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1 Copyright (C) 1987, 1988, 1989, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999,
2 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007
3 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
4 See the end of the file for license conditions.
5
6
7 This file describes various problems that have been encountered
8 in compiling, installing and running GNU Emacs. Try doing Ctl-C Ctl-t
9 and browsing through the outline headers.
10
11 * Emacs startup failures
12
13 ** Emacs fails to start, complaining about missing fonts.
14
15 A typical error message might be something like
16
17 No fonts match `-*-fixed-medium-r-*--6-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1'
18
19 This happens because some X resource specifies a bad font family for
20 Emacs to use. The possible places where this specification might be
21 are:
22
23 - in your ~/.Xdefaults file
24
25 - client-side X resource file, such as ~/Emacs or
26 /usr/X11R6/lib/app-defaults/Emacs or
27 /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/app-defaults/Emacs
28
29 One of these files might have bad or malformed specification of a
30 fontset that Emacs should use. To fix the problem, you need to find
31 the problematic line(s) and correct them.
32
33 ** Emacs aborts while starting up, only when run without X.
34
35 This problem often results from compiling Emacs with GCC when GCC was
36 installed incorrectly. The usual error in installing GCC is to
37 specify --includedir=/usr/include. Installation of GCC makes
38 corrected copies of the system header files. GCC is supposed to use
39 the corrected copies in preference to the original system headers.
40 Specifying --includedir=/usr/include causes the original system header
41 files to be used. On some systems, the definition of ioctl in the
42 original system header files is invalid for ANSI C and causes Emacs
43 not to work.
44
45 The fix is to reinstall GCC, and this time do not specify --includedir
46 when you configure it. Then recompile Emacs. Specifying --includedir
47 is appropriate only in very special cases and it should *never* be the
48 same directory where system header files are kept.
49
50 ** Emacs does not start, complaining that it cannot open termcap database file.
51
52 If your system uses Terminfo rather than termcap (most modern
53 systems do), this could happen if the proper version of
54 ncurses is not visible to the Emacs configure script (i.e. it
55 cannot be found along the usual path the linker looks for
56 libraries). It can happen because your version of ncurses is
57 obsolete, or is available only in form of binaries.
58
59 The solution is to install an up-to-date version of ncurses in
60 the developer's form (header files, static libraries and
61 symbolic links); in some GNU/Linux distributions (e.g. Debian)
62 it constitutes a separate package.
63
64 ** Emacs 20 and later fails to load Lisp files at startup.
65
66 The typical error message might be like this:
67
68 "Cannot open load file: fontset"
69
70 This could happen if you compress the file lisp/subdirs.el. That file
71 tells Emacs what are the directories where it should look for Lisp
72 files. Emacs cannot work with subdirs.el compressed, since the
73 Auto-compress mode it needs for this will not be loaded until later,
74 when your .emacs file is processed. (The package `fontset.el' is
75 required to set up fonts used to display text on window systems, and
76 it's loaded very early in the startup procedure.)
77
78 Similarly, any other .el file for which there's no corresponding .elc
79 file could fail to load if it is compressed.
80
81 The solution is to uncompress all .el files which don't have a .elc
82 file.
83
84 Another possible reason for such failures is stale *.elc files
85 lurking somewhere on your load-path. The following command will
86 print any duplicate Lisp files that are present in load-path:
87
88 emacs -q -batch -f list-load-path-shadows
89
90 If this command prints any file names, some of these files are stale,
91 and should be deleted or their directories removed from your
92 load-path.
93
94 ** Emacs prints an error at startup after upgrading from an earlier version.
95
96 An example of such an error is:
97
98 x-complement-fontset-spec: "Wrong type argument: stringp, nil"
99
100 This can be another symptom of stale *.elc files in your load-path.
101 The following command will print any duplicate Lisp files that are
102 present in load-path:
103
104 emacs -q -batch -f list-load-path-shadows
105
106 If this command prints any file names, some of these files are stale,
107 and should be deleted or their directories removed from your
108 load-path.
109
110 ** With X11R6.4, public-patch-3, Emacs crashes at startup.
111
112 Reportedly this patch in X fixes the problem.
113
114 --- xc/lib/X11/imInt.c~ Wed Jun 30 13:31:56 1999
115 +++ xc/lib/X11/imInt.c Thu Jul 1 15:10:27 1999
116 @@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
117 -/* $TOG: imInt.c /main/5 1998/05/30 21:11:16 kaleb $ */
118 +/* $TOG: imInt.c /main/5 1998/05/30 21:11:16 kaleb $ */
119 /******************************************************************
120
121 Copyright 1992, 1993, 1994 by FUJITSU LIMITED
122 @@ -166,8 +166,8 @@
123 _XimMakeImName(lcd)
124 XLCd lcd;
125 {
126 - char* begin;
127 - char* end;
128 + char* begin = NULL;
129 + char* end = NULL;
130 char* ret;
131 int i = 0;
132 char* ximmodifier = XIMMODIFIER;
133 @@ -182,7 +182,11 @@
134 }
135 ret = Xmalloc(end - begin + 2);
136 if (ret != NULL) {
137 - (void)strncpy(ret, begin, end - begin + 1);
138 + if (begin != NULL) {
139 + (void)strncpy(ret, begin, end - begin + 1);
140 + } else {
141 + ret[0] = '\0';
142 + }
143 ret[end - begin + 1] = '\0';
144 }
145 return ret;
146
147 ** Emacs crashes on startup after a glibc upgrade.
148
149 This is caused by a binary incompatible change to the malloc
150 implementation in glibc 2.5.90-22. As a result, Emacs binaries built
151 using prior versions of glibc crash when run under 2.5.90-22.
152
153 This problem was first seen in pre-release versions of Fedora 7, and
154 may be fixed in the final Fedora 7 release. To stop the crash from
155 happening, first try upgrading to the newest version of glibc; if this
156 does not work, rebuild Emacs with the same version of glibc that you
157 will run it under. For details, see
158
159 https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=239344
160
161 * Crash bugs
162
163 ** Emacs crashes in x-popup-dialog.
164
165 This can happen if the dialog widget cannot find the font it wants to
166 use. You can work around the problem by specifying another font with
167 an X resource--for example, `Emacs.dialog*.font: 9x15' (or any font that
168 happens to exist on your X server).
169
170 ** Emacs crashes when you use Bibtex mode.
171
172 This happens if your system puts a small limit on stack size. You can
173 prevent the problem by using a suitable shell command (often `ulimit')
174 to raise the stack size limit before you run Emacs.
175
176 Patches to raise the stack size limit automatically in `main'
177 (src/emacs.c) on various systems would be greatly appreciated.
178
179 ** Error message `Symbol's value as variable is void: x', followed by
180 a segmentation fault and core dump.
181
182 This has been tracked to a bug in tar! People report that tar erroneously
183 added a line like this at the beginning of files of Lisp code:
184
185 x FILENAME, N bytes, B tape blocks
186
187 If your tar has this problem, install GNU tar--if you can manage to
188 untar it :-).
189
190 ** Crashes when displaying GIF images in Emacs built with version
191 libungif-4.1.0 are resolved by using version libungif-4.1.0b1.
192 Configure checks for the correct version, but this problem could occur
193 if a binary built against a shared libungif is run on a system with an
194 older version.
195
196 ** Emacs aborts inside the function `tparam1'.
197
198 This can happen if Emacs was built without terminfo support, but the
199 terminal's capabilities use format that is only supported by terminfo.
200 If your system has ncurses installed, this might happen if your
201 version of ncurses is broken; upgrading to a newer version of ncurses
202 and reconfiguring and rebuilding Emacs should solve this.
203
204 All modern systems support terminfo, so even if ncurses is not the
205 problem, you should look for a way to configure Emacs so that it uses
206 terminfo when built.
207
208 ** Emacs crashes when using the Exceed 6.0 X server.
209
210 If you are using Exceed 6.1, upgrade to a later version. This was
211 reported to prevent the crashes.
212
213 ** Emacs crashes with SIGSEGV in XtInitializeWidgetClass.
214
215 It crashes on X, but runs fine when called with option "-nw".
216
217 This has been observed when Emacs is linked with GNU ld but without passing
218 the -z nocombreloc flag. Emacs normally knows to pass the -z nocombreloc
219 flag when needed, so if you come across a situation where the flag is
220 necessary but missing, please report it via M-x report-emacs-bug.
221
222 On platforms such as Solaris, you can also work around this problem by
223 configuring your compiler to use the native linker instead of GNU ld.
224
225 ** Emacs compiled with Gtk+ crashes when closing a display (x-close-connection).
226
227 This happens because of bugs in Gtk+. Gtk+ 2.10 seems to be OK. See bug
228 http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=85715.
229
230 ** Emacs compiled with Gtk+ crashes on startup on Cygwin.
231
232 A typical error message is
233 ***MEMORY-ERROR***: emacs[5172]: GSlice: failed to allocate 504 bytes
234 (alignment: 512): Function not implemented
235
236 Emacs supplies its own malloc, but glib (part of Gtk+) calls memalign and on
237 Cygwin, that becomes the Cygwin supplied memalign. As malloc is not the
238 Cygwin malloc, the Cygwin memalign always returns ENOSYS. A fix for this
239 problem would be welcome.
240
241 * General runtime problems
242
243 ** Lisp problems
244
245 *** Changes made to .el files do not take effect.
246
247 You may have forgotten to recompile them into .elc files.
248 Then the old .elc files will be loaded, and your changes
249 will not be seen. To fix this, do M-x byte-recompile-directory
250 and specify the directory that contains the Lisp files.
251
252 Emacs should print a warning when loading a .elc file which is older
253 than the corresponding .el file.
254
255 *** Watch out for .emacs files and EMACSLOADPATH environment vars.
256
257 These control the actions of Emacs.
258 ~/.emacs is your Emacs init file.
259 EMACSLOADPATH overrides which directories the function
260 "load" will search.
261
262 If you observe strange problems, check for these and get rid
263 of them, then try again.
264
265 *** Using epop3.el package causes Emacs to signal an error.
266
267 The error message might be something like this:
268
269 "Lisp nesting exceeds max-lisp-eval-depth"
270
271 This happens because epop3 redefines the function gethash, which is a
272 built-in primitive beginning with Emacs 21.1. We don't have a patch
273 for epop3 that fixes this, but perhaps a newer version of epop3
274 corrects that.
275
276 *** Buffers from `with-output-to-temp-buffer' get set up in Help mode.
277
278 Changes in Emacs 20.4 to the hooks used by that function cause
279 problems for some packages, specifically BBDB. See the function's
280 documentation for the hooks involved. BBDB 2.00.06 fixes the problem.
281
282 *** The Hyperbole package causes *Help* buffers not to be displayed in
283 Help mode due to setting `temp-buffer-show-hook' rather than using
284 `add-hook'. Using `(add-hook 'temp-buffer-show-hook
285 'help-mode-maybe)' after loading Hyperbole should fix this.
286
287 ** Keyboard problems
288
289 *** "Compose Character" key does strange things when used as a Meta key.
290
291 If you define one key to serve as both Meta and Compose Character, you
292 will get strange results. In previous Emacs versions, this "worked"
293 in that the key acted as Meta--that's because the older Emacs versions
294 did not try to support Compose Character. Now Emacs tries to do
295 character composition in the standard X way. This means that you
296 must pick one meaning or the other for any given key.
297
298 You can use both functions (Meta, and Compose Character) if you assign
299 them to two different keys.
300
301 *** C-z just refreshes the screen instead of suspending Emacs.
302
303 You are probably using a shell that doesn't support job control, even
304 though the system itself is capable of it. Either use a different shell,
305 or set the variable `cannot-suspend' to a non-nil value.
306
307 *** With M-x enable-flow-control, you need to type C-\ twice
308 to do incremental search--a single C-\ gets no response.
309
310 This has been traced to communicating with your machine via kermit,
311 with C-\ as the kermit escape character. One solution is to use
312 another escape character in kermit. One user did
313
314 set escape-character 17
315
316 in his .kermrc file, to make C-q the kermit escape character.
317
318 ** Mailers and other helper programs
319
320 *** movemail compiled with POP support can't connect to the POP server.
321
322 Make sure that the `pop' entry in /etc/services, or in the services
323 NIS map if your machine uses NIS, has the same port number as the
324 entry on the POP server. A common error is for the POP server to be
325 listening on port 110, the assigned port for the POP3 protocol, while
326 the client is trying to connect on port 109, the assigned port for the
327 old POP protocol.
328
329 *** RMAIL gets error getting new mail.
330
331 RMAIL gets new mail from /usr/spool/mail/$USER using a program
332 called `movemail'. This program interlocks with /bin/mail using
333 the protocol defined by /bin/mail.
334
335 There are two different protocols in general use. One of them uses
336 the `flock' system call. The other involves creating a lock file;
337 `movemail' must be able to write in /usr/spool/mail in order to do
338 this. You control which one is used by defining, or not defining,
339 the macro MAIL_USE_FLOCK in config.h or the m- or s- file it includes.
340 IF YOU DON'T USE THE FORM OF INTERLOCKING THAT IS NORMAL ON YOUR
341 SYSTEM, YOU CAN LOSE MAIL!
342
343 If your system uses the lock file protocol, and fascist restrictions
344 prevent ordinary users from writing the lock files in /usr/spool/mail,
345 you may need to make `movemail' setgid to a suitable group such as
346 `mail'. To do this, use the following commands (as root) after doing the
347 make install.
348
349 chgrp mail movemail
350 chmod 2755 movemail
351
352 Installation normally copies movemail from the build directory to an
353 installation directory which is usually under /usr/local/lib. The
354 installed copy of movemail is usually in the directory
355 /usr/local/lib/emacs/VERSION/TARGET. You must change the group and
356 mode of the installed copy; changing the group and mode of the build
357 directory copy is ineffective.
358
359 *** rcs2log gives you the awk error message "too many fields".
360
361 This is due to an arbitrary limit in certain versions of awk.
362 The solution is to use gawk (GNU awk).
363
364 ** Problems with hostname resolution
365
366 *** Emacs fails to understand most Internet host names, even though
367 the names work properly with other programs on the same system.
368 *** Emacs won't work with X-windows if the value of DISPLAY is HOSTNAME:0.
369 *** Gnus can't make contact with the specified host for nntp.
370
371 This typically happens on Suns and other systems that use shared
372 libraries. The cause is that the site has installed a version of the
373 shared library which uses a name server--but has not installed a
374 similar version of the unshared library which Emacs uses.
375
376 The result is that most programs, using the shared library, work with
377 the nameserver, but Emacs does not.
378
379 The fix is to install an unshared library that corresponds to what you
380 installed in the shared library, and then relink Emacs.
381
382 On SunOS 4.1, simply define HAVE_RES_INIT.
383
384 If you have already installed the name resolver in the file libresolv.a,
385 then you need to compile Emacs to use that library. The easiest way to
386 do this is to add to config.h a definition of LIBS_SYSTEM, LIBS_MACHINE
387 or LIB_STANDARD which uses -lresolv. Watch out! If you redefine a macro
388 that is already in use in your configuration to supply some other libraries,
389 be careful not to lose the others.
390
391 Thus, you could start by adding this to config.h:
392
393 #define LIBS_SYSTEM -lresolv
394
395 Then if this gives you an error for redefining a macro, and you see that
396 the s- file defines LIBS_SYSTEM as -lfoo -lbar, you could change config.h
397 again to say this:
398
399 #define LIBS_SYSTEM -lresolv -lfoo -lbar
400
401 *** Emacs does not know your host's fully-qualified domain name.
402
403 For example, (system-name) returns some variation on
404 "localhost.localdomain", rather the name you were expecting.
405
406 You need to configure your machine with a fully qualified domain name,
407 (i.e. a name with at least one ".") either in /etc/hosts,
408 /etc/hostname, the NIS, or wherever your system calls for specifying
409 this.
410
411 If you cannot fix the configuration, you can set the Lisp variable
412 mail-host-address to the value you want.
413
414 ** NFS and RFS
415
416 *** Emacs says it has saved a file, but the file does not actually
417 appear on disk.
418
419 This can happen on certain systems when you are using NFS, if the
420 remote disk is full. It is due to a bug in NFS (or certain NFS
421 implementations), and there is apparently nothing Emacs can do to
422 detect the problem. Emacs checks the failure codes of all the system
423 calls involved in writing a file, including `close'; but in the case
424 where the problem occurs, none of those system calls fails.
425
426 *** Editing files through RFS gives spurious "file has changed" warnings.
427 It is possible that a change in Emacs 18.37 gets around this problem,
428 but in case not, here is a description of how to fix the RFS bug that
429 causes it.
430
431 There was a serious pair of bugs in the handling of the fsync() system
432 call in the RFS server.
433
434 The first is that the fsync() call is handled as another name for the
435 close() system call (!!). It appears that fsync() is not used by very
436 many programs; Emacs version 18 does an fsync() before closing files
437 to make sure that the bits are on the disk.
438
439 This is fixed by the enclosed patch to the RFS server.
440
441 The second, more serious problem, is that fsync() is treated as a
442 non-blocking system call (i.e., it's implemented as a message that
443 gets sent to the remote system without waiting for a reply). Fsync is
444 a useful tool for building atomic file transactions. Implementing it
445 as a non-blocking RPC call (when the local call blocks until the sync
446 is done) is a bad idea; unfortunately, changing it will break the RFS
447 protocol. No fix was supplied for this problem.
448
449 (as always, your line numbers may vary)
450
451 % rcsdiff -c -r1.2 serversyscall.c
452 RCS file: RCS/serversyscall.c,v
453 retrieving revision 1.2
454 diff -c -r1.2 serversyscall.c
455 *** /tmp/,RCSt1003677 Wed Jan 28 15:15:02 1987
456 --- serversyscall.c Wed Jan 28 15:14:48 1987
457 ***************
458 *** 163,169 ****
459 /*
460 * No return sent for close or fsync!
461 */
462 ! if (syscall == RSYS_close || syscall == RSYS_fsync)
463 proc->p_returnval = deallocate_fd(proc, msg->m_args[0]);
464 else
465 {
466 --- 166,172 ----
467 /*
468 * No return sent for close or fsync!
469 */
470 ! if (syscall == RSYS_close)
471 proc->p_returnval = deallocate_fd(proc, msg->m_args[0]);
472 else
473 {
474
475 ** PSGML
476
477 *** Old versions of the PSGML package use the obsolete variables
478 `before-change-function' and `after-change-function', which are no
479 longer used by Emacs. Please use PSGML 1.2.3 or later.
480
481 *** PSGML conflicts with sgml-mode.
482
483 PSGML package uses the same names of some variables (like keymap)
484 as built-in sgml-mode.el because it was created as a replacement
485 of that package. The conflict will be shown if you load
486 sgml-mode.el before psgml.el. E.g. this could happen if you edit
487 HTML page and then start to work with SGML or XML file. html-mode
488 (from sgml-mode.el) is used for HTML file and loading of psgml.el
489 (for sgml-mode or xml-mode) will cause an error.
490
491 *** Versions of the PSGML package earlier than 1.0.3 (stable) or 1.1.2
492 (alpha) fail to parse DTD files correctly in Emacs 20.3 and later.
493 Here is a patch for psgml-parse.el from PSGML 1.0.1 and, probably,
494 earlier versions.
495
496 --- psgml-parse.el 1998/08/21 19:18:18 1.1
497 +++ psgml-parse.el 1998/08/21 19:20:00
498 @@ -2383,7 +2383,7 @@ (defun sgml-push-to-entity (entity &opti
499 (setq sgml-buffer-parse-state nil))
500 (cond
501 ((stringp entity) ; a file name
502 - (save-excursion (insert-file-contents entity))
503 + (insert-file-contents entity)
504 (setq default-directory (file-name-directory entity)))
505 ((consp (sgml-entity-text entity)) ; external id?
506 (let* ((extid (sgml-entity-text entity))
507
508 ** AUCTeX
509
510 You should not be using a version older than 11.52 if you can avoid
511 it.
512
513 *** Emacs 21 freezes when visiting a TeX file with AUCTeX installed.
514
515 Emacs 21 needs version 10 or later of AUCTeX; upgrading should solve
516 these problems.
517
518 *** No colors in AUCTeX with Emacs 21.
519
520 Upgrade to AUC TeX version 10 or later, and make sure it is
521 byte-compiled with Emacs 21.
522
523 ** PCL-CVS
524
525 *** Lines are not updated or new lines are added in the buffer upon commit.
526
527 When committing files located higher in the hierarchy than the examined
528 directory, some versions of the CVS program return an ambiguous message
529 from which PCL-CVS cannot extract the full location of the committed
530 files. As a result, the corresponding lines in the PCL-CVS buffer are
531 not updated with the new revision of these files, and new lines are
532 added to the top-level directory.
533
534 This can happen with CVS versions 1.12.8 and 1.12.9. Upgrade to CVS
535 1.12.10 or newer to fix this problem.
536
537 ** Miscellaneous problems
538
539 *** Emacs uses 100% of CPU time
540
541 This is a known problem with some versions of the Semantic package.
542 The solution is to upgrade Semantic to version 2.0pre4 (distributed
543 with CEDET 1.0pre4) or later.
544
545 *** Self-documentation messages are garbled.
546
547 This means that the file `etc/DOC-...' doesn't properly correspond
548 with the Emacs executable. Redumping Emacs and then installing the
549 corresponding pair of files should fix the problem.
550
551 *** Programs running under terminal emulator do not recognize `emacs'
552 terminal type.
553
554 The cause of this is a shell startup file that sets the TERMCAP
555 environment variable. The terminal emulator uses that variable to
556 provide the information on the special terminal type that Emacs
557 emulates.
558
559 Rewrite your shell startup file so that it does not change TERMCAP
560 in such a case. You could use the following conditional which sets
561 it only if it is undefined.
562
563 if ( ! ${?TERMCAP} ) setenv TERMCAP ~/my-termcap-file
564
565 Or you could set TERMCAP only when you set TERM--which should not
566 happen in a non-login shell.
567
568 *** In Shell mode, you get a ^M at the end of every line.
569
570 This happens to people who use tcsh, because it is trying to be too
571 smart. It sees that the Shell uses terminal type `unknown' and turns
572 on the flag to output ^M at the end of each line. You can fix the
573 problem by adding this to your .cshrc file:
574
575 if ($?EMACS) then
576 if ("$EMACS" =~ /*) then
577 unset edit
578 stty -icrnl -onlcr -echo susp ^Z
579 endif
580 endif
581
582 *** Emacs startup on GNU/Linux systems (and possibly other systems) is slow.
583
584 This can happen if the system is misconfigured and Emacs can't get the
585 full qualified domain name, FQDN. You should have your FQDN in the
586 /etc/hosts file, something like this:
587
588 127.0.0.1 localhost
589 129.187.137.82 nuc04.t30.physik.tu-muenchen.de nuc04
590
591 The way to set this up may vary on non-GNU systems.
592
593 *** Attempting to visit remote files via ange-ftp fails.
594
595 If the error message is "ange-ftp-file-modtime: Specified time is not
596 representable", then this could happen when `lukemftp' is used as the
597 ftp client. This was reported to happen on Debian GNU/Linux, kernel
598 version 2.4.3, with `lukemftp' 1.5-5, but might happen on other
599 systems as well. To avoid this problem, switch to using the standard
600 ftp client. On a Debian system, type
601
602 update-alternatives --config ftp
603
604 and then choose /usr/bin/netkit-ftp.
605
606 *** JPEG images aren't displayed.
607
608 This has been reported when Emacs is built with jpeg-6a library.
609 Upgrading to jpeg-6b solves the problem. Configure checks for the
610 correct version, but this problem could occur if a binary built
611 against a shared libjpeg is run on a system with an older version.
612
613 *** Dired is very slow.
614
615 This could happen if invocation of the `df' program takes a long
616 time. Possible reasons for this include:
617
618 - ClearCase mounted filesystems (VOBs) that sometimes make `df'
619 response time extremely slow (dozens of seconds);
620
621 - slow automounters on some old versions of Unix;
622
623 - slow operation of some versions of `df'.
624
625 To work around the problem, you could either (a) set the variable
626 `directory-free-space-program' to nil, and thus prevent Emacs from
627 invoking `df'; (b) use `df' from the GNU Fileutils package; or
628 (c) use CVS, which is Free Software, instead of ClearCase.
629
630 *** Versions of the W3 package released before Emacs 21.1 don't run
631 under Emacs 21. This fixed in W3 version 4.0pre.47.
632
633 *** The LDAP support rely on ldapsearch program from OpenLDAP version 2.
634
635 It can fail to work with ldapsearch program from OpenLDAP version 1.
636 Version 1 of OpenLDAP is now deprecated. If you are still using it,
637 please upgrade to version 2. As a temporary workaround, remove
638 argument "-x" from the variable `ldap-ldapsearch-args'.
639
640 *** ps-print commands fail to find prologue files ps-prin*.ps.
641
642 This can happen if you use an old version of X-Symbol package: it
643 defines compatibility functions which trick ps-print into thinking it
644 runs in XEmacs, and look for the prologue files in a wrong directory.
645
646 The solution is to upgrade X-Symbol to a later version.
647
648 *** On systems with shared libraries you might encounter run-time errors
649 from the dynamic linker telling you that it is unable to find some
650 shared libraries, for instance those for Xaw3d or image support.
651 These errors mean Emacs has been linked with a library whose shared
652 library is not in the default search path of the dynamic linker.
653
654 Similar problems could prevent Emacs from building, since the build
655 process invokes Emacs several times.
656
657 On many systems, it is possible to set LD_LIBRARY_PATH in your
658 environment to specify additional directories where shared libraries
659 can be found.
660
661 Other systems allow to set LD_RUN_PATH in a similar way, but before
662 Emacs is linked. With LD_RUN_PATH set, the linker will include a
663 specified run-time search path in the executable.
664
665 On some systems, Emacs can crash due to problems with dynamic
666 linking. Specifically, on SGI Irix 6.5, crashes were reported with
667 backtraces like this:
668
669 (dbx) where
670 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]
671 1 general_find_symbol(0xf49239d, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0xf0000000, 0xf4923aa, 0x0, 0x492ddb2)
672 ["/comp2/mtibuild/v73/workarea/v7.3/rld/rld.c":2140, 0xfb65a98]
673 2 resolve_symbol(0xf49239d, 0x4031184, 0x0, 0xfbdd438, 0x0, 0xf4923aa, 0x0, 0x492ddb2)
674 ["/comp2/mtibuild/v73/workarea/v7.3/rld/rld.c":1947, 0xfb657e4]
675 3 lazy_text_resolve(0xd18, 0x1a3, 0x40302b4, 0x12, 0xf0000000, 0xf4923aa, 0x0, 0x492ddb2)
676 ["/comp2/mtibuild/v73/workarea/v7.3/rld/rld.c":997, 0xfb64d44]
677 4 _rld_text_resolve(0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0)
678 ["/comp2/mtibuild/v73/workarea/v7.3/rld/rld_bridge.s":175, 0xfb6032c]
679
680 (`rld' is the dynamic linker.) We don't know yet why this
681 happens, but setting the environment variable LD_BIND_NOW to 1 (which
682 forces the dynamic linker to bind all shared objects early on) seems
683 to work around the problem.
684
685 Please refer to the documentation of your dynamic linker for details.
686
687 *** You request inverse video, and the first Emacs frame is in inverse
688 video, but later frames are not in inverse video.
689
690 This can happen if you have an old version of the custom library in
691 your search path for Lisp packages. Use M-x list-load-path-shadows to
692 check whether this is true. If it is, delete the old custom library.
693
694 *** When you run Ispell from Emacs, it reports a "misalignment" error.
695
696 This can happen if you compiled the Ispell program to use ASCII
697 characters only and then try to use it from Emacs with non-ASCII
698 characters, like Latin-1. The solution is to recompile Ispell with
699 support for 8-bit characters.
700
701 To see whether your Ispell program supports 8-bit characters, type
702 this at your shell's prompt:
703
704 ispell -vv
705
706 and look in the output for the string "NO8BIT". If Ispell says
707 "!NO8BIT (8BIT)", your speller supports 8-bit characters; otherwise it
708 does not.
709
710 To rebuild Ispell with 8-bit character support, edit the local.h file
711 in the Ispell distribution and make sure it does _not_ define NO8BIT.
712 Then rebuild the speller.
713
714 Another possible cause for "misalignment" error messages is that the
715 version of Ispell installed on your machine is old. Upgrade.
716
717 Yet another possibility is that you are trying to spell-check a word
718 in a language that doesn't fit the dictionary you choose for use by
719 Ispell. (Ispell can only spell-check one language at a time, because
720 it uses a single dictionary.) Make sure that the text you are
721 spelling and the dictionary used by Ispell conform to each other.
722
723 If your spell-checking program is Aspell, it has been reported that if
724 you have a personal configuration file (normally ~/.aspell.conf), it
725 can cause this error. Remove that file, execute `ispell-kill-ispell'
726 in Emacs, and then try spell-checking again.
727
728 * Runtime problems related to font handling
729
730 ** Under X11, some characters appear as hollow boxes.
731
732 Each X11 font covers just a fraction of the characters that Emacs
733 supports. To display the whole range of Emacs characters requires
734 many different fonts, collected into a fontset.
735
736 If some of the fonts called for in your fontset do not exist on your X
737 server, then the characters that have no font appear as hollow boxes.
738 You can remedy the problem by installing additional fonts.
739
740 The intlfonts distribution includes a full spectrum of fonts that can
741 display all the characters Emacs supports. The etl-unicode collection
742 of fonts (available from <URL:ftp://ftp.x.org/contrib/fonts/> and
743 <URL:ftp://ftp.xfree86.org/pub/mirror/X.Org/contrib/fonts/>) includes
744 fonts that can display many Unicode characters; they can also be used
745 by ps-print and ps-mule to print Unicode characters.
746
747 Another cause of this for specific characters is fonts which have a
748 missing glyph and no default character. This is known to occur for
749 character number 160 (no-break space) in some fonts, such as Lucida
750 but Emacs sets the display table for the unibyte and Latin-1 version
751 of this character to display a space.
752
753 ** Under X11, some characters appear improperly aligned in their lines.
754
755 You may have bad X11 fonts; try installing the intlfonts distribution
756 or the etl-unicode collection (see the previous entry).
757
758 ** Certain fonts make each line take one pixel more than it "should".
759
760 This is because these fonts contain characters a little taller
761 than the font's nominal height. Emacs needs to make sure that
762 lines do not overlap.
763
764 ** Loading fonts is very slow.
765
766 You might be getting scalable fonts instead of precomputed bitmaps.
767 Known scalable font directories are "Type1" and "Speedo". A font
768 directory contains scalable fonts if it contains the file
769 "fonts.scale".
770
771 If this is so, re-order your X windows font path to put the scalable
772 font directories last. See the documentation of `xset' for details.
773
774 With some X servers, it may be necessary to take the scalable font
775 directories out of your path entirely, at least for Emacs 19.26.
776 Changes in the future may make this unnecessary.
777
778 ** Font Lock displays portions of the buffer in incorrect faces.
779
780 By far the most frequent cause of this is a parenthesis `(' or a brace
781 `{' in column zero. Font Lock assumes that such a paren is outside of
782 any comment or string. This is of course not true in general, but the
783 vast majority of well-formatted program source files don't have such
784 parens, and therefore this assumption is used to allow optimizations
785 in Font Lock's syntactical analysis. These optimizations avoid some
786 pathological cases where jit-lock, the Just-in-Time fontification
787 introduced with Emacs 21.1, could significantly slow down scrolling
788 through the buffer, especially scrolling backwards, and also jumping
789 to the end of a very large buffer.
790
791 Beginning with version 22.1, a parenthesis or a brace in column zero
792 is highlighted in bold-red face if it is inside a string or a comment,
793 to indicate that it could interfere with Font Lock (and also with
794 indentation) and should be moved or escaped with a backslash.
795
796 If you don't use large buffers, or have a very fast machine which
797 makes the delays insignificant, you can avoid the incorrect
798 fontification by setting the variable
799 `font-lock-beginning-of-syntax-function' to a nil value. (This must
800 be done _after_ turning on Font Lock.)
801
802 Another alternative is to avoid a paren in column zero. For example,
803 in a Lisp string you could precede the paren with a backslash.
804
805 ** With certain fonts, when the cursor appears on a character, the
806 character doesn't appear--you get a solid box instead.
807
808 One user on a Linux-based GNU system reported that this problem went
809 away with installation of a new X server. The failing server was
810 XFree86 3.1.1. XFree86 3.1.2 works.
811
812 ** Characters are displayed as empty boxes or with wrong font under X.
813
814 This can occur when two different versions of FontConfig are used.
815 For example, XFree86 4.3.0 has one version and Gnome usually comes
816 with a newer version. Emacs compiled with --with-gtk will then use
817 the newer version. In most cases the problem can be temporarily
818 fixed by stopping the application that has the error (it can be
819 Emacs or any other application), removing ~/.fonts.cache-1,
820 and then start the application again.
821 If removing ~/.fonts.cache-1 and restarting doesn't help, the
822 application with problem must be recompiled with the same version
823 of FontConfig as the rest of the system uses. For KDE, it is
824 sufficient to recompile Qt.
825
826 ** Emacs pauses for several seconds when changing the default font.
827
828 This has been reported for fvwm 2.2.5 and the window manager of KDE
829 2.1. The reason for the pause is Xt waiting for a ConfigureNotify
830 event from the window manager, which the window manager doesn't send.
831 Xt stops waiting after a default timeout of usually 5 seconds.
832
833 A workaround for this is to add something like
834
835 emacs.waitForWM: false
836
837 to your X resources. Alternatively, add `(wait-for-wm . nil)' to a
838 frame's parameter list, like this:
839
840 (modify-frame-parameters nil '((wait-for-wm . nil)))
841
842 (this should go into your `.emacs' file).
843
844 ** Underlines appear at the wrong position.
845
846 This is caused by fonts having a wrong UNDERLINE_POSITION property.
847 Examples are the font 7x13 on XFree prior to version 4.1, or the jmk
848 neep font from the Debian xfonts-jmk package. To circumvent this
849 problem, set x-use-underline-position-properties to nil in your
850 `.emacs'.
851
852 To see what is the value of UNDERLINE_POSITION defined by the font,
853 type `xlsfonts -lll FONT' and look at the font's UNDERLINE_POSITION
854 property.
855
856 ** When using Exceed, fonts sometimes appear too tall.
857
858 When the display is set to an Exceed X-server and fonts are specified
859 (either explicitly with the -fn option or implicitly with X resources)
860 then the fonts may appear "too tall". The actual character sizes are
861 correct but there is too much vertical spacing between rows, which
862 gives the appearance of "double spacing".
863
864 To prevent this, turn off the Exceed's "automatic font substitution"
865 feature (in the font part of the configuration window).
866
867 ** Subscript/superscript text in TeX is hard to read.
868
869 If `tex-fontify-script' is non-nil, tex-mode displays
870 subscript/superscript text in the faces subscript/superscript, which
871 are smaller than the normal font and lowered/raised. With some fonts,
872 nested superscripts (say) can be hard to read. Switching to a
873 different font, or changing your antialiasing setting (on an LCD
874 screen), can both make the problem disappear. Alternatively, customize
875 the following variables: tex-font-script-display (how much to
876 lower/raise); tex-suscript-height-ratio (how much smaller than
877 normal); tex-suscript-height-minimum (minimum height).
878
879 * Internationalization problems
880
881 ** M-{ does not work on a Spanish PC keyboard.
882
883 Many Spanish keyboards seem to ignore that combination. Emacs can't
884 do anything about it.
885
886 ** Characters from the mule-unicode charsets aren't displayed under X.
887
888 XFree86 4 contains many fonts in iso10646-1 encoding which have
889 minimal character repertoires (whereas the encoding part of the font
890 name is meant to be a reasonable indication of the repertoire
891 according to the XLFD spec). Emacs may choose one of these to display
892 characters from the mule-unicode charsets and then typically won't be
893 able to find the glyphs to display many characters. (Check with C-u
894 C-x = .) To avoid this, you may need to use a fontset which sets the
895 font for the mule-unicode sets explicitly. E.g. to use GNU unifont,
896 include in the fontset spec:
897
898 mule-unicode-2500-33ff:-gnu-unifont-*-iso10646-1,\
899 mule-unicode-e000-ffff:-gnu-unifont-*-iso10646-1,\
900 mule-unicode-0100-24ff:-gnu-unifont-*-iso10646-1
901
902 ** The UTF-8/16/7 coding systems don't encode CJK (Far Eastern) characters.
903
904 Emacs directly supports the Unicode BMP whose code points are in the
905 ranges 0000-33ff and e000-ffff, and indirectly supports the parts of
906 CJK characters belonging to these legacy charsets:
907
908 GB2312, Big5, JISX0208, JISX0212, JISX0213-1, JISX0213-2, KSC5601
909
910 The latter support is done in Utf-Translate-Cjk mode (turned on by
911 default). Which Unicode CJK characters are decoded into which Emacs
912 charset is decided by the current language environment. For instance,
913 in Chinese-GB, most of them are decoded into chinese-gb2312.
914
915 If you read UTF-8 data with code points outside these ranges, the
916 characters appear in the buffer as raw bytes of the original UTF-8
917 (composed into a single quasi-character) and they will be written back
918 correctly as UTF-8, assuming you don't break the composed sequences.
919 If you read such characters from UTF-16 or UTF-7 data, they are
920 substituted with the Unicode `replacement character', and you lose
921 information.
922
923 ** Mule-UCS loads very slowly.
924
925 Changes to Emacs internals interact badly with Mule-UCS's `un-define'
926 library, which is the usual interface to Mule-UCS. Apply the
927 following patch to Mule-UCS 0.84 and rebuild it. That will help,
928 though loading will still be slower than in Emacs 20. (Some
929 distributions, such as Debian, may already have applied such a patch.)
930
931 --- lisp/un-define.el 6 Mar 2001 22:41:38 -0000 1.30
932 +++ lisp/un-define.el 19 Apr 2002 18:34:26 -0000
933 @@ -610,13 +624,21 @@ by calling post-read-conversion and pre-
934
935 (mapcar
936 (lambda (x)
937 - (mapcar
938 - (lambda (y)
939 - (mucs-define-coding-system
940 - (nth 0 y) (nth 1 y) (nth 2 y)
941 - (nth 3 y) (nth 4 y) (nth 5 y) (nth 6 y))
942 - (coding-system-put (car y) 'alias-coding-systems (list (car x))))
943 - (cdr x)))
944 + (if (fboundp 'register-char-codings)
945 + ;; Mule 5, where we don't need the eol-type specified and
946 + ;; register-char-codings may be very slow for these coding
947 + ;; system definitions.
948 + (let ((y (cadr x)))
949 + (mucs-define-coding-system
950 + (car x) (nth 1 y) (nth 2 y)
951 + (nth 3 y) (nth 4 y) (nth 5 y)))
952 + (mapcar
953 + (lambda (y)
954 + (mucs-define-coding-system
955 + (nth 0 y) (nth 1 y) (nth 2 y)
956 + (nth 3 y) (nth 4 y) (nth 5 y) (nth 6 y))
957 + (coding-system-put (car y) 'alias-coding-systems (list (car x)))))
958 + (cdr x)))
959 `((utf-8
960 (utf-8-unix
961 ?u "UTF-8 coding system"
962
963 Note that Emacs has native support for Unicode, roughly equivalent to
964 Mule-UCS's, so you may not need it.
965
966 ** Mule-UCS compilation problem.
967
968 Emacs of old versions and XEmacs byte-compile the form `(progn progn
969 ...)' the same way as `(progn ...)', but Emacs of version 21.3 and the
970 later process that form just as interpreter does, that is, as `progn'
971 variable reference. Apply the following patch to Mule-UCS 0.84 to
972 make it compiled by the latest Emacs.
973
974 --- mucs-ccl.el 2 Sep 2005 00:42:23 -0000 1.1.1.1
975 +++ mucs-ccl.el 2 Sep 2005 01:31:51 -0000 1.3
976 @@ -639,10 +639,14 @@
977 (mucs-notify-embedment 'mucs-ccl-required name)
978 (setq ccl-pgm-list (cdr ccl-pgm-list)))
979 ; (message "MCCLREGFIN:%S" result)
980 - `(progn
981 - (setq mucs-ccl-facility-alist
982 - (quote ,mucs-ccl-facility-alist))
983 - ,@result)))
984 + ;; The only way the function is used in this package is included
985 + ;; in `mucs-package-definition-end-hook' value, where it must
986 + ;; return (possibly empty) *list* of forms. Do this. Do not rely
987 + ;; on byte compiler to remove extra `progn's in `(progn ...)'
988 + ;; form.
989 + `((setq mucs-ccl-facility-alist
990 + (quote ,mucs-ccl-facility-alist))
991 + ,@result)))
992
993 ;;; Add hook for embedding translation informations to a package.
994 (add-hook 'mucs-package-definition-end-hook
995
996 ** Accented ISO-8859-1 characters are displayed as | or _.
997
998 Try other font set sizes (S-mouse-1). If the problem persists with
999 other sizes as well, your text is corrupted, probably through software
1000 that is not 8-bit clean. If the problem goes away with another font
1001 size, it's probably because some fonts pretend to be ISO-8859-1 fonts
1002 when they are really ASCII fonts. In particular the schumacher-clean
1003 fonts have this bug in some versions of X.
1004
1005 To see what glyphs are included in a font, use `xfd', like this:
1006
1007 xfd -fn -schumacher-clean-medium-r-normal--12-120-75-75-c-60-iso8859-1
1008
1009 If this shows only ASCII glyphs, the font is indeed the source of the
1010 problem.
1011
1012 The solution is to remove the corresponding lines from the appropriate
1013 `fonts.alias' file, then run `mkfontdir' in that directory, and then run
1014 `xset fp rehash'.
1015
1016 ** The `oc-unicode' package doesn't work with Emacs 21.
1017
1018 This package tries to define more private charsets than there are free
1019 slots now. The current built-in Unicode support is actually more
1020 flexible. (Use option `utf-translate-cjk-mode' if you need CJK
1021 support.) Files encoded as emacs-mule using oc-unicode aren't
1022 generally read correctly by Emacs 21.
1023
1024 ** After a while, Emacs slips into unibyte mode.
1025
1026 The VM mail package, which is not part of Emacs, sometimes does
1027 (standard-display-european t)
1028 That should be changed to
1029 (standard-display-european 1 t)
1030
1031 * X runtime problems
1032
1033 ** X keyboard problems
1034
1035 *** You "lose characters" after typing Compose Character key.
1036
1037 This is because the Compose Character key is defined as the keysym
1038 Multi_key, and Emacs (seeing that) does the proper X11
1039 character-composition processing. If you don't want your Compose key
1040 to do that, you can redefine it with xmodmap.
1041
1042 For example, here's one way to turn it into a Meta key:
1043
1044 xmodmap -e "keysym Multi_key = Meta_L"
1045
1046 If all users at your site of a particular keyboard prefer Meta to
1047 Compose, you can make the remapping happen automatically by adding the
1048 xmodmap command to the xdm setup script for that display.
1049
1050 *** Using X Windows, control-shift-leftbutton makes Emacs hang.
1051
1052 Use the shell command `xset bc' to make the old X Menu package work.
1053
1054 *** C-SPC fails to work on Fedora GNU/Linux (or with fcitx input method).
1055
1056 Fedora Core 4 steals the C-SPC key by default for the `iiimx' program
1057 which is the input method for some languages. It blocks Emacs users
1058 from using the C-SPC key for `set-mark-command'.
1059
1060 One solutions is to remove the `<Ctrl>space' from the `Iiimx' file
1061 which can be found in the `/usr/lib/X11/app-defaults' directory.
1062 However, that requires root access.
1063
1064 Another is to specify `Emacs*useXIM: false' in your X resources.
1065
1066 Another is to build Emacs with the `--without-xim' configure option.
1067
1068 The same problem happens on any other system if you are using fcitx
1069 (Chinese input method) which by default use C-SPC for toggling. If
1070 you want to use fcitx with Emacs, you have two choices. Toggle fcitx
1071 by another key (e.g. C-\) by modifying ~/.fcitx/config, or be
1072 accustomed to use C-@ for `set-mark-command'.
1073
1074 *** M-SPC seems to be ignored as input.
1075
1076 See if your X server is set up to use this as a command
1077 for character composition.
1078
1079 *** The S-C-t key combination doesn't get passed to Emacs on X.
1080
1081 This happens because some X configurations assign the Ctrl-Shift-t
1082 combination the same meaning as the Multi_key. The offending
1083 definition is in the file `...lib/X11/locale/iso8859-1/Compose'; there
1084 might be other similar combinations which are grabbed by X for similar
1085 purposes.
1086
1087 We think that this can be countermanded with the `xmodmap' utility, if
1088 you want to be able to bind one of these key sequences within Emacs.
1089
1090 *** Under X, C-v and/or other keys don't work.
1091
1092 These may have been intercepted by your window manager. In
1093 particular, AfterStep 1.6 is reported to steal C-v in its default
1094 configuration. Various Meta keys are also likely to be taken by the
1095 configuration of the `feel'. See the WM's documentation for how to
1096 change this.
1097
1098 *** Clicking C-mouse-2 in the scroll bar doesn't split the window.
1099
1100 This currently doesn't work with scroll-bar widgets (and we don't know
1101 a good way of implementing it with widgets). If Emacs is configured
1102 --without-toolkit-scroll-bars, C-mouse-2 on the scroll bar does work.
1103
1104 *** Inability to send an Alt-modified key, when Emacs is communicating
1105 directly with an X server.
1106
1107 If you have tried to bind an Alt-modified key as a command, and it
1108 does not work to type the command, the first thing you should check is
1109 whether the key is getting through to Emacs. To do this, type C-h c
1110 followed by the Alt-modified key. C-h c should say what kind of event
1111 it read. If it says it read an Alt-modified key, then make sure you
1112 have made the key binding correctly.
1113
1114 If C-h c reports an event that doesn't have the Alt modifier, it may
1115 be because your X server has no key for the Alt modifier. The X
1116 server that comes from MIT does not set up the Alt modifier by
1117 default.
1118
1119 If your keyboard has keys named Alt, you can enable them as follows:
1120
1121 xmodmap -e 'add mod2 = Alt_L'
1122 xmodmap -e 'add mod2 = Alt_R'
1123
1124 If the keyboard has just one key named Alt, then only one of those
1125 commands is needed. The modifier `mod2' is a reasonable choice if you
1126 are using an unmodified MIT version of X. Otherwise, choose any
1127 modifier bit not otherwise used.
1128
1129 If your keyboard does not have keys named Alt, you can use some other
1130 keys. Use the keysym command in xmodmap to turn a function key (or
1131 some other 'spare' key) into Alt_L or into Alt_R, and then use the
1132 commands show above to make them modifier keys.
1133
1134 Note that if you have Alt keys but no Meta keys, Emacs translates Alt
1135 into Meta. This is because of the great importance of Meta in Emacs.
1136
1137 ** Window-manager and toolkit-related problems
1138
1139 *** Gnome: Emacs receives input directly from the keyboard, bypassing XIM.
1140
1141 This seems to happen when gnome-settings-daemon version 2.12 or later
1142 is running. If gnome-settings-daemon is not running, Emacs receives
1143 input through XIM without any problem. Furthermore, this seems only
1144 to happen in *.UTF-8 locales; zh_CN.GB2312 and zh_CN.GBK locales, for
1145 example, work fine. A bug report has been filed in the Gnome
1146 bugzilla: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=357032
1147
1148 *** Gnome: Emacs' xterm-mouse-mode doesn't work on the Gnome terminal.
1149
1150 A symptom of this bug is that double-clicks insert a control sequence
1151 into the buffer. The reason this happens is an apparent
1152 incompatibility of the Gnome terminal with Xterm, which also affects
1153 other programs using the Xterm mouse interface. A problem report has
1154 been filed.
1155
1156 *** KDE: When running on KDE, colors or fonts are not as specified for Emacs,
1157 or messed up.
1158
1159 For example, you could see background you set for Emacs only in the
1160 empty portions of the Emacs display, while characters have some other
1161 background.
1162
1163 This happens because KDE's defaults apply its color and font
1164 definitions even to applications that weren't compiled for KDE. The
1165 solution is to uncheck the "Apply fonts and colors to non-KDE apps"
1166 option in Preferences->Look&Feel->Style (KDE 2). In KDE 3, this option
1167 is in the "Colors" section, rather than "Style".
1168
1169 Alternatively, if you do want the KDE defaults to apply to other
1170 applications, but not to Emacs, you could modify the file `Emacs.ad'
1171 (should be in the `/usr/share/apps/kdisplay/app-defaults/' directory)
1172 so that it doesn't set the default background and foreground only for
1173 Emacs. For example, make sure the following resources are either not
1174 present or commented out:
1175
1176 Emacs.default.attributeForeground
1177 Emacs.default.attributeBackground
1178 Emacs*Foreground
1179 Emacs*Background
1180
1181 It is also reported that a bug in the gtk-engines-qt engine can cause this if
1182 Emacs is compiled with Gtk+.
1183 The bug is fixed in version 0.7 or newer of gtk-engines-qt.
1184
1185 *** KDE: Emacs hangs on KDE when a large portion of text is killed.
1186
1187 This is caused by a bug in the KDE applet `klipper' which periodically
1188 requests the X clipboard contents from applications. Early versions
1189 of klipper don't implement the ICCCM protocol for large selections,
1190 which leads to Emacs being flooded with selection requests. After a
1191 while, Emacs may print a message:
1192
1193 Timed out waiting for property-notify event
1194
1195 A workaround is to not use `klipper'. An upgrade to the `klipper' that
1196 comes with KDE 3.3 or later also solves the problem.
1197
1198 *** CDE: Frames may cover dialogs they created when using CDE.
1199
1200 This can happen if you have "Allow Primary Windows On Top" enabled which
1201 seems to be the default in the Common Desktop Environment.
1202 To change, go in to "Desktop Controls" -> "Window Style Manager"
1203 and uncheck "Allow Primary Windows On Top".
1204
1205 *** Xaw3d : When using Xaw3d scroll bars without arrows, the very first mouse
1206 click in a scroll bar might be ignored by the scroll bar widget. This
1207 is probably a bug in Xaw3d; when Xaw3d is compiled with arrows, the
1208 problem disappears.
1209
1210 *** Xaw: There are known binary incompatibilities between Xaw, Xaw3d, neXtaw,
1211 XawM and the few other derivatives of Xaw. So when you compile with
1212 one of these, it may not work to dynamically link with another one.
1213 For example, strange problems, such as Emacs exiting when you type
1214 "C-x 1", were reported when Emacs compiled with Xaw3d and libXaw was
1215 used with neXtaw at run time.
1216
1217 The solution is to rebuild Emacs with the toolkit version you actually
1218 want to use, or set LD_PRELOAD to preload the same toolkit version you
1219 built Emacs with.
1220
1221 *** Open Motif: Problems with file dialogs in Emacs built with Open Motif.
1222
1223 When Emacs 21 is built with Open Motif 2.1, it can happen that the
1224 graphical file dialog boxes do not work properly. The "OK", "Filter"
1225 and "Cancel" buttons do not respond to mouse clicks. Dragging the
1226 file dialog window usually causes the buttons to work again.
1227
1228 The solution is to use LessTif instead. LessTif is a free replacement
1229 for Motif. See the file INSTALL for information on how to do this.
1230
1231 Another workaround is not to use the mouse to trigger file prompts,
1232 but to use the keyboard. This way, you will be prompted for a file in
1233 the minibuffer instead of a graphical file dialog.
1234
1235 *** LessTif: Problems in Emacs built with LessTif.
1236
1237 The problems seem to depend on the version of LessTif and the Motif
1238 emulation for which it is set up.
1239
1240 Only the Motif 1.2 emulation seems to be stable enough in LessTif.
1241 LessTif 0.92-17's Motif 1.2 emulation seems to work okay on FreeBSD.
1242 On GNU/Linux systems, lesstif-0.92.6 configured with "./configure
1243 --enable-build-12 --enable-default-12" is reported to be the most
1244 successful. The binary GNU/Linux package
1245 lesstif-devel-0.92.0-1.i386.rpm was reported to have problems with
1246 menu placement.
1247
1248 On some systems, even with Motif 1.2 emulation, Emacs occasionally
1249 locks up, grabbing all mouse and keyboard events. We still don't know
1250 what causes these problems; they are not reproducible by Emacs
1251 developers.
1252
1253 *** Motif: The Motif version of Emacs paints the screen a solid color.
1254
1255 This has been observed to result from the following X resource:
1256
1257 Emacs*default.attributeFont: -*-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-140-*-*-*-*-iso8859-*
1258
1259 That the resource has this effect indicates a bug in something, but we
1260 do not yet know what. If it is an Emacs bug, we hope someone can
1261 explain what the bug is so we can fix it. In the mean time, removing
1262 the resource prevents the problem.
1263
1264 ** General X problems
1265
1266 *** Redisplay using X11 is much slower than previous Emacs versions.
1267
1268 We've noticed that certain X servers draw the text much slower when
1269 scroll bars are on the left. We don't know why this happens. If this
1270 happens to you, you can work around it by putting the scroll bars
1271 on the right (as they were in Emacs 19).
1272
1273 Here's how to do this:
1274
1275 (set-scroll-bar-mode 'right)
1276
1277 If you're not sure whether (or how much) this problem affects you,
1278 try that and see how much difference it makes. To set things back
1279 to normal, do
1280
1281 (set-scroll-bar-mode 'left)
1282
1283 *** Error messages about undefined colors on X.
1284
1285 The messages might say something like this:
1286
1287 Unable to load color "grey95"
1288
1289 (typically, in the `*Messages*' buffer), or something like this:
1290
1291 Error while displaying tooltip: (error Undefined color lightyellow)
1292
1293 These problems could happen if some other X program has used up too
1294 many colors of the X palette, leaving Emacs with insufficient system
1295 resources to load all the colors it needs.
1296
1297 A solution is to exit the offending X programs before starting Emacs.
1298
1299 "undefined color" messages can also occur if the RgbPath entry in the
1300 X configuration file is incorrect, or the rgb.txt file is not where
1301 X expects to find it.
1302
1303 *** Improving performance with slow X connections.
1304
1305 There are several ways to improve this performance, any subset of which can
1306 be carried out at the same time:
1307
1308 1) If you don't need X Input Methods (XIM) for entering text in some
1309 language you use, you can improve performance on WAN links by using
1310 the X resource useXIM to turn off use of XIM. This does not affect
1311 the use of Emacs' own input methods, which are part of the Leim
1312 package.
1313
1314 2) If the connection is very slow, you might also want to consider
1315 switching off scroll bars, menu bar, and tool bar. Adding the
1316 following forms to your .emacs file will accomplish that, but only
1317 after the the initial frame is displayed:
1318
1319 (scroll-bar-mode -1)
1320 (menu-bar-mode -1)
1321 (tool-bar-mode -1)
1322
1323 For still quicker startup, put these X resources in your .Xdefaults
1324 file:
1325
1326 Emacs.verticalScrollBars: off
1327 Emacs.menuBar: off
1328 Emacs.toolBar: off
1329
1330 3) Use ssh to forward the X connection, and enable compression on this
1331 forwarded X connection (ssh -XC remotehostname emacs ...).
1332
1333 4) Use lbxproxy on the remote end of the connection. This is an interface
1334 to the low bandwidth X extension in most modern X servers, which
1335 improves performance dramatically, at the slight expense of correctness
1336 of the X protocol. lbxproxy acheives the performance gain by grouping
1337 several X requests in one TCP packet and sending them off together,
1338 instead of requiring a round-trip for each X request in a separate
1339 packet. The switches that seem to work best for emacs are:
1340 -noatomsfile -nowinattr -cheaterrors -cheatevents
1341 Note that the -nograbcmap option is known to cause problems.
1342 For more about lbxproxy, see:
1343 http://www.xfree86.org/4.3.0/lbxproxy.1.html
1344
1345 5) If copying and killing is slow, try to disable the interaction with the
1346 native system's clipboard by adding these lines to your .emacs file:
1347 (setq interprogram-cut-function nil)
1348 (setq interprogram-paste-function nil)
1349
1350 *** Emacs gives the error, Couldn't find per display information.
1351
1352 This can result if the X server runs out of memory because Emacs uses
1353 a large number of fonts. On systems where this happens, C-h h is
1354 likely to cause it.
1355
1356 We do not know of a way to prevent the problem.
1357
1358 *** Emacs does not notice when you release the mouse.
1359
1360 There are reports that this happened with (some) Microsoft mice and
1361 that replacing the mouse made it stop.
1362
1363 *** You can't select from submenus (in the X toolkit version).
1364
1365 On certain systems, mouse-tracking and selection in top-level menus
1366 works properly with the X toolkit, but neither of them works when you
1367 bring up a submenu (such as Bookmarks or Compare or Apply Patch, in
1368 the Files menu).
1369
1370 This works on most systems. There is speculation that the failure is
1371 due to bugs in old versions of X toolkit libraries, but no one really
1372 knows. If someone debugs this and finds the precise cause, perhaps a
1373 workaround can be found.
1374
1375 *** An error message such as `X protocol error: BadMatch (invalid
1376 parameter attributes) on protocol request 93'.
1377
1378 This comes from having an invalid X resource, such as
1379 emacs*Cursor: black
1380 (which is invalid because it specifies a color name for something
1381 that isn't a color.)
1382
1383 The fix is to correct your X resources.
1384
1385 *** Slow startup on X11R6 with X windows.
1386
1387 If Emacs takes two minutes to start up on X11R6, see if your X
1388 resources specify any Adobe fonts. That causes the type-1 font
1389 renderer to start up, even if the font you asked for is not a type-1
1390 font.
1391
1392 One way to avoid this problem is to eliminate the type-1 fonts from
1393 your font path, like this:
1394
1395 xset -fp /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/
1396
1397 *** Pull-down menus appear in the wrong place, in the toolkit version of Emacs.
1398
1399 An X resource of this form can cause the problem:
1400
1401 Emacs*geometry: 80x55+0+0
1402
1403 This resource is supposed to apply, and does apply, to the menus
1404 individually as well as to Emacs frames. If that is not what you
1405 want, rewrite the resource.
1406
1407 To check thoroughly for such resource specifications, use `xrdb
1408 -query' to see what resources the X server records, and also look at
1409 the user's ~/.Xdefaults and ~/.Xdefaults-* files.
1410
1411 *** Emacs running under X Windows does not handle mouse clicks.
1412 *** `emacs -geometry 80x20' finds a file named `80x20'.
1413
1414 One cause of such problems is having (setq term-file-prefix nil) in
1415 your .emacs file. Another cause is a bad value of EMACSLOADPATH in
1416 the environment.
1417
1418 *** Emacs fails to get default settings from X Windows server.
1419
1420 The X library in X11R4 has a bug; it interchanges the 2nd and 3rd
1421 arguments to XGetDefaults. Define the macro XBACKWARDS in config.h to
1422 tell Emacs to compensate for this.
1423
1424 I don't believe there is any way Emacs can determine for itself
1425 whether this problem is present on a given system.
1426
1427 *** X Windows doesn't work if DISPLAY uses a hostname.
1428
1429 People have reported kernel bugs in certain systems that cause Emacs
1430 not to work with X Windows if DISPLAY is set using a host name. But
1431 the problem does not occur if DISPLAY is set to `unix:0.0'. I think
1432 the bug has to do with SIGIO or FIONREAD.
1433
1434 You may be able to compensate for the bug by doing (set-input-mode nil nil).
1435 However, that has the disadvantage of turning off interrupts, so that
1436 you are unable to quit out of a Lisp program by typing C-g.
1437
1438 The easy way to do this is to put
1439
1440 (setq x-sigio-bug t)
1441
1442 in your site-init.el file.
1443
1444 * Runtime problems on character terminals
1445
1446 ** Emacs spontaneously displays "I-search: " at the bottom of the screen.
1447
1448 This means that Control-S/Control-Q (XON/XOFF) "flow control" is being
1449 used. C-s/C-q flow control is bad for Emacs editors because it takes
1450 away C-s and C-q as user commands. Since editors do not output long
1451 streams of text without user commands, there is no need for a
1452 user-issuable "stop output" command in an editor; therefore, a
1453 properly designed flow control mechanism would transmit all possible
1454 input characters without interference. Designing such a mechanism is
1455 easy, for a person with at least half a brain.
1456
1457 There are three possible reasons why flow control could be taking place:
1458
1459 1) Terminal has not been told to disable flow control
1460 2) Insufficient padding for the terminal in use
1461 3) Some sort of terminal concentrator or line switch is responsible
1462
1463 First of all, many terminals have a set-up mode which controls whether
1464 they generate XON/XOFF flow control characters. This must be set to
1465 "no XON/XOFF" in order for Emacs to work. Sometimes there is an
1466 escape sequence that the computer can send to turn flow control off
1467 and on. If so, perhaps the termcap `ti' string should turn flow
1468 control off, and the `te' string should turn it on.
1469
1470 Once the terminal has been told "no flow control", you may find it
1471 needs more padding. The amount of padding Emacs sends is controlled
1472 by the termcap entry for the terminal in use, and by the output baud
1473 rate as known by the kernel. The shell command `stty' will print
1474 your output baud rate; `stty' with suitable arguments will set it if
1475 it is wrong. Setting to a higher speed causes increased padding. If
1476 the results are wrong for the correct speed, there is probably a
1477 problem in the termcap entry. You must speak to a local Unix wizard
1478 to fix this. Perhaps you are just using the wrong terminal type.
1479
1480 For terminals that lack a "no flow control" mode, sometimes just
1481 giving lots of padding will prevent actual generation of flow control
1482 codes. You might as well try it.
1483
1484 If you are really unlucky, your terminal is connected to the computer
1485 through a concentrator which sends XON/XOFF flow control to the
1486 computer, or it insists on sending flow control itself no matter how
1487 much padding you give it. Unless you can figure out how to turn flow
1488 control off on this concentrator (again, refer to your local wizard),
1489 you are screwed! You should have the terminal or concentrator
1490 replaced with a properly designed one. In the mean time, some drastic
1491 measures can make Emacs semi-work.
1492
1493 You can make Emacs ignore C-s and C-q and let the operating system
1494 handle them. To do this on a per-session basis, just type M-x
1495 enable-flow-control RET. You will see a message that C-\ and C-^ are
1496 now translated to C-s and C-q. (Use the same command M-x
1497 enable-flow-control to turn *off* this special mode. It toggles flow
1498 control handling.)
1499
1500 If C-\ and C-^ are inconvenient for you (for example, if one of them
1501 is the escape character of your terminal concentrator), you can choose
1502 other characters by setting the variables flow-control-c-s-replacement
1503 and flow-control-c-q-replacement. But choose carefully, since all
1504 other control characters are already used by emacs.
1505
1506 IMPORTANT: if you type C-s by accident while flow control is enabled,
1507 Emacs output will freeze, and you will have to remember to type C-q in
1508 order to continue.
1509
1510 If you work in an environment where a majority of terminals of a
1511 certain type are flow control hobbled, you can use the function
1512 `enable-flow-control-on' to turn on this flow control avoidance scheme
1513 automatically. Here is an example:
1514
1515 (enable-flow-control-on "vt200" "vt300" "vt101" "vt131")
1516
1517 If this isn't quite correct (e.g. you have a mixture of flow-control hobbled
1518 and good vt200 terminals), you can still run enable-flow-control
1519 manually.
1520
1521 I have no intention of ever redesigning the Emacs command set for the
1522 assumption that terminals use C-s/C-q flow control. XON/XOFF flow
1523 control technique is a bad design, and terminals that need it are bad
1524 merchandise and should not be purchased. Now that X is becoming
1525 widespread, XON/XOFF seems to be on the way out. If you can get some
1526 use out of GNU Emacs on inferior terminals, more power to you, but I
1527 will not make Emacs worse for properly designed systems for the sake
1528 of inferior systems.
1529
1530 ** Control-S and Control-Q commands are ignored completely.
1531
1532 For some reason, your system is using brain-damaged C-s/C-q flow
1533 control despite Emacs's attempts to turn it off. Perhaps your
1534 terminal is connected to the computer through a concentrator
1535 that wants to use flow control.
1536
1537 You should first try to tell the concentrator not to use flow control.
1538 If you succeed in this, try making the terminal work without
1539 flow control, as described in the preceding section.
1540
1541 If that line of approach is not successful, map some other characters
1542 into C-s and C-q using keyboard-translate-table. The example above
1543 shows how to do this with C-^ and C-\.
1544
1545 ** Screen is updated wrong, but only on one kind of terminal.
1546
1547 This could mean that the termcap entry you are using for that
1548 terminal is wrong, or it could mean that Emacs has a bug handing
1549 the combination of features specified for that terminal.
1550
1551 The first step in tracking this down is to record what characters
1552 Emacs is sending to the terminal. Execute the Lisp expression
1553 (open-termscript "./emacs-script") to make Emacs write all
1554 terminal output into the file ~/emacs-script as well; then do
1555 what makes the screen update wrong, and look at the file
1556 and decode the characters using the manual for the terminal.
1557 There are several possibilities:
1558
1559 1) The characters sent are correct, according to the terminal manual.
1560
1561 In this case, there is no obvious bug in Emacs, and most likely you
1562 need more padding, or possibly the terminal manual is wrong.
1563
1564 2) The characters sent are incorrect, due to an obscure aspect
1565 of the terminal behavior not described in an obvious way
1566 by termcap.
1567
1568 This case is hard. It will be necessary to think of a way for
1569 Emacs to distinguish between terminals with this kind of behavior
1570 and other terminals that behave subtly differently but are
1571 classified the same by termcap; or else find an algorithm for
1572 Emacs to use that avoids the difference. Such changes must be
1573 tested on many kinds of terminals.
1574
1575 3) The termcap entry is wrong.
1576
1577 See the file etc/TERMS for information on changes
1578 that are known to be needed in commonly used termcap entries
1579 for certain terminals.
1580
1581 4) The characters sent are incorrect, and clearly cannot be
1582 right for any terminal with the termcap entry you were using.
1583
1584 This is unambiguously an Emacs bug, and can probably be fixed
1585 in termcap.c, tparam.c, term.c, scroll.c, cm.c or dispnew.c.
1586
1587 ** Control-S and Control-Q commands are ignored completely on a net connection.
1588
1589 Some versions of rlogin (and possibly telnet) do not pass flow
1590 control characters to the remote system to which they connect.
1591 On such systems, emacs on the remote system cannot disable flow
1592 control on the local system.
1593
1594 One way to cure this is to disable flow control on the local host
1595 (the one running rlogin, not the one running rlogind) using the
1596 stty command, before starting the rlogin process. On many systems,
1597 "stty start u stop u" will do this.
1598
1599 Some versions of tcsh will prevent even this from working. One way
1600 around this is to start another shell before starting rlogin, and
1601 issue the stty command to disable flow control from that shell.
1602
1603 If none of these methods work, the best solution is to type
1604 M-x enable-flow-control at the beginning of your emacs session, or
1605 if you expect the problem to continue, add a line such as the
1606 following to your .emacs (on the host running rlogind):
1607
1608 (enable-flow-control-on "vt200" "vt300" "vt101" "vt131")
1609
1610 See the entry about spontaneous display of I-search (above) for more
1611 info.
1612
1613 ** Output from Control-V is slow.
1614
1615 On many bit-map terminals, scrolling operations are fairly slow.
1616 Often the termcap entry for the type of terminal in use fails
1617 to inform Emacs of this. The two lines at the bottom of the screen
1618 before a Control-V command are supposed to appear at the top after
1619 the Control-V command. If Emacs thinks scrolling the lines is fast,
1620 it will scroll them to the top of the screen.
1621
1622 If scrolling is slow but Emacs thinks it is fast, the usual reason is
1623 that the termcap entry for the terminal you are using does not
1624 specify any padding time for the `al' and `dl' strings. Emacs
1625 concludes that these operations take only as much time as it takes to
1626 send the commands at whatever line speed you are using. You must
1627 fix the termcap entry to specify, for the `al' and `dl', as much
1628 time as the operations really take.
1629
1630 Currently Emacs thinks in terms of serial lines which send characters
1631 at a fixed rate, so that any operation which takes time for the
1632 terminal to execute must also be padded. With bit-map terminals
1633 operated across networks, often the network provides some sort of
1634 flow control so that padding is never needed no matter how slow
1635 an operation is. You must still specify a padding time if you want
1636 Emacs to realize that the operation takes a long time. This will
1637 cause padding characters to be sent unnecessarily, but they do
1638 not really cost much. They will be transmitted while the scrolling
1639 is happening and then discarded quickly by the terminal.
1640
1641 Most bit-map terminals provide commands for inserting or deleting
1642 multiple lines at once. Define the `AL' and `DL' strings in the
1643 termcap entry to say how to do these things, and you will have
1644 fast output without wasted padding characters. These strings should
1645 each contain a single %-spec saying how to send the number of lines
1646 to be scrolled. These %-specs are like those in the termcap
1647 `cm' string.
1648
1649 You should also define the `IC' and `DC' strings if your terminal
1650 has a command to insert or delete multiple characters. These
1651 take the number of positions to insert or delete as an argument.
1652
1653 A `cs' string to set the scrolling region will reduce the amount
1654 of motion you see on the screen when part of the screen is scrolled.
1655
1656 ** You type Control-H (Backspace) expecting to delete characters.
1657
1658 Put `stty dec' in your .login file and your problems will disappear
1659 after a day or two.
1660
1661 The choice of Backspace for erasure was based on confusion, caused by
1662 the fact that backspacing causes erasure (later, when you type another
1663 character) on most display terminals. But it is a mistake. Deletion
1664 of text is not the same thing as backspacing followed by failure to
1665 overprint. I do not wish to propagate this confusion by conforming
1666 to it.
1667
1668 For this reason, I believe `stty dec' is the right mode to use,
1669 and I have designed Emacs to go with that. If there were a thousand
1670 other control characters, I would define Control-h to delete as well;
1671 but there are not very many other control characters, and I think
1672 that providing the most mnemonic possible Help character is more
1673 important than adapting to people who don't use `stty dec'.
1674
1675 If you are obstinate about confusing buggy overprinting with deletion,
1676 you can redefine Backspace in your .emacs file:
1677 (global-set-key "\b" 'delete-backward-char)
1678 You can probably access help-command via f1.
1679
1680 ** Colors are not available on a tty or in xterm.
1681
1682 Emacs 21 supports colors on character terminals and terminal
1683 emulators, but this support relies on the terminfo or termcap database
1684 entry to specify that the display supports color. Emacs looks at the
1685 "Co" capability for the terminal to find out how many colors are
1686 supported; it should be non-zero to activate the color support within
1687 Emacs. (Most color terminals support 8 or 16 colors.) If your system
1688 uses terminfo, the name of the capability equivalent to "Co" is
1689 "colors".
1690
1691 In addition to the "Co" capability, Emacs needs the "op" (for
1692 ``original pair'') capability, which tells how to switch the terminal
1693 back to the default foreground and background colors. Emacs will not
1694 use colors if this capability is not defined. If your terminal entry
1695 doesn't provide such a capability, try using the ANSI standard escape
1696 sequence \E[00m (that is, define a new termcap/terminfo entry and make
1697 it use your current terminal's entry plus \E[00m for the "op"
1698 capability).
1699
1700 Finally, the "NC" capability (terminfo name: "ncv") tells Emacs which
1701 attributes cannot be used with colors. Setting this capability
1702 incorrectly might have the effect of disabling colors; try setting
1703 this capability to `0' (zero) and see if that helps.
1704
1705 Emacs uses the database entry for the terminal whose name is the value
1706 of the environment variable TERM. With `xterm', a common terminal
1707 entry that supports color is `xterm-color', so setting TERM's value to
1708 `xterm-color' might activate the color support on an xterm-compatible
1709 emulator.
1710
1711 Beginning with version 22.1, Emacs supports the --color command-line
1712 option which may be used to force Emacs to use one of a few popular
1713 modes for getting colors on a tty. For example, --color=ansi8 sets up
1714 for using the ANSI-standard escape sequences that support 8 colors.
1715
1716 Some modes do not use colors unless you turn on the Font-lock mode.
1717 Some people have long ago set their `~/.emacs' files to turn on
1718 Font-lock on X only, so they won't see colors on a tty. The
1719 recommended way of turning on Font-lock is by typing "M-x
1720 global-font-lock-mode RET" or by customizing the variable
1721 `global-font-lock-mode'.
1722
1723 * Runtime problems specific to individual Unix variants
1724
1725 ** GNU/Linux
1726
1727 *** GNU/Linux: Process output is corrupted.
1728
1729 There is a bug in Linux kernel 2.6.10 PTYs that can cause emacs to
1730 read corrupted process output.
1731
1732 *** GNU/Linux: Remote access to CVS with SSH causes file corruption.
1733
1734 If you access a remote CVS repository via SSH, files may be corrupted
1735 due to bad interaction between CVS, SSH, and libc.
1736
1737 To fix the problem, save the following script into a file, make it
1738 executable, and set CVS_RSH environment variable to the file name of
1739 the script:
1740
1741 #!/bin/bash
1742 exec 2> >(exec cat >&2 2>/dev/null)
1743 exec ssh "$@"
1744
1745 *** GNU/Linux: On Linux-based GNU systems using libc versions 5.4.19 through
1746 5.4.22, Emacs crashes at startup with a segmentation fault.
1747
1748 This problem happens if libc defines the symbol __malloc_initialized.
1749 One known solution is to upgrade to a newer libc version. 5.4.33 is
1750 known to work.
1751
1752 *** GNU/Linux: After upgrading to a newer version of Emacs,
1753 the Meta key stops working.
1754
1755 This was reported to happen on a GNU/Linux system distributed by
1756 Mandrake. The reason is that the previous version of Emacs was
1757 modified by Mandrake to make the Alt key act as the Meta key, on a
1758 keyboard where the Windows key is the one which produces the Meta
1759 modifier. A user who started using a newer version of Emacs, which
1760 was not hacked by Mandrake, expected the Alt key to continue to act as
1761 Meta, and was astonished when that didn't happen.
1762
1763 The solution is to find out what key on your keyboard produces the Meta
1764 modifier, and use that key instead. Try all of the keys to the left
1765 and to the right of the space bar, together with the `x' key, and see
1766 which combination produces "M-x" in the echo area. You can also use
1767 the `xmodmap' utility to show all the keys which produce a Meta
1768 modifier:
1769
1770 xmodmap -pk | egrep -i "meta|alt"
1771
1772 A more convenient way of finding out which keys produce a Meta modifier
1773 is to use the `xkbprint' utility, if it's available on your system:
1774
1775 xkbprint 0:0 /tmp/k.ps
1776
1777 This produces a PostScript file `/tmp/k.ps' with a picture of your
1778 keyboard; printing that file on a PostScript printer will show what
1779 keys can serve as Meta.
1780
1781 The `xkeycaps' also shows a visual representation of the current
1782 keyboard settings. It also allows to modify them.
1783
1784 *** GNU/Linux: slow startup on Linux-based GNU systems.
1785
1786 People using systems based on the Linux kernel sometimes report that
1787 startup takes 10 to 15 seconds longer than `usual'.
1788
1789 This is because Emacs looks up the host name when it starts.
1790 Normally, this takes negligible time; the extra delay is due to
1791 improper system configuration. This problem can occur for both
1792 networked and non-networked machines.
1793
1794 Here is how to fix the configuration. It requires being root.
1795
1796 **** Networked Case.
1797
1798 First, make sure the files `/etc/hosts' and `/etc/host.conf' both
1799 exist. The first line in the `/etc/hosts' file should look like this
1800 (replace HOSTNAME with your host name):
1801
1802 127.0.0.1 HOSTNAME
1803
1804 Also make sure that the `/etc/host.conf' files contains the following
1805 lines:
1806
1807 order hosts, bind
1808 multi on
1809
1810 Any changes, permanent and temporary, to the host name should be
1811 indicated in the `/etc/hosts' file, since it acts a limited local
1812 database of addresses and names (e.g., some SLIP connections
1813 dynamically allocate ip addresses).
1814
1815 **** Non-Networked Case.
1816
1817 The solution described in the networked case applies here as well.
1818 However, if you never intend to network your machine, you can use a
1819 simpler solution: create an empty `/etc/host.conf' file. The command
1820 `touch /etc/host.conf' suffices to create the file. The `/etc/hosts'
1821 file is not necessary with this approach.
1822
1823 *** GNU/Linux: Emacs on a tty switches the cursor to large blinking block.
1824
1825 This was reported to happen on some GNU/Linux systems which use
1826 ncurses version 5.0, but could be relevant for other versions as well.
1827 These versions of ncurses come with a `linux' terminfo entry, where
1828 the "cvvis" capability (termcap "vs") is defined as "\E[?25h\E[?8c"
1829 (show cursor, change size). This escape sequence switches on a
1830 blinking hardware text-mode cursor whose size is a full character
1831 cell. This blinking cannot be stopped, since a hardware cursor
1832 always blinks.
1833
1834 A work-around is to redefine the "cvvis" capability so that it
1835 enables a *software* cursor. The software cursor works by inverting
1836 the colors of the character at point, so what you see is a block
1837 cursor that doesn't blink. For this to work, you need to redefine
1838 the "cnorm" capability as well, so that it operates on the software
1839 cursor instead of the hardware cursor.
1840
1841 To this end, run "infocmp linux > linux-term", edit the file
1842 `linux-term' to make both the "cnorm" and "cvvis" capabilities send
1843 the sequence "\E[?25h\E[?17;0;64c", and then run "tic linux-term" to
1844 produce a modified terminfo entry.
1845
1846 Alternatively, if you want a blinking underscore as your Emacs cursor,
1847 change the "cvvis" capability to send the "\E[?25h\E[?0c" command.
1848
1849 *** GNU/Linux: Error messages `internal facep []' happen on GNU/Linux systems.
1850
1851 There is a report that replacing libc.so.5.0.9 with libc.so.5.2.16
1852 caused this to start happening. People are not sure why, but the
1853 problem seems unlikely to be in Emacs itself. Some suspect that it
1854 is actually Xlib which won't work with libc.so.5.2.16.
1855
1856 Using the old library version is a workaround.
1857
1858 ** Mac OS X
1859
1860 *** Mac OS X (Carbon): Environment Variables from dotfiles are ignored.
1861
1862 When starting Emacs from the Dock or the Finder on Mac OS X, the
1863 environment variables that are set up in dotfiles, such as .cshrc or
1864 .profile, are ignored. This is because the Finder and Dock are not
1865 started from a shell, but instead from the Window Manager itself.
1866
1867 The workaround for this is to create a .MacOSX/environment.plist file to
1868 setup these environment variables. These environment variables will
1869 apply to all processes regardless of where they are started.
1870 For me information, see http://developer.apple.com/qa/qa2001/qa1067.html.
1871
1872 *** Mac OS X (Carbon): Process output truncated when using ptys.
1873
1874 There appears to be a problem with the implementation of pty's on the
1875 Mac OS X that causes process output to be truncated. To avoid this,
1876 leave process-connection-type set to its default value of nil.
1877
1878 *** Mac OS X 10.3.9 (Carbon): QuickTime updater breaks build.
1879
1880 Some QuickTime updaters such as 7.0.4 and 7.2.0 are known to break
1881 build at the link stage with the message like "Undefined symbols:
1882 _HICopyAccessibilityActionDescription referenced from QuickTime
1883 expected to be defined in Carbon". A workaround is to use a QuickTime
1884 reinstaller. Alternatively, you can link with the frameworks in the
1885 corresponding SDK by specifying LDFLAGS as
1886 "-Wl,-F/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.3.0.sdk/System/Library/Frameworks".
1887
1888 ** FreeBSD
1889
1890 *** FreeBSD 2.1.5: useless symbolic links remain in /tmp or other
1891 directories that have the +t bit.
1892
1893 This is because of a kernel bug in FreeBSD 2.1.5 (fixed in 2.2).
1894 Emacs uses symbolic links to implement file locks. In a directory
1895 with +t bit, the directory owner becomes the owner of the symbolic
1896 link, so that it cannot be removed by anyone else.
1897
1898 If you don't like those useless links, you can let Emacs not to using
1899 file lock by adding #undef CLASH_DETECTION to config.h.
1900
1901 *** FreeBSD: Getting a Meta key on the console.
1902
1903 By default, neither Alt nor any other key acts as a Meta key on
1904 FreeBSD, but this can be changed using kbdcontrol(1). Dump the
1905 current keymap to a file with the command
1906
1907 $ kbdcontrol -d >emacs.kbd
1908
1909 Edit emacs.kbd, and give the key you want to be the Meta key the
1910 definition `meta'. For instance, if your keyboard has a ``Windows''
1911 key with scan code 105, change the line for scan code 105 in emacs.kbd
1912 to look like this
1913
1914 105 meta meta meta meta meta meta meta meta O
1915
1916 to make the Windows key the Meta key. Load the new keymap with
1917
1918 $ kbdcontrol -l emacs.kbd
1919
1920 ** HP-UX
1921
1922 *** HP/UX : Shell mode gives the message, "`tty`: Ambiguous".
1923
1924 christos@theory.tn.cornell.edu says:
1925
1926 The problem is that in your .cshrc you have something that tries to
1927 execute `tty`. If you are not running the shell on a real tty then
1928 tty will print "not a tty". Csh expects one word in some places,
1929 but tty is giving it back 3.
1930
1931 The solution is to add a pair of quotes around `tty` to make it a single
1932 word:
1933
1934 if (`tty` == "/dev/console")
1935
1936 should be changed to:
1937
1938 if ("`tty`" == "/dev/console")
1939
1940 Even better, move things that set up terminal sections out of .cshrc
1941 and into .login.
1942
1943 *** HP/UX: `Pid xxx killed due to text modification or page I/O error'.
1944
1945 On HP/UX, you can get that error when the Emacs executable is on an NFS
1946 file system. HP/UX responds this way if it tries to swap in a page and
1947 does not get a response from the server within a timeout whose default
1948 value is just ten seconds.
1949
1950 If this happens to you, extend the timeout period.
1951
1952 *** HP/UX: The right Alt key works wrong on German HP keyboards (and perhaps
1953 other non-English HP keyboards too).
1954
1955 This is because HP-UX defines the modifiers wrong in X. Here is a
1956 shell script to fix the problem; be sure that it is run after VUE
1957 configures the X server.
1958
1959 xmodmap 2> /dev/null - << EOF
1960 keysym Alt_L = Meta_L
1961 keysym Alt_R = Meta_R
1962 EOF
1963
1964 xmodmap - << EOF
1965 clear mod1
1966 keysym Mode_switch = NoSymbol
1967 add mod1 = Meta_L
1968 keysym Meta_R = Mode_switch
1969 add mod2 = Mode_switch
1970 EOF
1971
1972 *** HP/UX: "Cannot find callback list" messages from dialog boxes in
1973 Emacs built with Motif.
1974
1975 This problem resulted from a bug in GCC 2.4.5. Newer GCC versions
1976 such as 2.7.0 fix the problem.
1977
1978 *** HP/UX: Emacs does not recognize the AltGr key.
1979
1980 To fix this, set up a file ~/.dt/sessions/sessionetc with executable
1981 rights, containing this text:
1982
1983 --------------------------------
1984 xmodmap 2> /dev/null - << EOF
1985 keysym Alt_L = Meta_L
1986 keysym Alt_R = Meta_R
1987 EOF
1988
1989 xmodmap - << EOF
1990 clear mod1
1991 keysym Mode_switch = NoSymbol
1992 add mod1 = Meta_L
1993 keysym Meta_R = Mode_switch
1994 add mod2 = Mode_switch
1995 EOF
1996 --------------------------------
1997
1998 *** HP/UX 11.0: Emacs makes HP/UX 11.0 crash.
1999
2000 This is a bug in HPUX; HPUX patch PHKL_16260 is said to fix it.
2001
2002 ** AIX
2003
2004 *** AIX: Trouble using ptys.
2005
2006 People often install the pty devices on AIX incorrectly.
2007 Use `smit pty' to reinstall them properly.
2008
2009 *** AIXterm: Your Delete key sends a Backspace to the terminal.
2010
2011 The solution is to include in your .Xdefaults the lines:
2012
2013 *aixterm.Translations: #override <Key>BackSpace: string(0x7f)
2014 aixterm*ttyModes: erase ^?
2015
2016 This makes your Backspace key send DEL (ASCII 127).
2017
2018 *** AIX: If linking fails because libXbsd isn't found, check if you
2019 are compiling with the system's `cc' and CFLAGS containing `-O5'. If
2020 so, you have hit a compiler bug. Please make sure to re-configure
2021 Emacs so that it isn't compiled with `-O5'.
2022
2023 *** AIX 4.3.x or 4.4: Compiling fails.
2024
2025 This could happen if you use /bin/c89 as your compiler, instead of
2026 the default `cc'. /bin/c89 treats certain warnings, such as benign
2027 redefinitions of macros, as errors, and fails the build. A solution
2028 is to use the default compiler `cc'.
2029
2030 *** AIX 4: Some programs fail when run in a Shell buffer
2031 with an error message like No terminfo entry for "unknown".
2032
2033 On AIX, many terminal type definitions are not installed by default.
2034 `unknown' is one of them. Install the "Special Generic Terminal
2035 Definitions" to make them defined.
2036
2037 ** Solaris
2038
2039 We list bugs in current versions here. Solaris 2.x and 4.x are covered in the
2040 section on legacy systems.
2041
2042 *** On Solaris, C-x doesn't get through to Emacs when you use the console.
2043
2044 This is a Solaris feature (at least on Intel x86 cpus). Type C-r
2045 C-r C-t, to toggle whether C-x gets through to Emacs.
2046
2047 *** Problem with remote X server on Suns.
2048
2049 On a Sun, running Emacs on one machine with the X server on another
2050 may not work if you have used the unshared system libraries. This
2051 is because the unshared libraries fail to use YP for host name lookup.
2052 As a result, the host name you specify may not be recognized.
2053
2054 *** Solaris 2,6: Emacs crashes with SIGBUS or SIGSEGV on Solaris after you delete a frame.
2055
2056 We suspect that this is a bug in the X libraries provided by
2057 Sun. There is a report that one of these patches fixes the bug and
2058 makes the problem stop:
2059
2060 105216-01 105393-01 105518-01 105621-01 105665-01 105615-02 105216-02
2061 105667-01 105401-08 105615-03 105621-02 105686-02 105736-01 105755-03
2062 106033-01 105379-01 105786-01 105181-04 105379-03 105786-04 105845-01
2063 105284-05 105669-02 105837-01 105837-02 105558-01 106125-02 105407-01
2064
2065 Another person using a newer system (kernel patch level Generic_105181-06)
2066 suspects that the bug was fixed by one of these more recent patches:
2067
2068 106040-07 SunOS 5.6: X Input & Output Method patch
2069 106222-01 OpenWindows 3.6: filemgr (ff.core) fixes
2070 105284-12 Motif 1.2.7: sparc Runtime library patch
2071
2072 *** Solaris 7 or 8: Emacs reports a BadAtom error (from X)
2073
2074 This happens when Emacs was built on some other version of Solaris.
2075 Rebuild it on Solaris 8.
2076
2077 *** When using M-x dbx with the SparcWorks debugger, the `up' and `down'
2078 commands do not move the arrow in Emacs.
2079
2080 You can fix this by adding the following line to `~/.dbxinit':
2081
2082 dbxenv output_short_file_name off
2083
2084 *** On Solaris, CTRL-t is ignored by Emacs when you use
2085 the fr.ISO-8859-15 locale (and maybe other related locales).
2086
2087 You can fix this by editing the file:
2088
2089 /usr/openwin/lib/locale/iso8859-15/Compose
2090
2091 Near the bottom there is a line that reads:
2092
2093 Ctrl<t> <quotedbl> <Y> : "\276" threequarters
2094
2095 that should read:
2096
2097 Ctrl<T> <quotedbl> <Y> : "\276" threequarters
2098
2099 Note the lower case <t>. Changing this line should make C-t work.
2100
2101 ** Irix
2102
2103 *** Irix 6.5: Emacs crashes on the SGI R10K, when compiled with GCC.
2104
2105 This seems to be fixed in GCC 2.95.
2106
2107 *** Irix: Trouble using ptys, or running out of ptys.
2108
2109 The program mkpts (which may be in `/usr/adm' or `/usr/sbin') needs to
2110 be set-UID to root, or non-root programs like Emacs will not be able
2111 to allocate ptys reliably.
2112
2113 * Runtime problems specific to MS-Windows
2114
2115 ** Windows 95 and networking.
2116
2117 To support server sockets, Emacs 22.1 loads ws2_32.dll. If this file
2118 is missing, all Emacs networking features are disabled.
2119
2120 Old versions of Windows 95 may not have the required DLL. To use
2121 Emacs' networking features on Windows 95, you must install the
2122 "Windows Socket 2" update available from MicroSoft's support Web.
2123
2124 ** Emacs exits with "X protocol error" when run with an X server for MS-Windows.
2125
2126 A certain X server for Windows had a bug which caused this.
2127 Supposedly the newer 32-bit version of this server doesn't have the
2128 problem.
2129
2130 ** Known problems with the MS-Windows port of Emacs 22.1
2131
2132 Using create-fontset-from-ascii-font or the --font startup parameter
2133 with a Chinese, Japanese or Korean font leads to display problems.
2134 Use a Latin-only font as your default font. If you want control over
2135 which font is used to display Chinese, Japanese or Korean character,
2136 use create-fontset-from-fontset-spec to define a fontset.
2137
2138 Frames are not refreshed while the File or Font dialog or a pop-up menu
2139 is displayed. This also means help text for pop-up menus is not
2140 displayed at all. This is because message handling under Windows is
2141 synchronous, so we cannot handle repaint (or any other) messages while
2142 waiting for a system function to return the result of the dialog or
2143 pop-up menu interaction.
2144
2145 Windows 95 and Windows NT up to version 4.0 do not support help text
2146 for menus. Help text is only available in later versions of Windows.
2147
2148 When "ClearType" method is selected as the "method to smooth edges of
2149 screen fonts" (in Display Properties, Appearance tab, under
2150 "Effects"), there are various problems related to display of
2151 characters: 2-pixel trace is left behind when moving overlays, bold
2152 fonts can be hard to read, small portions of some characters could
2153 appear chopped, etc. This happens because, under ClearType,
2154 characters are drawn outside their advertised bounding box. Emacs 21
2155 disabled the use of ClearType, whereas Emacs 22 allows it and has some
2156 code to enlarge the width of the bounding box. Apparently, this
2157 display feature needs more changes to get it 100% right. A workaround
2158 is to disable ClearType.
2159
2160 There are problems with display if mouse-tracking is enabled and the
2161 mouse is moved off a frame, over another frame then back over the first
2162 frame. A workaround is to click the left mouse button inside the frame
2163 after moving back into it.
2164
2165 Some minor flickering still persists during mouse-tracking, although
2166 not as severely as in 21.1.
2167
2168 An inactive cursor remains in an active window after the Windows
2169 Manager driven switch of the focus, until a key is pressed.
2170
2171 Windows input methods are not recognized by Emacs. However, some
2172 of these input methods cause the keyboard to send characters encoded
2173 in the appropriate coding system (e.g., ISO 8859-1 for Latin-1
2174 characters, ISO 8859-8 for Hebrew characters, etc.). To make these
2175 input methods work with Emacs, set the keyboard coding system to the
2176 appropriate value after you activate the Windows input method. For
2177 example, if you activate the Hebrew input method, type this:
2178
2179 C-x RET k hebrew-iso-8bit RET
2180
2181 (Emacs ought to recognize the Windows language-change event and set up
2182 the appropriate keyboard encoding automatically, but it doesn't do
2183 that yet.) In addition, to use these Windows input methods, you
2184 should set your "Language for non-Unicode programs" (on Windows XP,
2185 this is on the Advanced tab of Regional Settings) to the language of
2186 the input method.
2187
2188 To bind keys that produce non-ASCII characters with modifiers, you
2189 must specify raw byte codes. For instance, if you want to bind
2190 META-a-grave to a command, you need to specify this in your `~/.emacs':
2191
2192 (global-set-key [?\M-\340] ...)
2193
2194 The above example is for the Latin-1 environment where the byte code
2195 of the encoded a-grave is 340 octal. For other environments, use the
2196 encoding appropriate to that environment.
2197
2198 The %b specifier for format-time-string does not produce abbreviated
2199 month names with consistent widths for some locales on some versions
2200 of Windows. This is caused by a deficiency in the underlying system
2201 library function.
2202
2203 Files larger than 4GB cause overflow in the size (represented as a
2204 32-bit integer) reported by `file-attributes'. This affects Dired as
2205 well, since the Windows port uses a Lisp emulation of `ls' that relies
2206 on `file-attributes'.
2207
2208 Sound playing is not supported with the `:data DATA' key-value pair.
2209 You _must_ use the `:file FILE' method.
2210
2211 ** Typing Alt-Shift has strange effects on MS-Windows.
2212
2213 This combination of keys is a command to change keyboard layout. If
2214 you proceed to type another non-modifier key before you let go of Alt
2215 and Shift, the Alt and Shift act as modifiers in the usual way. A
2216 more permanent work around is to change it to another key combination,
2217 or disable it in the keyboard control panel.
2218
2219 ** Cygwin build of Emacs hangs after rebasing Cygwin DLLs
2220
2221 Usually, on Cygwin, one needs to rebase the DLLs if an application
2222 aborts with a message like this:
2223
2224 C:\cygwin\bin\python.exe: *** unable to remap C:\cygwin\bin\cygssl.dll to
2225 same address as parent(0xDF0000) != 0xE00000
2226
2227 However, since Cygwin DLL 1.5.17 was released, after such rebasing,
2228 Emacs hangs.
2229
2230 This was reported to happen for Emacs 21.2 and also for the pretest of
2231 Emacs 22.1 on Cygwin.
2232
2233 To work around this, build Emacs like this:
2234
2235 LDFLAGS='-Wl,--enable-auto-import -Wl,--enable-auto-image-base' ./configure
2236 make LD='$(CC)'
2237 make LD='$(CC)' install
2238
2239 This produces an Emacs binary that is independent of rebasing.
2240
2241 Note that you _must_ use LD='$(CC)' in the last two commands above, to
2242 prevent GCC from passing the "--image-base 0x20000000" option to the
2243 linker, which is what it does by default. That option produces an
2244 Emacs binary with the base address 0x20000000, which will cause Emacs
2245 to hang after Cygwin DLLs are rebased.
2246
2247 ** Interrupting Cygwin port of Bash from Emacs doesn't work.
2248
2249 Cygwin 1.x builds of the ported Bash cannot be interrupted from the
2250 MS-Windows version of Emacs. This is due to some change in the Bash
2251 port or in the Cygwin library which apparently make Bash ignore the
2252 keyboard interrupt event sent by Emacs to Bash. (Older Cygwin ports
2253 of Bash, up to b20.1, did receive SIGINT from Emacs.)
2254
2255 ** Accessing remote files with ange-ftp hangs the MS-Windows version of Emacs.
2256
2257 If the FTP client is the Cygwin port of GNU `ftp', this appears to be
2258 due to some bug in the Cygwin DLL or some incompatibility between it
2259 and the implementation of asynchronous subprocesses in the Windows
2260 port of Emacs. Specifically, some parts of the FTP server responses
2261 are not flushed out, apparently due to buffering issues, which
2262 confuses ange-ftp.
2263
2264 The solution is to downgrade to an older version of the Cygwin DLL
2265 (version 1.3.2 was reported to solve the problem), or use the stock
2266 Windows FTP client, usually found in the `C:\WINDOWS' or 'C:\WINNT'
2267 directory. To force ange-ftp use the stock Windows client, set the
2268 variable `ange-ftp-ftp-program-name' to the absolute file name of the
2269 client's executable. For example:
2270
2271 (setq ange-ftp-ftp-program-name "c:/windows/ftp.exe")
2272
2273 If you want to stick with the Cygwin FTP client, you can work around
2274 this problem by putting this in your `.emacs' file:
2275
2276 (setq ange-ftp-ftp-program-args '("-i" "-n" "-g" "-v" "--prompt" "")
2277
2278 ** lpr commands don't work on MS-Windows with some cheap printers.
2279
2280 This problem may also strike other platforms, but the solution is
2281 likely to be a global one, and not Emacs specific.
2282
2283 Many cheap inkjet, and even some cheap laser printers, do not
2284 print plain text anymore, they will only print through graphical
2285 printer drivers. A workaround on MS-Windows is to use Windows' basic
2286 built in editor to print (this is possibly the only useful purpose it
2287 has):
2288
2289 (setq printer-name "") ;; notepad takes the default
2290 (setq lpr-command "notepad") ;; notepad
2291 (setq lpr-switches nil) ;; not needed
2292 (setq lpr-printer-switch "/P") ;; run notepad as batch printer
2293
2294 ** Antivirus software interacts badly with the MS-Windows version of Emacs.
2295
2296 The usual manifestation of these problems is that subprocesses don't
2297 work or even wedge the entire system. In particular, "M-x shell RET"
2298 was reported to fail to work. But other commands also sometimes don't
2299 work when an antivirus package is installed.
2300
2301 The solution is to switch the antivirus software to a less aggressive
2302 mode (e.g., disable the ``auto-protect'' feature), or even uninstall
2303 or disable it entirely.
2304
2305 ** Pressing the mouse button on MS-Windows does not give a mouse-2 event.
2306
2307 This is usually a problem with the mouse driver. Because most Windows
2308 programs do not do anything useful with the middle mouse button, many
2309 mouse drivers allow you to define the wheel press to do something
2310 different. Some drivers do not even have the option to generate a
2311 middle button press. In such cases, setting the wheel press to
2312 "scroll" sometimes works if you press the button twice. Trying a
2313 generic mouse driver might help.
2314
2315 ** Scrolling the mouse wheel on MS-Windows always scrolls the top window.
2316
2317 This is another common problem with mouse drivers. Instead of
2318 generating scroll events, some mouse drivers try to fake scroll bar
2319 movement. But they are not intelligent enough to handle multiple
2320 scroll bars within a frame. Trying a generic mouse driver might help.
2321
2322 ** Mail sent through Microsoft Exchange in some encodings appears to be
2323 mangled and is not seen correctly in Rmail or Gnus. We don't know
2324 exactly what happens, but it isn't an Emacs problem in cases we've
2325 seen.
2326
2327 ** On MS-Windows, you cannot use the right-hand ALT key and the left-hand
2328 CTRL key together to type a Control-Meta character.
2329
2330 This is a consequence of a misfeature beyond Emacs's control.
2331
2332 Under Windows, the AltGr key on international keyboards generates key
2333 events with the modifiers Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl. Since Emacs cannot
2334 distinguish AltGr from an explicit Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl
2335 combination, whenever it sees Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl it assumes that
2336 AltGr has been pressed. The variable `w32-recognize-altgr' can be set
2337 to nil to tell Emacs that AltGr is really Ctrl and Alt.
2338
2339 ** Under some X-servers running on MS-Windows, Emacs' display is incorrect.
2340
2341 The symptoms are that Emacs does not completely erase blank areas of the
2342 screen during scrolling or some other screen operations (e.g., selective
2343 display or when killing a region). M-x recenter will cause the screen
2344 to be completely redisplayed and the "extra" characters will disappear.
2345
2346 This is known to occur under Exceed 6, and possibly earlier versions
2347 as well; it is reportedly solved in version 6.2.0.16 and later. The
2348 problem lies in the X-server settings.
2349
2350 There are reports that you can solve the problem with Exceed by
2351 running `Xconfig' from within NT, choosing "X selection", then
2352 un-checking the boxes "auto-copy X selection" and "auto-paste to X
2353 selection".
2354
2355 Of this does not work, please inform bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org. Then
2356 please call support for your X-server and see if you can get a fix.
2357 If you do, please send it to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org so we can list it
2358 here.
2359
2360 * Build-time problems
2361
2362 ** Configuration
2363
2364 *** The `configure' script doesn't find the jpeg library.
2365
2366 There are reports that this happens on some systems because the linker
2367 by default only looks for shared libraries, but jpeg distribution by
2368 default only installs a nonshared version of the library, `libjpeg.a'.
2369
2370 If this is the problem, you can configure the jpeg library with the
2371 `--enable-shared' option and then rebuild libjpeg. This produces a
2372 shared version of libjpeg, which you need to install. Finally, rerun
2373 the Emacs configure script, which should now find the jpeg library.
2374 Alternatively, modify the generated src/Makefile to link the .a file
2375 explicitly, and edit src/config.h to define HAVE_JPEG.
2376
2377 *** `configure' warns ``accepted by the compiler, rejected by the preprocessor''.
2378
2379 This indicates a mismatch between the C compiler and preprocessor that
2380 configure is using. For example, on Solaris 10 trying to use
2381 CC=/opt/SUNWspro/bin/cc (the Sun Studio compiler) together with
2382 CPP=/usr/ccs/lib/cpp can result in errors of this form (you may also
2383 see the error ``"/usr/include/sys/isa_defs.h", line 500: undefined control'').
2384
2385 The solution is to tell configure to use the correct C preprocessor
2386 for your C compiler (CPP="/opt/SUNWspro/bin/cc -E" in the above
2387 example).
2388
2389 *** `configure' fails with ``"junk.c", line 660: invalid input token: 8.elc''
2390
2391 The final stage of the Emacs configure process uses the C preprocessor
2392 to generate the Makefiles. Errors of this form can occur if the C
2393 preprocessor inserts extra whitespace into its output. The solution
2394 is to find the switches that stop your preprocessor from inserting extra
2395 whitespace, add them to CPPFLAGS, and re-run configure. For example,
2396 this error can occur on Solaris 10 when using the Sun Studio compiler
2397 ``Sun C 5.8'' with its preprocessor CPP="/opt/SUNWspro/bin/cc -E".
2398 The relevant switch in this case is "-Xs" (``compile assuming
2399 (pre-ANSI) K & R C style code'').
2400
2401 ** Compilation
2402
2403 *** Building Emacs over NFS fails with ``Text file busy''.
2404
2405 This was reported to happen when building Emacs on a GNU/Linux system
2406 (Red Hat Linux 6.2) using a build directory automounted from Solaris
2407 (SunOS 5.6) file server, but it might not be limited to that
2408 configuration alone. Presumably, the NFS server doesn't commit the
2409 files' data to disk quickly enough, and the Emacs executable file is
2410 left ``busy'' for several seconds after Emacs has finished dumping
2411 itself. This causes the subsequent commands which invoke the dumped
2412 Emacs executable to fail with the above message.
2413
2414 In some of these cases, a time skew between the NFS server and the
2415 machine where Emacs is built is detected and reported by GNU Make
2416 (it says that some of the files have modification time in the future).
2417 This might be a symptom of NFS-related problems.
2418
2419 If the NFS server runs on Solaris, apply the Solaris patch 105379-05
2420 (Sunos 5.6: /kernel/misc/nfssrv patch). If that doesn't work, or if
2421 you have a different version of the OS or the NFS server, you can
2422 force the NFS server to use 1KB blocks, which was reported to fix the
2423 problem albeit at a price of slowing down file I/O. You can force 1KB
2424 blocks by specifying the "-o rsize=1024,wsize=1024" options to the
2425 `mount' command, or by adding ",rsize=1024,wsize=1024" to the mount
2426 options in the appropriate system configuration file, such as
2427 `/etc/auto.home'.
2428
2429 Alternatively, when Make fails due to this problem, you could wait for
2430 a few seconds and then invoke Make again. In one particular case,
2431 waiting for 10 or more seconds between the two Make invocations seemed
2432 to work around the problem.
2433
2434 Similar problems can happen if your machine NFS-mounts a directory
2435 onto itself. Suppose the Emacs sources live in `/usr/local/src' and
2436 you are working on the host called `marvin'. Then an entry in the
2437 `/etc/fstab' file like the following is asking for trouble:
2438
2439 marvin:/usr/local/src /usr/local/src ...options.omitted...
2440
2441 The solution is to remove this line from `etc/fstab'.
2442
2443 *** Building Emacs with GCC 2.9x fails in the `src' directory.
2444
2445 This may happen if you use a development version of GNU `cpp' from one
2446 of the GCC snapshots between Oct 2000 and Feb 2001, or from a released
2447 version of GCC newer than 2.95.2 which was prepared around those
2448 dates; similar problems were reported with some snapshots of GCC 3.1
2449 around Sep 30 2001. The preprocessor in those versions is
2450 incompatible with a traditional Unix cpp (e.g., it expands ".." into
2451 ". .", which breaks relative file names that reference the parent
2452 directory; or inserts TAB characters before lines that set Make
2453 variables).
2454
2455 The solution is to make sure the preprocessor is run with the
2456 `-traditional' option. The `configure' script does that automatically
2457 when it detects the known problems in your cpp, but you might hit some
2458 unknown ones. To force the `configure' script to use `-traditional',
2459 run the script like this:
2460
2461 CPP='gcc -E -traditional' ./configure ...
2462
2463 (replace the ellipsis "..." with any additional arguments you pass to
2464 the script).
2465
2466 Note that this problem does not pertain to the MS-Windows port of
2467 Emacs, since it doesn't use the preprocessor to generate Makefiles.
2468
2469 *** src/Makefile and lib-src/Makefile are truncated--most of the file missing.
2470 *** Compiling wakeup, in lib-src, says it can't make wakeup.c.
2471
2472 This can happen if configure uses GNU sed version 2.03. That version
2473 had a bug. GNU sed version 2.05 works properly.To solve the
2474 problem, install the current version of GNU Sed, then rerun Emacs's
2475 configure script.
2476
2477 *** Compiling lib-src says there is no rule to make test-distrib.c.
2478
2479 This results from a bug in a VERY old version of GNU Sed. To solve
2480 the problem, install the current version of GNU Sed, then rerun
2481 Emacs's configure script.
2482
2483 *** Building a 32-bit executable on a 64-bit GNU/Linux architecture.
2484
2485 First ensure that the necessary 32-bit system libraries and include
2486 files are installed. Then use:
2487
2488 env CC="gcc -m32" ./configure --build=i386-linux-gnu \
2489 --x-libraries=/usr/X11R6/lib
2490
2491 (using the location of the 32-bit X libraries on your system).
2492
2493 *** Building the Cygwin port for MS-Windows can fail with some GCC versions
2494
2495 Building Emacs 22 with Cygwin builds of GCC 3.4.4-1 and 3.4.4-2 is
2496 reported to either fail or cause Emacs to segfault at run time. In
2497 addition, the Cygwin GCC 3.4.4-2 has problems with generating debug
2498 info. Cygwin users are advised not to use these versions of GCC for
2499 compiling Emacs. GCC versions 4.0.3, 4.0.4, 4.1.1, and 4.1.2
2500 reportedly build a working Cygwin binary of Emacs, so we recommend
2501 these GCC versions. Note that these versions of GCC, 4.0.3, 4.0.4,
2502 4.1.1, and 4.1.2, are currently the _only_ versions known to succeed
2503 in building Emacs (as of v22.1).
2504
2505 *** Building the native MS-Windows port with Cygwin GCC can fail.
2506
2507 Emacs may not build using recent Cygwin builds of GCC, such as Cygwin
2508 version 1.1.8, using the default configure settings. It appears to be
2509 necessary to specify the -mwin32 flag when compiling, and define
2510 __MSVCRT__, like so:
2511
2512 configure --with-gcc --cflags -mwin32 --cflags -D__MSVCRT__
2513
2514 *** Building the MS-Windows port fails with a CreateProcess failure.
2515
2516 Some versions of mingw32 make on some versions of Windows do not seem
2517 to detect the shell correctly. Try "make SHELL=cmd.exe", or if that
2518 fails, try running make from Cygwin bash instead.
2519
2520 *** Building the MS-Windows port with Leim fails in the `leim' directory.
2521
2522 The error message might be something like this:
2523
2524 Converting d:/emacs-21.3/leim/CXTERM-DIC/4Corner.tit to quail-package...
2525 Invalid ENCODE: value in TIT dictionary
2526 NMAKE : fatal error U1077: '"../src/obj-spd/i386/emacs.exe"' : return code
2527 '0xffffffff'
2528 Stop.
2529
2530 This can happen if the Leim distribution is unpacked with a program
2531 which converts the `*.tit' files to DOS-style CR-LF text format. The
2532 `*.tit' files in the leim/CXTERM-DIC directory require Unix-style line
2533 endings to compile properly, because Emacs reads them without any code
2534 or EOL conversions.
2535
2536 The solution is to make sure the program used to unpack Leim does not
2537 change the files' line endings behind your back. The GNU FTP site has
2538 in the `/gnu/emacs/windows' directory a program called `djtarnt.exe'
2539 which can be used to unpack `.tar.gz' and `.zip' archives without
2540 mangling them.
2541
2542 *** Building `ctags' for MS-Windows with the MinGW port of GCC fails.
2543
2544 This might happen due to a bug in the MinGW header assert.h, which
2545 defines the `assert' macro with a trailing semi-colon. The following
2546 patch to assert.h should solve this:
2547
2548 *** include/assert.h.orig Sun Nov 7 02:41:36 1999
2549 --- include/assert.h Mon Jan 29 11:49:10 2001
2550 ***************
2551 *** 41,47 ****
2552 /*
2553 * If not debugging, assert does nothing.
2554 */
2555 ! #define assert(x) ((void)0);
2556
2557 #else /* debugging enabled */
2558
2559 --- 41,47 ----
2560 /*
2561 * If not debugging, assert does nothing.
2562 */
2563 ! #define assert(x) ((void)0)
2564
2565 #else /* debugging enabled */
2566
2567
2568 *** Building the MS-Windows port with Visual Studio 2005 fails.
2569
2570 Microsoft no longer ships the single threaded version of the C library
2571 with their compiler, and the multithreaded static library is missing
2572 some functions that Microsoft have deemed non-threadsafe. The
2573 dynamically linked C library has all the functions, but there is a
2574 conflict between the versions of malloc in the DLL and in Emacs, which
2575 is not resolvable due to the way Windows does dynamic linking.
2576
2577 We recommend the use of the MingW port of GCC for compiling Emacs, as
2578 not only does it not suffer these problems, but it is also Free
2579 software like Emacs.
2580
2581 ** Linking
2582
2583 *** Building Emacs with a system compiler fails to link because of an
2584 undefined symbol such as __eprintf which does not appear in Emacs.
2585
2586 This can happen if some of the libraries linked into Emacs were built
2587 with GCC, but Emacs itself is being linked with a compiler other than
2588 GCC. Object files compiled with GCC might need some helper functions
2589 from libgcc.a, the library which comes with GCC, but the system
2590 compiler does not instruct the linker to search libgcc.a during the
2591 link stage.
2592
2593 A solution is to link with GCC, like this:
2594
2595 make CC=gcc
2596
2597 Since the .o object files already exist, this will not recompile Emacs
2598 with GCC, but just restart by trying again to link temacs.
2599
2600 *** AIX 1.3 ptf 0013: Link failure.
2601
2602 There is a real duplicate definition of the function `_slibc_free' in
2603 the library /lib/libc_s.a (just do nm on it to verify). The
2604 workaround/fix is:
2605
2606 cd /lib
2607 ar xv libc_s.a NLtmtime.o
2608 ar dv libc_s.a NLtmtime.o
2609
2610 *** AIX 4.1.2: Linker error messages such as
2611 ld: 0711-212 SEVERE ERROR: Symbol .__quous, found in the global symbol table
2612 of archive /usr/lib/libIM.a, was not defined in archive member shr.o.
2613
2614 This is a problem in libIM.a. You can work around it by executing
2615 these shell commands in the src subdirectory of the directory where
2616 you build Emacs:
2617
2618 cp /usr/lib/libIM.a .
2619 chmod 664 libIM.a
2620 ranlib libIM.a
2621
2622 Then change -lIM to ./libIM.a in the command to link temacs (in
2623 Makefile).
2624
2625 *** Sun with acc: Link failure when using acc on a Sun.
2626
2627 To use acc, you need additional options just before the libraries, such as
2628
2629 /usr/lang/SC2.0.1/values-Xt.o -L/usr/lang/SC2.0.1/cg87 -L/usr/lang/SC2.0.1
2630
2631 and you need to add -lansi just before -lc.
2632
2633 The precise file names depend on the compiler version, so we
2634 cannot easily arrange to supply them.
2635
2636 *** Linking says that the functions insque and remque are undefined.
2637
2638 Change oldXMenu/Makefile by adding insque.o to the variable OBJS.
2639
2640 *** `tparam' reported as a multiply-defined symbol when linking with ncurses.
2641
2642 This problem results from an incompatible change in ncurses, in
2643 version 1.9.9e approximately. This version is unable to provide a
2644 definition of tparm without also defining tparam. This is also
2645 incompatible with Terminfo; as a result, the Emacs Terminfo support
2646 does not work with this version of ncurses.
2647
2648 The fix is to install a newer version of ncurses, such as version 4.2.
2649
2650 ** Dumping
2651
2652 *** Linux: Segfault during `make bootstrap' under certain recent versions of the Linux kernel.
2653
2654 With certain recent Linux kernels (like the one of Red Hat Fedora Core
2655 1 and newer), the new "Exec-shield" functionality is enabled by default, which
2656 creates a different memory layout that breaks the emacs dumper. Emacs tries
2657 to handle this at build time, but if the workaround used fails, these
2658 instructions can be useful.
2659 The work-around explained here is not enough on Fedora Core 4 (and possible
2660 newer). Read the next item.
2661
2662 Configure can overcome the problem of exec-shield if the architecture is
2663 x86 and the program setarch is present. On other architectures no
2664 workaround is known.
2665
2666 You can check the Exec-shield state like this:
2667
2668 cat /proc/sys/kernel/exec-shield
2669
2670 It returns non-zero when Exec-shield is enabled, 0 otherwise. Please
2671 read your system documentation for more details on Exec-shield and
2672 associated commands. Exec-shield can be turned off with this command:
2673
2674 echo "0" > /proc/sys/kernel/exec-shield
2675
2676 When Exec-shield is enabled, building Emacs will segfault during the
2677 execution of this command:
2678
2679 ./temacs --batch --load loadup [dump|bootstrap]
2680
2681 To work around this problem, it is necessary to temporarily disable
2682 Exec-shield while building Emacs, or, on x86, by using the `setarch'
2683 command when running temacs like this:
2684
2685 setarch i386 ./temacs --batch --load loadup [dump|bootstrap]
2686
2687
2688 *** Fedora Core 4 GNU/Linux: Segfault during dumping.
2689
2690 In addition to exec-shield explained above "Linux: Segfault during
2691 `make bootstrap' under certain recent versions of the Linux kernel"
2692 item, Linux kernel shipped with Fedora Core 4 randomizes the virtual
2693 address space of a process. As the result dumping may fail even if
2694 you turn off exec-shield. In this case, use the -R option to the setarch
2695 command:
2696
2697 setarch i386 -R ./temacs --batch --load loadup [dump|bootstrap]
2698
2699 or
2700
2701 setarch i386 -R make bootstrap
2702
2703 *** Fatal signal in the command temacs -l loadup inc dump.
2704
2705 This command is the final stage of building Emacs. It is run by the
2706 Makefile in the src subdirectory, or by build.com on VMS.
2707
2708 It has been known to get fatal errors due to insufficient swapping
2709 space available on the machine.
2710
2711 On 68000s, it has also happened because of bugs in the
2712 subroutine `alloca'. Verify that `alloca' works right, even
2713 for large blocks (many pages).
2714
2715 *** test-distrib says that the distribution has been clobbered.
2716 *** or, temacs prints "Command key out of range 0-127".
2717 *** or, temacs runs and dumps emacs, but emacs totally fails to work.
2718 *** or, temacs gets errors dumping emacs.
2719
2720 This can be because the .elc files have been garbled. Do not be
2721 fooled by the fact that most of a .elc file is text: these are
2722 binary files and can contain all 256 byte values.
2723
2724 In particular `shar' cannot be used for transmitting GNU Emacs.
2725 It typically truncates "lines". What appear to be "lines" in
2726 a binary file can of course be of any length. Even once `shar'
2727 itself is made to work correctly, `sh' discards null characters
2728 when unpacking the shell archive.
2729
2730 I have also seen character \177 changed into \377. I do not know
2731 what transfer means caused this problem. Various network
2732 file transfer programs are suspected of clobbering the high bit.
2733
2734 If you have a copy of Emacs that has been damaged in its
2735 nonprinting characters, you can fix them:
2736
2737 1) Record the names of all the .elc files.
2738 2) Delete all the .elc files.
2739 3) Recompile alloc.c with a value of PURESIZE twice as large.
2740 (See puresize.h.) You might as well save the old alloc.o.
2741 4) Remake emacs. It should work now.
2742 5) Running emacs, do Meta-x byte-compile-file repeatedly
2743 to recreate all the .elc files that used to exist.
2744 You may need to increase the value of the variable
2745 max-lisp-eval-depth to succeed in running the compiler interpreted
2746 on certain .el files. 400 was sufficient as of last report.
2747 6) Reinstall the old alloc.o (undoing changes to alloc.c if any)
2748 and remake temacs.
2749 7) Remake emacs. It should work now, with valid .elc files.
2750
2751 *** temacs prints "Pure Lisp storage exhausted".
2752
2753 This means that the Lisp code loaded from the .elc and .el
2754 files during temacs -l loadup inc dump took up more
2755 space than was allocated.
2756
2757 This could be caused by
2758 1) adding code to the preloaded Lisp files
2759 2) adding more preloaded files in loadup.el
2760 3) having a site-init.el or site-load.el which loads files.
2761 Note that ANY site-init.el or site-load.el is nonstandard;
2762 if you have received Emacs from some other site
2763 and it contains a site-init.el or site-load.el file, consider
2764 deleting that file.
2765 4) getting the wrong .el or .elc files
2766 (not from the directory you expected).
2767 5) deleting some .elc files that are supposed to exist.
2768 This would cause the source files (.el files) to be
2769 loaded instead. They take up more room, so you lose.
2770 6) a bug in the Emacs distribution which underestimates
2771 the space required.
2772
2773 If the need for more space is legitimate, change the definition
2774 of PURESIZE in puresize.h.
2775
2776 But in some of the cases listed above, this problem is a consequence
2777 of something else that is wrong. Be sure to check and fix the real
2778 problem.
2779
2780 *** Linux: Emacs crashes when dumping itself on Mac PPC running Yellow Dog GNU/Linux.
2781
2782 The crashes happen inside the function Fmake_symbol; here's a typical
2783 C backtrace printed by GDB:
2784
2785 0x190c0c0 in Fmake_symbol ()
2786 (gdb) where
2787 #0 0x190c0c0 in Fmake_symbol ()
2788 #1 0x1942ca4 in init_obarray ()
2789 #2 0x18b3500 in main ()
2790 #3 0x114371c in __libc_start_main (argc=5, argv=0x7ffff5b4, envp=0x7ffff5cc,
2791
2792 This could happen because GCC version 2.95 and later changed the base
2793 of the load address to 0x10000000. Emacs needs to be told about this,
2794 but we currently cannot do that automatically, because that breaks
2795 other versions of GNU/Linux on the MacPPC. Until we find a way to
2796 distinguish between the Yellow Dog and the other varieties of
2797 GNU/Linux systems on the PPC, you will have to manually uncomment the
2798 following section near the end of the file src/m/macppc.h in the Emacs
2799 distribution:
2800
2801 #if 0 /* This breaks things on PPC GNU/Linux except for Yellowdog,
2802 even with identical GCC, as, ld. Let's take it out until we
2803 know what's really going on here. */
2804 /* GCC 2.95 and newer on GNU/Linux PPC changed the load address to
2805 0x10000000. */
2806 #if defined __linux__
2807 #if __GNUC__ > 2 || (__GNUC__ == 2 && __GNUC_MINOR__ >= 95)
2808 #define DATA_SEG_BITS 0x10000000
2809 #endif
2810 #endif
2811 #endif /* 0 */
2812
2813 Remove the "#if 0" and "#endif" directives which surround this, save
2814 the file, and then reconfigure and rebuild Emacs. The dumping process
2815 should now succeed.
2816
2817 *** OpenBSD 4.0 macppc: Segfault during dumping.
2818
2819 The build aborts with signal 11 when the command `./temacs --batch
2820 --load loadup bootstrap' tries to load files.el. A workaround seems
2821 to be to reduce the level of compiler optimization used during the
2822 build (from -O2 to -O1). It is possible this is an OpenBSD
2823 GCC problem specific to the macppc architecture, possibly only
2824 occurring with older versions of GCC (e.g. 3.3.5).
2825
2826 *** openSUSE 10.3: Segfault in bcopy during dumping.
2827
2828 This is due to a bug in the bcopy implementation in openSUSE 10.3.
2829 It is/will be fixed in an openSUSE update.
2830
2831 ** Installation
2832
2833 *** Installing Emacs gets an error running `install-info'.
2834
2835 You need to install a recent version of Texinfo; that package
2836 supplies the `install-info' command.
2837
2838 *** Installing to a directory with spaces in the name fails.
2839
2840 For example, if you call configure with a directory-related option
2841 with spaces in the value, eg --enable-locallisppath='/path/with\ spaces'.
2842 Using directory paths with spaces is not supported at this time: you
2843 must re-configure without using spaces.
2844
2845 *** Installing to a directory with non-ASCII characters in the name fails.
2846
2847 Installation may fail, or the Emacs executable may not start
2848 correctly, if a directory name containing non-ASCII characters is used
2849 as a `configure' argument (e.g. `--prefix'). The problem can also
2850 occur if a non-ASCII directory is specified in the EMACSLOADPATH
2851 envvar.
2852
2853 *** On Solaris, use GNU Make when installing an out-of-tree build
2854
2855 The Emacs configuration process allows you to configure the
2856 build environment so that you can build emacs in a directory
2857 outside of the distribution tree. When installing Emacs from an
2858 out-of-tree build directory on Solaris, you may need to use GNU
2859 make. The make programs bundled with Solaris support the VPATH
2860 macro but use it differently from the way the VPATH macro is
2861 used by GNU make. The differences will cause the "make install"
2862 step to fail, leaving you with an incomplete emacs
2863 installation. GNU make is available in /usr/sfw/bin on Solaris
2864 10 and can be installed as /opt/sfw/bin/gmake from the Solaris 9
2865 Software Companion CDROM.
2866
2867 The problems due to the VPATH processing differences affect only
2868 out of tree builds so, if you are on a Solaris installation
2869 without GNU make, you can install Emacs completely by installing
2870 from a build environment using the original emacs distribution tree.
2871
2872 ** First execution
2873
2874 *** Emacs binary is not in executable format, and cannot be run.
2875
2876 This was reported to happen when Emacs is built in a directory mounted
2877 via NFS, for some combinations of NFS client and NFS server.
2878 Usually, the file `emacs' produced in these cases is full of
2879 binary null characters, and the `file' utility says:
2880
2881 emacs: ASCII text, with no line terminators
2882
2883 We don't know what exactly causes this failure. A work-around is to
2884 build Emacs in a directory on a local disk.
2885
2886 *** The dumped Emacs crashes when run, trying to write pure data.
2887
2888 Two causes have been seen for such problems.
2889
2890 1) On a system where getpagesize is not a system call, it is defined
2891 as a macro. If the definition (in both unexec.c and malloc.c) is wrong,
2892 it can cause problems like this. You might be able to find the correct
2893 value in the man page for a.out (5).
2894
2895 2) Some systems allocate variables declared static among the
2896 initialized variables. Emacs makes all initialized variables in most
2897 of its files pure after dumping, but the variables declared static and
2898 not initialized are not supposed to be pure. On these systems you
2899 may need to add "#define static" to the m- or the s- file.
2900
2901 * Emacs 19 problems
2902
2903 ** Error messages `Wrong number of arguments: #<subr where-is-internal>, 5'.
2904
2905 This typically results from having the powerkey library loaded.
2906 Powerkey was designed for Emacs 19.22. It is obsolete now because
2907 Emacs 19 now has this feature built in; and powerkey also calls
2908 where-is-internal in an obsolete way.
2909
2910 So the fix is to arrange not to load powerkey.
2911
2912 * Runtime problems on legacy systems
2913
2914 This section covers bugs reported on very old hardware or software.
2915 If you are using hardware and an operating system shipped after 2000,
2916 it is unlikely you will see any of these.
2917
2918 ** Ancient operating systems
2919
2920 AIX 4.2 was end-of-lifed on Dec 31st, 1999.
2921
2922 *** AIX: You get this compiler error message:
2923
2924 Processing include file ./XMenuInt.h
2925 1501-106: (S) Include file X11/Xlib.h not found.
2926
2927 This means your system was installed with only the X11 runtime i.d
2928 libraries. You have to find your sipo (bootable tape) and install
2929 X11Dev... with smit.
2930
2931 (This report must be ancient. Bootable tapes are long dead.)
2932
2933 *** AIX 3.2.4: Releasing Ctrl/Act key has no effect, if Shift is down.
2934
2935 Due to a feature of AIX, pressing or releasing the Ctrl/Act key is
2936 ignored when the Shift, Alt or AltGr keys are held down. This can
2937 lead to the keyboard being "control-locked"--ordinary letters are
2938 treated as control characters.
2939
2940 You can get out of this "control-locked" state by pressing and
2941 releasing Ctrl/Act while not pressing or holding any other keys.
2942
2943 *** AIX 3.2.5: You get this message when running Emacs:
2944
2945 Could not load program emacs
2946 Symbol smtcheckinit in csh is undefined
2947 Error was: Exec format error
2948
2949 or this one:
2950
2951 Could not load program .emacs
2952 Symbol _system_con in csh is undefined
2953 Symbol _fp_trapsta in csh is undefined
2954 Error was: Exec format error
2955
2956 These can happen when you try to run on AIX 3.2.5 a program that was
2957 compiled with 3.2.4. The fix is to recompile.
2958
2959 *** AIX 4.2: Emacs gets a segmentation fault at startup.
2960
2961 If you are using IBM's xlc compiler, compile emacs.c
2962 without optimization; that should avoid the problem.
2963
2964 *** ISC Unix
2965
2966 **** ISC: display-time causes kernel problems on ISC systems.
2967
2968 Under Interactive Unix versions 3.0.1 and 4.0 (and probably other
2969 versions), display-time causes the loss of large numbers of STREVENT
2970 cells. Eventually the kernel's supply of these cells is exhausted.
2971 This makes emacs and the whole system run slow, and can make other
2972 processes die, in particular pcnfsd.
2973
2974 Other emacs functions that communicate with remote processes may have
2975 the same problem. Display-time seems to be far the worst.
2976
2977 The only known fix: Don't run display-time.
2978
2979 *** SunOS
2980
2981 SunOS 4.1.4 stopped shipping on Sep 30 1998.
2982
2983 **** SunOS: You get linker errors
2984 ld: Undefined symbol
2985 _get_wmShellWidgetClass
2986 _get_applicationShellWidgetClass
2987
2988 **** Sun 4.0.x: M-x shell persistently reports "Process shell exited abnormally with code 1".
2989
2990 This happened on Suns as a result of what is said to be a bug in Sunos
2991 version 4.0.x. The only fix was to reboot the machine.
2992
2993 **** SunOS4.1.1 and SunOS4.1.3: Mail is lost when sent to local aliases.
2994
2995 Many emacs mail user agents (VM and rmail, for instance) use the
2996 sendmail.el library. This library can arrange for mail to be
2997 delivered by passing messages to the /usr/lib/sendmail (usually)
2998 program . In doing so, it passes the '-t' flag to sendmail, which
2999 means that the name of the recipient of the message is not on the
3000 command line and, therefore, that sendmail must parse the message to
3001 obtain the destination address.
3002
3003 There is a bug in the SunOS4.1.1 and SunOS4.1.3 versions of sendmail.
3004 In short, when given the -t flag, the SunOS sendmail won't recognize
3005 non-local (i.e. NIS) aliases. It has been reported that the Solaris
3006 2.x versions of sendmail do not have this bug. For those using SunOS
3007 4.1, the best fix is to install sendmail V8 or IDA sendmail (which
3008 have other advantages over the regular sendmail as well). At the time
3009 of this writing, these official versions are available:
3010
3011 Sendmail V8 on ftp.cs.berkeley.edu in /ucb/sendmail:
3012 sendmail.8.6.9.base.tar.Z (the base system source & documentation)
3013 sendmail.8.6.9.cf.tar.Z (configuration files)
3014 sendmail.8.6.9.misc.tar.Z (miscellaneous support programs)
3015 sendmail.8.6.9.xdoc.tar.Z (extended documentation, with postscript)
3016
3017 IDA sendmail on vixen.cso.uiuc.edu in /pub:
3018 sendmail-5.67b+IDA-1.5.tar.gz
3019
3020 **** Sunos 4: You get the error ld: Undefined symbol __lib_version.
3021
3022 This is the result of using cc or gcc with the shared library meant
3023 for acc (the Sunpro compiler). Check your LD_LIBRARY_PATH and delete
3024 /usr/lang/SC2.0.1 or some similar directory.
3025
3026 **** SunOS 4.1.3: Emacs unpredictably crashes in _yp_dobind_soft.
3027
3028 This happens if you configure Emacs specifying just `sparc-sun-sunos4'
3029 on a system that is version 4.1.3. You must specify the precise
3030 version number (or let configure figure out the configuration, which
3031 it can do perfectly well for SunOS).
3032
3033 **** Sunos 4.1.3: Emacs gets hung shortly after startup.
3034
3035 We think this is due to a bug in Sunos. The word is that
3036 one of these Sunos patches fixes the bug:
3037
3038 100075-11 100224-06 100347-03 100482-05 100557-02 100623-03 100804-03 101080-01
3039 100103-12 100249-09 100496-02 100564-07 100630-02 100891-10 101134-01
3040 100170-09 100296-04 100377-09 100507-04 100567-04 100650-02 101070-01 101145-01
3041 100173-10 100305-15 100383-06 100513-04 100570-05 100689-01 101071-03 101200-02
3042 100178-09 100338-05 100421-03 100536-02 100584-05 100784-01 101072-01 101207-01
3043
3044 We don't know which of these patches really matter. If you find out
3045 which ones, please inform bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
3046
3047 **** SunOS 4: Emacs processes keep going after you kill the X server
3048 (or log out, if you logged in using X).
3049
3050 Someone reported that recompiling with GCC 2.7.0 fixed this problem.
3051
3052 The fix to this is to install patch 100573 for OpenWindows 3.0
3053 or link libXmu statically.
3054
3055 **** Sunos 5.3: Subprocesses remain, hanging but not zombies.
3056
3057 A bug in Sunos 5.3 causes Emacs subprocesses to remain after Emacs
3058 exits. Sun patch # 101415-02 is part of the fix for this, but it only
3059 applies to ptys, and doesn't fix the problem with subprocesses
3060 communicating through pipes.
3061
3062 *** Apollo Domain
3063
3064 **** Shell mode ignores interrupts on Apollo Domain.
3065
3066 You may find that M-x shell prints the following message:
3067
3068 Warning: no access to tty; thus no job control in this shell...
3069
3070 This can happen if there are not enough ptys on your system.
3071 Here is how to make more of them.
3072
3073 % cd /dev
3074 % ls pty*
3075 # shows how many pty's you have. I had 8, named pty0 to pty7)
3076 % /etc/crpty 8
3077 # creates eight new pty's
3078
3079 *** Irix
3080
3081 *** Irix 6.2: No visible display on mips-sgi-irix6.2 when compiling with GCC 2.8.1.
3082
3083 This problem went away after installing the latest IRIX patches
3084 as of 8 Dec 1998.
3085
3086 The same problem has been reported on Irix 6.3.
3087
3088 *** Irix 6.3: substituting environment variables in file names
3089 in the minibuffer gives peculiar error messages such as
3090
3091 Substituting nonexistent environment variable ""
3092
3093 This is not an Emacs bug; it is caused by something in SGI patch
3094 003082 August 11, 1998.
3095
3096 *** OPENSTEP
3097
3098 **** OPENSTEP 4.2: Compiling syntax.c with gcc 2.7.2.1 fails.
3099
3100 The compiler was reported to crash while compiling syntax.c with the
3101 following message:
3102
3103 cc: Internal compiler error: program cc1obj got fatal signal 11
3104
3105 To work around this, replace the macros UPDATE_SYNTAX_TABLE_FORWARD,
3106 INC_BOTH, and INC_FROM with functions. To this end, first define 3
3107 functions, one each for every macro. Here's an example:
3108
3109 static int update_syntax_table_forward(int from)
3110 {
3111 return(UPDATE_SYNTAX_TABLE_FORWARD(from));
3112 }/*update_syntax_table_forward*/
3113
3114 Then replace all references to UPDATE_SYNTAX_TABLE_FORWARD in syntax.c
3115 with a call to the function update_syntax_table_forward.
3116
3117 *** Solaris 2.x
3118
3119 **** Strange results from format %d in a few cases, on a Sun.
3120
3121 Sun compiler version SC3.0 has been found to miscompile part of
3122 editfns.c. The workaround is to compile with some other compiler such
3123 as GCC.
3124
3125 **** On Solaris, Emacs dumps core if lisp-complete-symbol is called.
3126
3127 If you compile Emacs with the -fast or -xO4 option with version 3.0.2
3128 of the Sun C compiler, Emacs dumps core when lisp-complete-symbol is
3129 called. The problem does not happen if you compile with GCC.
3130
3131 **** On Solaris, Emacs crashes if you use (display-time).
3132
3133 This can happen if you configure Emacs without specifying the precise
3134 version of Solaris that you are using.
3135
3136 **** Solaris 2.3 and 2.4: Unpredictable segmentation faults.
3137
3138 A user reported that this happened in 19.29 when it was compiled with
3139 the Sun compiler, but not when he recompiled with GCC 2.7.0.
3140
3141 We do not know whether something in Emacs is partly to blame for this.
3142
3143 **** Solaris 2.4: Emacs dumps core on startup.
3144
3145 Bill Sebok says that the cause of this is Solaris 2.4 vendor patch
3146 102303-05, which extends the Solaris linker to deal with the Solaris
3147 Common Desktop Environment's linking needs. You can fix the problem
3148 by removing this patch and installing patch 102049-02 instead.
3149 However, that linker version won't work with CDE.
3150
3151 Solaris 2.5 comes with a linker that has this bug. It is reported that if
3152 you install all the latest patches (as of June 1996), the bug is fixed.
3153 We suspect the crucial patch is one of these, but we don't know
3154 for certain.
3155
3156 103093-03: [README] SunOS 5.5: kernel patch (2140557 bytes)
3157 102832-01: [README] OpenWindows 3.5: Xview Jumbo Patch (4181613 bytes)
3158 103242-04: [README] SunOS 5.5: linker patch (595363 bytes)
3159
3160 (One user reports that the bug was fixed by those patches together
3161 with patches 102980-04, 103279-01, 103300-02, and 103468-01.)
3162
3163 If you can determine which patch does fix the bug, please tell
3164 bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
3165
3166 Meanwhile, the GNU linker links Emacs properly on both Solaris 2.4 and
3167 Solaris 2.5.
3168
3169 **** Solaris 2.4: Dired hangs and C-g does not work. Or Emacs hangs
3170 forever waiting for termination of a subprocess that is a zombie.
3171
3172 casper@fwi.uva.nl says the problem is in X11R6. Rebuild libX11.so
3173 after changing the file xc/config/cf/sunLib.tmpl. Change the lines
3174
3175 #if ThreadedX
3176 #define SharedX11Reqs -lthread
3177 #endif
3178
3179 to:
3180
3181 #if OSMinorVersion < 4
3182 #if ThreadedX
3183 #define SharedX11Reqs -lthread
3184 #endif
3185 #endif
3186
3187 Be sure also to edit x/config/cf/sun.cf so that OSMinorVersion is 4
3188 (as it should be for Solaris 2.4). The file has three definitions for
3189 OSMinorVersion: the first is for x86, the second for SPARC under
3190 Solaris, and the third for SunOS 4. Make sure to update the
3191 definition for your type of machine and system.
3192
3193 Then do `make Everything' in the top directory of X11R6, to rebuild
3194 the makefiles and rebuild X. The X built this way work only on
3195 Solaris 2.4, not on 2.3.
3196
3197 For multithreaded X to work it is necessary to install patch
3198 101925-02 to fix problems in header files [2.4]. You need
3199 to reinstall gcc or re-run just-fixinc after installing that
3200 patch.
3201
3202 However, Frank Rust <frust@iti.cs.tu-bs.de> used a simpler solution:
3203 he changed
3204 #define ThreadedX YES
3205 to
3206 #define ThreadedX NO
3207 in sun.cf and did `make World' to rebuild X11R6. Removing all
3208 `-DXTHREAD*' flags and `-lthread' entries from lib/X11/Makefile and
3209 typing 'make install' in that directory also seemed to work.
3210
3211 **** Solaris 2.x: GCC complains "64 bit integer types not supported".
3212
3213 This suggests that GCC is not installed correctly. Most likely you
3214 are using GCC 2.7.2.3 (or earlier) on Solaris 2.6 (or later); this
3215 does not work without patching. To run GCC 2.7.2.3 on Solaris 2.6 or
3216 later, you must patch fixinc.svr4 and reinstall GCC from scratch as
3217 described in the Solaris FAQ
3218 <http://www.wins.uva.nl/pub/solaris/solaris2.html>. A better fix is
3219 to upgrade to GCC 2.8.1 or later.
3220
3221 **** Solaris 2.7: Building Emacs with WorkShop Compilers 5.0 98/12/15
3222 C 5.0 failed, apparently with non-default CFLAGS, most probably due to
3223 compiler bugs. Using Sun Solaris 2.7 Sun WorkShop 6 update 1 C
3224 release was reported to work without problems. It worked OK on
3225 another system with Solaris 8 using apparently the same 5.0 compiler
3226 and the default CFLAGS.
3227
3228 **** Solaris 2.x: Emacs dumps core when built with Motif.
3229
3230 The Solaris Motif libraries are buggy, at least up through Solaris 2.5.1.
3231 Install the current Motif runtime library patch appropriate for your host.
3232 (Make sure the patch is current; some older patch versions still have the bug.)
3233 You should install the other patches recommended by Sun for your host, too.
3234 You can obtain Sun patches from ftp://sunsolve.sun.com/pub/patches/;
3235 look for files with names ending in `.PatchReport' to see which patches
3236 are currently recommended for your host.
3237
3238 On Solaris 2.6, Emacs is said to work with Motif when Solaris patch
3239 105284-12 is installed, but fail when 105284-15 is installed.
3240 105284-18 might fix it again.
3241
3242 **** Solaris 2.6 and 7: the Compose key does not work.
3243
3244 This is a bug in Motif in Solaris. Supposedly it has been fixed for
3245 the next major release of Solaris. However, if someone with Sun
3246 support complains to Sun about the bug, they may release a patch.
3247 If you do this, mention Sun bug #4188711.
3248
3249 One workaround is to use a locale that allows non-ASCII characters.
3250 For example, before invoking emacs, set the LC_ALL environment
3251 variable to "en_US" (American English). The directory /usr/lib/locale
3252 lists the supported locales; any locale other than "C" or "POSIX"
3253 should do.
3254
3255 pen@lysator.liu.se says (Feb 1998) that the Compose key does work
3256 if you link with the MIT X11 libraries instead of the Solaris X11
3257 libraries.
3258
3259 *** HP/UX versions before 11.0
3260
3261 HP/UX 9 was end-of-lifed in December 1998.
3262 HP/UX 10 was end-of-lifed in May 1999.
3263
3264 **** HP/UX 9: Emacs crashes with SIGBUS or SIGSEGV after you delete a frame.
3265
3266 We think this is due to a bug in the X libraries provided by HP. With
3267 the alternative X libraries in /usr/contrib/mitX11R5/lib, the problem
3268 does not happen.
3269
3270 *** HP/UX 10: Large file support is disabled.
3271
3272 See the comments in src/s/hpux10.h.
3273
3274 *** HP/UX: Emacs is slow using X11R5.
3275
3276 This happens if you use the MIT versions of the X libraries--it
3277 doesn't run as fast as HP's version. People sometimes use the version
3278 because they see the HP version doesn't have the libraries libXaw.a,
3279 libXmu.a, libXext.a and others. HP/UX normally doesn't come with
3280 those libraries installed. To get good performance, you need to
3281 install them and rebuild Emacs.
3282
3283 *** Ultrix and Digital Unix
3284
3285 **** Ultrix 4.2: `make install' fails on install-doc with `Error 141'.
3286
3287 This happens on Ultrix 4.2 due to failure of a pipeline of tar
3288 commands. We don't know why they fail, but the bug seems not to be in
3289 Emacs. The workaround is to run the shell command in install-doc by
3290 hand.
3291
3292 **** Digital Unix 4.0: Garbled display on non-X terminals when Emacs runs.
3293
3294 So far it appears that running `tset' triggers this problem (when TERM
3295 is vt100, at least). If you do not run `tset', then Emacs displays
3296 properly. If someone can tell us precisely which effect of running
3297 `tset' actually causes the problem, we may be able to implement a fix
3298 in Emacs.
3299
3300 **** Ultrix: `expand-file-name' fails to work on any but the machine you dumped Emacs on.
3301
3302 On Ultrix, if you use any of the functions which look up information
3303 in the passwd database before dumping Emacs (say, by using
3304 expand-file-name in site-init.el), then those functions will not work
3305 in the dumped Emacs on any host but the one Emacs was dumped on.
3306
3307 The solution? Don't use expand-file-name in site-init.el, or in
3308 anything it loads. Yuck - some solution.
3309
3310 I'm not sure why this happens; if you can find out exactly what is
3311 going on, and perhaps find a fix or a workaround, please let us know.
3312 Perhaps the YP functions cache some information, the cache is included
3313 in the dumped Emacs, and is then inaccurate on any other host.
3314
3315 *** SVr4
3316
3317 **** SVr4: On some variants of SVR4, Emacs does not work at all with X.
3318
3319 Try defining BROKEN_FIONREAD in your config.h file. If this solves
3320 the problem, please send a bug report to tell us this is needed; be
3321 sure to say exactly what type of machine and system you are using.
3322
3323 **** SVr4: After running emacs once, subsequent invocations crash.
3324
3325 Some versions of SVR4 have a serious bug in the implementation of the
3326 mmap () system call in the kernel; this causes emacs to run correctly
3327 the first time, and then crash when run a second time.
3328
3329 Contact your vendor and ask for the mmap bug fix; in the mean time,
3330 you may be able to work around the problem by adding a line to your
3331 operating system description file (whose name is reported by the
3332 configure script) that reads:
3333 #define SYSTEM_MALLOC
3334 This makes Emacs use memory less efficiently, but seems to work around
3335 the kernel bug.
3336
3337 *** Irix 5 and earlier
3338
3339 Exactly when Irix-5 end-of-lifed is obscure. But since Irix 6.0
3340 shipped in 1994, it has been some years.
3341
3342 **** Irix 5.2: unexelfsgi.c can't find cmplrs/stsupport.h.
3343
3344 The file cmplrs/stsupport.h was included in the wrong file set in the
3345 Irix 5.2 distribution. You can find it in the optional fileset
3346 compiler_dev, or copy it from some other Irix 5.2 system. A kludgy
3347 workaround is to change unexelfsgi.c to include sym.h instead of
3348 syms.h.
3349
3350 **** Irix 5.3: "out of virtual swap space".
3351
3352 This message occurs when the system runs out of swap space due to too
3353 many large programs running. The solution is either to provide more
3354 swap space or to reduce the number of large programs being run. You
3355 can check the current status of the swap space by executing the
3356 command `swap -l'.
3357
3358 You can increase swap space by changing the file /etc/fstab. Adding a
3359 line like this:
3360
3361 /usr/swap/swap.more swap swap pri=3 0 0
3362
3363 where /usr/swap/swap.more is a file previously created (for instance
3364 by using /etc/mkfile), will increase the swap space by the size of
3365 that file. Execute `swap -m' or reboot the machine to activate the
3366 new swap area. See the manpages for `swap' and `fstab' for further
3367 information.
3368
3369 The objectserver daemon can use up lots of memory because it can be
3370 swamped with NIS information. It collects information about all users
3371 on the network that can log on to the host.
3372
3373 If you want to disable the objectserver completely, you can execute
3374 the command `chkconfig objectserver off' and reboot. That may disable
3375 some of the window system functionality, such as responding CDROM
3376 icons.
3377
3378 You can also remove NIS support from the objectserver. The SGI `admin'
3379 FAQ has a detailed description on how to do that; see question 35
3380 ("Why isn't the objectserver working?"). The admin FAQ can be found at
3381 ftp://viz.tamu.edu/pub/sgi/faq/.
3382
3383 **** Irix 5.3: Emacs crashes in utmpname.
3384
3385 This problem is fixed in Patch 3175 for Irix 5.3.
3386 It is also fixed in Irix versions 6.2 and up.
3387
3388 **** Irix 6.0: Make tries (and fails) to build a program named unexelfsgi.
3389
3390 A compiler bug inserts spaces into the string "unexelfsgi . o"
3391 in src/Makefile. Edit src/Makefile, after configure is run,
3392 find that string, and take out the spaces.
3393
3394 Compiler fixes in Irix 6.0.1 should eliminate this problem.
3395
3396 *** SCO Unix and UnixWare
3397
3398 **** SCO 3.2v4: Unusable default font.
3399
3400 The Open Desktop environment comes with default X resource settings
3401 that tell Emacs to use a variable-width font. Emacs cannot use such
3402 fonts, so it does not work.
3403
3404 This is caused by the file /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/ScoTerm, which is
3405 the application-specific resource file for the `scoterm' terminal
3406 emulator program. It contains several extremely general X resources
3407 that affect other programs besides `scoterm'. In particular, these
3408 resources affect Emacs also:
3409
3410 *Font: -*-helvetica-medium-r-*--12-*-p-*
3411 *Background: scoBackground
3412 *Foreground: scoForeground
3413
3414 The best solution is to create an application-specific resource file for
3415 Emacs, /usr/lib/X11/sco/startup/Emacs, with the following contents:
3416
3417 Emacs*Font: -*-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-120-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1
3418 Emacs*Background: white
3419 Emacs*Foreground: black
3420
3421 (These settings mimic the Emacs defaults, but you can change them to
3422 suit your needs.) This resource file is only read when the X server
3423 starts up, so you should restart it by logging out of the Open Desktop
3424 environment or by running `scologin stop; scologin start` from the shell
3425 as root. Alternatively, you can put these settings in the
3426 /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/Emacs resource file and simply restart Emacs,
3427 but then they will not affect remote invocations of Emacs that use the
3428 Open Desktop display.
3429
3430 These resource files are not normally shared across a network of SCO
3431 machines; you must create the file on each machine individually.
3432
3433 **** SCO 4.2.0: Regular expressions matching bugs on SCO systems.
3434
3435 On SCO, there are problems in regexp matching when Emacs is compiled
3436 with the system compiler. The compiler version is "Microsoft C
3437 version 6", SCO 4.2.0h Dev Sys Maintenance Supplement 01/06/93; Quick
3438 C Compiler Version 1.00.46 (Beta). The solution is to compile with
3439 GCC.
3440
3441 **** UnixWare 2.1: Error 12 (virtual memory exceeded) when dumping Emacs.
3442
3443 Paul Abrahams (abrahams@acm.org) reports that with the installed
3444 virtual memory settings for UnixWare 2.1.2, an Error 12 occurs during
3445 the "make" that builds Emacs, when running temacs to dump emacs. That
3446 error indicates that the per-process virtual memory limit has been
3447 exceeded. The default limit is probably 32MB. Raising the virtual
3448 memory limit to 40MB should make it possible to finish building Emacs.
3449
3450 You can do this with the command `ulimit' (sh) or `limit' (csh).
3451 But you have to be root to do it.
3452
3453 According to Martin Sohnius, you can also retune this in the kernel:
3454
3455 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune SDATLIM 33554432 ## soft data size limit
3456 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune HDATLIM 33554432 ## hard "
3457 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune SVMMSIZE unlimited ## soft process size limit
3458 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune HVMMSIZE unlimited ## hard "
3459 # /etc/conf/bin/idbuild -B
3460
3461 (He recommends you not change the stack limit, though.)
3462 These changes take effect when you reboot.
3463
3464 *** Linux 1.x
3465
3466 **** Linux 1.0-1.04: Typing C-c C-c in Shell mode kills your X server.
3467
3468 This happens with Linux kernel 1.0 thru 1.04, approximately. The workaround is
3469 to define SIGNALS_VIA_CHARACTERS in config.h and recompile Emacs.
3470 Newer Linux kernel versions don't have this problem.
3471
3472 **** Linux 1.3: Output from subprocess (such as man or diff) is randomly
3473 truncated on GNU/Linux systems.
3474
3475 This is due to a kernel bug which seems to be fixed in Linux version
3476 1.3.75.
3477
3478 ** Windows 3.1, 95, 98, and ME
3479
3480 *** MS-Windows NT/95: Problems running Perl under Emacs
3481
3482 `perl -de 0' just hangs when executed in an Emacs subshell.
3483 The fault lies with Perl (indirectly with Windows NT/95).
3484
3485 The problem is that the Perl debugger explicitly opens a connection to
3486 "CON", which is the DOS/NT equivalent of "/dev/tty", for interacting
3487 with the user.
3488
3489 On Unix, this is okay, because Emacs (or the shell?) creates a
3490 pseudo-tty so that /dev/tty is really the pipe Emacs is using to
3491 communicate with the subprocess.
3492
3493 On NT, this fails because CON always refers to the handle for the
3494 relevant console (approximately equivalent to a tty), and cannot be
3495 redirected to refer to the pipe Emacs assigned to the subprocess as
3496 stdin.
3497
3498 A workaround is to modify perldb.pl to use STDIN/STDOUT instead of CON.
3499
3500 For Perl 4:
3501
3502 *** PERL/LIB/PERLDB.PL.orig Wed May 26 08:24:18 1993
3503 --- PERL/LIB/PERLDB.PL Mon Jul 01 15:28:16 1996
3504 ***************
3505 *** 68,74 ****
3506 $rcfile=".perldb";
3507 }
3508 else {
3509 ! $console = "con";
3510 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
3511 }
3512
3513 --- 68,74 ----
3514 $rcfile=".perldb";
3515 }
3516 else {
3517 ! $console = "";
3518 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
3519 }
3520
3521
3522 For Perl 5:
3523 *** perl/5.001/lib/perl5db.pl.orig Sun Jun 04 21:13:40 1995
3524 --- perl/5.001/lib/perl5db.pl Mon Jul 01 17:00:08 1996
3525 ***************
3526 *** 22,28 ****
3527 $rcfile=".perldb";
3528 }
3529 elsif (-e "con") {
3530 ! $console = "con";
3531 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
3532 }
3533 else {
3534 --- 22,28 ----
3535 $rcfile=".perldb";
3536 }
3537 elsif (-e "con") {
3538 ! $console = "";
3539 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
3540 }
3541 else {
3542
3543 *** MS-Windows 95: Alt-f6 does not get through to Emacs.
3544
3545 This character seems to be trapped by the kernel in Windows 95.
3546 You can enter M-f6 by typing ESC f6.
3547
3548 *** MS-Windows 95/98/ME: subprocesses do not terminate properly.
3549
3550 This is a limitation of the Operating System, and can cause problems
3551 when shutting down Windows. Ensure that all subprocesses are exited
3552 cleanly before exiting Emacs. For more details, see the FAQ at
3553 http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/windows/.
3554
3555 *** MS-Windows 95/98/ME: crashes when Emacs invokes non-existent programs.
3556
3557 When a program you are trying to run is not found on the PATH,
3558 Windows might respond by crashing or locking up your system. In
3559 particular, this has been reported when trying to compile a Java
3560 program in JDEE when javac.exe is installed, but not on the system
3561 PATH.
3562
3563 ** MS-DOS
3564
3565 *** When compiling with DJGPP on MS-Windows NT, "config msdos" fails.
3566
3567 If the error message is "VDM has been already loaded", this is because
3568 Windows has a program called `redir.exe' that is incompatible with a
3569 program by the same name supplied with DJGPP, which is used by
3570 config.bat. To resolve this, move the DJGPP's `bin' subdirectory to
3571 the front of your PATH environment variable.
3572
3573 *** When compiling with DJGPP on MS-Windows 95, Make fails for some targets
3574 like make-docfile.
3575
3576 This can happen if long file name support (the setting of environment
3577 variable LFN) when Emacs distribution was unpacked and during
3578 compilation are not the same. See the MSDOG section of INSTALL for
3579 the explanation of how to avoid this problem.
3580
3581 *** Emacs compiled with DJGPP complains at startup:
3582
3583 "Wrong type of argument: internal-facep, msdos-menu-active-face"
3584
3585 This can happen if you define an environment variable `TERM'. Emacs
3586 on MSDOS uses an internal terminal emulator which is disabled if the
3587 value of `TERM' is anything but the string "internal". Emacs then
3588 works as if its terminal were a dumb glass teletype that doesn't
3589 support faces. To work around this, arrange for `TERM' to be
3590 undefined when Emacs runs. The best way to do that is to add an
3591 [emacs] section to the DJGPP.ENV file which defines an empty value for
3592 `TERM'; this way, only Emacs gets the empty value, while the rest of
3593 your system works as before.
3594
3595 *** MS-DOS: Emacs crashes at startup.
3596
3597 Some users report that Emacs 19.29 requires dpmi memory management,
3598 and crashes on startup if the system does not have it. We don't yet
3599 know why this happens--perhaps these machines don't have enough real
3600 memory, or perhaps something is wrong in Emacs or the compiler.
3601 However, arranging to use dpmi support is a workaround.
3602
3603 You can find out if you have a dpmi host by running go32 without
3604 arguments; it will tell you if it uses dpmi memory. For more
3605 information about dpmi memory, consult the djgpp FAQ. (djgpp
3606 is the GNU C compiler as packaged for MSDOS.)
3607
3608 Compiling Emacs under MSDOS is extremely sensitive for proper memory
3609 configuration. If you experience problems during compilation, consider
3610 removing some or all memory resident programs (notably disk caches)
3611 and make sure that your memory managers are properly configured. See
3612 the djgpp faq for configuration hints.
3613
3614 *** Emacs compiled with DJGPP for MS-DOS/MS-Windows cannot access files
3615 in the directory with the special name `dev' under the root of any
3616 drive, e.g. `c:/dev'.
3617
3618 This is an unfortunate side-effect of the support for Unix-style
3619 device names such as /dev/null in the DJGPP runtime library. A
3620 work-around is to rename the problem directory to another name.
3621
3622 *** MS-DOS+DJGPP: Problems on MS-DOG if DJGPP v2.0 is used to compile Emacs.
3623
3624 There are two DJGPP library bugs which cause problems:
3625
3626 * Running `shell-command' (or `compile', or `grep') you get
3627 `Searching for program: permission denied (EACCES), c:/command.com';
3628 * After you shell to DOS, Ctrl-Break kills Emacs.
3629
3630 To work around these bugs, you can use two files in the msdos
3631 subdirectory: `is_exec.c' and `sigaction.c'. Compile them and link
3632 them into the Emacs executable `temacs'; then they will replace the
3633 incorrect library functions.
3634
3635 *** MS-DOS: Emacs compiled for MSDOS cannot find some Lisp files, or other
3636 run-time support files, when long filename support is enabled.
3637
3638 Usually, this problem will manifest itself when Emacs exits
3639 immediately after flashing the startup screen, because it cannot find
3640 the Lisp files it needs to load at startup. Redirect Emacs stdout
3641 and stderr to a file to see the error message printed by Emacs.
3642
3643 Another manifestation of this problem is that Emacs is unable to load
3644 the support for editing program sources in languages such as C and
3645 Lisp.
3646
3647 This can happen if the Emacs distribution was unzipped without LFN
3648 support, thus causing long filenames to be truncated to the first 6
3649 characters and a numeric tail that Windows 95 normally attaches to it.
3650 You should unzip the files again with a utility that supports long
3651 filenames (such as djtar from DJGPP or InfoZip's UnZip program
3652 compiled with DJGPP v2). The MSDOG section of the file INSTALL
3653 explains this issue in more detail.
3654
3655 Another possible reason for such failures is that Emacs compiled for
3656 MSDOS is used on Windows NT, where long file names are not supported
3657 by this version of Emacs, but the distribution was unpacked by an
3658 unzip program that preserved the long file names instead of truncating
3659 them to DOS 8+3 limits. To be useful on NT, the MSDOS port of Emacs
3660 must be unzipped by a DOS utility, so that long file names are
3661 properly truncated.
3662
3663 ** Archaic window managers and toolkits
3664
3665 *** OpenLook: Under OpenLook, the Emacs window disappears when you type M-q.
3666
3667 Some versions of the Open Look window manager interpret M-q as a quit
3668 command for whatever window you are typing at. If you want to use
3669 Emacs with that window manager, you should try to configure the window
3670 manager to use some other command. You can disable the
3671 shortcut keys entirely by adding this line to ~/.OWdefaults:
3672
3673 OpenWindows.WindowMenuAccelerators: False
3674
3675 **** twm: A position you specified in .Xdefaults is ignored, using twm.
3676
3677 twm normally ignores "program-specified" positions.
3678 You can tell it to obey them with this command in your `.twmrc' file:
3679
3680 UsePPosition "on" #allow clients to request a position
3681
3682 ** Bugs related to old DEC hardware
3683
3684 *** The Compose key on a DEC keyboard does not work as Meta key.
3685
3686 This shell command should fix it:
3687
3688 xmodmap -e 'keycode 0xb1 = Meta_L'
3689
3690 *** Keyboard input gets confused after a beep when using a DECserver
3691 as a concentrator.
3692
3693 This problem seems to be a matter of configuring the DECserver to use
3694 7 bit characters rather than 8 bit characters.
3695
3696 * Build problems on legacy systems
3697
3698 ** BSD/386 1.0: --with-x-toolkit option configures wrong.
3699
3700 This problem is due to bugs in the shell in version 1.0 of BSD/386.
3701 The workaround is to edit the configure file to use some other shell,
3702 such as bash.
3703
3704 ** Digital Unix 4.0: Emacs fails to build, giving error message
3705 Invalid dimension for the charset-ID 160
3706
3707 This is due to a bug or an installation problem in GCC 2.8.0.
3708 Installing a more recent version of GCC fixes the problem.
3709
3710 ** Digital Unix 4.0: Failure in unexec while dumping emacs.
3711
3712 This problem manifests itself as an error message
3713
3714 unexec: Bad address, writing data section to ...
3715
3716 The user suspects that this happened because his X libraries
3717 were built for an older system version,
3718
3719 ./configure --x-includes=/usr/include --x-libraries=/usr/shlib
3720
3721 made the problem go away.
3722
3723 ** Sunos 4.1.1: there are errors compiling sysdep.c.
3724
3725 If you get errors such as
3726
3727 "sysdep.c", line 2017: undefined structure or union
3728 "sysdep.c", line 2017: undefined structure or union
3729 "sysdep.c", line 2019: nodename undefined
3730
3731 This can result from defining LD_LIBRARY_PATH. It is very tricky
3732 to use that environment variable with Emacs. The Emacs configure
3733 script links many test programs with the system libraries; you must
3734 make sure that the libraries available to configure are the same
3735 ones available when you build Emacs.
3736
3737 ** SunOS 4.1.1: You get this error message from GNU ld:
3738
3739 /lib/libc.a(_Q_sub.o): Undefined symbol __Q_get_rp_rd referenced from text segment
3740
3741 The problem is in the Sun shared C library, not in GNU ld.
3742
3743 The solution is to install Patch-ID# 100267-03 from Sun.
3744
3745 ** Sunos 4.1: Undefined symbols when linking using --with-x-toolkit.
3746
3747 If you get the undefined symbols _atowc _wcslen, _iswprint, _iswspace,
3748 _iswcntrl, _wcscpy, and _wcsncpy, then you need to add -lXwchar after
3749 -lXaw in the command that links temacs.
3750
3751 This problem seems to arise only when the international language
3752 extensions to X11R5 are installed.
3753
3754 ** SunOS: Emacs gets error message from linker on Sun.
3755
3756 If the error message says that a symbol such as `f68881_used' or
3757 `ffpa_used' or `start_float' is undefined, this probably indicates
3758 that you have compiled some libraries, such as the X libraries,
3759 with a floating point option other than the default.
3760
3761 It's not terribly hard to make this work with small changes in
3762 crt0.c together with linking with Fcrt1.o, Wcrt1.o or Mcrt1.o.
3763 However, the easiest approach is to build Xlib with the default
3764 floating point option: -fsoft.
3765
3766 ** SunOS: Undefined symbols _dlopen, _dlsym and/or _dlclose.
3767
3768 If you see undefined symbols _dlopen, _dlsym, or _dlclose when linking
3769 with -lX11, compile and link against the file mit/util/misc/dlsym.c in
3770 the MIT X11R5 distribution. Alternatively, link temacs using shared
3771 libraries with s/sunos4shr.h. (This doesn't work if you use the X
3772 toolkit.)
3773
3774 If you get the additional error that the linker could not find
3775 lib_version.o, try extracting it from X11/usr/lib/X11/libvim.a in
3776 X11R4, then use it in the link.
3777
3778 ** SunOS4, DGUX 5.4.2: --with-x-toolkit version crashes when used with shared libraries.
3779
3780 On some systems, including Sunos 4 and DGUX 5.4.2 and perhaps others,
3781 unexec doesn't work properly with the shared library for the X
3782 toolkit. You might be able to work around this by using a nonshared
3783 libXt.a library. The real fix is to upgrade the various versions of
3784 unexec and/or ralloc. We think this has been fixed on Sunos 4
3785 and Solaris in version 19.29.
3786
3787 ** HPUX 10.20: Emacs crashes during dumping on the HPPA machine.
3788
3789 This seems to be due to a GCC bug; it is fixed in GCC 2.8.1.
3790
3791 ** VMS: Compilation errors on VMS.
3792
3793 You will get warnings when compiling on VMS because there are
3794 variable names longer than 32 (or whatever it is) characters.
3795 This is not an error. Ignore it.
3796
3797 VAX C does not support #if defined(foo). Uses of this construct
3798 were removed, but some may have crept back in. They must be rewritten.
3799
3800 There is a bug in the C compiler which fails to sign extend characters
3801 in conditional expressions. The bug is:
3802 char c = -1, d = 1;
3803 int i;
3804
3805 i = d ? c : d;
3806 The result is i == 255; the fix is to typecast the char in the
3807 conditional expression as an (int). Known occurrences of such
3808 constructs in Emacs have been fixed.
3809
3810 ** Vax C compiler bugs affecting Emacs.
3811
3812 You may get one of these problems compiling Emacs:
3813
3814 foo.c line nnn: compiler error: no table entry for op STASG
3815 foo.c: fatal error in /lib/ccom
3816
3817 These are due to bugs in the C compiler; the code is valid C.
3818 Unfortunately, the bugs are unpredictable: the same construct
3819 may compile properly or trigger one of these bugs, depending
3820 on what else is in the source file being compiled. Even changes
3821 in header files that should not affect the file being compiled
3822 can affect whether the bug happens. In addition, sometimes files
3823 that compile correctly on one machine get this bug on another machine.
3824
3825 As a result, it is hard for me to make sure this bug will not affect
3826 you. I have attempted to find and alter these constructs, but more
3827 can always appear. However, I can tell you how to deal with it if it
3828 should happen. The bug comes from having an indexed reference to an
3829 array of Lisp_Objects, as an argument in a function call:
3830 Lisp_Object *args;
3831 ...
3832 ... foo (5, args[i], ...)...
3833 putting the argument into a temporary variable first, as in
3834 Lisp_Object *args;
3835 Lisp_Object tem;
3836 ...
3837 tem = args[i];
3838 ... foo (r, tem, ...)...
3839 causes the problem to go away.
3840 The `contents' field of a Lisp vector is an array of Lisp_Objects,
3841 so you may see the problem happening with indexed references to that.
3842
3843 ** 68000 C compiler problems
3844
3845 Various 68000 compilers have different problems.
3846 These are some that have been observed.
3847
3848 *** Using value of assignment expression on union type loses.
3849 This means that x = y = z; or foo (x = z); does not work
3850 if x is of type Lisp_Object.
3851
3852 *** "cannot reclaim" error.
3853
3854 This means that an expression is too complicated. You get the correct
3855 line number in the error message. The code must be rewritten with
3856 simpler expressions.
3857
3858 *** XCONS, XSTRING, etc macros produce incorrect code.
3859
3860 If temacs fails to run at all, this may be the cause.
3861 Compile this test program and look at the assembler code:
3862
3863 struct foo { char x; unsigned int y : 24; };
3864
3865 lose (arg)
3866 struct foo arg;
3867 {
3868 test ((int *) arg.y);
3869 }
3870
3871 If the code is incorrect, your compiler has this problem.
3872 In the XCONS, etc., macros in lisp.h you must replace (a).u.val with
3873 ((a).u.val + coercedummy) where coercedummy is declared as int.
3874
3875 This problem will not happen if the m-...h file for your type
3876 of machine defines NO_UNION_TYPE. That is the recommended setting now.
3877
3878 *** C compilers lose on returning unions.
3879
3880 I hear that some C compilers cannot handle returning a union type.
3881 Most of the functions in GNU Emacs return type Lisp_Object, which is
3882 defined as a union on some rare architectures.
3883
3884 This problem will not happen if the m-...h file for your type
3885 of machine defines NO_UNION_TYPE.
3886
3887 \f
3888 This file is part of GNU Emacs.
3889
3890 GNU Emacs is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
3891 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
3892 the Free Software Foundation; either version 3, or (at your option)
3893 any later version.
3894
3895 GNU Emacs is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
3896 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
3897 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
3898 GNU General Public License for more details.
3899
3900 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
3901 along with GNU Emacs; see the file COPYING. If not, write to the
3902 Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor,
3903 Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.
3904
3905 \f
3906 Local variables:
3907 mode: outline
3908 paragraph-separate: "[ \f]*$"
3909 end:
3910
3911 arch-tag: 49fc0d95-88cb-4715-b21c-f27fb5a4764a