1 This file describes various problems that have been encountered
2 in compiling, installing and running GNU Emacs. Try doing Ctl-C Ctl-t
3 and browsing through the outline headers.
5 * Mule-UCS doesn't work in Emacs 23.
7 It's completely redundant now, as far as we know.
9 * Emacs startup failures
11 ** Emacs fails to start, complaining about missing fonts.
13 A typical error message might be something like
15 No fonts match `-*-fixed-medium-r-*--6-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1'
17 This happens because some X resource specifies a bad font family for
18 Emacs to use. The possible places where this specification might be
21 - in your ~/.Xdefaults file
23 - client-side X resource file, such as ~/Emacs or
24 /usr/X11R6/lib/app-defaults/Emacs or
25 /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/app-defaults/Emacs
27 One of these files might have bad or malformed specification of a
28 fontset that Emacs should use. To fix the problem, you need to find
29 the problematic line(s) and correct them.
31 ** Emacs aborts while starting up, only when run without X.
33 This problem often results from compiling Emacs with GCC when GCC was
34 installed incorrectly. The usual error in installing GCC is to
35 specify --includedir=/usr/include. Installation of GCC makes
36 corrected copies of the system header files. GCC is supposed to use
37 the corrected copies in preference to the original system headers.
38 Specifying --includedir=/usr/include causes the original system header
39 files to be used. On some systems, the definition of ioctl in the
40 original system header files is invalid for ANSI C and causes Emacs
43 The fix is to reinstall GCC, and this time do not specify --includedir
44 when you configure it. Then recompile Emacs. Specifying --includedir
45 is appropriate only in very special cases and it should *never* be the
46 same directory where system header files are kept.
48 ** Emacs does not start, complaining that it cannot open termcap database file.
50 If your system uses Terminfo rather than termcap (most modern
51 systems do), this could happen if the proper version of
52 ncurses is not visible to the Emacs configure script (i.e. it
53 cannot be found along the usual path the linker looks for
54 libraries). It can happen because your version of ncurses is
55 obsolete, or is available only in form of binaries.
57 The solution is to install an up-to-date version of ncurses in
58 the developer's form (header files, static libraries and
59 symbolic links); in some GNU/Linux distributions (e.g. Debian)
60 it constitutes a separate package.
62 ** Emacs 20 and later fails to load Lisp files at startup.
64 The typical error message might be like this:
66 "Cannot open load file: fontset"
68 This could happen if you compress the file lisp/subdirs.el. That file
69 tells Emacs what are the directories where it should look for Lisp
70 files. Emacs cannot work with subdirs.el compressed, since the
71 Auto-compress mode it needs for this will not be loaded until later,
72 when your .emacs file is processed. (The package `fontset.el' is
73 required to set up fonts used to display text on window systems, and
74 it's loaded very early in the startup procedure.)
76 Similarly, any other .el file for which there's no corresponding .elc
77 file could fail to load if it is compressed.
79 The solution is to uncompress all .el files which don't have a .elc
82 Another possible reason for such failures is stale *.elc files
83 lurking somewhere on your load-path. The following command will
84 print any duplicate Lisp files that are present in load-path:
86 emacs -q -batch -f list-load-path-shadows
88 If this command prints any file names, some of these files are stale,
89 and should be deleted or their directories removed from your
92 ** Emacs prints an error at startup after upgrading from an earlier version.
94 An example of such an error is:
96 x-complement-fontset-spec: "Wrong type argument: stringp, nil"
98 This can be another symptom of stale *.elc files in your load-path.
99 The following command will print any duplicate Lisp files that are
100 present in load-path:
102 emacs -q -batch -f list-load-path-shadows
104 If this command prints any file names, some of these files are stale,
105 and should be deleted or their directories removed from your
108 ** With X11R6.4, public-patch-3, Emacs crashes at startup.
110 Reportedly this patch in X fixes the problem.
112 --- xc/lib/X11/imInt.c~ Wed Jun 30 13:31:56 1999
113 +++ xc/lib/X11/imInt.c Thu Jul 1 15:10:27 1999
115 -/* $TOG: imInt.c /main/5 1998/05/30 21:11:16 kaleb $ */
116 +/* $TOG: imInt.c /main/5 1998/05/30 21:11:16 kaleb $ */
117 /******************************************************************
119 Copyright 1992, 1993, 1994 by FUJITSU LIMITED
126 + char* begin = NULL;
130 char* ximmodifier = XIMMODIFIER;
133 ret = Xmalloc(end - begin + 2);
135 - (void)strncpy(ret, begin, end - begin + 1);
136 + if (begin != NULL) {
137 + (void)strncpy(ret, begin, end - begin + 1);
141 ret[end - begin + 1] = '\0';
147 ** Emacs crashes in x-popup-dialog.
149 This can happen if the dialog widget cannot find the font it wants to
150 use. You can work around the problem by specifying another font with
151 an X resource--for example, `Emacs.dialog*.font: 9x15' (or any font that
152 happens to exist on your X server).
154 ** Emacs crashes when you use Bibtex mode.
156 This happens if your system puts a small limit on stack size. You can
157 prevent the problem by using a suitable shell command (often `ulimit')
158 to raise the stack size limit before you run Emacs.
160 Patches to raise the stack size limit automatically in `main'
161 (src/emacs.c) on various systems would be greatly appreciated.
163 ** Error message `Symbol's value as variable is void: x', followed by
164 a segmentation fault and core dump.
166 This has been tracked to a bug in tar! People report that tar erroneously
167 added a line like this at the beginning of files of Lisp code:
169 x FILENAME, N bytes, B tape blocks
171 If your tar has this problem, install GNU tar--if you can manage to
174 ** Crashes when displaying GIF images in Emacs built with version
175 libungif-4.1.0 are resolved by using version libungif-4.1.0b1.
176 Configure checks for the correct version, but this problem could occur
177 if a binary built against a shared libungif is run on a system with an
180 ** Emacs aborts inside the function `tparam1'.
182 This can happen if Emacs was built without terminfo support, but the
183 terminal's capabilities use format that is only supported by terminfo.
184 If your system has ncurses installed, this might happen if your
185 version of ncurses is broken; upgrading to a newer version of ncurses
186 and reconfiguring and rebuilding Emacs should solve this.
188 All modern systems support terminfo, so even if ncurses is not the
189 problem, you should look for a way to configure Emacs so that it uses
192 ** Emacs crashes when using the Exceed 6.0 X server.
194 If you are using Exceed 6.1, upgrade to a later version. This was
195 reported to prevent the crashes.
197 ** Emacs crashes with SIGSEGV in XtInitializeWidgetClass.
199 It crashes on X, but runs fine when called with option "-nw".
201 This has been observed when Emacs is linked with GNU ld but without passing
202 the -z nocombreloc flag. Emacs normally knows to pass the -z nocombreloc
203 flag when needed, so if you come across a situation where the flag is
204 necessary but missing, please report it via M-x report-emacs-bug.
206 On platforms such as Solaris, you can also work around this problem by
207 configuring your compiler to use the native linker instead of GNU ld.
209 * General runtime problems
213 *** Changes made to .el files do not take effect.
215 You may have forgotten to recompile them into .elc files.
216 Then the old .elc files will be loaded, and your changes
217 will not be seen. To fix this, do M-x byte-recompile-directory
218 and specify the directory that contains the Lisp files.
220 Emacs should print a warning when loading a .elc file which is older
221 than the corresponding .el file.
223 *** Watch out for .emacs files and EMACSLOADPATH environment vars.
225 These control the actions of Emacs.
226 ~/.emacs is your Emacs init file.
227 EMACSLOADPATH overrides which directories the function
230 If you observe strange problems, check for these and get rid
231 of them, then try again.
233 *** Using epop3.el package causes Emacs to signal an error.
235 The error message might be something like this:
237 "Lisp nesting exceeds max-lisp-eval-depth"
239 This happens because epop3 redefines the function gethash, which is a
240 built-in primitive beginning with Emacs 21.1. We don't have a patch
241 for epop3 that fixes this, but perhaps a newer version of epop3
244 *** Buffers from `with-output-to-temp-buffer' get set up in Help mode.
246 Changes in Emacs 20.4 to the hooks used by that function cause
247 problems for some packages, specifically BBDB. See the function's
248 documentation for the hooks involved. BBDB 2.00.06 fixes the problem.
250 *** The Hyperbole package causes *Help* buffers not to be displayed in
251 Help mode due to setting `temp-buffer-show-hook' rather than using
252 `add-hook'. Using `(add-hook 'temp-buffer-show-hook
253 'help-mode-maybe)' after loading Hyperbole should fix this.
257 *** "Compose Character" key does strange things when used as a Meta key.
259 If you define one key to serve as both Meta and Compose Character, you
260 will get strange results. In previous Emacs versions, this "worked"
261 in that the key acted as Meta--that's because the older Emacs versions
262 did not try to support Compose Character. Now Emacs tries to do
263 character composition in the standard X way. This means that you
264 must pick one meaning or the other for any given key.
266 You can use both functions (Meta, and Compose Character) if you assign
267 them to two different keys.
269 *** C-z just refreshes the screen instead of suspending Emacs.
271 You are probably using a shell that doesn't support job control, even
272 though the system itself is capable of it. Either use a different shell,
273 or set the variable `cannot-suspend' to a non-nil value.
275 *** With M-x enable-flow-control, you need to type C-\ twice
276 to do incremental search--a single C-\ gets no response.
278 This has been traced to communicating with your machine via kermit,
279 with C-\ as the kermit escape character. One solution is to use
280 another escape character in kermit. One user did
282 set escape-character 17
284 in his .kermrc file, to make C-q the kermit escape character.
286 ** Mailers and other helper programs
288 *** movemail compiled with POP support can't connect to the POP server.
290 Make sure that the `pop' entry in /etc/services, or in the services
291 NIS map if your machine uses NIS, has the same port number as the
292 entry on the POP server. A common error is for the POP server to be
293 listening on port 110, the assigned port for the POP3 protocol, while
294 the client is trying to connect on port 109, the assigned port for the
297 *** RMAIL gets error getting new mail.
299 RMAIL gets new mail from /usr/spool/mail/$USER using a program
300 called `movemail'. This program interlocks with /bin/mail using
301 the protocol defined by /bin/mail.
303 There are two different protocols in general use. One of them uses
304 the `flock' system call. The other involves creating a lock file;
305 `movemail' must be able to write in /usr/spool/mail in order to do
306 this. You control which one is used by defining, or not defining,
307 the macro MAIL_USE_FLOCK in config.h or the m- or s- file it includes.
308 IF YOU DON'T USE THE FORM OF INTERLOCKING THAT IS NORMAL ON YOUR
309 SYSTEM, YOU CAN LOSE MAIL!
311 If your system uses the lock file protocol, and fascist restrictions
312 prevent ordinary users from writing the lock files in /usr/spool/mail,
313 you may need to make `movemail' setgid to a suitable group such as
314 `mail'. You can use these commands (as root):
319 If your system uses the lock file protocol, and fascist restrictions
320 prevent ordinary users from writing the lock files in /usr/spool/mail,
321 you may need to make `movemail' setgid to a suitable group such as
322 `mail'. To do this, use the following commands (as root) after doing the
328 Installation normally copies movemail from the build directory to an
329 installation directory which is usually under /usr/local/lib. The
330 installed copy of movemail is usually in the directory
331 /usr/local/lib/emacs/VERSION/TARGET. You must change the group and
332 mode of the installed copy; changing the group and mode of the build
333 directory copy is ineffective.
335 *** rcs2log gives you the awk error message "too many fields".
337 This is due to an arbitrary limit in certain versions of awk.
338 The solution is to use gawk (GNU awk).
340 ** Problems with hostname resolution
342 *** Emacs fails to understand most Internet host names, even though
343 the names work properly with other programs on the same system.
344 *** Emacs won't work with X-windows if the value of DISPLAY is HOSTNAME:0.
345 *** Gnus can't make contact with the specified host for nntp.
347 This typically happens on Suns and other systems that use shared
348 libraries. The cause is that the site has installed a version of the
349 shared library which uses a name server--but has not installed a
350 similar version of the unshared library which Emacs uses.
352 The result is that most programs, using the shared library, work with
353 the nameserver, but Emacs does not.
355 The fix is to install an unshared library that corresponds to what you
356 installed in the shared library, and then relink Emacs.
358 On SunOS 4.1, simply define HAVE_RES_INIT.
360 If you have already installed the name resolver in the file libresolv.a,
361 then you need to compile Emacs to use that library. The easiest way to
362 do this is to add to config.h a definition of LIBS_SYSTEM, LIBS_MACHINE
363 or LIB_STANDARD which uses -lresolv. Watch out! If you redefine a macro
364 that is already in use in your configuration to supply some other libraries,
365 be careful not to lose the others.
367 Thus, you could start by adding this to config.h:
369 #define LIBS_SYSTEM -lresolv
371 Then if this gives you an error for redefining a macro, and you see that
372 the s- file defines LIBS_SYSTEM as -lfoo -lbar, you could change config.h
375 #define LIBS_SYSTEM -lresolv -lfoo -lbar
377 *** Emacs does not know your host's fully-qualified domain name.
379 You need to configure your machine with a fully qualified domain name,
380 either in /etc/hosts, /etc/hostname, the NIS, or wherever your system
381 calls for specifying this.
383 If you cannot fix the configuration, you can set the Lisp variable
384 mail-host-address to the value you want.
388 *** Emacs says it has saved a file, but the file does not actually
391 This can happen on certain systems when you are using NFS, if the
392 remote disk is full. It is due to a bug in NFS (or certain NFS
393 implementations), and there is apparently nothing Emacs can do to
394 detect the problem. Emacs checks the failure codes of all the system
395 calls involved in writing a file, including `close'; but in the case
396 where the problem occurs, none of those system calls fails.
398 *** Editing files through RFS gives spurious "file has changed" warnings.
399 It is possible that a change in Emacs 18.37 gets around this problem,
400 but in case not, here is a description of how to fix the RFS bug that
403 There was a serious pair of bugs in the handling of the fsync() system
404 call in the RFS server.
406 The first is that the fsync() call is handled as another name for the
407 close() system call (!!). It appears that fsync() is not used by very
408 many programs; Emacs version 18 does an fsync() before closing files
409 to make sure that the bits are on the disk.
411 This is fixed by the enclosed patch to the RFS server.
413 The second, more serious problem, is that fsync() is treated as a
414 non-blocking system call (i.e., it's implemented as a message that
415 gets sent to the remote system without waiting for a reply). Fsync is
416 a useful tool for building atomic file transactions. Implementing it
417 as a non-blocking RPC call (when the local call blocks until the sync
418 is done) is a bad idea; unfortunately, changing it will break the RFS
419 protocol. No fix was supplied for this problem.
421 (as always, your line numbers may vary)
423 % rcsdiff -c -r1.2 serversyscall.c
424 RCS file: RCS/serversyscall.c,v
425 retrieving revision 1.2
426 diff -c -r1.2 serversyscall.c
427 *** /tmp/,RCSt1003677 Wed Jan 28 15:15:02 1987
428 --- serversyscall.c Wed Jan 28 15:14:48 1987
432 * No return sent for close or fsync!
434 ! if (syscall == RSYS_close || syscall == RSYS_fsync)
435 proc->p_returnval = deallocate_fd(proc, msg->m_args[0]);
440 * No return sent for close or fsync!
442 ! if (syscall == RSYS_close)
443 proc->p_returnval = deallocate_fd(proc, msg->m_args[0]);
449 *** Old versions of the PSGML package use the obsolete variables
450 `before-change-function' and `after-change-function', which are no
451 longer used by Emacs. Please use PSGML 1.2.3 or later.
453 *** PSGML conflicts with sgml-mode.
455 PSGML package uses the same names of some variables (like keymap)
456 as built-in sgml-mode.el because it was created as a replacement
457 of that package. The conflict will be shown if you load
458 sgml-mode.el before psgml.el. E.g. this could happen if you edit
459 HTML page and then start to work with SGML or XML file. html-mode
460 (from sgml-mode.el) is used for HTML file and loading of psgml.el
461 (for sgml-mode or xml-mode) will cause an error.
463 *** Versions of the PSGML package earlier than 1.0.3 (stable) or 1.1.2
464 (alpha) fail to parse DTD files correctly in Emacs 20.3 and later.
465 Here is a patch for psgml-parse.el from PSGML 1.0.1 and, probably,
468 --- psgml-parse.el 1998/08/21 19:18:18 1.1
469 +++ psgml-parse.el 1998/08/21 19:20:00
470 @@ -2383,7 +2383,7 @@ (defun sgml-push-to-entity (entity &opti
471 (setq sgml-buffer-parse-state nil))
473 ((stringp entity) ; a file name
474 - (save-excursion (insert-file-contents entity))
475 + (insert-file-contents entity)
476 (setq default-directory (file-name-directory entity)))
477 ((consp (sgml-entity-text entity)) ; external id?
478 (let* ((extid (sgml-entity-text entity))
482 You should not be using a version older than 11.52 if you can avoid
485 *** Emacs 21 freezes when visiting a TeX file with AUCTeX installed.
487 Emacs 21 needs version 10 or later of AUCTeX; upgrading should solve
490 *** No colors in AUCTeX with Emacs 21.
492 Upgrade to AUC TeX version 10 or later, and make sure it is
493 byte-compiled with Emacs 21.
497 *** Lines are not updated or new lines are added in the buffer upon commit.
499 When committing files located higher in the hierarchy than the examined
500 directory, some versions of the CVS program return an ambiguous message
501 from which PCL-CVS cannot extract the full location of the committed
502 files. As a result, the corresponding lines in the PCL-CVS buffer are
503 not updated with the new revision of these files, and new lines are
504 added to the top-level directory.
506 This can happen with CVS versions 1.12.8 and 1.12.9. Upgrade to CVS
507 1.12.10 or newer to fix this problem.
509 ** Miscellaneous problems
511 *** Self-documentation messages are garbled.
513 This means that the file `etc/DOC-...' doesn't properly correspond
514 with the Emacs executable. Redumping Emacs and then installing the
515 corresponding pair of files should fix the problem.
517 *** Programs running under terminal emulator do not recognize `emacs'
520 The cause of this is a shell startup file that sets the TERMCAP
521 environment variable. The terminal emulator uses that variable to
522 provide the information on the special terminal type that Emacs
525 Rewrite your shell startup file so that it does not change TERMCAP
526 in such a case. You could use the following conditional which sets
527 it only if it is undefined.
529 if ( ! ${?TERMCAP} ) setenv TERMCAP ~/my-termcap-file
531 Or you could set TERMCAP only when you set TERM--which should not
532 happen in a non-login shell.
534 *** In Shell mode, you get a ^M at the end of every line.
536 This happens to people who use tcsh, because it is trying to be too
537 smart. It sees that the Shell uses terminal type `unknown' and turns
538 on the flag to output ^M at the end of each line. You can fix the
539 problem by adding this to your .cshrc file:
542 if ($EMACS == "t") then
544 stty -icrnl -onlcr -echo susp ^Z
548 *** Emacs startup on GNU/Linux systems (and possibly other systems) is slow.
550 This can happen if the system is misconfigured and Emacs can't get the
551 full qualified domain name, FQDN. You should have your FQDN in the
552 /etc/hosts file, something like this:
555 129.187.137.82 nuc04.t30.physik.tu-muenchen.de nuc04
557 The way to set this up may vary on non-GNU systems.
559 *** Attempting to visit remote files via ange-ftp fails.
561 If the error message is "ange-ftp-file-modtime: Specified time is not
562 representable", then this could happen when `lukemftp' is used as the
563 ftp client. This was reported to happen on Debian GNU/Linux, kernel
564 version 2.4.3, with `lukemftp' 1.5-5, but might happen on other
565 systems as well. To avoid this problem, switch to using the standard
566 ftp client. On a Debian system, type
568 update-alternatives --config ftp
570 and then choose /usr/bin/netkit-ftp.
572 *** JPEG images aren't displayed.
574 This has been reported when Emacs is built with jpeg-6a library.
575 Upgrading to jpeg-6b solves the problem. Configure checks for the
576 correct version, but this problem could occur if a binary built
577 against a shared libjpeg is run on a system with an older version.
579 *** Dired is very slow.
581 This could happen if invocation of the `df' program takes a long
582 time. Possible reasons for this include:
584 - ClearCase mounted filesystems (VOBs) that sometimes make `df'
585 response time extremely slow (dozens of seconds);
587 - slow automounters on some old versions of Unix;
589 - slow operation of some versions of `df'.
591 To work around the problem, you could either (a) set the variable
592 `directory-free-space-program' to nil, and thus prevent Emacs from
593 invoking `df'; (b) use `df' from the GNU Fileutils package; or
594 (c) use CVS, which is Free Software, instead of ClearCase.
596 *** Versions of the W3 package released before Emacs 21.1 don't run
597 under Emacs 21. This fixed in W3 version 4.0pre.47.
599 *** The LDAP support rely on ldapsearch program from OpenLDAP version 2.
601 It can fail to work with ldapsearch program from OpenLDAP version 1.
602 Version 1 of OpenLDAP is now deprecated. If you are still using it,
603 please upgrade to version 2. As a temporary workaround, remove
604 argument "-x" from the variable `ldap-ldapsearch-args'.
606 *** ps-print commands fail to find prologue files ps-prin*.ps.
608 This can happen if you use an old version of X-Symbol package: it
609 defines compatibility functions which trick ps-print into thinking it
610 runs in XEmacs, and look for the prologue files in a wrong directory.
612 The solution is to upgrade X-Symbol to a later version.
614 *** On systems with shared libraries you might encounter run-time errors
615 from the dynamic linker telling you that it is unable to find some
616 shared libraries, for instance those for Xaw3d or image support.
617 These errors mean Emacs has been linked with a library whose shared
618 library is not in the default search path of the dynamic linker.
620 Similar problems could prevent Emacs from building, since the build
621 process invokes Emacs several times.
623 On many systems, it is possible to set LD_LIBRARY_PATH in your
624 environment to specify additional directories where shared libraries
627 Other systems allow to set LD_RUN_PATH in a similar way, but before
628 Emacs is linked. With LD_RUN_PATH set, the linker will include a
629 specified run-time search path in the executable.
631 On some systems, Emacs can crash due to problems with dynamic
632 linking. Specifically, on SGI Irix 6.5, crashes were reported with
633 backtraces like this:
636 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]
637 1 general_find_symbol(0xf49239d, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0xf0000000, 0xf4923aa, 0x0, 0x492ddb2)
638 ["/comp2/mtibuild/v73/workarea/v7.3/rld/rld.c":2140, 0xfb65a98]
639 2 resolve_symbol(0xf49239d, 0x4031184, 0x0, 0xfbdd438, 0x0, 0xf4923aa, 0x0, 0x492ddb2)
640 ["/comp2/mtibuild/v73/workarea/v7.3/rld/rld.c":1947, 0xfb657e4]
641 3 lazy_text_resolve(0xd18, 0x1a3, 0x40302b4, 0x12, 0xf0000000, 0xf4923aa, 0x0, 0x492ddb2)
642 ["/comp2/mtibuild/v73/workarea/v7.3/rld/rld.c":997, 0xfb64d44]
643 4 _rld_text_resolve(0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0)
644 ["/comp2/mtibuild/v73/workarea/v7.3/rld/rld_bridge.s":175, 0xfb6032c]
646 (`rld' is the dynamic linker.) We don't know yet why this
647 happens, but setting the environment variable LD_BIND_NOW to 1 (which
648 forces the dynamic linker to bind all shared objects early on) seems
649 to work around the problem.
651 Please refer to the documentation of your dynamic linker for details.
653 *** You request inverse video, and the first Emacs frame is in inverse
654 video, but later frames are not in inverse video.
656 This can happen if you have an old version of the custom library in
657 your search path for Lisp packages. Use M-x list-load-path-shadows to
658 check whether this is true. If it is, delete the old custom library.
660 *** When you run Ispell from Emacs, it reports a "misalignment" error.
662 This can happen if you compiled the Ispell program to use ASCII
663 characters only and then try to use it from Emacs with non-ASCII
664 characters, like Latin-1. The solution is to recompile Ispell with
665 support for 8-bit characters.
667 To see whether your Ispell program supports 8-bit characters, type
668 this at your shell's prompt:
672 and look in the output for the string "NO8BIT". If Ispell says
673 "!NO8BIT (8BIT)", your speller supports 8-bit characters; otherwise it
676 To rebuild Ispell with 8-bit character support, edit the local.h file
677 in the Ispell distribution and make sure it does _not_ define NO8BIT.
678 Then rebuild the speller.
680 Another possible cause for "misalignment" error messages is that the
681 version of Ispell installed on your machine is old. Upgrade.
683 Yet another possibility is that you are trying to spell-check a word
684 in a language that doesn't fit the dictionary you choose for use by
685 Ispell. (Ispell can only spell-check one language at a time, because
686 it uses a single dictionary.) Make sure that the text you are
687 spelling and the dictionary used by Ispell conform to each other.
689 If your spell-checking program is Aspell, it has been reported that if
690 you have a personal configuration file (normally ~/.aspell.conf), it
691 can cause this error. Remove that file, execute `ispell-kill-ispell'
692 in Emacs, and then try spell-checking again.
694 * Runtime problems related to font handling
696 ** Under X11, some characters appear as hollow boxes.
698 Each X11 font covers just a fraction of the characters that Emacs
699 supports. To display the whole range of Emacs characters requires
700 many different fonts, collected into a fontset.
702 If some of the fonts called for in your fontset do not exist on your X
703 server, then the characters that have no font appear as hollow boxes.
704 You can remedy the problem by installing additional fonts.
706 The intlfonts distribution includes a full spectrum of fonts that can
707 display all the characters Emacs supports.
709 Another cause of this for specific characters is fonts which have a
710 missing glyph and no default character. This is known to occur for
711 character number 160 (no-break space) in some fonts, such as Lucida
712 but Emacs sets the display table for the unibyte and Latin-1 version
713 of this character to display a space.
715 ** Under X11, some characters appear improperly aligned in their lines.
717 You may have bad X11 fonts; try installing the intlfonts distribution.
719 ** Certain fonts make each line take one pixel more than it "should".
721 This is because these fonts contain characters a little taller
722 than the font's nominal height. Emacs needs to make sure that
723 lines do not overlap.
725 ** Loading fonts is very slow.
727 You might be getting scalable fonts instead of precomputed bitmaps.
728 Known scalable font directories are "Type1" and "Speedo". A font
729 directory contains scalable fonts if it contains the file
732 If this is so, re-order your X windows font path to put the scalable
733 font directories last. See the documentation of `xset' for details.
735 With some X servers, it may be necessary to take the scalable font
736 directories out of your path entirely, at least for Emacs 19.26.
737 Changes in the future may make this unnecessary.
739 ** Font Lock displays portions of the buffer in incorrect faces.
741 By far the most frequent cause of this is a parenthesis `(' or a brace
742 `{' in column zero. Font Lock assumes that such a paren is outside of
743 any comment or string. This is of course not true in general, but the
744 vast majority of well-formatted program source files don't have such
745 parens, and therefore this assumption is used to allow optimizations
746 in Font Lock's syntactical analysis. These optimizations avoid some
747 pathological cases where jit-lock, the Just-in-Time fontification
748 introduced with Emacs 21.1, could significantly slow down scrolling
749 through the buffer, especially scrolling backwards, and also jumping
750 to the end of a very large buffer.
752 Beginning with version 22.1, a parenthesis or a brace in column zero
753 is highlighted in bold-red face if it is inside a string or a comment,
754 to indicate that it could interfere with Font Lock (and also with
755 indentation) and should be moved or escaped with a backslash.
757 If you don't use large buffers, or have a very fast machine which
758 makes the delays insignificant, you can avoid the incorrect
759 fontification by setting the variable
760 `font-lock-beginning-of-syntax-function' to a nil value. (This must
761 be done _after_ turning on Font Lock.)
763 Another alternative is to avoid a paren in column zero. For example,
764 in a Lisp string you could precede the paren with a backslash.
766 ** With certain fonts, when the cursor appears on a character, the
767 character doesn't appear--you get a solid box instead.
769 One user on a Linux-based GNU system reported that this problem went
770 away with installation of a new X server. The failing server was
771 XFree86 3.1.1. XFree86 3.1.2 works.
773 ** Characters are displayed as empty boxes or with wrong font under X.
775 This can occur when two different versions of FontConfig are used.
776 For example, XFree86 4.3.0 has one version and Gnome usually comes
777 with a newer version. Emacs compiled with --with-gtk will then use
778 the newer version. In most cases the problem can be temporarily
779 fixed by stopping the application that has the error (it can be
780 Emacs or any other application), removing ~/.fonts.cache-1,
781 and then start the application again.
782 If removing ~/.fonts.cache-1 and restarting doesn't help, the
783 application with problem must be recompiled with the same version
784 of FontConfig as the rest of the system uses. For KDE, it is
785 sufficient to recompile Qt.
787 ** Emacs pauses for several seconds when changing the default font.
789 This has been reported for fvwm 2.2.5 and the window manager of KDE
790 2.1. The reason for the pause is Xt waiting for a ConfigureNotify
791 event from the window manager, which the window manager doesn't send.
792 Xt stops waiting after a default timeout of usually 5 seconds.
794 A workaround for this is to add something like
796 emacs.waitForWM: false
798 to your X resources. Alternatively, add `(wait-for-wm . nil)' to a
799 frame's parameter list, like this:
801 (modify-frame-parameters nil '((wait-for-wm . nil)))
803 (this should go into your `.emacs' file).
805 ** Underlines appear at the wrong position.
807 This is caused by fonts having a wrong UNDERLINE_POSITION property.
808 Examples are the font 7x13 on XFree prior to version 4.1, or the jmk
809 neep font from the Debian xfonts-jmk package. To circumvent this
810 problem, set x-use-underline-position-properties to nil in your
813 To see what is the value of UNDERLINE_POSITION defined by the font,
814 type `xlsfonts -lll FONT' and look at the font's UNDERLINE_POSITION
817 ** When using Exceed, fonts sometimes appear too tall.
819 When the display is set to an Exceed X-server and fonts are specified
820 (either explicitly with the -fn option or implicitly with X resources)
821 then the fonts may appear "too tall". The actual character sizes are
822 correct but there is too much vertical spacing between rows, which
823 gives the appearance of "double spacing".
825 To prevent this, turn off the Exceed's "automatic font substitution"
826 feature (in the font part of the configuration window).
828 * Internationalization problems
830 ** Characters from the mule-unicode charsets aren't displayed under X.
832 XFree86 4 contains many fonts in iso10646-1 encoding which have
833 minimal character repertoires (whereas the encoding part of the font
834 name is meant to be a reasonable indication of the repertoire
835 according to the XLFD spec). Emacs may choose one of these to display
836 characters from the mule-unicode charsets and then typically won't be
837 able to find the glyphs to display many characters. (Check with C-u
838 C-x = .) To avoid this, you may need to use a fontset which sets the
839 font for the mule-unicode sets explicitly. E.g. to use GNU unifont,
840 include in the fontset spec:
842 mule-unicode-2500-33ff:-gnu-unifont-*-iso10646-1,\
843 mule-unicode-e000-ffff:-gnu-unifont-*-iso10646-1,\
844 mule-unicode-0100-24ff:-gnu-unifont-*-iso10646-1
846 ** The UTF-8/16/7 coding systems don't encode CJK (Far Eastern) characters.
848 Emacs directly supports the Unicode BMP whose code points are in the
849 ranges 0000-33ff and e000-ffff, and indirectly supports the parts of
850 CJK characters belonging to these legacy charsets:
852 GB2312, Big5, JISX0208, JISX0212, JISX0213-1, JISX0213-2, KSC5601
854 The latter support is done in Utf-Translate-Cjk mode (turned on by
855 default). Which Unicode CJK characters are decoded into which Emacs
856 charset is decided by the current language environment. For instance,
857 in Chinese-GB, most of them are decoded into chinese-gb2312.
859 If you read UTF-8 data with code points outside these ranges, the
860 characters appear in the buffer as raw bytes of the original UTF-8
861 (composed into a single quasi-character) and they will be written back
862 correctly as UTF-8, assuming you don't break the composed sequences.
863 If you read such characters from UTF-16 or UTF-7 data, they are
864 substituted with the Unicode `replacement character', and you lose
867 ** Mule-UCS loads very slowly.
869 Changes to Emacs internals interact badly with Mule-UCS's `un-define'
870 library, which is the usual interface to Mule-UCS. Apply the
871 following patch to Mule-UCS 0.84 and rebuild it. That will help,
872 though loading will still be slower than in Emacs 20. (Some
873 distributions, such as Debian, may already have applied such a patch.)
875 --- lisp/un-define.el 6 Mar 2001 22:41:38 -0000 1.30
876 +++ lisp/un-define.el 19 Apr 2002 18:34:26 -0000
877 @@ -610,13 +624,21 @@ by calling post-read-conversion and pre-
883 - (mucs-define-coding-system
884 - (nth 0 y) (nth 1 y) (nth 2 y)
885 - (nth 3 y) (nth 4 y) (nth 5 y) (nth 6 y))
886 - (coding-system-put (car y) 'alias-coding-systems (list (car x))))
888 + (if (fboundp 'register-char-codings)
889 + ;; Mule 5, where we don't need the eol-type specified and
890 + ;; register-char-codings may be very slow for these coding
891 + ;; system definitions.
892 + (let ((y (cadr x)))
893 + (mucs-define-coding-system
894 + (car x) (nth 1 y) (nth 2 y)
895 + (nth 3 y) (nth 4 y) (nth 5 y)))
898 + (mucs-define-coding-system
899 + (nth 0 y) (nth 1 y) (nth 2 y)
900 + (nth 3 y) (nth 4 y) (nth 5 y) (nth 6 y))
901 + (coding-system-put (car y) 'alias-coding-systems (list (car x)))))
905 ?u "UTF-8 coding system"
907 Note that Emacs has native support for Unicode, roughly equivalent to
908 Mule-UCS's, so you may not need it.
910 ** Mule-UCS compilation problem.
912 Emacs of old versions and XEmacs byte-compile the form `(progn progn
913 ...)' the same way as `(progn ...)', but Emacs of version 21.3 and the
914 later process that form just as interpreter does, that is, as `progn'
915 variable reference. Apply the following patch to Mule-UCS 0.84 to
916 make it compiled by the latest Emacs.
918 --- mucs-ccl.el 2 Sep 2005 00:42:23 -0000 1.1.1.1
919 +++ mucs-ccl.el 2 Sep 2005 01:31:51 -0000 1.3
920 @@ -639,10 +639,14 @@
921 (mucs-notify-embedment 'mucs-ccl-required name)
922 (setq ccl-pgm-list (cdr ccl-pgm-list)))
923 ; (message "MCCLREGFIN:%S" result)
925 - (setq mucs-ccl-facility-alist
926 - (quote ,mucs-ccl-facility-alist))
928 + ;; The only way the function is used in this package is included
929 + ;; in `mucs-package-definition-end-hook' value, where it must
930 + ;; return (possibly empty) *list* of forms. Do this. Do not rely
931 + ;; on byte compiler to remove extra `progn's in `(progn ...)'
933 + `((setq mucs-ccl-facility-alist
934 + (quote ,mucs-ccl-facility-alist))
937 ;;; Add hook for embedding translation informations to a package.
938 (add-hook 'mucs-package-definition-end-hook
940 ** Accented ISO-8859-1 characters are displayed as | or _.
942 Try other font set sizes (S-mouse-1). If the problem persists with
943 other sizes as well, your text is corrupted, probably through software
944 that is not 8-bit clean. If the problem goes away with another font
945 size, it's probably because some fonts pretend to be ISO-8859-1 fonts
946 when they are really ASCII fonts. In particular the schumacher-clean
947 fonts have this bug in some versions of X.
949 To see what glyphs are included in a font, use `xfd', like this:
951 xfd -fn -schumacher-clean-medium-r-normal--12-120-75-75-c-60-iso8859-1
953 If this shows only ASCII glyphs, the font is indeed the source of the
956 The solution is to remove the corresponding lines from the appropriate
957 `fonts.alias' file, then run `mkfontdir' in that directory, and then run
960 ** The `oc-unicode' package doesn't work with Emacs 21.
962 This package tries to define more private charsets than there are free
963 slots now. The current built-in Unicode support is actually more
964 flexible. (Use option `utf-translate-cjk-mode' if you need CJK
965 support.) Files encoded as emacs-mule using oc-unicode aren't
966 generally read correctly by Emacs 21.
968 ** After a while, Emacs slips into unibyte mode.
970 The VM mail package, which is not part of Emacs, sometimes does
971 (standard-display-european t)
972 That should be changed to
973 (standard-display-european 1 t)
977 ** X keyboard problems
979 *** You "lose characters" after typing Compose Character key.
981 This is because the Compose Character key is defined as the keysym
982 Multi_key, and Emacs (seeing that) does the proper X11
983 character-composition processing. If you don't want your Compose key
984 to do that, you can redefine it with xmodmap.
986 For example, here's one way to turn it into a Meta key:
988 xmodmap -e "keysym Multi_key = Meta_L"
990 If all users at your site of a particular keyboard prefer Meta to
991 Compose, you can make the remapping happen automatically by adding the
992 xmodmap command to the xdm setup script for that display.
994 *** Using X Windows, control-shift-leftbutton makes Emacs hang.
996 Use the shell command `xset bc' to make the old X Menu package work.
998 *** C-SPC fails to work on Fedora GNU/Linux.
1000 Fedora Core 4 steals the C-SPC key by default for the `iiimx' program
1001 which is the input method for some languages. It blocks Emacs users
1002 from using the C-SPC key for `set-mark-command'.
1004 One solutions is to remove the `<Ctrl>space' from the `Iiimx' file
1005 which can be found in the `/usr/lib/X11/app-defaults' directory.
1006 However, that requires root access.
1008 Another is to specify `Emacs*useXIM: false' in your X resources.
1010 Another is to build Emacs with the `--without-xim' configure option.
1012 *** M-SPC seems to be ignored as input.
1014 See if your X server is set up to use this as a command
1015 for character composition.
1017 *** The S-C-t key combination doesn't get passed to Emacs on X.
1019 This happens because some X configurations assign the Ctrl-Shift-t
1020 combination the same meaning as the Multi_key. The offending
1021 definition is in the file `...lib/X11/locale/iso8859-1/Compose'; there
1022 might be other similar combinations which are grabbed by X for similar
1025 We think that this can be countermanded with the `xmodmap' utility, if
1026 you want to be able to bind one of these key sequences within Emacs.
1028 *** Under X, C-v and/or other keys don't work.
1030 These may have been intercepted by your window manager. In
1031 particular, AfterStep 1.6 is reported to steal C-v in its default
1032 configuration. Various Meta keys are also likely to be taken by the
1033 configuration of the `feel'. See the WM's documentation for how to
1036 *** Clicking C-mouse-2 in the scroll bar doesn't split the window.
1038 This currently doesn't work with scroll-bar widgets (and we don't know
1039 a good way of implementing it with widgets). If Emacs is configured
1040 --without-toolkit-scroll-bars, C-mouse-2 on the scroll bar does work.
1042 *** Inability to send an Alt-modified key, when Emacs is communicating
1043 directly with an X server.
1045 If you have tried to bind an Alt-modified key as a command, and it
1046 does not work to type the command, the first thing you should check is
1047 whether the key is getting through to Emacs. To do this, type C-h c
1048 followed by the Alt-modified key. C-h c should say what kind of event
1049 it read. If it says it read an Alt-modified key, then make sure you
1050 have made the key binding correctly.
1052 If C-h c reports an event that doesn't have the Alt modifier, it may
1053 be because your X server has no key for the Alt modifier. The X
1054 server that comes from MIT does not set up the Alt modifier by
1057 If your keyboard has keys named Alt, you can enable them as follows:
1059 xmodmap -e 'add mod2 = Alt_L'
1060 xmodmap -e 'add mod2 = Alt_R'
1062 If the keyboard has just one key named Alt, then only one of those
1063 commands is needed. The modifier `mod2' is a reasonable choice if you
1064 are using an unmodified MIT version of X. Otherwise, choose any
1065 modifier bit not otherwise used.
1067 If your keyboard does not have keys named Alt, you can use some other
1068 keys. Use the keysym command in xmodmap to turn a function key (or
1069 some other 'spare' key) into Alt_L or into Alt_R, and then use the
1070 commands show above to make them modifier keys.
1072 Note that if you have Alt keys but no Meta keys, Emacs translates Alt
1073 into Meta. This is because of the great importance of Meta in Emacs.
1075 ** Window-manager and toolkit-related problems
1077 *** Gnome: Emacs' xterm-mouse-mode doesn't work on the Gnome terminal.
1079 A symptom of this bug is that double-clicks insert a control sequence
1080 into the buffer. The reason this happens is an apparent
1081 incompatibility of the Gnome terminal with Xterm, which also affects
1082 other programs using the Xterm mouse interface. A problem report has
1085 *** KDE: When running on KDE, colors or fonts are not as specified for Emacs,
1088 For example, you could see background you set for Emacs only in the
1089 empty portions of the Emacs display, while characters have some other
1092 This happens because KDE's defaults apply its color and font
1093 definitions even to applications that weren't compiled for KDE. The
1094 solution is to uncheck the "Apply fonts and colors to non-KDE apps"
1095 option in Preferences->Look&Feel->Style (KDE 2). In KDE 3, this option
1096 is in the "Colors" section, rather than "Style".
1098 Alternatively, if you do want the KDE defaults to apply to other
1099 applications, but not to Emacs, you could modify the file `Emacs.ad'
1100 (should be in the `/usr/share/apps/kdisplay/app-defaults/' directory)
1101 so that it doesn't set the default background and foreground only for
1102 Emacs. For example, make sure the following resources are either not
1103 present or commented out:
1105 Emacs.default.attributeForeground
1106 Emacs.default.attributeBackground
1110 *** KDE: Emacs hangs on KDE when a large portion of text is killed.
1112 This is caused by a bug in the KDE applet `klipper' which periodically
1113 requests the X clipboard contents from applications. Early versions
1114 of klipper don't implement the ICCCM protocol for large selections,
1115 which leads to Emacs being flooded with selection requests. After a
1116 while, Emacs may print a message:
1118 Timed out waiting for property-notify event
1120 A workaround is to not use `klipper'. An upgrade to the `klipper' that
1121 comes with KDE 3.3 or later also solves the problem.
1123 *** CDE: Frames may cover dialogs they created when using CDE.
1125 This can happen if you have "Allow Primary Windows On Top" enabled which
1126 seems to be the default in the Common Desktop Environment.
1127 To change, go in to "Desktop Controls" -> "Window Style Manager"
1128 and uncheck "Allow Primary Windows On Top".
1130 *** Xaw3d : When using Xaw3d scroll bars without arrows, the very first mouse
1131 click in a scroll bar might be ignored by the scroll bar widget. This
1132 is probably a bug in Xaw3d; when Xaw3d is compiled with arrows, the
1135 *** Xaw: There are known binary incompatibilities between Xaw, Xaw3d, neXtaw,
1136 XawM and the few other derivatives of Xaw. So when you compile with
1137 one of these, it may not work to dynamically link with another one.
1138 For example, strange problems, such as Emacs exiting when you type
1139 "C-x 1", were reported when Emacs compiled with Xaw3d and libXaw was
1140 used with neXtaw at run time.
1142 The solution is to rebuild Emacs with the toolkit version you actually
1143 want to use, or set LD_PRELOAD to preload the same toolkit version you
1146 *** Open Motif: Problems with file dialogs in Emacs built with Open Motif.
1148 When Emacs 21 is built with Open Motif 2.1, it can happen that the
1149 graphical file dialog boxes do not work properly. The "OK", "Filter"
1150 and "Cancel" buttons do not respond to mouse clicks. Dragging the
1151 file dialog window usually causes the buttons to work again.
1153 The solution is to use LessTif instead. LessTif is a free replacement
1154 for Motif. See the file INSTALL for information on how to do this.
1156 Another workaround is not to use the mouse to trigger file prompts,
1157 but to use the keyboard. This way, you will be prompted for a file in
1158 the minibuffer instead of a graphical file dialog.
1160 *** LessTif: Problems in Emacs built with LessTif.
1162 The problems seem to depend on the version of LessTif and the Motif
1163 emulation for which it is set up.
1165 Only the Motif 1.2 emulation seems to be stable enough in LessTif.
1166 Lesstif 0.92-17's Motif 1.2 emulation seems to work okay on FreeBSD.
1167 On GNU/Linux systems, lesstif-0.92.6 configured with "./configure
1168 --enable-build-12 --enable-default-12" is reported to be the most
1169 successful. The binary GNU/Linux package
1170 lesstif-devel-0.92.0-1.i386.rpm was reported to have problems with
1173 On some systems, even with Motif 1.2 emulation, Emacs occasionally
1174 locks up, grabbing all mouse and keyboard events. We still don't know
1175 what causes these problems; they are not reproducible by Emacs
1178 *** Motif: The Motif version of Emacs paints the screen a solid color.
1180 This has been observed to result from the following X resource:
1182 Emacs*default.attributeFont: -*-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-140-*-*-*-*-iso8859-*
1184 That the resource has this effect indicates a bug in something, but we
1185 do not yet know what. If it is an Emacs bug, we hope someone can
1186 explain what the bug is so we can fix it. In the mean time, removing
1187 the resource prevents the problem.
1189 ** General X problems
1191 *** Redisplay using X11 is much slower than previous Emacs versions.
1193 We've noticed that certain X servers draw the text much slower when
1194 scroll bars are on the left. We don't know why this happens. If this
1195 happens to you, you can work around it by putting the scroll bars
1196 on the right (as they were in Emacs 19).
1198 Here's how to do this:
1200 (set-scroll-bar-mode 'right)
1202 If you're not sure whether (or how much) this problem affects you,
1203 try that and see how much difference it makes. To set things back
1206 (set-scroll-bar-mode 'left)
1208 *** Error messages about undefined colors on X.
1210 The messages might say something like this:
1212 Unable to load color "grey95"
1214 (typically, in the `*Messages*' buffer), or something like this:
1216 Error while displaying tooltip: (error Undefined color lightyellow)
1218 These problems could happen if some other X program has used up too
1219 many colors of the X palette, leaving Emacs with insufficient system
1220 resources to load all the colors it needs.
1222 A solution is to exit the offending X programs before starting Emacs.
1224 *** Improving performance with slow X connections.
1226 There are several ways to improve this performance, any subset of which can
1227 be carried out at the same time:
1229 1) If you don't need X Input Methods (XIM) for entering text in some
1230 language you use, you can improve performance on WAN links by using
1231 the X resource useXIM to turn off use of XIM. This does not affect
1232 the use of Emacs' own input methods, which are part of the Leim
1235 2) If the connection is very slow, you might also want to consider
1236 switching off scroll bars, menu bar, and tool bar.
1238 3) Use ssh to forward the X connection, and enable compression on this
1239 forwarded X connection (ssh -XC remotehostname emacs ...).
1241 4) Use lbxproxy on the remote end of the connection. This is an interface
1242 to the low bandwidth X extension in most modern X servers, which
1243 improves performance dramatically, at the slight expense of correctness
1244 of the X protocol. lbxproxy acheives the performance gain by grouping
1245 several X requests in one TCP packet and sending them off together,
1246 instead of requiring a round-trip for each X request in a seperate
1247 packet. The switches that seem to work best for emacs are:
1248 -noatomsfile -nowinattr -cheaterrors -cheatevents
1249 Note that the -nograbcmap option is known to cause problems.
1250 For more about lbxproxy, see:
1251 http://www.xfree86.org/4.3.0/lbxproxy.1.html
1253 *** Emacs gives the error, Couldn't find per display information.
1255 This can result if the X server runs out of memory because Emacs uses
1256 a large number of fonts. On systems where this happens, C-h h is
1259 We do not know of a way to prevent the problem.
1261 *** Emacs does not notice when you release the mouse.
1263 There are reports that this happened with (some) Microsoft mice and
1264 that replacing the mouse made it stop.
1266 *** You can't select from submenus (in the X toolkit version).
1268 On certain systems, mouse-tracking and selection in top-level menus
1269 works properly with the X toolkit, but neither of them works when you
1270 bring up a submenu (such as Bookmarks or Compare or Apply Patch, in
1273 This works on most systems. There is speculation that the failure is
1274 due to bugs in old versions of X toolkit libraries, but no one really
1275 knows. If someone debugs this and finds the precise cause, perhaps a
1276 workaround can be found.
1278 *** An error message such as `X protocol error: BadMatch (invalid
1279 parameter attributes) on protocol request 93'.
1281 This comes from having an invalid X resource, such as
1283 (which is invalid because it specifies a color name for something
1284 that isn't a color.)
1286 The fix is to correct your X resources.
1288 *** Slow startup on X11R6 with X windows.
1290 If Emacs takes two minutes to start up on X11R6, see if your X
1291 resources specify any Adobe fonts. That causes the type-1 font
1292 renderer to start up, even if the font you asked for is not a type-1
1295 One way to avoid this problem is to eliminate the type-1 fonts from
1296 your font path, like this:
1298 xset -fp /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/
1300 *** Pull-down menus appear in the wrong place, in the toolkit version of Emacs.
1302 An X resource of this form can cause the problem:
1304 Emacs*geometry: 80x55+0+0
1306 This resource is supposed to apply, and does apply, to the menus
1307 individually as well as to Emacs frames. If that is not what you
1308 want, rewrite the resource.
1310 To check thoroughly for such resource specifications, use `xrdb
1311 -query' to see what resources the X server records, and also look at
1312 the user's ~/.Xdefaults and ~/.Xdefaults-* files.
1314 *** Emacs running under X Windows does not handle mouse clicks.
1315 *** `emacs -geometry 80x20' finds a file named `80x20'.
1317 One cause of such problems is having (setq term-file-prefix nil) in
1318 your .emacs file. Another cause is a bad value of EMACSLOADPATH in
1321 *** Emacs fails to get default settings from X Windows server.
1323 The X library in X11R4 has a bug; it interchanges the 2nd and 3rd
1324 arguments to XGetDefaults. Define the macro XBACKWARDS in config.h to
1325 tell Emacs to compensate for this.
1327 I don't believe there is any way Emacs can determine for itself
1328 whether this problem is present on a given system.
1330 *** X Windows doesn't work if DISPLAY uses a hostname.
1332 People have reported kernel bugs in certain systems that cause Emacs
1333 not to work with X Windows if DISPLAY is set using a host name. But
1334 the problem does not occur if DISPLAY is set to `unix:0.0'. I think
1335 the bug has to do with SIGIO or FIONREAD.
1337 You may be able to compensate for the bug by doing (set-input-mode nil nil).
1338 However, that has the disadvantage of turning off interrupts, so that
1339 you are unable to quit out of a Lisp program by typing C-g.
1341 The easy way to do this is to put
1343 (setq x-sigio-bug t)
1345 in your site-init.el file.
1347 * Runtime problems on character termunals
1349 ** Emacs spontaneously displays "I-search: " at the bottom of the screen.
1351 This means that Control-S/Control-Q (XON/XOFF) "flow control" is being
1352 used. C-s/C-q flow control is bad for Emacs editors because it takes
1353 away C-s and C-q as user commands. Since editors do not output long
1354 streams of text without user commands, there is no need for a
1355 user-issuable "stop output" command in an editor; therefore, a
1356 properly designed flow control mechanism would transmit all possible
1357 input characters without interference. Designing such a mechanism is
1358 easy, for a person with at least half a brain.
1360 There are three possible reasons why flow control could be taking place:
1362 1) Terminal has not been told to disable flow control
1363 2) Insufficient padding for the terminal in use
1364 3) Some sort of terminal concentrator or line switch is responsible
1366 First of all, many terminals have a set-up mode which controls whether
1367 they generate XON/XOFF flow control characters. This must be set to
1368 "no XON/XOFF" in order for Emacs to work. Sometimes there is an
1369 escape sequence that the computer can send to turn flow control off
1370 and on. If so, perhaps the termcap `ti' string should turn flow
1371 control off, and the `te' string should turn it on.
1373 Once the terminal has been told "no flow control", you may find it
1374 needs more padding. The amount of padding Emacs sends is controlled
1375 by the termcap entry for the terminal in use, and by the output baud
1376 rate as known by the kernel. The shell command `stty' will print
1377 your output baud rate; `stty' with suitable arguments will set it if
1378 it is wrong. Setting to a higher speed causes increased padding. If
1379 the results are wrong for the correct speed, there is probably a
1380 problem in the termcap entry. You must speak to a local Unix wizard
1381 to fix this. Perhaps you are just using the wrong terminal type.
1383 For terminals that lack a "no flow control" mode, sometimes just
1384 giving lots of padding will prevent actual generation of flow control
1385 codes. You might as well try it.
1387 If you are really unlucky, your terminal is connected to the computer
1388 through a concentrator which sends XON/XOFF flow control to the
1389 computer, or it insists on sending flow control itself no matter how
1390 much padding you give it. Unless you can figure out how to turn flow
1391 control off on this concentrator (again, refer to your local wizard),
1392 you are screwed! You should have the terminal or concentrator
1393 replaced with a properly designed one. In the mean time, some drastic
1394 measures can make Emacs semi-work.
1396 You can make Emacs ignore C-s and C-q and let the operating system
1397 handle them. To do this on a per-session basis, just type M-x
1398 enable-flow-control RET. You will see a message that C-\ and C-^ are
1399 now translated to C-s and C-q. (Use the same command M-x
1400 enable-flow-control to turn *off* this special mode. It toggles flow
1403 If C-\ and C-^ are inconvenient for you (for example, if one of them
1404 is the escape character of your terminal concentrator), you can choose
1405 other characters by setting the variables flow-control-c-s-replacement
1406 and flow-control-c-q-replacement. But choose carefully, since all
1407 other control characters are already used by emacs.
1409 IMPORTANT: if you type C-s by accident while flow control is enabled,
1410 Emacs output will freeze, and you will have to remember to type C-q in
1413 If you work in an environment where a majority of terminals of a
1414 certain type are flow control hobbled, you can use the function
1415 `enable-flow-control-on' to turn on this flow control avoidance scheme
1416 automatically. Here is an example:
1418 (enable-flow-control-on "vt200" "vt300" "vt101" "vt131")
1420 If this isn't quite correct (e.g. you have a mixture of flow-control hobbled
1421 and good vt200 terminals), you can still run enable-flow-control
1424 I have no intention of ever redesigning the Emacs command set for the
1425 assumption that terminals use C-s/C-q flow control. XON/XOFF flow
1426 control technique is a bad design, and terminals that need it are bad
1427 merchandise and should not be purchased. Now that X is becoming
1428 widespread, XON/XOFF seems to be on the way out. If you can get some
1429 use out of GNU Emacs on inferior terminals, more power to you, but I
1430 will not make Emacs worse for properly designed systems for the sake
1431 of inferior systems.
1433 ** Control-S and Control-Q commands are ignored completely.
1435 For some reason, your system is using brain-damaged C-s/C-q flow
1436 control despite Emacs's attempts to turn it off. Perhaps your
1437 terminal is connected to the computer through a concentrator
1438 that wants to use flow control.
1440 You should first try to tell the concentrator not to use flow control.
1441 If you succeed in this, try making the terminal work without
1442 flow control, as described in the preceding section.
1444 If that line of approach is not successful, map some other characters
1445 into C-s and C-q using keyboard-translate-table. The example above
1446 shows how to do this with C-^ and C-\.
1448 ** Screen is updated wrong, but only on one kind of terminal.
1450 This could mean that the termcap entry you are using for that
1451 terminal is wrong, or it could mean that Emacs has a bug handing
1452 the combination of features specified for that terminal.
1454 The first step in tracking this down is to record what characters
1455 Emacs is sending to the terminal. Execute the Lisp expression
1456 (open-termscript "./emacs-script") to make Emacs write all
1457 terminal output into the file ~/emacs-script as well; then do
1458 what makes the screen update wrong, and look at the file
1459 and decode the characters using the manual for the terminal.
1460 There are several possibilities:
1462 1) The characters sent are correct, according to the terminal manual.
1464 In this case, there is no obvious bug in Emacs, and most likely you
1465 need more padding, or possibly the terminal manual is wrong.
1467 2) The characters sent are incorrect, due to an obscure aspect
1468 of the terminal behavior not described in an obvious way
1471 This case is hard. It will be necessary to think of a way for
1472 Emacs to distinguish between terminals with this kind of behavior
1473 and other terminals that behave subtly differently but are
1474 classified the same by termcap; or else find an algorithm for
1475 Emacs to use that avoids the difference. Such changes must be
1476 tested on many kinds of terminals.
1478 3) The termcap entry is wrong.
1480 See the file etc/TERMS for information on changes
1481 that are known to be needed in commonly used termcap entries
1482 for certain terminals.
1484 4) The characters sent are incorrect, and clearly cannot be
1485 right for any terminal with the termcap entry you were using.
1487 This is unambiguously an Emacs bug, and can probably be fixed
1488 in termcap.c, tparam.c, term.c, scroll.c, cm.c or dispnew.c.
1490 ** Control-S and Control-Q commands are ignored completely on a net connection.
1492 Some versions of rlogin (and possibly telnet) do not pass flow
1493 control characters to the remote system to which they connect.
1494 On such systems, emacs on the remote system cannot disable flow
1495 control on the local system.
1497 One way to cure this is to disable flow control on the local host
1498 (the one running rlogin, not the one running rlogind) using the
1499 stty command, before starting the rlogin process. On many systems,
1500 "stty start u stop u" will do this.
1502 Some versions of tcsh will prevent even this from working. One way
1503 around this is to start another shell before starting rlogin, and
1504 issue the stty command to disable flow control from that shell.
1506 If none of these methods work, the best solution is to type
1507 M-x enable-flow-control at the beginning of your emacs session, or
1508 if you expect the problem to continue, add a line such as the
1509 following to your .emacs (on the host running rlogind):
1511 (enable-flow-control-on "vt200" "vt300" "vt101" "vt131")
1513 See the entry about spontaneous display of I-search (above) for more
1516 ** Output from Control-V is slow.
1518 On many bit-map terminals, scrolling operations are fairly slow.
1519 Often the termcap entry for the type of terminal in use fails
1520 to inform Emacs of this. The two lines at the bottom of the screen
1521 before a Control-V command are supposed to appear at the top after
1522 the Control-V command. If Emacs thinks scrolling the lines is fast,
1523 it will scroll them to the top of the screen.
1525 If scrolling is slow but Emacs thinks it is fast, the usual reason is
1526 that the termcap entry for the terminal you are using does not
1527 specify any padding time for the `al' and `dl' strings. Emacs
1528 concludes that these operations take only as much time as it takes to
1529 send the commands at whatever line speed you are using. You must
1530 fix the termcap entry to specify, for the `al' and `dl', as much
1531 time as the operations really take.
1533 Currently Emacs thinks in terms of serial lines which send characters
1534 at a fixed rate, so that any operation which takes time for the
1535 terminal to execute must also be padded. With bit-map terminals
1536 operated across networks, often the network provides some sort of
1537 flow control so that padding is never needed no matter how slow
1538 an operation is. You must still specify a padding time if you want
1539 Emacs to realize that the operation takes a long time. This will
1540 cause padding characters to be sent unnecessarily, but they do
1541 not really cost much. They will be transmitted while the scrolling
1542 is happening and then discarded quickly by the terminal.
1544 Most bit-map terminals provide commands for inserting or deleting
1545 multiple lines at once. Define the `AL' and `DL' strings in the
1546 termcap entry to say how to do these things, and you will have
1547 fast output without wasted padding characters. These strings should
1548 each contain a single %-spec saying how to send the number of lines
1549 to be scrolled. These %-specs are like those in the termcap
1552 You should also define the `IC' and `DC' strings if your terminal
1553 has a command to insert or delete multiple characters. These
1554 take the number of positions to insert or delete as an argument.
1556 A `cs' string to set the scrolling region will reduce the amount
1557 of motion you see on the screen when part of the screen is scrolled.
1559 ** You type Control-H (Backspace) expecting to delete characters.
1561 Put `stty dec' in your .login file and your problems will disappear
1564 The choice of Backspace for erasure was based on confusion, caused by
1565 the fact that backspacing causes erasure (later, when you type another
1566 character) on most display terminals. But it is a mistake. Deletion
1567 of text is not the same thing as backspacing followed by failure to
1568 overprint. I do not wish to propagate this confusion by conforming
1571 For this reason, I believe `stty dec' is the right mode to use,
1572 and I have designed Emacs to go with that. If there were a thousand
1573 other control characters, I would define Control-h to delete as well;
1574 but there are not very many other control characters, and I think
1575 that providing the most mnemonic possible Help character is more
1576 important than adapting to people who don't use `stty dec'.
1578 If you are obstinate about confusing buggy overprinting with deletion,
1579 you can redefine Backspace in your .emacs file:
1580 (global-set-key "\b" 'delete-backward-char)
1581 You can probably access help-command via f1.
1583 ** Colors are not available on a tty or in xterm.
1585 Emacs 21 supports colors on character terminals and terminal
1586 emulators, but this support relies on the terminfo or termcap database
1587 entry to specify that the display supports color. Emacs looks at the
1588 "Co" capability for the terminal to find out how many colors are
1589 supported; it should be non-zero to activate the color support within
1590 Emacs. (Most color terminals support 8 or 16 colors.) If your system
1591 uses terminfo, the name of the capability equivalent to "Co" is
1594 In addition to the "Co" capability, Emacs needs the "op" (for
1595 ``original pair'') capability, which tells how to switch the terminal
1596 back to the default foreground and background colors. Emacs will not
1597 use colors if this capability is not defined. If your terminal entry
1598 doesn't provide such a capability, try using the ANSI standard escape
1599 sequence \E[00m (that is, define a new termcap/terminfo entry and make
1600 it use your current terminal's entry plus \E[00m for the "op"
1603 Finally, the "NC" capability (terminfo name: "ncv") tells Emacs which
1604 attributes cannot be used with colors. Setting this capability
1605 incorrectly might have the effect of disabling colors; try setting
1606 this capability to `0' (zero) and see if that helps.
1608 Emacs uses the database entry for the terminal whose name is the value
1609 of the environment variable TERM. With `xterm', a common terminal
1610 entry that supports color is `xterm-color', so setting TERM's value to
1611 `xterm-color' might activate the color support on an xterm-compatible
1614 Beginning with version 22.1, Emacs supports the --color command-line
1615 option which may be used to force Emacs to use one of a few popular
1616 modes for getting colors on a tty. For example, --color=ansi8 sets up
1617 for using the ANSI-standard escape sequences that support 8 colors.
1619 Some modes do not use colors unless you turn on the Font-lock mode.
1620 Some people have long ago set their `~/.emacs' files to turn on
1621 Font-lock on X only, so they won't see colors on a tty. The
1622 recommended way of turning on Font-lock is by typing "M-x
1623 global-font-lock-mode RET" or by customizing the variable
1624 `global-font-lock-mode'.
1626 * Runtime problems specific to individual Unix variants
1630 *** GNU/Linux: Process output is corrupted.
1632 There is a bug in Linux kernel 2.6.10 PTYs that can cause emacs to
1633 read corrupted process output.
1635 *** GNU/Linux: Remote access to CVS with SSH causes file corruption.
1637 If you access a remote CVS repository via SSH, files may be corrupted
1638 due to bad interaction between CVS, SSH, and libc.
1640 To fix the problem, save the following script into a file, make it
1641 executable, and set CVS_RSH environment variable to the file name of
1645 exec 2> >(exec cat >&2 2>/dev/null)
1648 *** GNU/Linux: On Linux-based GNU systems using libc versions 5.4.19 through
1649 5.4.22, Emacs crashes at startup with a segmentation fault.
1651 This problem happens if libc defines the symbol __malloc_initialized.
1652 One known solution is to upgrade to a newer libc version. 5.4.33 is
1655 *** GNU/Linux: After upgrading to a newer version of Emacs,
1656 the Meta key stops working.
1658 This was reported to happen on a GNU/Linux system distributed by
1659 Mandrake. The reason is that the previous version of Emacs was
1660 modified by Mandrake to make the Alt key act as the Meta key, on a
1661 keyboard where the Windows key is the one which produces the Meta
1662 modifier. A user who started using a newer version of Emacs, which
1663 was not hacked by Mandrake, expected the Alt key to continue to act as
1664 Meta, and was astonished when that didn't happen.
1666 The solution is to find out what key on your keyboard produces the Meta
1667 modifier, and use that key instead. Try all of the keys to the left
1668 and to the right of the space bar, together with the `x' key, and see
1669 which combination produces "M-x" in the echo area. You can also use
1670 the `xmodmap' utility to show all the keys which produce a Meta
1673 xmodmap -pk | egrep -i "meta|alt"
1675 A more convenient way of finding out which keys produce a Meta modifier
1676 is to use the `xkbprint' utility, if it's available on your system:
1678 xkbprint 0:0 /tmp/k.ps
1680 This produces a PostScript file `/tmp/k.ps' with a picture of your
1681 keyboard; printing that file on a PostScript printer will show what
1682 keys can serve as Meta.
1684 The `xkeycaps' also shows a visual representation of the current
1685 keyboard settings. It also allows to modify them.
1687 *** GNU/Linux: low startup on Linux-based GNU systems.
1689 People using systems based on the Linux kernel sometimes report that
1690 startup takes 10 to 15 seconds longer than `usual'.
1692 This is because Emacs looks up the host name when it starts.
1693 Normally, this takes negligible time; the extra delay is due to
1694 improper system configuration. This problem can occur for both
1695 networked and non-networked machines.
1697 Here is how to fix the configuration. It requires being root.
1699 **** Networked Case.
1701 First, make sure the files `/etc/hosts' and `/etc/host.conf' both
1702 exist. The first line in the `/etc/hosts' file should look like this
1703 (replace HOSTNAME with your host name):
1707 Also make sure that the `/etc/host.conf' files contains the following
1713 Any changes, permanent and temporary, to the host name should be
1714 indicated in the `/etc/hosts' file, since it acts a limited local
1715 database of addresses and names (e.g., some SLIP connections
1716 dynamically allocate ip addresses).
1718 **** Non-Networked Case.
1720 The solution described in the networked case applies here as well.
1721 However, if you never intend to network your machine, you can use a
1722 simpler solution: create an empty `/etc/host.conf' file. The command
1723 `touch /etc/host.conf' suffices to create the file. The `/etc/hosts'
1724 file is not necessary with this approach.
1726 *** GNU/Linux: Emacs on a tty switches the cursor to large blinking block.
1728 This was reported to happen on some GNU/Linux systems which use
1729 ncurses version 5.0, but could be relevant for other versions as well.
1730 These versions of ncurses come with a `linux' terminfo entry, where
1731 the "cvvis" capability (termcap "vs") is defined as "\E[?25h\E[?8c"
1732 (show cursor, change size). This escape sequence switches on a
1733 blinking hardware text-mode cursor whose size is a full character
1734 cell. This blinking cannot be stopped, since a hardware cursor
1737 A work-around is to redefine the "cvvis" capability so that it
1738 enables a *software* cursor. The software cursor works by inverting
1739 the colors of the character at point, so what you see is a block
1740 cursor that doesn't blink. For this to work, you need to redefine
1741 the "cnorm" capability as well, so that it operates on the software
1742 cursor instead of the hardware cursor.
1744 To this end, run "infocmp linux > linux-term", edit the file
1745 `linux-term' to make both the "cnorm" and "cvvis" capabilities send
1746 the sequence "\E[?25h\E[?17;0;64c", and then run "tic linux-term" to
1747 produce a modified terminfo entry.
1749 Alternatively, if you want a blinking underscore as your Emacs cursor,
1750 change the "cvvis" capability to send the "\E[?25h\E[?0c" command.
1752 *** GNU/Linux: Error messages `internal facep []' happen on GNU/Linux systems.
1754 There is a report that replacing libc.so.5.0.9 with libc.so.5.2.16
1755 caused this to start happening. People are not sure why, but the
1756 problem seems unlikely to be in Emacs itself. Some suspect that it
1757 is actually Xlib which won't work with libc.so.5.2.16.
1759 Using the old library version is a workaround.
1763 *** Mac OS X (Carbon): Environment Variables from dotfiles are ignored.
1765 When starting Emacs from the Dock or the Finder on Mac OS X, the
1766 environment variables that are set up in dotfiles, such as .cshrc or
1767 .profile, are ignored. This is because the Finder and Dock are not
1768 started from a shell, but instead from the Window Manager itself.
1770 The workaround for this is to create a .MacOSX/environment.plist file to
1771 setup these environment variables. These environment variables will
1772 apply to all processes regardless of where they are started.
1773 For me information, see http://developer.apple.com/qa/qa2001/qa1067.html.
1775 *** Mac OS X (Carbon): Process output truncated when using ptys.
1777 There appears to be a problem with the implementation of pty's on the
1778 Mac OS X that causes process output to be truncated. To avoid this,
1779 leave process-connection-type set to its default value of nil.
1783 *** FreeBSD 2.1.5: useless symbolic links remain in /tmp or other
1784 directories that have the +t bit.
1786 This is because of a kernel bug in FreeBSD 2.1.5 (fixed in 2.2).
1787 Emacs uses symbolic links to implement file locks. In a directory
1788 with +t bit, the directory owner becomes the owner of the symbolic
1789 link, so that it cannot be removed by anyone else.
1791 If you don't like those useless links, you can let Emacs not to using
1792 file lock by adding #undef CLASH_DETECTION to config.h.
1794 *** FreeBSD: Getting a Meta key on the console.
1796 By default, neither Alt nor any other key acts as a Meta key on
1797 FreeBSD, but this can be changed using kbdcontrol(1). Dump the
1798 current keymap to a file with the command
1800 $ kbdcontrol -d >emacs.kbd
1802 Edit emacs.kbd, and give the key you want to be the Meta key the
1803 definition `meta'. For instance, if your keyboard has a ``Windows''
1804 key with scan code 105, change the line for scan code 105 in emacs.kbd
1807 105 meta meta meta meta meta meta meta meta O
1809 to make the Windows key the Meta key. Load the new keymap with
1811 $ kbdcontrol -l emacs.kbd
1815 *** HP/UX : Shell mode gives the message, "`tty`: Ambiguous".
1817 christos@theory.tn.cornell.edu says:
1819 The problem is that in your .cshrc you have something that tries to
1820 execute `tty`. If you are not running the shell on a real tty then
1821 tty will print "not a tty". Csh expects one word in some places,
1822 but tty is giving it back 3.
1824 The solution is to add a pair of quotes around `tty` to make it a single
1827 if (`tty` == "/dev/console")
1829 should be changed to:
1831 if ("`tty`" == "/dev/console")
1833 Even better, move things that set up terminal sections out of .cshrc
1836 *** HP/UX: `Pid xxx killed due to text modification or page I/O error'.
1838 On HP/UX, you can get that error when the Emacs executable is on an NFS
1839 file system. HP/UX responds this way if it tries to swap in a page and
1840 does not get a response from the server within a timeout whose default
1841 value is just ten seconds.
1843 If this happens to you, extend the timeout period.
1845 *** HP/UX: The right Alt key works wrong on German HP keyboards (and perhaps
1846 other non-English HP keyboards too).
1848 This is because HP-UX defines the modifiers wrong in X. Here is a
1849 shell script to fix the problem; be sure that it is run after VUE
1850 configures the X server.
1852 xmodmap 2> /dev/null - << EOF
1853 keysym Alt_L = Meta_L
1854 keysym Alt_R = Meta_R
1859 keysym Mode_switch = NoSymbol
1861 keysym Meta_R = Mode_switch
1862 add mod2 = Mode_switch
1865 *** HP/UX: "Cannot find callback list" messages from dialog boxes in
1866 Emacs built with Motif.
1868 This problem resulted from a bug in GCC 2.4.5. Newer GCC versions
1869 such as 2.7.0 fix the problem.
1871 *** HP/UX: Emacs does not recognize the AltGr key.
1873 To fix this, set up a file ~/.dt/sessions/sessionetc with executable
1874 rights, containing this text:
1876 --------------------------------
1877 xmodmap 2> /dev/null - << EOF
1878 keysym Alt_L = Meta_L
1879 keysym Alt_R = Meta_R
1884 keysym Mode_switch = NoSymbol
1886 keysym Meta_R = Mode_switch
1887 add mod2 = Mode_switch
1889 --------------------------------
1891 *** HP/UX 11.0: Emacs makes HP/UX 11.0 crash.
1893 This is a bug in HPUX; HPUX patch PHKL_16260 is said to fix it.
1897 *** AIX: Trouble using ptys.
1899 People often install the pty devices on AIX incorrectly.
1900 Use `smit pty' to reinstall them properly.
1902 *** AIXterm: Your Delete key sends a Backspace to the terminal.
1904 The solution is to include in your .Xdefaults the lines:
1906 *aixterm.Translations: #override <Key>BackSpace: string(0x7f)
1907 aixterm*ttyModes: erase ^?
1909 This makes your Backspace key send DEL (ASCII 127).
1911 *** AIX: If linking fails because libXbsd isn't found, check if you
1912 are compiling with the system's `cc' and CFLAGS containing `-O5'. If
1913 so, you have hit a compiler bug. Please make sure to re-configure
1914 Emacs so that it isn't compiled with `-O5'.
1916 *** AIX 4.3.x or 4.4: Compiling fails.
1918 This could happen if you use /bin/c89 as your compiler, instead of
1919 the default `cc'. /bin/c89 treats certain warnings, such as benign
1920 redefinitions of macros, as errors, and fails the build. A solution
1921 is to use the default compiler `cc'.
1923 *** AIX 4: Some programs fail when run in a Shell buffer
1924 with an error message like No terminfo entry for "unknown".
1926 On AIX, many terminal type definitions are not installed by default.
1927 `unknown' is one of them. Install the "Special Generic Terminal
1928 Definitions" to make them defined.
1932 We list bugs in current versions here. Solaris 2.x and 4.x are covered in the
1933 section on legacy systems.
1935 *** On Solaris, C-x doesn't get through to Emacs when you use the console.
1937 This is a Solaris feature (at least on Intel x86 cpus). Type C-r
1938 C-r C-t, to toggle whether C-x gets through to Emacs.
1940 *** Problem with remote X server on Suns.
1942 On a Sun, running Emacs on one machine with the X server on another
1943 may not work if you have used the unshared system libraries. This
1944 is because the unshared libraries fail to use YP for host name lookup.
1945 As a result, the host name you specify may not be recognized.
1947 *** Solaris 2,6: Emacs crashes with SIGBUS or SIGSEGV on Solaris after you delete a frame.
1949 We suspect that this is a bug in the X libraries provided by
1950 Sun. There is a report that one of these patches fixes the bug and
1951 makes the problem stop:
1953 105216-01 105393-01 105518-01 105621-01 105665-01 105615-02 105216-02
1954 105667-01 105401-08 105615-03 105621-02 105686-02 105736-01 105755-03
1955 106033-01 105379-01 105786-01 105181-04 105379-03 105786-04 105845-01
1956 105284-05 105669-02 105837-01 105837-02 105558-01 106125-02 105407-01
1958 Another person using a newer system (kernel patch level Generic_105181-06)
1959 suspects that the bug was fixed by one of these more recent patches:
1961 106040-07 SunOS 5.6: X Input & Output Method patch
1962 106222-01 OpenWindows 3.6: filemgr (ff.core) fixes
1963 105284-12 Motif 1.2.7: sparc Runtime library patch
1965 *** Solaris 7 or 8: Emacs reports a BadAtom error (from X)
1967 This happens when Emacs was built on some other version of Solaris.
1968 Rebuild it on Solaris 8.
1970 *** When using M-x dbx with the SparcWorks debugger, the `up' and `down'
1971 commands do not move the arrow in Emacs.
1973 You can fix this by adding the following line to `~/.dbxinit':
1975 dbxenv output_short_file_name off
1977 *** On Solaris, CTRL-t is ignored by Emacs when you use
1978 the fr.ISO-8859-15 locale (and maybe other related locales).
1980 You can fix this by editing the file:
1982 /usr/openwin/lib/locale/iso8859-15/Compose
1984 Near the bottom there is a line that reads:
1986 Ctrl<t> <quotedbl> <Y> : "\276" threequarters
1990 Ctrl<T> <quotedbl> <Y> : "\276" threequarters
1992 Note the lower case <t>. Changing this line should make C-t work.
1996 *** Irix 6.5: Emacs crashes on the SGI R10K, when compiled with GCC.
1998 This seems to be fixed in GCC 2.95.
2000 *** Irix: Trouble using ptys, or running out of ptys.
2002 The program mkpts (which may be in `/usr/adm' or `/usr/sbin') needs to
2003 be set-UID to root, or non-root programs like Emacs will not be able
2004 to allocate ptys reliably.
2006 * Runtime problems specific to MS-Windows
2008 ** Emacs exits with "X protocol error" when run with an X server for MS-Windows.
2010 A certain X server for Windows had a bug which caused this.
2011 Supposedly the newer 32-bit version of this server doesn't have the
2014 ** Known problems with the MS-Windows port of Emacs 22.1
2016 Using create-fontset-from-ascii-font or the --font startup parameter
2017 with a Chinese, Japanese or Korean font leads to display problems.
2018 Use a Latin-only font as your default font. If you want control over
2019 which font is used to display Chinese, Japanese or Korean character,
2020 use create-fontset-from-fontset-spec to define a fontset.
2022 Frames are not refreshed while the File or Font dialog or a pop-up menu
2023 is displayed. This also means help text for pop-up menus is not
2024 displayed at all. This is because message handling under Windows is
2025 synchronous, so we cannot handle repaint (or any other) messages while
2026 waiting for a system function to return the result of the dialog or
2027 pop-up menu interaction.
2029 Windows 95 and Windows NT up to version 4.0 do not support help text
2030 for menus. Help text is only available in later versions of Windows.
2032 There are problems with display if mouse-tracking is enabled and the
2033 mouse is moved off a frame, over another frame then back over the first
2034 frame. A workaround is to click the left mouse button inside the frame
2035 after moving back into it.
2037 Some minor flickering still persists during mouse-tracking, although
2038 not as severely as in 21.1.
2040 An inactive cursor remains in an active window after the Windows
2041 Manager driven switch of the focus, until a key is pressed.
2043 Windows input methods are not recognized by Emacs. Some
2044 of these input methods cause the keyboard to send characters encoded
2045 in the appropriate coding system (e.g., ISO 8859-1 for Latin-1
2046 characters, ISO 8859-8 for Hebrew characters, etc.). To make this
2047 work, set the keyboard coding system to the appropriate value after
2048 you activate the Windows input method. For example, if you activate
2049 the Hebrew input method, type "C-x RET k iso-8859-8 RET". (Emacs
2050 ought to recognize the Windows language-change event and set up the
2051 appropriate keyboard encoding automatically, but it doesn't do that
2054 The %b specifier for format-time-string does not produce abbreviated
2055 month names with consistent widths for some locales on some versions
2056 of Windows. This is caused by a deficiency in the underlying system
2059 ** Typing Alt-Shift has strange effects on MS-Windows.
2061 This combination of keys is a command to change keyboard layout. If
2062 you proceed to type another non-modifier key before you let go of Alt
2063 and Shift, the Alt and Shift act as modifiers in the usual way. A
2064 more permanent work around is to change it to another key combination,
2065 or disable it in the keyboard control panel.
2067 ** Interrupting Cygwin port of Bash from Emacs doesn't work.
2069 Cygwin 1.x builds of the ported Bash cannot be interrupted from the
2070 MS-Windows version of Emacs. This is due to some change in the Bash
2071 port or in the Cygwin library which apparently make Bash ignore the
2072 keyboard interrupt event sent by Emacs to Bash. (Older Cygwin ports
2073 of Bash, up to b20.1, did receive SIGINT from Emacs.)
2075 ** Accessing remote files with ange-ftp hangs the MS-Windows version of Emacs.
2077 If the FTP client is the Cygwin port of GNU `ftp', this appears to be
2078 due to some bug in the Cygwin DLL or some incompatibility between it
2079 and the implementation of asynchronous subprocesses in the Windows
2080 port of Emacs. Specifically, some parts of the FTP server responses
2081 are not flushed out, apparently due to buffering issues, which
2084 The solution is to downgrade to an older version of the Cygwin DLL
2085 (version 1.3.2 was reported to solve the problem), or use the stock
2086 Windows FTP client, usually found in the `C:\WINDOWS' or 'C:\WINNT'
2087 directory. To force ange-ftp use the stock Windows client, set the
2088 variable `ange-ftp-ftp-program-name' to the absolute file name of the
2089 client's executable. For example:
2091 (setq ange-ftp-ftp-program-name "c:/windows/ftp.exe")
2093 If you want to stick with the Cygwin FTP client, you can work around
2094 this problem by putting this in your `.emacs' file:
2096 (setq ange-ftp-ftp-program-args '("-i" "-n" "-g" "-v" "--prompt" "")
2098 ** lpr commands don't work on MS-Windows with some cheap printers.
2100 This problem may also strike other platforms, but the solution is
2101 likely to be a global one, and not Emacs specific.
2103 Many cheap inkjet, and even some cheap laser printers, do not
2104 print plain text anymore, they will only print through graphical
2105 printer drivers. A workaround on MS-Windows is to use Windows' basic
2106 built in editor to print (this is possibly the only useful purpose it
2109 (setq printer-name "") ;; notepad takes the default
2110 (setq lpr-command "notepad") ;; notepad
2111 (setq lpr-switches nil) ;; not needed
2112 (setq lpr-printer-switch "/P") ;; run notepad as batch printer
2114 ** Antivirus software interacts badly with the MS-Windows version of Emacs.
2116 The usual manifestation of these problems is that subprocesses don't
2117 work or even wedge the entire system. In particular, "M-x shell RET"
2118 was reported to fail to work. But other commands also sometimes don't
2119 work when an antivirus package is installed.
2121 The solution is to switch the antivirus software to a less aggressive
2122 mode (e.g., disable the ``auto-protect'' feature), or even uninstall
2123 or disable it entirely.
2125 ** Pressing the mouse button on MS-Windows does not give a mouse-2 event.
2127 This is usually a problem with the mouse driver. Because most Windows
2128 programs do not do anything useful with the middle mouse button, many
2129 mouse drivers allow you to define the wheel press to do something
2130 different. Some drivers do not even have the option to generate a
2131 middle button press. In such cases, setting the wheel press to
2132 "scroll" sometimes works if you press the button twice. Trying a
2133 generic mouse driver might help.
2135 ** Scrolling the mouse wheel on MS-Windows always scrolls the top window.
2137 This is another common problem with mouse drivers. Instead of
2138 generating scroll events, some mouse drivers try to fake scroll bar
2139 movement. But they are not intelligent enough to handle multiple
2140 scroll bars within a frame. Trying a generic mouse driver might help.
2142 ** Mail sent through Microsoft Exchange in some encodings appears to be
2143 mangled and is not seen correctly in Rmail or Gnus. We don't know
2144 exactly what happens, but it isn't an Emacs problem in cases we've
2147 ** On MS-Windows, you cannot use the right-hand ALT key and the left-hand
2148 CTRL key together to type a Control-Meta character.
2150 This is a consequence of a misfeature beyond Emacs's control.
2152 Under Windows, the AltGr key on international keyboards generates key
2153 events with the modifiers Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl. Since Emacs cannot
2154 distinguish AltGr from an explicit Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl
2155 combination, whenever it sees Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl it assumes that
2156 AltGr has been pressed. The variable `w32-recognize-altgr' can be set
2157 to nil to tell Emacs that AltGr is really Ctrl and Alt.
2159 ** Under some X-servers running on MS-Windows, Emacs' display is incorrect.
2161 The symptoms are that Emacs does not completely erase blank areas of the
2162 screen during scrolling or some other screen operations (e.g., selective
2163 display or when killing a region). M-x recenter will cause the screen
2164 to be completely redisplayed and the "extra" characters will disappear.
2166 This is known to occur under Exceed 6, and possibly earlier versions
2167 as well; it is reportedly solved in version 6.2.0.16 and later. The
2168 problem lies in the X-server settings.
2170 There are reports that you can solve the problem with Exceed by
2171 running `Xconfig' from within NT, choosing "X selection", then
2172 un-checking the boxes "auto-copy X selection" and "auto-paste to X
2175 Of this does not work, please inform bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org. Then
2176 please call support for your X-server and see if you can get a fix.
2177 If you do, please send it to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org so we can list it
2180 * Build-time problems
2184 *** The `configure' script doesn't find the jpeg library.
2186 There are reports that this happens on some systems because the linker
2187 by default only looks for shared libraries, but jpeg distribution by
2188 default only installs a nonshared version of the library, `libjpeg.a'.
2190 If this is the problem, you can configure the jpeg library with the
2191 `--enable-shared' option and then rebuild libjpeg. This produces a
2192 shared version of libjpeg, which you need to install. Finally, rerun
2193 the Emacs configure script, which should now find the jpeg library.
2194 Alternatively, modify the generated src/Makefile to link the .a file
2195 explicitly, and edit src/config.h to define HAVE_JPEG.
2199 *** Building Emacs over NFS fails with ``Text file busy''.
2201 This was reported to happen when building Emacs on a GNU/Linux system
2202 (RedHat Linux 6.2) using a build directory automounted from Solaris
2203 (SunOS 5.6) file server, but it might not be limited to that
2204 configuration alone. Presumably, the NFS server doesn't commit the
2205 files' data to disk quickly enough, and the Emacs executable file is
2206 left ``busy'' for several seconds after Emacs has finished dumping
2207 itself. This causes the subsequent commands which invoke the dumped
2208 Emacs executable to fail with the above message.
2210 In some of these cases, a time skew between the NFS server and the
2211 machine where Emacs is built is detected and reported by GNU Make
2212 (it says that some of the files have modification time in the future).
2213 This might be a symptom of NFS-related problems.
2215 If the NFS server runs on Solaris, apply the Solaris patch 105379-05
2216 (Sunos 5.6: /kernel/misc/nfssrv patch). If that doesn't work, or if
2217 you have a different version of the OS or the NFS server, you can
2218 force the NFS server to use 1KB blocks, which was reported to fix the
2219 problem albeit at a price of slowing down file I/O. You can force 1KB
2220 blocks by specifying the "-o rsize=1024,wsize=1024" options to the
2221 `mount' command, or by adding ",rsize=1024,wsize=1024" to the mount
2222 options in the appropriate system configuration file, such as
2225 Alternatively, when Make fails due to this problem, you could wait for
2226 a few seconds and then invoke Make again. In one particular case,
2227 waiting for 10 or more seconds between the two Make invocations seemed
2228 to work around the problem.
2230 Similar problems can happen if your machine NFS-mounts a directory
2231 onto itself. Suppose the Emacs sources live in `/usr/local/src' and
2232 you are working on the host called `marvin'. Then an entry in the
2233 `/etc/fstab' file like the following is asking for trouble:
2235 marvin:/usr/local/src /usr/local/src ...options.omitted...
2237 The solution is to remove this line from `etc/fstab'.
2239 *** Building Emacs with GCC 2.9x fails in the `src' directory.
2241 This may happen if you use a development version of GNU `cpp' from one
2242 of the GCC snapshots between Oct 2000 and Feb 2001, or from a released
2243 version of GCC newer than 2.95.2 which was prepared around those
2244 dates; similar problems were reported with some snapshots of GCC 3.1
2245 around Sep 30 2001. The preprocessor in those versions is
2246 incompatible with a traditional Unix cpp (e.g., it expands ".." into
2247 ". .", which breaks relative file names that reference the parent
2248 directory; or inserts TAB characters before lines that set Make
2251 The solution is to make sure the preprocessor is run with the
2252 `-traditional' option. The `configure' script does that automatically
2253 when it detects the known problems in your cpp, but you might hit some
2254 unknown ones. To force the `configure' script to use `-traditional',
2255 run the script like this:
2257 CPP='gcc -E -traditional' ./configure ...
2259 (replace the ellipsis "..." with any additional arguments you pass to
2262 Note that this problem does not pertain to the MS-Windows port of
2263 Emacs, since it doesn't use the preprocessor to generate Makefiles.
2265 *** src/Makefile and lib-src/Makefile are truncated--most of the file missing.
2266 *** Compiling wakeup, in lib-src, says it can't make wakeup.c.
2268 This can happen if configure uses GNU sed version 2.03. That version
2269 had a bug. GNU sed version 2.05 works properly.To solve the
2270 problem, install the current version of GNU Sed, then rerun Emacs's
2273 *** Compiling lib-src says there is no rule to make test-distrib.c.
2275 This results from a bug in a VERY old version of GNU Sed. To solve
2276 the problem, install the current version of GNU Sed, then rerun
2277 Emacs's configure script.
2279 *** Building the MS-Windows port with Cygwin GCC can fail.
2281 Emacs may not build using recent Cygwin builds of GCC, such as Cygwin
2282 version 1.1.8, using the default configure settings. It appears to be
2283 necessary to specify the -mwin32 flag when compiling, and define
2284 __MSVCRT__, like so:
2286 configure --with-gcc --cflags -mwin32 --cflags -D__MSVCRT__
2288 *** Building the MS-Windows port fails with a CreateProcess failure.
2290 Some versions of mingw32 make on some versions of Windows do not seem
2291 to detect the shell correctly. Try "make SHELL=cmd.exe", or if that
2292 fails, try running make from Cygwin bash instead.
2294 *** Building the MS-Windows port with Leim fails in the `leim' directory.
2296 The error message might be something like this:
2298 Converting d:/emacs-21.3/leim/CXTERM-DIC/4Corner.tit to quail-package...
2299 Invalid ENCODE: value in TIT dictionary
2300 NMAKE : fatal error U1077: '"../src/obj-spd/i386/emacs.exe"' : return code
2304 This can happen if the Leim distribution is unpacked with a program
2305 which converts the `*.tit' files to DOS-style CR-LF text format. The
2306 `*.tit' files in the leim/CXTERM-DIC directory require Unix-style line
2307 endings to compile properly, because Emacs reads them without any code
2310 The solution is to make sure the program used to unpack Leim does not
2311 change the files' line endings behind your back. The GNU FTP site has
2312 in the `/gnu/emacs/windows' directory a program called `djtarnt.exe'
2313 which can be used to unpack `.tar.gz' and `.zip' archives without
2316 *** Building `ctags' for MS-Windows with the MinGW port of GCC fails.
2318 This might happen due to a bug in the MinGW header assert.h, which
2319 defines the `assert' macro with a trailing semi-colon. The following
2320 patch to assert.h should solve this:
2322 *** include/assert.h.orig Sun Nov 7 02:41:36 1999
2323 --- include/assert.h Mon Jan 29 11:49:10 2001
2327 * If not debugging, assert does nothing.
2329 ! #define assert(x) ((void)0);
2331 #else /* debugging enabled */
2335 * If not debugging, assert does nothing.
2337 ! #define assert(x) ((void)0)
2339 #else /* debugging enabled */
2344 *** Building Emacs with a system compiler fails to link because of an
2345 undefined symbol such as __eprintf which does not appear in Emacs.
2347 This can happen if some of the libraries linked into Emacs were built
2348 with GCC, but Emacs itself is being linked with a compiler other than
2349 GCC. Object files compiled with GCC might need some helper functions
2350 from libgcc.a, the library which comes with GCC, but the system
2351 compiler does not instruct the linker to search libgcc.a during the
2354 A solution is to link with GCC, like this:
2358 Since the .o object files already exist, this will not recompile Emacs
2359 with GCC, but just restart by trying again to link temacs.
2361 *** AIX 1.3 ptf 0013: Link failure.
2363 There is a real duplicate definition of the function `_slibc_free' in
2364 the library /lib/libc_s.a (just do nm on it to verify). The
2368 ar xv libc_s.a NLtmtime.o
2369 ar dv libc_s.a NLtmtime.o
2371 *** AIX 4.1.2: Linker error messages such as
2372 ld: 0711-212 SEVERE ERROR: Symbol .__quous, found in the global symbol table
2373 of archive /usr/lib/libIM.a, was not defined in archive member shr.o.
2375 This is a problem in libIM.a. You can work around it by executing
2376 these shell commands in the src subdirectory of the directory where
2379 cp /usr/lib/libIM.a .
2383 Then change -lIM to ./libIM.a in the command to link temacs (in
2386 *** Sun with acc: Link failure when using acc on a Sun.
2388 To use acc, you need additional options just before the libraries, such as
2390 /usr/lang/SC2.0.1/values-Xt.o -L/usr/lang/SC2.0.1/cg87 -L/usr/lang/SC2.0.1
2392 and you need to add -lansi just before -lc.
2394 The precise file names depend on the compiler version, so we
2395 cannot easily arrange to supply them.
2397 *** Linking says that the functions insque and remque are undefined.
2399 Change oldXMenu/Makefile by adding insque.o to the variable OBJS.
2401 *** `tparam' reported as a multiply-defined symbol when linking with ncurses.
2403 This problem results from an incompatible change in ncurses, in
2404 version 1.9.9e approximately. This version is unable to provide a
2405 definition of tparm without also defining tparam. This is also
2406 incompatible with Terminfo; as a result, the Emacs Terminfo support
2407 does not work with this version of ncurses.
2409 The fix is to install a newer version of ncurses, such as version 4.2.
2413 *** Linux: Segfault during `make bootstrap' under certain recent versions of the Linux kernel.
2415 With certain recent Linux kernels (like the one of Redhat Fedora Core
2416 1 and newer), the new "Exec-shield" functionality is enabled by default, which
2417 creates a different memory layout that breaks the emacs dumper. Emacs tries
2418 to handle this at build time, but if the workaround used fails, these
2419 instructions can be useful.
2420 The work-around explained here is not enough on Fedora Core 4 (and possible
2421 newer). Read the next item.
2423 Configure can overcome the problem of exec-shield if the architecture is
2424 x86 and the program setarch is present. On other architectures no
2425 workaround is known.
2427 You can check the Exec-shield state like this:
2429 cat /proc/sys/kernel/exec-shield
2431 It returns non-zero when Exec-shield is enabled, 0 otherwise. Please
2432 read your system documentation for more details on Exec-shield and
2433 associated commands. Exec-shield can be turned off with this command:
2435 echo "0" > /proc/sys/kernel/exec-shield
2437 When Exec-shield is enabled, building Emacs will segfault during the
2438 execution of this command:
2440 ./temacs --batch --load loadup [dump|bootstrap]
2442 To work around this problem, it is necessary to temporarily disable
2443 Exec-shield while building Emacs, or, on x86, by using the `setarch'
2444 command when running temacs like this:
2446 setarch i386 ./temacs --batch --load loadup [dump|bootstrap]
2449 *** Fedora Core 4 GNU/Linux: Segfault during dumping.
2451 In addition to exec-shield explained above "Linux: Segfault during
2452 `make bootstrap' under certain recent versions of the Linux kernel"
2453 item, Linux kernel shipped with Fedora Core 4 randomizes the virtual
2454 address space of a process. As the result dumping may fail even if
2455 you turn off exec-shield. In this case, use the -R option to the setarch
2458 setarch i386 -R ./temacs --batch --load loadup [dump|bootstrap]
2462 setarch i386 -R make bootstrap
2464 *** Fatal signal in the command temacs -l loadup inc dump.
2466 This command is the final stage of building Emacs. It is run by the
2467 Makefile in the src subdirectory, or by build.com on VMS.
2469 It has been known to get fatal errors due to insufficient swapping
2470 space available on the machine.
2472 On 68000s, it has also happened because of bugs in the
2473 subroutine `alloca'. Verify that `alloca' works right, even
2474 for large blocks (many pages).
2476 *** test-distrib says that the distribution has been clobbered.
2477 *** or, temacs prints "Command key out of range 0-127".
2478 *** or, temacs runs and dumps emacs, but emacs totally fails to work.
2479 *** or, temacs gets errors dumping emacs.
2481 This can be because the .elc files have been garbled. Do not be
2482 fooled by the fact that most of a .elc file is text: these are
2483 binary files and can contain all 256 byte values.
2485 In particular `shar' cannot be used for transmitting GNU Emacs.
2486 It typically truncates "lines". What appear to be "lines" in
2487 a binary file can of course be of any length. Even once `shar'
2488 itself is made to work correctly, `sh' discards null characters
2489 when unpacking the shell archive.
2491 I have also seen character \177 changed into \377. I do not know
2492 what transfer means caused this problem. Various network
2493 file transfer programs are suspected of clobbering the high bit.
2495 If you have a copy of Emacs that has been damaged in its
2496 nonprinting characters, you can fix them:
2498 1) Record the names of all the .elc files.
2499 2) Delete all the .elc files.
2500 3) Recompile alloc.c with a value of PURESIZE twice as large.
2501 (See puresize.h.) You might as well save the old alloc.o.
2502 4) Remake emacs. It should work now.
2503 5) Running emacs, do Meta-x byte-compile-file repeatedly
2504 to recreate all the .elc files that used to exist.
2505 You may need to increase the value of the variable
2506 max-lisp-eval-depth to succeed in running the compiler interpreted
2507 on certain .el files. 400 was sufficient as of last report.
2508 6) Reinstall the old alloc.o (undoing changes to alloc.c if any)
2510 7) Remake emacs. It should work now, with valid .elc files.
2512 *** temacs prints "Pure Lisp storage exhausted".
2514 This means that the Lisp code loaded from the .elc and .el
2515 files during temacs -l loadup inc dump took up more
2516 space than was allocated.
2518 This could be caused by
2519 1) adding code to the preloaded Lisp files
2520 2) adding more preloaded files in loadup.el
2521 3) having a site-init.el or site-load.el which loads files.
2522 Note that ANY site-init.el or site-load.el is nonstandard;
2523 if you have received Emacs from some other site
2524 and it contains a site-init.el or site-load.el file, consider
2526 4) getting the wrong .el or .elc files
2527 (not from the directory you expected).
2528 5) deleting some .elc files that are supposed to exist.
2529 This would cause the source files (.el files) to be
2530 loaded instead. They take up more room, so you lose.
2531 6) a bug in the Emacs distribution which underestimates
2534 If the need for more space is legitimate, change the definition
2535 of PURESIZE in puresize.h.
2537 But in some of the cases listed above, this problem is a consequence
2538 of something else that is wrong. Be sure to check and fix the real
2541 *** Linux: Emacs crashes when dumping itself on Mac PPC running Yellow Dog GNU/Linux.
2543 The crashes happen inside the function Fmake_symbol; here's a typical
2544 C backtrace printed by GDB:
2546 0x190c0c0 in Fmake_symbol ()
2548 #0 0x190c0c0 in Fmake_symbol ()
2549 #1 0x1942ca4 in init_obarray ()
2550 #2 0x18b3500 in main ()
2551 #3 0x114371c in __libc_start_main (argc=5, argv=0x7ffff5b4, envp=0x7ffff5cc,
2553 This could happen because GCC version 2.95 and later changed the base
2554 of the load address to 0x10000000. Emacs needs to be told about this,
2555 but we currently cannot do that automatically, because that breaks
2556 other versions of GNU/Linux on the MacPPC. Until we find a way to
2557 distinguish between the Yellow Dog and the other varieties of
2558 GNU/Linux systems on the PPC, you will have to manually uncomment the
2559 following section near the end of the file src/m/macppc.h in the Emacs
2562 #if 0 /* This breaks things on PPC GNU/Linux except for Yellowdog,
2563 even with identical GCC, as, ld. Let's take it out until we
2564 know what's really going on here. */
2565 /* GCC 2.95 and newer on GNU/Linux PPC changed the load address to
2567 #if defined __linux__
2568 #if __GNUC__ > 2 || (__GNUC__ == 2 && __GNUC_MINOR__ >= 95)
2569 #define DATA_SEG_BITS 0x10000000
2574 Remove the "#if 0" and "#endif" directives which surround this, save
2575 the file, and then reconfigure and rebuild Emacs. The dumping process
2580 *** Installing Emacs gets an error running `install-info'.
2582 You need to install a recent version of Texinfo; that package
2583 supplies the `install-info' command.
2587 *** Emacs binary is not in executable format, and cannot be run.
2589 This was reported to happen when Emacs is built in a directory mounted
2590 via NFS, for some combinations of NFS client and NFS server.
2591 Usually, the file `emacs' produced in these cases is full of
2592 binary null characters, and the `file' utility says:
2594 emacs: ASCII text, with no line terminators
2596 We don't know what exactly causes this failure. A work-around is to
2597 build Emacs in a directory on a local disk.
2599 *** The dumped Emacs crashes when run, trying to write pure data.
2601 Two causes have been seen for such problems.
2603 1) On a system where getpagesize is not a system call, it is defined
2604 as a macro. If the definition (in both unexec.c and malloc.c) is wrong,
2605 it can cause problems like this. You might be able to find the correct
2606 value in the man page for a.out (5).
2608 2) Some systems allocate variables declared static among the
2609 initialized variables. Emacs makes all initialized variables in most
2610 of its files pure after dumping, but the variables declared static and
2611 not initialized are not supposed to be pure. On these systems you
2612 may need to add "#define static" to the m- or the s- file.
2616 ** Error messages `Wrong number of arguments: #<subr where-is-internal>, 5'.
2618 This typically results from having the powerkey library loaded.
2619 Powerkey was designed for Emacs 19.22. It is obsolete now because
2620 Emacs 19 now has this feature built in; and powerkey also calls
2621 where-is-internal in an obsolete way.
2623 So the fix is to arrange not to load powerkey.
2625 * Runtime problems on legacy systems
2627 This section covers bugs reported on very old hardware or software.
2628 If you are using hardware and an operating system shipped after 2000,
2629 it is unlikely you will see any of these.
2631 ** Ancient operating systems
2633 AIX 4.2 was end-of-lifed on Dec 31st, 1999.
2635 *** AIX: You get this compiler error message:
2637 Processing include file ./XMenuInt.h
2638 1501-106: (S) Include file X11/Xlib.h not found.
2640 This means your system was installed with only the X11 runtime i.d
2641 libraries. You have to find your sipo (bootable tape) and install
2642 X11Dev... with smit.
2644 (This report must be ancient. Bootable tapes are long dead.)
2646 *** AIX 3.2.4: Releasing Ctrl/Act key has no effect, if Shift is down.
2648 Due to a feature of AIX, pressing or releasing the Ctrl/Act key is
2649 ignored when the Shift, Alt or AltGr keys are held down. This can
2650 lead to the keyboard being "control-locked"--ordinary letters are
2651 treated as control characters.
2653 You can get out of this "control-locked" state by pressing and
2654 releasing Ctrl/Act while not pressing or holding any other keys.
2656 *** AIX 3.2.5: You get this message when running Emacs:
2658 Could not load program emacs
2659 Symbol smtcheckinit in csh is undefined
2660 Error was: Exec format error
2664 Could not load program .emacs
2665 Symbol _system_con in csh is undefined
2666 Symbol _fp_trapsta in csh is undefined
2667 Error was: Exec format error
2669 These can happen when you try to run on AIX 3.2.5 a program that was
2670 compiled with 3.2.4. The fix is to recompile.
2672 *** AIX 4.2: Emacs gets a segmentation fault at startup.
2674 If you are using IBM's xlc compiler, compile emacs.c
2675 without optimization; that should avoid the problem.
2679 **** ISC: display-time causes kernel problems on ISC systems.
2681 Under Interactive Unix versions 3.0.1 and 4.0 (and probably other
2682 versions), display-time causes the loss of large numbers of STREVENT
2683 cells. Eventually the kernel's supply of these cells is exhausted.
2684 This makes emacs and the whole system run slow, and can make other
2685 processes die, in particular pcnfsd.
2687 Other emacs functions that communicate with remote processes may have
2688 the same problem. Display-time seems to be far the worst.
2690 The only known fix: Don't run display-time.
2694 SunOS 4.1.4 stopped shipping on Sep 30 1998.
2696 **** SunOS: You get linker errors
2697 ld: Undefined symbol
2698 _get_wmShellWidgetClass
2699 _get_applicationShellWidgetClass
2701 **** Sun 4.0.x: M-x shell persistently reports "Process shell exited abnormally with code 1".
2703 This happened on Suns as a result of what is said to be a bug in Sunos
2704 version 4.0.x. The only fix was to reboot the machine.
2706 **** SunOS4.1.1 and SunOS4.1.3: Mail is lost when sent to local aliases.
2708 Many emacs mail user agents (VM and rmail, for instance) use the
2709 sendmail.el library. This library can arrange for mail to be
2710 delivered by passing messages to the /usr/lib/sendmail (usually)
2711 program . In doing so, it passes the '-t' flag to sendmail, which
2712 means that the name of the recipient of the message is not on the
2713 command line and, therefore, that sendmail must parse the message to
2714 obtain the destination address.
2716 There is a bug in the SunOS4.1.1 and SunOS4.1.3 versions of sendmail.
2717 In short, when given the -t flag, the SunOS sendmail won't recognize
2718 non-local (i.e. NIS) aliases. It has been reported that the Solaris
2719 2.x versions of sendmail do not have this bug. For those using SunOS
2720 4.1, the best fix is to install sendmail V8 or IDA sendmail (which
2721 have other advantages over the regular sendmail as well). At the time
2722 of this writing, these official versions are available:
2724 Sendmail V8 on ftp.cs.berkeley.edu in /ucb/sendmail:
2725 sendmail.8.6.9.base.tar.Z (the base system source & documentation)
2726 sendmail.8.6.9.cf.tar.Z (configuration files)
2727 sendmail.8.6.9.misc.tar.Z (miscellaneous support programs)
2728 sendmail.8.6.9.xdoc.tar.Z (extended documentation, with postscript)
2730 IDA sendmail on vixen.cso.uiuc.edu in /pub:
2731 sendmail-5.67b+IDA-1.5.tar.gz
2733 **** Sunos 4: You get the error ld: Undefined symbol __lib_version.
2735 This is the result of using cc or gcc with the shared library meant
2736 for acc (the Sunpro compiler). Check your LD_LIBRARY_PATH and delete
2737 /usr/lang/SC2.0.1 or some similar directory.
2739 **** SunOS 4.1.3: Emacs unpredictably crashes in _yp_dobind_soft.
2741 This happens if you configure Emacs specifying just `sparc-sun-sunos4'
2742 on a system that is version 4.1.3. You must specify the precise
2743 version number (or let configure figure out the configuration, which
2744 it can do perfectly well for SunOS).
2746 **** Sunos 4.1.3: Emacs gets hung shortly after startup.
2748 We think this is due to a bug in Sunos. The word is that
2749 one of these Sunos patches fixes the bug:
2751 100075-11 100224-06 100347-03 100482-05 100557-02 100623-03 100804-03 101080-01
2752 100103-12 100249-09 100496-02 100564-07 100630-02 100891-10 101134-01
2753 100170-09 100296-04 100377-09 100507-04 100567-04 100650-02 101070-01 101145-01
2754 100173-10 100305-15 100383-06 100513-04 100570-05 100689-01 101071-03 101200-02
2755 100178-09 100338-05 100421-03 100536-02 100584-05 100784-01 101072-01 101207-01
2757 We don't know which of these patches really matter. If you find out
2758 which ones, please inform bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
2760 **** SunOS 4: Emacs processes keep going after you kill the X server
2761 (or log out, if you logged in using X).
2763 Someone reported that recompiling with GCC 2.7.0 fixed this problem.
2765 The fix to this is to install patch 100573 for OpenWindows 3.0
2766 or link libXmu statically.
2768 **** Sunos 5.3: Subprocesses remain, hanging but not zombies.
2770 A bug in Sunos 5.3 causes Emacs subprocesses to remain after Emacs
2771 exits. Sun patch # 101415-02 is part of the fix for this, but it only
2772 applies to ptys, and doesn't fix the problem with subprocesses
2773 communicating through pipes.
2777 **** Shell mode ignores interrupts on Apollo Domain.
2779 You may find that M-x shell prints the following message:
2781 Warning: no access to tty; thus no job control in this shell...
2783 This can happen if there are not enough ptys on your system.
2784 Here is how to make more of them.
2788 # shows how many pty's you have. I had 8, named pty0 to pty7)
2790 # creates eight new pty's
2794 *** Irix 6.2: No visible display on mips-sgi-irix6.2 when compiling with GCC 2.8.1.
2796 This problem went away after installing the latest IRIX patches
2799 The same problem has been reported on Irix 6.3.
2801 *** Irix 6.3: substituting environment variables in file names
2802 in the minibuffer gives peculiar error messages such as
2804 Substituting nonexistent environment variable ""
2806 This is not an Emacs bug; it is caused by something in SGI patch
2807 003082 August 11, 1998.
2811 **** OPENSTEP 4.2: Compiling syntax.c with gcc 2.7.2.1 fails.
2813 The compiler was reported to crash while compiling syntax.c with the
2816 cc: Internal compiler error: program cc1obj got fatal signal 11
2818 To work around this, replace the macros UPDATE_SYNTAX_TABLE_FORWARD,
2819 INC_BOTH, and INC_FROM with functions. To this end, first define 3
2820 functions, one each for every macro. Here's an example:
2822 static int update_syntax_table_forward(int from)
2824 return(UPDATE_SYNTAX_TABLE_FORWARD(from));
2825 }/*update_syntax_table_forward*/
2827 Then replace all references to UPDATE_SYNTAX_TABLE_FORWARD in syntax.c
2828 with a call to the function update_syntax_table_forward.
2832 **** Strange results from format %d in a few cases, on a Sun.
2834 Sun compiler version SC3.0 has been found to miscompile part of
2835 editfns.c. The workaround is to compile with some other compiler such
2838 **** On Solaris, Emacs dumps core if lisp-complete-symbol is called.
2840 If you compile Emacs with the -fast or -xO4 option with version 3.0.2
2841 of the Sun C compiler, Emacs dumps core when lisp-complete-symbol is
2842 called. The problem does not happen if you compile with GCC.
2844 **** On Solaris, Emacs crashes if you use (display-time).
2846 This can happen if you configure Emacs without specifying the precise
2847 version of Solaris that you are using.
2849 **** Solaris 2.3 and 2.4: Unpredictable segmentation faults.
2851 A user reported that this happened in 19.29 when it was compiled with
2852 the Sun compiler, but not when he recompiled with GCC 2.7.0.
2854 We do not know whether something in Emacs is partly to blame for this.
2856 **** Solaris 2.4: Emacs dumps core on startup.
2858 Bill Sebok says that the cause of this is Solaris 2.4 vendor patch
2859 102303-05, which extends the Solaris linker to deal with the Solaris
2860 Common Desktop Environment's linking needs. You can fix the problem
2861 by removing this patch and installing patch 102049-02 instead.
2862 However, that linker version won't work with CDE.
2864 Solaris 2.5 comes with a linker that has this bug. It is reported that if
2865 you install all the latest patches (as of June 1996), the bug is fixed.
2866 We suspect the crucial patch is one of these, but we don't know
2869 103093-03: [README] SunOS 5.5: kernel patch (2140557 bytes)
2870 102832-01: [README] OpenWindows 3.5: Xview Jumbo Patch (4181613 bytes)
2871 103242-04: [README] SunOS 5.5: linker patch (595363 bytes)
2873 (One user reports that the bug was fixed by those patches together
2874 with patches 102980-04, 103279-01, 103300-02, and 103468-01.)
2876 If you can determine which patch does fix the bug, please tell
2877 bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
2879 Meanwhile, the GNU linker links Emacs properly on both Solaris 2.4 and
2882 **** Solaris 2.4: Dired hangs and C-g does not work. Or Emacs hangs
2883 forever waiting for termination of a subprocess that is a zombie.
2885 casper@fwi.uva.nl says the problem is in X11R6. Rebuild libX11.so
2886 after changing the file xc/config/cf/sunLib.tmpl. Change the lines
2889 #define SharedX11Reqs -lthread
2894 #if OSMinorVersion < 4
2896 #define SharedX11Reqs -lthread
2900 Be sure also to edit x/config/cf/sun.cf so that OSMinorVersion is 4
2901 (as it should be for Solaris 2.4). The file has three definitions for
2902 OSMinorVersion: the first is for x86, the second for SPARC under
2903 Solaris, and the third for SunOS 4. Make sure to update the
2904 definition for your type of machine and system.
2906 Then do `make Everything' in the top directory of X11R6, to rebuild
2907 the makefiles and rebuild X. The X built this way work only on
2908 Solaris 2.4, not on 2.3.
2910 For multithreaded X to work it is necessary to install patch
2911 101925-02 to fix problems in header files [2.4]. You need
2912 to reinstall gcc or re-run just-fixinc after installing that
2915 However, Frank Rust <frust@iti.cs.tu-bs.de> used a simpler solution:
2917 #define ThreadedX YES
2919 #define ThreadedX NO
2920 in sun.cf and did `make World' to rebuild X11R6. Removing all
2921 `-DXTHREAD*' flags and `-lthread' entries from lib/X11/Makefile and
2922 typing 'make install' in that directory also seemed to work.
2924 **** Solaris 2.x: GCC complains "64 bit integer types not supported".
2926 This suggests that GCC is not installed correctly. Most likely you
2927 are using GCC 2.7.2.3 (or earlier) on Solaris 2.6 (or later); this
2928 does not work without patching. To run GCC 2.7.2.3 on Solaris 2.6 or
2929 later, you must patch fixinc.svr4 and reinstall GCC from scratch as
2930 described in the Solaris FAQ
2931 <http://www.wins.uva.nl/pub/solaris/solaris2.html>. A better fix is
2932 to upgrade to GCC 2.8.1 or later.
2934 **** Solaris 2.7: Building Emacs with WorkShop Compilers 5.0 98/12/15
2935 C 5.0 failed, apparently with non-default CFLAGS, most probably due to
2936 compiler bugs. Using Sun Solaris 2.7 Sun WorkShop 6 update 1 C
2937 release was reported to work without problems. It worked OK on
2938 another system with Solaris 8 using apparently the same 5.0 compiler
2939 and the default CFLAGS.
2941 **** Solaris 2.x: Emacs dumps core when built with Motif.
2943 The Solaris Motif libraries are buggy, at least up through Solaris 2.5.1.
2944 Install the current Motif runtime library patch appropriate for your host.
2945 (Make sure the patch is current; some older patch versions still have the bug.)
2946 You should install the other patches recommended by Sun for your host, too.
2947 You can obtain Sun patches from ftp://sunsolve.sun.com/pub/patches/;
2948 look for files with names ending in `.PatchReport' to see which patches
2949 are currently recommended for your host.
2951 On Solaris 2.6, Emacs is said to work with Motif when Solaris patch
2952 105284-12 is installed, but fail when 105284-15 is installed.
2953 105284-18 might fix it again.
2955 **** Solaris 2.6 and 7: the Compose key does not work.
2957 This is a bug in Motif in Solaris. Supposedly it has been fixed for
2958 the next major release of Solaris. However, if someone with Sun
2959 support complains to Sun about the bug, they may release a patch.
2960 If you do this, mention Sun bug #4188711.
2962 One workaround is to use a locale that allows non-ASCII characters.
2963 For example, before invoking emacs, set the LC_ALL environment
2964 variable to "en_US" (American English). The directory /usr/lib/locale
2965 lists the supported locales; any locale other than "C" or "POSIX"
2968 pen@lysator.liu.se says (Feb 1998) that the Compose key does work
2969 if you link with the MIT X11 libraries instead of the Solaris X11
2972 *** HP/UX versions before 11.0
2974 HP/UX 9 was end-of-lifed in December 1998.
2975 HP/UX 10 was end-of-lifed in May 1999.
2977 **** HP/UX 9: Emacs crashes with SIGBUS or SIGSEGV after you delete a frame.
2979 We think this is due to a bug in the X libraries provided by HP. With
2980 the alternative X libraries in /usr/contrib/mitX11R5/lib, the problem
2983 *** HP/UX 10: Large file support is disabled.
2985 See the comments in src/s/hpux10.h.
2987 *** HP/UX: Emacs is slow using X11R5.
2989 This happens if you use the MIT versions of the X libraries--it
2990 doesn't run as fast as HP's version. People sometimes use the version
2991 because they see the HP version doesn't have the libraries libXaw.a,
2992 libXmu.a, libXext.a and others. HP/UX normally doesn't come with
2993 those libraries installed. To get good performance, you need to
2994 install them and rebuild Emacs.
2996 *** Ultrix and Digital Unix
2998 **** Ultrix 4.2: `make install' fails on install-doc with `Error 141'.
3000 This happens on Ultrix 4.2 due to failure of a pipeline of tar
3001 commands. We don't know why they fail, but the bug seems not to be in
3002 Emacs. The workaround is to run the shell command in install-doc by
3005 **** Digital Unix 4.0: Garbled display on non-X terminals when Emacs runs.
3007 So far it appears that running `tset' triggers this problem (when TERM
3008 is vt100, at least). If you do not run `tset', then Emacs displays
3009 properly. If someone can tell us precisely which effect of running
3010 `tset' actually causes the problem, we may be able to implement a fix
3013 **** Ultrix: `expand-file-name' fails to work on any but the machine you dumped Emacs on.
3015 On Ultrix, if you use any of the functions which look up information
3016 in the passwd database before dumping Emacs (say, by using
3017 expand-file-name in site-init.el), then those functions will not work
3018 in the dumped Emacs on any host but the one Emacs was dumped on.
3020 The solution? Don't use expand-file-name in site-init.el, or in
3021 anything it loads. Yuck - some solution.
3023 I'm not sure why this happens; if you can find out exactly what is
3024 going on, and perhaps find a fix or a workaround, please let us know.
3025 Perhaps the YP functions cache some information, the cache is included
3026 in the dumped Emacs, and is then inaccurate on any other host.
3030 **** SVr4: On some variants of SVR4, Emacs does not work at all with X.
3032 Try defining BROKEN_FIONREAD in your config.h file. If this solves
3033 the problem, please send a bug report to tell us this is needed; be
3034 sure to say exactly what type of machine and system you are using.
3036 **** SVr4: After running emacs once, subsequent invocations crash.
3038 Some versions of SVR4 have a serious bug in the implementation of the
3039 mmap () system call in the kernel; this causes emacs to run correctly
3040 the first time, and then crash when run a second time.
3042 Contact your vendor and ask for the mmap bug fix; in the mean time,
3043 you may be able to work around the problem by adding a line to your
3044 operating system description file (whose name is reported by the
3045 configure script) that reads:
3046 #define SYSTEM_MALLOC
3047 This makes Emacs use memory less efficiently, but seems to work around
3050 *** Irix 5 and earlier
3052 Exactly when Irix-5 end-of-lifed is obscure. But since Irix 6.0
3053 shipped in 1994, it has been some years.
3055 **** Irix 5.2: unexelfsgi.c can't find cmplrs/stsupport.h.
3057 The file cmplrs/stsupport.h was included in the wrong file set in the
3058 Irix 5.2 distribution. You can find it in the optional fileset
3059 compiler_dev, or copy it from some other Irix 5.2 system. A kludgy
3060 workaround is to change unexelfsgi.c to include sym.h instead of
3063 **** Irix 5.3: "out of virtual swap space".
3065 This message occurs when the system runs out of swap space due to too
3066 many large programs running. The solution is either to provide more
3067 swap space or to reduce the number of large programs being run. You
3068 can check the current status of the swap space by executing the
3071 You can increase swap space by changing the file /etc/fstab. Adding a
3074 /usr/swap/swap.more swap swap pri=3 0 0
3076 where /usr/swap/swap.more is a file previously created (for instance
3077 by using /etc/mkfile), will increase the swap space by the size of
3078 that file. Execute `swap -m' or reboot the machine to activate the
3079 new swap area. See the manpages for `swap' and `fstab' for further
3082 The objectserver daemon can use up lots of memory because it can be
3083 swamped with NIS information. It collects information about all users
3084 on the network that can log on to the host.
3086 If you want to disable the objectserver completely, you can execute
3087 the command `chkconfig objectserver off' and reboot. That may disable
3088 some of the window system functionality, such as responding CDROM
3091 You can also remove NIS support from the objectserver. The SGI `admin'
3092 FAQ has a detailed description on how to do that; see question 35
3093 ("Why isn't the objectserver working?"). The admin FAQ can be found at
3094 ftp://viz.tamu.edu/pub/sgi/faq/.
3096 **** Irix 5.3: Emacs crashes in utmpname.
3098 This problem is fixed in Patch 3175 for Irix 5.3.
3099 It is also fixed in Irix versions 6.2 and up.
3101 **** Irix 6.0: Make tries (and fails) to build a program named unexelfsgi.
3103 A compiler bug inserts spaces into the string "unexelfsgi . o"
3104 in src/Makefile. Edit src/Makefile, after configure is run,
3105 find that string, and take out the spaces.
3107 Compiler fixes in Irix 6.0.1 should eliminate this problem.
3109 *** SCO Unix and UnixWare
3111 **** SCO 3.2v4: Unusable default font.
3113 The Open Desktop environment comes with default X resource settings
3114 that tell Emacs to use a variable-width font. Emacs cannot use such
3115 fonts, so it does not work.
3117 This is caused by the file /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/ScoTerm, which is
3118 the application-specific resource file for the `scoterm' terminal
3119 emulator program. It contains several extremely general X resources
3120 that affect other programs besides `scoterm'. In particular, these
3121 resources affect Emacs also:
3123 *Font: -*-helvetica-medium-r-*--12-*-p-*
3124 *Background: scoBackground
3125 *Foreground: scoForeground
3127 The best solution is to create an application-specific resource file for
3128 Emacs, /usr/lib/X11/sco/startup/Emacs, with the following contents:
3130 Emacs*Font: -*-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-120-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1
3131 Emacs*Background: white
3132 Emacs*Foreground: black
3134 (These settings mimic the Emacs defaults, but you can change them to
3135 suit your needs.) This resource file is only read when the X server
3136 starts up, so you should restart it by logging out of the Open Desktop
3137 environment or by running `scologin stop; scologin start` from the shell
3138 as root. Alternatively, you can put these settings in the
3139 /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/Emacs resource file and simply restart Emacs,
3140 but then they will not affect remote invocations of Emacs that use the
3141 Open Desktop display.
3143 These resource files are not normally shared across a network of SCO
3144 machines; you must create the file on each machine individually.
3146 **** SCO 4.2.0: Regular expressions matching bugs on SCO systems.
3148 On SCO, there are problems in regexp matching when Emacs is compiled
3149 with the system compiler. The compiler version is "Microsoft C
3150 version 6", SCO 4.2.0h Dev Sys Maintenance Supplement 01/06/93; Quick
3151 C Compiler Version 1.00.46 (Beta). The solution is to compile with
3154 **** UnixWare 2.1: Error 12 (virtual memory exceeded) when dumping Emacs.
3156 Paul Abrahams (abrahams@acm.org) reports that with the installed
3157 virtual memory settings for UnixWare 2.1.2, an Error 12 occurs during
3158 the "make" that builds Emacs, when running temacs to dump emacs. That
3159 error indicates that the per-process virtual memory limit has been
3160 exceeded. The default limit is probably 32MB. Raising the virtual
3161 memory limit to 40MB should make it possible to finish building Emacs.
3163 You can do this with the command `ulimit' (sh) or `limit' (csh).
3164 But you have to be root to do it.
3166 According to Martin Sohnius, you can also retune this in the kernel:
3168 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune SDATLIM 33554432 ## soft data size limit
3169 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune HDATLIM 33554432 ## hard "
3170 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune SVMMSIZE unlimited ## soft process size limit
3171 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune HVMMSIZE unlimited ## hard "
3172 # /etc/conf/bin/idbuild -B
3174 (He recommends you not change the stack limit, though.)
3175 These changes take effect when you reboot.
3179 **** Linux 1.0-1.04: Typing C-c C-c in Shell mode kills your X server.
3181 This happens with Linux kernel 1.0 thru 1.04, approximately. The workaround is
3182 to define SIGNALS_VIA_CHARACTERS in config.h and recompile Emacs.
3183 Newer Linux kernel versions don't have this problem.
3185 **** Linux 1.3: Output from subprocess (such as man or diff) is randomly
3186 truncated on GNU/Linux systems.
3188 This is due to a kernel bug which seems to be fixed in Linux version
3191 ** Windows 3.1, 95, 98, and ME
3193 *** MS-Windows NT/95: Problems running Perl under Emacs
3195 `perl -de 0' just hangs when executed in an Emacs subshell.
3196 The fault lies with Perl (indirectly with Windows NT/95).
3198 The problem is that the Perl debugger explicitly opens a connection to
3199 "CON", which is the DOS/NT equivalent of "/dev/tty", for interacting
3202 On Unix, this is okay, because Emacs (or the shell?) creates a
3203 pseudo-tty so that /dev/tty is really the pipe Emacs is using to
3204 communicate with the subprocess.
3206 On NT, this fails because CON always refers to the handle for the
3207 relevant console (approximately equivalent to a tty), and cannot be
3208 redirected to refer to the pipe Emacs assigned to the subprocess as
3211 A workaround is to modify perldb.pl to use STDIN/STDOUT instead of CON.
3215 *** PERL/LIB/PERLDB.PL.orig Wed May 26 08:24:18 1993
3216 --- PERL/LIB/PERLDB.PL Mon Jul 01 15:28:16 1996
3223 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
3231 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
3236 *** perl/5.001/lib/perl5db.pl.orig Sun Jun 04 21:13:40 1995
3237 --- perl/5.001/lib/perl5db.pl Mon Jul 01 17:00:08 1996
3244 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
3252 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
3256 *** MS-Windows 95: Alt-f6 does not get through to Emacs.
3258 This character seems to be trapped by the kernel in Windows 95.
3259 You can enter M-f6 by typing ESC f6.
3261 *** MS-Windows 95/98/ME: subprocesses do not terminate properly.
3263 This is a limitation of the Operating System, and can cause problems
3264 when shutting down Windows. Ensure that all subprocesses are exited
3265 cleanly before exiting Emacs. For more details, see the FAQ at
3266 http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/windows/.
3268 *** MS-Windows 95/98/ME: crashes when Emacs invokes non-existent programs.
3270 When a program you are trying to run is not found on the PATH,
3271 Windows might respond by crashing or locking up your system. In
3272 particular, this has been reported when trying to compile a Java
3273 program in JDEE when javac.exe is installed, but not on the system
3278 *** When compiling with DJGPP on MS-Windows NT, "config msdos" fails.
3280 If the error message is "VDM has been already loaded", this is because
3281 Windows has a program called `redir.exe' that is incompatible with a
3282 program by the same name supplied with DJGPP, which is used by
3283 config.bat. To resolve this, move the DJGPP's `bin' subdirectory to
3284 the front of your PATH environment variable.
3286 *** When compiling with DJGPP on MS-Windows 95, Make fails for some targets
3289 This can happen if long file name support (the setting of environment
3290 variable LFN) when Emacs distribution was unpacked and during
3291 compilation are not the same. See the MSDOG section of INSTALL for
3292 the explanation of how to avoid this problem.
3294 *** Emacs compiled with DJGPP complains at startup:
3296 "Wrong type of argument: internal-facep, msdos-menu-active-face"
3298 This can happen if you define an environment variable `TERM'. Emacs
3299 on MSDOS uses an internal terminal emulator which is disabled if the
3300 value of `TERM' is anything but the string "internal". Emacs then
3301 works as if its terminal were a dumb glass teletype that doesn't
3302 support faces. To work around this, arrange for `TERM' to be
3303 undefined when Emacs runs. The best way to do that is to add an
3304 [emacs] section to the DJGPP.ENV file which defines an empty value for
3305 `TERM'; this way, only Emacs gets the empty value, while the rest of
3306 your system works as before.
3308 *** MS-DOS: Emacs crashes at startup.
3310 Some users report that Emacs 19.29 requires dpmi memory management,
3311 and crashes on startup if the system does not have it. We don't yet
3312 know why this happens--perhaps these machines don't have enough real
3313 memory, or perhaps something is wrong in Emacs or the compiler.
3314 However, arranging to use dpmi support is a workaround.
3316 You can find out if you have a dpmi host by running go32 without
3317 arguments; it will tell you if it uses dpmi memory. For more
3318 information about dpmi memory, consult the djgpp FAQ. (djgpp
3319 is the GNU C compiler as packaged for MSDOS.)
3321 Compiling Emacs under MSDOS is extremely sensitive for proper memory
3322 configuration. If you experience problems during compilation, consider
3323 removing some or all memory resident programs (notably disk caches)
3324 and make sure that your memory managers are properly configured. See
3325 the djgpp faq for configuration hints.
3327 *** Emacs compiled with DJGPP for MS-DOS/MS-Windows cannot access files
3328 in the directory with the special name `dev' under the root of any
3329 drive, e.g. `c:/dev'.
3331 This is an unfortunate side-effect of the support for Unix-style
3332 device names such as /dev/null in the DJGPP runtime library. A
3333 work-around is to rename the problem directory to another name.
3335 *** MS-DOS+DJGPP: Problems on MS-DOG if DJGPP v2.0 is used to compile Emacs.
3337 There are two DJGPP library bugs which cause problems:
3339 * Running `shell-command' (or `compile', or `grep') you get
3340 `Searching for program: permission denied (EACCES), c:/command.com';
3341 * After you shell to DOS, Ctrl-Break kills Emacs.
3343 To work around these bugs, you can use two files in the msdos
3344 subdirectory: `is_exec.c' and `sigaction.c'. Compile them and link
3345 them into the Emacs executable `temacs'; then they will replace the
3346 incorrect library functions.
3348 *** MS-DOS: Emacs compiled for MSDOS cannot find some Lisp files, or other
3349 run-time support files, when long filename support is enabled.
3351 Usually, this problem will manifest itself when Emacs exits
3352 immediately after flashing the startup screen, because it cannot find
3353 the Lisp files it needs to load at startup. Redirect Emacs stdout
3354 and stderr to a file to see the error message printed by Emacs.
3356 Another manifestation of this problem is that Emacs is unable to load
3357 the support for editing program sources in languages such as C and
3360 This can happen if the Emacs distribution was unzipped without LFN
3361 support, thus causing long filenames to be truncated to the first 6
3362 characters and a numeric tail that Windows 95 normally attaches to it.
3363 You should unzip the files again with a utility that supports long
3364 filenames (such as djtar from DJGPP or InfoZip's UnZip program
3365 compiled with DJGPP v2). The MSDOG section of the file INSTALL
3366 explains this issue in more detail.
3368 Another possible reason for such failures is that Emacs compiled for
3369 MSDOS is used on Windows NT, where long file names are not supported
3370 by this version of Emacs, but the distribution was unpacked by an
3371 unzip program that preserved the long file names instead of truncating
3372 them to DOS 8+3 limits. To be useful on NT, the MSDOS port of Emacs
3373 must be unzipped by a DOS utility, so that long file names are
3376 ** Archaic window managers and toolkits
3378 *** OpenLook: Under OpenLook, the Emacs window disappears when you type M-q.
3380 Some versions of the Open Look window manager interpret M-q as a quit
3381 command for whatever window you are typing at. If you want to use
3382 Emacs with that window manager, you should try to configure the window
3383 manager to use some other command. You can disable the
3384 shortcut keys entirely by adding this line to ~/.OWdefaults:
3386 OpenWindows.WindowMenuAccelerators: False
3388 **** twm: A position you specified in .Xdefaults is ignored, using twm.
3390 twm normally ignores "program-specified" positions.
3391 You can tell it to obey them with this command in your `.twmrc' file:
3393 UsePPosition "on" #allow clients to request a position
3395 ** Bugs related to old DEC hardware
3397 *** The Compose key on a DEC keyboard does not work as Meta key.
3399 This shell command should fix it:
3401 xmodmap -e 'keycode 0xb1 = Meta_L'
3403 *** Keyboard input gets confused after a beep when using a DECserver
3406 This problem seems to be a matter of configuring the DECserver to use
3407 7 bit characters rather than 8 bit characters.
3409 * Build problems on legacy systems
3411 ** BSD/386 1.0: --with-x-toolkit option configures wrong.
3413 This problem is due to bugs in the shell in version 1.0 of BSD/386.
3414 The workaround is to edit the configure file to use some other shell,
3417 ** Digital Unix 4.0: Emacs fails to build, giving error message
3418 Invalid dimension for the charset-ID 160
3420 This is due to a bug or an installation problem in GCC 2.8.0.
3421 Installing a more recent version of GCC fixes the problem.
3423 ** Digital Unix 4.0: Failure in unexec while dumping emacs.
3425 This problem manifests itself as an error message
3427 unexec: Bad address, writing data section to ...
3429 The user suspects that this happened because his X libraries
3430 were built for an older system version,
3432 ./configure --x-includes=/usr/include --x-libraries=/usr/shlib
3434 made the problem go away.
3436 ** Sunos 4.1.1: there are errors compiling sysdep.c.
3438 If you get errors such as
3440 "sysdep.c", line 2017: undefined structure or union
3441 "sysdep.c", line 2017: undefined structure or union
3442 "sysdep.c", line 2019: nodename undefined
3444 This can result from defining LD_LIBRARY_PATH. It is very tricky
3445 to use that environment variable with Emacs. The Emacs configure
3446 script links many test programs with the system libraries; you must
3447 make sure that the libraries available to configure are the same
3448 ones available when you build Emacs.
3450 ** SunOS 4.1.1: You get this error message from GNU ld:
3452 /lib/libc.a(_Q_sub.o): Undefined symbol __Q_get_rp_rd referenced from text segment
3454 The problem is in the Sun shared C library, not in GNU ld.
3456 The solution is to install Patch-ID# 100267-03 from Sun.
3458 ** Sunos 4.1: Undefined symbols when linking using --with-x-toolkit.
3460 If you get the undefined symbols _atowc _wcslen, _iswprint, _iswspace,
3461 _iswcntrl, _wcscpy, and _wcsncpy, then you need to add -lXwchar after
3462 -lXaw in the command that links temacs.
3464 This problem seems to arise only when the international language
3465 extensions to X11R5 are installed.
3467 ** SunOS: Emacs gets error message from linker on Sun.
3469 If the error message says that a symbol such as `f68881_used' or
3470 `ffpa_used' or `start_float' is undefined, this probably indicates
3471 that you have compiled some libraries, such as the X libraries,
3472 with a floating point option other than the default.
3474 It's not terribly hard to make this work with small changes in
3475 crt0.c together with linking with Fcrt1.o, Wcrt1.o or Mcrt1.o.
3476 However, the easiest approach is to build Xlib with the default
3477 floating point option: -fsoft.
3479 ** SunOS: Undefined symbols _dlopen, _dlsym and/or _dlclose.
3481 If you see undefined symbols _dlopen, _dlsym, or _dlclose when linking
3482 with -lX11, compile and link against the file mit/util/misc/dlsym.c in
3483 the MIT X11R5 distribution. Alternatively, link temacs using shared
3484 libraries with s/sunos4shr.h. (This doesn't work if you use the X
3487 If you get the additional error that the linker could not find
3488 lib_version.o, try extracting it from X11/usr/lib/X11/libvim.a in
3489 X11R4, then use it in the link.
3491 ** SunOS4, DGUX 5.4.2: --with-x-toolkit version crashes when used with shared libraries.
3493 On some systems, including Sunos 4 and DGUX 5.4.2 and perhaps others,
3494 unexec doesn't work properly with the shared library for the X
3495 toolkit. You might be able to work around this by using a nonshared
3496 libXt.a library. The real fix is to upgrade the various versions of
3497 unexec and/or ralloc. We think this has been fixed on Sunos 4
3498 and Solaris in version 19.29.
3500 ** HPUX 10.20: Emacs crashes during dumping on the HPPA machine.
3502 This seems to be due to a GCC bug; it is fixed in GCC 2.8.1.
3504 ** VMS: Compilation errors on VMS.
3506 You will get warnings when compiling on VMS because there are
3507 variable names longer than 32 (or whatever it is) characters.
3508 This is not an error. Ignore it.
3510 VAX C does not support #if defined(foo). Uses of this construct
3511 were removed, but some may have crept back in. They must be rewritten.
3513 There is a bug in the C compiler which fails to sign extend characters
3514 in conditional expressions. The bug is:
3519 The result is i == 255; the fix is to typecast the char in the
3520 conditional expression as an (int). Known occurrences of such
3521 constructs in Emacs have been fixed.
3523 ** Vax C compiler bugs affecting Emacs.
3525 You may get one of these problems compiling Emacs:
3527 foo.c line nnn: compiler error: no table entry for op STASG
3528 foo.c: fatal error in /lib/ccom
3530 These are due to bugs in the C compiler; the code is valid C.
3531 Unfortunately, the bugs are unpredictable: the same construct
3532 may compile properly or trigger one of these bugs, depending
3533 on what else is in the source file being compiled. Even changes
3534 in header files that should not affect the file being compiled
3535 can affect whether the bug happens. In addition, sometimes files
3536 that compile correctly on one machine get this bug on another machine.
3538 As a result, it is hard for me to make sure this bug will not affect
3539 you. I have attempted to find and alter these constructs, but more
3540 can always appear. However, I can tell you how to deal with it if it
3541 should happen. The bug comes from having an indexed reference to an
3542 array of Lisp_Objects, as an argument in a function call:
3545 ... foo (5, args[i], ...)...
3546 putting the argument into a temporary variable first, as in
3551 ... foo (r, tem, ...)...
3552 causes the problem to go away.
3553 The `contents' field of a Lisp vector is an array of Lisp_Objects,
3554 so you may see the problem happening with indexed references to that.
3556 ** 68000 C compiler problems
3558 Various 68000 compilers have different problems.
3559 These are some that have been observed.
3561 *** Using value of assignment expression on union type loses.
3562 This means that x = y = z; or foo (x = z); does not work
3563 if x is of type Lisp_Object.
3565 *** "cannot reclaim" error.
3567 This means that an expression is too complicated. You get the correct
3568 line number in the error message. The code must be rewritten with
3569 simpler expressions.
3571 *** XCONS, XSTRING, etc macros produce incorrect code.
3573 If temacs fails to run at all, this may be the cause.
3574 Compile this test program and look at the assembler code:
3576 struct foo { char x; unsigned int y : 24; };
3581 test ((int *) arg.y);
3584 If the code is incorrect, your compiler has this problem.
3585 In the XCONS, etc., macros in lisp.h you must replace (a).u.val with
3586 ((a).u.val + coercedummy) where coercedummy is declared as int.
3588 This problem will not happen if the m-...h file for your type
3589 of machine defines NO_UNION_TYPE. That is the recommended setting now.
3591 *** C compilers lose on returning unions.
3593 I hear that some C compilers cannot handle returning a union type.
3594 Most of the functions in GNU Emacs return type Lisp_Object, which is
3595 defined as a union on some rare architectures.
3597 This problem will not happen if the m-...h file for your type
3598 of machine defines NO_UNION_TYPE.
3601 Copyright 1987, 1988, 1989, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999,
3602 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
3604 Copying and redistribution of this file with or without modification
3605 are permitted without royalty provided this notice is preserved.
3609 paragraph-separate: "[
\f]*$"
3612 arch-tag: 49fc0d95-88cb-4715-b21c-f27fb5a4764a