacs,
1159 or messed up.
1160
1161 For example, you could see background you set for Emacs only in the
1162 empty portions of the Emacs display, while characters have some other
1163 background.
1164
1165 This happens because KDE's defaults apply its color and font
1166 definitions even to applications that weren't compiled for KDE. The
1167 solution is to uncheck the "Apply fonts and colors to non-KDE apps"
1168 option in Preferences->Look&Feel->Style (KDE 2). In KDE 3, this option
1169 is in the "Colors" section, rather than "Style".
1170
1171 Alternatively, if you do want the KDE defaults to apply to other
1172 applications, but not to Emacs, you could modify the file `Emacs.ad'
1173 (should be in the `/usr/share/apps/kdisplay/app-defaults/' directory)
1174 so that it doesn't set the default background and foreground only for
1175 Emacs. For example, make sure the following resources are either not
1176 present or commented out:
1177
1178 Emacs.default.attributeForeground
1179 Emacs.default.attributeBackground
1180 Emacs*Foreground
1181 Emacs*Background
1182
1183 It is also reported that a bug in the gtk-engines-qt engine can cause this if
1184 Emacs is compiled with Gtk+.
1185 The bug is fixed in version 0.7 or newer of gtk-engines-qt.
1186
1187 *** KDE: Emacs hangs on KDE when a large portion of text is killed.
1188
1189 This is caused by a bug in the KDE applet `klipper' which periodically
1190 requests the X clipboard contents from applications. Early versions
1191 of klipper don't implement the ICCCM protocol for large selections,
1192 which leads to Emacs being flooded with selection requests. After a
1193 while, Emacs may print a message:
1194
1195 Timed out waiting for property-notify event
1196
1197 A workaround is to not use `klipper'. An upgrade to the `klipper' that
1198 comes with KDE 3.3 or later also solves the problem.
1199
1200 *** CDE: Frames may cover dialogs they created when using CDE.
1201
1202 This can happen if you have "Allow Primary Windows On Top" enabled which
1203 seems to be the default in the Common Desktop Environment.
1204 To change, go in to "Desktop Controls" -> "Window Style Manager"
1205 and uncheck "Allow Primary Windows On Top".
1206
1207 *** Xaw3d : When using Xaw3d scroll bars without arrows, the very first mouse
1208 click in a scroll bar might be ignored by the scroll bar widget. This
1209 is probably a bug in Xaw3d; when Xaw3d is compiled with arrows, the
1210 problem disappears.
1211
1212 *** Xaw: There are known binary incompatibilities between Xaw, Xaw3d, neXtaw,
1213 XawM and the few other derivatives of Xaw. So when you compile with
1214 one of these, it may not work to dynamically link with another one.
1215 For example, strange problems, such as Emacs exiting when you type
1216 "C-x 1", were reported when Emacs compiled with Xaw3d and libXaw was
1217 used with neXtaw at run time.
1218
1219 The solution is to rebuild Emacs with the toolkit version you actually
1220 want to use, or set LD_PRELOAD to preload the same toolkit version you
1221 built Emacs with.
1222
1223 *** Open Motif: Problems with file dialogs in Emacs built with Open Motif.
1224
1225 When Emacs 21 is built with Open Motif 2.1, it can happen that the
1226 graphical file dialog boxes do not work properly. The "OK", "Filter"
1227 and "Cancel" buttons do not respond to mouse clicks. Dragging the
1228 file dialog window usually causes the buttons to work again.
1229
1230 The solution is to use LessTif instead. LessTif is a free replacement
1231 for Motif. See the file INSTALL for information on how to do this.
1232
1233 Another workaround is not to use the mouse to trigger file prompts,
1234 but to use the keyboard. This way, you will be prompted for a file in
1235 the minibuffer instead of a graphical file dialog.
1236
1237 *** LessTif: Problems in Emacs built with LessTif.
1238
1239 The problems seem to depend on the version of LessTif and the Motif
1240 emulation for which it is set up.
1241
1242 Only the Motif 1.2 emulation seems to be stable enough in LessTif.
1243 LessTif 0.92-17's Motif 1.2 emulation seems to work okay on FreeBSD.
1244 On GNU/Linux systems, lesstif-0.92.6 configured with "./configure
1245 --enable-build-12 --enable-default-12" is reported to be the most
1246 successful. The binary GNU/Linux package
1247 lesstif-devel-0.92.0-1.i386.rpm was reported to have problems with
1248 menu placement.
1249
1250 On some systems, even with Motif 1.2 emulation, Emacs occasionally
1251 locks up, grabbing all mouse and keyboard events. We still don't know
1252 what causes these problems; they are not reproducible by Emacs
1253 developers.
1254
1255 *** Motif: The Motif version of Emacs paints the screen a solid color.
1256
1257 This has been observed to result from the following X resource:
1258
1259 Emacs*default.attributeFont: -*-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-140-*-*-*-*-iso8859-*
1260
1261 That the resource has this effect indicates a bug in something, but we
1262 do not yet know what. If it is an Emacs bug, we hope someone can
1263 explain what the bug is so we can fix it. In the mean time, removing
1264 the resource prevents the problem.
1265
1266 ** General X problems
1267
1268 *** Redisplay using X11 is much slower than previous Emacs versions.
1269
1270 We've noticed that certain X servers draw the text much slower when
1271 scroll bars are on the left. We don't know why this happens. If this
1272 happens to you, you can work around it by putting the scroll bars
1273 on the right (as they were in Emacs 19).
1274
1275 Here's how to do this:
1276
1277 (set-scroll-bar-mode 'right)
1278
1279 If you're not sure whether (or how much) this problem affects you,
1280 try that and see how much difference it makes. To set things back
1281 to normal, do
1282
1283 (set-scroll-bar-mode 'left)
1284
1285 *** Error messages about undefined colors on X.
1286
1287 The messages might say something like this:
1288
1289 Unable to load color "grey95"
1290
1291 (typically, in the `*Messages*' buffer), or something like this:
1292
1293 Error while displaying tooltip: (error Undefined color lightyellow)
1294
1295 These problems could happen if some other X program has used up too
1296 many colors of the X palette, leaving Emacs with insufficient system
1297 resources to load all the colors it needs.
1298
1299 A solution is to exit the offending X programs before starting Emacs.
1300
1301 "undefined color" messages can also occur if the RgbPath entry in the
1302 X configuration file is incorrect, or the rgb.txt file is not where
1303 X expects to find it.
1304
1305 *** Improving performance with slow X connections.
1306
1307 There are several ways to improve this performance, any subset of which can
1308 be carried out at the same time:
1309
1310 1) If you don't need X Input Methods (XIM) for entering text in some
1311 language you use, you can improve performance on WAN links by using
1312 the X resource useXIM to turn off use of XIM. This does not affect
1313 the use of Emacs' own input methods, which are part of the Leim
1314 package.
1315
1316 2) If the connection is very slow, you might also want to consider
1317 switching off scroll bars, menu bar, and tool bar. Adding the
1318 following forms to your .emacs file will accomplish that, but only
1319 after the the initial frame is displayed:
1320
1321 (scroll-bar-mode -1)
1322 (menu-bar-mode -1)
1323 (tool-bar-mode -1)
1324
1325 For still quicker startup, put these X resources in your .Xdefaults
1326 file:
1327
1328 Emacs.verticalScrollBars: off
1329 Emacs.menuBar: off
1330 Emacs.toolBar: off
1331
1332 3) Use ssh to forward the X connection, and enable compression on this
1333 forwarded X connection (ssh -XC remotehostname emacs ...).
1334
1335 4) Use lbxproxy on the remote end of the connection. This is an interface
1336 to the low bandwidth X extension in most modern X servers, which
1337 improves performance dramatically, at the slight expense of correctness
1338 of the X protocol. lbxproxy acheives the performance gain by grouping
1339 several X requests in one TCP packet and sending them off together,
1340 instead of requiring a round-trip for each X request in a separate
1341 packet. The switches that seem to work best for emacs are:
1342 -noatomsfile -nowinattr -cheaterrors -cheatevents
1343 Note that the -nograbcmap option is known to cause problems.
1344 For more about lbxproxy, see:
1345 http://www.xfree86.org/4.3.0/lbxproxy.1.html
1346
1347 5) If copying and killing is slow, try to disable the interaction with the
1348 native system's clipboard by adding these lines to your .emacs file:
1349 (setq interprogram-cut-function nil)
1350 (setq interprogram-paste-function nil)
1351
1352 *** Emacs gives the error, Couldn't find per display information.
1353
1354 This can result if the X server runs out of memory because Emacs uses
1355 a large number of fonts. On systems where this happens, C-h h is
1356 likely to cause it.
1357
1358 We do not know of a way to prevent the problem.
1359
1360 *** Emacs does not notice when you release the mouse.
1361
1362 There are reports that this happened with (some) Microsoft mice and
1363 that replacing the mouse made it stop.
1364
1365 *** You can't select from submenus (in the X toolkit version).
1366
1367 On certain systems, mouse-tracking and selection in top-level menus
1368 works properly with the X toolkit, but neither of them works when you
1369 bring up a submenu (such as Bookmarks or Compare or Apply Patch, in
1370 the Files menu).
1371
1372 This works on most systems. There is speculation that the failure is
1373 due to bugs in old versions of X toolkit libraries, but no one really
1374 knows. If someone debugs this and finds the precise cause, perhaps a
1375 workaround can be found.
1376
1377 *** An error message such as `X protocol error: BadMatch (invalid
1378 parameter attributes) on protocol request 93'.
1379
1380 This comes from having an invalid X resource, such as
1381 emacs*Cursor: black
1382 (which is invalid because it specifies a color name for something
1383 that isn't a color.)
1384
1385 The fix is to correct your X resources.
1386
1387 *** Slow startup on X11R6 with X windows.
1388
1389 If Emacs takes two minutes to start up on X11R6, see if your X
1390 resources specify any Adobe fonts. That causes the type-1 font
1391 renderer to start up, even if the font you asked for is not a type-1
1392 font.
1393
1394 One way to avoid this problem is to eliminate the type-1 fonts from
1395 your font path, like this:
1396
1397 xset -fp /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/
1398
1399 *** Pull-down menus appear in the wrong place, in the toolkit version of Emacs.
1400
1401 An X resource of this form can cause the problem:
1402
1403 Emacs*geometry: 80x55+0+0
1404
1405 This resource is supposed to apply, and does apply, to the menus
1406 individually as well as to Emacs frames. If that is not what you
1407 want, rewrite the resource.
1408
1409 To check thoroughly for such resource specifications, use `xrdb
1410 -query' to see what resources the X server records, and also look at
1411 the user's ~/.Xdefaults and ~/.Xdefaults-* files.
1412
1413 *** Emacs running under X Windows does not handle mouse clicks.
1414 *** `emacs -geometry 80x20' finds a file named `80x20'.
1415
1416 One cause of such problems is having (setq term-file-prefix nil) in
1417 your .emacs file. Another cause is a bad value of EMACSLOADPATH in
1418 the environment.
1419
1420 *** Emacs fails to get default settings from X Windows server.
1421
1422 The X library in X11R4 has a bug; it interchanges the 2nd and 3rd
1423 arguments to XGetDefaults. Define the macro XBACKWARDS in config.h to
1424 tell Emacs to compensate for this.
1425
1426 I don't believe there is any way Emacs can determine for itself
1427 whether this problem is present on a given system.
1428
1429 *** X Windows doesn't work if DISPLAY uses a hostname.
1430
1431 People have reported kernel bugs in certain systems that cause Emacs
1432 not to work with X Windows if DISPLAY is set using a host name. But
1433 the problem does not occur if DISPLAY is set to `unix:0.0'. I think
1434 the bug has to do with SIGIO or FIONREAD.
1435
1436 You may be able to compensate for the bug by doing (set-input-mode nil nil).
1437 However, that has the disadvantage of turning off interrupts, so that
1438 you are unable to quit out of a Lisp program by typing C-g.
1439
1440 The easy way to do this is to put
1441
1442 (setq x-sigio-bug t)
1443
1444 in your site-init.el file.
1445
1446 * Runtime problems on character terminals
1447
1448 ** Emacs spontaneously displays "I-search: " at the bottom of the screen.
1449
1450 This means that Control-S/Control-Q (XON/XOFF) "flow control" is being
1451 used. C-s/C-q flow control is bad for Emacs editors because it takes
1452 away C-s and C-q as user commands. Since editors do not output long
1453 streams of text without user commands, there is no need for a
1454 user-issuable "stop output" command in an editor; therefore, a
1455 properly designed flow control mechanism would transmit all possible
1456 input characters without interference. Designing such a mechanism is
1457 easy, for a person with at least half a brain.
1458
1459 There are three possible reasons why flow control could be taking place:
1460
1461 1) Terminal has not been told to disable flow control
1462 2) Insufficient padding for the terminal in use
1463 3) Some sort of terminal concentrator or line switch is responsible
1464
1465 First of all, many terminals have a set-up mode which controls whether
1466 they generate XON/XOFF flow control characters. This must be set to
1467 "no XON/XOFF" in order for Emacs to work. Sometimes there is an
1468 escape sequence that the computer can send to turn flow control off
1469 and on. If so, perhaps the termcap `ti' string should turn flow
1470 control off, and the `te' string should turn it on.
1471
1472 Once the terminal has been told "no flow control", you may find it
1473 needs more padding. The amount of padding Emacs sends is controlled
1474 by the termcap entry for the terminal in use, and by the output baud
1475 rate as known by the kernel. The shell command `stty' will print
1476 your output baud rate; `stty' with suitable arguments will set it if
1477 it is wrong. Setting to a higher speed causes increased padding. If
1478 the results are wrong for the correct speed, there is probably a
1479 problem in the termcap entry. You must speak to a local Unix wizard
1480 to fix this. Perhaps you are just using the wrong terminal type.
1481
1482 For terminals that lack a "no flow control" mode, sometimes just
1483 giving lots of padding will prevent actual generation of flow control
1484 codes. You might as well try it.
1485
1486 If you are really unlucky, your terminal is connected to the computer
1487 through a concentrator which sends XON/XOFF flow control to the
1488 computer, or it insists on sending flow control itself no matter how
1489 much padding you give it. Unless you can figure out how to turn flow
1490 control off on this concentrator (again, refer to your local wizard),
1491 you are screwed! You should have the terminal or concentrator
1492 replaced with a properly designed one. In the mean time, some drastic
1493 measures can make Emacs semi-work.
1494
1495 You can make Emacs ignore C-s and C-q and let the operating system
1496 handle them. To do this on a per-session basis, just type M-x
1497 enable-flow-control RET. You will see a message that C-\ and C-^ are
1498 now translated to C-s and C-q. (Use the same command M-x
1499 enable-flow-control to turn *off* this special mode. It toggles flow
1500 control handling.)
1501
1502 If C-\ and C-^ are inconvenient for you (for example, if one of them
1503 is the escape character of your terminal concentrator), you can choose
1504 other characters by setting the variables flow-control-c-s-replacement
1505 and flow-control-c-q-replacement. But choose carefully, since all
1506 other control characters are already used by emacs.
1507
1508 IMPORTANT: if you type C-s by accident while flow control is enabled,
1509 Emacs output will freeze, and you will have to remember to type C-q in
1510 order to continue.
1511
1512 If you work in an environment where a majority of terminals of a
1513 certain type are flow control hobbled, you can use the function
1514 `enable-flow-control-on' to turn on this flow control avoidance scheme
1515 automatically. Here is an example:
1516
1517 (enable-flow-control-on "vt200" "vt300" "vt101" "vt131")
1518
1519 If this isn't quite correct (e.g. you have a mixture of flow-control hobbled
1520 and good vt200 terminals), you can still run enable-flow-control
1521 manually.
1522
1523 I have no intention of ever redesigning the Emacs command set for the
1524 assumption that terminals use C-s/C-q flow control. XON/XOFF flow
1525 control technique is a bad design, and terminals that need it are bad
1526 merchandise and should not be purchased. Now that X is becoming
1527 widespread, XON/XOFF seems to be on the way out. If you can get some
1528 use out of GNU Emacs on inferior terminals, more power to you, but I
1529 will not make Emacs worse for properly designed systems for the sake
1530 of inferior systems.
1531
1532 ** Control-S and Control-Q commands are ignored completely.
1533
1534 For some reason, your system is using brain-damaged C-s/C-q flow
1535 control despite Emacs's attempts to turn it off. Perhaps your
1536 terminal is connected to the computer through a concentrator
1537 that wants to use flow control.
1538
1539 You should first try to tell the concentrator not to use flow control.
1540 If you succeed in this, try making the terminal work without
1541 flow control, as described in the preceding section.
1542
1543 If that line of approach is not successful, map some other characters
1544 into C-s and C-q using keyboard-translate-table. The example above
1545 shows how to do this with C-^ and C-\.
1546
1547 ** Screen is updated wrong, but only on one kind of terminal.
1548
1549 This could mean that the termcap entry you are using for that
1550 terminal is wrong, or it could mean that Emacs has a bug handing
1551 the combination of features specified for that terminal.
1552
1553 The first step in tracking this down is to record what characters
1554 Emacs is sending to the terminal. Execute the Lisp expression
1555 (open-termscript "./emacs-script") to make Emacs write all
1556 terminal output into the file ~/emacs-script as well; then do
1557 what makes the screen update wrong, and look at the file
1558 and decode the characters using the manual for the terminal.
1559 There are several possibilities:
1560
1561 1) The characters sent are correct, according to the terminal manual.
1562
1563 In this case, there is no obvious bug in Emacs, and most likely you
1564 need more padding, or possibly the terminal manual is wrong.
1565
1566 2) The characters sent are incorrect, due to an obscure aspect
1567 of the terminal behavior not described in an obvious way
1568 by termcap.
1569
1570 This case is hard. It will be necessary to think of a way for
1571 Emacs to distinguish between terminals with this kind of behavior
1572 and other terminals that behave subtly differently but are
1573 classified the same by termcap; or else find an algorithm for
1574 Emacs to use that avoids the difference. Such changes must be
1575 tested on many kinds of terminals.
1576
1577 3) The termcap entry is wrong.
1578
1579 See the file etc/TERMS for information on changes
1580 that are known to be needed in commonly used termcap entries
1581 for certain terminals.
1582
1583 4) The characters sent are incorrect, and clearly cannot be
1584 right for any terminal with the termcap entry you were using.
1585
1586 This is unambiguously an Emacs bug, and can probably be fixed
1587 in termcap.c, tparam.c, term.c, scroll.c, cm.c or dispnew.c.
1588
1589 ** Control-S and Control-Q commands are ignored completely on a net connection.
1590
1591 Some versions of rlogin (and possibly telnet) do not pass flow
1592 control characters to the remote system to which they connect.
1593 On such systems, emacs on the remote system cannot disable flow
1594 control on the local system.
1595
1596 One way to cure this is to disable flow control on the local host
1597 (the one running rlogin, not the one running rlogind) using the
1598 stty command, before starting the rlogin process. On many systems,
1599 "stty start u stop u" will do this.
1600
1601 Some versions of tcsh will prevent even this from working. One way
1602 around this is to start another shell before starting rlogin, and
1603 issue the stty command to disable flow control from that shell.
1604
1605 If none of these methods work, the best solution is to type
1606 M-x enable-flow-control at the beginning of your emacs session, or
1607 if you expect the problem to continue, add a line such as the
1608 following to your .emacs (on the host running rlogind):
1609
1610 (enable-flow-control-on "vt200" "vt300" "vt101" "vt131")
1611
1612 See the entry about spontaneous display of I-search (above) for more
1613 info.
1614
1615 ** Output from Control-V is slow.
1616
1617 On many bit-map terminals, scrolling operations are fairly slow.
1618 Often the termcap entry for the type of terminal in use fails
1619 to inform Emacs of this. The two lines at the bottom of the screen
1620 before a Control-V command are supposed to appear at the top after
1621 the Control-V command. If Emacs thinks scrolling the lines is fast,
1622 it will scroll them to the top of the screen.
1623
1624 If scrolling is slow but Emacs thinks it is fast, the usual reason is
1625 that the termcap entry for the terminal you are using does not
1626 specify any padding time for the `al' and `dl' strings. Emacs
1627 concludes that these operations take only as much time as it takes to
1628 send the commands at whatever line speed you are using. You must
1629 fix the termcap entry to specify, for the `al' and `dl', as much
1630 time as the operations really take.
1631
1632 Currently Emacs thinks in terms of serial lines which send characters
1633 at a fixed rate, so that any operation which takes time for the
1634 terminal to execute must also be padded. With bit-map terminals
1635 operated across networks, often the network provides some sort of
1636 flow control so that padding is never needed no matter how slow
1637 an operation is. You must still specify a padding time if you want
1638 Emacs to realize that the operation takes a long time. This will
1639 cause padding characters to be sent unnecessarily, but they do
1640 not really cost much. They will be transmitted while the scrolling
1641 is happening and then discarded quickly by the terminal.
1642
1643 Most bit-map terminals provide commands for inserting or deleting
1644 multiple lines at once. Define the `AL' and `DL' strings in the
1645 termcap entry to say how to do these things, and you will have
1646 fast output without wasted padding characters. These strings should
1647 each contain a single %-spec saying how to send the number of lines
1648 to be scrolled. These %-specs are like those in the termcap
1649 `cm' string.
1650
1651 You should also define the `IC' and `DC' strings if your terminal
1652 has a command to insert or delete multiple characters. These
1653 take the number of positions to insert or delete as an argument.
1654
1655 A `cs' string to set the scrolling region will reduce the amount
1656 of motion you see on the screen when part of the screen is scrolled.
1657
1658 ** You type Control-H (Backspace) expecting to delete characters.
1659
1660 Put `stty dec' in your .login file and your problems will disappear
1661 after a day or two.
1662
1663 The choice of Backspace for erasure was based on confusion, caused by
1664 the fact that backspacing causes erasure (later, when you type another
1665 character) on most display terminals. But it is a mistake. Deletion
1666 of text is not the same thing as backspacing followed by failure to
1667 overprint. I do not wish to propagate this confusion by conforming
1668 to it.
1669
1670 For this reason, I believe `stty dec' is the right mode to use,
1671 and I have designed Emacs to go with that. If there were a thousand
1672 other control characters, I would define Control-h to delete as well;
1673 but there are not very many other control characters, and I think
1674 that providing the most mnemonic possible Help character is more
1675 important than adapting to people who don't use `stty dec'.
1676
1677 If you are obstinate about confusing buggy overprinting with deletion,
1678 you can redefine Backspace in your .emacs file:
1679 (global-set-key "\b" 'delete-backward-char)
1680 You can probably access help-command via f1.
1681
1682 ** Colors are not available on a tty or in xterm.
1683
1684 Emacs 21 supports colors on character terminals and terminal
1685 emulators, but this support relies on the terminfo or termcap database
1686 entry to specify that the display supports color. Emacs looks at the
1687 "Co" capability for the terminal to find out how many colors are
1688 supported; it should be non-zero to activate the color support within
1689 Emacs. (Most color terminals support 8 or 16 colors.) If your system
1690 uses terminfo, the name of the capability equivalent to "Co" is
1691 "colors".
1692
1693 In addition to the "Co" capability, Emacs needs the "op" (for
1694 ``original pair'') capability, which tells how to switch the terminal
1695 back to the default foreground and background colors. Emacs will not
1696 use colors if this capability is not defined. If your terminal entry
1697 doesn't provide such a capability, try using the ANSI standard escape
1698 sequence \E[00m (that is, define a new termcap/terminfo entry and make
1699 it use your current terminal's entry plus \E[00m for the "op"
1700 capability).
1701
1702 Finally, the "NC" capability (terminfo name: "ncv") tells Emacs which
1703 attributes cannot be used with colors. Setting this capability
1704 incorrectly might have the effect of disabling colors; try setting
1705 this capability to `0' (zero) and see if that helps.
1706
1707 Emacs uses the database entry for the terminal whose name is the value
1708 of the environment variable TERM. With `xterm', a common terminal
1709 entry that supports color is `xterm-color', so setting TERM's value to
1710 `xterm-color' might activate the color support on an xterm-compatible
1711 emulator.
1712
1713 Beginning with version 22.1, Emacs supports the --color command-line
1714 option which may be used to force Emacs to use one of a few popular
1715 modes for getting colors on a tty. For example, --color=ansi8 sets up
1716 for using the ANSI-standard escape sequences that support 8 colors.
1717
1718 Some modes do not use colors unless you turn on the Font-lock mode.
1719 Some people have long ago set their `~/.emacs' files to turn on
1720 Font-lock on X only, so they won't see colors on a tty. The
1721 recommended way of turning on Font-lock is by typing "M-x
1722 global-font-lock-mode RET" or by customizing the variable
1723 `global-font-lock-mode'.
1724
1725 * Runtime problems specific to individual Unix variants
1726
1727 ** GNU/Linux
1728
1729 *** GNU/Linux: Process output is corrupted.
1730
1731 There is a bug in Linux kernel 2.6.10 PTYs that can cause emacs to
1732 read corrupted process output.
1733
1734 *** GNU/Linux: Remote access to CVS with SSH causes file corruption.
1735
1736 If you access a remote CVS repository via SSH, files may be corrupted
1737 due to bad interaction between CVS, SSH, and libc.
1738
1739 To fix the problem, save the following script into a file, make it
1740 executable, and set CVS_RSH environment variable to the file name of
1741 the script:
1742
1743 #!/bin/bash
1744 exec 2> >(exec cat >&2 2>/dev/null)
1745 exec ssh "$@"
1746
1747 *** GNU/Linux: On Linux-based GNU systems using libc versions 5.4.19 through
1748 5.4.22, Emacs crashes at startup with a segmentation fault.
1749
1750 This problem happens if libc defines the symbol __malloc_initialized.
1751 One known solution is to upgrade to a newer libc version. 5.4.33 is
1752 known to work.
1753
1754 *** GNU/Linux: After upgrading to a newer version of Emacs,
1755 the Meta key stops working.
1756
1757 This was reported to happen on a GNU/Linux system distributed by
1758 Mandrake. The reason is that the previous version of Emacs was
1759 modified by Mandrake to make the Alt key act as the Meta key, on a
1760 keyboard where the Windows key is the one which produces the Meta
1761 modifier. A user who started using a newer version of Emacs, which
1762 was not hacked by Mandrake, expected the Alt key to continue to act as
1763 Meta, and was astonished when that didn't happen.
1764
1765 The solution is to find out what key on your keyboard produces the Meta
1766 modifier, and use that key instead. Try all of the keys to the left
1767 and to the right of the space bar, together with the `x' key, and see
1768 which combination produces "M-x" in the echo area. You can also use
1769 the `xmodmap' utility to show all the keys which produce a Meta
1770 modifier:
1771
1772 xmodmap -pk | egrep -i "meta|alt"
1773
1774 A more convenient way of finding out which keys produce a Meta modifier
1775 is to use the `xkbprint' utility, if it's available on your system:
1776
1777 xkbprint 0:0 /tmp/k.ps
1778
1779 This produces a PostScript file `/tmp/k.ps' with a picture of your
1780 keyboard; printing that file on a PostScript printer will show what
1781 keys can serve as Meta.
1782
1783 The `xkeycaps' also shows a visual representation of the current
1784 keyboard settings. It also allows to modify them.
1785
1786 *** GNU/Linux: slow startup on Linux-based GNU systems.
1787
1788 People using systems based on the Linux kernel sometimes report that
1789 startup takes 10 to 15 seconds longer than `usual'.
1790
1791 This is because Emacs looks up the host name when it starts.
1792 Normally, this takes negligible time; the extra delay is due to
1793 improper system configuration. This problem can occur for both
1794 networked and non-networked machines.
1795
1796 Here is how to fix the configuration. It requires being root.
1797
1798 **** Networked Case.
1799
1800 First, make sure the files `/etc/hosts' and `/etc/host.conf' both
1801 exist. The first line in the `/etc/hosts' file should look like this
1802 (replace HOSTNAME with your host name):
1803
1804 127.0.0.1 HOSTNAME
1805
1806 Also make sure that the `/etc/host.conf' files contains the following
1807 lines:
1808
1809 order hosts, bind
1810 multi on
1811
1812 Any changes, permanent and temporary, to the host name should be
1813 indicated in the `/etc/hosts' file, since it acts a limited local
1814 database of addresses and names (e.g., some SLIP connections
1815 dynamically allocate ip addresses).
1816
1817 **** Non-Networked Case.
1818
1819 The solution described in the networked case applies here as well.
1820 However, if you never intend to network your machine, you can use a
1821 simpler solution: create an empty `/etc/host.conf' file. The command
1822 `touch /etc/host.conf' suffices to create the file. The `/etc/hosts'
1823 file is not necessary with this approach.
1824
1825 *** GNU/Linux: Emacs on a tty switches the cursor to large blinking block.
1826
1827 This was reported to happen on some GNU/Linux systems which use
1828 ncurses version 5.0, but could be relevant for other versions as well.
1829 These versions of ncurses come with a `linux' terminfo entry, where
1830 the "cvvis" capability (termcap "vs") is defined as "\E[?25h\E[?8c"
1831 (show cursor, change size). This escape sequence switches on a
1832 blinking hardware text-mode cursor whose size is a full character
1833 cell. This blinking cannot be stopped, since a hardware cursor
1834 always blinks.
1835
1836 A work-around is to redefine the "cvvis" capability so that it
1837 enables a *software* cursor. The software cursor works by inverting
1838 the colors of the character at point, so what you see is a block
1839 cursor that doesn't blink. For this to work, you need to redefine
1840 the "cnorm" capability as well, so that it operates on the software
1841 cursor instead of the hardware cursor.
1842
1843 To this end, run "infocmp linux > linux-term", edit the file
1844 `linux-term' to make both the "cnorm" and "cvvis" capabilities send
1845 the sequence "\E[?25h\E[?17;0;64c", and then run "tic linux-term" to
1846 produce a modified terminfo entry.
1847
1848 Alternatively, if you want a blinking underscore as your Emacs cursor,
1849 change the "cvvis" capability to send the "\E[?25h\E[?0c" command.
1850
1851 *** GNU/Linux: Error messages `internal facep []' happen on GNU/Linux systems.
1852
1853 There is a report that replacing libc.so.5.0.9 with libc.so.5.2.16
1854 caused this to start happening. People are not sure why, but the
1855 problem seems unlikely to be in Emacs itself. Some suspect that it
1856 is actually Xlib which won't work with libc.so.5.2.16.
1857
1858 Using the old library version is a workaround.
1859
1860 ** Mac OS X
1861
1862 *** Mac OS X (Carbon): Environment Variables from dotfiles are ignored.
1863
1864 When starting Emacs from the Dock or the Finder on Mac OS X, the
1865 environment variables that are set up in dotfiles, such as .cshrc or
1866 .profile, are ignored. This is because the Finder and Dock are not
1867 started from a shell, but instead from the Window Manager itself.
1868
1869 The workaround for this is to create a .MacOSX/environment.plist file to
1870 setup these environment variables. These environment variables will
1871 apply to all processes regardless of where they are started.
1872 For me information, see http://developer.apple.com/qa/qa2001/qa1067.html.
1873
1874 *** Mac OS X (Carbon): Process output truncated when using ptys.
1875
1876 There appears to be a problem with the implementation of pty's on the
1877 Mac OS X that causes process output to be truncated. To avoid this,
1878 leave process-connection-type set to its default value of nil.
1879
1880 *** Mac OS X 10.3.9 (Carbon): QuickTime updater breaks build.
1881
1882 Some QuickTime updaters such as 7.0.4 and 7.2.0 are known to break
1883 build at the link stage with the message like "Undefined symbols:
1884 _HICopyAccessibilityActionDescription referenced from QuickTime
1885 expected to be defined in Carbon". A workaround is to use a QuickTime
1886 reinstaller. Alternatively, you can link with the frameworks in the
1887 corresponding SDK by specifying LDFLAGS as
1888 "-Wl,-F/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.3.0.sdk/System/Library/Frameworks".
1889
1890 ** FreeBSD
1891
1892 *** FreeBSD 2.1.5: useless symbolic links remain in /tmp or other
1893 directories that have the +t bit.
1894
1895 This is because of a kernel bug in FreeBSD 2.1.5 (fixed in 2.2).
1896 Emacs uses symbolic links to implement file locks. In a directory
1897 with +t bit, the directory owner becomes the owner of the symbolic
1898 link, so that it cannot be removed by anyone else.
1899
1900 If you don't like those useless links, you can let Emacs not to using
1901 file lock by adding #undef CLASH_DETECTION to config.h.
1902
1903 *** FreeBSD: Getting a Meta key on the console.
1904
1905 By default, neither Alt nor any other key acts as a Meta key on
1906 FreeBSD, but this can be changed using kbdcontrol(1). Dump the
1907 current keymap to a file with the command
1908
1909 $ kbdcontrol -d >emacs.kbd
1910
1911 Edit emacs.kbd, and give the key you want to be the Meta key the
1912 definition `meta'. For instance, if your keyboard has a ``Windows''
1913 key with scan code 105, change the line for scan code 105 in emacs.kbd
1914 to look like this
1915
1916 105 meta meta meta meta meta meta meta meta O
1917
1918 to make the Windows key the Meta key. Load the new keymap with
1919
1920 $ kbdcontrol -l emacs.kbd
1921
1922 ** HP-UX
1923
1924 *** HP/UX : Shell mode gives the message, "`tty`: Ambiguous".
1925
1926 christos@theory.tn.cornell.edu says:
1927
1928 The problem is that in your .cshrc you have something that tries to
1929 execute `tty`. If you are not running the shell on a real tty then
1930 tty will print "not a tty". Csh expects one word in some places,
1931 but tty is giving it back 3.
1932
1933 The solution is to add a pair of quotes around `tty` to make it a single
1934 word:
1935
1936 if (`tty` == "/dev/console")
1937
1938 should be changed to:
1939
1940 if ("`tty`" == "/dev/console")
1941
1942 Even better, move things that set up terminal sections out of .cshrc
1943 and into .login.
1944
1945 *** HP/UX: `Pid xxx killed due to text modification or page I/O error'.
1946
1947 On HP/UX, you can get that error when the Emacs executable is on an NFS
1948 file system. HP/UX responds this way if it tries to swap in a page and
1949 does not get a response from the server within a timeout whose default
1950 value is just ten seconds.
1951
1952 If this happens to you, extend the timeout period.
1953
1954 *** HP/UX: The right Alt key works wrong on German HP keyboards (and perhaps
1955 other non-English HP keyboards too).
1956
1957 This is because HP-UX defines the modifiers wrong in X. Here is a
1958 shell script to fix the problem; be sure that it is run after VUE
1959 configures the X server.
1960
1961 xmodmap 2> /dev/null - << EOF
1962 keysym Alt_L = Meta_L
1963 keysym Alt_R = Meta_R
1964 EOF
1965
1966 xmodmap - << EOF
1967 clear mod1
1968 keysym Mode_switch = NoSymbol
1969 add mod1 = Meta_L
1970 keysym Meta_R = Mode_switch
1971 add mod2 = Mode_switch
1972 EOF
1973
1974 *** HP/UX: "Cannot find callback list" messages from dialog boxes in
1975 Emacs built with Motif.
1976
1977 This problem resulted from a bug in GCC 2.4.5. Newer GCC versions
1978 such as 2.7.0 fix the problem.
1979
1980 *** HP/UX: Emacs does not recognize the AltGr key.
1981
1982 To fix this, set up a file ~/.dt/sessions/sessionetc with executable
1983 rights, containing this text:
1984
1985 --------------------------------
1986 xmodmap 2> /dev/null - << EOF
1987 keysym Alt_L = Meta_L
1988 keysym Alt_R = Meta_R
1989 EOF
1990
1991 xmodmap - << EOF
1992 clear mod1
1993 keysym Mode_switch = NoSymbol
1994 add mod1 = Meta_L
1995 keysym Meta_R = Mode_switch
1996 add mod2 = Mode_switch
1997 EOF
1998 --------------------------------
1999
2000 *** HP/UX 11.0: Emacs makes HP/UX 11.0 crash.
2001
2002 This is a bug in HPUX; HPUX patch PHKL_16260 is said to fix it.
2003
2004 ** AIX
2005
2006 *** AIX: Trouble using ptys.
2007
2008 People often install the pty devices on AIX incorrectly.
2009 Use `smit pty' to reinstall them properly.
2010
2011 *** AIXterm: Your Delete key sends a Backspace to the terminal.
2012
2013 The solution is to include in your .Xdefaults the lines:
2014
2015 *aixterm.Translations: #override <Key>BackSpace: string(0x7f)
2016 aixterm*ttyModes: erase ^?
2017
2018 This makes your Backspace key send DEL (ASCII 127).
2019
2020 *** AIX: If linking fails because libXbsd isn't found, check if you
2021 are compiling with the system's `cc' and CFLAGS containing `-O5'. If
2022 so, you have hit a compiler bug. Please make sure to re-configure
2023 Emacs so that it isn't compiled with `-O5'.
2024
2025 *** AIX 4.3.x or 4.4: Compiling fails.
2026
2027 This could happen if you use /bin/c89 as your compiler, instead of
2028 the default `cc'. /bin/c89 treats certain warnings, such as benign
2029 redefinitions of macros, as errors, and fails the build. A solution
2030 is to use the default compiler `cc'.
2031
2032 *** AIX 4: Some programs fail when run in a Shell buffer
2033 with an error message like No terminfo entry for "unknown".
2034
2035 On AIX, many terminal type definitions are not installed by default.
2036 `unknown' is one of them. Install the "Special Generic Terminal
2037 Definitions" to make them defined.
2038
2039 ** Solaris
2040
2041 We list bugs in current versions here. Solaris 2.x and 4.x are covered in the
2042 section on legacy systems.
2043
2044 *** On Solaris, C-x doesn't get through to Emacs when you use the console.
2045
2046 This is a Solaris feature (at least on Intel x86 cpus). Type C-r
2047 C-r C-t, to toggle whether C-x gets through to Emacs.
2048
2049 *** Problem with remote X server on Suns.
2050
2051 On a Sun, running Emacs on one machine with the X server on another
2052 may not work if you have used the unshared system libraries. This
2053 is because the unshared libraries fail to use YP for host name lookup.
2054 As a result, the host name you specify may not be recognized.
2055
2056 *** Solaris 2,6: Emacs crashes with SIGBUS or SIGSEGV on Solaris after you delete a frame.
2057
2058 We suspect that this is a bug in the X libraries provided by
2059 Sun. There is a report that one of these patches fixes the bug and
2060 makes the problem stop:
2061
2062 105216-01 105393-01 105518-01 105621-01 105665-01 105615-02 105216-02
2063 105667-01 105401-08 105615-03 105621-02 105686-02 105736-01 105755-03
2064 106033-01 105379-01 105786-01 105181-04 105379-03 105786-04 105845-01
2065 105284-05 105669-02 105837-01 105837-02 105558-01 106125-02 105407-01
2066
2067 Another person using a newer system (kernel patch level Generic_105181-06)
2068 suspects that the bug was fixed by one of these more recent patches:
2069
2070 106040-07 SunOS 5.6: X Input & Output Method patch
2071 106222-01 OpenWindows 3.6: filemgr (ff.core) fixes
2072 105284-12 Motif 1.2.7: sparc Runtime library patch
2073
2074 *** Solaris 7 or 8: Emacs reports a BadAtom error (from X)
2075
2076 This happens when Emacs was built on some other version of Solaris.
2077 Rebuild it on Solaris 8.
2078
2079 *** When using M-x dbx with the SparcWorks debugger, the `up' and `down'
2080 commands do not move the arrow in Emacs.
2081
2082 You can fix this by adding the following line to `~/.dbxinit':
2083
2084 dbxenv output_short_file_name off
2085
2086 *** On Solaris, CTRL-t is ignored by Emacs when you use
2087 the fr.ISO-8859-15 locale (and maybe other related locales).
2088
2089 You can fix this by editing the file:
2090
2091 /usr/openwin/lib/locale/iso8859-15/Compose
2092
2093 Near the bottom there is a line that reads:
2094
2095 Ctrl<t> <quotedbl> <Y> : "\276" threequarters
2096
2097 that should read:
2098
2099 Ctrl<T> <quotedbl> <Y> : "\276" threequarters
2100
2101 Note the lower case <t>. Changing this line should make C-t work.
2102
2103 *** On Solaris, Emacs fails to set menu-bar-update-hook on startup, with error
2104 "Error in menu-bar-update-hook: (error Point before start of properties)".
2105 This seems to be a GCC optimization bug that occurs for GCC 4.1.2 (-g
2106 and -g -O2) and GCC 4.2.3 (-g -O and -g -O2). You can fix this by
2107 compiling with GCC 4.2.3 or CC 5.7, with no optimizations.
2108
2109 ** Irix
2110
2111 *** Irix 6.5: Emacs crashes on the SGI R10K, when compiled with GCC.
2112
2113 This seems to be fixed in GCC 2.95.
2114
2115 *** Irix: Trouble using ptys, or running out of ptys.
2116
2117 The program mkpts (which may be in `/usr/adm' or `/usr/sbin') needs to
2118 be set-UID to root, or non-root programs like Emacs will not be able
2119 to allocate ptys reliably.
2120
2121 * Runtime problems specific to MS-Windows
2122
2123 ** Windows 95 and networking.
2124
2125 To support server sockets, Emacs 22.1 loads ws2_32.dll. If this file
2126 is missing, all Emacs networking features are disabled.
2127
2128 Old versions of Windows 95 may not have the required DLL. To use
2129 Emacs' networking features on Windows 95, you must install the
2130 "Windows Socket 2" update available from MicroSoft's support Web.
2131
2132 ** Emacs exits with "X protocol error" when run with an X server for MS-Windows.
2133
2134 A certain X server for Windows had a bug which caused this.
2135 Supposedly the newer 32-bit version of this server doesn't have the
2136 problem.
2137
2138 ** Known problems with the MS-Windows port of Emacs 22.1
2139
2140 Using create-fontset-from-ascii-font or the --font startup parameter
2141 with a Chinese, Japanese or Korean font leads to display problems.
2142 Use a Latin-only font as your default font. If you want control over
2143 which font is used to display Chinese, Japanese or Korean character,
2144 use create-fontset-from-fontset-spec to define a fontset.
2145
2146 Frames are not refreshed while the File or Font dialog or a pop-up menu
2147 is displayed. This also means help text for pop-up menus is not
2148 displayed at all. This is because message handling under Windows is
2149 synchronous, so we cannot handle repaint (or any other) messages while
2150 waiting for a system function to return the result of the dialog or
2151 pop-up menu interaction.
2152
2153 Windows 95 and Windows NT up to version 4.0 do not support help text
2154 for menus. Help text is only available in later versions of Windows.
2155
2156 When "ClearType" method is selected as the "method to smooth edges of
2157 screen fonts" (in Display Properties, Appearance tab, under
2158 "Effects"), there are various problems related to display of
2159 characters: Bold fonts can be hard to read, small portions of some
2160 characters could appear chopped, etc. This happens because, under
2161 ClearType, characters are drawn outside their advertised bounding box.
2162 Emacs 21 disabled the use of ClearType, whereas Emacs 22 allows it and
2163 has some code to enlarge the width of the bounding box. Apparently,
2164 this display feature needs more changes to get it 100% right. A
2165 workaround is to disable ClearType.
2166
2167 There are problems with display if mouse-tracking is enabled and the
2168 mouse is moved off a frame, over another frame then back over the first
2169 frame. A workaround is to click the left mouse button inside the frame
2170 after moving back into it.
2171
2172 Some minor flickering still persists during mouse-tracking, although
2173 not as severely as in 21.1.
2174
2175 An inactive cursor remains in an active window after the Windows
2176 Manager driven switch of the focus, until a key is pressed.
2177
2178 Windows input methods are not recognized by Emacs. However, some
2179 of these input methods cause the keyboard to send characters encoded
2180 in the appropriate coding system (e.g., ISO 8859-1 for Latin-1
2181 characters, ISO 8859-8 for Hebrew characters, etc.). To make these
2182 input methods work with Emacs, set the keyboard coding system to the
2183 appropriate value after you activate the Windows input method. For
2184 example, if you activate the Hebrew input method, type this:
2185
2186 C-x RET k hebrew-iso-8bit RET
2187
2188 (Emacs ought to recognize the Windows language-change event and set up
2189 the appropriate keyboard encoding automatically, but it doesn't do
2190 that yet.) In addition, to use these Windows input methods, you
2191 should set your "Language for non-Unicode programs" (on Windows XP,
2192 this is on the Advanced tab of Regional Settings) to the language of
2193 the input method.
2194
2195 To bind keys that produce non-ASCII characters with modifiers, you
2196 must specify raw byte codes. For instance, if you want to bind
2197 META-a-grave to a command, you need to specify this in your `~/.emacs':
2198
2199 (global-set-key [?\M-\340] ...)
2200
2201 The above example is for the Latin-1 environment where the byte code
2202 of the encoded a-grave is 340 octal. For other environments, use the
2203 encoding appropriate to that environment.
2204
2205 The %b specifier for format-time-string does not produce abbreviated
2206 month names with consistent widths for some locales on some versions
2207 of Windows. This is caused by a deficiency in the underlying system
2208 library function.
2209
2210 The function set-time-zone-rule gives incorrect results for many
2211 non-US timezones. This is due to over-simplistic handling of
2212 daylight savings switchovers by the Windows libraries.
2213
2214 Files larger than 4GB cause overflow in the size (represented as a
2215 32-bit integer) reported by `file-attributes'. This affects Dired as
2216 well, since the Windows port uses a Lisp emulation of `ls' that relies
2217 on `file-attributes'.
2218
2219 Sound playing is not supported with the `:data DATA' key-value pair.
2220 You _must_ use the `:file FILE' method.
2221
2222 ** Typing Alt-Shift has strange effects on MS-Windows.
2223
2224 This combination of keys is a command to change keyboard layout. If
2225 you proceed to type another non-modifier key before you let go of Alt
2226 and Shift, the Alt and Shift act as modifiers in the usual way. A
2227 more permanent work around is to change it to another key combination,
2228 or disable it in the "Regional and Language Options" applet of the
2229 Control Panel. (The exact sequence of mouse clicks in the "Regional
2230 and Language Options" applet needed to find the key combination that
2231 changes the keyboard layout depends on your Windows version; for XP,
2232 in the Languages tab, click "Details" and then "Key Settings".)
2233
2234 ** Cygwin build of Emacs hangs after rebasing Cygwin DLLs
2235
2236 Usually, on Cygwin, one needs to rebase the DLLs if an application
2237 aborts with a message like this:
2238
2239 C:\cygwin\bin\python.exe: *** unable to remap C:\cygwin\bin\cygssl.dll to
2240 same address as parent(0xDF0000) != 0xE00000
2241
2242 However, since Cygwin DLL 1.5.17 was released, after such rebasing,
2243 Emacs hangs.
2244
2245 This was reported to happen for Emacs 21.2 and also for the pretest of
2246 Emacs 22.1 on Cygwin.
2247
2248 To work around this, build Emacs like this:
2249
2250 LDFLAGS='-Wl,--enable-auto-import -Wl,--enable-auto-image-base' ./configure
2251 make LD='$(CC)'
2252 make LD='$(CC)' install
2253
2254 This produces an Emacs binary that is independent of rebasing.
2255
2256 Note that you _must_ use LD='$(CC)' in the last two commands above, to
2257 prevent GCC from passing the "--image-base 0x20000000" option to the
2258 linker, which is what it does by default. That option produces an
2259 Emacs binary with the base address 0x20000000, which will cause Emacs
2260 to hang after Cygwin DLLs are rebased.
2261
2262 ** Interrupting Cygwin port of Bash from Emacs doesn't work.
2263
2264 Cygwin 1.x builds of the ported Bash cannot be interrupted from the
2265 MS-Windows version of Emacs. This is due to some change in the Bash
2266 port or in the Cygwin library which apparently make Bash ignore the
2267 keyboard interrupt event sent by Emacs to Bash. (Older Cygwin ports
2268 of Bash, up to b20.1, did receive SIGINT from Emacs.)
2269
2270 ** Accessing remote files with ange-ftp hangs the MS-Windows version of Emacs.
2271
2272 If the FTP client is the Cygwin port of GNU `ftp', this appears to be
2273 due to some bug in the Cygwin DLL or some incompatibility between it
2274 and the implementation of asynchronous subprocesses in the Windows
2275 port of Emacs. Specifically, some parts of the FTP server responses
2276 are not flushed out, apparently due to buffering issues, which
2277 confuses ange-ftp.
2278
2279 The solution is to downgrade to an older version of the Cygwin DLL
2280 (version 1.3.2 was reported to solve the problem), or use the stock
2281 Windows FTP client, usually found in the `C:\WINDOWS' or 'C:\WINNT'
2282 directory. To force ange-ftp use the stock Windows client, set the
2283 variable `ange-ftp-ftp-program-name' to the absolute file name of the
2284 client's executable. For example:
2285
2286 (setq ange-ftp-ftp-program-name "c:/windows/ftp.exe")
2287
2288 If you want to stick with the Cygwin FTP client, you can work around
2289 this problem by putting this in your `.emacs' file:
2290
2291 (setq ange-ftp-ftp-program-args '("-i" "-n" "-g" "-v" "--prompt" "")
2292
2293 ** lpr commands don't work on MS-Windows with some cheap printers.
2294
2295 This problem may also strike other platforms, but the solution is
2296 likely to be a global one, and not Emacs specific.
2297
2298 Many cheap inkjet, and even some cheap laser printers, do not
2299 print plain text anymore, they will only print through graphical
2300 printer drivers. A workaround on MS-Windows is to use Windows' basic
2301 built in editor to print (this is possibly the only useful purpose it
2302 has):
2303
2304 (setq printer-name "") ;; notepad takes the default
2305 (setq lpr-command "notepad") ;; notepad
2306 (setq lpr-switches nil) ;; not needed
2307 (setq lpr-printer-switch "/P") ;; run notepad as batch printer
2308
2309 ** Antivirus software interacts badly with the MS-Windows version of Emacs.
2310
2311 The usual manifestation of these problems is that subprocesses don't
2312 work or even wedge the entire system. In particular, "M-x shell RET"
2313 was reported to fail to work. But other commands also sometimes don't
2314 work when an antivirus package is installed.
2315
2316 The solution is to switch the antivirus software to a less aggressive
2317 mode (e.g., disable the ``auto-protect'' feature), or even uninstall
2318 or disable it entirely.
2319
2320 ** Pressing the mouse button on MS-Windows does not give a mouse-2 event.
2321
2322 This is usually a problem with the mouse driver. Because most Windows
2323 programs do not do anything useful with the middle mouse button, many
2324 mouse drivers allow you to define the wheel press to do something
2325 different. Some drivers do not even have the option to generate a
2326 middle button press. In such cases, setting the wheel press to
2327 "scroll" sometimes works if you press the button twice. Trying a
2328 generic mouse driver might help.
2329
2330 ** Scrolling the mouse wheel on MS-Windows always scrolls the top window.
2331
2332 This is another common problem with mouse drivers. Instead of
2333 generating scroll events, some mouse drivers try to fake scroll bar
2334 movement. But they are not intelligent enough to handle multiple
2335 scroll bars within a frame. Trying a generic mouse driver might help.
2336
2337 ** Mail sent through Microsoft Exchange in some encodings appears to be
2338 mangled and is not seen correctly in Rmail or Gnus. We don't know
2339 exactly what happens, but it isn't an Emacs problem in cases we've
2340 seen.
2341
2342 ** On MS-Windows, you cannot use the right-hand ALT key and the left-hand
2343 CTRL key together to type a Control-Meta character.
2344
2345 This is a consequence of a misfeature beyond Emacs's control.
2346
2347 Under Windows, the AltGr key on international keyboards generates key
2348 events with the modifiers Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl. Since Emacs cannot
2349 distinguish AltGr from an explicit Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl
2350 combination, whenever it sees Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl it assumes that
2351 AltGr has been pressed. The variable `w32-recognize-altgr' can be set
2352 to nil to tell Emacs that AltGr is really Ctrl and Alt.
2353
2354 ** Under some X-servers running on MS-Windows, Emacs' display is incorrect.
2355
2356 The symptoms are that Emacs does not completely erase blank areas of the
2357 screen during scrolling or some other screen operations (e.g., selective
2358 display or when killing a region). M-x recenter will cause the screen
2359 to be completely redisplayed and the "extra" characters will disappear.
2360
2361 This is known to occur under Exceed 6, and possibly earlier versions
2362 as well; it is reportedly solved in version 6.2.0.16 and later. The
2363 problem lies in the X-server settings.
2364
2365 There are reports that you can solve the problem with Exceed by
2366 running `Xconfig' from within NT, choosing "X selection", then
2367 un-checking the boxes "auto-copy X selection" and "auto-paste to X
2368 selection".
2369
2370 Of this does not work, please inform bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org. Then
2371 please call support for your X-server and see if you can get a fix.
2372 If you do, please send it to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org so we can list it
2373 here.
2374
2375 * Build-time problems
2376
2377 ** Configuration
2378
2379 *** The `configure' script doesn't find the jpeg library.
2380
2381 There are reports that this happens on some systems because the linker
2382 by default only looks for shared libraries, but jpeg distribution by
2383 default only installs a nonshared version of the library, `libjpeg.a'.
2384
2385 If this is the problem, you can configure the jpeg library with the
2386 `--enable-shared' option and then rebuild libjpeg. This produces a
2387 shared version of libjpeg, which you need to install. Finally, rerun
2388 the Emacs configure script, which should now find the jpeg library.
2389 Alternatively, modify the generated src/Makefile to link the .a file
2390 explicitly, and edit src/config.h to define HAVE_JPEG.
2391
2392 *** `configure' warns ``accepted by the compiler, rejected by the preprocessor''.
2393
2394 This indicates a mismatch between the C compiler and preprocessor that
2395 configure is using. For example, on Solaris 10 trying to use
2396 CC=/opt/SUNWspro/bin/cc (the Sun Studio compiler) together with
2397 CPP=/usr/ccs/lib/cpp can result in errors of this form (you may also
2398 see the error ``"/usr/include/sys/isa_defs.h", line 500: undefined control'').
2399
2400 The solution is to tell configure to use the correct C preprocessor
2401 for your C compiler (CPP="/opt/SUNWspro/bin/cc -E" in the above
2402 example).
2403
2404 *** `configure' fails with ``"junk.c", line 660: invalid input token: 8.elc''
2405
2406 The final stage of the Emacs configure process uses the C preprocessor
2407 to generate the Makefiles. Errors of this form can occur if the C
2408 preprocessor inserts extra whitespace into its output. The solution
2409 is to find the switches that stop your preprocessor from inserting extra
2410 whitespace, add them to CPPFLAGS, and re-run configure. For example,
2411 this error can occur on Solaris 10 when using the Sun Studio compiler
2412 ``Sun C 5.8'' with its preprocessor CPP="/opt/SUNWspro/bin/cc -E".
2413 The relevant switch in this case is "-Xs" (``compile assuming
2414 (pre-ANSI) K & R C style code'').
2415
2416 ** Compilation
2417
2418 *** Building Emacs over NFS fails with ``Text file busy''.
2419
2420 This was reported to happen when building Emacs on a GNU/Linux system
2421 (Red Hat Linux 6.2) using a build directory automounted from Solaris
2422 (SunOS 5.6) file server, but it might not be limited to that
2423 configuration alone. Presumably, the NFS server doesn't commit the
2424 files' data to disk quickly enough, and the Emacs executable file is
2425 left ``busy'' for several seconds after Emacs has finished dumping
2426 itself. This causes the subsequent commands which invoke the dumped
2427 Emacs executable to fail with the above message.
2428
2429 In some of these cases, a time skew between the NFS server and the
2430 machine where Emacs is built is detected and reported by GNU Make
2431 (it says that some of the files have modification time in the future).
2432 This might be a symptom of NFS-related problems.
2433
2434 If the NFS server runs on Solaris, apply the Solaris patch 105379-05
2435 (Sunos 5.6: /kernel/misc/nfssrv patch). If that doesn't work, or if
2436 you have a different version of the OS or the NFS server, you can
2437 force the NFS server to use 1KB blocks, which was reported to fix the
2438 problem albeit at a price of slowing down file I/O. You can force 1KB
2439 blocks by specifying the "-o rsize=1024,wsize=1024" options to the
2440 `mount' command, or by adding ",rsize=1024,wsize=1024" to the mount
2441 options in the appropriate system configuration file, such as
2442 `/etc/auto.home'.
2443
2444 Alternatively, when Make fails due to this problem, you could wait for
2445 a few seconds and then invoke Make again. In one particular case,
2446 waiting for 10 or more seconds between the two Make invocations seemed
2447 to work around the problem.
2448
2449 Similar problems can happen if your machine NFS-mounts a directory
2450 onto itself. Suppose the Emacs sources live in `/usr/local/src' and
2451 you are working on the host called `marvin'. Then an entry in the
2452 `/etc/fstab' file like the following is asking for trouble:
2453
2454 marvin:/usr/local/src /usr/local/src ...options.omitted...
2455
2456 The solution is to remove this line from `etc/fstab'.
2457
2458 *** Building Emacs with GCC 2.9x fails in the `src' directory.
2459
2460 This may happen if you use a development version of GNU `cpp' from one
2461 of the GCC snapshots between Oct 2000 and Feb 2001, or from a released
2462 version of GCC newer than 2.95.2 which was prepared around those
2463 dates; similar problems were reported with some snapshots of GCC 3.1
2464 around Sep 30 2001. The preprocessor in those versions is
2465 incompatible with a traditional Unix cpp (e.g., it expands ".." into
2466 ". .", which breaks relative file names that reference the parent
2467 directory; or inserts TAB characters before lines that set Make
2468 variables).
2469
2470 The solution is to make sure the preprocessor is run with the
2471 `-traditional' option. The `configure' script does that automatically
2472 when it detects the known problems in your cpp, but you might hit some
2473 unknown ones. To force the `configure' script to use `-traditional',
2474 run the script like this:
2475
2476 CPP='gcc -E -traditional' ./configure ...
2477
2478 (replace the ellipsis "..." with any additional arguments you pass to
2479 the script).
2480
2481 Note that this problem does not pertain to the MS-Windows port of
2482 Emacs, since it doesn't use the preprocessor to generate Makefiles.
2483
2484 *** src/Makefile and lib-src/Makefile are truncated--most of the file missing.
2485 *** Compiling wakeup, in lib-src, says it can't make wakeup.c.
2486
2487 This can happen if configure uses GNU sed version 2.03. That version
2488 had a bug. GNU sed version 2.05 works properly.To solve the
2489 problem, install the current version of GNU Sed, then rerun Emacs's
2490 configure script.
2491
2492 *** Compiling lib-src says there is no rule to make test-distrib.c.
2493
2494 This results from a bug in a VERY old version of GNU Sed. To solve
2495 the problem, install the current version of GNU Sed, then rerun
2496 Emacs's configure script.
2497
2498 *** Building a 32-bit executable on a 64-bit GNU/Linux architecture.
2499
2500 First ensure that the necessary 32-bit system libraries and include
2501 files are installed. Then use:
2502
2503 env CC="gcc -m32" ./configure --build=i386-linux-gnu \
2504 --x-libraries=/usr/X11R6/lib
2505
2506 (using the location of the 32-bit X libraries on your system).
2507
2508 *** Building the Cygwin port for MS-Windows can fail with some GCC versions
2509
2510 Building Emacs 22 with Cygwin builds of GCC 3.4.4-1 and 3.4.4-2 is
2511 reported to either fail or cause Emacs to segfault at run time. In
2512 addition, the Cygwin GCC 3.4.4-2 has problems with generating debug
2513 info. Cygwin users are advised not to use these versions of GCC for
2514 compiling Emacs. GCC versions 4.0.3, 4.0.4, 4.1.1, and 4.1.2
2515 reportedly build a working Cygwin binary of Emacs, so we recommend
2516 these GCC versions. Note that these versions of GCC, 4.0.3, 4.0.4,
2517 4.1.1, and 4.1.2, are currently the _only_ versions known to succeed
2518 in building Emacs (as of v22.1).
2519
2520 *** Building the native MS-Windows port with Cygwin GCC can fail.
2521
2522 Emacs may not build using some Cygwin builds of GCC, such as Cygwin
2523 version 1.1.8, using the default configure settings. It appears to be
2524 necessary to specify the -mwin32 flag when compiling, and define
2525 __MSVCRT__, like so:
2526
2527 configure --with-gcc --cflags -mwin32 --cflags -D__MSVCRT__
2528
2529 *** Building the MS-Windows port fails with a CreateProcess failure.
2530
2531 Some versions of mingw32 make on some versions of Windows do not seem
2532 to detect the shell correctly. Try "make SHELL=cmd.exe", or if that
2533 fails, try running make from Cygwin bash instead.
2534
2535 *** Building `ctags' for MS-Windows with the MinGW port of GCC fails.
2536
2537 This might happen due to a bug in the MinGW header assert.h, which
2538 defines the `assert' macro with a trailing semi-colon. The following
2539 patch to assert.h should solve this:
2540
2541 *** include/assert.h.orig Sun Nov 7 02:41:36 1999
2542 --- include/assert.h Mon Jan 29 11:49:10 2001
2543 ***************
2544 *** 41,47 ****
2545 /*
2546 * If not debugging, assert does nothing.
2547 */
2548 ! #define assert(x) ((void)0);
2549
2550 #else /* debugging enabled */
2551
2552 --- 41,47 ----
2553 /*
2554 * If not debugging, assert does nothing.
2555 */
2556 ! #define assert(x) ((void)0)
2557
2558 #else /* debugging enabled */
2559
2560
2561 *** Building the MS-Windows port with Visual Studio 2005 fails.
2562
2563 Microsoft no longer ships the single threaded version of the C library
2564 with their compiler, and the multithreaded static library is missing
2565 some functions that Microsoft have deemed non-threadsafe. The
2566 dynamically linked C library has all the functions, but there is a
2567 conflict between the versions of malloc in the DLL and in Emacs, which
2568 is not resolvable due to the way Windows does dynamic linking.
2569
2570 We recommend the use of the MingW port of GCC for compiling Emacs, as
2571 not only does it not suffer these problems, but it is also Free
2572 software like Emacs.
2573
2574 ** Linking
2575
2576 *** Building Emacs with a system compiler fails to link because of an
2577 undefined symbol such as __eprintf which does not appear in Emacs.
2578
2579 This can happen if some of the libraries linked into Emacs were built
2580 with GCC, but Emacs itself is being linked with a compiler other than
2581 GCC. Object files compiled with GCC might need some helper functions
2582 from libgcc.a, the library which comes with GCC, but the system
2583 compiler does not instruct the linker to search libgcc.a during the
2584 link stage.
2585
2586 A solution is to link with GCC, like this:
2587
2588 make CC=gcc
2589
2590 Since the .o object files already exist, this will not recompile Emacs
2591 with GCC, but just restart by trying again to link temacs.
2592
2593 *** AIX 1.3 ptf 0013: Link failure.
2594
2595 There is a real duplicate definition of the function `_slibc_free' in
2596 the library /lib/libc_s.a (just do nm on it to verify). The
2597 workaround/fix is:
2598
2599 cd /lib
2600 ar xv libc_s.a NLtmtime.o
2601 ar dv libc_s.a NLtmtime.o
2602
2603 *** AIX 4.1.2: Linker error messages such as
2604 ld: 0711-212 SEVERE ERROR: Symbol .__quous, found in the global symbol table
2605 of archive /usr/lib/libIM.a, was not defined in archive member shr.o.
2606
2607 This is a problem in libIM.a. You can work around it by executing
2608 these shell commands in the src subdirectory of the directory where
2609 you build Emacs:
2610
2611 cp /usr/lib/libIM.a .
2612 chmod 664 libIM.a
2613 ranlib libIM.a
2614
2615 Then change -lIM to ./libIM.a in the command to link temacs (in
2616 Makefile).
2617
2618 *** Sun with acc: Link failure when using acc on a Sun.
2619
2620 To use acc, you need additional options just before the libraries, such as
2621
2622 /usr/lang/SC2.0.1/values-Xt.o -L/usr/lang/SC2.0.1/cg87 -L/usr/lang/SC2.0.1
2623
2624 and you need to add -lansi just before -lc.
2625
2626 The precise file names depend on the compiler version, so we
2627 cannot easily arrange to supply them.
2628
2629 *** Linking says that the functions insque and remque are undefined.
2630
2631 Change oldXMenu/Makefile by adding insque.o to the variable OBJS.
2632
2633 *** `tparam' reported as a multiply-defined symbol when linking with ncurses.
2634
2635 This problem results from an incompatible change in ncurses, in
2636 version 1.9.9e approximately. This version is unable to provide a
2637 definition of tparm without also defining tparam. This is also
2638 incompatible with Terminfo; as a result, the Emacs Terminfo support
2639 does not work with this version of ncurses.
2640
2641 The fix is to install a newer version of ncurses, such as version 4.2.
2642
2643 ** Dumping
2644
2645 *** Linux: Segfault during `make bootstrap' under certain recent versions of the Linux kernel.
2646
2647 With certain recent Linux kernels (like the one of Red Hat Fedora Core
2648 1 and newer), the new "Exec-shield" functionality is enabled by default, which
2649 creates a different memory layout that breaks the emacs dumper. Emacs tries
2650 to handle this at build time, but if the workaround used fails, these
2651 instructions can be useful.
2652 The work-around explained here is not enough on Fedora Core 4 (and possible
2653 newer). Read the next item.
2654
2655 Configure can overcome the problem of exec-shield if the architecture is
2656 x86 and the program setarch is present. On other architectures no
2657 workaround is known.
2658
2659 You can check the Exec-shield state like this:
2660
2661 cat /proc/sys/kernel/exec-shield
2662
2663 It returns non-zero when Exec-shield is enabled, 0 otherwise. Please
2664 read your system documentation for more details on Exec-shield and
2665 associated commands. Exec-shield can be turned off with this command:
2666
2667 echo "0" > /proc/sys/kernel/exec-shield
2668
2669 When Exec-shield is enabled, building Emacs will segfault during the
2670 execution of this command:
2671
2672 ./temacs --batch --load loadup [dump|bootstrap]
2673
2674 To work around this problem, it is necessary to temporarily disable
2675 Exec-shield while building Emacs, or, on x86, by using the `setarch'
2676 command when running temacs like this:
2677
2678 setarch i386 ./temacs --batch --load loadup [dump|bootstrap]
2679
2680
2681 *** Fedora Core 4 GNU/Linux: Segfault during dumping.
2682
2683 In addition to exec-shield explained above "Linux: Segfault during
2684 `make bootstrap' under certain recent versions of the Linux kernel"
2685 item, Linux kernel shipped with Fedora Core 4 randomizes the virtual
2686 address space of a process. As the result dumping may fail even if
2687 you turn off exec-shield. In this case, use the -R option to the setarch
2688 command:
2689
2690 setarch i386 -R ./temacs --batch --load loadup [dump|bootstrap]
2691
2692 or
2693
2694 setarch i386 -R make bootstrap
2695
2696 *** Fatal signal in the command temacs -l loadup inc dump.
2697
2698 This command is the final stage of building Emacs. It is run by the
2699 Makefile in the src subdirectory, or by build.com on VMS.
2700
2701 It has been known to get fatal errors due to insufficient swapping
2702 space available on the machine.
2703
2704 On 68000s, it has also happened because of bugs in the
2705 subroutine `alloca'. Verify that `alloca' works right, even
2706 for large blocks (many pages).
2707
2708 *** test-distrib says that the distribution has been clobbered.
2709 *** or, temacs prints "Command key out of range 0-127".
2710 *** or, temacs runs and dumps emacs, but emacs totally fails to work.
2711 *** or, temacs gets errors dumping emacs.
2712
2713 This can be because the .elc files have been garbled. Do not be
2714 fooled by the fact that most of a .elc file is text: these are
2715 binary files and can contain all 256 byte values.
2716
2717 In particular `shar' cannot be used for transmitting GNU Emacs.
2718 It typically truncates "lines". What appear to be "lines" in
2719 a binary file can of course be of any length. Even once `shar'
2720 itself is made to work correctly, `sh' discards null characters
2721 when unpacking the shell archive.
2722
2723 I have also seen character \177 changed into \377. I do not know
2724 what transfer means caused this problem. Various network
2725 file transfer programs are suspected of clobbering the high bit.
2726
2727 If you have a copy of Emacs that has been damaged in its
2728 nonprinting characters, you can fix them:
2729
2730 1) Record the names of all the .elc files.
2731 2) Delete all the .elc files.
2732 3) Recompile alloc.c with a value of PURESIZE twice as large.
2733 (See puresize.h.) You might as well save the old alloc.o.
2734 4) Remake emacs. It should work now.
2735 5) Running emacs, do Meta-x byte-compile-file repeatedly
2736 to recreate all the .elc files that used to exist.
2737 You may need to increase the value of the variable
2738 max-lisp-eval-depth to succeed in running the compiler interpreted
2739 on certain .el files. 400 was sufficient as of last report.
2740 6) Reinstall the old alloc.o (undoing changes to alloc.c if any)
2741 and remake temacs.
2742 7) Remake emacs. It should work now, with valid .elc files.
2743
2744 *** temacs prints "Pure Lisp storage exhausted".
2745
2746 This means that the Lisp code loaded from the .elc and .el
2747 files during temacs -l loadup inc dump took up more
2748 space than was allocated.
2749
2750 This could be caused by
2751 1) adding code to the preloaded Lisp files
2752 2) adding more preloaded files in loadup.el
2753 3) having a site-init.el or site-load.el which loads files.
2754 Note that ANY site-init.el or site-load.el is nonstandard;
2755 if you have received Emacs from some other site
2756 and it contains a site-init.el or site-load.el file, consider
2757 deleting that file.
2758 4) getting the wrong .el or .elc files
2759 (not from the directory you expected).
2760 5) deleting some .elc files that are supposed to exist.
2761 This would cause the source files (.el files) to be
2762 loaded instead. They take up more room, so you lose.
2763 6) a bug in the Emacs distribution which underestimates
2764 the space required.
2765
2766 If the need for more space is legitimate, change the definition
2767 of PURESIZE in puresize.h.
2768
2769 But in some of the cases listed above, this problem is a consequence
2770 of something else that is wrong. Be sure to check and fix the real
2771 problem.
2772
2773 *** Linux: Emacs crashes when dumping itself on Mac PPC running Yellow Dog GNU/Linux.
2774
2775 The crashes happen inside the function Fmake_symbol; here's a typical
2776 C backtrace printed by GDB:
2777
2778 0x190c0c0 in Fmake_symbol ()
2779 (gdb) where
2780 #0 0x190c0c0 in Fmake_symbol ()
2781 #1 0x1942ca4 in init_obarray ()
2782 #2 0x18b3500 in main ()
2783 #3 0x114371c in __libc_start_main (argc=5, argv=0x7ffff5b4, envp=0x7ffff5cc,
2784
2785 This could happen because GCC version 2.95 and later changed the base
2786 of the load address to 0x10000000. Emacs needs to be told about this,
2787 but we currently cannot do that automatically, because that breaks
2788 other versions of GNU/Linux on the MacPPC. Until we find a way to
2789 distinguish between the Yellow Dog and the other varieties of
2790 GNU/Linux systems on the PPC, you will have to manually uncomment the
2791 following section near the end of the file src/m/macppc.h in the Emacs
2792 distribution:
2793
2794 #if 0 /* This breaks things on PPC GNU/Linux except for Yellowdog,
2795 even with identical GCC, as, ld. Let's take it out until we
2796 know what's really going on here. */
2797 /* GCC 2.95 and newer on GNU/Linux PPC changed the load address to
2798 0x10000000. */
2799 #if defined __linux__
2800 #if __GNUC__ > 2 || (__GNUC__ == 2 && __GNUC_MINOR__ >= 95)
2801 #define DATA_SEG_BITS 0x10000000
2802 #endif
2803 #endif
2804 #endif /* 0 */
2805
2806 Remove the "#if 0" and "#endif" directives which surround this, save
2807 the file, and then reconfigure and rebuild Emacs. The dumping process
2808 should now succeed.
2809
2810 *** OpenBSD 4.0 macppc: Segfault during dumping.
2811
2812 The build aborts with signal 11 when the command `./temacs --batch
2813 --load loadup bootstrap' tries to load files.el. A workaround seems
2814 to be to reduce the level of compiler optimization used during the
2815 build (from -O2 to -O1). It is possible this is an OpenBSD
2816 GCC problem specific to the macppc architecture, possibly only
2817 occurring with older versions of GCC (e.g. 3.3.5).
2818
2819 *** openSUSE 10.3: Segfault in bcopy during dumping.
2820
2821 This is due to a bug in the bcopy implementation in openSUSE 10.3.
2822 It is/will be fixed in an openSUSE update.
2823
2824 ** Installation
2825
2826 *** Installing Emacs gets an error running `install-info'.
2827
2828 You need to install a recent version of Texinfo; that package
2829 supplies the `install-info' command.
2830
2831 *** Installing to a directory with spaces in the name fails.
2832
2833 For example, if you call configure with a directory-related option
2834 with spaces in the value, eg --enable-locallisppath='/path/with\ spaces'.
2835 Using directory paths with spaces is not supported at this time: you
2836 must re-configure without using spaces.
2837
2838 *** Installing to a directory with non-ASCII characters in the name fails.
2839
2840 Installation may fail, or the Emacs executable may not start
2841 correctly, if a directory name containing non-ASCII characters is used
2842 as a `configure' argument (e.g. `--prefix'). The problem can also
2843 occur if a non-ASCII directory is specified in the EMACSLOADPATH
2844 envvar.
2845
2846 *** On Solaris, use GNU Make when installing an out-of-tree build
2847
2848 The Emacs configuration process allows you to configure the
2849 build environment so that you can build emacs in a directory
2850 outside of the distribution tree. When installing Emacs from an
2851 out-of-tree build directory on Solaris, you may need to use GNU
2852 make. The make programs bundled with Solaris support the VPATH
2853 macro but use it differently from the way the VPATH macro is
2854 used by GNU make. The differences will cause the "make install"
2855 step to fail, leaving you with an incomplete emacs
2856 installation. GNU make is available in /usr/sfw/bin on Solaris
2857 10 and can be installed as /opt/sfw/bin/gmake from the Solaris 9
2858 Software Companion CDROM.
2859
2860 The problems due to the VPATH processing differences affect only
2861 out of tree builds so, if you are on a Solaris installation
2862 without GNU make, you can install Emacs completely by installing
2863 from a build environment using the original emacs distribution tree.
2864
2865 ** First execution
2866
2867 *** Emacs binary is not in executable format, and cannot be run.
2868
2869 This was reported to happen when Emacs is built in a directory mounted
2870 via NFS, for some combinations of NFS client and NFS server.
2871 Usually, the file `emacs' produced in these cases is full of
2872 binary null characters, and the `file' utility says:
2873
2874 emacs: ASCII text, with no line terminators
2875
2876 We don't know what exactly causes this failure. A work-around is to
2877 build Emacs in a directory on a local disk.
2878
2879 *** The dumped Emacs crashes when run, trying to write pure data.
2880
2881 Two causes have been seen for such problems.
2882
2883 1) On a system where getpagesize is not a system call, it is defined
2884 as a macro. If the definition (in both unexec.c and malloc.c) is wrong,
2885 it can cause problems like this. You might be able to find the correct
2886 value in the man page for a.out (5).
2887
2888 2) Some systems allocate variables declared static among the
2889 initialized variables. Emacs makes all initialized variables in most
2890 of its files pure after dumping, but the variables declared static and
2891 not initialized are not supposed to be pure. On these systems you
2892 may need to add "#define static" to the m- or the s- file.
2893
2894 * Emacs 19 problems
2895
2896 ** Error messages `Wrong number of arguments: #<subr where-is-internal>, 5'.
2897
2898 This typically results from having the powerkey library loaded.
2899 Powerkey was designed for Emacs 19.22. It is obsolete now because
2900 Emacs 19 now has this feature built in; and powerkey also calls
2901 where-is-internal in an obsolete way.
2902
2903 So the fix is to arrange not to load powerkey.
2904
2905 * Runtime problems on legacy systems
2906
2907 This section covers bugs reported on very old hardware or software.
2908 If you are using hardware and an operating system shipped after 2000,
2909 it is unlikely you will see any of these.
2910
2911 ** Ancient operating systems
2912
2913 AIX 4.2 was end-of-lifed on Dec 31st, 1999.
2914
2915 *** AIX: You get this compiler error message:
2916
2917 Processing include file ./XMenuInt.h
2918 1501-106: (S) Include file X11/Xlib.h not found.
2919
2920 This means your system was installed with only the X11 runtime i.d
2921 libraries. You have to find your sipo (bootable tape) and install
2922 X11Dev... with smit.
2923
2924 (This report must be ancient. Bootable tapes are long dead.)
2925
2926 *** AIX 3.2.4: Releasing Ctrl/Act key has no effect, if Shift is down.
2927
2928 Due to a feature of AIX, pressing or releasing the Ctrl/Act key is
2929 ignored when the Shift, Alt or AltGr keys are held down. This can
2930 lead to the keyboard being "control-locked"--ordinary letters are
2931 treated as control characters.
2932
2933 You can get out of this "control-locked" state by pressing and
2934 releasing Ctrl/Act while not pressing or holding any other keys.
2935
2936 *** AIX 3.2.5: You get this message when running Emacs:
2937
2938 Could not load program emacs
2939 Symbol smtcheckinit in csh is undefined
2940 Error was: Exec format error
2941
2942 or this one:
2943
2944 Could not load program .emacs
2945 Symbol _system_con in csh is undefined
2946 Symbol _fp_trapsta in csh is undefined
2947 Error was: Exec format error
2948
2949 These can happen when you try to run on AIX 3.2.5 a program that was
2950 compiled with 3.2.4. The fix is to recompile.
2951
2952 *** AIX 4.2: Emacs gets a segmentation fault at startup.
2953
2954 If you are using IBM's xlc compiler, compile emacs.c
2955 without optimization; that should avoid the problem.
2956
2957 *** ISC Unix
2958
2959 **** ISC: display-time causes kernel problems on ISC systems.
2960
2961 Under Interactive Unix versions 3.0.1 and 4.0 (and probably other
2962 versions), display-time causes the loss of large numbers of STREVENT
2963 cells. Eventually the kernel's supply of these cells is exhausted.
2964 This makes emacs and the whole system run slow, and can make other
2965 processes die, in particular pcnfsd.
2966
2967 Other emacs functions that communicate with remote processes may have
2968 the same problem. Display-time seems to be far the worst.
2969
2970 The only known fix: Don't run display-time.
2971
2972 **** Sunos 5.3: Subprocesses remain, hanging but not zombies.
2973
2974 A bug in Sunos 5.3 causes Emacs subprocesses to remain after Emacs
2975 exits. Sun patch # 101415-02 is part of the fix for this, but it only
2976 applies to ptys, and doesn't fix the problem with subprocesses
2977 communicating through pipes.
2978
2979 *** Irix
2980
2981 *** Irix 6.2: No visible display on mips-sgi-irix6.2 when compiling with GCC 2.8.1.
2982
2983 This problem went away after installing the latest IRIX patches
2984 as of 8 Dec 1998.
2985
2986 The same problem has been reported on Irix 6.3.
2987
2988 *** Irix 6.3: substituting environment variables in file names
2989 in the minibuffer gives peculiar error messages such as
2990
2991 Substituting nonexistent environment variable ""
2992
2993 This is not an Emacs bug; it is caused by something in SGI patch
2994 003082 August 11, 1998.
2995
2996 *** OPENSTEP
2997
2998 **** OPENSTEP 4.2: Compiling syntax.c with gcc 2.7.2.1 fails.
2999
3000 The compiler was reported to crash while compiling syntax.c with the
3001 following message:
3002
3003 cc: Internal compiler error: program cc1obj got fatal signal 11
3004
3005 To work around this, replace the macros UPDATE_SYNTAX_TABLE_FORWARD,
3006 INC_BOTH, and INC_FROM with functions. To this end, first define 3
3007 functions, one each for every macro. Here's an example:
3008
3009 static int update_syntax_table_forward(int from)
3010 {
3011 return(UPDATE_SYNTAX_TABLE_FORWARD(from));
3012 }/*update_syntax_table_forward*/
3013
3014 Then replace all references to UPDATE_SYNTAX_TABLE_FORWARD in syntax.c
3015 with a call to the function update_syntax_table_forward.
3016
3017 *** Solaris 2.x
3018
3019 **** Strange results from format %d in a few cases, on a Sun.
3020
3021 Sun compiler version SC3.0 has been found to miscompile part of
3022 editfns.c. The workaround is to compile with some other compiler such
3023 as GCC.
3024
3025 **** On Solaris, Emacs dumps core if lisp-complete-symbol is called.
3026
3027 If you compile Emacs with the -fast or -xO4 option with version 3.0.2
3028 of the Sun C compiler, Emacs dumps core when lisp-complete-symbol is
3029 called. The problem does not happen if you compile with GCC.
3030
3031 **** On Solaris, Emacs crashes if you use (display-time).
3032
3033 This can happen if you configure Emacs without specifying the precise
3034 version of Solaris that you are using.
3035
3036 **** Solaris 2.3 and 2.4: Unpredictable segmentation faults.
3037
3038 A user reported that this happened in 19.29 when it was compiled with
3039 the Sun compiler, but not when he recompiled with GCC 2.7.0.
3040
3041 We do not know whether something in Emacs is partly to blame for this.
3042
3043 **** Solaris 2.4: Emacs dumps core on startup.
3044
3045 Bill Sebok says that the cause of this is Solaris 2.4 vendor patch
3046 102303-05, which extends the Solaris linker to deal with the Solaris
3047 Common Desktop Environment's linking needs. You can fix the problem
3048 by removing this patch and installing patch 102049-02 instead.
3049 However, that linker version won't work with CDE.
3050
3051 Solaris 2.5 comes with a linker that has this bug. It is reported that if
3052 you install all the latest patches (as of June 1996), the bug is fixed.
3053 We suspect the crucial patch is one of these, but we don't know
3054 for certain.
3055
3056 103093-03: [README] SunOS 5.5: kernel patch (2140557 bytes)
3057 102832-01: [README] OpenWindows 3.5: Xview Jumbo Patch (4181613 bytes)
3058 103242-04: [README] SunOS 5.5: linker patch (595363 bytes)
3059
3060 (One user reports that the bug was fixed by those patches together
3061 with patches 102980-04, 103279-01, 103300-02, and 103468-01.)
3062
3063 If you can determine which patch does fix the bug, please tell
3064 bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
3065
3066 Meanwhile, the GNU linker links Emacs properly on both Solaris 2.4 and
3067 Solaris 2.5.
3068
3069 **** Solaris 2.4: Dired hangs and C-g does not work. Or Emacs hangs
3070 forever waiting for termination of a subprocess that is a zombie.
3071
3072 casper@fwi.uva.nl says the problem is in X11R6. Rebuild libX11.so
3073 after changing the file xc/config/cf/sunLib.tmpl. Change the lines
3074
3075 #if ThreadedX
3076 #define SharedX11Reqs -lthread
3077 #endif
3078
3079 to:
3080
3081 #if OSMinorVersion < 4
3082 #if ThreadedX
3083 #define SharedX11Reqs -lthread
3084 #endif
3085 #endif
3086
3087 Be sure also to edit x/config/cf/sun.cf so that OSMinorVersion is 4
3088 (as it should be for Solaris 2.4). The file has three definitions for
3089 OSMinorVersion: the first is for x86, the second for SPARC under
3090 Solaris, and the third for SunOS 4. Make sure to update the
3091 definition for your type of machine and system.
3092
3093 Then do `make Everything' in the top directory of X11R6, to rebuild
3094 the makefiles and rebuild X. The X built this way work only on
3095 Solaris 2.4, not on 2.3.
3096
3097 For multithreaded X to work it is necessary to install patch
3098 101925-02 to fix problems in header files [2.4]. You need
3099 to reinstall gcc or re-run just-fixinc after installing that
3100 patch.
3101
3102 However, Frank Rust <frust@iti.cs.tu-bs.de> used a simpler solution:
3103 he changed
3104 #define ThreadedX YES
3105 to
3106 #define ThreadedX NO
3107 in sun.cf and did `make World' to rebuild X11R6. Removing all
3108 `-DXTHREAD*' flags and `-lthread' entries from lib/X11/Makefile and
3109 typing 'make install' in that directory also seemed to work.
3110
3111 **** Solaris 2.x: GCC complains "64 bit integer types not supported".
3112
3113 This suggests that GCC is not installed correctly. Most likely you
3114 are using GCC 2.7.2.3 (or earlier) on Solaris 2.6 (or later); this
3115 does not work without patching. To run GCC 2.7.2.3 on Solaris 2.6 or
3116 later, you must patch fixinc.svr4 and reinstall GCC from scratch as
3117 described in the Solaris FAQ
3118 <http://www.wins.uva.nl/pub/solaris/solaris2.html>. A better fix is
3119 to upgrade to GCC 2.8.1 or later.
3120
3121 **** Solaris 2.7: Building Emacs with WorkShop Compilers 5.0 98/12/15
3122 C 5.0 failed, apparently with non-default CFLAGS, most probably due to
3123 compiler bugs. Using Sun Solaris 2.7 Sun WorkShop 6 update 1 C
3124 release was reported to work without problems. It worked OK on
3125 another system with Solaris 8 using apparently the same 5.0 compiler
3126 and the default CFLAGS.
3127
3128 **** Solaris 2.x: Emacs dumps core when built with Motif.
3129
3130 The Solaris Motif libraries are buggy, at least up through Solaris 2.5.1.
3131 Install the current Motif runtime library patch appropriate for your host.
3132 (Make sure the patch is current; some older patch versions still have the bug.)
3133 You should install the other patches recommended by Sun for your host, too.
3134 You can obtain Sun patches from ftp://sunsolve.sun.com/pub/patches/;
3135 look for files with names ending in `.PatchReport' to see which patches
3136 are currently recommended for your host.
3137
3138 On Solaris 2.6, Emacs is said to work with Motif when Solaris patch
3139 105284-12 is installed, but fail when 105284-15 is installed.
3140 105284-18 might fix it again.
3141
3142 **** Solaris 2.6 and 7: the Compose key does not work.
3143
3144 This is a bug in Motif in Solaris. Supposedly it has been fixed for
3145 the next major release of Solaris. However, if someone with Sun
3146 support complains to Sun about the bug, they may release a patch.
3147 If you do this, mention Sun bug #4188711.
3148
3149 One workaround is to use a locale that allows non-ASCII characters.
3150 For example, before invoking emacs, set the LC_ALL environment
3151 variable to "en_US" (American English). The directory /usr/lib/locale
3152 lists the supported locales; any locale other than "C" or "POSIX"
3153 should do.
3154
3155 pen@lysator.liu.se says (Feb 1998) that the Compose key does work
3156 if you link with the MIT X11 libraries instead of the Solaris X11
3157 libraries.
3158
3159 *** HP/UX versions before 11.0
3160
3161 HP/UX 9 was end-of-lifed in December 1998.
3162 HP/UX 10 was end-of-lifed in May 1999.
3163
3164 **** HP/UX 9: Emacs crashes with SIGBUS or SIGSEGV after you delete a frame.
3165
3166 We think this is due to a bug in the X libraries provided by HP. With
3167 the alternative X libraries in /usr/contrib/mitX11R5/lib, the problem
3168 does not happen.
3169
3170 *** HP/UX 10: Large file support is disabled.
3171
3172 See the comments in src/s/hpux10.h.
3173
3174 *** HP/UX: Emacs is slow using X11R5.
3175
3176 This happens if you use the MIT versions of the X libraries--it
3177 doesn't run as fast as HP's version. People sometimes use the version
3178 because they see the HP version doesn't have the libraries libXaw.a,
3179 libXmu.a, libXext.a and others. HP/UX normally doesn't come with
3180 those libraries installed. To get good performance, you need to
3181 install them and rebuild Emacs.
3182
3183 *** Ultrix and Digital Unix
3184
3185 **** Ultrix 4.2: `make install' fails on install-doc with `Error 141'.
3186
3187 This happens on Ultrix 4.2 due to failure of a pipeline of tar
3188 commands. We don't know why they fail, but the bug seems not to be in
3189 Emacs. The workaround is to run the shell command in install-doc by
3190 hand.
3191
3192 **** Digital Unix 4.0: Garbled display on non-X terminals when Emacs runs.
3193
3194 So far it appears that running `tset' triggers this problem (when TERM
3195 is vt100, at least). If you do not run `tset', then Emacs displays
3196 properly. If someone can tell us precisely which effect of running
3197 `tset' actually causes the problem, we may be able to implement a fix
3198 in Emacs.
3199
3200 **** Ultrix: `expand-file-name' fails to work on any but the machine you dumped Emacs on.
3201
3202 On Ultrix, if you use any of the functions which look up information
3203 in the passwd database before dumping Emacs (say, by using
3204 expand-file-name in site-init.el), then those functions will not work
3205 in the dumped Emacs on any host but the one Emacs was dumped on.
3206
3207 The solution? Don't use expand-file-name in site-init.el, or in
3208 anything it loads. Yuck - some solution.
3209
3210 I'm not sure why this happens; if you can find out exactly what is
3211 going on, and perhaps find a fix or a workaround, please let us know.
3212 Perhaps the YP functions cache some information, the cache is included
3213 in the dumped Emacs, and is then inaccurate on any other host.
3214
3215 *** SVr4
3216
3217 **** SVr4: On some variants of SVR4, Emacs does not work at all with X.
3218
3219 Try defining BROKEN_FIONREAD in your config.h file. If this solves
3220 the problem, please send a bug report to tell us this is needed; be
3221 sure to say exactly what type of machine and system you are using.
3222
3223 **** SVr4: After running emacs once, subsequent invocations crash.
3224
3225 Some versions of SVR4 have a serious bug in the implementation of the
3226 mmap () system call in the kernel; this causes emacs to run correctly
3227 the first time, and then crash when run a second time.
3228
3229 Contact your vendor and ask for the mmap bug fix; in the mean time,
3230 you may be able to work around the problem by adding a line to your
3231 operating system description file (whose name is reported by the
3232 configure script) that reads:
3233 #define SYSTEM_MALLOC
3234 This makes Emacs use memory less efficiently, but seems to work around
3235 the kernel bug.
3236
3237 *** Irix 5 and earlier
3238
3239 Exactly when Irix-5 end-of-lifed is obscure. But since Irix 6.0
3240 shipped in 1994, it has been some years.
3241
3242 **** Irix 5.2: unexelfsgi.c can't find cmplrs/stsupport.h.
3243
3244 The file cmplrs/stsupport.h was included in the wrong file set in the
3245 Irix 5.2 distribution. You can find it in the optional fileset
3246 compiler_dev, or copy it from some other Irix 5.2 system. A kludgy
3247 workaround is to change unexelfsgi.c to include sym.h instead of
3248 syms.h.
3249
3250 **** Irix 5.3: "out of virtual swap space".
3251
3252 This message occurs when the system runs out of swap space due to too
3253 many large programs running. The solution is either to provide more
3254 swap space or to reduce the number of large programs being run. You
3255 can check the current status of the swap space by executing the
3256 command `swap -l'.
3257
3258 You can increase swap space by changing the file /etc/fstab. Adding a
3259 line like this:
3260
3261 /usr/swap/swap.more swap swap pri=3 0 0
3262
3263 where /usr/swap/swap.more is a file previously created (for instance
3264 by using /etc/mkfile), will increase the swap space by the size of
3265 that file. Execute `swap -m' or reboot the machine to activate the
3266 new swap area. See the manpages for `swap' and `fstab' for further
3267 information.
3268
3269 The objectserver daemon can use up lots of memory because it can be
3270 swamped with NIS information. It collects information about all users
3271 on the network that can log on to the host.
3272
3273 If you want to disable the objectserver completely, you can execute
3274 the command `chkconfig objectserver off' and reboot. That may disable
3275 some of the window system functionality, such as responding CDROM
3276 icons.
3277
3278 You can also remove NIS support from the objectserver. The SGI `admin'
3279 FAQ has a detailed description on how to do that; see question 35
3280 ("Why isn't the objectserver working?"). The admin FAQ can be found at
3281 ftp://viz.tamu.edu/pub/sgi/faq/.
3282
3283 **** Irix 5.3: Emacs crashes in utmpname.
3284
3285 This problem is fixed in Patch 3175 for Irix 5.3.
3286 It is also fixed in Irix versions 6.2 and up.
3287
3288 **** Irix 6.0: Make tries (and fails) to build a program named unexelfsgi.
3289
3290 A compiler bug inserts spaces into the string "unexelfsgi . o"
3291 in src/Makefile. Edit src/Makefile, after configure is run,
3292 find that string, and take out the spaces.
3293
3294 Compiler fixes in Irix 6.0.1 should eliminate this problem.
3295
3296 *** SCO Unix and UnixWare
3297
3298 **** SCO 3.2v4: Unusable default font.
3299
3300 The Open Desktop environment comes with default X resource settings
3301 that tell Emacs to use a variable-width font. Emacs cannot use such
3302 fonts, so it does not work.
3303
3304 This is caused by the file /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/ScoTerm, which is
3305 the application-specific resource file for the `scoterm' terminal
3306 emulator program. It contains several extremely general X resources
3307 that affect other programs besides `scoterm'. In particular, these
3308 resources affect Emacs also:
3309
3310 *Font: -*-helvetica-medium-r-*--12-*-p-*
3311 *Background: scoBackground
3312 *Foreground: scoForeground
3313
3314 The best solution is to create an application-specific resource file for
3315 Emacs, /usr/lib/X11/sco/startup/Emacs, with the following contents:
3316
3317 Emacs*Font: -*-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-120-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1
3318 Emacs*Background: white
3319 Emacs*Foreground: black
3320
3321 (These settings mimic the Emacs defaults, but you can change them to
3322 suit your needs.) This resource file is only read when the X server
3323 starts up, so you should restart it by logging out of the Open Desktop
3324 environment or by running `scologin stop; scologin start` from the shell
3325 as root. Alternatively, you can put these settings in the
3326 /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/Emacs resource file and simply restart Emacs,
3327 but then they will not affect remote invocations of Emacs that use the
3328 Open Desktop display.
3329
3330 These resource files are not normally shared across a network of SCO
3331 machines; you must create the file on each machine individually.
3332
3333 **** SCO 4.2.0: Regular expressions matching bugs on SCO systems.
3334
3335 On SCO, there are problems in regexp matching when Emacs is compiled
3336 with the system compiler. The compiler version is "Microsoft C
3337 version 6", SCO 4.2.0h Dev Sys Maintenance Supplement 01/06/93; Quick
3338 C Compiler Version 1.00.46 (Beta). The solution is to compile with
3339 GCC.
3340
3341 **** UnixWare 2.1: Error 12 (virtual memory exceeded) when dumping Emacs.
3342
3343 Paul Abrahams (abrahams@acm.org) reports that with the installed
3344 virtual memory settings for UnixWare 2.1.2, an Error 12 occurs during
3345 the "make" that builds Emacs, when running temacs to dump emacs. That
3346 error indicates that the per-process virtual memory limit has been
3347 exceeded. The default limit is probably 32MB. Raising the virtual
3348 memory limit to 40MB should make it possible to finish building Emacs.
3349
3350 You can do this with the command `ulimit' (sh) or `limit' (csh).
3351 But you have to be root to do it.
3352
3353 According to Martin Sohnius, you can also retune this in the kernel:
3354
3355 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune SDATLIM 33554432 ## soft data size limit
3356 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune HDATLIM 33554432 ## hard "
3357 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune SVMMSIZE unlimited ## soft process size limit
3358 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune HVMMSIZE unlimited ## hard "
3359 # /etc/conf/bin/idbuild -B
3360
3361 (He recommends you not change the stack limit, though.)
3362 These changes take effect when you reboot.
3363
3364 *** Linux 1.x
3365
3366 **** Linux 1.0-1.04: Typing C-c C-c in Shell mode kills your X server.
3367
3368 This happens with Linux kernel 1.0 thru 1.04, approximately. The workaround is
3369 to define SIGNALS_VIA_CHARACTERS in config.h and recompile Emacs.
3370 Newer Linux kernel versions don't have this problem.
3371
3372 **** Linux 1.3: Output from subprocess (such as man or diff) is randomly
3373 truncated on GNU/Linux systems.
3374
3375 This is due to a kernel bug which seems to be fixed in Linux version
3376 1.3.75.
3377
3378 ** Windows 3.1, 95, 98, and ME
3379
3380 *** MS-Windows NT/95: Problems running Perl under Emacs
3381
3382 `perl -de 0' just hangs when executed in an Emacs subshell.
3383 The fault lies with Perl (indirectly with Windows NT/95).
3384
3385 The problem is that the Perl debugger explicitly opens a connection to
3386 "CON", which is the DOS/NT equivalent of "/dev/tty", for interacting
3387 with the user.
3388
3389 On Unix, this is okay, because Emacs (or the shell?) creates a
3390 pseudo-tty so that /dev/tty is really the pipe Emacs is using to
3391 communicate with the subprocess.
3392
3393 On NT, this fails because CON always refers to the handle for the
3394 relevant console (approximately equivalent to a tty), and cannot be
3395 redirected to refer to the pipe Emacs assigned to the subprocess as
3396 stdin.
3397
3398 A workaround is to modify perldb.pl to use STDIN/STDOUT instead of CON.
3399
3400 For Perl 4:
3401
3402 *** PERL/LIB/PERLDB.PL.orig Wed May 26 08:24:18 1993
3403 --- PERL/LIB/PERLDB.PL Mon Jul 01 15:28:16 1996
3404 ***************
3405 *** 68,74 ****
3406 $rcfile=".perldb";
3407 }
3408 else {
3409 ! $console = "con";
3410 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
3411 }
3412
3413 --- 68,74 ----
3414 $rcfile=".perldb";
3415 }
3416 else {
3417 ! $console = "";
3418 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
3419 }
3420
3421
3422 For Perl 5:
3423 *** perl/5.001/lib/perl5db.pl.orig Sun Jun 04 21:13:40 1995
3424 --- perl/5.001/lib/perl5db.pl Mon Jul 01 17:00:08 1996
3425 ***************
3426 *** 22,28 ****
3427 $rcfile=".perldb";
3428 }
3429 elsif (-e "con") {
3430 ! $console = "con";
3431 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
3432 }
3433 else {
3434 --- 22,28 ----
3435 $rcfile=".perldb";
3436 }
3437 elsif (-e "con") {
3438 ! $console = "";
3439 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
3440 }
3441 else {
3442
3443 *** MS-Windows 95: Alt-f6 does not get through to Emacs.
3444
3445 This character seems to be trapped by the kernel in Windows 95.
3446 You can enter M-f6 by typing ESC f6.
3447
3448 *** MS-Windows 95/98/ME: subprocesses do not terminate properly.
3449
3450 This is a limitation of the Operating System, and can cause problems
3451 when shutting down Windows. Ensure that all subprocesses are exited
3452 cleanly before exiting Emacs. For more details, see the FAQ at
3453 http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/windows/.
3454
3455 *** MS-Windows 95/98/ME: crashes when Emacs invokes non-existent programs.
3456
3457 When a program you are trying to run is not found on the PATH,
3458 Windows might respond by crashing or locking up your system. In
3459 particular, this has been reported when trying to compile a Java
3460 program in JDEE when javac.exe is installed, but not on the system
3461 PATH.
3462
3463 ** MS-DOS
3464
3465 *** When compiling with DJGPP on MS-Windows NT, "config msdos" fails.
3466
3467 If the error message is "VDM has been already loaded", this is because
3468 Windows has a program called `redir.exe' that is incompatible with a
3469 program by the same name supplied with DJGPP, which is used by
3470 config.bat. To resolve this, move the DJGPP's `bin' subdirectory to
3471 the front of your PATH environment variable.
3472
3473 *** When compiling with DJGPP on MS-Windows 95, Make fails for some targets
3474 like make-docfile.
3475
3476 This can happen if long file name support (the setting of environment
3477 variable LFN) when Emacs distribution was unpacked and during
3478 compilation are not the same. See the MSDOG section of INSTALL for
3479 the explanation of how to avoid this problem.
3480
3481 *** Emacs compiled with DJGPP complains at startup:
3482
3483 "Wrong type of argument: internal-facep, msdos-menu-active-face"
3484
3485 This can happen if you define an environment variable `TERM'. Emacs
3486 on MSDOS uses an internal terminal emulator which is disabled if the
3487 value of `TERM' is anything but the string "internal". Emacs then
3488 works as if its terminal were a dumb glass teletype that doesn't
3489 support faces. To work around this, arrange for `TERM' to be
3490 undefined when Emacs runs. The best way to do that is to add an
3491 [emacs] section to the DJGPP.ENV file which defines an empty value for
3492 `TERM'; this way, only Emacs gets the empty value, while the rest of
3493 your system works as before.
3494
3495 *** MS-DOS: Emacs crashes at startup.
3496
3497 Some users report that Emacs 19.29 requires dpmi memory management,
3498 and crashes on startup if the system does not have it. We don't yet
3499 know why this happens--perhaps these machines don't have enough real
3500 memory, or perhaps something is wrong in Emacs or the compiler.
3501 However, arranging to use dpmi support is a workaround.
3502
3503 You can find out if you have a dpmi host by running go32 without
3504 arguments; it will tell you if it uses dpmi memory. For more
3505 information about dpmi memory, consult the djgpp FAQ. (djgpp
3506 is the GNU C compiler as packaged for MSDOS.)
3507
3508 Compiling Emacs under MSDOS is extremely sensitive for proper memory
3509 configuration. If you experience problems during compilation, consider
3510 removing some or all memory resident programs (notably disk caches)
3511 and make sure that your memory managers are properly configured. See
3512 the djgpp faq for configuration hints.
3513
3514 *** Emacs compiled with DJGPP for MS-DOS/MS-Windows cannot access files
3515 in the directory with the special name `dev' under the root of any
3516 drive, e.g. `c:/dev'.
3517
3518 This is an unfortunate side-effect of the support for Unix-style
3519 device names such as /dev/null in the DJGPP runtime library. A
3520 work-around is to rename the problem directory to another name.
3521
3522 *** MS-DOS+DJGPP: Problems on MS-DOG if DJGPP v2.0 is used to compile Emacs.
3523
3524 There are two DJGPP library bugs which cause problems:
3525
3526 * Running `shell-command' (or `compile', or `grep') you get
3527 `Searching for program: permission denied (EACCES), c:/command.com';
3528 * After you shell to DOS, Ctrl-Break kills Emacs.
3529
3530 To work around these bugs, you can use two files in the msdos
3531 subdirectory: `is_exec.c' and `sigaction.c'. Compile them and link
3532 them into the Emacs executable `temacs'; then they will replace the
3533 incorrect library functions.
3534
3535 *** MS-DOS: Emacs compiled for MSDOS cannot find some Lisp files, or other
3536 run-time support files, when long filename support is enabled.
3537
3538 Usually, this problem will manifest itself when Emacs exits
3539 immediately after flashing the startup screen, because it cannot find
3540 the Lisp files it needs to load at startup. Redirect Emacs stdout
3541 and stderr to a file to see the error message printed by Emacs.
3542
3543 Another manifestation of this problem is that Emacs is unable to load
3544 the support for editing program sources in languages such as C and
3545 Lisp.
3546
3547 This can happen if the Emacs distribution was unzipped without LFN
3548 support, thus causing long filenames to be truncated to the first 6
3549 characters and a numeric tail that Windows 95 normally attaches to it.
3550 You should unzip the files again with a utility that supports long
3551 filenames (such as djtar from DJGPP or InfoZip's UnZip program
3552 compiled with DJGPP v2). The MSDOG section of the file INSTALL
3553 explains this issue in more detail.
3554
3555 Another possible reason for such failures is that Emacs compiled for
3556 MSDOS is used on Windows NT, where long file names are not supported
3557 by this version of Emacs, but the distribution was unpacked by an
3558 unzip program that preserved the long file names instead of truncating
3559 them to DOS 8+3 limits. To be useful on NT, the MSDOS port of Emacs
3560 must be unzipped by a DOS utility, so that long file names are
3561 properly truncated.
3562
3563 ** Archaic window managers and toolkits
3564
3565 *** OpenLook: Under OpenLook, the Emacs window disappears when you type M-q.
3566
3567 Some versions of the Open Look window manager interpret M-q as a quit
3568 command for whatever window you are typing at. If you want to use
3569 Emacs with that window manager, you should try to configure the window
3570 manager to use some other command. You can disable the
3571 shortcut keys entirely by adding this line to ~/.OWdefaults:
3572
3573 OpenWindows.WindowMenuAccelerators: False
3574
3575 **** twm: A position you specified in .Xdefaults is ignored, using twm.
3576
3577 twm normally ignores "program-specified" positions.
3578 You can tell it to obey them with this command in your `.twmrc' file:
3579
3580 UsePPosition "on" #allow clients to request a position
3581
3582 ** Bugs related to old DEC hardware
3583
3584 *** The Compose key on a DEC keyboard does not work as Meta key.
3585
3586 This shell command should fix it:
3587
3588 xmodmap -e 'keycode 0xb1 = Meta_L'
3589
3590 *** Keyboard input gets confused after a beep when using a DECserver
3591 as a concentrator.
3592
3593 This problem seems to be a matter of configuring the DECserver to use
3594 7 bit characters rather than 8 bit characters.
3595
3596 * Build problems on legacy systems
3597
3598 ** BSD/386 1.0: --with-x-toolkit option configures wrong.
3599
3600 This problem is due to bugs in the shell in version 1.0 of BSD/386.
3601 The workaround is to edit the configure file to use some other shell,
3602 such as bash.
3603
3604 ** Digital Unix 4.0: Emacs fails to build, giving error message
3605 Invalid dimension for the charset-ID 160
3606
3607 This is due to a bug or an installation problem in GCC 2.8.0.
3608 Installing a more recent version of GCC fixes the problem.
3609
3610 ** Digital Unix 4.0: Failure in unexec while dumping emacs.
3611
3612 This problem manifests itself as an error message
3613
3614 unexec: Bad address, writing data section to ...
3615
3616 The user suspects that this happened because his X libraries
3617 were built for an older system version,
3618
3619 ./configure --x-includes=/usr/include --x-libraries=/usr/shlib
3620
3621 made the problem go away.
3622
3623 ** Sunos 4.1.1: there are errors compiling sysdep.c.
3624
3625 If you get errors such as
3626
3627 "sysdep.c", line 2017: undefined structure or union
3628 "sysdep.c", line 2017: undefined structure or union
3629 "sysdep.c", line 2019: nodename undefined
3630
3631 This can result from defining LD_LIBRARY_PATH. It is very tricky
3632 to use that environment variable with Emacs. The Emacs configure
3633 script links many test programs with the system libraries; you must
3634 make sure that the libraries available to configure are the same
3635 ones available when you build Emacs.
3636
3637 ** SunOS 4.1.1: You get this error message from GNU ld:
3638
3639 /lib/libc.a(_Q_sub.o): Undefined symbol __Q_get_rp_rd referenced from text segment
3640
3641 The problem is in the Sun shared C library, not in GNU ld.
3642
3643 The solution is to install Patch-ID# 100267-03 from Sun.
3644
3645 ** Sunos 4.1: Undefined symbols when linking using --with-x-toolkit.
3646
3647 If you get the undefined symbols _atowc _wcslen, _iswprint, _iswspace,
3648 _iswcntrl, _wcscpy, and _wcsncpy, then you need to add -lXwchar after
3649 -lXaw in the command that links temacs.
3650
3651 This problem seems to arise only when the international language
3652 extensions to X11R5 are installed.
3653
3654 ** SunOS: Emacs gets error message from linker on Sun.
3655
3656 If the error message says that a symbol such as `f68881_used' or
3657 `ffpa_used' or `start_float' is undefined, this probably indicates
3658 that you have compiled some libraries, such as the X libraries,
3659 with a floating point option other than the default.
3660
3661 It's not terribly hard to make this work with small changes in
3662 crt0.c together with linking with Fcrt1.o, Wcrt1.o or Mcrt1.o.
3663 However, the easiest approach is to build Xlib with the default
3664 floating point option: -fsoft.
3665
3666 ** HPUX 10.20: Emacs crashes during dumping on the HPPA machine.
3667
3668 This seems to be due to a GCC bug; it is fixed in GCC 2.8.1.
3669
3670 ** VMS: Compilation errors on VMS.
3671
3672 You will get warnings when compiling on VMS because there are
3673 variable names longer than 32 (or whatever it is) characters.
3674 This is not an error. Ignore it.
3675
3676 VAX C does not support #if defined(foo). Uses of this construct
3677 were removed, but some may have crept back in. They must be rewritten.
3678
3679 There is a bug in the C compiler which fails to sign extend characters
3680 in conditional expressions. The bug is:
3681 char c = -1, d = 1;
3682 int i;
3683
3684 i = d ? c : d;
3685 The result is i == 255; the fix is to typecast the char in the
3686 conditional expression as an (int). Known occurrences of such
3687 constructs in Emacs have been fixed.
3688
3689 ** Vax C compiler bugs affecting Emacs.
3690
3691 You may get one of these problems compiling Emacs:
3692
3693 foo.c line nnn: compiler error: no table entry for op STASG
3694 foo.c: fatal error in /lib/ccom
3695
3696 These are due to bugs in the C compiler; the code is valid C.
3697 Unfortunately, the bugs are unpredictable: the same construct
3698 may compile properly or trigger one of these bugs, depending
3699 on what else is in the source file being compiled. Even changes
3700 in header files that should not affect the file being compiled
3701 can affect whether the bug happens. In addition, sometimes files
3702 that compile correctly on one machine get this bug on another machine.
3703
3704 As a result, it is hard for me to make sure this bug will not affect
3705 you. I have attempted to find and alter these constructs, but more
3706 can always appear. However, I can tell you how to deal with it if it
3707 should happen. The bug comes from having an indexed reference to an
3708 array of Lisp_Objects, as an argument in a function call:
3709 Lisp_Object *args;
3710 ...
3711 ... foo (5, args[i], ...)...
3712 putting the argument into a temporary variable first, as in
3713 Lisp_Object *args;
3714 Lisp_Object tem;
3715 ...
3716 tem = args[i];
3717 ... foo (r, tem, ...)...
3718 causes the problem to go away.
3719 The `contents' field of a Lisp vector is an array of Lisp_Objects,
3720 so you may see the problem happening with indexed references to that.
3721
3722 ** 68000 C compiler problems
3723
3724 Various 68000 compilers have different problems.
3725 These are some that have been observed.
3726
3727 *** Using value of assignment expression on union type loses.
3728 This means that x = y = z; or foo (x = z); does not work
3729 if x is of type Lisp_Object.
3730
3731 *** "cannot reclaim" error.
3732
3733 This means that an expression is too complicated. You get the correct
3734 line number in the error message. The code must be rewritten with
3735 simpler expressions.
3736
3737 *** XCONS, XSTRING, etc macros produce incorrect code.
3738
3739 If temacs fails to run at all, this may be the cause.
3740 Compile this test program and look at the assembler code:
3741
3742 struct foo { char x; unsigned int y : 24; };
3743
3744 lose (arg)
3745 struct foo arg;
3746 {
3747 test ((int *) arg.y);
3748 }
3749
3750 If the code is incorrect, your compiler has this problem.
3751 In the XCONS, etc., macros in lisp.h you must replace (a).u.val with
3752 ((a).u.val + coercedummy) where coercedummy is declared as int.
3753
3754 This problem will not happen if the m-...h file for your type
3755 of machine defines NO_UNION_TYPE. That is the recommended setting now.
3756
3757 *** C compilers lose on returning unions.
3758
3759 I hear that some C compilers cannot handle returning a union type.
3760 Most of the functions in GNU Emacs return type Lisp_Object, which is
3761 defined as a union on some rare architectures.
3762
3763 This problem will not happen if the m-...h file for your type
3764 of machine defines NO_UNION_TYPE.
3765
3766 \f
3767 This file is part of GNU Emacs.
3768
3769 GNU Emacs is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
3770 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
3771 the Free Software Foundation; either version 3, or (at your option)
3772 any later version.
3773
3774 GNU Emacs is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
3775 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
3776 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
3777 GNU General Public License for more details.
3778
3779 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
3780 along with GNU Emacs; see the file COPYING. If not, write to the
3781 Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor,
3782 Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.
3783
3784 \f
3785 Local variables:
3786 mode: outline
3787 paragraph-separate: "[ \f]*$"
3788 end:
3789
3790 arch-tag: 49fc0d95-88cb-4715-b21c-f27fb5a4764a