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[gnu-emacs] / etc / PROBLEMS
1 This file describes various problems that have been encountered
2 in compiling, installing and running GNU Emacs.
3
4 * Building Emacs with GCC 2.9x fails in the `src' directory.
5
6 This may happen if you use a development version of GNU `cpp' from one
7 of the GCC snapshots around Oct 2000 and later, or from a released
8 version of GCC newer than 2.95.2. The preprocessor in those versions
9 expands ".." into ". .", which breaks relative file names that
10 reference the parent directory.
11
12 The solution is to make sure the preprocessor is run with the
13 `-traditional' option. (The `configure' script should do that
14 automatically with Emacs 21 and later.)
15
16 Note that this problem does not pertain to the MS-Windows port of
17 Emacs, since it doesn't use the preprocessor to generate Makefile's.
18
19 * Building the Windows port with Leim fails in the `leim' directory.
20
21 The error message might be something like this:
22
23 Converting d:/emacs-21.1/leim/CXTERM-DIC/4Corner.tit to quail-package...
24 Invalid ENCODE: value in TIT dictionary
25 NMAKE : fatal error U1077: '"../src/obj-spd/i386/emacs.exe"' : return code
26 '0xffffffff'
27 Stop.
28
29 This can happen if the Leim distribution is unpacked with a program
30 which converts the `*.tit' files to DOS-style CR-LF text format. The
31 `*.tit' files in the leim/CXTERM-DIC directory require Unix-style line
32 endings to compile properly, because Emacs reads them without any code
33 or EOL conversions.
34
35 The solution is to make sure the program used to unpack Leim does not
36 change the files' line endings behind your back. The GNU FTP site has
37 in the `/gnu/emacs/windows' directory a program called `djtarnt.exe'
38 which can be used to unpack `.tar.gz' and `.zip' archives without
39 mangling them.
40
41 * `put-image' and `insert-image' don't work with JPEG images
42
43 This can happen if Emacs is built with jpeg-6a library. Upgrading to
44 jpeg-6b reportedly solves the problem.
45
46 * When using Xaw3d scroll bars without arrows, the very first mouse
47 click in a scroll bar might be ignored by the scroll bar widget. This
48 is probably a bug in Xaw3d; when Xaw3d is compiled with arrows, the
49 problem disappears.
50
51 * Clicking C-mouse-2 in the scroll bar doesn't split the window.
52
53 This currently doesn't work with scroll-bar widgets (and we don't know
54 a good way of implementing it with widgets). If Emacs is configured
55 --without-toolkit-scroll-bars, C-mouse-2 on the scroll bar does work.
56
57 * Problems in Emacs built with LessTif.
58
59 The problems seem to depend on the version of LessTif and the Motif
60 emulation for which it is set up.
61
62 To the best of our knowledge, only the Motif 1.2 emulation seemed to
63 be stable enough in LessTif. Lesstif 0.92-17's Motif 1.2 emulation
64 seems to work okay on FreeBSD. On GNU/Linux systems, lesstif-0.92.6
65 configured with "./configure --enable-build-12 --enable-default-12" is
66 reported to be the most successful. By contrast,
67 lesstif-0.92.0-1.i386.rpm was reported to have problems with menu
68 placement, and should probably be avoided.
69
70 On some systems, even with Motif 1.2 emulation, Emacs occasionally
71 locks up, grabbing all mouse and keyboard events. The mouse still
72 moves, but will not go outside of the Emacs window (so you can't get
73 it over the frame title barm, for instance). None of the menus are
74 responsive. In addition, the keyboard will not respond. Keypresses
75 are totally ignored, including Ctrl-Alt-F1 to Ctrl-Alt-F6. This means
76 you can not even get to the virtual console.
77
78 We still don't know what causes these problems; they are not
79 reproducible on some systems, notably those used by Emacs developers.
80
81 * Some accented ISO-8859-1 characters or umlauts are displayed as | or _.
82
83 Try other font set sizes (S-mouse-1). If the problem persists with
84 other sizes as well, your text is corrupted, probably through software
85 that is not 8-bit clean. If the problem goes away with another font
86 size, it's probably because some fonts pretend to be ISO-8859-1 fonts
87 when they are really ASCII fonts. In particular the schumacher-clean
88 fonts have this bug in some versions of X.
89
90 To see what glyphs are included in a font, use `xfd', like this:
91
92 xfd -fn -schumacher-clean-medium-r-normal--12-120-75-75-c-60-iso8859-1
93
94 If this shows only ASCII glyphs, the font is indeed the source of the
95 problem.
96
97 The solution is to remove the corresponding lines from the appropriate
98 `fonts.alias' file, then run `mkfontdir' in that directory, and then run
99 `xset fp rehash'.
100
101 * Large file support is disabled on HP-UX. See the comments in
102 src/s/hpux10.h.
103
104 * Crashes when displaying uncompressed GIFs with version
105 libungif-4.1.0 are resolved by using version libungif-4.1.0b1.
106
107 * The W3 package (either from from the CVS sources or the last
108 release) currently (2000-12-14) doesn't run properly with Emacs 21 and
109 needs work. This patch is reported to make w3-4.0pre.46 work:
110
111 diff -aur --new-file w3-4.0pre.46-orig/lisp/w3-display.el w3-4.0pre.46-new/lisp/w3-display.el
112 --- w3-4.0pre.46-orig/lisp/w3-display.el Sun Nov 14 22:00:12 1999
113 +++ w3-4.0pre.46-new/lisp/w3-display.el Thu Dec 14 14:59:15 2000
114 @@ -181,7 +181,8 @@
115 (dispatch-event (next-command-event)))
116 (error nil))))
117 (t
118 - (if (and (not (sit-for 0)) (input-pending-p))
119 + ;; modified for GNU Emacs 21 by bob@rattlesnake.com on 2000 Dec 14
120 + (if (and (not (sit-for 0)) nil)
121 (condition-case ()
122 (progn
123 (setq w3-pause-keystroke
124 diff -aur --new-file w3-4.0pre.46-orig/lisp/w3-e21.el w3-4.0pre.46-new/lisp/w3-e21.el
125 --- w3-4.0pre.46-orig/lisp/w3-e21.el Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970
126 +++ w3-4.0pre.46-new/lisp/w3-e21.el Thu Dec 14 14:54:58 2000
127 @@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
128 +;;; w3-e21.el --- ** required for GNU Emacs 21 **
129 +;; Added by bob@rattlesnake.com on 2000 Dec 14
130 +
131 +(require 'w3-e19)
132 +(provide 'w3-e21)
133
134
135 * On AIX, if linking fails because libXbsd isn't found, check if you
136 are compiling with the system's `cc' and CFLAGS containing `-O5'. If
137 so, you have hit a compiler bug. Please make sure to re-configure
138 Emacs so that it isn't compiled with `-O5'.
139
140 * The PSGML package uses the obsolete variables
141 `before-change-function' and `after-change-function', which are no
142 longer used by Emacs. These changes to PSGML 1.2.1 fix that.
143
144 --- psgml-edit.el 1999/12/17 10:55:07 1.1
145 +++ psgml-edit.el 1999/12/17 11:36:37
146 @@ -263,4 +263,4 @@
147 ; inhibit-read-only
148 - (before-change-function nil)
149 - (after-change-function nil))
150 + (before-change-functions nil)
151 + (after-change-functions nil))
152 (setq selective-display t)
153 @@ -1474,3 +1474,3 @@
154 (buffer-read-only nil)
155 - (before-change-function nil)
156 + (before-change-functions nil)
157 (markup-index ; match-data index in tag regexp
158 @@ -1526,3 +1526,3 @@
159 (defun sgml-expand-shortref-to-text (name)
160 - (let (before-change-function
161 + (let (before-change-functions
162 (entity (sgml-lookup-entity name (sgml-dtd-entities sgml-dtd-info))))
163 @@ -1543,3 +1543,3 @@
164 (re-found nil)
165 - before-change-function)
166 + before-change-functions)
167 (goto-char sgml-markup-start)
168 @@ -1576,3 +1576,3 @@
169 (goto-char (sgml-element-end element))
170 - (let ((before-change-function nil))
171 + (let ((before-change-functions nil))
172 (sgml-normalize-content element only-one)))
173 --- psgml-other.el 1999/12/17 10:40:02 1.1
174 +++ psgml-other.el 1999/12/17 11:30:43
175 @@ -32,2 +32,3 @@
176 (require 'easymenu)
177 +(eval-when-compile (require 'cl))
178
179 @@ -61,4 +62,9 @@
180 (let ((submenu
181 - (subseq entries 0 (min (length entries)
182 - sgml-max-menu-size))))
183 +;;; (subseq entries 0 (min (length entries)
184 +;;; sgml-max-menu-size))
185 + (let ((new (copy-sequence entries)))
186 + (setcdr (nthcdr (1- (min (length entries)
187 + sgml-max-menu-size))
188 + new) nil)
189 + new)))
190 (setq entries (nthcdr sgml-max-menu-size entries))
191 @@ -113,7 +119,10 @@
192 (let ((inhibit-read-only t)
193 - (after-change-function nil) ; obsolete variable
194 - (before-change-function nil) ; obsolete variable
195 (after-change-functions nil)
196 - (before-change-functions nil))
197 - (put-text-property start end 'face face)))
198 + (before-change-functions nil)
199 + (modified (buffer-modified-p))
200 + (buffer-undo-list t)
201 + deactivate-mark)
202 + (put-text-property start end 'face face)
203 + (when (and (not modified) (buffer-modified-p))
204 + (set-buffer-modified-p nil))))
205 (t
206 --- psgml-parse.el 1999/12/17 10:32:45 1.1
207 +++ psgml-parse.el 2000/12/05 17:12:34
208 @@ -40,2 +40,4 @@
209
210 +(eval-when-compile (require 'cl))
211 +
212 \f
213 @@ -2474,8 +2476,8 @@
214 (setq sgml-scratch-buffer nil))
215 - (when after-change-function ;***
216 - (message "OOPS: after-change-function not NIL in scratch buffer %s: %s"
217 + (when after-change-functions ;***
218 + (message "OOPS: after-change-functions not NIL in scratch buffer %s: %S"
219 (current-buffer)
220 - after-change-function)
221 - (setq before-change-function nil
222 - after-change-function nil))
223 + after-change-functions)
224 + (setq before-change-functions nil
225 + after-change-functions nil))
226 (setq sgml-last-entity-buffer (current-buffer))
227 @@ -2846,6 +2848,5 @@
228 "Set initial state of parsing"
229 - (make-local-variable 'before-change-function)
230 - (setq before-change-function 'sgml-note-change-at)
231 - (make-local-variable 'after-change-function)
232 - (setq after-change-function 'sgml-set-face-after-change)
233 + (set (make-local-variable 'before-change-functions) '(sgml-note-change-at))
234 + (set (make-local-variable 'after-change-functions)
235 + '(sgml-set-face-after-change))
236 (sgml-set-active-dtd-indicator (sgml-dtd-doctype dtd))
237 @@ -3887,7 +3888,7 @@
238
239 - (unless before-change-function
240 - (message "WARN: before-change-function has been lost, restoring (%s)"
241 + (unless before-change-functions
242 + (message "WARN: before-change-functions has been lost, restoring (%s)"
243 (current-buffer))
244 - (setq before-change-function 'sgml-note-change-at)
245 - (setq after-change-function 'sgml-set-face-after-change)
246 + (setq before-change-functions '(sgml-note-change-at))
247 + (setq after-change-functions '(sgml-set-face-after-change))
248 )
249
250 * The Calc package fails to build and signals errors with Emacs 21.
251
252 Apply the following patches which reportedly fix several problems:
253
254 --- calc-ext.el.~1~ Sun Apr 3 02:26:34 1994
255 +++ calc-ext.el Wed Sep 18 17:35:01 1996
256 @@ -1354,6 +1354,25 @@
257 (calc-fancy-prefix 'calc-inverse-flag "Inverse..." n)
258 )
259
260 +(defconst calc-fancy-prefix-map
261 + (let ((map (make-sparse-keymap)))
262 + (define-key map [t] 'calc-fancy-prefix-other-key)
263 + (define-key map (vector meta-prefix-char t) 'calc-fancy-prefix-other-key)
264 + (define-key map [switch-frame] nil)
265 + (define-key map [?\C-u] 'universal-argument)
266 + (define-key map [?0] 'digit-argument)
267 + (define-key map [?1] 'digit-argument)
268 + (define-key map [?2] 'digit-argument)
269 + (define-key map [?3] 'digit-argument)
270 + (define-key map [?4] 'digit-argument)
271 + (define-key map [?5] 'digit-argument)
272 + (define-key map [?6] 'digit-argument)
273 + (define-key map [?7] 'digit-argument)
274 + (define-key map [?8] 'digit-argument)
275 + (define-key map [?9] 'digit-argument)
276 + map)
277 + "Keymap used while processing calc-fancy-prefix.")
278 +
279 (defun calc-fancy-prefix (flag msg n)
280 (let (prefix)
281 (calc-wrapper
282 @@ -1364,6 +1383,8 @@
283 (message (if prefix msg "")))
284 (and prefix
285 (not calc-is-keypad-press)
286 + (if (boundp 'overriding-terminal-local-map)
287 + (setq overriding-terminal-local-map calc-fancy-prefix-map)
288 (let ((event (calc-read-key t)))
289 (if (eq (setq last-command-char (car event)) ?\C-u)
290 (universal-argument)
291 @@ -1376,9 +1397,18 @@
292 (if (or (not (integerp last-command-char))
293 (eq last-command-char ?-))
294 (calc-unread-command)
295 - (digit-argument n))))))
296 + (digit-argument n)))))))
297 )
298 (setq calc-is-keypad-press nil)
299 +
300 +(defun calc-fancy-prefix-other-key (arg)
301 + (interactive "P")
302 + (if (or (not (integerp last-command-char))
303 + (and (>= last-command-char 0) (< last-command-char ? )
304 + (not (eq last-command-char meta-prefix-char))))
305 + (calc-wrapper)) ; clear flags if not a Calc command.
306 + (calc-unread-command)
307 + (setq overriding-terminal-local-map nil))
308
309 (defun calc-invert-func ()
310 (save-excursion
311
312 --- Makefile.~1~ Sun Dec 15 23:50:45 1996
313 +++ Makefile Thu Nov 30 15:09:45 2000
314 @@ -41,7 +41,7 @@
315
316 # Other macros.
317 EFLAGS = -batch
318 -MAINT = -l calc-maint.elc
319 +MAINT = -l calc-maint.el
320
321 # Control whether intermediate files are kept.
322 PURGE = -rm -f
323 @@ -154,10 +154,7 @@
324
325
326 # All this because "-l calc-maint" doesn't work.
327 -maint: calc-maint.elc
328 -calc-maint.elc: calc-maint.el
329 - cp calc-maint.el calc-maint.elc
330 -
331 +maint: calc-maint.el
332
333 # Create an Emacs TAGS file
334 tags: TAGS
335
336 --- calc-aent.el.~1~ Sun Dec 15 23:50:36 1996
337 +++ calc-aent.el Tue Nov 21 18:34:33 2000
338 @@ -385,7 +385,7 @@
339 (calc-minibuffer-contains
340 "\\`\\([^\"]*\"[^\"]*\"\\)*[^\"]*\"[^\"]*\\'"))
341 (insert "`")
342 - (setq alg-exp (buffer-string))
343 + (setq alg-exp (field-string))
344 (and (> (length alg-exp) 0) (setq calc-previous-alg-entry alg-exp))
345 (exit-minibuffer))
346 )
347 @@ -393,14 +393,14 @@
348
349 (defun calcAlg-enter ()
350 (interactive)
351 - (let* ((str (buffer-string))
352 + (let* ((str (field-string))
353 (exp (and (> (length str) 0)
354 (save-excursion
355 (set-buffer calc-buffer)
356 (math-read-exprs str)))))
357 (if (eq (car-safe exp) 'error)
358 (progn
359 - (goto-char (point-min))
360 + (goto-char (field-beginning))
361 (forward-char (nth 1 exp))
362 (beep)
363 (calc-temp-minibuffer-message
364 @@ -455,14 +455,14 @@
365 (interactive)
366 (if (calc-minibuffer-contains ".*[@oh] *[^'m ]+[^'m]*\\'")
367 (calcDigit-key)
368 - (setq calc-digit-value (buffer-string))
369 + (setq calc-digit-value (field-string))
370 (exit-minibuffer))
371 )
372
373 (defun calcDigit-edit ()
374 (interactive)
375 (calc-unread-command)
376 - (setq calc-digit-value (buffer-string))
377 + (setq calc-digit-value (field-string))
378 (exit-minibuffer)
379 )
380
381 --- calc.el.~1~ Sun Dec 15 23:50:47 1996
382 +++ calc.el Wed Nov 22 13:08:49 2000
383 @@ -2051,11 +2051,11 @@
384 ;; Exercise for the reader: Figure out why this is a good precaution!
385 (or (boundp 'calc-buffer)
386 (use-local-map minibuffer-local-map))
387 - (let ((str (buffer-string)))
388 + (let ((str (field-string)))
389 (setq calc-digit-value (save-excursion
390 (set-buffer calc-buffer)
391 (math-read-number str))))
392 - (if (and (null calc-digit-value) (> (buffer-size) 0))
393 + (if (and (null calc-digit-value) (> (field-end) (field-beginning)))
394 (progn
395 (beep)
396 (calc-temp-minibuffer-message " [Bad format]"))
397 @@ -2071,7 +2071,7 @@
398
399 (defun calc-minibuffer-contains (rex)
400 (save-excursion
401 - (goto-char (point-min))
402 + (goto-char (field-end (point-min)))
403 (looking-at rex))
404 )
405
406 @@ -2158,10 +2158,8 @@
407 (upcase last-command-char))))
408 (and dig
409 (< dig radix)))))))
410 - (save-excursion
411 - (goto-char (point-min))
412 - (looking-at
413 - "[-+]?\\(.*\\+/- *\\|.*mod *\\)?\\([0-9]+\\.?0*[@oh] *\\)?\\([0-9]+\\.?0*['m] *\\)?[0-9]*\\(\\.?[0-9]*\\(e[-+]?[0-3]?[0-9]?[0-9]?[0-9]?[0-9]?[0-9]?[0-9]?\\)?\\|[0-9]:\\([0-9]+:\\)?[0-9]*\\)?[\"s]?\\'")))
414 + (calc-minibuffer-contains
415 + "[-+]?\\(.*\\+/- *\\|.*mod *\\)?\\([0-9]+\\.?0*[@oh] *\\)?\\([0-9]+\\.?0*['m] *\\)?[0-9]*\\(\\.?[0-9]*\\(e[-+]?[0-3]?[0-9]?[0-9]?[0-9]?[0-9]?[0-9]?[0-9]?\\)?\\|[0-9]:\\([0-9]+:\\)?[0-9]*\\)?[\"s]?\\'"))
416 (if (and (memq last-command-char '(?@ ?o ?h ?\' ?m))
417 (string-match " " calc-hms-format))
418 (insert " "))
419 @@ -2190,7 +2188,7 @@
420 ((eq last-command 'calcDigit-start)
421 (erase-buffer))
422 (t (backward-delete-char 1)))
423 - (if (= (buffer-size) 0)
424 + (if (= (field-beginning) (field-end))
425 (progn
426 (setq last-command-char 13)
427 (calcDigit-nondigit)))
428
429 * TeX'ing the Calc manual fails.
430
431 The following patches allow to build the Calc manual using texinfo.tex
432 from Emacs 19.34 distribution:
433
434 *** calc-maint.e~0 Mon Dec 16 07:11:26 1996
435 --- calc-maint.el Sun Dec 10 14:32:38 2000
436 ***************
437 *** 308,314 ****
438 (insert "@tex\n"
439 "\\global\\advance\\appendixno2\n"
440 "\\gdef\\xref#1.{See ``#1.''}\n")
441 ! (setq midpos (point))
442 (insert "@end tex\n")
443 (insert-buffer-substring srcbuf sumpos endpos)
444 (insert "@bye\n")
445 --- 308,314 ----
446 (insert "@tex\n"
447 "\\global\\advance\\appendixno2\n"
448 "\\gdef\\xref#1.{See ``#1.''}\n")
449 ! (setq midpos (point-marker))
450 (insert "@end tex\n")
451 (insert-buffer-substring srcbuf sumpos endpos)
452 (insert "@bye\n")
453 *** Makefile.~0 Mon Dec 16 07:11:24 1996
454 --- Makefile Sun Dec 10 14:44:00 2000
455 ***************
456 *** 98,106 ****
457 # Format the Calc manual as one printable volume using TeX.
458 tex:
459 $(REMOVE) calc.aux
460 ! $(TEX) calc.texinfo
461 $(TEXINDEX) calc.[cfkptv]?
462 ! $(TEX) calc.texinfo
463 $(PURGE) calc.cp calc.fn calc.pg calc.tp calc.vr
464 $(PURGE) calc.cps calc.fns calc.kys calc.pgs calc.tps calc.vrs
465 $(PURGE) calc.toc
466 --- 98,106 ----
467 # Format the Calc manual as one printable volume using TeX.
468 tex:
469 $(REMOVE) calc.aux
470 ! -$(TEX) calc.texinfo
471 $(TEXINDEX) calc.[cfkptv]?
472 ! -$(TEX) calc.texinfo
473 $(PURGE) calc.cp calc.fn calc.pg calc.tp calc.vr
474 $(PURGE) calc.cps calc.fns calc.kys calc.pgs calc.tps calc.vrs
475 $(PURGE) calc.toc
476 *** calc.texinfo.~1~ Thu Oct 10 18:18:56 1996
477 --- calc.texinfo Mon Dec 11 08:25:00 2000
478 ***************
479 *** 12,17 ****
480 --- 12,19 ----
481 % Because makeinfo.c exists, we can't just define new commands.
482 % So instead, we take over little-used existing commands.
483 %
484 + % Suggested by Karl Berry <karl@@freefriends.org>
485 + \gdef\!{\mskip-\thinmuskip}
486 % Redefine @cite{text} to act like $text$ in regular TeX.
487 % Info will typeset this same as @samp{text}.
488 \gdef\goodtex{\tex \let\rm\goodrm \let\t\ttfont \turnoffactive}
489 ***************
490 *** 23686,23692 ****
491 a vector of the actual parameter values, written as equations:
492 @cite{[a = 3, b = 2]}, in case you'd rather read them in a list
493 than pick them out of the formula. (You can type @kbd{t y}
494 ! to move this vector to the stack; @pxref{Trail Commands})
495
496 Specifying a different independent variable name will affect the
497 resulting formula: @kbd{a F 1 k RET} produces @kbd{3 + 2 k}.
498 --- 23689,23695 ----
499 a vector of the actual parameter values, written as equations:
500 @cite{[a = 3, b = 2]}, in case you'd rather read them in a list
501 than pick them out of the formula. (You can type @kbd{t y}
502 ! to move this vector to the stack; see @ref{Trail Commands}.)
503
504 Specifying a different independent variable name will affect the
505 resulting formula: @kbd{a F 1 k RET} produces @kbd{3 + 2 k}.
506
507
508 * On systems with shared libraries you might encounter run-time errors
509 from the dynamic linker telling you that it is unable to find some
510 shared libraries, for instance those for Xaw3d or image support.
511 These errors mean Emacs has been linked with a library whose shared
512 library is not in the default search path of the dynamic linker.
513
514 On many systems, it is possible to set LD_LIBRARY_PATH in your
515 environment to specify additional directories where shared libraries
516 can be found.
517
518 Other systems allow to set LD_RUN_PATH in a similar way, but before
519 Emacs is linked. With LD_RUN_PATH set, the linker will include a
520 specified run-time search path in the executable.
521
522 Please refer to the documentation of your dynamic linker for details.
523
524 * On Solaris 2.7, building Emacs with WorkShop Compilers 5.0 98/12/15
525 C 5.0 failed, apparently with non-default CFLAGS, most probably due to
526 compiler bugs. Using Sun Solaris 2.7 Sun WorkShop 6 update 1 C
527 release was reported to work without problems. It worked OK on
528 another system with Solaris 8 using apparently the same 5.0 compiler
529 and the default CFLAGS.
530
531 * On Windows 95/98/ME, subprocesses do not terminate properly.
532
533 This is a limitation of the Operating System, and can cause problems
534 when shutting down Windows. Ensure that all subprocesses are exited
535 cleanly before exiting Emacs. For more details, see the FAQ at
536 ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/windows/emacs/doc/index.html
537
538 * Mail sent through Microsoft Exchange in some encodings appears to be
539 mangled and is not seen correctly in Rmail or Gnus. We don't know
540 exactly what happens, but it isn't an Emacs problem in cases we've
541 seen.
542
543 * On OSF/Dec Unix/Tru64/<whatever it is this year> under X locally or
544 remotely, M-SPC acts as a `compose' key with strange results. See
545 keyboard(5).
546
547 Changing Alt_L to Meta_L fixes it:
548 % xmodmap -e 'keysym Alt_L = Meta_L Alt_L'
549 % xmodmap -e 'keysym Alt_R = Meta_R Alt_R'
550
551 * Error "conflicting types for `initstate'" compiling with GCC on Irix 6.
552
553 Install GCC 2.95 or a newer version, and this problem should go away.
554 It is possible that this problem results from upgrading the operating
555 system without reinstalling GCC; so you could also try reinstalling
556 the same version of GCC, and telling us whether that fixes the problem.
557
558 * On Solaris 7, Emacs gets a segmentation fault when starting up using X.
559
560 This results from Sun patch 107058-01 (SunOS 5.7: Patch for
561 assembler) if you use GCC version 2.7 or later.
562 To work around it, either install patch 106950-03 or later,
563 or uninstall patch 107058-01, or install the GNU Binutils.
564 Then recompile Emacs, and it should work.
565
566 * With X11R6.4, public-patch-3, Emacs crashes at startup.
567
568 Reportedly this patch in X fixes the problem.
569
570 --- xc/lib/X11/imInt.c~ Wed Jun 30 13:31:56 1999
571 +++ xc/lib/X11/imInt.c Thu Jul 1 15:10:27 1999
572 @@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
573 -/* $TOG: imInt.c /main/5 1998/05/30 21:11:16 kaleb $ */
574 +/* $TOG: imInt.c /main/5 1998/05/30 21:11:16 kaleb $ */
575 /******************************************************************
576
577 Copyright 1992, 1993, 1994 by FUJITSU LIMITED
578 @@ -166,8 +166,8 @@
579 _XimMakeImName(lcd)
580 XLCd lcd;
581 {
582 - char* begin;
583 - char* end;
584 + char* begin = NULL;
585 + char* end = NULL;
586 char* ret;
587 int i = 0;
588 char* ximmodifier = XIMMODIFIER;
589 @@ -182,7 +182,11 @@
590 }
591 ret = Xmalloc(end - begin + 2);
592 if (ret != NULL) {
593 - (void)strncpy(ret, begin, end - begin + 1);
594 + if (begin != NULL) {
595 + (void)strncpy(ret, begin, end - begin + 1);
596 + } else {
597 + ret[0] = '\0';
598 + }
599 ret[end - begin + 1] = '\0';
600 }
601 return ret;
602
603
604 * Emacs crashes on Irix 6.5 on the SGI R10K, when compiled with GCC.
605
606 This seems to be fixed in GCC 2.95.
607
608 * Emacs crashes in utmpname on Irix 5.3.
609
610 This problem is fixed in Patch 3175 for Irix 5.3.
611 It is also fixed in Irix versions 6.2 and up.
612
613 * The S-C-t key combination doesn't get passed to Emacs on X.
614
615 This happens because some X configurations assign the Ctrl-Shift-t
616 combination the same meaning as the Multi_key. The offending
617 definition is in the file `...lib/X11/locale/iso8859-1/Compose'; there
618 might be other similar combinations which are grabbed by X for similar
619 purposes.
620
621 We think that this can be countermanded with the `xmodmap' utility, if
622 you want to be able to bind one of these key sequences within Emacs.
623
624 * On Solaris, CTRL-t is ignored by Emacs when you use
625 the fr.ISO-8859-15 locale (and maybe other related locales).
626
627 You can fix this by editing the file:
628
629 /usr/openwin/lib/locale/iso8859-15/Compose
630
631 Near the bottom there is a line that reads:
632
633 Ctrl<t> <quotedbl> <Y> : "\276" threequarters
634
635 that should read:
636
637 Ctrl<T> <quotedbl> <Y> : "\276" threequarters
638
639 Note the lower case <t>. Changing this line should make C-t work.
640
641 * Emacs on Digital Unix 4.0 fails to build, giving error message
642 Invalid dimension for the charset-ID 160
643
644 This is due to a bug or an installation problem in GCC 2.8.0.
645 Installing a more recent version of GCC fixes the problem.
646
647 * Buffers from `with-output-to-temp-buffer' get set up in Help mode.
648
649 Changes in Emacs 20.4 to the hooks used by that function cause
650 problems for some packages, specifically BBDB. See the function's
651 documentation for the hooks involved. BBDB 2.00.06 fixes the problem.
652
653 * Under X, C-v and/or other keys don't work.
654
655 These may have been intercepted by your window manager. In
656 particular, AfterStep 1.6 is reported to steal C-v in its default
657 configuration. Various Meta keys are also likely to be taken by the
658 configuration of the `feel'. See the WM's documentation for how to
659 change this.
660
661 * When using Exceed, fonts sometimes appear too tall.
662
663 When the display is set to an Exceed X-server and fonts are specified
664 (either explicitly with the -fn option or implicitly with X resources)
665 then the fonts may appear "too tall". The actual character sizes are
666 correct but there is too much vertical spacing between rows, which
667 gives the appearance of "double spacing".
668
669 To prevent this, turn off the Exceed's "automatic font substitution"
670 feature (in the font part of the configuration window).
671
672 * Failure in unexec while dumping emacs on Digital Unix 4.0
673
674 This problem manifests itself as an error message
675
676 unexec: Bad address, writing data section to ...
677
678 The user suspects that this happened because his X libraries
679 were built for an older system version,
680
681 ./configure --x-includes=/usr/include --x-libraries=/usr/shlib
682
683 made the problem go away.
684
685 * No visible display on mips-sgi-irix6.2 when compiling with GCC 2.8.1.
686
687 This problem went away after installing the latest IRIX patches
688 as of 8 Dec 1998.
689
690 The same problem has been reported on Irix 6.3.
691
692 * As of version 20.4, Emacs doesn't work properly if configured for
693 the Motif toolkit and linked against the free LessTif library. The
694 next Emacs release is expected to work with LessTif.
695
696 * Emacs gives the error, Couldn't find per display information.
697
698 This can result if the X server runs out of memory because Emacs uses
699 a large number of fonts. On systems where this happens, C-h h is
700 likely to cause it.
701
702 We do not know of a way to prevent the problem.
703
704 * Emacs makes HPUX 11.0 crash.
705
706 This is a bug in HPUX; HPUX patch PHKL_16260 is said to fix it.
707
708 * Emacs crashes during dumping on the HPPA machine (HPUX 10.20).
709
710 This seems to be due to a GCC bug; it is fixed in GCC 2.8.1.
711
712 * The Hyperbole package causes *Help* buffers not to be displayed in
713 Help mode due to setting `temp-buffer-show-hook' rather than using
714 `add-hook'. Using `(add-hook 'temp-buffer-show-hook
715 'help-mode-maybe)' after loading Hyperbole should fix this.
716
717 * Versions of the PSGML package earlier than 1.0.3 (stable) or 1.1.2
718 (alpha) fail to parse DTD files correctly in Emacs 20.3 and later.
719 Here is a patch for psgml-parse.el from PSGML 1.0.1 and, probably,
720 earlier versions.
721
722 --- psgml-parse.el 1998/08/21 19:18:18 1.1
723 +++ psgml-parse.el 1998/08/21 19:20:00
724 @@ -2383,7 +2383,7 @@ (defun sgml-push-to-entity (entity &opti
725 (setq sgml-buffer-parse-state nil))
726 (cond
727 ((stringp entity) ; a file name
728 - (save-excursion (insert-file-contents entity))
729 + (insert-file-contents entity)
730 (setq default-directory (file-name-directory entity)))
731 ((consp (sgml-entity-text entity)) ; external id?
732 (let* ((extid (sgml-entity-text entity))
733
734 * Running TeX from AUXTeX package with Emacs 20.3 gives a Lisp error
735 about a read-only tex output buffer.
736
737 This problem appeared for AUC TeX version 9.9j and some earlier
738 versions. Here is a patch for the file tex-buf.el in the AUC TeX
739 package.
740
741 diff -c auctex/tex-buf.el~ auctex/tex-buf.el
742 *** auctex/tex-buf.el~ Wed Jul 29 18:35:32 1998
743 --- auctex/tex-buf.el Sat Sep 5 15:20:38 1998
744 ***************
745 *** 545,551 ****
746 (dir (TeX-master-directory)))
747 (TeX-process-check file) ; Check that no process is running
748 (setq TeX-command-buffer (current-buffer))
749 ! (with-output-to-temp-buffer buffer)
750 (set-buffer buffer)
751 (if dir (cd dir))
752 (insert "Running `" name "' on `" file "' with ``" command "''\n")
753 - --- 545,552 ----
754 (dir (TeX-master-directory)))
755 (TeX-process-check file) ; Check that no process is running
756 (setq TeX-command-buffer (current-buffer))
757 ! (let (temp-buffer-show-function temp-buffer-show-hook)
758 ! (with-output-to-temp-buffer buffer))
759 (set-buffer buffer)
760 (if dir (cd dir))
761 (insert "Running `" name "' on `" file "' with ``" command "''\n")
762
763 * On Irix 6.3, substituting environment variables in file names
764 in the minibuffer gives peculiar error messages such as
765
766 Substituting nonexistent environment variable ""
767
768 This is not an Emacs bug; it is caused by something in SGI patch
769 003082 August 11, 1998.
770
771 * After a while, Emacs slips into unibyte mode.
772
773 The VM mail package, which is not part of Emacs, sometimes does
774 (standard-display-european t)
775 That should be changed to
776 (standard-display-european 1 t)
777
778 * Installing Emacs gets an error running `install-info'.
779
780 You need to install a recent version of Texinfo; that package
781 supplies the `install-info' command.
782
783 * Emacs does not recognize the AltGr key, on HPUX.
784
785 To fix this, set up a file ~/.dt/sessions/sessionetc with executable
786 rights, containing this text:
787
788 --------------------------------
789 xmodmap 2> /dev/null - << EOF
790 keysym Alt_L = Meta_L
791 keysym Alt_R = Meta_R
792 EOF
793
794 xmodmap - << EOF
795 clear mod1
796 keysym Mode_switch = NoSymbol
797 add mod1 = Meta_L
798 keysym Meta_R = Mode_switch
799 add mod2 = Mode_switch
800 EOF
801 --------------------------------
802
803 * Emacs compiled with DJGPP for MS-DOS/MS-Windows cannot access files
804 in the directory with the special name `dev' under the root of any
805 drive, e.g. `c:/dev'.
806
807 This is an unfortunate side-effect of the support for Unix-style
808 device names such as /dev/null in the DJGPP runtime library. A
809 work-around is to rename the problem directory to another name.
810
811 * M-SPC seems to be ignored as input.
812
813 See if your X server is set up to use this as a command
814 for character composition.
815
816 * Emacs startup on GNU/Linux systems (and possibly other systems) is slow.
817
818 This can happen if the system is misconfigured and Emacs can't get the
819 full qualified domain name, FQDN. You should have your FQDN in the
820 /etc/hosts file, something like this:
821
822 127.0.0.1 localhost
823 129.187.137.82 nuc04.t30.physik.tu-muenchen.de nuc04
824
825 The way to set this up may vary on non-GNU systems.
826
827 * Garbled display on non-X terminals when Emacs runs on Digital Unix 4.0.
828
829 So far it appears that running `tset' triggers this problem (when TERM
830 is vt100, at least). If you do not run `tset', then Emacs displays
831 properly. If someone can tell us precisely which effect of running
832 `tset' actually causes the problem, we may be able to implement a fix
833 in Emacs.
834
835 * When you run Ispell from Emacs, it reports a "misalignment" error.
836
837 This can happen if you compiled Ispell to use ASCII characters only
838 and then try to use it from Emacs with non-ASCII characters,
839 specifically Latin-1. The solution is to recompile Ispell with
840 Latin-1 support.
841
842 This can also happen if the version of Ispell installed on your
843 machine is old.
844
845 * On Linux-based GNU systems using libc versions 5.4.19 through
846 5.4.22, Emacs crashes at startup with a segmentation fault.
847
848 This problem happens if libc defines the symbol __malloc_initialized.
849 One known solution is to upgrade to a newer libc version. 5.4.33 is
850 known to work.
851
852 * On Windows, you cannot use the right-hand ALT key and the left-hand
853 CTRL key together to type a Control-Meta character.
854
855 This is a consequence of a misfeature beyond Emacs's control.
856
857 Under Windows, the AltGr key on international keyboards generates key
858 events with the modifiers Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl. Since Emacs cannot
859 distinguish AltGr from an explicit Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl
860 combination, whenever it sees Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl it assumes that
861 AltGr has been pressed.
862
863 * Under some Windows X-servers, Emacs' display is incorrect
864
865 The symptoms are that Emacs does not completely erase blank areas of the
866 screen during scrolling or some other screen operations (e.g., selective
867 display or when killing a region). M-x recenter will cause the screen
868 to be completely redisplayed and the "extra" characters will disappear.
869
870 This is known to occur under Exceed 6, and possibly earlier versions as
871 well. The problem lies in the X-server settings.
872
873 There are reports that you can solve the problem with Exceed by
874 running `Xconfig' from within NT, choosing "X selection", then
875 un-checking the boxes "auto-copy X selection" and "auto-paste to X
876 selection".
877
878 Of this does not work, please inform bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org. Then
879 please call support for your X-server and see if you can get a fix.
880 If you do, please send it to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org so we can list it
881 here.
882
883 * On Solaris 2, Emacs dumps core when built with Motif.
884
885 The Solaris Motif libraries are buggy, at least up through Solaris 2.5.1.
886 Install the current Motif runtime library patch appropriate for your host.
887 (Make sure the patch is current; some older patch versions still have the bug.)
888 You should install the other patches recommended by Sun for your host, too.
889 You can obtain Sun patches from ftp://sunsolve.sun.com/pub/patches/;
890 look for files with names ending in `.PatchReport' to see which patches
891 are currently recommended for your host.
892
893 On Solaris 2.6, Emacs is said to work with Motif when Solaris patch
894 105284-12 is installed, but fail when 105284-15 is installed.
895 105284-18 might fix it again.
896
897 * On Solaris 2.6 and 7, the Compose key does not work.
898
899 This is a bug in Motif in Solaris. Supposedly it has been fixed for
900 the next major release of Solaris. However, if someone with Sun
901 support complains to Sun about the bug, they may release a patch.
902 If you do this, mention Sun bug #4188711.
903
904 One workaround is to use a locale that allows non-ASCII characters.
905 For example, before invoking emacs, set the LC_ALL environment
906 variable to "en_US" (American English). The directory /usr/lib/locale
907 lists the supported locales; any locale other than "C" or "POSIX"
908 should do.
909
910 pen@lysator.liu.se says (Feb 1998) that the Compose key does work
911 if you link with the MIT X11 libraries instead of the Solaris X11
912 libraries.
913
914 * Emacs does not know your host's fully-qualified domain name.
915
916 You need to configure your machine with a fully qualified domain name,
917 either in /etc/hosts, /etc/hostname, the NIS, or wherever your system
918 calls for specifying this.
919
920 If you cannot fix the configuration, you can set the Lisp variable
921 mail-host-address to the value you want.
922
923 * Error 12 (virtual memory exceeded) when dumping Emacs, on UnixWare 2.1
924
925 Paul Abrahams (abrahams@acm.org) reports that with the installed
926 virtual memory settings for UnixWare 2.1.2, an Error 12 occurs during
927 the "make" that builds Emacs, when running temacs to dump emacs. That
928 error indicates that the per-process virtual memory limit has been
929 exceeded. The default limit is probably 32MB. Raising the virtual
930 memory limit to 40MB should make it possible to finish building Emacs.
931
932 You can do this with the command `ulimit' (sh) or `limit' (csh).
933 But you have to be root to do it.
934
935 According to Martin Sohnius, you can also retune this in the kernel:
936
937 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune SDATLIM 33554432 ## soft data size limit
938 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune HDATLIM 33554432 ## hard "
939 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune SVMMSIZE unlimited ## soft process size limit
940 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune HVMMSIZE unlimited ## hard "
941 # /etc/conf/bin/idbuild -B
942
943 (He recommends you not change the stack limit, though.)
944 These changes take effect when you reboot.
945
946 * Redisplay using X11 is much slower than previous Emacs versions.
947
948 We've noticed that certain X servers draw the text much slower when
949 scroll bars are on the left. We don't know why this happens. If this
950 happens to you, you can work around it by putting the scroll bars
951 on the right (as they were in Emacs 19).
952
953 Here's how to do this:
954
955 (set-scroll-bar-mode 'right)
956
957 If you're not sure whether (or how much) this problem affects you,
958 try that and see how much difference it makes. To set things back
959 to normal, do
960
961 (set-scroll-bar-mode 'left)
962
963 * Under X11, some characters appear as hollow boxes.
964
965 Each X11 font covers just a fraction of the characters that Emacs
966 supports. To display the whole range of Emacs characters requires
967 many different fonts, collected into a fontset.
968
969 If some of the fonts called for in your fontset do not exist on your X
970 server, then the characters that have no font appear as hollow boxes.
971 You can remedy the problem by installing additional fonts.
972
973 The intlfonts distribution includes a full spectrum of fonts that can
974 display all the characters Emacs supports.
975
976 Another cause of this for specific characters is fonts which have a
977 missing glyph and no default character. This is known ot occur for
978 character number 160 (no-break space) in some fonts, such as Lucida
979 but Emacs sets the display table for the unibyte and Latin-1 version
980 of this character to display a space.
981
982 * Under X11, some characters appear improperly aligned in their lines.
983
984 You may have bad X11 fonts; try installing the intlfonts distribution.
985
986 * Certain fonts make each line take one pixel more than it "should".
987
988 This is because these fonts contain characters a little taller
989 than the font's nominal height. Emacs needs to make sure that
990 lines do not overlap.
991
992 * You request inverse video, and the first Emacs frame is in inverse
993 video, but later frames are not in inverse video.
994
995 This can happen if you have an old version of the custom library in
996 your search path for Lisp packages. Use M-x list-load-path-shadows to
997 check whether this is true. If it is, delete the old custom library.
998
999 * In FreeBSD 2.1.5, useless symbolic links remain in /tmp or other
1000 directories that have the +t bit.
1001
1002 This is because of a kernel bug in FreeBSD 2.1.5 (fixed in 2.2).
1003 Emacs uses symbolic links to implement file locks. In a directory
1004 with +t bit, the directory owner becomes the owner of the symbolic
1005 link, so that it cannot be removed by anyone else.
1006
1007 If you don't like those useless links, you can let Emacs not to using
1008 file lock by adding #undef CLASH_DETECTION to config.h.
1009
1010 * When using M-x dbx with the SparcWorks debugger, the `up' and `down'
1011 commands do not move the arrow in Emacs.
1012
1013 You can fix this by adding the following line to `~/.dbxinit':
1014
1015 dbxenv output_short_file_name off
1016
1017 * Emacs says it has saved a file, but the file does not actually
1018 appear on disk.
1019
1020 This can happen on certain systems when you are using NFS, if the
1021 remote disk is full. It is due to a bug in NFS (or certain NFS
1022 implementations), and there is apparently nothing Emacs can do to
1023 detect the problem. Emacs checks the failure codes of all the system
1024 calls involved in writing a file, including `close'; but in the case
1025 where the problem occurs, none of those system calls fails.
1026
1027 * "Compose Character" key does strange things when used as a Meta key.
1028
1029 If you define one key to serve as both Meta and Compose Character, you
1030 will get strange results. In previous Emacs versions, this "worked"
1031 in that the key acted as Meta--that's because the older Emacs versions
1032 did not try to support Compose Character. Now Emacs tries to do
1033 character composition in the standard X way. This means that you
1034 must pick one meaning or the other for any given key.
1035
1036 You can use both functions (Meta, and Compose Character) if you assign
1037 them to two different keys.
1038
1039 * Emacs gets a segmentation fault at startup, on AIX4.2.
1040
1041 If you are using IBM's xlc compiler, compile emacs.c
1042 without optimization; that should avoid the problem.
1043
1044 * movemail compiled with POP support can't connect to the POP server.
1045
1046 Make sure that the `pop' entry in /etc/services, or in the services
1047 NIS map if your machine uses NIS, has the same port number as the
1048 entry on the POP server. A common error is for the POP server to be
1049 listening on port 110, the assigned port for the POP3 protocol, while
1050 the client is trying to connect on port 109, the assigned port for the
1051 old POP protocol.
1052
1053 * Emacs crashes in x-popup-dialog.
1054
1055 This can happen if the dialog widget cannot find the font it wants to
1056 use. You can work around the problem by specifying another font with
1057 an X resource--for example, `Emacs.dialog*.font: 9x15' (or any font that
1058 happens to exist on your X server).
1059
1060 * Emacs crashes when you use Bibtex mode.
1061
1062 This happens if your system puts a small limit on stack size. You can
1063 prevent the problem by using a suitable shell command (often `ulimit')
1064 to raise the stack size limit before you run Emacs.
1065
1066 Patches to raise the stack size limit automatically in `main'
1067 (src/emacs.c) on various systems would be greatly appreciated.
1068
1069 * Emacs crashes with SIGBUS or SIGSEGV on HPUX 9 after you delete a frame.
1070
1071 We think this is due to a bug in the X libraries provided by HP. With
1072 the alternative X libraries in /usr/contrib/mitX11R5/lib, the problem
1073 does not happen.
1074
1075 * Emacs crashes with SIGBUS or SIGSEGV on Solaris after you delete a frame.
1076
1077 We suspect that this is a similar bug in the X libraries provided by
1078 Sun. There is a report that one of these patches fixes the bug and
1079 makes the problem stop:
1080
1081 105216-01 105393-01 105518-01 105621-01 105665-01 105615-02 105216-02
1082 105667-01 105401-08 105615-03 105621-02 105686-02 105736-01 105755-03
1083 106033-01 105379-01 105786-01 105181-04 105379-03 105786-04 105845-01
1084 105284-05 105669-02 105837-01 105837-02 105558-01 106125-02 105407-01
1085
1086 Another person using a newer system (kernel patch level Generic_105181-06)
1087 suspects that the bug was fixed by one of these more recent patches:
1088
1089 106040-07 SunOS 5.6: X Input & Output Method patch
1090 106222-01 OpenWindows 3.6: filemgr (ff.core) fixes
1091 105284-12 Motif 1.2.7: sparc Runtime library patch
1092
1093 * Problems running Perl under Emacs on Windows NT/95.
1094
1095 `perl -de 0' just hangs when executed in an Emacs subshell.
1096 The fault lies with Perl (indirectly with Windows NT/95).
1097
1098 The problem is that the Perl debugger explicitly opens a connection to
1099 "CON", which is the DOS/NT equivalent of "/dev/tty", for interacting
1100 with the user.
1101
1102 On Unix, this is okay, because Emacs (or the shell?) creates a
1103 pseudo-tty so that /dev/tty is really the pipe Emacs is using to
1104 communicate with the subprocess.
1105
1106 On NT, this fails because CON always refers to the handle for the
1107 relevant console (approximately equivalent to a tty), and cannot be
1108 redirected to refer to the pipe Emacs assigned to the subprocess as
1109 stdin.
1110
1111 A workaround is to modify perldb.pl to use STDIN/STDOUT instead of CON.
1112
1113 For Perl 4:
1114
1115 *** PERL/LIB/PERLDB.PL.orig Wed May 26 08:24:18 1993
1116 --- PERL/LIB/PERLDB.PL Mon Jul 01 15:28:16 1996
1117 ***************
1118 *** 68,74 ****
1119 $rcfile=".perldb";
1120 }
1121 else {
1122 ! $console = "con";
1123 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
1124 }
1125
1126 --- 68,74 ----
1127 $rcfile=".perldb";
1128 }
1129 else {
1130 ! $console = "";
1131 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
1132 }
1133
1134
1135 For Perl 5:
1136 *** perl/5.001/lib/perl5db.pl.orig Sun Jun 04 21:13:40 1995
1137 --- perl/5.001/lib/perl5db.pl Mon Jul 01 17:00:08 1996
1138 ***************
1139 *** 22,28 ****
1140 $rcfile=".perldb";
1141 }
1142 elsif (-e "con") {
1143 ! $console = "con";
1144 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
1145 }
1146 else {
1147 --- 22,28 ----
1148 $rcfile=".perldb";
1149 }
1150 elsif (-e "con") {
1151 ! $console = "";
1152 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
1153 }
1154 else {
1155
1156 * Problems running DOS programs on Windows NT versions earlier than 3.51.
1157
1158 Some DOS programs, such as pkzip/pkunzip will not work at all, while
1159 others will only work if their stdin is redirected from a file or NUL.
1160
1161 When a DOS program does not work, a new process is actually created, but
1162 hangs. It cannot be interrupted from Emacs, and might need to be killed
1163 by an external program if Emacs is hung waiting for the process to
1164 finish. If Emacs is not waiting for it, you should be able to kill the
1165 instance of ntvdm that is running the hung process from Emacs, if you
1166 can find out the process id.
1167
1168 It is safe to run most DOS programs using call-process (eg. M-! and
1169 M-|) since stdin is then redirected from a file, but not with
1170 start-process since that redirects stdin to a pipe. Also, running DOS
1171 programs in a shell buffer prompt without redirecting stdin does not
1172 work.
1173
1174 * Problems on MS-DOG if DJGPP v2.0 is used to compile Emacs:
1175
1176 There are two DJGPP library bugs which cause problems:
1177
1178 * Running `shell-command' (or `compile', or `grep') you get
1179 `Searching for program: permission denied (EACCES), c:/command.com';
1180 * After you shell to DOS, Ctrl-Break kills Emacs.
1181
1182 To work around these bugs, you can use two files in the msdos
1183 subdirectory: `is_exec.c' and `sigaction.c'. Compile them and link
1184 them into the Emacs executable `temacs'; then they will replace the
1185 incorrect library functions.
1186
1187 * When compiling with DJGPP on Windows 95, Make fails for some targets
1188 like make-docfile.
1189
1190 This can happen if long file name support (the setting of environment
1191 variable LFN) when Emacs distribution was unpacked and during
1192 compilation are not the same. See the MSDOG section of INSTALL for
1193 the explanation of how to avoid this problem.
1194
1195 * Emacs compiled for MSDOS cannot find some Lisp files, or other
1196 run-time support files, when long filename support is enabled.
1197 (Usually, this problem will manifest itself when Emacs exits
1198 immediately after flashing the startup screen, because it cannot find
1199 the Lisp files it needs to load at startup. Redirect Emacs stdout
1200 and stderr to a file to see the error message printed by Emacs.)
1201
1202 This can happen if the Emacs distribution was unzipped without LFN
1203 support, thus causing long filenames to be truncated to the first 6
1204 characters and a numeric tail that Windows 95 normally attaches to it.
1205 You should unzip the files again with a utility that supports long
1206 filenames (such as djtar from DJGPP or InfoZip's UnZip program
1207 compiled with DJGPP v2). The MSDOG section of the file INSTALL
1208 explains this issue in more detail.
1209
1210 * Emacs compiled with DJGPP complains at startup:
1211
1212 "Wrong type of argument: internal-facep, msdos-menu-active-face"
1213
1214 This can happen if you define an environment variable `TERM'. Emacs
1215 on MSDOS uses an internal terminal emulator which is disabled if the
1216 value of `TERM' is anything but the string "internal". Emacs then
1217 works as if its terminal were a dumb glass teletype that doesn't
1218 support faces. To work around this, arrange for `TERM' to be
1219 undefined when Emacs runs. The best way to do that is to add an
1220 [emacs] section to the DJGPP.ENV file which defines an empty value for
1221 `TERM'; this way, only Emacs gets the empty value, while the rest of
1222 your system works as before.
1223
1224 * On Windows 95, Alt-f6 does not get through to Emacs.
1225
1226 This character seems to be trapped by the kernel in Windows 95.
1227 You can enter M-f6 by typing ESC f6.
1228
1229 * Typing Alt-Shift has strange effects on Windows 95.
1230
1231 This combination of keys is a command to change keyboard layout. If
1232 you proceed to type another non-modifier key before you let go of Alt
1233 and Shift, the Alt and Shift act as modifiers in the usual way.
1234
1235 * `tparam' reported as a multiply-defined symbol when linking with ncurses.
1236
1237 This problem results from an incompatible change in ncurses, in
1238 version 1.9.9e approximately. This version is unable to provide a
1239 definition of tparm without also defining tparam. This is also
1240 incompatible with Terminfo; as a result, the Emacs Terminfo support
1241 does not work with this version of ncurses.
1242
1243 The fix is to install a newer version of ncurses, such as version 4.2.
1244
1245 * Strange results from format %d in a few cases, on a Sun.
1246
1247 Sun compiler version SC3.0 has been found to miscompile part of
1248 editfns.c. The workaround is to compile with some other compiler such
1249 as GCC.
1250
1251 * Output from subprocess (such as man or diff) is randomly truncated
1252 on GNU/Linux systems.
1253
1254 This is due to a kernel bug which seems to be fixed in Linux version
1255 1.3.75.
1256
1257 * Error messages `internal facep []' happen on GNU/Linux systems.
1258
1259 There is a report that replacing libc.so.5.0.9 with libc.so.5.2.16
1260 caused this to start happening. People are not sure why, but the
1261 problem seems unlikely to be in Emacs itself. Some suspect that it
1262 is actually Xlib which won't work with libc.so.5.2.16.
1263
1264 Using the old library version is a workaround.
1265
1266 * On Solaris, Emacs crashes if you use (display-time).
1267
1268 This can happen if you configure Emacs without specifying the precise
1269 version of Solaris that you are using.
1270
1271 * Emacs dumps core on startup, on Solaris.
1272
1273 Bill Sebok says that the cause of this is Solaris 2.4 vendor patch
1274 102303-05, which extends the Solaris linker to deal with the Solaris
1275 Common Desktop Environment's linking needs. You can fix the problem
1276 by removing this patch and installing patch 102049-02 instead.
1277 However, that linker version won't work with CDE.
1278
1279 Solaris 2.5 comes with a linker that has this bug. It is reported that if
1280 you install all the latest patches (as of June 1996), the bug is fixed.
1281 We suspect the crucial patch is one of these, but we don't know
1282 for certain.
1283
1284 103093-03: [README] SunOS 5.5: kernel patch (2140557 bytes)
1285 102832-01: [README] OpenWindows 3.5: Xview Jumbo Patch (4181613 bytes)
1286 103242-04: [README] SunOS 5.5: linker patch (595363 bytes)
1287
1288 (One user reports that the bug was fixed by those patches together
1289 with patches 102980-04, 103279-01, 103300-02, and 103468-01.)
1290
1291 If you can determine which patch does fix the bug, please tell
1292 bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
1293
1294 Meanwhile, the GNU linker links Emacs properly on both Solaris 2.4 and
1295 Solaris 2.5.
1296
1297 * Emacs dumps core if lisp-complete-symbol is called, on Solaris.
1298
1299 If you compile Emacs with the -fast or -xO4 option with version 3.0.2
1300 of the Sun C compiler, Emacs dumps core when lisp-complete-symbol is
1301 called. The problem does not happen if you compile with GCC.
1302
1303 * "Cannot find callback list" messages from dialog boxes on HPUX, in
1304 Emacs built with Motif.
1305
1306 This problem resulted from a bug in GCC 2.4.5. Newer GCC versions
1307 such as 2.7.0 fix the problem.
1308
1309 * On Irix 6.0, make tries (and fails) to build a program named unexelfsgi
1310
1311 A compiler bug inserts spaces into the string "unexelfsgi . o"
1312 in src/Makefile. Edit src/Makefile, after configure is run,
1313 find that string, and take out the spaces.
1314
1315 Compiler fixes in Irix 6.0.1 should eliminate this problem.
1316
1317 * "out of virtual swap space" on Irix 5.3
1318
1319 This message occurs when the system runs out of swap space due to too
1320 many large programs running. The solution is either to provide more
1321 swap space or to reduce the number of large programs being run. You
1322 can check the current status of the swap space by executing the
1323 command `swap -l'.
1324
1325 You can increase swap space by changing the file /etc/fstab. Adding a
1326 line like this:
1327
1328 /usr/swap/swap.more swap swap pri=3 0 0
1329
1330 where /usr/swap/swap.more is a file previously created (for instance
1331 by using /etc/mkfile), will increase the swap space by the size of
1332 that file. Execute `swap -m' or reboot the machine to activate the
1333 new swap area. See the manpages for `swap' and `fstab' for further
1334 information.
1335
1336 The objectserver daemon can use up lots of memory because it can be
1337 swamped with NIS information. It collects information about all users
1338 on the network that can log on to the host.
1339
1340 If you want to disable the objectserver completely, you can execute
1341 the command `chkconfig objectserver off' and reboot. That may disable
1342 some of the window system functionality, such as responding CDROM
1343 icons.
1344
1345 You can also remove NIS support from the objectserver. The SGI `admin'
1346 FAQ has a detailed description on how to do that; see question 35
1347 ("Why isn't the objectserver working?"). The admin FAQ can be found at
1348 ftp://viz.tamu.edu/pub/sgi/faq/.
1349
1350 * With certain fonts, when the cursor appears on a character, the
1351 character doesn't appear--you get a solid box instead.
1352
1353 One user on a Linux-based GNU system reported that this problem went
1354 away with installation of a new X server. The failing server was
1355 XFree86 3.1.1. XFree86 3.1.2 works.
1356
1357 * On SunOS 4.1.3, Emacs unpredictably crashes in _yp_dobind_soft.
1358
1359 This happens if you configure Emacs specifying just `sparc-sun-sunos4'
1360 on a system that is version 4.1.3. You must specify the precise
1361 version number (or let configure figure out the configuration, which
1362 it can do perfectly well for SunOS).
1363
1364 * On SunOS 4, Emacs processes keep going after you kill the X server
1365 (or log out, if you logged in using X).
1366
1367 Someone reported that recompiling with GCC 2.7.0 fixed this problem.
1368
1369 * On AIX 4, some programs fail when run in a Shell buffer
1370 with an error message like No terminfo entry for "unknown".
1371
1372 On AIX, many terminal type definitions are not installed by default.
1373 `unknown' is one of them. Install the "Special Generic Terminal
1374 Definitions" to make them defined.
1375
1376 * On SunOS, you get linker errors
1377 ld: Undefined symbol
1378 _get_wmShellWidgetClass
1379 _get_applicationShellWidgetClass
1380
1381 The fix to this is to install patch 100573 for OpenWindows 3.0
1382 or link libXmu statically.
1383
1384 * On AIX 4.1.2, linker error messages such as
1385 ld: 0711-212 SEVERE ERROR: Symbol .__quous, found in the global symbol table
1386 of archive /usr/lib/libIM.a, was not defined in archive member shr.o.
1387
1388 This is a problem in libIM.a. You can work around it by executing
1389 these shell commands in the src subdirectory of the directory where
1390 you build Emacs:
1391
1392 cp /usr/lib/libIM.a .
1393 chmod 664 libIM.a
1394 ranlib libIM.a
1395
1396 Then change -lIM to ./libIM.a in the command to link temacs (in
1397 Makefile).
1398
1399 * Unpredictable segmentation faults on Solaris 2.3 and 2.4.
1400
1401 A user reported that this happened in 19.29 when it was compiled with
1402 the Sun compiler, but not when he recompiled with GCC 2.7.0.
1403
1404 We do not know whether something in Emacs is partly to blame for this.
1405
1406 * Emacs exits with "X protocol error" when run with an X server for
1407 Windows.
1408
1409 A certain X server for Windows had a bug which caused this.
1410 Supposedly the newer 32-bit version of this server doesn't have the
1411 problem.
1412
1413 * Emacs crashes at startup on MSDOS.
1414
1415 Some users report that Emacs 19.29 requires dpmi memory management,
1416 and crashes on startup if the system does not have it. We don't yet
1417 know why this happens--perhaps these machines don't have enough real
1418 memory, or perhaps something is wrong in Emacs or the compiler.
1419 However, arranging to use dpmi support is a workaround.
1420
1421 You can find out if you have a dpmi host by running go32 without
1422 arguments; it will tell you if it uses dpmi memory. For more
1423 information about dpmi memory, consult the djgpp FAQ. (djgpp
1424 is the GNU C compiler as packaged for MSDOS.)
1425
1426 Compiling Emacs under MSDOS is extremely sensitive for proper memory
1427 configuration. If you experience problems during compilation, consider
1428 removing some or all memory resident programs (notably disk caches)
1429 and make sure that your memory managers are properly configured. See
1430 the djgpp faq for configuration hints.
1431
1432 * A position you specified in .Xdefaults is ignored, using twm.
1433
1434 twm normally ignores "program-specified" positions.
1435 You can tell it to obey them with this command in your `.twmrc' file:
1436
1437 UsePPosition "on" #allow clients to request a position
1438
1439 * Compiling lib-src says there is no rule to make test-distrib.c.
1440
1441 This results from a bug in a VERY old version of GNU Sed. To solve
1442 the problem, install the current version of GNU Sed, then rerun
1443 Emacs's configure script.
1444
1445 * Compiling wakeup, in lib-src, says it can't make wakeup.c.
1446
1447 This results from a bug in GNU Sed version 2.03. To solve the
1448 problem, install the current version of GNU Sed, then rerun Emacs's
1449 configure script.
1450
1451 * On Sunos 4.1.1, there are errors compiling sysdep.c.
1452
1453 If you get errors such as
1454
1455 "sysdep.c", line 2017: undefined structure or union
1456 "sysdep.c", line 2017: undefined structure or union
1457 "sysdep.c", line 2019: nodename undefined
1458
1459 This can result from defining LD_LIBRARY_PATH. It is very tricky
1460 to use that environment variable with Emacs. The Emacs configure
1461 script links many test programs with the system libraries; you must
1462 make sure that the libraries available to configure are the same
1463 ones available when you build Emacs.
1464
1465 * The right Alt key works wrong on German HP keyboards (and perhaps
1466 other non-English HP keyboards too).
1467
1468 This is because HPUX defines the modifiers wrong in X. Here is a
1469 shell script to fix the problem; be sure that it is run after VUE
1470 configures the X server.
1471
1472 xmodmap 2> /dev/null - << EOF
1473 keysym Alt_L = Meta_L
1474 keysym Alt_R = Meta_R
1475 EOF
1476
1477 xmodmap - << EOF
1478 clear mod1
1479 keysym Mode_switch = NoSymbol
1480 add mod1 = Meta_L
1481 keysym Meta_R = Mode_switch
1482 add mod2 = Mode_switch
1483 EOF
1484
1485 * The Emacs window disappears when you type M-q.
1486
1487 Some versions of the Open Look window manager interpret M-q as a quit
1488 command for whatever window you are typing at. If you want to use
1489 Emacs with that window manager, you should try to configure the window
1490 manager to use some other command. You can disable the
1491 shortcut keys entirely by adding this line to ~/.OWdefaults:
1492
1493 OpenWindows.WindowMenuAccelerators: False
1494
1495 * Emacs does not notice when you release the mouse.
1496
1497 There are reports that this happened with (some) Microsoft mice and
1498 that replacing the mouse made it stop.
1499
1500 * Trouble using ptys on IRIX, or running out of ptys.
1501
1502 The program mkpts (which may be in `/usr/adm' or `/usr/sbin') needs to
1503 be set-UID to root, or non-root programs like Emacs will not be able
1504 to allocate ptys reliably.
1505
1506 * On Irix 5.2, unexelfsgi.c can't find cmplrs/stsupport.h.
1507
1508 The file cmplrs/stsupport.h was included in the wrong file set in the
1509 Irix 5.2 distribution. You can find it in the optional fileset
1510 compiler_dev, or copy it from some other Irix 5.2 system. A kludgy
1511 workaround is to change unexelfsgi.c to include sym.h instead of
1512 syms.h.
1513
1514 * Slow startup on Linux-based GNU systems.
1515
1516 People using systems based on the Linux kernel sometimes report that
1517 startup takes 10 to 15 seconds longer than `usual'.
1518
1519 This is because Emacs looks up the host name when it starts.
1520 Normally, this takes negligible time; the extra delay is due to
1521 improper system configuration. This problem can occur for both
1522 networked and non-networked machines.
1523
1524 Here is how to fix the configuration. It requires being root.
1525
1526 ** Networked Case
1527
1528 First, make sure the files `/etc/hosts' and `/etc/host.conf' both
1529 exist. The first line in the `/etc/hosts' file should look like this
1530 (replace HOSTNAME with your host name):
1531
1532 127.0.0.1 HOSTNAME
1533
1534 Also make sure that the `/etc/host.conf' files contains the following
1535 lines:
1536
1537 order hosts, bind
1538 multi on
1539
1540 Any changes, permanent and temporary, to the host name should be
1541 indicated in the `/etc/hosts' file, since it acts a limited local
1542 database of addresses and names (e.g., some SLIP connections
1543 dynamically allocate ip addresses).
1544
1545 ** Non-Networked Case
1546
1547 The solution described in the networked case applies here as well.
1548 However, if you never intend to network your machine, you can use a
1549 simpler solution: create an empty `/etc/host.conf' file. The command
1550 `touch /etc/host.conf' suffices to create the file. The `/etc/hosts'
1551 file is not necessary with this approach.
1552
1553 * On Solaris 2.4, Dired hangs and C-g does not work. Or Emacs hangs
1554 forever waiting for termination of a subprocess that is a zombie.
1555
1556 casper@fwi.uva.nl says the problem is in X11R6. Rebuild libX11.so
1557 after changing the file xc/config/cf/sunLib.tmpl. Change the lines
1558
1559 #if ThreadedX
1560 #define SharedX11Reqs -lthread
1561 #endif
1562
1563 to:
1564
1565 #if OSMinorVersion < 4
1566 #if ThreadedX
1567 #define SharedX11Reqs -lthread
1568 #endif
1569 #endif
1570
1571 Be sure also to edit x/config/cf/sun.cf so that OSMinorVersion is 4
1572 (as it should be for Solaris 2.4). The file has three definitions for
1573 OSMinorVersion: the first is for x86, the second for SPARC under
1574 Solaris, and the third for SunOS 4. Make sure to update the
1575 definition for your type of machine and system.
1576
1577 Then do `make Everything' in the top directory of X11R6, to rebuild
1578 the makefiles and rebuild X. The X built this way work only on
1579 Solaris 2.4, not on 2.3.
1580
1581 For multithreaded X to work it is necessary to install patch
1582 101925-02 to fix problems in header files [2.4]. You need
1583 to reinstall gcc or re-run just-fixinc after installing that
1584 patch.
1585
1586 However, Frank Rust <frust@iti.cs.tu-bs.de> used a simpler solution:
1587 he changed
1588 #define ThreadedX YES
1589 to
1590 #define ThreadedX NO
1591 in sun.cf and did `make World' to rebuild X11R6. Removing all
1592 `-DXTHREAD*' flags and `-lthread' entries from lib/X11/Makefile and
1593 typing 'make install' in that directory also seemed to work.
1594
1595 * With M-x enable-flow-control, you need to type C-\ twice
1596 to do incremental search--a single C-\ gets no response.
1597
1598 This has been traced to communicating with your machine via kermit,
1599 with C-\ as the kermit escape character. One solution is to use
1600 another escape character in kermit. One user did
1601
1602 set escape-character 17
1603
1604 in his .kermrc file, to make C-q the kermit escape character.
1605
1606 * The Motif version of Emacs paints the screen a solid color.
1607
1608 This has been observed to result from the following X resource:
1609
1610 Emacs*default.attributeFont: -*-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-140-*-*-*-*-iso8859-*
1611
1612 That the resource has this effect indicates a bug in something, but we
1613 do not yet know what. If it is an Emacs bug, we hope someone can
1614 explain what the bug is so we can fix it. In the mean time, removing
1615 the resource prevents the problem.
1616
1617 * Emacs gets hung shortly after startup, on Sunos 4.1.3.
1618
1619 We think this is due to a bug in Sunos. The word is that
1620 one of these Sunos patches fixes the bug:
1621
1622 100075-11 100224-06 100347-03 100482-05 100557-02 100623-03 100804-03 101080-01
1623 100103-12 100249-09 100496-02 100564-07 100630-02 100891-10 101134-01
1624 100170-09 100296-04 100377-09 100507-04 100567-04 100650-02 101070-01 101145-01
1625 100173-10 100305-15 100383-06 100513-04 100570-05 100689-01 101071-03 101200-02
1626 100178-09 100338-05 100421-03 100536-02 100584-05 100784-01 101072-01 101207-01
1627
1628 We don't know which of these patches really matter. If you find out
1629 which ones, please inform bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
1630
1631 * Emacs aborts while starting up, only when run without X.
1632
1633 This problem often results from compiling Emacs with GCC when GCC was
1634 installed incorrectly. The usual error in installing GCC is to
1635 specify --includedir=/usr/include. Installation of GCC makes
1636 corrected copies of the system header files. GCC is supposed to use
1637 the corrected copies in preference to the original system headers.
1638 Specifying --includedir=/usr/include causes the original system header
1639 files to be used. On some systems, the definition of ioctl in the
1640 original system header files is invalid for ANSI C and causes Emacs
1641 not to work.
1642
1643 The fix is to reinstall GCC, and this time do not specify --includedir
1644 when you configure it. Then recompile Emacs. Specifying --includedir
1645 is appropriate only in very special cases and it should *never* be the
1646 same directory where system header files are kept.
1647
1648 * On Solaris 2.x, GCC complains "64 bit integer types not supported"
1649
1650 This suggests that GCC is not installed correctly. Most likely you
1651 are using GCC 2.7.2.3 (or earlier) on Solaris 2.6 (or later); this
1652 does not work without patching. To run GCC 2.7.2.3 on Solaris 2.6 or
1653 later, you must patch fixinc.svr4 and reinstall GCC from scratch as
1654 described in the Solaris FAQ
1655 <http://www.wins.uva.nl/pub/solaris/solaris2.html>. A better fix is
1656 to upgrade to GCC 2.8.1 or later.
1657
1658 * The Compose key on a DEC keyboard does not work as Meta key.
1659
1660 This shell command should fix it:
1661
1662 xmodmap -e 'keycode 0xb1 = Meta_L'
1663
1664 * Regular expressions matching bugs on SCO systems.
1665
1666 On SCO, there are problems in regexp matching when Emacs is compiled
1667 with the system compiler. The compiler version is "Microsoft C
1668 version 6", SCO 4.2.0h Dev Sys Maintenance Supplement 01/06/93; Quick
1669 C Compiler Version 1.00.46 (Beta). The solution is to compile with
1670 GCC.
1671
1672 * On Sunos 4, you get the error ld: Undefined symbol __lib_version.
1673
1674 This is the result of using cc or gcc with the shared library meant
1675 for acc (the Sunpro compiler). Check your LD_LIBRARY_PATH and delete
1676 /usr/lang/SC2.0.1 or some similar directory.
1677
1678 * You can't select from submenus (in the X toolkit version).
1679
1680 On certain systems, mouse-tracking and selection in top-level menus
1681 works properly with the X toolkit, but neither of them works when you
1682 bring up a submenu (such as Bookmarks or Compare or Apply Patch, in
1683 the Files menu).
1684
1685 This works on most systems. There is speculation that the failure is
1686 due to bugs in old versions of X toolkit libraries, but no one really
1687 knows. If someone debugs this and finds the precise cause, perhaps a
1688 workaround can be found.
1689
1690 * Unusable default font on SCO 3.2v4.
1691
1692 The Open Desktop environment comes with default X resource settings
1693 that tell Emacs to use a variable-width font. Emacs cannot use such
1694 fonts, so it does not work.
1695
1696 This is caused by the file /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/ScoTerm, which is
1697 the application-specific resource file for the `scoterm' terminal
1698 emulator program. It contains several extremely general X resources
1699 that affect other programs besides `scoterm'. In particular, these
1700 resources affect Emacs also:
1701
1702 *Font: -*-helvetica-medium-r-*--12-*-p-*
1703 *Background: scoBackground
1704 *Foreground: scoForeground
1705
1706 The best solution is to create an application-specific resource file for
1707 Emacs, /usr/lib/X11/sco/startup/Emacs, with the following contents:
1708
1709 Emacs*Font: -*-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-120-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1
1710 Emacs*Background: white
1711 Emacs*Foreground: black
1712
1713 (These settings mimic the Emacs defaults, but you can change them to
1714 suit your needs.) This resource file is only read when the X server
1715 starts up, so you should restart it by logging out of the Open Desktop
1716 environment or by running `scologin stop; scologin start` from the shell
1717 as root. Alternatively, you can put these settings in the
1718 /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/Emacs resource file and simply restart Emacs,
1719 but then they will not affect remote invocations of Emacs that use the
1720 Open Desktop display.
1721
1722 These resource files are not normally shared across a network of SCO
1723 machines; you must create the file on each machine individually.
1724
1725 * rcs2log gives you the awk error message "too many fields".
1726
1727 This is due to an arbitrary limit in certain versions of awk.
1728 The solution is to use gawk (GNU awk).
1729
1730 * Emacs is slow using X11R5 on HP/UX.
1731
1732 This happens if you use the MIT versions of the X libraries--it
1733 doesn't run as fast as HP's version. People sometimes use the version
1734 because they see the HP version doesn't have the libraries libXaw.a,
1735 libXmu.a, libXext.a and others. HP/UX normally doesn't come with
1736 those libraries installed. To get good performance, you need to
1737 install them and rebuild Emacs.
1738
1739 * Loading fonts is very slow.
1740
1741 You might be getting scalable fonts instead of precomputed bitmaps.
1742 Known scalable font directories are "Type1" and "Speedo". A font
1743 directory contains scalable fonts if it contains the file
1744 "fonts.scale".
1745
1746 If this is so, re-order your X windows font path to put the scalable
1747 font directories last. See the documentation of `xset' for details.
1748
1749 With some X servers, it may be necessary to take the scalable font
1750 directories out of your path entirely, at least for Emacs 19.26.
1751 Changes in the future may make this unnecessary.
1752
1753 * On AIX 3.2.4, releasing Ctrl/Act key has no effect, if Shift is down.
1754
1755 Due to a feature of AIX, pressing or releasing the Ctrl/Act key is
1756 ignored when the Shift, Alt or AltGr keys are held down. This can
1757 lead to the keyboard being "control-locked"--ordinary letters are
1758 treated as control characters.
1759
1760 You can get out of this "control-locked" state by pressing and
1761 releasing Ctrl/Act while not pressing or holding any other keys.
1762
1763 * display-time causes kernel problems on ISC systems.
1764
1765 Under Interactive Unix versions 3.0.1 and 4.0 (and probably other
1766 versions), display-time causes the loss of large numbers of STREVENT
1767 cells. Eventually the kernel's supply of these cells is exhausted.
1768 This makes emacs and the whole system run slow, and can make other
1769 processes die, in particular pcnfsd.
1770
1771 Other emacs functions that communicate with remote processes may have
1772 the same problem. Display-time seems to be far the worst.
1773
1774 The only known fix: Don't run display-time.
1775
1776 * On Solaris, C-x doesn't get through to Emacs when you use the console.
1777
1778 This is a Solaris feature (at least on Intel x86 cpus). Type C-r
1779 C-r C-t, to toggle whether C-x gets through to Emacs.
1780
1781 * Error message `Symbol's value as variable is void: x', followed by
1782 segmentation fault and core dump.
1783
1784 This has been tracked to a bug in tar! People report that tar erroneously
1785 added a line like this at the beginning of files of Lisp code:
1786
1787 x FILENAME, N bytes, B tape blocks
1788
1789 If your tar has this problem, install GNU tar--if you can manage to
1790 untar it :-).
1791
1792 * Link failure when using acc on a Sun.
1793
1794 To use acc, you need additional options just before the libraries, such as
1795
1796 /usr/lang/SC2.0.1/values-Xt.o -L/usr/lang/SC2.0.1/cg87 -L/usr/lang/SC2.0.1
1797
1798 and you need to add -lansi just before -lc.
1799
1800 The precise file names depend on the compiler version, so we
1801 cannot easily arrange to supply them.
1802
1803 * Link failure on IBM AIX 1.3 ptf 0013.
1804
1805 There is a real duplicate definition of the function `_slibc_free' in
1806 the library /lib/libc_s.a (just do nm on it to verify). The
1807 workaround/fix is:
1808
1809 cd /lib
1810 ar xv libc_s.a NLtmtime.o
1811 ar dv libc_s.a NLtmtime.o
1812
1813 * Undefined symbols _dlopen, _dlsym and/or _dlclose on a Sun.
1814
1815 If you see undefined symbols _dlopen, _dlsym, or _dlclose when linking
1816 with -lX11, compile and link against the file mit/util/misc/dlsym.c in
1817 the MIT X11R5 distribution. Alternatively, link temacs using shared
1818 libraries with s/sunos4shr.h. (This doesn't work if you use the X
1819 toolkit.)
1820
1821 If you get the additional error that the linker could not find
1822 lib_version.o, try extracting it from X11/usr/lib/X11/libvim.a in
1823 X11R4, then use it in the link.
1824
1825 * Error messages `Wrong number of arguments: #<subr where-is-internal>, 5'
1826
1827 This typically results from having the powerkey library loaded.
1828 Powerkey was designed for Emacs 19.22. It is obsolete now because
1829 Emacs 19 now has this feature built in; and powerkey also calls
1830 where-is-internal in an obsolete way.
1831
1832 So the fix is to arrange not to load powerkey.
1833
1834 * In Shell mode, you get a ^M at the end of every line.
1835
1836 This happens to people who use tcsh, because it is trying to be too
1837 smart. It sees that the Shell uses terminal type `unknown' and turns
1838 on the flag to output ^M at the end of each line. You can fix the
1839 problem by adding this to your .cshrc file:
1840
1841 if ($?EMACS) then
1842 if ($EMACS == "t") then
1843 unset edit
1844 stty -icrnl -onlcr -echo susp ^Z
1845 endif
1846 endif
1847
1848 * An error message such as `X protocol error: BadMatch (invalid
1849 parameter attributes) on protocol request 93'.
1850
1851 This comes from having an invalid X resource, such as
1852 emacs*Cursor: black
1853 (which is invalid because it specifies a color name for something
1854 that isn't a color.)
1855
1856 The fix is to correct your X resources.
1857
1858 * Undefined symbols when linking on Sunos 4.1 using --with-x-toolkit.
1859
1860 If you get the undefined symbols _atowc _wcslen, _iswprint, _iswspace,
1861 _iswcntrl, _wcscpy, and _wcsncpy, then you need to add -lXwchar after
1862 -lXaw in the command that links temacs.
1863
1864 This problem seems to arise only when the international language
1865 extensions to X11R5 are installed.
1866
1867 * Typing C-c C-c in Shell mode kills your X server.
1868
1869 This happens with Linux kernel 1.0 thru 1.04, approximately. The workaround is
1870 to define SIGNALS_VIA_CHARACTERS in config.h and recompile Emacs.
1871 Newer Linux kernel versions don't have this problem.
1872
1873 * src/Makefile and lib-src/Makefile are truncated--most of the file missing.
1874
1875 This can happen if configure uses GNU sed version 2.03. That version
1876 had a bug. GNU sed version 2.05 works properly.
1877
1878 * Slow startup on X11R6 with X windows.
1879
1880 If Emacs takes two minutes to start up on X11R6, see if your X
1881 resources specify any Adobe fonts. That causes the type-1 font
1882 renderer to start up, even if the font you asked for is not a type-1
1883 font.
1884
1885 One way to avoid this problem is to eliminate the type-1 fonts from
1886 your font path, like this:
1887
1888 xset -fp /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/
1889
1890 * Pull-down menus appear in the wrong place, in the toolkit version of Emacs.
1891
1892 An X resource of this form can cause the problem:
1893
1894 Emacs*geometry: 80x55+0+0
1895
1896 This resource is supposed to apply, and does apply, to the menus
1897 individually as well as to Emacs frames. If that is not what you
1898 want, rewrite the resource.
1899
1900 To check thoroughly for such resource specifications, use `xrdb
1901 -query' to see what resources the X server records, and also look at
1902 the user's ~/.Xdefaults and ~/.Xdefaults-* files.
1903
1904 * --with-x-toolkit version crashes when used with shared libraries.
1905
1906 On some systems, including Sunos 4 and DGUX 5.4.2 and perhaps others,
1907 unexec doesn't work properly with the shared library for the X
1908 toolkit. You might be able to work around this by using a nonshared
1909 libXt.a library. The real fix is to upgrade the various versions of
1910 unexec and/or ralloc. We think this has been fixed on Sunos 4
1911 and Solaris in version 19.29.
1912
1913 * `make install' fails on install-doc with `Error 141'.
1914
1915 This happens on Ultrix 4.2 due to failure of a pipeline of tar
1916 commands. We don't know why they fail, but the bug seems not to be in
1917 Emacs. The workaround is to run the shell command in install-doc by
1918 hand.
1919
1920 * --with-x-toolkit option configures wrong on BSD/386.
1921
1922 This problem is due to bugs in the shell in version 1.0 of BSD/386.
1923 The workaround is to edit the configure file to use some other shell,
1924 such as bash.
1925
1926 * Subprocesses remain, hanging but not zombies, on Sunos 5.3.
1927
1928 A bug in Sunos 5.3 causes Emacs subprocesses to remain after Emacs
1929 exits. Sun patch # 101415-02 is part of the fix for this, but it only
1930 applies to ptys, and doesn't fix the problem with subprocesses
1931 communicating through pipes.
1932
1933 * Mail is lost when sent to local aliases.
1934
1935 Many emacs mail user agents (VM and rmail, for instance) use the
1936 sendmail.el library. This library can arrange for mail to be
1937 delivered by passing messages to the /usr/lib/sendmail (usually)
1938 program . In doing so, it passes the '-t' flag to sendmail, which
1939 means that the name of the recipient of the message is not on the
1940 command line and, therefore, that sendmail must parse the message to
1941 obtain the destination address.
1942
1943 There is a bug in the SunOS4.1.1 and SunOS4.1.3 versions of sendmail.
1944 In short, when given the -t flag, the SunOS sendmail won't recognize
1945 non-local (i.e. NIS) aliases. It has been reported that the Solaris
1946 2.x versions of sendmail do not have this bug. For those using SunOS
1947 4.1, the best fix is to install sendmail V8 or IDA sendmail (which
1948 have other advantages over the regular sendmail as well). At the time
1949 of this writing, these official versions are available:
1950
1951 Sendmail V8 on ftp.cs.berkeley.edu in /ucb/sendmail:
1952 sendmail.8.6.9.base.tar.Z (the base system source & documentation)
1953 sendmail.8.6.9.cf.tar.Z (configuration files)
1954 sendmail.8.6.9.misc.tar.Z (miscellaneous support programs)
1955 sendmail.8.6.9.xdoc.tar.Z (extended documentation, with postscript)
1956
1957 IDA sendmail on vixen.cso.uiuc.edu in /pub:
1958 sendmail-5.67b+IDA-1.5.tar.gz
1959
1960 * On AIX, you get this message when running Emacs:
1961
1962 Could not load program emacs
1963 Symbol smtcheckinit in csh is undefined
1964 Error was: Exec format error
1965
1966 or this one:
1967
1968 Could not load program .emacs
1969 Symbol _system_con in csh is undefined
1970 Symbol _fp_trapsta in csh is undefined
1971 Error was: Exec format error
1972
1973 These can happen when you try to run on AIX 3.2.5 a program that was
1974 compiled with 3.2.4. The fix is to recompile.
1975
1976 * On AIX, you get this compiler error message:
1977
1978 Processing include file ./XMenuInt.h
1979 1501-106: (S) Include file X11/Xlib.h not found.
1980
1981 This means your system was installed with only the X11 runtime i.d
1982 libraries. You have to find your sipo (bootable tape) and install
1983 X11Dev... with smit.
1984
1985 * You "lose characters" after typing Compose Character key.
1986
1987 This is because the Compose Character key is defined as the keysym
1988 Multi_key, and Emacs (seeing that) does the proper X11
1989 character-composition processing. If you don't want your Compose key
1990 to do that, you can redefine it with xmodmap.
1991
1992 For example, here's one way to turn it into a Meta key:
1993
1994 xmodmap -e "keysym Multi_key = Meta_L"
1995
1996 If all users at your site of a particular keyboard prefer Meta to
1997 Compose, you can make the remapping happen automatically by adding the
1998 xmodmap command to the xdm setup script for that display.
1999
2000 * C-z just refreshes the screen instead of suspending Emacs.
2001
2002 You are probably using a shell that doesn't support job control, even
2003 though the system itself is capable of it. Either use a different shell,
2004 or set the variable `cannot-suspend' to a non-nil value.
2005
2006 * Watch out for .emacs files and EMACSLOADPATH environment vars
2007
2008 These control the actions of Emacs.
2009 ~/.emacs is your Emacs init file.
2010 EMACSLOADPATH overrides which directories the function
2011 "load" will search.
2012
2013 If you observe strange problems, check for these and get rid
2014 of them, then try again.
2015
2016 * After running emacs once, subsequent invocations crash.
2017
2018 Some versions of SVR4 have a serious bug in the implementation of the
2019 mmap () system call in the kernel; this causes emacs to run correctly
2020 the first time, and then crash when run a second time.
2021
2022 Contact your vendor and ask for the mmap bug fix; in the mean time,
2023 you may be able to work around the problem by adding a line to your
2024 operating system description file (whose name is reported by the
2025 configure script) that reads:
2026 #define SYSTEM_MALLOC
2027 This makes Emacs use memory less efficiently, but seems to work around
2028 the kernel bug.
2029
2030 * Inability to send an Alt-modified key, when Emacs is communicating
2031 directly with an X server.
2032
2033 If you have tried to bind an Alt-modified key as a command, and it
2034 does not work to type the command, the first thing you should check is
2035 whether the key is getting through to Emacs. To do this, type C-h c
2036 followed by the Alt-modified key. C-h c should say what kind of event
2037 it read. If it says it read an Alt-modified key, then make sure you
2038 have made the key binding correctly.
2039
2040 If C-h c reports an event that doesn't have the Alt modifier, it may
2041 be because your X server has no key for the Alt modifier. The X
2042 server that comes from MIT does not set up the Alt modifier by
2043 default.
2044
2045 If your keyboard has keys named Alt, you can enable them as follows:
2046
2047 xmodmap -e 'add mod2 = Alt_L'
2048 xmodmap -e 'add mod2 = Alt_R'
2049
2050 If the keyboard has just one key named Alt, then only one of those
2051 commands is needed. The modifier `mod2' is a reasonable choice if you
2052 are using an unmodified MIT version of X. Otherwise, choose any
2053 modifier bit not otherwise used.
2054
2055 If your keyboard does not have keys named Alt, you can use some other
2056 keys. Use the keysym command in xmodmap to turn a function key (or
2057 some other 'spare' key) into Alt_L or into Alt_R, and then use the
2058 commands show above to make them modifier keys.
2059
2060 Note that if you have Alt keys but no Meta keys, Emacs translates Alt
2061 into Meta. This is because of the great importance of Meta in Emacs.
2062
2063 * `Pid xxx killed due to text modification or page I/O error'
2064
2065 On HP/UX, you can get that error when the Emacs executable is on an NFS
2066 file system. HP/UX responds this way if it tries to swap in a page and
2067 does not get a response from the server within a timeout whose default
2068 value is just ten seconds.
2069
2070 If this happens to you, extend the timeout period.
2071
2072 * `expand-file-name' fails to work on any but the machine you dumped Emacs on.
2073
2074 On Ultrix, if you use any of the functions which look up information
2075 in the passwd database before dumping Emacs (say, by using
2076 expand-file-name in site-init.el), then those functions will not work
2077 in the dumped Emacs on any host but the one Emacs was dumped on.
2078
2079 The solution? Don't use expand-file-name in site-init.el, or in
2080 anything it loads. Yuck - some solution.
2081
2082 I'm not sure why this happens; if you can find out exactly what is
2083 going on, and perhaps find a fix or a workaround, please let us know.
2084 Perhaps the YP functions cache some information, the cache is included
2085 in the dumped Emacs, and is then inaccurate on any other host.
2086
2087 * On some variants of SVR4, Emacs does not work at all with X.
2088
2089 Try defining BROKEN_FIONREAD in your config.h file. If this solves
2090 the problem, please send a bug report to tell us this is needed; be
2091 sure to say exactly what type of machine and system you are using.
2092
2093 * Linking says that the functions insque and remque are undefined.
2094
2095 Change oldXMenu/Makefile by adding insque.o to the variable OBJS.
2096
2097 * Emacs fails to understand most Internet host names, even though
2098 the names work properly with other programs on the same system.
2099 * Emacs won't work with X-windows if the value of DISPLAY is HOSTNAME:0.
2100 * GNUs can't make contact with the specified host for nntp.
2101
2102 This typically happens on Suns and other systems that use shared
2103 libraries. The cause is that the site has installed a version of the
2104 shared library which uses a name server--but has not installed a
2105 similar version of the unshared library which Emacs uses.
2106
2107 The result is that most programs, using the shared library, work with
2108 the nameserver, but Emacs does not.
2109
2110 The fix is to install an unshared library that corresponds to what you
2111 installed in the shared library, and then relink Emacs.
2112
2113 On SunOS 4.1, simply define HAVE_RES_INIT.
2114
2115 If you have already installed the name resolver in the file libresolv.a,
2116 then you need to compile Emacs to use that library. The easiest way to
2117 do this is to add to config.h a definition of LIBS_SYSTEM, LIBS_MACHINE
2118 or LIB_STANDARD which uses -lresolv. Watch out! If you redefine a macro
2119 that is already in use in your configuration to supply some other libraries,
2120 be careful not to lose the others.
2121
2122 Thus, you could start by adding this to config.h:
2123
2124 #define LIBS_SYSTEM -lresolv
2125
2126 Then if this gives you an error for redefining a macro, and you see that
2127 the s- file defines LIBS_SYSTEM as -lfoo -lbar, you could change config.h
2128 again to say this:
2129
2130 #define LIBS_SYSTEM -lresolv -lfoo -lbar
2131
2132 * On a Sun running SunOS 4.1.1, you get this error message from GNU ld:
2133
2134 /lib/libc.a(_Q_sub.o): Undefined symbol __Q_get_rp_rd referenced from text segment
2135
2136 The problem is in the Sun shared C library, not in GNU ld.
2137
2138 The solution is to install Patch-ID# 100267-03 from Sun.
2139
2140 * Self documentation messages are garbled.
2141
2142 This means that the file `etc/DOC-...' doesn't properly correspond
2143 with the Emacs executable. Redumping Emacs and then installing the
2144 corresponding pair of files should fix the problem.
2145
2146 * Trouble using ptys on AIX.
2147
2148 People often install the pty devices on AIX incorrectly.
2149 Use `smit pty' to reinstall them properly.
2150
2151 * Shell mode on HP/UX gives the message, "`tty`: Ambiguous".
2152
2153 christos@theory.tn.cornell.edu says:
2154
2155 The problem is that in your .cshrc you have something that tries to
2156 execute `tty`. If you are not running the shell on a real tty then
2157 tty will print "not a tty". Csh expects one word in some places,
2158 but tty is giving it back 3.
2159
2160 The solution is to add a pair of quotes around `tty` to make it a single
2161 word:
2162
2163 if (`tty` == "/dev/console")
2164
2165 should be changed to:
2166
2167 if ("`tty`" == "/dev/console")
2168
2169 Even better, move things that set up terminal sections out of .cshrc
2170 and into .login.
2171
2172 * Using X Windows, control-shift-leftbutton makes Emacs hang.
2173
2174 Use the shell command `xset bc' to make the old X Menu package work.
2175
2176 * Emacs running under X Windows does not handle mouse clicks.
2177 * `emacs -geometry 80x20' finds a file named `80x20'.
2178
2179 One cause of such problems is having (setq term-file-prefix nil) in
2180 your .emacs file. Another cause is a bad value of EMACSLOADPATH in
2181 the environment.
2182
2183 * Emacs gets error message from linker on Sun.
2184
2185 If the error message says that a symbol such as `f68881_used' or
2186 `ffpa_used' or `start_float' is undefined, this probably indicates
2187 that you have compiled some libraries, such as the X libraries,
2188 with a floating point option other than the default.
2189
2190 It's not terribly hard to make this work with small changes in
2191 crt0.c together with linking with Fcrt1.o, Wcrt1.o or Mcrt1.o.
2192 However, the easiest approach is to build Xlib with the default
2193 floating point option: -fsoft.
2194
2195 * Emacs fails to get default settings from X Windows server.
2196
2197 The X library in X11R4 has a bug; it interchanges the 2nd and 3rd
2198 arguments to XGetDefaults. Define the macro XBACKWARDS in config.h to
2199 tell Emacs to compensate for this.
2200
2201 I don't believe there is any way Emacs can determine for itself
2202 whether this problem is present on a given system.
2203
2204 * Keyboard input gets confused after a beep when using a DECserver
2205 as a concentrator.
2206
2207 This problem seems to be a matter of configuring the DECserver to use
2208 7 bit characters rather than 8 bit characters.
2209
2210 * M-x shell persistently reports "Process shell exited abnormally with code 1".
2211
2212 This happened on Suns as a result of what is said to be a bug in Sunos
2213 version 4.0.x. The only fix was to reboot the machine.
2214
2215 * Programs running under terminal emulator do not recognize `emacs'
2216 terminal type.
2217
2218 The cause of this is a shell startup file that sets the TERMCAP
2219 environment variable. The terminal emulator uses that variable to
2220 provide the information on the special terminal type that Emacs
2221 emulates.
2222
2223 Rewrite your shell startup file so that it does not change TERMCAP
2224 in such a case. You could use the following conditional which sets
2225 it only if it is undefined.
2226
2227 if ( ! ${?TERMCAP} ) setenv TERMCAP ~/my-termcap-file
2228
2229 Or you could set TERMCAP only when you set TERM--which should not
2230 happen in a non-login shell.
2231
2232 * X Windows doesn't work if DISPLAY uses a hostname.
2233
2234 People have reported kernel bugs in certain systems that cause Emacs
2235 not to work with X Windows if DISPLAY is set using a host name. But
2236 the problem does not occur if DISPLAY is set to `unix:0.0'. I think
2237 the bug has to do with SIGIO or FIONREAD.
2238
2239 You may be able to compensate for the bug by doing (set-input-mode nil nil).
2240 However, that has the disadvantage of turning off interrupts, so that
2241 you are unable to quit out of a Lisp program by typing C-g.
2242
2243 The easy way to do this is to put
2244
2245 (setq x-sigio-bug t)
2246
2247 in your site-init.el file.
2248
2249 * Problem with remote X server on Suns.
2250
2251 On a Sun, running Emacs on one machine with the X server on another
2252 may not work if you have used the unshared system libraries. This
2253 is because the unshared libraries fail to use YP for host name lookup.
2254 As a result, the host name you specify may not be recognized.
2255
2256 * Shell mode ignores interrupts on Apollo Domain
2257
2258 You may find that M-x shell prints the following message:
2259
2260 Warning: no access to tty; thus no job control in this shell...
2261
2262 This can happen if there are not enough ptys on your system.
2263 Here is how to make more of them.
2264
2265 % cd /dev
2266 % ls pty*
2267 # shows how many pty's you have. I had 8, named pty0 to pty7)
2268 % /etc/crpty 8
2269 # creates eight new pty's
2270
2271 * Fatal signal in the command temacs -l loadup inc dump
2272
2273 This command is the final stage of building Emacs. It is run by the
2274 Makefile in the src subdirectory, or by build.com on VMS.
2275
2276 It has been known to get fatal errors due to insufficient swapping
2277 space available on the machine.
2278
2279 On 68000's, it has also happened because of bugs in the
2280 subroutine `alloca'. Verify that `alloca' works right, even
2281 for large blocks (many pages).
2282
2283 * test-distrib says that the distribution has been clobbered
2284 * or, temacs prints "Command key out of range 0-127"
2285 * or, temacs runs and dumps emacs, but emacs totally fails to work.
2286 * or, temacs gets errors dumping emacs
2287
2288 This can be because the .elc files have been garbled. Do not be
2289 fooled by the fact that most of a .elc file is text: these are
2290 binary files and can contain all 256 byte values.
2291
2292 In particular `shar' cannot be used for transmitting GNU Emacs.
2293 It typically truncates "lines". What appear to be "lines" in
2294 a binary file can of course be of any length. Even once `shar'
2295 itself is made to work correctly, `sh' discards null characters
2296 when unpacking the shell archive.
2297
2298 I have also seen character \177 changed into \377. I do not know
2299 what transfer means caused this problem. Various network
2300 file transfer programs are suspected of clobbering the high bit.
2301
2302 If you have a copy of Emacs that has been damaged in its
2303 nonprinting characters, you can fix them:
2304
2305 1) Record the names of all the .elc files.
2306 2) Delete all the .elc files.
2307 3) Recompile alloc.c with a value of PURESIZE twice as large.
2308 (See puresize.h.) You might as well save the old alloc.o.
2309 4) Remake emacs. It should work now.
2310 5) Running emacs, do Meta-x byte-compile-file repeatedly
2311 to recreate all the .elc files that used to exist.
2312 You may need to increase the value of the variable
2313 max-lisp-eval-depth to succeed in running the compiler interpreted
2314 on certain .el files. 400 was sufficient as of last report.
2315 6) Reinstall the old alloc.o (undoing changes to alloc.c if any)
2316 and remake temacs.
2317 7) Remake emacs. It should work now, with valid .elc files.
2318
2319 * temacs prints "Pure Lisp storage exhausted"
2320
2321 This means that the Lisp code loaded from the .elc and .el
2322 files during temacs -l loadup inc dump took up more
2323 space than was allocated.
2324
2325 This could be caused by
2326 1) adding code to the preloaded Lisp files
2327 2) adding more preloaded files in loadup.el
2328 3) having a site-init.el or site-load.el which loads files.
2329 Note that ANY site-init.el or site-load.el is nonstandard;
2330 if you have received Emacs from some other site
2331 and it contains a site-init.el or site-load.el file, consider
2332 deleting that file.
2333 4) getting the wrong .el or .elc files
2334 (not from the directory you expected).
2335 5) deleting some .elc files that are supposed to exist.
2336 This would cause the source files (.el files) to be
2337 loaded instead. They take up more room, so you lose.
2338 6) a bug in the Emacs distribution which underestimates
2339 the space required.
2340
2341 If the need for more space is legitimate, change the definition
2342 of PURESIZE in puresize.h.
2343
2344 But in some of the cases listed above, this problem is a consequence
2345 of something else that is wrong. Be sure to check and fix the real
2346 problem.
2347
2348 * Changes made to .el files do not take effect.
2349
2350 You may have forgotten to recompile them into .elc files.
2351 Then the old .elc files will be loaded, and your changes
2352 will not be seen. To fix this, do M-x byte-recompile-directory
2353 and specify the directory that contains the Lisp files.
2354
2355 Emacs should print a warning when loading a .elc file which is older
2356 than the corresponding .el file.
2357
2358 * The dumped Emacs crashes when run, trying to write pure data.
2359
2360 Two causes have been seen for such problems.
2361
2362 1) On a system where getpagesize is not a system call, it is defined
2363 as a macro. If the definition (in both unexec.c and malloc.c) is wrong,
2364 it can cause problems like this. You might be able to find the correct
2365 value in the man page for a.out (5).
2366
2367 2) Some systems allocate variables declared static among the
2368 initialized variables. Emacs makes all initialized variables in most
2369 of its files pure after dumping, but the variables declared static and
2370 not initialized are not supposed to be pure. On these systems you
2371 may need to add "#define static" to the m- or the s- file.
2372
2373 * Compilation errors on VMS.
2374
2375 You will get warnings when compiling on VMS because there are
2376 variable names longer than 32 (or whatever it is) characters.
2377 This is not an error. Ignore it.
2378
2379 VAX C does not support #if defined(foo). Uses of this construct
2380 were removed, but some may have crept back in. They must be rewritten.
2381
2382 There is a bug in the C compiler which fails to sign extend characters
2383 in conditional expressions. The bug is:
2384 char c = -1, d = 1;
2385 int i;
2386
2387 i = d ? c : d;
2388 The result is i == 255; the fix is to typecast the char in the
2389 conditional expression as an (int). Known occurrences of such
2390 constructs in Emacs have been fixed.
2391
2392 * rmail gets error getting new mail
2393
2394 rmail gets new mail from /usr/spool/mail/$USER using a program
2395 called `movemail'. This program interlocks with /bin/mail using
2396 the protocol defined by /bin/mail.
2397
2398 There are two different protocols in general use. One of them uses
2399 the `flock' system call. The other involves creating a lock file;
2400 `movemail' must be able to write in /usr/spool/mail in order to do
2401 this. You control which one is used by defining, or not defining,
2402 the macro MAIL_USE_FLOCK in config.h or the m- or s- file it includes.
2403 IF YOU DON'T USE THE FORM OF INTERLOCKING THAT IS NORMAL ON YOUR
2404 SYSTEM, YOU CAN LOSE MAIL!
2405
2406 If your system uses the lock file protocol, and fascist restrictions
2407 prevent ordinary users from writing the lock files in /usr/spool/mail,
2408 you may need to make `movemail' setgid to a suitable group such as
2409 `mail'. You can use these commands (as root):
2410
2411 chgrp mail movemail
2412 chmod 2755 movemail
2413
2414 If your system uses the lock file protocol, and fascist restrictions
2415 prevent ordinary users from writing the lock files in /usr/spool/mail,
2416 you may need to make `movemail' setgid to a suitable group such as
2417 `mail'. To do this, use the following commands (as root) after doing the
2418 make install.
2419
2420 chgrp mail movemail
2421 chmod 2755 movemail
2422
2423 Installation normally copies movemail from the build directory to an
2424 installation directory which is usually under /usr/local/lib. The
2425 installed copy of movemail is usually in the directory
2426 /usr/local/lib/emacs/VERSION/TARGET. You must change the group and
2427 mode of the installed copy; changing the group and mode of the build
2428 directory copy is ineffective.
2429
2430 * Emacs spontaneously displays "I-search: " at the bottom of the screen.
2431
2432 This means that Control-S/Control-Q (XON/XOFF) "flow control" is being
2433 used. C-s/C-q flow control is bad for Emacs editors because it takes
2434 away C-s and C-q as user commands. Since editors do not output long
2435 streams of text without user commands, there is no need for a
2436 user-issuable "stop output" command in an editor; therefore, a
2437 properly designed flow control mechanism would transmit all possible
2438 input characters without interference. Designing such a mechanism is
2439 easy, for a person with at least half a brain.
2440
2441 There are three possible reasons why flow control could be taking place:
2442
2443 1) Terminal has not been told to disable flow control
2444 2) Insufficient padding for the terminal in use
2445 3) Some sort of terminal concentrator or line switch is responsible
2446
2447 First of all, many terminals have a set-up mode which controls whether
2448 they generate XON/XOFF flow control characters. This must be set to
2449 "no XON/XOFF" in order for Emacs to work. Sometimes there is an
2450 escape sequence that the computer can send to turn flow control off
2451 and on. If so, perhaps the termcap `ti' string should turn flow
2452 control off, and the `te' string should turn it on.
2453
2454 Once the terminal has been told "no flow control", you may find it
2455 needs more padding. The amount of padding Emacs sends is controlled
2456 by the termcap entry for the terminal in use, and by the output baud
2457 rate as known by the kernel. The shell command `stty' will print
2458 your output baud rate; `stty' with suitable arguments will set it if
2459 it is wrong. Setting to a higher speed causes increased padding. If
2460 the results are wrong for the correct speed, there is probably a
2461 problem in the termcap entry. You must speak to a local Unix wizard
2462 to fix this. Perhaps you are just using the wrong terminal type.
2463
2464 For terminals that lack a "no flow control" mode, sometimes just
2465 giving lots of padding will prevent actual generation of flow control
2466 codes. You might as well try it.
2467
2468 If you are really unlucky, your terminal is connected to the computer
2469 through a concentrator which sends XON/XOFF flow control to the
2470 computer, or it insists on sending flow control itself no matter how
2471 much padding you give it. Unless you can figure out how to turn flow
2472 control off on this concentrator (again, refer to your local wizard),
2473 you are screwed! You should have the terminal or concentrator
2474 replaced with a properly designed one. In the mean time, some drastic
2475 measures can make Emacs semi-work.
2476
2477 You can make Emacs ignore C-s and C-q and let the operating system
2478 handle them. To do this on a per-session basis, just type M-x
2479 enable-flow-control RET. You will see a message that C-\ and C-^ are
2480 now translated to C-s and C-q. (Use the same command M-x
2481 enable-flow-control to turn *off* this special mode. It toggles flow
2482 control handling.)
2483
2484 If C-\ and C-^ are inconvenient for you (for example, if one of them
2485 is the escape character of your terminal concentrator), you can choose
2486 other characters by setting the variables flow-control-c-s-replacement
2487 and flow-control-c-q-replacement. But choose carefully, since all
2488 other control characters are already used by emacs.
2489
2490 IMPORTANT: if you type C-s by accident while flow control is enabled,
2491 Emacs output will freeze, and you will have to remember to type C-q in
2492 order to continue.
2493
2494 If you work in an environment where a majority of terminals of a
2495 certain type are flow control hobbled, you can use the function
2496 `enable-flow-control-on' to turn on this flow control avoidance scheme
2497 automatically. Here is an example:
2498
2499 (enable-flow-control-on "vt200" "vt300" "vt101" "vt131")
2500
2501 If this isn't quite correct (e.g. you have a mixture of flow-control hobbled
2502 and good vt200 terminals), you can still run enable-flow-control
2503 manually.
2504
2505 I have no intention of ever redesigning the Emacs command set for the
2506 assumption that terminals use C-s/C-q flow control. XON/XOFF flow
2507 control technique is a bad design, and terminals that need it are bad
2508 merchandise and should not be purchased. Now that X is becoming
2509 widespread, XON/XOFF seems to be on the way out. If you can get some
2510 use out of GNU Emacs on inferior terminals, more power to you, but I
2511 will not make Emacs worse for properly designed systems for the sake
2512 of inferior systems.
2513
2514 * Control-S and Control-Q commands are ignored completely.
2515
2516 For some reason, your system is using brain-damaged C-s/C-q flow
2517 control despite Emacs's attempts to turn it off. Perhaps your
2518 terminal is connected to the computer through a concentrator
2519 that wants to use flow control.
2520
2521 You should first try to tell the concentrator not to use flow control.
2522 If you succeed in this, try making the terminal work without
2523 flow control, as described in the preceding section.
2524
2525 If that line of approach is not successful, map some other characters
2526 into C-s and C-q using keyboard-translate-table. The example above
2527 shows how to do this with C-^ and C-\.
2528
2529 * Control-S and Control-Q commands are ignored completely on a net connection.
2530
2531 Some versions of rlogin (and possibly telnet) do not pass flow
2532 control characters to the remote system to which they connect.
2533 On such systems, emacs on the remote system cannot disable flow
2534 control on the local system.
2535
2536 One way to cure this is to disable flow control on the local host
2537 (the one running rlogin, not the one running rlogind) using the
2538 stty command, before starting the rlogin process. On many systems,
2539 "stty start u stop u" will do this.
2540
2541 Some versions of tcsh will prevent even this from working. One way
2542 around this is to start another shell before starting rlogin, and
2543 issue the stty command to disable flow control from that shell.
2544
2545 If none of these methods work, the best solution is to type
2546 M-x enable-flow-control at the beginning of your emacs session, or
2547 if you expect the problem to continue, add a line such as the
2548 following to your .emacs (on the host running rlogind):
2549
2550 (enable-flow-control-on "vt200" "vt300" "vt101" "vt131")
2551
2552 See the entry about spontaneous display of I-search (above) for more
2553 info.
2554
2555 * Screen is updated wrong, but only on one kind of terminal.
2556
2557 This could mean that the termcap entry you are using for that
2558 terminal is wrong, or it could mean that Emacs has a bug handing
2559 the combination of features specified for that terminal.
2560
2561 The first step in tracking this down is to record what characters
2562 Emacs is sending to the terminal. Execute the Lisp expression
2563 (open-termscript "./emacs-script") to make Emacs write all
2564 terminal output into the file ~/emacs-script as well; then do
2565 what makes the screen update wrong, and look at the file
2566 and decode the characters using the manual for the terminal.
2567 There are several possibilities:
2568
2569 1) The characters sent are correct, according to the terminal manual.
2570
2571 In this case, there is no obvious bug in Emacs, and most likely you
2572 need more padding, or possibly the terminal manual is wrong.
2573
2574 2) The characters sent are incorrect, due to an obscure aspect
2575 of the terminal behavior not described in an obvious way
2576 by termcap.
2577
2578 This case is hard. It will be necessary to think of a way for
2579 Emacs to distinguish between terminals with this kind of behavior
2580 and other terminals that behave subtly differently but are
2581 classified the same by termcap; or else find an algorithm for
2582 Emacs to use that avoids the difference. Such changes must be
2583 tested on many kinds of terminals.
2584
2585 3) The termcap entry is wrong.
2586
2587 See the file etc/TERMS for information on changes
2588 that are known to be needed in commonly used termcap entries
2589 for certain terminals.
2590
2591 4) The characters sent are incorrect, and clearly cannot be
2592 right for any terminal with the termcap entry you were using.
2593
2594 This is unambiguously an Emacs bug, and can probably be fixed
2595 in termcap.c, tparam.c, term.c, scroll.c, cm.c or dispnew.c.
2596
2597 * Output from Control-V is slow.
2598
2599 On many bit-map terminals, scrolling operations are fairly slow.
2600 Often the termcap entry for the type of terminal in use fails
2601 to inform Emacs of this. The two lines at the bottom of the screen
2602 before a Control-V command are supposed to appear at the top after
2603 the Control-V command. If Emacs thinks scrolling the lines is fast,
2604 it will scroll them to the top of the screen.
2605
2606 If scrolling is slow but Emacs thinks it is fast, the usual reason is
2607 that the termcap entry for the terminal you are using does not
2608 specify any padding time for the `al' and `dl' strings. Emacs
2609 concludes that these operations take only as much time as it takes to
2610 send the commands at whatever line speed you are using. You must
2611 fix the termcap entry to specify, for the `al' and `dl', as much
2612 time as the operations really take.
2613
2614 Currently Emacs thinks in terms of serial lines which send characters
2615 at a fixed rate, so that any operation which takes time for the
2616 terminal to execute must also be padded. With bit-map terminals
2617 operated across networks, often the network provides some sort of
2618 flow control so that padding is never needed no matter how slow
2619 an operation is. You must still specify a padding time if you want
2620 Emacs to realize that the operation takes a long time. This will
2621 cause padding characters to be sent unnecessarily, but they do
2622 not really cost much. They will be transmitted while the scrolling
2623 is happening and then discarded quickly by the terminal.
2624
2625 Most bit-map terminals provide commands for inserting or deleting
2626 multiple lines at once. Define the `AL' and `DL' strings in the
2627 termcap entry to say how to do these things, and you will have
2628 fast output without wasted padding characters. These strings should
2629 each contain a single %-spec saying how to send the number of lines
2630 to be scrolled. These %-specs are like those in the termcap
2631 `cm' string.
2632
2633 You should also define the `IC' and `DC' strings if your terminal
2634 has a command to insert or delete multiple characters. These
2635 take the number of positions to insert or delete as an argument.
2636
2637 A `cs' string to set the scrolling region will reduce the amount
2638 of motion you see on the screen when part of the screen is scrolled.
2639
2640 * Your Delete key sends a Backspace to the terminal, using an AIXterm.
2641
2642 The solution is to include in your .Xdefaults the lines:
2643
2644 *aixterm.Translations: #override <Key>BackSpace: string(0x7f)
2645 aixterm*ttyModes: erase ^?
2646
2647 This makes your Backspace key send DEL (ASCII 127).
2648
2649 * You type Control-H (Backspace) expecting to delete characters.
2650
2651 Put `stty dec' in your .login file and your problems will disappear
2652 after a day or two.
2653
2654 The choice of Backspace for erasure was based on confusion, caused by
2655 the fact that backspacing causes erasure (later, when you type another
2656 character) on most display terminals. But it is a mistake. Deletion
2657 of text is not the same thing as backspacing followed by failure to
2658 overprint. I do not wish to propagate this confusion by conforming
2659 to it.
2660
2661 For this reason, I believe `stty dec' is the right mode to use,
2662 and I have designed Emacs to go with that. If there were a thousand
2663 other control characters, I would define Control-h to delete as well;
2664 but there are not very many other control characters, and I think
2665 that providing the most mnemonic possible Help character is more
2666 important than adapting to people who don't use `stty dec'.
2667
2668 If you are obstinate about confusing buggy overprinting with deletion,
2669 you can redefine Backspace in your .emacs file:
2670 (global-set-key "\b" 'delete-backward-char)
2671 You can probably access help-command via f1.
2672
2673 * Editing files through RFS gives spurious "file has changed" warnings.
2674 It is possible that a change in Emacs 18.37 gets around this problem,
2675 but in case not, here is a description of how to fix the RFS bug that
2676 causes it.
2677
2678 There was a serious pair of bugs in the handling of the fsync() system
2679 call in the RFS server.
2680
2681 The first is that the fsync() call is handled as another name for the
2682 close() system call (!!). It appears that fsync() is not used by very
2683 many programs; Emacs version 18 does an fsync() before closing files
2684 to make sure that the bits are on the disk.
2685
2686 This is fixed by the enclosed patch to the RFS server.
2687
2688 The second, more serious problem, is that fsync() is treated as a
2689 non-blocking system call (i.e., it's implemented as a message that
2690 gets sent to the remote system without waiting for a reply). Fsync is
2691 a useful tool for building atomic file transactions. Implementing it
2692 as a non-blocking RPC call (when the local call blocks until the sync
2693 is done) is a bad idea; unfortunately, changing it will break the RFS
2694 protocol. No fix was supplied for this problem.
2695
2696 (as always, your line numbers may vary)
2697
2698 % rcsdiff -c -r1.2 serversyscall.c
2699 RCS file: RCS/serversyscall.c,v
2700 retrieving revision 1.2
2701 diff -c -r1.2 serversyscall.c
2702 *** /tmp/,RCSt1003677 Wed Jan 28 15:15:02 1987
2703 --- serversyscall.c Wed Jan 28 15:14:48 1987
2704 ***************
2705 *** 163,169 ****
2706 /*
2707 * No return sent for close or fsync!
2708 */
2709 ! if (syscall == RSYS_close || syscall == RSYS_fsync)
2710 proc->p_returnval = deallocate_fd(proc, msg->m_args[0]);
2711 else
2712 {
2713 --- 166,172 ----
2714 /*
2715 * No return sent for close or fsync!
2716 */
2717 ! if (syscall == RSYS_close)
2718 proc->p_returnval = deallocate_fd(proc, msg->m_args[0]);
2719 else
2720 {
2721
2722 * Vax C compiler bugs affecting Emacs.
2723
2724 You may get one of these problems compiling Emacs:
2725
2726 foo.c line nnn: compiler error: no table entry for op STASG
2727 foo.c: fatal error in /lib/ccom
2728
2729 These are due to bugs in the C compiler; the code is valid C.
2730 Unfortunately, the bugs are unpredictable: the same construct
2731 may compile properly or trigger one of these bugs, depending
2732 on what else is in the source file being compiled. Even changes
2733 in header files that should not affect the file being compiled
2734 can affect whether the bug happens. In addition, sometimes files
2735 that compile correctly on one machine get this bug on another machine.
2736
2737 As a result, it is hard for me to make sure this bug will not affect
2738 you. I have attempted to find and alter these constructs, but more
2739 can always appear. However, I can tell you how to deal with it if it
2740 should happen. The bug comes from having an indexed reference to an
2741 array of Lisp_Objects, as an argument in a function call:
2742 Lisp_Object *args;
2743 ...
2744 ... foo (5, args[i], ...)...
2745 putting the argument into a temporary variable first, as in
2746 Lisp_Object *args;
2747 Lisp_Object tem;
2748 ...
2749 tem = args[i];
2750 ... foo (r, tem, ...)...
2751 causes the problem to go away.
2752 The `contents' field of a Lisp vector is an array of Lisp_Objects,
2753 so you may see the problem happening with indexed references to that.
2754
2755 * 68000 C compiler problems
2756
2757 Various 68000 compilers have different problems.
2758 These are some that have been observed.
2759
2760 ** Using value of assignment expression on union type loses.
2761 This means that x = y = z; or foo (x = z); does not work
2762 if x is of type Lisp_Object.
2763
2764 ** "cannot reclaim" error.
2765
2766 This means that an expression is too complicated. You get the correct
2767 line number in the error message. The code must be rewritten with
2768 simpler expressions.
2769
2770 ** XCONS, XSTRING, etc macros produce incorrect code.
2771
2772 If temacs fails to run at all, this may be the cause.
2773 Compile this test program and look at the assembler code:
2774
2775 struct foo { char x; unsigned int y : 24; };
2776
2777 lose (arg)
2778 struct foo arg;
2779 {
2780 test ((int *) arg.y);
2781 }
2782
2783 If the code is incorrect, your compiler has this problem.
2784 In the XCONS, etc., macros in lisp.h you must replace (a).u.val with
2785 ((a).u.val + coercedummy) where coercedummy is declared as int.
2786
2787 This problem will not happen if the m-...h file for your type
2788 of machine defines NO_UNION_TYPE. That is the recommended setting now.
2789
2790 * C compilers lose on returning unions
2791
2792 I hear that some C compilers cannot handle returning a union type.
2793 Most of the functions in GNU Emacs return type Lisp_Object, which is
2794 defined as a union on some rare architectures.
2795
2796 This problem will not happen if the m-...h file for your type
2797 of machine defines NO_UNION_TYPE.
2798