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* INSTALL: Prefer './configure FOO=BAR' to 'FOO=BAR ./configure'. * INSTALL.REPO: pkg-config is no longer required to build from the repository. * autogen.sh: Don't check for pkg-config. (progs): Remove pkg-config. (pkg_config_min, AUTORECONF_ENV, env_space, ACLOCAL_PATH): Remove. All uses removed. * m4/pkg.m4: New file, built by admin/merge-pkg-config. * configure.ac: Remove unnecessary m4_pattern_forbid of ^PKG_ and an AC_ARG_VAR of PKG_CONFIG_PATH. pkg.m4 does that for us. (EMACS_CHECK_MODULES): Remove workaround for old pkg-config bug, as we use pkg.m4 from a newer pkg-config. * admin/merge-pkg-config: New script. * admin/notes/copyright: Update for m4/*.m4, in particular m4/pkg.m4. * etc/NEWS: Prefer './configure FOO=BAR' to 'FOO=BAR ./configure'. * etc/PROBLEMS (Build-time-problems): Remove pkg-config problem that is no longer an issue. * nt/INSTALL: Remove no-longer-needed notes about pkg-config.
2917 lines
118 KiB
Plaintext
2917 lines
118 KiB
Plaintext
Known Problems with GNU Emacs
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Copyright (C) 1987-1989, 1993-1999, 2001-2014 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
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See the end of the file for license conditions.
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This file describes various problems that have been encountered
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in compiling, installing and running GNU Emacs. Try doing C-c C-t
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and browsing through the outline headers. (See C-h m for help on
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Outline mode.) Information about systems that are no longer supported,
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and old Emacs releases, has been removed. Consult older versions of
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this file if you are interested in that information.
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* Mule-UCS doesn't work in Emacs 23 onwards
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It's completely redundant now, as far as we know.
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* Emacs startup failures
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** Emacs fails to start, complaining about missing fonts.
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A typical error message might be something like
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No fonts match `-*-fixed-medium-r-*--6-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1'
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This happens because some X resource specifies a bad font family for
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Emacs to use. The possible places where this specification might be are:
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- in your ~/.Xdefaults file
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- client-side X resource file, such as ~/Emacs or
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/usr/share/X11/app-defaults/Emacs
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One of these files might have bad or malformed specification of a
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fontset that Emacs should use. To fix the problem, you need to find
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the problematic line(s) and correct them.
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** Emacs aborts while starting up, only when run without X.
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This problem often results from compiling Emacs with GCC when GCC was
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installed incorrectly. The usual error in installing GCC is to
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specify --includedir=/usr/include. Installation of GCC makes
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corrected copies of the system header files. GCC is supposed to use
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the corrected copies in preference to the original system headers.
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Specifying --includedir=/usr/include causes the original system header
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files to be used. On some systems, the definition of ioctl in the
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original system header files is invalid for ANSI C and causes Emacs
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not to work.
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The fix is to reinstall GCC, and this time do not specify --includedir
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when you configure it. Then recompile Emacs. Specifying --includedir
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is appropriate only in very special cases and it should *never* be the
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same directory where system header files are kept.
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** Emacs does not start, complaining that it cannot open termcap database file.
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If your system uses Terminfo rather than termcap (most modern
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systems do), this could happen if the proper version of
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ncurses is not visible to the Emacs configure script (i.e. it
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cannot be found along the usual path the linker looks for
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libraries). It can happen because your version of ncurses is
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obsolete, or is available only in form of binaries.
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The solution is to install an up-to-date version of ncurses in
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the developer's form (header files, static libraries and
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symbolic links); in some GNU/Linux distributions (e.g. Debian)
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it constitutes a separate package.
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** Emacs 20 and later fails to load Lisp files at startup.
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The typical error message might be like this:
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"Cannot open load file: fontset"
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This could happen if you compress the file lisp/subdirs.el. That file
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tells Emacs what are the directories where it should look for Lisp
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files. Emacs cannot work with subdirs.el compressed, since the
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Auto-compress mode it needs for this will not be loaded until later,
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when your .emacs file is processed. (The package `fontset.el' is
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required to set up fonts used to display text on window systems, and
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it's loaded very early in the startup procedure.)
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Similarly, any other .el file for which there's no corresponding .elc
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file could fail to load if it is compressed.
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The solution is to uncompress all .el files that don't have a .elc file.
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Another possible reason for such failures is stale *.elc files
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lurking somewhere on your load-path -- see the next section.
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** Emacs prints an error at startup after upgrading from an earlier version.
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An example of such an error is:
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x-complement-fontset-spec: "Wrong type argument: stringp, nil"
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This can be another symptom of stale *.elc files in your load-path.
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The following command will print any duplicate Lisp files that are
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present in load-path:
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emacs -batch -f list-load-path-shadows
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If this command prints any file names, some of these files are stale,
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and should be deleted or their directories removed from your
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load-path.
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* Crash bugs
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** Emacs crashes when running in a terminal, if compiled with GCC 4.5.0
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This version of GCC is buggy: see
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http://debbugs.gnu.org/6031
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http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=43904
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You can work around this error in gcc-4.5 by omitting sibling call
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optimization. To do this, configure Emacs with
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CFLAGS="-g -O2 -fno-optimize-sibling-calls" ./configure
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** Emacs compiled with GCC 4.6.1 crashes on MS-Windows when C-g is pressed
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This is known to happen when Emacs is compiled with MinGW GCC 4.6.1
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with the -O2 option (which is the default in the Windows build). The
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reason is a bug in MinGW GCC 4.6.1; to work around, either add the
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`-fno-omit-frame-pointer' switch to GCC or compile without
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optimizations (`--no-opt' switch to the configure.bat script).
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** Emacs crashes in x-popup-dialog.
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This can happen if the dialog widget cannot find the font it wants to
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use. You can work around the problem by specifying another font with
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an X resource--for example, `Emacs.dialog*.font: 9x15' (or any font that
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happens to exist on your X server).
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** Emacs crashes when you use Bibtex mode.
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This happens if your system puts a small limit on stack size. You can
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prevent the problem by using a suitable shell command (often `ulimit')
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to raise the stack size limit before you run Emacs.
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Patches to raise the stack size limit automatically in `main'
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(src/emacs.c) on various systems would be greatly appreciated.
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** Error message `Symbol's value as variable is void: x', followed by
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a segmentation fault and core dump.
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This has been tracked to a bug in tar! People report that tar erroneously
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added a line like this at the beginning of files of Lisp code:
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x FILENAME, N bytes, B tape blocks
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If your tar has this problem, install GNU tar--if you can manage to
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untar it :-).
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** Emacs can crash when displaying PNG images with transparency.
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This is due to a bug introduced in ImageMagick 6.8.2-3. The bug should
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be fixed in ImageMagick 6.8.3-10. See <URL:http://debbugs.gnu.org/13867>.
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** Crashes when displaying GIF images in Emacs built with version
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libungif-4.1.0 are resolved by using version libungif-4.1.0b1.
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Configure checks for the correct version, but this problem could occur
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if a binary built against a shared libungif is run on a system with an
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older version.
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** Emacs aborts inside the function `tparam1'.
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This can happen if Emacs was built without terminfo support, but the
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terminal's capabilities use format that is only supported by terminfo.
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If your system has ncurses installed, this might happen if your
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version of ncurses is broken; upgrading to a newer version of ncurses
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and reconfiguring and rebuilding Emacs should solve this.
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All modern systems support terminfo, so even if ncurses is not the
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problem, you should look for a way to configure Emacs so that it uses
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terminfo when built.
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** Emacs crashes when using some version of the Exceed X server.
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Upgrading to a newer version of Exceed has been reported to prevent
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these crashes. You should consider switching to a free X server, such
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as Xming or Cygwin/X.
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** Emacs crashes with SIGSEGV in XtInitializeWidgetClass.
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It crashes on X, but runs fine when called with option "-nw".
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This has been observed when Emacs is linked with GNU ld but without passing
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the -z nocombreloc flag. Emacs normally knows to pass the -z nocombreloc
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flag when needed, so if you come across a situation where the flag is
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necessary but missing, please report it via M-x report-emacs-bug.
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On platforms such as Solaris, you can also work around this problem by
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configuring your compiler to use the native linker instead of GNU ld.
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** When Emacs is compiled with Gtk+, closing a display kills Emacs.
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There is a long-standing bug in GTK that prevents it from recovering
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from disconnects: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=85715.
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Thus, for instance, when Emacs is run as a server on a text terminal,
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and an X frame is created, and the X server for that frame crashes or
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exits unexpectedly, Emacs must exit to prevent a GTK error that would
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result in an endless loop.
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If you need Emacs to be able to recover from closing displays, compile
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it with the Lucid toolkit instead of GTK.
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** Emacs crashes when you try to view a file with complex characters.
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For example, the etc/HELLO file (as shown by C-h h).
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The message "symbol lookup error: /usr/bin/emacs: undefined symbol: OTF_open"
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is shown in the terminal from which you launched Emacs.
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This problem only happens when you use a graphical display (ie not
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with -nw) and compiled Emacs with the "libotf" library for complex
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text handling.
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This problem occurs because unfortunately there are two libraries
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called "libotf". One is the library for handling OpenType fonts,
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http://www.m17n.org/libotf/, which is the one that Emacs expects.
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The other is a library for Open Trace Format, and is used by some
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versions of the MPI message passing interface for parallel
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programming.
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For example, on RHEL6 GNU/Linux, the OpenMPI rpm provides a version
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of "libotf.so" in /usr/lib/openmpi/lib. This directory is not
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normally in the ld search path, but if you want to use OpenMPI,
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you must issue the command "module load openmpi". This adds
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/usr/lib/openmpi/lib to LD_LIBRARY_PATH. If you then start Emacs from
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the same shell, you will encounter this crash.
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Ref: <URL:https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=844776>
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There is no good solution to this problem if you need to use both
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OpenMPI and Emacs with libotf support. The best you can do is use a
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wrapper shell script (or function) "emacs" that removes the offending
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element from LD_LIBRARY_PATH before starting emacs proper.
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Or you could recompile Emacs with an -Wl,-rpath option that
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gives the location of the correct libotf.
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* General runtime problems
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** Lisp problems
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*** Changes made to .el files do not take effect.
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You may have forgotten to recompile them into .elc files.
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Then the old .elc files will be loaded, and your changes
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will not be seen. To fix this, do M-x byte-recompile-directory
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and specify the directory that contains the Lisp files.
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Emacs prints a warning when loading a .elc file which is older
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than the corresponding .el file.
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Alternatively, if you set the option `load-prefer-newer' non-nil,
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Emacs will load whichever version of a file is the newest.
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*** Watch out for the EMACSLOADPATH environment variable
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EMACSLOADPATH overrides which directories the function "load" will search.
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If you observe strange problems, check for this variable in your
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environment.
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*** Using epop3.el package causes Emacs to signal an error.
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The error message might be something like this:
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"Lisp nesting exceeds max-lisp-eval-depth"
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This happens because epop3 redefines the function gethash, which is a
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built-in primitive beginning with Emacs 21.1. We don't have a patch
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for epop3 that fixes this, but perhaps a newer version of epop3
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corrects that.
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*** Buffers from `with-output-to-temp-buffer' get set up in Help mode.
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Changes in Emacs 20.4 to the hooks used by that function cause
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problems for some packages, specifically BBDB. See the function's
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documentation for the hooks involved. BBDB 2.00.06 fixes the problem.
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*** The Hyperbole package causes *Help* buffers not to be displayed in
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Help mode due to setting `temp-buffer-show-hook' rather than using
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`add-hook'. Using `(add-hook 'temp-buffer-show-hook 'help-mode-finish)'
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after loading Hyperbole should fix this.
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** Keyboard problems
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*** Unable to enter the M-| key on some German keyboards.
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Some users have reported that M-| suffers from "keyboard ghosting".
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This can't be fixed by Emacs, as the keypress never gets passed to it
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at all (as can be verified using "xev"). You can work around this by
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typing `ESC |' instead.
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*** "Compose Character" key does strange things when used as a Meta key.
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If you define one key to serve as both Meta and Compose Character, you
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will get strange results. In previous Emacs versions, this "worked"
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in that the key acted as Meta--that's because the older Emacs versions
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did not try to support Compose Character. Now Emacs tries to do
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character composition in the standard X way. This means that you
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must pick one meaning or the other for any given key.
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You can use both functions (Meta, and Compose Character) if you assign
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them to two different keys.
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*** C-z just refreshes the screen instead of suspending Emacs.
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You are probably using a shell that doesn't support job control, even
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though the system itself is capable of it. Either use a different shell,
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or set the variable `cannot-suspend' to a non-nil value.
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** Mailers and other helper programs
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*** movemail compiled with POP support can't connect to the POP server.
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Make sure that the `pop' entry in /etc/services, or in the services
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NIS map if your machine uses NIS, has the same port number as the
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entry on the POP server. A common error is for the POP server to be
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listening on port 110, the assigned port for the POP3 protocol, while
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the client is trying to connect on port 109, the assigned port for the
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old POP protocol.
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*** RMAIL gets error getting new mail.
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RMAIL gets new mail from /usr/spool/mail/$USER using a program
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called `movemail'. This program interlocks with /bin/mail using
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the protocol defined by /bin/mail.
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There are two different protocols in general use. One of them uses
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the `flock' system call. The other involves creating a lock file;
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`movemail' must be able to write in /usr/spool/mail in order to do
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this. You control which one is used by defining, or not defining,
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the macro MAIL_USE_FLOCK in config.h.
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IF YOU DON'T USE THE FORM OF INTERLOCKING THAT IS NORMAL ON YOUR
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SYSTEM, YOU CAN LOSE MAIL!
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If your system uses the lock file protocol, and fascist restrictions
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prevent ordinary users from writing the lock files in /usr/spool/mail,
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you may need to make `movemail' setgid to a suitable group such as
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`mail'. To do this, use the following commands (as root) after doing the
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make install.
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chgrp mail movemail
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chmod 2755 movemail
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Installation normally copies movemail from the build directory to an
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installation directory which is usually under /usr/local/lib. The
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installed copy of movemail is usually in the directory
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/usr/local/lib/emacs/VERSION/TARGET. You must change the group and
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mode of the installed copy; changing the group and mode of the build
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directory copy is ineffective.
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*** rcs2log gives you the awk error message "too many fields".
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This is due to an arbitrary limit in certain versions of awk.
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The solution is to use gawk (GNU awk).
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** Problems with hostname resolution
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*** Emacs does not know your host's fully-qualified domain name.
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For example, (system-name) returns some variation on
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"localhost.localdomain", rather the name you were expecting.
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You need to configure your machine with a fully qualified domain name,
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(i.e. a name with at least one ".") either in /etc/hosts,
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/etc/hostname, the NIS, or wherever your system calls for specifying this.
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If you cannot fix the configuration, you can set the Lisp variable
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mail-host-address to the value you want.
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** NFS
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*** Emacs says it has saved a file, but the file does not actually
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appear on disk.
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This can happen on certain systems when you are using NFS, if the
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remote disk is full. It is due to a bug in NFS (or certain NFS
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implementations), and there is apparently nothing Emacs can do to
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detect the problem. Emacs checks the failure codes of all the system
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calls involved in writing a file, including `close'; but in the case
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where the problem occurs, none of those system calls fails.
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** PSGML conflicts with sgml-mode.
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PSGML package uses the same names of some variables (like keymap)
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as built-in sgml-mode.el because it was created as a replacement
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of that package. The conflict will be shown if you load
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sgml-mode.el before psgml.el. E.g. this could happen if you edit
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HTML page and then start to work with SGML or XML file. html-mode
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(from sgml-mode.el) is used for HTML file and loading of psgml.el
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(for sgml-mode or xml-mode) will cause an error.
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** PCL-CVS
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*** Lines are not updated or new lines are added in the buffer upon commit.
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When committing files located higher in the hierarchy than the examined
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directory, some versions of the CVS program return an ambiguous message
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from which PCL-CVS cannot extract the full location of the committed
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files. As a result, the corresponding lines in the PCL-CVS buffer are
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not updated with the new revision of these files, and new lines are
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added to the top-level directory.
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This can happen with CVS versions 1.12.8 and 1.12.9. Upgrade to CVS
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1.12.10 or newer to fix this problem.
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** Miscellaneous problems
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*** Editing files with very long lines is slow.
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For example, simply moving through a file that contains hundreds of
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thousands of characters per line is slow, and consumes a lot of CPU.
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This is a known limitation of Emacs with no solution at this time.
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*** Emacs uses 100% of CPU time
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This was a known problem with some old versions of the Semantic package.
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The solution was to upgrade Semantic to version 2.0pre4 (distributed
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with CEDET 1.0pre4) or later. Note that Emacs includes Semantic since
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23.2, and this issue does not apply to the included version.
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*** Self-documentation messages are garbled.
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This means that the file `etc/DOC' doesn't properly correspond
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with the Emacs executable. Redumping Emacs and then installing the
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corresponding pair of files should fix the problem.
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*** Programs running under terminal emulator do not recognize `emacs'
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terminal type.
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The cause of this is a shell startup file that sets the TERMCAP
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environment variable. The terminal emulator uses that variable to
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provide the information on the special terminal type that Emacs emulates.
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Rewrite your shell startup file so that it does not change TERMCAP
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in such a case. You could use the following conditional which sets
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it only if it is undefined.
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if ( ! ${?TERMCAP} ) setenv TERMCAP ~/my-termcap-file
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Or you could set TERMCAP only when you set TERM--which should not
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happen in a non-login shell.
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*** In Shell mode, you get a ^M at the end of every line.
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This happens to people who use tcsh, because it is trying to be too
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smart. It sees that the Shell uses terminal type `unknown' and turns
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on the flag to output ^M at the end of each line. You can fix the
|
||
problem by adding this to your .cshrc file:
|
||
|
||
if ($?EMACS) then
|
||
if ("$EMACS" =~ /*) then
|
||
unset edit
|
||
stty -icrnl -onlcr -echo susp ^Z
|
||
endif
|
||
endif
|
||
|
||
*** Emacs startup on GNU/Linux systems (and possibly other systems) is slow.
|
||
|
||
This can happen if the system is misconfigured and Emacs can't get the
|
||
full qualified domain name, FQDN. You should have your FQDN in the
|
||
/etc/hosts file, something like this:
|
||
|
||
127.0.0.1 localhost
|
||
129.187.137.82 nuc04.t30.physik.tu-muenchen.de nuc04
|
||
|
||
The way to set this up may vary on non-GNU systems.
|
||
|
||
*** Attempting to visit remote files via ange-ftp fails.
|
||
|
||
If the error message is "ange-ftp-file-modtime: Specified time is not
|
||
representable", then this could happen when `lukemftp' is used as the
|
||
ftp client. This was reported to happen on Debian GNU/Linux, kernel
|
||
version 2.4.3, with `lukemftp' 1.5-5, but might happen on other
|
||
systems as well. To avoid this problem, switch to using the standard
|
||
ftp client. On a Debian system, type
|
||
|
||
update-alternatives --config ftp
|
||
|
||
and then choose /usr/bin/netkit-ftp.
|
||
|
||
*** Dired is very slow.
|
||
|
||
This could happen if invocation of the `df' program takes a long
|
||
time. Possible reasons for this include:
|
||
|
||
- ClearCase mounted filesystems (VOBs) that sometimes make `df'
|
||
response time extremely slow (dozens of seconds);
|
||
|
||
- slow automounters on some old versions of Unix;
|
||
|
||
- slow operation of some versions of `df'.
|
||
|
||
To work around the problem, you could either (a) set the variable
|
||
`directory-free-space-program' to nil, and thus prevent Emacs from
|
||
invoking `df'; (b) use `df' from the GNU Fileutils package; or
|
||
(c) use CVS, which is Free Software, instead of ClearCase.
|
||
|
||
*** ps-print commands fail to find prologue files ps-prin*.ps.
|
||
|
||
This can happen if you use an old version of X-Symbol package: it
|
||
defines compatibility functions which trick ps-print into thinking it
|
||
runs in XEmacs, and look for the prologue files in a wrong directory.
|
||
|
||
The solution is to upgrade X-Symbol to a later version.
|
||
|
||
*** On systems with shared libraries you might encounter run-time errors
|
||
from the dynamic linker telling you that it is unable to find some
|
||
shared libraries, for instance those for Xaw3d or image support.
|
||
These errors mean Emacs has been linked with a library whose shared
|
||
library is not in the default search path of the dynamic linker.
|
||
|
||
Similar problems could prevent Emacs from building, since the build
|
||
process invokes Emacs several times.
|
||
|
||
On many systems, it is possible to set LD_LIBRARY_PATH in your
|
||
environment to specify additional directories where shared libraries
|
||
can be found.
|
||
|
||
Other systems allow to set LD_RUN_PATH in a similar way, but before
|
||
Emacs is linked. With LD_RUN_PATH set, the linker will include a
|
||
specified run-time search path in the executable.
|
||
|
||
On some systems, Emacs can crash due to problems with dynamic
|
||
linking. Specifically, on SGI Irix 6.5, crashes were reported with
|
||
backtraces like this:
|
||
|
||
(dbx) where
|
||
0 strcmp(0xf49239d, 0x4031184, 0x40302b4, 0x12, 0xf0000000, 0xf4923aa, 0x0, 0x492ddb2) ["/xlv22/ficus-jan23/work/irix/lib/libc/libc_n32_M3_ns/strings/strcmp.s":35, 0xfb7e480]
|
||
1 general_find_symbol(0xf49239d, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0xf0000000, 0xf4923aa, 0x0, 0x492ddb2)
|
||
["/comp2/mtibuild/v73/workarea/v7.3/rld/rld.c":2140, 0xfb65a98]
|
||
2 resolve_symbol(0xf49239d, 0x4031184, 0x0, 0xfbdd438, 0x0, 0xf4923aa, 0x0, 0x492ddb2)
|
||
["/comp2/mtibuild/v73/workarea/v7.3/rld/rld.c":1947, 0xfb657e4]
|
||
3 lazy_text_resolve(0xd18, 0x1a3, 0x40302b4, 0x12, 0xf0000000, 0xf4923aa, 0x0, 0x492ddb2)
|
||
["/comp2/mtibuild/v73/workarea/v7.3/rld/rld.c":997, 0xfb64d44]
|
||
4 _rld_text_resolve(0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0)
|
||
["/comp2/mtibuild/v73/workarea/v7.3/rld/rld_bridge.s":175, 0xfb6032c]
|
||
|
||
(`rld' is the dynamic linker.) We don't know why this
|
||
happens, but setting the environment variable LD_BIND_NOW to 1 (which
|
||
forces the dynamic linker to bind all shared objects early on) seems
|
||
to work around the problem.
|
||
|
||
Please refer to the documentation of your dynamic linker for details.
|
||
|
||
*** When you run Ispell from Emacs, it reports a "misalignment" error.
|
||
|
||
This can happen if you compiled the Ispell program to use ASCII
|
||
characters only and then try to use it from Emacs with non-ASCII
|
||
characters, like Latin-1. The solution is to recompile Ispell with
|
||
support for 8-bit characters.
|
||
|
||
To see whether your Ispell program supports 8-bit characters, type
|
||
this at your shell's prompt:
|
||
|
||
ispell -vv
|
||
|
||
and look in the output for the string "NO8BIT". If Ispell says
|
||
"!NO8BIT (8BIT)", your speller supports 8-bit characters; otherwise it
|
||
does not.
|
||
|
||
To rebuild Ispell with 8-bit character support, edit the local.h file
|
||
in the Ispell distribution and make sure it does _not_ define NO8BIT.
|
||
Then rebuild the speller.
|
||
|
||
Another possible cause for "misalignment" error messages is that the
|
||
version of Ispell installed on your machine is old. Upgrade.
|
||
|
||
Yet another possibility is that you are trying to spell-check a word
|
||
in a language that doesn't fit the dictionary you choose for use by
|
||
Ispell. (Ispell can only spell-check one language at a time, because
|
||
it uses a single dictionary.) Make sure that the text you are
|
||
spelling and the dictionary used by Ispell conform to each other.
|
||
|
||
If your spell-checking program is Aspell, it has been reported that if
|
||
you have a personal configuration file (normally ~/.aspell.conf), it
|
||
can cause this error. Remove that file, execute `ispell-kill-ispell'
|
||
in Emacs, and then try spell-checking again.
|
||
|
||
* Runtime problems related to font handling
|
||
|
||
** Characters are displayed as empty boxes or with wrong font under X.
|
||
|
||
*** This can occur when two different versions of FontConfig are used.
|
||
For example, XFree86 4.3.0 has one version and Gnome usually comes
|
||
with a newer version. Emacs compiled with Gtk+ will then use the
|
||
newer version. In most cases the problem can be temporarily fixed by
|
||
stopping the application that has the error (it can be Emacs or any
|
||
other application), removing ~/.fonts.cache-1, and then start the
|
||
application again. If removing ~/.fonts.cache-1 and restarting
|
||
doesn't help, the application with problem must be recompiled with the
|
||
same version of FontConfig as the rest of the system uses. For KDE,
|
||
it is sufficient to recompile Qt.
|
||
|
||
*** Some fonts have a missing glyph and no default character. This is
|
||
known to occur for character number 160 (no-break space) in some
|
||
fonts, such as Lucida but Emacs sets the display table for the unibyte
|
||
and Latin-1 version of this character to display a space.
|
||
|
||
*** Some of the fonts called for in your fontset may not exist on your
|
||
X server.
|
||
|
||
Each X font covers just a fraction of the characters that Emacs
|
||
supports. To display the whole range of Emacs characters requires
|
||
many different fonts, collected into a fontset. You can remedy the
|
||
problem by installing additional fonts.
|
||
|
||
The intlfonts distribution includes a full spectrum of fonts that can
|
||
display all the characters Emacs supports. The etl-unicode collection
|
||
of fonts (available from <URL:ftp://ftp.x.org/contrib/fonts/>) includes
|
||
fonts that can display many Unicode characters; they can also be used
|
||
by ps-print and ps-mule to print Unicode characters.
|
||
|
||
** Under X, some characters appear improperly aligned in their lines.
|
||
|
||
You may have bad fonts.
|
||
|
||
** Under X, an unexpected monospace font is used as the default font.
|
||
|
||
When compiled with XFT, Emacs tries to use a default font named
|
||
"monospace". This is a "virtual font", which the operating system
|
||
(Fontconfig) redirects to a suitable font such as DejaVu Sans Mono.
|
||
On some systems, there exists a font that is actually named Monospace,
|
||
which takes over the virtual font. This is considered an operating
|
||
system bug; see
|
||
|
||
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2008-10/msg00696.html
|
||
|
||
If you encounter this problem, set the default font to a specific font
|
||
in your .Xresources or initialization file. For instance, you can put
|
||
the following in your .Xresources:
|
||
|
||
Emacs.font: DejaVu Sans Mono 12
|
||
|
||
** Certain fonts make each line take one pixel more than it should.
|
||
|
||
This is because these fonts contain characters a little taller than
|
||
the font's nominal height. Emacs needs to make sure that lines do not
|
||
overlap.
|
||
|
||
** Font Lock displays portions of the buffer in incorrect faces.
|
||
|
||
By far the most frequent cause of this is a parenthesis `(' or a brace
|
||
`{' in column zero. Font Lock assumes that such a paren is outside of
|
||
any comment or string. This is of course not true in general, but the
|
||
vast majority of well-formatted program source files don't have such
|
||
parens, and therefore this assumption is used to allow optimizations
|
||
in Font Lock's syntactical analysis. These optimizations avoid some
|
||
pathological cases where jit-lock, the Just-in-Time fontification
|
||
introduced with Emacs 21.1, could significantly slow down scrolling
|
||
through the buffer, especially scrolling backwards, and also jumping
|
||
to the end of a very large buffer.
|
||
|
||
Beginning with version 22.1, a parenthesis or a brace in column zero
|
||
is highlighted in bold-red face if it is inside a string or a comment,
|
||
to indicate that it could interfere with Font Lock (and also with
|
||
indentation) and should be moved or escaped with a backslash.
|
||
|
||
If you don't use large buffers, or have a very fast machine which
|
||
makes the delays insignificant, you can avoid the incorrect
|
||
fontification by setting the variable
|
||
`font-lock-beginning-of-syntax-function' to a nil value. (This must
|
||
be done _after_ turning on Font Lock.)
|
||
|
||
Another alternative is to avoid a paren in column zero. For example,
|
||
in a Lisp string you could precede the paren with a backslash.
|
||
|
||
** Emacs pauses for several seconds when changing the default font.
|
||
|
||
This has been reported for fvwm 2.2.5 and the window manager of KDE
|
||
2.1. The reason for the pause is Xt waiting for a ConfigureNotify
|
||
event from the window manager, which the window manager doesn't send.
|
||
Xt stops waiting after a default timeout of usually 5 seconds.
|
||
|
||
A workaround for this is to add something like
|
||
|
||
emacs.waitForWM: false
|
||
|
||
to your X resources. Alternatively, add `(wait-for-wm . nil)' to a
|
||
frame's parameter list, like this:
|
||
|
||
(modify-frame-parameters nil '((wait-for-wm . nil)))
|
||
|
||
(this should go into your `.emacs' file).
|
||
|
||
** Underlines appear at the wrong position.
|
||
|
||
This is caused by fonts having a wrong UNDERLINE_POSITION property.
|
||
Examples are the font 7x13 on XFree prior to version 4.1, or the jmk
|
||
neep font from the Debian xfonts-jmk package prior to version 3.0.17.
|
||
To circumvent this problem, set x-use-underline-position-properties
|
||
to nil in your `.emacs'.
|
||
|
||
To see what is the value of UNDERLINE_POSITION defined by the font,
|
||
type `xlsfonts -lll FONT' and look at the font's UNDERLINE_POSITION property.
|
||
|
||
** When using Exceed, fonts sometimes appear too tall.
|
||
|
||
When the display is set to an Exceed X-server and fonts are specified
|
||
(either explicitly with the -fn option or implicitly with X resources)
|
||
then the fonts may appear "too tall". The actual character sizes are
|
||
correct but there is too much vertical spacing between rows, which
|
||
gives the appearance of "double spacing".
|
||
|
||
To prevent this, turn off the Exceed's "automatic font substitution"
|
||
feature (in the font part of the configuration window).
|
||
|
||
** Subscript/superscript text in TeX is hard to read.
|
||
|
||
If `tex-fontify-script' is non-nil, tex-mode displays
|
||
subscript/superscript text in the faces subscript/superscript, which
|
||
are smaller than the normal font and lowered/raised. With some fonts,
|
||
nested superscripts (say) can be hard to read. Switching to a
|
||
different font, or changing your antialiasing setting (on an LCD
|
||
screen), can both make the problem disappear. Alternatively, customize
|
||
the following variables: tex-font-script-display (how much to
|
||
lower/raise); tex-suscript-height-ratio (how much smaller than
|
||
normal); tex-suscript-height-minimum (minimum height).
|
||
|
||
* Internationalization problems
|
||
|
||
** M-{ does not work on a Spanish PC keyboard.
|
||
|
||
Many Spanish keyboards seem to ignore that combination. Emacs can't
|
||
do anything about it.
|
||
|
||
** International characters aren't displayed under X.
|
||
|
||
*** Missing X fonts
|
||
|
||
XFree86 4 contains many fonts in iso10646-1 encoding which have
|
||
minimal character repertoires (whereas the encoding part of the font
|
||
name is meant to be a reasonable indication of the repertoire
|
||
according to the XLFD spec). Emacs may choose one of these to display
|
||
characters from the mule-unicode charsets and then typically won't be
|
||
able to find the glyphs to display many characters. (Check with C-u
|
||
C-x = .) To avoid this, you may need to use a fontset which sets the
|
||
font for the mule-unicode sets explicitly. E.g. to use GNU unifont,
|
||
include in the fontset spec:
|
||
|
||
mule-unicode-2500-33ff:-gnu-unifont-*-iso10646-1,\
|
||
mule-unicode-e000-ffff:-gnu-unifont-*-iso10646-1,\
|
||
mule-unicode-0100-24ff:-gnu-unifont-*-iso10646-1
|
||
|
||
** The UTF-8/16/7 coding systems don't encode CJK (Far Eastern) characters.
|
||
|
||
Emacs directly supports the Unicode BMP whose code points are in the
|
||
ranges 0000-33ff and e000-ffff, and indirectly supports the parts of
|
||
CJK characters belonging to these legacy charsets:
|
||
|
||
GB2312, Big5, JISX0208, JISX0212, JISX0213-1, JISX0213-2, KSC5601
|
||
|
||
The latter support is done in Utf-Translate-Cjk mode (turned on by
|
||
default). Which Unicode CJK characters are decoded into which Emacs
|
||
charset is decided by the current language environment. For instance,
|
||
in Chinese-GB, most of them are decoded into chinese-gb2312.
|
||
|
||
If you read UTF-8 data with code points outside these ranges, the
|
||
characters appear in the buffer as raw bytes of the original UTF-8
|
||
(composed into a single quasi-character) and they will be written back
|
||
correctly as UTF-8, assuming you don't break the composed sequences.
|
||
If you read such characters from UTF-16 or UTF-7 data, they are
|
||
substituted with the Unicode `replacement character', and you lose
|
||
information.
|
||
|
||
** Accented ISO-8859-1 characters are displayed as | or _.
|
||
|
||
Try other font set sizes (S-mouse-1). If the problem persists with
|
||
other sizes as well, your text is corrupted, probably through software
|
||
that is not 8-bit clean. If the problem goes away with another font
|
||
size, it's probably because some fonts pretend to be ISO-8859-1 fonts
|
||
when they are really ASCII fonts. In particular the schumacher-clean
|
||
fonts have this bug in some versions of X.
|
||
|
||
To see what glyphs are included in a font, use `xfd', like this:
|
||
|
||
xfd -fn -schumacher-clean-medium-r-normal--12-120-75-75-c-60-iso8859-1
|
||
|
||
If this shows only ASCII glyphs, the font is indeed the source of the problem.
|
||
|
||
The solution is to remove the corresponding lines from the appropriate
|
||
`fonts.alias' file, then run `mkfontdir' in that directory, and then run
|
||
`xset fp rehash'.
|
||
|
||
** The `oc-unicode' package doesn't work with Emacs 21.
|
||
|
||
This package tries to define more private charsets than there are free
|
||
slots now. The current built-in Unicode support is actually more
|
||
flexible. (Use option `utf-translate-cjk-mode' if you need CJK
|
||
support.) Files encoded as emacs-mule using oc-unicode aren't
|
||
generally read correctly by Emacs 21.
|
||
|
||
* X runtime problems
|
||
|
||
** X keyboard problems
|
||
|
||
*** You "lose characters" after typing Compose Character key.
|
||
|
||
This is because the Compose Character key is defined as the keysym
|
||
Multi_key, and Emacs (seeing that) does the proper X
|
||
character-composition processing. If you don't want your Compose key
|
||
to do that, you can redefine it with xmodmap.
|
||
|
||
For example, here's one way to turn it into a Meta key:
|
||
|
||
xmodmap -e "keysym Multi_key = Meta_L"
|
||
|
||
If all users at your site of a particular keyboard prefer Meta to
|
||
Compose, you can make the remapping happen automatically by adding the
|
||
xmodmap command to the xdm setup script for that display.
|
||
|
||
*** Using X Windows, control-shift-leftbutton makes Emacs hang.
|
||
|
||
Use the shell command `xset bc' to make the old X Menu package work.
|
||
|
||
*** C-SPC fails to work on Fedora GNU/Linux (or with fcitx input method).
|
||
|
||
Fedora Core 4 steals the C-SPC key by default for the `iiimx' program
|
||
which is the input method for some languages. It blocks Emacs users
|
||
from using the C-SPC key for `set-mark-command'.
|
||
|
||
One solutions is to remove the `<Ctrl>space' from the `Iiimx' file
|
||
which can be found in the `/usr/lib/X11/app-defaults' directory.
|
||
However, that requires root access.
|
||
|
||
Another is to specify `Emacs*useXIM: false' in your X resources.
|
||
|
||
Another is to build Emacs with the `--without-xim' configure option.
|
||
|
||
The same problem happens on any other system if you are using fcitx
|
||
(Chinese input method) which by default use C-SPC for toggling. If
|
||
you want to use fcitx with Emacs, you have two choices. Toggle fcitx
|
||
by another key (e.g. C-\) by modifying ~/.fcitx/config, or be
|
||
accustomed to use C-@ for `set-mark-command'.
|
||
|
||
*** Link-time optimization with clang doesn't work on Fedora 20.
|
||
|
||
As of May 2014, Fedora 20 has broken LLVMgold.so plugin support in clang
|
||
(tested with clang-3.4-6.fc20) - `clang --print-file-name=LLVMgold.so'
|
||
prints `LLVMgold.so' instead of full path to plugin shared library, and
|
||
`clang -flto' is unable to find the plugin with the following error:
|
||
|
||
/bin/ld: error: /usr/bin/../lib/LLVMgold.so: could not load plugin library:
|
||
/usr/bin/../lib/LLVMgold.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file
|
||
or directory
|
||
|
||
The only way to avoid this is to build your own clang from source code
|
||
repositories, as described at http://clang.llvm.org/get_started.html.
|
||
|
||
*** M-SPC seems to be ignored as input.
|
||
|
||
See if your X server is set up to use this as a command
|
||
for character composition.
|
||
|
||
*** The S-C-t key combination doesn't get passed to Emacs on X.
|
||
|
||
This happens because some X configurations assign the Ctrl-Shift-t
|
||
combination the same meaning as the Multi_key. The offending
|
||
definition is in the file `...lib/X11/locale/iso8859-1/Compose'; there
|
||
might be other similar combinations which are grabbed by X for similar
|
||
purposes.
|
||
|
||
We think that this can be countermanded with the `xmodmap' utility, if
|
||
you want to be able to bind one of these key sequences within Emacs.
|
||
|
||
*** Under X, C-v and/or other keys don't work.
|
||
|
||
These may have been intercepted by your window manager.
|
||
See the WM's documentation for how to change this.
|
||
|
||
*** Clicking C-mouse-2 in the scroll bar doesn't split the window.
|
||
|
||
This currently doesn't work with scroll-bar widgets (and we don't know
|
||
a good way of implementing it with widgets). If Emacs is configured
|
||
--without-toolkit-scroll-bars, C-mouse-2 on the scroll bar does work.
|
||
|
||
*** Inability to send an Alt-modified key, when Emacs is communicating
|
||
directly with an X server.
|
||
|
||
If you have tried to bind an Alt-modified key as a command, and it
|
||
does not work to type the command, the first thing you should check is
|
||
whether the key is getting through to Emacs. To do this, type C-h c
|
||
followed by the Alt-modified key. C-h c should say what kind of event
|
||
it read. If it says it read an Alt-modified key, then make sure you
|
||
have made the key binding correctly.
|
||
|
||
If C-h c reports an event that doesn't have the Alt modifier, it may
|
||
be because your X server has no key for the Alt modifier. The X
|
||
server that comes from MIT does not set up the Alt modifier by default.
|
||
|
||
If your keyboard has keys named Alt, you can enable them as follows:
|
||
|
||
xmodmap -e 'add mod2 = Alt_L'
|
||
xmodmap -e 'add mod2 = Alt_R'
|
||
|
||
If the keyboard has just one key named Alt, then only one of those
|
||
commands is needed. The modifier `mod2' is a reasonable choice if you
|
||
are using an unmodified MIT version of X. Otherwise, choose any
|
||
modifier bit not otherwise used.
|
||
|
||
If your keyboard does not have keys named Alt, you can use some other
|
||
keys. Use the keysym command in xmodmap to turn a function key (or
|
||
some other 'spare' key) into Alt_L or into Alt_R, and then use the
|
||
commands show above to make them modifier keys.
|
||
|
||
Note that if you have Alt keys but no Meta keys, Emacs translates Alt
|
||
into Meta. This is because of the great importance of Meta in Emacs.
|
||
|
||
** Window-manager and toolkit-related problems
|
||
|
||
*** Metacity: Resizing Emacs or ALT-Tab causes X to be unresponsive.
|
||
|
||
This happens sometimes when using Metacity. Resizing Emacs or ALT-Tab:bing
|
||
makes the system unresponsive to the mouse or the keyboard. Killing Emacs
|
||
or shifting out from X and back again usually cures it (i.e. Ctrl-Alt-F1
|
||
and then Alt-F7). A bug for it is here:
|
||
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/metacity/+bug/231034.
|
||
Note that a permanent fix seems to be to disable "assistive technologies".
|
||
|
||
*** Gnome: Emacs receives input directly from the keyboard, bypassing XIM.
|
||
|
||
This seems to happen when gnome-settings-daemon version 2.12 or later
|
||
is running. If gnome-settings-daemon is not running, Emacs receives
|
||
input through XIM without any problem. Furthermore, this seems only
|
||
to happen in *.UTF-8 locales; zh_CN.GB2312 and zh_CN.GBK locales, for
|
||
example, work fine. A bug report has been filed in the Gnome
|
||
bugzilla: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=357032
|
||
|
||
*** Gnome: Emacs's xterm-mouse-mode doesn't work on the Gnome terminal.
|
||
|
||
A symptom of this bug is that double-clicks insert a control sequence
|
||
into the buffer. The reason this happens is an apparent
|
||
incompatibility of the Gnome terminal with Xterm, which also affects
|
||
other programs using the Xterm mouse interface. A problem report has
|
||
been filed.
|
||
|
||
*** KDE: When running on KDE, colors or fonts are not as specified for Emacs,
|
||
or messed up.
|
||
|
||
For example, you could see background you set for Emacs only in the
|
||
empty portions of the Emacs display, while characters have some other
|
||
background.
|
||
|
||
This happens because KDE's defaults apply its color and font
|
||
definitions even to applications that weren't compiled for KDE. The
|
||
solution is to uncheck the "Apply fonts and colors to non-KDE apps"
|
||
option in Preferences->Look&Feel->Style (KDE 2). In KDE 3, this option
|
||
is in the "Colors" section, rather than "Style".
|
||
|
||
Alternatively, if you do want the KDE defaults to apply to other
|
||
applications, but not to Emacs, you could modify the file `Emacs.ad'
|
||
(should be in the `/usr/share/apps/kdisplay/app-defaults/' directory)
|
||
so that it doesn't set the default background and foreground only for
|
||
Emacs. For example, make sure the following resources are either not
|
||
present or commented out:
|
||
|
||
Emacs.default.attributeForeground
|
||
Emacs.default.attributeBackground
|
||
Emacs*Foreground
|
||
Emacs*Background
|
||
|
||
It is also reported that a bug in the gtk-engines-qt engine can cause this if
|
||
Emacs is compiled with Gtk+.
|
||
The bug is fixed in version 0.7 or newer of gtk-engines-qt.
|
||
|
||
*** KDE: Emacs hangs on KDE when a large portion of text is killed.
|
||
|
||
This is caused by a bug in the KDE applet `klipper' which periodically
|
||
requests the X clipboard contents from applications. Early versions
|
||
of klipper don't implement the ICCCM protocol for large selections,
|
||
which leads to Emacs being flooded with selection requests. After a
|
||
while, Emacs may print a message:
|
||
|
||
Timed out waiting for property-notify event
|
||
|
||
A workaround is to not use `klipper'. An upgrade to the `klipper' that
|
||
comes with KDE 3.3 or later also solves the problem.
|
||
|
||
*** CDE: Frames may cover dialogs they created when using CDE.
|
||
|
||
This can happen if you have "Allow Primary Windows On Top" enabled which
|
||
seems to be the default in the Common Desktop Environment.
|
||
To change, go in to "Desktop Controls" -> "Window Style Manager"
|
||
and uncheck "Allow Primary Windows On Top".
|
||
|
||
*** Xaw3d : When using Xaw3d scroll bars without arrows, the very first mouse
|
||
click in a scroll bar might be ignored by the scroll bar widget. This
|
||
is probably a bug in Xaw3d; when Xaw3d is compiled with arrows, the
|
||
problem disappears.
|
||
|
||
*** Xaw: There are known binary incompatibilities between Xaw, Xaw3d, neXtaw,
|
||
XawM and the few other derivatives of Xaw. So when you compile with
|
||
one of these, it may not work to dynamically link with another one.
|
||
For example, strange problems, such as Emacs exiting when you type
|
||
"C-x 1", were reported when Emacs compiled with Xaw3d and libXaw was
|
||
used with neXtaw at run time.
|
||
|
||
The solution is to rebuild Emacs with the toolkit version you actually
|
||
want to use, or set LD_PRELOAD to preload the same toolkit version you
|
||
built Emacs with.
|
||
|
||
*** Open Motif: Problems with file dialogs in Emacs built with Open Motif.
|
||
|
||
When Emacs 21 is built with Open Motif 2.1, it can happen that the
|
||
graphical file dialog boxes do not work properly. The "OK", "Filter"
|
||
and "Cancel" buttons do not respond to mouse clicks. Dragging the
|
||
file dialog window usually causes the buttons to work again.
|
||
|
||
As a workaround, you can try building Emacs using Motif or LessTif instead.
|
||
|
||
Another workaround is not to use the mouse to trigger file prompts,
|
||
but to use the keyboard. This way, you will be prompted for a file in
|
||
the minibuffer instead of a graphical file dialog.
|
||
|
||
*** LessTif: Problems in Emacs built with LessTif.
|
||
|
||
The problems seem to depend on the version of LessTif and the Motif
|
||
emulation for which it is set up.
|
||
|
||
Only the Motif 1.2 emulation seems to be stable enough in LessTif.
|
||
LessTif 0.92-17's Motif 1.2 emulation seems to work okay on FreeBSD.
|
||
On GNU/Linux systems, lesstif-0.92.6 configured with "./configure
|
||
--enable-build-12 --enable-default-12" is reported to be the most
|
||
successful. The binary GNU/Linux package
|
||
lesstif-devel-0.92.0-1.i386.rpm was reported to have problems with
|
||
menu placement.
|
||
|
||
On some systems, Emacs occasionally locks up, grabbing all mouse and
|
||
keyboard events. We don't know what causes these problems; they are
|
||
not reproducible by Emacs developers.
|
||
|
||
*** Motif: The Motif version of Emacs paints the screen a solid color.
|
||
|
||
This has been observed to result from the following X resource:
|
||
|
||
Emacs*default.attributeFont: -*-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-140-*-*-*-*-iso8859-*
|
||
|
||
That the resource has this effect indicates a bug in something, but we
|
||
do not know what. If it is an Emacs bug, we hope someone can
|
||
explain what the bug is so we can fix it. In the mean time, removing
|
||
the resource prevents the problem.
|
||
|
||
** General X problems
|
||
|
||
*** Redisplay using X is much slower than previous Emacs versions.
|
||
|
||
We've noticed that certain X servers draw the text much slower when
|
||
scroll bars are on the left. We don't know why this happens. If this
|
||
happens to you, you can work around it by putting the scroll bars
|
||
on the right (as they were in Emacs 19).
|
||
|
||
Here's how to do this:
|
||
|
||
(set-scroll-bar-mode 'right)
|
||
|
||
If you're not sure whether (or how much) this problem affects you,
|
||
try that and see how much difference it makes. To set things back
|
||
to normal, do
|
||
|
||
(set-scroll-bar-mode 'left)
|
||
|
||
*** Error messages about undefined colors on X.
|
||
|
||
The messages might say something like this:
|
||
|
||
Unable to load color "grey95"
|
||
|
||
(typically, in the `*Messages*' buffer), or something like this:
|
||
|
||
Error while displaying tooltip: (error Undefined color lightyellow)
|
||
|
||
These problems could happen if some other X program has used up too
|
||
many colors of the X palette, leaving Emacs with insufficient system
|
||
resources to load all the colors it needs.
|
||
|
||
A solution is to exit the offending X programs before starting Emacs.
|
||
|
||
"undefined color" messages can also occur if the RgbPath entry in the
|
||
X configuration file is incorrect, or the rgb.txt file is not where
|
||
X expects to find it.
|
||
|
||
*** Improving performance with slow X connections.
|
||
|
||
There are several ways to improve this performance, any subset of which can
|
||
be carried out at the same time:
|
||
|
||
1) If you don't need X Input Methods (XIM) for entering text in some
|
||
language you use, you can improve performance on WAN links by using
|
||
the X resource useXIM to turn off use of XIM. This does not affect
|
||
the use of Emacs's own input methods, which are part of the Leim
|
||
package.
|
||
|
||
2) If the connection is very slow, you might also want to consider
|
||
switching off scroll bars, menu bar, and tool bar. Adding the
|
||
following forms to your .emacs file will accomplish that, but only
|
||
after the initial frame is displayed:
|
||
|
||
(scroll-bar-mode -1)
|
||
(menu-bar-mode -1)
|
||
(tool-bar-mode -1)
|
||
|
||
For still quicker startup, put these X resources in your .Xdefaults
|
||
file:
|
||
|
||
Emacs.verticalScrollBars: off
|
||
Emacs.menuBar: off
|
||
Emacs.toolBar: off
|
||
|
||
3) Use ssh to forward the X connection, and enable compression on this
|
||
forwarded X connection (ssh -XC remotehostname emacs ...).
|
||
|
||
4) Use lbxproxy on the remote end of the connection. This is an interface
|
||
to the low bandwidth X extension in most modern X servers, which
|
||
improves performance dramatically, at the slight expense of correctness
|
||
of the X protocol. lbxproxy achieves the performance gain by grouping
|
||
several X requests in one TCP packet and sending them off together,
|
||
instead of requiring a round-trip for each X request in a separate
|
||
packet. The switches that seem to work best for emacs are:
|
||
-noatomsfile -nowinattr -cheaterrors -cheatevents
|
||
Note that the -nograbcmap option is known to cause problems.
|
||
For more about lbxproxy, see:
|
||
http://www.xfree86.org/4.3.0/lbxproxy.1.html
|
||
|
||
5) If copying and killing is slow, try to disable the interaction with the
|
||
native system's clipboard by adding these lines to your .emacs file:
|
||
(setq interprogram-cut-function nil)
|
||
(setq interprogram-paste-function nil)
|
||
|
||
*** Emacs gives the error, Couldn't find per display information.
|
||
|
||
This can result if the X server runs out of memory because Emacs uses
|
||
a large number of fonts. On systems where this happens, C-h h is
|
||
likely to cause it.
|
||
|
||
We do not know of a way to prevent the problem.
|
||
|
||
*** Emacs does not notice when you release the mouse.
|
||
|
||
There are reports that this happened with (some) Microsoft mice and
|
||
that replacing the mouse made it stop.
|
||
|
||
*** You can't select from submenus (in the X toolkit version).
|
||
|
||
On certain systems, mouse-tracking and selection in top-level menus
|
||
works properly with the X toolkit, but neither of them works when you
|
||
bring up a submenu (such as Bookmarks or Compare or Apply Patch, in
|
||
the Files menu).
|
||
|
||
This works on most systems. There is speculation that the failure is
|
||
due to bugs in old versions of X toolkit libraries, but no one really
|
||
knows. If someone debugs this and finds the precise cause, perhaps a
|
||
workaround can be found.
|
||
|
||
*** An error message such as `X protocol error: BadMatch (invalid
|
||
parameter attributes) on protocol request 93'.
|
||
|
||
This comes from having an invalid X resource, such as
|
||
emacs*Cursor: black
|
||
(which is invalid because it specifies a color name for something
|
||
that isn't a color.)
|
||
|
||
The fix is to correct your X resources.
|
||
|
||
*** Slow startup on X11R6 with X windows.
|
||
|
||
If Emacs takes two minutes to start up on X11R6, see if your X
|
||
resources specify any Adobe fonts. That causes the type-1 font
|
||
renderer to start up, even if the font you asked for is not a type-1
|
||
font.
|
||
|
||
One way to avoid this problem is to eliminate the type-1 fonts from
|
||
your font path, like this:
|
||
|
||
xset -fp /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/
|
||
|
||
*** Pull-down menus appear in the wrong place, in the toolkit version of Emacs.
|
||
|
||
An X resource of this form can cause the problem:
|
||
|
||
Emacs*geometry: 80x55+0+0
|
||
|
||
This resource is supposed to apply, and does apply, to the menus
|
||
individually as well as to Emacs frames. If that is not what you
|
||
want, rewrite the resource.
|
||
|
||
To check thoroughly for such resource specifications, use `xrdb
|
||
-query' to see what resources the X server records, and also look at
|
||
the user's ~/.Xdefaults and ~/.Xdefaults-* files.
|
||
|
||
*** Emacs running under X Windows does not handle mouse clicks.
|
||
*** `emacs -geometry 80x20' finds a file named `80x20'.
|
||
|
||
One cause of such problems is having (setq term-file-prefix nil) in
|
||
your .emacs file. Another cause is a bad value of EMACSLOADPATH in
|
||
the environment.
|
||
|
||
*** X Windows doesn't work if DISPLAY uses a hostname.
|
||
|
||
People have reported kernel bugs in certain systems that cause Emacs
|
||
not to work with X Windows if DISPLAY is set using a host name. But
|
||
the problem does not occur if DISPLAY is set to `unix:0.0'. I think
|
||
the bug has to do with SIGIO or FIONREAD.
|
||
|
||
You may be able to compensate for the bug by doing (set-input-mode nil nil).
|
||
However, that has the disadvantage of turning off interrupts, so that
|
||
you are unable to quit out of a Lisp program by typing C-g.
|
||
|
||
*** Prevent double pastes in X
|
||
|
||
The problem: a region, such as a command, is pasted twice when you copy
|
||
it with your mouse from GNU Emacs to an xterm or an RXVT shell in X.
|
||
The solution: try the following in your X configuration file,
|
||
/etc/X11/xorg.conf This should enable both PS/2 and USB mice for
|
||
single copies. You do not need any other drivers or options.
|
||
|
||
Section "InputDevice"
|
||
Identifier "Generic Mouse"
|
||
Driver "mousedev"
|
||
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
|
||
EndSection
|
||
|
||
*** Emacs is slow to exit in X
|
||
|
||
After you use e.g. C-x C-c to exit, it takes many seconds before the
|
||
Emacs window disappears. If Emacs was started from a terminal, you
|
||
see the message:
|
||
|
||
Error saving to X clipboard manager.
|
||
If the problem persists, set `x-select-enable-clipboard-manager' to nil.
|
||
|
||
As the message suggests, this problem occurs when Emacs thinks you
|
||
have a clipboard manager program running, but has trouble contacting it.
|
||
If you don't want to use a clipboard manager, you can set the
|
||
suggested variable. Or you can make Emacs not wait so long by
|
||
reducing the value of `x-selection-timeout', either in .emacs or with
|
||
X resources.
|
||
|
||
Sometimes this problem is due to a bug in your clipboard manager.
|
||
Updating to the latest version of the manager can help.
|
||
For example, in the Xfce 4.8 desktop environment, the clipboard
|
||
manager in versions of xfce4-settings-helper before 4.8.2 is buggy;
|
||
https://bugzilla.xfce.org/show_bug.cgi?id=7588 .
|
||
|
||
*** Warning messages when running in Ubuntu
|
||
|
||
When you start Emacs you may see something like this:
|
||
|
||
(emacs:2286): LIBDBUSMENU-GTK-CRITICAL **: watch_submenu: assertion
|
||
`GTK_IS_MENU_SHELL(menu)' failed
|
||
|
||
This happens if the Emacs binary has been renamed. The cause is the Ubuntu
|
||
appmenu concept. It tries to track Emacs menus and show them in the top
|
||
panel, instead of in each Emacs window. This is not properly implemented,
|
||
so it fails for Emacs. The order of menus is wrong, and things like copy/paste
|
||
that depend on what state Emacs is in are usually wrong (i.e. paste disabled
|
||
even if you should be able to paste, and similar).
|
||
|
||
You can get back menus on each frame by starting emacs like this:
|
||
% env UBUNTU_MENUPROXY= emacs
|
||
|
||
* Runtime problems on character terminals
|
||
|
||
** The meta key does not work on xterm.
|
||
|
||
Typing M-x rings the terminal bell, and inserts a string like ";120~".
|
||
For recent xterm versions (>= 216), Emacs uses xterm's modifyOtherKeys
|
||
feature to generate strings for key combinations that are not
|
||
otherwise usable. One circumstance in which this can cause problems
|
||
is if you have specified the X resource
|
||
|
||
xterm*VT100.Translations
|
||
|
||
to contain translations that use the meta key. Then xterm will not
|
||
use meta in modified function-keys, which confuses Emacs. To fix
|
||
this, you can remove the X resource or put this in your init file:
|
||
|
||
(xterm-remove-modify-other-keys)
|
||
|
||
** Emacs spontaneously displays "I-search: " at the bottom of the screen.
|
||
|
||
This means that Control-S/Control-Q (XON/XOFF) "flow control" is being
|
||
used. C-s/C-q flow control is bad for Emacs editors because it takes
|
||
away C-s and C-q as user commands. Since editors do not output long
|
||
streams of text without user commands, there is no need for a
|
||
user-issuable "stop output" command in an editor; therefore, a
|
||
properly designed flow control mechanism would transmit all possible
|
||
input characters without interference. Designing such a mechanism is
|
||
easy, for a person with at least half a brain.
|
||
|
||
There are three possible reasons why flow control could be taking place:
|
||
|
||
1) Terminal has not been told to disable flow control
|
||
2) Insufficient padding for the terminal in use
|
||
3) Some sort of terminal concentrator or line switch is responsible
|
||
|
||
First of all, many terminals have a set-up mode which controls whether
|
||
they generate XON/XOFF flow control characters. This must be set to
|
||
"no XON/XOFF" in order for Emacs to work. (For example, on a VT220
|
||
you may select "No XOFF" in the setup menu.) Sometimes there is an
|
||
escape sequence that the computer can send to turn flow control off
|
||
and on. If so, perhaps the termcap `ti' string should turn flow
|
||
control off, and the `te' string should turn it on.
|
||
|
||
Once the terminal has been told "no flow control", you may find it
|
||
needs more padding. The amount of padding Emacs sends is controlled
|
||
by the termcap entry for the terminal in use, and by the output baud
|
||
rate as known by the kernel. The shell command `stty' will print
|
||
your output baud rate; `stty' with suitable arguments will set it if
|
||
it is wrong. Setting to a higher speed causes increased padding. If
|
||
the results are wrong for the correct speed, there is probably a
|
||
problem in the termcap entry. You must speak to a local Unix wizard
|
||
to fix this. Perhaps you are just using the wrong terminal type.
|
||
|
||
For terminals that lack a "no flow control" mode, sometimes just
|
||
giving lots of padding will prevent actual generation of flow control
|
||
codes. You might as well try it.
|
||
|
||
If you are really unlucky, your terminal is connected to the computer
|
||
through a concentrator which sends XON/XOFF flow control to the
|
||
computer, or it insists on sending flow control itself no matter how
|
||
much padding you give it. Unless you can figure out how to turn flow
|
||
control off on this concentrator (again, refer to your local wizard),
|
||
you are screwed! You should have the terminal or concentrator
|
||
replaced with a properly designed one. In the mean time, some drastic
|
||
measures can make Emacs semi-work.
|
||
|
||
You can make Emacs ignore C-s and C-q and let the operating system
|
||
handle them. To do this on a per-session basis, just type M-x
|
||
enable-flow-control RET. You will see a message that C-\ and C-^ are
|
||
now translated to C-s and C-q. (Use the same command M-x
|
||
enable-flow-control to turn *off* this special mode. It toggles flow
|
||
control handling.)
|
||
|
||
If C-\ and C-^ are inconvenient for you (for example, if one of them
|
||
is the escape character of your terminal concentrator), you can choose
|
||
other characters by setting the variables flow-control-c-s-replacement
|
||
and flow-control-c-q-replacement. But choose carefully, since all
|
||
other control characters are already used by emacs.
|
||
|
||
IMPORTANT: if you type C-s by accident while flow control is enabled,
|
||
Emacs output will freeze, and you will have to remember to type C-q in
|
||
order to continue.
|
||
|
||
If you work in an environment where a majority of terminals of a
|
||
certain type are flow control hobbled, you can use the function
|
||
`enable-flow-control-on' to turn on this flow control avoidance scheme
|
||
automatically. Here is an example:
|
||
|
||
(enable-flow-control-on "vt200" "vt300" "vt101" "vt131")
|
||
|
||
If this isn't quite correct (e.g. you have a mixture of flow-control hobbled
|
||
and good vt200 terminals), you can still run enable-flow-control
|
||
manually.
|
||
|
||
I have no intention of ever redesigning the Emacs command set for the
|
||
assumption that terminals use C-s/C-q flow control. XON/XOFF flow
|
||
control technique is a bad design, and terminals that need it are bad
|
||
merchandise and should not be purchased. Now that X is becoming
|
||
widespread, XON/XOFF seems to be on the way out. If you can get some
|
||
use out of GNU Emacs on inferior terminals, more power to you, but I
|
||
will not make Emacs worse for properly designed systems for the sake
|
||
of inferior systems.
|
||
|
||
** Control-S and Control-Q commands are ignored completely.
|
||
|
||
For some reason, your system is using brain-damaged C-s/C-q flow
|
||
control despite Emacs's attempts to turn it off. Perhaps your
|
||
terminal is connected to the computer through a concentrator
|
||
that wants to use flow control.
|
||
|
||
You should first try to tell the concentrator not to use flow control.
|
||
If you succeed in this, try making the terminal work without
|
||
flow control, as described in the preceding section.
|
||
|
||
If that line of approach is not successful, map some other characters
|
||
into C-s and C-q using keyboard-translate-table. The example above
|
||
shows how to do this with C-^ and C-\.
|
||
|
||
** Screen is updated wrong, but only on one kind of terminal.
|
||
|
||
This could mean that the termcap entry you are using for that
|
||
terminal is wrong, or it could mean that Emacs has a bug handing
|
||
the combination of features specified for that terminal.
|
||
|
||
The first step in tracking this down is to record what characters
|
||
Emacs is sending to the terminal. Execute the Lisp expression
|
||
(open-termscript "./emacs-script") to make Emacs write all
|
||
terminal output into the file ~/emacs-script as well; then do
|
||
what makes the screen update wrong, and look at the file
|
||
and decode the characters using the manual for the terminal.
|
||
There are several possibilities:
|
||
|
||
1) The characters sent are correct, according to the terminal manual.
|
||
|
||
In this case, there is no obvious bug in Emacs, and most likely you
|
||
need more padding, or possibly the terminal manual is wrong.
|
||
|
||
2) The characters sent are incorrect, due to an obscure aspect
|
||
of the terminal behavior not described in an obvious way by termcap.
|
||
|
||
This case is hard. It will be necessary to think of a way for
|
||
Emacs to distinguish between terminals with this kind of behavior
|
||
and other terminals that behave subtly differently but are
|
||
classified the same by termcap; or else find an algorithm for
|
||
Emacs to use that avoids the difference. Such changes must be
|
||
tested on many kinds of terminals.
|
||
|
||
3) The termcap entry is wrong.
|
||
|
||
See the file etc/TERMS for information on changes
|
||
that are known to be needed in commonly used termcap entries
|
||
for certain terminals.
|
||
|
||
4) The characters sent are incorrect, and clearly cannot be
|
||
right for any terminal with the termcap entry you were using.
|
||
|
||
This is unambiguously an Emacs bug, and can probably be fixed
|
||
in termcap.c, tparam.c, term.c, scroll.c, cm.c or dispnew.c.
|
||
|
||
** Control-S and Control-Q commands are ignored completely on a net connection.
|
||
|
||
Some versions of rlogin (and possibly telnet) do not pass flow
|
||
control characters to the remote system to which they connect.
|
||
On such systems, emacs on the remote system cannot disable flow
|
||
control on the local system. Sometimes `rlogin -8' will avoid this problem.
|
||
|
||
One way to cure this is to disable flow control on the local host
|
||
(the one running rlogin, not the one running rlogind) using the
|
||
stty command, before starting the rlogin process. On many systems,
|
||
"stty start u stop u" will do this. On some systems, use
|
||
"stty -ixon" instead.
|
||
|
||
Some versions of tcsh will prevent even this from working. One way
|
||
around this is to start another shell before starting rlogin, and
|
||
issue the stty command to disable flow control from that shell.
|
||
|
||
If none of these methods work, the best solution is to type
|
||
M-x enable-flow-control at the beginning of your emacs session, or
|
||
if you expect the problem to continue, add a line such as the
|
||
following to your .emacs (on the host running rlogind):
|
||
|
||
(enable-flow-control-on "vt200" "vt300" "vt101" "vt131")
|
||
|
||
See the entry about spontaneous display of I-search (above) for more info.
|
||
|
||
** Output from Control-V is slow.
|
||
|
||
On many bit-map terminals, scrolling operations are fairly slow.
|
||
Often the termcap entry for the type of terminal in use fails
|
||
to inform Emacs of this. The two lines at the bottom of the screen
|
||
before a Control-V command are supposed to appear at the top after
|
||
the Control-V command. If Emacs thinks scrolling the lines is fast,
|
||
it will scroll them to the top of the screen.
|
||
|
||
If scrolling is slow but Emacs thinks it is fast, the usual reason is
|
||
that the termcap entry for the terminal you are using does not
|
||
specify any padding time for the `al' and `dl' strings. Emacs
|
||
concludes that these operations take only as much time as it takes to
|
||
send the commands at whatever line speed you are using. You must
|
||
fix the termcap entry to specify, for the `al' and `dl', as much
|
||
time as the operations really take.
|
||
|
||
Currently Emacs thinks in terms of serial lines which send characters
|
||
at a fixed rate, so that any operation which takes time for the
|
||
terminal to execute must also be padded. With bit-map terminals
|
||
operated across networks, often the network provides some sort of
|
||
flow control so that padding is never needed no matter how slow
|
||
an operation is. You must still specify a padding time if you want
|
||
Emacs to realize that the operation takes a long time. This will
|
||
cause padding characters to be sent unnecessarily, but they do
|
||
not really cost much. They will be transmitted while the scrolling
|
||
is happening and then discarded quickly by the terminal.
|
||
|
||
Most bit-map terminals provide commands for inserting or deleting
|
||
multiple lines at once. Define the `AL' and `DL' strings in the
|
||
termcap entry to say how to do these things, and you will have
|
||
fast output without wasted padding characters. These strings should
|
||
each contain a single %-spec saying how to send the number of lines
|
||
to be scrolled. These %-specs are like those in the termcap
|
||
`cm' string.
|
||
|
||
You should also define the `IC' and `DC' strings if your terminal
|
||
has a command to insert or delete multiple characters. These
|
||
take the number of positions to insert or delete as an argument.
|
||
|
||
A `cs' string to set the scrolling region will reduce the amount
|
||
of motion you see on the screen when part of the screen is scrolled.
|
||
|
||
** You type Control-H (Backspace) expecting to delete characters.
|
||
|
||
Put `stty dec' in your .login file and your problems will disappear
|
||
after a day or two.
|
||
|
||
The choice of Backspace for erasure was based on confusion, caused by
|
||
the fact that backspacing causes erasure (later, when you type another
|
||
character) on most display terminals. But it is a mistake. Deletion
|
||
of text is not the same thing as backspacing followed by failure to
|
||
overprint. I do not wish to propagate this confusion by conforming
|
||
to it.
|
||
|
||
For this reason, I believe `stty dec' is the right mode to use,
|
||
and I have designed Emacs to go with that. If there were a thousand
|
||
other control characters, I would define Control-h to delete as well;
|
||
but there are not very many other control characters, and I think
|
||
that providing the most mnemonic possible Help character is more
|
||
important than adapting to people who don't use `stty dec'.
|
||
|
||
If you are obstinate about confusing buggy overprinting with deletion,
|
||
you can redefine Backspace in your .emacs file:
|
||
(global-set-key "\b" 'delete-backward-char)
|
||
You can probably access help-command via f1.
|
||
|
||
** Colors are not available on a tty or in xterm.
|
||
|
||
Emacs 21 supports colors on character terminals and terminal
|
||
emulators, but this support relies on the terminfo or termcap database
|
||
entry to specify that the display supports color. Emacs looks at the
|
||
"Co" capability for the terminal to find out how many colors are
|
||
supported; it should be non-zero to activate the color support within
|
||
Emacs. (Most color terminals support 8 or 16 colors.) If your system
|
||
uses terminfo, the name of the capability equivalent to "Co" is
|
||
"colors".
|
||
|
||
In addition to the "Co" capability, Emacs needs the "op" (for
|
||
``original pair'') capability, which tells how to switch the terminal
|
||
back to the default foreground and background colors. Emacs will not
|
||
use colors if this capability is not defined. If your terminal entry
|
||
doesn't provide such a capability, try using the ANSI standard escape
|
||
sequence \E[00m (that is, define a new termcap/terminfo entry and make
|
||
it use your current terminal's entry plus \E[00m for the "op"
|
||
capability).
|
||
|
||
Finally, the "NC" capability (terminfo name: "ncv") tells Emacs which
|
||
attributes cannot be used with colors. Setting this capability
|
||
incorrectly might have the effect of disabling colors; try setting
|
||
this capability to `0' (zero) and see if that helps.
|
||
|
||
Emacs uses the database entry for the terminal whose name is the value
|
||
of the environment variable TERM. With `xterm', a common terminal
|
||
entry that supports color is `xterm-color', so setting TERM's value to
|
||
`xterm-color' might activate the color support on an xterm-compatible
|
||
emulator.
|
||
|
||
Beginning with version 22.1, Emacs supports the --color command-line
|
||
option which may be used to force Emacs to use one of a few popular
|
||
modes for getting colors on a tty. For example, --color=ansi8 sets up
|
||
for using the ANSI-standard escape sequences that support 8 colors.
|
||
|
||
Some modes do not use colors unless you turn on the Font-lock mode.
|
||
Some people have long ago set their `~/.emacs' files to turn on
|
||
Font-lock on X only, so they won't see colors on a tty. The
|
||
recommended way of turning on Font-lock is by typing "M-x
|
||
global-font-lock-mode RET" or by customizing the variable
|
||
`global-font-lock-mode'.
|
||
|
||
** Unexpected characters inserted into the buffer when you start Emacs.
|
||
See e.g. <URL:http://debbugs.gnu.org/11129>
|
||
|
||
This can happen when you start Emacs in -nw mode in an Xterm.
|
||
For example, in the *scratch* buffer, you might see something like:
|
||
|
||
0;276;0c
|
||
|
||
This is more likely to happen if you are using Emacs over a slow
|
||
connection, and begin typing before Emacs is ready to respond.
|
||
|
||
This occurs when Emacs tries to query the terminal to see what
|
||
capabilities it supports, and gets confused by the answer.
|
||
To avoid it, set xterm-extra-capabilities to a value other than
|
||
`check' (the default). See that variable's documentation (in
|
||
term/xterm.el) for more details.
|
||
|
||
* Runtime problems specific to individual Unix variants
|
||
|
||
** GNU/Linux
|
||
|
||
*** GNU/Linux: Process output is corrupted.
|
||
|
||
There is a bug in Linux kernel 2.6.10 PTYs that can cause emacs to
|
||
read corrupted process output.
|
||
|
||
*** GNU/Linux: Remote access to CVS with SSH causes file corruption.
|
||
|
||
If you access a remote CVS repository via SSH, files may be corrupted
|
||
due to bad interaction between CVS, SSH, and libc.
|
||
|
||
To fix the problem, save the following script into a file, make it
|
||
executable, and set CVS_RSH environment variable to the file name of
|
||
the script:
|
||
|
||
#!/bin/bash
|
||
exec 2> >(exec cat >&2 2>/dev/null)
|
||
exec ssh "$@"
|
||
|
||
*** GNU/Linux: Truncated svn annotate output with SSH.
|
||
http://debbugs.gnu.org/7791
|
||
|
||
The symptoms are: you are accessing a svn repository over SSH.
|
||
You use vc-annotate on a large (several thousand line) file, and the
|
||
result is truncated around the 1000 line mark. It works fine with
|
||
other access methods (eg http), or from outside Emacs.
|
||
|
||
This may be a similar libc/SSH issue to the one mentioned above for CVS.
|
||
A similar workaround seems to be effective: create a script with the
|
||
same contents as the one used above for CVS_RSH, and set the SVN_SSH
|
||
environment variable to point to it.
|
||
|
||
*** GNU/Linux: After upgrading to a newer version of Emacs,
|
||
the Meta key stops working.
|
||
|
||
This was reported to happen on a GNU/Linux system distributed by
|
||
Mandrake. The reason is that the previous version of Emacs was
|
||
modified by Mandrake to make the Alt key act as the Meta key, on a
|
||
keyboard where the Windows key is the one which produces the Meta
|
||
modifier. A user who started using a newer version of Emacs, which
|
||
was not hacked by Mandrake, expected the Alt key to continue to act as
|
||
Meta, and was astonished when that didn't happen.
|
||
|
||
The solution is to find out what key on your keyboard produces the Meta
|
||
modifier, and use that key instead. Try all of the keys to the left
|
||
and to the right of the space bar, together with the `x' key, and see
|
||
which combination produces "M-x" in the echo area. You can also use
|
||
the `xmodmap' utility to show all the keys which produce a Meta
|
||
modifier:
|
||
|
||
xmodmap -pk | egrep -i "meta|alt"
|
||
|
||
A more convenient way of finding out which keys produce a Meta modifier
|
||
is to use the `xkbprint' utility, if it's available on your system:
|
||
|
||
xkbprint 0:0 /tmp/k.ps
|
||
|
||
This produces a PostScript file `/tmp/k.ps' with a picture of your
|
||
keyboard; printing that file on a PostScript printer will show what
|
||
keys can serve as Meta.
|
||
|
||
The `xkeycaps' also shows a visual representation of the current
|
||
keyboard settings. It also allows to modify them.
|
||
|
||
*** GNU/Linux: slow startup on Linux-based GNU systems.
|
||
|
||
People using systems based on the Linux kernel sometimes report that
|
||
startup takes 10 to 15 seconds longer than `usual'.
|
||
|
||
This is because Emacs looks up the host name when it starts.
|
||
Normally, this takes negligible time; the extra delay is due to
|
||
improper system configuration. This problem can occur for both
|
||
networked and non-networked machines.
|
||
|
||
Here is how to fix the configuration. It requires being root.
|
||
|
||
**** Networked Case.
|
||
|
||
First, make sure the files `/etc/hosts' and `/etc/host.conf' both
|
||
exist. The first line in the `/etc/hosts' file should look like this
|
||
(replace HOSTNAME with your host name):
|
||
|
||
127.0.0.1 HOSTNAME
|
||
|
||
Also make sure that the `/etc/host.conf' files contains the following
|
||
lines:
|
||
|
||
order hosts, bind
|
||
multi on
|
||
|
||
Any changes, permanent and temporary, to the host name should be
|
||
indicated in the `/etc/hosts' file, since it acts a limited local
|
||
database of addresses and names (e.g., some SLIP connections
|
||
dynamically allocate ip addresses).
|
||
|
||
**** Non-Networked Case.
|
||
|
||
The solution described in the networked case applies here as well.
|
||
However, if you never intend to network your machine, you can use a
|
||
simpler solution: create an empty `/etc/host.conf' file. The command
|
||
`touch /etc/host.conf' suffices to create the file. The `/etc/hosts'
|
||
file is not necessary with this approach.
|
||
|
||
*** GNU/Linux: Emacs on a tty switches the cursor to large blinking block.
|
||
|
||
This was reported to happen on some GNU/Linux systems which use
|
||
ncurses version 5.0, but could be relevant for other versions as well.
|
||
These versions of ncurses come with a `linux' terminfo entry, where
|
||
the "cvvis" capability (termcap "vs") is defined as "\E[?25h\E[?8c"
|
||
(show cursor, change size). This escape sequence switches on a
|
||
blinking hardware text-mode cursor whose size is a full character
|
||
cell. This blinking cannot be stopped, since a hardware cursor
|
||
always blinks.
|
||
|
||
A work-around is to redefine the "cvvis" capability so that it
|
||
enables a *software* cursor. The software cursor works by inverting
|
||
the colors of the character at point, so what you see is a block
|
||
cursor that doesn't blink. For this to work, you need to redefine
|
||
the "cnorm" capability as well, so that it operates on the software
|
||
cursor instead of the hardware cursor.
|
||
|
||
To this end, run "infocmp linux > linux-term", edit the file
|
||
`linux-term' to make both the "cnorm" and "cvvis" capabilities send
|
||
the sequence "\E[?25h\E[?17;0;64c", and then run "tic linux-term" to
|
||
produce a modified terminfo entry.
|
||
|
||
Alternatively, if you want a blinking underscore as your Emacs cursor,
|
||
change the "cvvis" capability to send the "\E[?25h\E[?0c" command.
|
||
|
||
** FreeBSD
|
||
|
||
*** FreeBSD: Getting a Meta key on the console.
|
||
|
||
By default, neither Alt nor any other key acts as a Meta key on
|
||
FreeBSD, but this can be changed using kbdcontrol(1). Dump the
|
||
current keymap to a file with the command
|
||
|
||
$ kbdcontrol -d >emacs.kbd
|
||
|
||
Edit emacs.kbd, and give the key you want to be the Meta key the
|
||
definition `meta'. For instance, if your keyboard has a ``Windows''
|
||
key with scan code 105, change the line for scan code 105 in emacs.kbd
|
||
to look like this
|
||
|
||
105 meta meta meta meta meta meta meta meta O
|
||
|
||
to make the Windows key the Meta key. Load the new keymap with
|
||
|
||
$ kbdcontrol -l emacs.kbd
|
||
|
||
** HP-UX
|
||
|
||
*** HP/UX : Shell mode gives the message, "`tty`: Ambiguous".
|
||
|
||
christos@theory.tn.cornell.edu says:
|
||
|
||
The problem is that in your .cshrc you have something that tries to
|
||
execute `tty`. If you are not running the shell on a real tty then
|
||
tty will print "not a tty". Csh expects one word in some places,
|
||
but tty is giving it back 3.
|
||
|
||
The solution is to add a pair of quotes around `tty` to make it a single
|
||
word:
|
||
|
||
if (`tty` == "/dev/console")
|
||
|
||
should be changed to:
|
||
|
||
if ("`tty`" == "/dev/console")
|
||
|
||
Even better, move things that set up terminal sections out of .cshrc
|
||
and into .login.
|
||
|
||
*** HP/UX: `Pid xxx killed due to text modification or page I/O error'.
|
||
|
||
On HP/UX, you can get that error when the Emacs executable is on an NFS
|
||
file system. HP/UX responds this way if it tries to swap in a page and
|
||
does not get a response from the server within a timeout whose default
|
||
value is just ten seconds.
|
||
|
||
If this happens to you, extend the timeout period.
|
||
|
||
*** HP/UX: The right Alt key works wrong on German HP keyboards (and perhaps
|
||
other non-English HP keyboards too).
|
||
|
||
This is because HP-UX defines the modifiers wrong in X. Here is a
|
||
shell script to fix the problem; be sure that it is run after VUE
|
||
configures the X server.
|
||
|
||
xmodmap 2> /dev/null - << EOF
|
||
keysym Alt_L = Meta_L
|
||
keysym Alt_R = Meta_R
|
||
EOF
|
||
|
||
xmodmap - << EOF
|
||
clear mod1
|
||
keysym Mode_switch = NoSymbol
|
||
add mod1 = Meta_L
|
||
keysym Meta_R = Mode_switch
|
||
add mod2 = Mode_switch
|
||
EOF
|
||
|
||
*** HP/UX: Emacs does not recognize the AltGr key.
|
||
|
||
To fix this, set up a file ~/.dt/sessions/sessionetc with executable
|
||
rights, containing this text:
|
||
|
||
--------------------------------
|
||
xmodmap 2> /dev/null - << EOF
|
||
keysym Alt_L = Meta_L
|
||
keysym Alt_R = Meta_R
|
||
EOF
|
||
|
||
xmodmap - << EOF
|
||
clear mod1
|
||
keysym Mode_switch = NoSymbol
|
||
add mod1 = Meta_L
|
||
keysym Meta_R = Mode_switch
|
||
add mod2 = Mode_switch
|
||
EOF
|
||
--------------------------------
|
||
|
||
*** HP/UX 11.0: Emacs makes HP/UX 11.0 crash.
|
||
|
||
This is a bug in HPUX; HPUX patch PHKL_16260 is said to fix it.
|
||
|
||
** AIX
|
||
|
||
*** AIX: Trouble using ptys.
|
||
|
||
People often install the pty devices on AIX incorrectly.
|
||
Use `smit pty' to reinstall them properly.
|
||
|
||
*** AIXterm: Your Delete key sends a Backspace to the terminal.
|
||
|
||
The solution is to include in your .Xdefaults the lines:
|
||
|
||
*aixterm.Translations: #override <Key>BackSpace: string(0x7f)
|
||
aixterm*ttyModes: erase ^?
|
||
|
||
This makes your Backspace key send DEL (ASCII 127).
|
||
|
||
*** AIX: If linking fails because libXbsd isn't found, check if you
|
||
are compiling with the system's `cc' and CFLAGS containing `-O5'. If
|
||
so, you have hit a compiler bug. Please make sure to re-configure
|
||
Emacs so that it isn't compiled with `-O5'.
|
||
|
||
*** AIX 4.3.x or 4.4: Compiling fails.
|
||
|
||
This could happen if you use /bin/c89 as your compiler, instead of
|
||
the default `cc'. /bin/c89 treats certain warnings, such as benign
|
||
redefinitions of macros, as errors, and fails the build. A solution
|
||
is to use the default compiler `cc'.
|
||
|
||
*** AIX 4: Some programs fail when run in a Shell buffer
|
||
with an error message like No terminfo entry for "unknown".
|
||
|
||
On AIX, many terminal type definitions are not installed by default.
|
||
`unknown' is one of them. Install the "Special Generic Terminal
|
||
Definitions" to make them defined.
|
||
|
||
** Solaris
|
||
|
||
We list bugs in current versions here. See also the section on legacy
|
||
systems.
|
||
|
||
*** On Solaris, C-x doesn't get through to Emacs when you use the console.
|
||
|
||
This is a Solaris feature (at least on Intel x86 cpus). Type C-r
|
||
C-r C-t, to toggle whether C-x gets through to Emacs.
|
||
|
||
*** Problem with remote X server on Suns.
|
||
|
||
On a Sun, running Emacs on one machine with the X server on another
|
||
may not work if you have used the unshared system libraries. This
|
||
is because the unshared libraries fail to use YP for host name lookup.
|
||
As a result, the host name you specify may not be recognized.
|
||
|
||
*** Solaris 2.6: Emacs crashes with SIGBUS or SIGSEGV on Solaris after you delete a frame.
|
||
|
||
We suspect that this is a bug in the X libraries provided by
|
||
Sun. There is a report that one of these patches fixes the bug and
|
||
makes the problem stop:
|
||
|
||
105216-01 105393-01 105518-01 105621-01 105665-01 105615-02 105216-02
|
||
105667-01 105401-08 105615-03 105621-02 105686-02 105736-01 105755-03
|
||
106033-01 105379-01 105786-01 105181-04 105379-03 105786-04 105845-01
|
||
105284-05 105669-02 105837-01 105837-02 105558-01 106125-02 105407-01
|
||
|
||
Another person using a newer system (kernel patch level Generic_105181-06)
|
||
suspects that the bug was fixed by one of these more recent patches:
|
||
|
||
106040-07 SunOS 5.6: X Input & Output Method patch
|
||
106222-01 OpenWindows 3.6: filemgr (ff.core) fixes
|
||
105284-12 Motif 1.2.7: sparc Runtime library patch
|
||
|
||
*** Solaris 7 or 8: Emacs reports a BadAtom error (from X)
|
||
|
||
This happens when Emacs was built on some other version of Solaris.
|
||
Rebuild it on Solaris 8.
|
||
|
||
*** When using M-x dbx with the SparcWorks debugger, the `up' and `down'
|
||
commands do not move the arrow in Emacs.
|
||
|
||
You can fix this by adding the following line to `~/.dbxinit':
|
||
|
||
dbxenv output_short_file_name off
|
||
|
||
*** On Solaris, CTRL-t is ignored by Emacs when you use
|
||
the fr.ISO-8859-15 locale (and maybe other related locales).
|
||
|
||
You can fix this by editing the file:
|
||
|
||
/usr/openwin/lib/locale/iso8859-15/Compose
|
||
|
||
Near the bottom there is a line that reads:
|
||
|
||
Ctrl<t> <quotedbl> <Y> : "\276" threequarters
|
||
|
||
that should read:
|
||
|
||
Ctrl<T> <quotedbl> <Y> : "\276" threequarters
|
||
|
||
Note the lower case <t>. Changing this line should make C-t work.
|
||
|
||
*** On Solaris, Emacs fails to set menu-bar-update-hook on startup, with error
|
||
"Error in menu-bar-update-hook: (error Point before start of properties)".
|
||
This seems to be a GCC optimization bug that occurs for GCC 4.1.2 (-g
|
||
and -g -O2) and GCC 4.2.3 (-g -O and -g -O2). You can fix this by
|
||
compiling with GCC 4.2.3 or CC 5.7, with no optimizations.
|
||
|
||
** Irix
|
||
|
||
*** Irix: Trouble using ptys, or running out of ptys.
|
||
|
||
The program mkpts (which may be in `/usr/adm' or `/usr/sbin') needs to
|
||
be set-UID to root, or non-root programs like Emacs will not be able
|
||
to allocate ptys reliably.
|
||
|
||
* Runtime problems specific to MS-Windows
|
||
|
||
** Emacs on Windows 9X requires UNICOWS.DLL
|
||
|
||
If that DLL is not available, Emacs will display an error dialog
|
||
stating its absence, and refuse to run.
|
||
|
||
This is because Emacs 24.4 and later uses functions whose non-stub
|
||
implementation is only available in UNICOWS.DLL, which implements the
|
||
Microsoft Layer for Unicode on Windows 9X, or "MSLU". This article on
|
||
MSDN:
|
||
|
||
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/goglobal/bb688166.aspx
|
||
|
||
includes a short description of MSLU and a link where it can be
|
||
downloaded.
|
||
|
||
** A few seconds delay is seen at startup and for many file operations
|
||
|
||
This happens when the Net Logon service is enabled. During Emacs
|
||
startup, this service issues many DNS requests looking up for the
|
||
Windows Domain Controller. When Emacs accesses files on networked
|
||
drives, it automatically logs on the user into those drives, which
|
||
again causes delays when Net Logon is running.
|
||
|
||
The solution seems to be to disable Net Logon with this command typed
|
||
at the Windows shell prompt:
|
||
|
||
net stop netlogon
|
||
|
||
To start the service again, type "net start netlogon". (You can also
|
||
stop and start the service from the Computer Management application,
|
||
accessible by right-clicking "My Computer" or "Computer", selecting
|
||
"Manage", then clicking on "Services".)
|
||
|
||
** Emacs crashes when exiting the Emacs session
|
||
|
||
This was reported to happen when some optional DLLs, such as those
|
||
used for displaying images or the GnuTLS library, which are loaded
|
||
on-demand, have a runtime dependency on the libgcc DLL,
|
||
libgcc_s_dw2-1.dll. The reason seems to be a bug in libgcc which
|
||
rears its ugly head whenever the libgcc DLL is loaded after Emacs has
|
||
started.
|
||
|
||
One solution for this problem is to find an alternative build of the
|
||
same optional library that does not depend on the libgcc DLL.
|
||
|
||
Another possibility is to rebuild Emacs with the -shared-libgcc
|
||
switch, which will force Emacs to load libgcc_s_dw2-1.dll on startup,
|
||
ahead of any optional DLLs loaded on-demand later in the session.
|
||
|
||
** PATH can contain unexpanded environment variables
|
||
|
||
Old releases of TCC (version 9) and 4NT (up to version 8) do not correctly
|
||
expand App Paths entries of type REG_EXPAND_SZ. When Emacs is run from TCC
|
||
and such an entry exists for emacs.exe, exec-path will contain the
|
||
unexpanded entry. This has been fixed in TCC 10. For more information,
|
||
see bug#2062.
|
||
|
||
** Setting w32-pass-rwindow-to-system and w32-pass-lwindow-to-system to nil
|
||
does not prevent the Start menu from popping up when the left or right
|
||
``Windows'' key is pressed.
|
||
|
||
This was reported to happen when XKeymacs is installed. At least with
|
||
XKeymacs Version 3.47, deactivating XKeymacs when Emacs is active is
|
||
not enough to avoid its messing with the keyboard input. Exiting
|
||
XKeymacs completely is reported to solve the problem.
|
||
|
||
** Windows 95 and networking.
|
||
|
||
To support server sockets, Emacs loads ws2_32.dll. If this file is
|
||
missing, all Emacs networking features are disabled.
|
||
|
||
Old versions of Windows 95 may not have the required DLL. To use
|
||
Emacs's networking features on Windows 95, you must install the
|
||
"Windows Socket 2" update available from MicroSoft's support Web.
|
||
|
||
** Emacs exits with "X protocol error" when run with an X server for MS-Windows.
|
||
|
||
A certain X server for Windows had a bug which caused this.
|
||
Supposedly the newer 32-bit version of this server doesn't have the
|
||
problem.
|
||
|
||
** Emacs crashes when opening a file with a UNC path and rails-mode is loaded.
|
||
|
||
Loading rails-mode seems to interfere with UNC path handling. This has been
|
||
reported as a bug against both Emacs and rails-mode, so look for an updated
|
||
rails-mode that avoids this crash, or avoid using UNC paths if using
|
||
rails-mode.
|
||
|
||
** M-x term does not work on MS-Windows.
|
||
|
||
TTY emulation on Windows is undocumented, and programs such as stty
|
||
which are used on posix platforms to control tty emulation do not
|
||
exist for native windows terminals.
|
||
|
||
** Using create-fontset-from-ascii-font or the --font startup parameter
|
||
with a Chinese, Japanese or Korean font leads to display problems.
|
||
Use a Latin-only font as your default font. If you want control over
|
||
which font is used to display Chinese, Japanese or Korean character,
|
||
use create-fontset-from-fontset-spec to define a fontset.
|
||
|
||
** Frames are not refreshed while dialogs or menus are displayed
|
||
|
||
This means no redisplay while the File or Font dialog or a pop-up menu
|
||
is displayed. This also means tooltips with help text for pop-up
|
||
menus is not displayed at all (except in a TTY session, where the help
|
||
text is shown in the echo area). This is because message handling
|
||
under Windows is synchronous, so we cannot handle repaint (or any
|
||
other) messages while waiting for a system function, which popped up
|
||
the menu/dialog, to return the result of the dialog or pop-up menu
|
||
interaction.
|
||
|
||
** Help text in tooltips does not work on old Windows versions
|
||
|
||
Windows 95 and Windows NT up to version 4.0 do not support help text
|
||
for menus. Help text is only available in later versions of Windows.
|
||
|
||
** Display problems with ClearType method of smoothing
|
||
|
||
When "ClearType" method is selected as the "method to smooth edges of
|
||
screen fonts" (in Display Properties, Appearance tab, under
|
||
"Effects"), there are various problems related to display of
|
||
characters: Bold fonts can be hard to read, small portions of some
|
||
characters could appear chopped, etc. This happens because, under
|
||
ClearType, characters are drawn outside their advertised bounding box.
|
||
Emacs 21 disabled the use of ClearType, whereas Emacs 22 allows it and
|
||
has some code to enlarge the width of the bounding box. Apparently,
|
||
this display feature needs more changes to get it 100% right. A
|
||
workaround is to disable ClearType.
|
||
|
||
** Problems with mouse-tracking and focus management
|
||
|
||
There are problems with display if mouse-tracking is enabled and the
|
||
mouse is moved off a frame, over another frame then back over the first
|
||
frame. A workaround is to click the left mouse button inside the frame
|
||
after moving back into it.
|
||
|
||
Some minor flickering still persists during mouse-tracking, although
|
||
not as severely as in 21.1.
|
||
|
||
An inactive cursor remains in an active window after the Windows
|
||
Manager driven switch of the focus, until a key is pressed.
|
||
|
||
** Problems with Windows input methods
|
||
|
||
Some of the Windows input methods cause the keyboard to send
|
||
characters encoded in the appropriate coding system (e.g., ISO 8859-1
|
||
for Latin-1 characters, ISO 8859-8 for Hebrew characters, etc.). To
|
||
make these input methods work with Emacs on Windows 9X, you might need
|
||
to set the keyboard coding system to the appropriate value after you
|
||
activate the Windows input method. For example, if you activate the
|
||
Hebrew input method, type this:
|
||
|
||
C-x RET k hebrew-iso-8bit RET
|
||
|
||
In addition, to use these Windows input methods, you might need to set
|
||
your "Language for non-Unicode programs" (on Windows XP, this is on
|
||
the Advanced tab of Regional Settings) to the language of the input
|
||
method.
|
||
|
||
To bind keys that produce non-ASCII characters with modifiers, you
|
||
must specify raw byte codes. For instance, if you want to bind
|
||
META-a-grave to a command, you need to specify this in your `~/.emacs':
|
||
|
||
(global-set-key [?\M-\340] ...)
|
||
|
||
The above example is for the Latin-1 environment where the byte code
|
||
of the encoded a-grave is 340 octal. For other environments, use the
|
||
encoding appropriate to that environment.
|
||
|
||
** Problems with the %b format specifier for format-time-string
|
||
|
||
The %b specifier for format-time-string does not produce abbreviated
|
||
month names with consistent widths for some locales on some versions
|
||
of Windows. This is caused by a deficiency in the underlying system
|
||
library function.
|
||
|
||
** Problems with set-time-zone-rule function
|
||
|
||
The function set-time-zone-rule gives incorrect results for many
|
||
non-US timezones. This is due to over-simplistic handling of
|
||
daylight savings switchovers by the Windows libraries.
|
||
|
||
** Files larger than 4GB report wrong size
|
||
|
||
Files larger than 4GB cause overflow in the size (represented as a
|
||
32-bit integer) reported by `file-attributes'. This affects Dired as
|
||
well, since the Windows port uses a Lisp emulation of `ls' that relies
|
||
on `file-attributes'.
|
||
|
||
** Playing sound doesn't support the :data method
|
||
|
||
Sound playing is not supported with the `:data DATA' key-value pair.
|
||
You _must_ use the `:file FILE' method.
|
||
|
||
** Typing Alt-Shift has strange effects on MS-Windows.
|
||
|
||
This combination of keys is a command to change keyboard layout. If
|
||
you proceed to type another non-modifier key before you let go of Alt
|
||
and Shift, the Alt and Shift act as modifiers in the usual way. A
|
||
more permanent work around is to change it to another key combination,
|
||
or disable it in the "Regional and Language Options" applet of the
|
||
Control Panel. (The exact sequence of mouse clicks in the "Regional
|
||
and Language Options" applet needed to find the key combination that
|
||
changes the keyboard layout depends on your Windows version; for XP,
|
||
in the Languages tab, click "Details" and then "Key Settings".)
|
||
|
||
** Interrupting Cygwin port of Bash from Emacs doesn't work.
|
||
|
||
Cygwin 1.x builds of the ported Bash cannot be interrupted from the
|
||
MS-Windows version of Emacs. This is due to some change in the Bash
|
||
port or in the Cygwin library which apparently make Bash ignore the
|
||
keyboard interrupt event sent by Emacs to Bash. (Older Cygwin ports
|
||
of Bash, up to b20.1, did receive SIGINT from Emacs.)
|
||
|
||
** Accessing remote files with ange-ftp hangs the MS-Windows version of Emacs.
|
||
|
||
If the FTP client is the Cygwin port of GNU `ftp', this appears to be
|
||
due to some bug in the Cygwin DLL or some incompatibility between it
|
||
and the implementation of asynchronous subprocesses in the Windows
|
||
port of Emacs. Specifically, some parts of the FTP server responses
|
||
are not flushed out, apparently due to buffering issues, which
|
||
confuses ange-ftp.
|
||
|
||
The solution is to downgrade to an older version of the Cygwin DLL
|
||
(version 1.3.2 was reported to solve the problem), or use the stock
|
||
Windows FTP client, usually found in the `C:\WINDOWS' or 'C:\WINNT'
|
||
directory. To force ange-ftp use the stock Windows client, set the
|
||
variable `ange-ftp-ftp-program-name' to the absolute file name of the
|
||
client's executable. For example:
|
||
|
||
(setq ange-ftp-ftp-program-name "c:/windows/ftp.exe")
|
||
|
||
If you want to stick with the Cygwin FTP client, you can work around
|
||
this problem by putting this in your `.emacs' file:
|
||
|
||
(setq ange-ftp-ftp-program-args '("-i" "-n" "-g" "-v" "--prompt" "")
|
||
|
||
** lpr commands don't work on MS-Windows with some cheap printers.
|
||
|
||
This problem may also strike other platforms, but the solution is
|
||
likely to be a global one, and not Emacs specific.
|
||
|
||
Many cheap inkjet, and even some cheap laser printers, do not
|
||
print plain text anymore, they will only print through graphical
|
||
printer drivers. A workaround on MS-Windows is to use Windows's basic
|
||
built in editor to print (this is possibly the only useful purpose it
|
||
has):
|
||
|
||
(setq printer-name "") ; notepad takes the default
|
||
(setq lpr-command "notepad") ; notepad
|
||
(setq lpr-switches nil) ; not needed
|
||
(setq lpr-printer-switch "/P") ; run notepad as batch printer
|
||
|
||
** Antivirus software interacts badly with the MS-Windows version of Emacs.
|
||
|
||
The usual manifestation of these problems is that subprocesses don't
|
||
work or even wedge the entire system. In particular, "M-x shell RET"
|
||
was reported to fail to work. But other commands also sometimes don't
|
||
work when an antivirus package is installed.
|
||
|
||
The solution is to switch the antivirus software to a less aggressive
|
||
mode (e.g., disable the ``auto-protect'' feature), or even uninstall
|
||
or disable it entirely.
|
||
|
||
** Pressing the mouse button on MS-Windows does not give a mouse-2 event.
|
||
|
||
This is usually a problem with the mouse driver. Because most Windows
|
||
programs do not do anything useful with the middle mouse button, many
|
||
mouse drivers allow you to define the wheel press to do something
|
||
different. Some drivers do not even have the option to generate a
|
||
middle button press. In such cases, setting the wheel press to
|
||
"scroll" sometimes works if you press the button twice. Trying a
|
||
generic mouse driver might help.
|
||
|
||
** Scrolling the mouse wheel on MS-Windows always scrolls the top window.
|
||
|
||
This is another common problem with mouse drivers. Instead of
|
||
generating scroll events, some mouse drivers try to fake scroll bar
|
||
movement. But they are not intelligent enough to handle multiple
|
||
scroll bars within a frame. Trying a generic mouse driver might help.
|
||
|
||
** Mail sent through Microsoft Exchange in some encodings appears to be
|
||
mangled and is not seen correctly in Rmail or Gnus. We don't know
|
||
exactly what happens, but it isn't an Emacs problem in cases we've
|
||
seen.
|
||
|
||
** On MS-Windows, you cannot use the right-hand ALT key and the left-hand
|
||
CTRL key together to type a Control-Meta character.
|
||
|
||
This is a consequence of a misfeature beyond Emacs's control.
|
||
|
||
Under Windows, the AltGr key on international keyboards generates key
|
||
events with the modifiers Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl. Since Emacs cannot
|
||
distinguish AltGr from an explicit Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl
|
||
combination, whenever it sees Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl it assumes that
|
||
AltGr has been pressed. The variable `w32-recognize-altgr' can be set
|
||
to nil to tell Emacs that AltGr is really Ctrl and Alt.
|
||
|
||
** Under some X-servers running on MS-Windows, Emacs's display is incorrect.
|
||
|
||
The symptoms are that Emacs does not completely erase blank areas of the
|
||
screen during scrolling or some other screen operations (e.g., selective
|
||
display or when killing a region). M-x recenter will cause the screen
|
||
to be completely redisplayed and the "extra" characters will disappear.
|
||
|
||
This is known to occur under Exceed 6, and possibly earlier versions
|
||
as well; it is reportedly solved in version 6.2.0.16 and later. The
|
||
problem lies in the X-server settings.
|
||
|
||
There are reports that you can solve the problem with Exceed by
|
||
running `Xconfig' from within NT, choosing "X selection", then
|
||
un-checking the boxes "auto-copy X selection" and "auto-paste to X
|
||
selection".
|
||
|
||
If this does not work, please inform bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org. Then
|
||
please call support for your X-server and see if you can get a fix.
|
||
If you do, please send it to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org so we can list it here.
|
||
|
||
* Build-time problems
|
||
|
||
** Configuration
|
||
|
||
*** `configure' warns ``accepted by the compiler, rejected by the preprocessor''.
|
||
|
||
This indicates a mismatch between the C compiler and preprocessor that
|
||
configure is using. For example, on Solaris 10 trying to use
|
||
CC=/opt/SUNWspro/bin/cc (the Sun Studio compiler) together with
|
||
CPP=/usr/ccs/lib/cpp can result in errors of this form (you may also
|
||
see the error ``"/usr/include/sys/isa_defs.h", line 500: undefined control'').
|
||
|
||
The solution is to tell configure to use the correct C preprocessor
|
||
for your C compiler (CPP="/opt/SUNWspro/bin/cc -E" in the above
|
||
example).
|
||
|
||
** Compilation
|
||
|
||
*** Building Emacs over NFS fails with ``Text file busy''.
|
||
|
||
This was reported to happen when building Emacs on a GNU/Linux system
|
||
(Red Hat Linux 6.2) using a build directory automounted from Solaris
|
||
(SunOS 5.6) file server, but it might not be limited to that
|
||
configuration alone. Presumably, the NFS server doesn't commit the
|
||
files' data to disk quickly enough, and the Emacs executable file is
|
||
left ``busy'' for several seconds after Emacs has finished dumping
|
||
itself. This causes the subsequent commands which invoke the dumped
|
||
Emacs executable to fail with the above message.
|
||
|
||
In some of these cases, a time skew between the NFS server and the
|
||
machine where Emacs is built is detected and reported by GNU Make
|
||
(it says that some of the files have modification time in the future).
|
||
This might be a symptom of NFS-related problems.
|
||
|
||
If the NFS server runs on Solaris, apply the Solaris patch 105379-05
|
||
(Sunos 5.6: /kernel/misc/nfssrv patch). If that doesn't work, or if
|
||
you have a different version of the OS or the NFS server, you can
|
||
force the NFS server to use 1KB blocks, which was reported to fix the
|
||
problem albeit at a price of slowing down file I/O. You can force 1KB
|
||
blocks by specifying the "-o rsize=1024,wsize=1024" options to the
|
||
`mount' command, or by adding ",rsize=1024,wsize=1024" to the mount
|
||
options in the appropriate system configuration file, such as
|
||
`/etc/auto.home'.
|
||
|
||
Alternatively, when Make fails due to this problem, you could wait for
|
||
a few seconds and then invoke Make again. In one particular case,
|
||
waiting for 10 or more seconds between the two Make invocations seemed
|
||
to work around the problem.
|
||
|
||
Similar problems can happen if your machine NFS-mounts a directory
|
||
onto itself. Suppose the Emacs sources live in `/usr/local/src' and
|
||
you are working on the host called `marvin'. Then an entry in the
|
||
`/etc/fstab' file like the following is asking for trouble:
|
||
|
||
marvin:/usr/local/src /usr/local/src ...options.omitted...
|
||
|
||
The solution is to remove this line from `etc/fstab'.
|
||
|
||
*** Building a 32-bit executable on a 64-bit GNU/Linux architecture.
|
||
|
||
First ensure that the necessary 32-bit system libraries and include
|
||
files are installed. Then use:
|
||
|
||
env CC="gcc -m32" ./configure --build=i386-linux-gnu --x-libraries=/usr/lib
|
||
|
||
(using the location of the 32-bit X libraries on your system).
|
||
|
||
*** Building Emacs for Cygwin can fail with GCC 3
|
||
|
||
As of Emacs 22.1, there have been stability problems with Cygwin
|
||
builds of Emacs using GCC 3. Cygwin users are advised to use GCC 4.
|
||
|
||
*** Building Emacs 23.3 and later will fail under Cygwin 1.5.19
|
||
|
||
This is a consequence of a change to src/dired.c on 2010-07-27. The
|
||
issue is that Cygwin 1.5.19 did not have d_ino in 'struct dirent'.
|
||
See
|
||
|
||
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2010-07/msg01266.html
|
||
|
||
*** Building the native MS-Windows port fails due to unresolved externals
|
||
|
||
The linker error messages look like this:
|
||
|
||
oo-spd/i386/ctags.o:ctags.c:(.text+0x156e): undefined reference to `_imp__re_set_syntax'
|
||
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
|
||
|
||
This happens because GCC finds an incompatible header regex.h
|
||
somewhere on the include path, before the version of regex.h supplied
|
||
with Emacs. One such incompatible version of regex.h is part of the
|
||
GnuWin32 Regex package.
|
||
|
||
The solution is to remove the incompatible regex.h from the include
|
||
path, when compiling Emacs. Alternatively, re-run the configure.bat
|
||
script with the "-isystem C:/GnuWin32/include" switch (adapt for your
|
||
system's place where you keep the GnuWin32 include files) -- this will
|
||
cause the compiler to search headers in the directories specified by
|
||
the Emacs Makefile _before_ it looks in the GnuWin32 include
|
||
directories.
|
||
|
||
*** Building the native MS-Windows port with Cygwin GCC can fail.
|
||
|
||
Emacs may not build using some Cygwin builds of GCC, such as Cygwin
|
||
version 1.1.8, using the default configure settings. It appears to be
|
||
necessary to specify the -mwin32 flag when compiling, and define
|
||
__MSVCRT__, like so:
|
||
|
||
configure --with-gcc --cflags -mwin32 --cflags -D__MSVCRT__
|
||
|
||
*** Building the MS-Windows port fails with a CreateProcess failure.
|
||
|
||
Some versions of mingw32 make on some versions of Windows do not seem
|
||
to detect the shell correctly. Try "make SHELL=cmd.exe", or if that
|
||
fails, try running make from Cygwin bash instead.
|
||
|
||
*** Building `ctags' for MS-Windows with the MinGW port of GCC fails.
|
||
|
||
This might happen due to a bug in the MinGW header assert.h, which
|
||
defines the `assert' macro with a trailing semi-colon. The following
|
||
patch to assert.h should solve this:
|
||
|
||
*** include/assert.h.orig Sun Nov 7 02:41:36 1999
|
||
--- include/assert.h Mon Jan 29 11:49:10 2001
|
||
***************
|
||
*** 41,47 ****
|
||
/*
|
||
* If not debugging, assert does nothing.
|
||
*/
|
||
! #define assert(x) ((void)0);
|
||
|
||
#else /* debugging enabled */
|
||
|
||
--- 41,47 ----
|
||
/*
|
||
* If not debugging, assert does nothing.
|
||
*/
|
||
! #define assert(x) ((void)0)
|
||
|
||
#else /* debugging enabled */
|
||
|
||
|
||
*** Building the MS-Windows port with Visual Studio 2005 fails.
|
||
|
||
Microsoft no longer ships the single threaded version of the C library
|
||
with their compiler, and the multithreaded static library is missing
|
||
some functions that Microsoft have deemed non-threadsafe. The
|
||
dynamically linked C library has all the functions, but there is a
|
||
conflict between the versions of malloc in the DLL and in Emacs, which
|
||
is not resolvable due to the way Windows does dynamic linking.
|
||
|
||
We recommend the use of the MinGW port of GCC for compiling Emacs, as
|
||
not only does it not suffer these problems, but it is also Free
|
||
software like Emacs.
|
||
|
||
*** Building the MS-Windows port with Visual Studio fails compiling emacs.rc
|
||
|
||
If the build fails with the following message then the problem
|
||
described here most likely applies:
|
||
|
||
../nt/emacs.rc(1) : error RC2176 : old DIB in icons\emacs.ico; pass it
|
||
through SDKPAINT
|
||
|
||
The Emacs icon contains a high resolution PNG icon for Vista, which is
|
||
not recognized by older versions of the resource compiler. There are
|
||
several workarounds for this problem:
|
||
1. Use Free MinGW tools to compile, which do not have this problem.
|
||
2. Install the latest Windows SDK.
|
||
3. Replace emacs.ico with an older or edited icon.
|
||
|
||
*** Building the MS-Windows port complains about unknown escape sequences.
|
||
|
||
Errors and warnings can look like this:
|
||
|
||
w32.c:1959:27: error: \x used with no following hex digits
|
||
w32.c:1959:27: warning: unknown escape sequence '\i'
|
||
|
||
This happens when paths using backslashes are passed to the compiler or
|
||
linker (via -I and possibly other compiler flags); when these paths are
|
||
included in source code, the backslashes are interpreted as escape sequences.
|
||
See http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2010-07/msg00995.html
|
||
|
||
The fix is to use forward slashes in all paths passed to the compiler.
|
||
|
||
** Linking
|
||
|
||
*** Building Emacs with a system compiler fails to link because of an
|
||
undefined symbol such as __eprintf which does not appear in Emacs.
|
||
|
||
This can happen if some of the libraries linked into Emacs were built
|
||
with GCC, but Emacs itself is being linked with a compiler other than
|
||
GCC. Object files compiled with GCC might need some helper functions
|
||
from libgcc.a, the library which comes with GCC, but the system
|
||
compiler does not instruct the linker to search libgcc.a during the
|
||
link stage.
|
||
|
||
A solution is to link with GCC, like this:
|
||
|
||
make CC=gcc
|
||
|
||
Since the .o object files already exist, this will not recompile Emacs
|
||
with GCC, but just restart by trying again to link temacs.
|
||
|
||
*** Sun with acc: Link failure when using acc on a Sun.
|
||
|
||
To use acc, you need additional options just before the libraries, such as
|
||
|
||
/usr/lang/SC2.0.1/values-Xt.o -L/usr/lang/SC2.0.1/cg87 -L/usr/lang/SC2.0.1
|
||
|
||
and you need to add -lansi just before -lc.
|
||
|
||
The precise file names depend on the compiler version, so we
|
||
cannot easily arrange to supply them.
|
||
|
||
*** `tparam' reported as a multiply-defined symbol when linking with ncurses.
|
||
|
||
This problem results from an incompatible change in ncurses, in
|
||
version 1.9.9e approximately. This version is unable to provide a
|
||
definition of tparm without also defining tparam. This is also
|
||
incompatible with Terminfo; as a result, the Emacs Terminfo support
|
||
does not work with this version of ncurses.
|
||
|
||
The fix is to install a newer version of ncurses, such as version 4.2.
|
||
|
||
** Bootstrapping
|
||
|
||
Bootstrapping (compiling the .el files) is normally only necessary
|
||
with development builds, since the .elc files are pre-compiled in releases.
|
||
|
||
*** "No rule to make target" with Ubuntu 8.04 make 3.81-3build1
|
||
|
||
Compiling the lisp files fails at random places, complaining:
|
||
"No rule to make target `/path/to/some/lisp.elc'".
|
||
The causes of this problem are not understood. Using GNU make 3.81 compiled
|
||
from source, rather than the Ubuntu version, worked.
|
||
See <URL:http://debbugs.gnu.org/327, <URL:http://debbugs.gnu.org/821>.
|
||
|
||
** Dumping
|
||
|
||
*** Segfault during `make bootstrap' under the Linux kernel.
|
||
|
||
In Red Hat Linux kernels, "Exec-shield" functionality is enabled by
|
||
default, which creates a different memory layout that can break the
|
||
emacs dumper. Emacs tries to handle this at build time, but if this
|
||
fails, the following instructions may be useful.
|
||
|
||
Exec-shield is enabled on your system if
|
||
|
||
cat /proc/sys/kernel/exec-shield
|
||
|
||
prints a value other than 0. (Please read your system documentation
|
||
for more details on Exec-shield and associated commands.)
|
||
|
||
Additionally, Linux kernel versions since 2.6.12 randomize the virtual
|
||
address space of a process by default. If this feature is enabled on
|
||
your system, then
|
||
|
||
cat /proc/sys/kernel/randomize_va_space
|
||
|
||
prints a value other than 0.
|
||
|
||
When these features are enabled, building Emacs may segfault during
|
||
the execution of this command:
|
||
|
||
./temacs --batch --load loadup [dump|bootstrap]
|
||
|
||
To work around this problem, you can temporarily disable these
|
||
features while building Emacs. You can do so using the following
|
||
commands (as root). Remember to re-enable them when you are done,
|
||
by echoing the original values back to the files.
|
||
|
||
echo 0 > /proc/sys/kernel/exec-shield
|
||
echo 0 > /proc/sys/kernel/randomize_va_space
|
||
|
||
Or, on x86, you can try using the `setarch' command when running
|
||
temacs, like this:
|
||
|
||
setarch i386 -R ./temacs --batch --load loadup [dump|bootstrap]
|
||
|
||
or
|
||
|
||
setarch i386 -R make
|
||
|
||
(The -R option disables address space randomization.)
|
||
|
||
*** temacs prints "Pure Lisp storage exhausted".
|
||
|
||
This means that the Lisp code loaded from the .elc and .el files during
|
||
`temacs --batch --load loadup dump' took up more space than was allocated.
|
||
|
||
This could be caused by
|
||
1) adding code to the preloaded Lisp files
|
||
2) adding more preloaded files in loadup.el
|
||
3) having a site-init.el or site-load.el which loads files.
|
||
Note that ANY site-init.el or site-load.el is nonstandard;
|
||
if you have received Emacs from some other site and it contains a
|
||
site-init.el or site-load.el file, consider deleting that file.
|
||
4) getting the wrong .el or .elc files
|
||
(not from the directory you expected).
|
||
5) deleting some .elc files that are supposed to exist.
|
||
This would cause the source files (.el files) to be
|
||
loaded instead. They take up more room, so you lose.
|
||
6) a bug in the Emacs distribution which underestimates the space required.
|
||
|
||
If the need for more space is legitimate, change the definition
|
||
of PURESIZE in puresize.h.
|
||
|
||
But in some of the cases listed above, this problem is a consequence
|
||
of something else that is wrong. Be sure to check and fix the real problem.
|
||
|
||
*** OpenBSD 4.0 macppc: Segfault during dumping.
|
||
|
||
The build aborts with signal 11 when the command `./temacs --batch
|
||
--load loadup bootstrap' tries to load files.el. A workaround seems
|
||
to be to reduce the level of compiler optimization used during the
|
||
build (from -O2 to -O1). It is possible this is an OpenBSD
|
||
GCC problem specific to the macppc architecture, possibly only
|
||
occurring with older versions of GCC (e.g. 3.3.5).
|
||
|
||
*** openSUSE 10.3: Segfault in bcopy during dumping.
|
||
|
||
This is due to a bug in the bcopy implementation in openSUSE 10.3.
|
||
It is/will be fixed in an openSUSE update.
|
||
|
||
** First execution
|
||
|
||
*** Emacs binary is not in executable format, and cannot be run.
|
||
|
||
This was reported to happen when Emacs is built in a directory mounted
|
||
via NFS, for some combinations of NFS client and NFS server.
|
||
Usually, the file `emacs' produced in these cases is full of
|
||
binary null characters, and the `file' utility says:
|
||
|
||
emacs: ASCII text, with no line terminators
|
||
|
||
We don't know what exactly causes this failure. A work-around is to
|
||
build Emacs in a directory on a local disk.
|
||
|
||
*** The dumped Emacs crashes when run, trying to write pure data.
|
||
|
||
On a system where getpagesize is not a system call, it is defined
|
||
as a macro. If the definition (in both unex*.c and malloc.c) is wrong,
|
||
it can cause problems like this. You might be able to find the correct
|
||
value in the man page for a.out (5).
|
||
|
||
* Problems on legacy systems
|
||
|
||
This section covers bugs reported on very old hardware or software.
|
||
If you are using hardware and an operating system shipped after 2000,
|
||
it is unlikely you will see any of these.
|
||
|
||
*** Solaris 2.x
|
||
|
||
**** Strange results from format %d in a few cases, on a Sun.
|
||
|
||
Sun compiler version SC3.0 has been found to miscompile part of editfns.c.
|
||
The workaround is to compile with some other compiler such as GCC.
|
||
|
||
**** On Solaris, Emacs dumps core if lisp-complete-symbol is called.
|
||
|
||
If you compile Emacs with the -fast or -xO4 option with version 3.0.2
|
||
of the Sun C compiler, Emacs dumps core when lisp-complete-symbol is
|
||
called. The problem does not happen if you compile with GCC.
|
||
|
||
**** On Solaris, Emacs crashes if you use (display-time).
|
||
|
||
This can happen if you configure Emacs without specifying the precise
|
||
version of Solaris that you are using.
|
||
|
||
**** Solaris 2.x: GCC complains "64 bit integer types not supported".
|
||
|
||
This suggests that GCC is not installed correctly. Most likely you
|
||
are using GCC 2.7.2.3 (or earlier) on Solaris 2.6 (or later); this
|
||
does not work without patching. To run GCC 2.7.2.3 on Solaris 2.6 or
|
||
later, you must patch fixinc.svr4 and reinstall GCC from scratch as
|
||
described in the Solaris FAQ
|
||
<http://www.wins.uva.nl/pub/solaris/solaris2.html>. A better fix is
|
||
to upgrade to GCC 2.8.1 or later.
|
||
|
||
**** Solaris 2.7: Building Emacs with WorkShop Compilers 5.0 98/12/15
|
||
C 5.0 failed, apparently with non-default CFLAGS, most probably due to
|
||
compiler bugs. Using Sun Solaris 2.7 Sun WorkShop 6 update 1 C
|
||
release was reported to work without problems. It worked OK on
|
||
another system with Solaris 8 using apparently the same 5.0 compiler
|
||
and the default CFLAGS.
|
||
|
||
**** Solaris 2.x: Emacs dumps core when built with Motif.
|
||
|
||
The Solaris Motif libraries are buggy, at least up through Solaris 2.5.1.
|
||
Install the current Motif runtime library patch appropriate for your host.
|
||
(Make sure the patch is current; some older patch versions still have the bug.)
|
||
You should install the other patches recommended by Sun for your host, too.
|
||
You can obtain Sun patches from ftp://sunsolve.sun.com/pub/patches/;
|
||
look for files with names ending in `.PatchReport' to see which patches
|
||
are currently recommended for your host.
|
||
|
||
On Solaris 2.6, Emacs is said to work with Motif when Solaris patch
|
||
105284-12 is installed, but fail when 105284-15 is installed.
|
||
105284-18 might fix it again.
|
||
|
||
**** Solaris 2.6 and 7: the Compose key does not work.
|
||
|
||
This is a bug in Motif in Solaris. Supposedly it has been fixed for
|
||
the next major release of Solaris. However, if someone with Sun
|
||
support complains to Sun about the bug, they may release a patch.
|
||
If you do this, mention Sun bug #4188711.
|
||
|
||
One workaround is to use a locale that allows non-ASCII characters.
|
||
For example, before invoking emacs, set the LC_ALL environment
|
||
variable to "en_US" (American English). The directory /usr/lib/locale
|
||
lists the supported locales; any locale other than "C" or "POSIX"
|
||
should do.
|
||
|
||
pen@lysator.liu.se says (Feb 1998) that the Compose key does work
|
||
if you link with the MIT X11 libraries instead of the Solaris X11 libraries.
|
||
|
||
** MS-Windows 95, 98, ME, and NT
|
||
|
||
*** MS-Windows NT/95: Problems running Perl under Emacs
|
||
|
||
`perl -de 0' just hangs when executed in an Emacs subshell.
|
||
The fault lies with Perl (indirectly with Windows NT/95).
|
||
|
||
The problem is that the Perl debugger explicitly opens a connection to
|
||
"CON", which is the DOS/NT equivalent of "/dev/tty", for interacting
|
||
with the user.
|
||
|
||
On Unix, this is okay, because Emacs (or the shell?) creates a
|
||
pseudo-tty so that /dev/tty is really the pipe Emacs is using to
|
||
communicate with the subprocess.
|
||
|
||
On NT, this fails because CON always refers to the handle for the
|
||
relevant console (approximately equivalent to a tty), and cannot be
|
||
redirected to refer to the pipe Emacs assigned to the subprocess as
|
||
stdin.
|
||
|
||
A workaround is to modify perldb.pl to use STDIN/STDOUT instead of CON.
|
||
|
||
For Perl 4:
|
||
|
||
*** PERL/LIB/PERLDB.PL.orig Wed May 26 08:24:18 1993
|
||
--- PERL/LIB/PERLDB.PL Mon Jul 01 15:28:16 1996
|
||
***************
|
||
*** 68,74 ****
|
||
$rcfile=".perldb";
|
||
}
|
||
else {
|
||
! $console = "con";
|
||
$rcfile="perldb.ini";
|
||
}
|
||
|
||
--- 68,74 ----
|
||
$rcfile=".perldb";
|
||
}
|
||
else {
|
||
! $console = "";
|
||
$rcfile="perldb.ini";
|
||
}
|
||
|
||
|
||
For Perl 5:
|
||
*** perl/5.001/lib/perl5db.pl.orig Sun Jun 04 21:13:40 1995
|
||
--- perl/5.001/lib/perl5db.pl Mon Jul 01 17:00:08 1996
|
||
***************
|
||
*** 22,28 ****
|
||
$rcfile=".perldb";
|
||
}
|
||
elsif (-e "con") {
|
||
! $console = "con";
|
||
$rcfile="perldb.ini";
|
||
}
|
||
else {
|
||
--- 22,28 ----
|
||
$rcfile=".perldb";
|
||
}
|
||
elsif (-e "con") {
|
||
! $console = "";
|
||
$rcfile="perldb.ini";
|
||
}
|
||
else {
|
||
|
||
*** MS-Windows 95: Alt-f6 does not get through to Emacs.
|
||
|
||
This character seems to be trapped by the kernel in Windows 95.
|
||
You can enter M-f6 by typing ESC f6.
|
||
|
||
*** MS-Windows 95/98/ME: subprocesses do not terminate properly.
|
||
|
||
This is a limitation of the Operating System, and can cause problems
|
||
when shutting down Windows. Ensure that all subprocesses are exited
|
||
cleanly before exiting Emacs. For more details, see the Emacs on MS
|
||
Windows FAQ (info manual "efaq-w32").
|
||
|
||
*** MS-Windows 95/98/ME: crashes when Emacs invokes non-existent programs.
|
||
|
||
When a program you are trying to run is not found on the PATH,
|
||
Windows might respond by crashing or locking up your system. In
|
||
particular, this has been reported when trying to compile a Java
|
||
program in JDEE when javac.exe is installed, but not on the system PATH.
|
||
|
||
** MS-DOS
|
||
|
||
*** When compiling with DJGPP on MS-Windows NT or later, "config msdos" fails.
|
||
|
||
If the error message is "VDM has been already loaded", this is because
|
||
Windows has a program called `redir.exe' that is incompatible with a
|
||
program by the same name supplied with DJGPP, which is used by
|
||
config.bat. To resolve this, move the DJGPP's `bin' subdirectory to
|
||
the front of your PATH environment variable.
|
||
|
||
*** When Emacs compiled with DJGPP runs on Windows 2000 and later, it cannot
|
||
find your HOME directory.
|
||
|
||
This was reported to happen when you click on "Save for future
|
||
sessions" button in a Customize buffer. You might see an error
|
||
message like this one:
|
||
|
||
basic-save-buffer-2: c:/FOO/BAR/~dosuser/: no such directory
|
||
|
||
(The telltale sign is the "~USER" part at the end of the directory
|
||
Emacs complains about, where USER is your username or the literal
|
||
string "dosuser", which is the default username set up by the DJGPP
|
||
startup file DJGPP.ENV.)
|
||
|
||
This happens when the functions `user-login-name' and
|
||
`user-real-login-name' return different strings for your username as
|
||
Emacs sees it. To correct this, make sure both USER and USERNAME
|
||
environment variables are set to the same value. Windows 2000 and
|
||
later sets USERNAME, so if you want to keep that, make sure USER is
|
||
set to the same value. If you don't want to set USER globally, you
|
||
can do it in the [emacs] section of your DJGPP.ENV file.
|
||
|
||
*** When Emacs compiled with DJGPP runs on Vista, it runs out of memory.
|
||
|
||
If Emacs running on Vista displays "!MEM FULL!" in the mode line, you
|
||
are hitting the memory allocation bugs in the Vista DPMI server. See
|
||
msdos/INSTALL for how to work around these bugs (search for "Vista").
|
||
|
||
*** When compiling with DJGPP on MS-Windows 95, Make fails for some targets
|
||
like make-docfile.
|
||
|
||
This can happen if long file name support (the setting of environment
|
||
variable LFN) when Emacs distribution was unpacked and during
|
||
compilation are not the same. See msdos/INSTALL for the explanation
|
||
of how to avoid this problem.
|
||
|
||
*** Emacs compiled with DJGPP complains at startup:
|
||
|
||
"Wrong type of argument: internal-facep, msdos-menu-active-face"
|
||
|
||
This can happen if you define an environment variable `TERM'. Emacs
|
||
on MSDOS uses an internal terminal emulator which is disabled if the
|
||
value of `TERM' is anything but the string "internal". Emacs then
|
||
works as if its terminal were a dumb glass teletype that doesn't
|
||
support faces. To work around this, arrange for `TERM' to be
|
||
undefined when Emacs runs. The best way to do that is to add an
|
||
[emacs] section to the DJGPP.ENV file which defines an empty value for
|
||
`TERM'; this way, only Emacs gets the empty value, while the rest of
|
||
your system works as before.
|
||
|
||
*** MS-DOS: Emacs crashes at startup.
|
||
|
||
Some users report that Emacs 19.29 requires dpmi memory management,
|
||
and crashes on startup if the system does not have it. We don't
|
||
know why this happens--perhaps these machines don't have enough real
|
||
memory, or perhaps something is wrong in Emacs or the compiler.
|
||
However, arranging to use dpmi support is a workaround.
|
||
|
||
You can find out if you have a dpmi host by running go32 without
|
||
arguments; it will tell you if it uses dpmi memory. For more
|
||
information about dpmi memory, consult the djgpp FAQ. (djgpp
|
||
is the GNU C compiler as packaged for MSDOS.)
|
||
|
||
Compiling Emacs under MSDOS is extremely sensitive for proper memory
|
||
configuration. If you experience problems during compilation, consider
|
||
removing some or all memory resident programs (notably disk caches)
|
||
and make sure that your memory managers are properly configured. See
|
||
the djgpp faq for configuration hints.
|
||
|
||
*** Emacs compiled with DJGPP for MS-DOS/MS-Windows cannot access files
|
||
in the directory with the special name `dev' under the root of any
|
||
drive, e.g. `c:/dev'.
|
||
|
||
This is an unfortunate side-effect of the support for Unix-style
|
||
device names such as /dev/null in the DJGPP runtime library. A
|
||
work-around is to rename the problem directory to another name.
|
||
|
||
*** MS-DOS+DJGPP: Problems on MS-DOS if DJGPP v2.0 is used to compile Emacs.
|
||
|
||
There are two DJGPP library bugs which cause problems:
|
||
|
||
* Running `shell-command' (or `compile', or `grep') you get
|
||
`Searching for program: permission denied (EACCES), c:/command.com';
|
||
* After you shell to DOS, Ctrl-Break kills Emacs.
|
||
|
||
To work around these bugs, you can use two files in the msdos
|
||
subdirectory: `is_exec.c' and `sigaction.c'. Compile them and link
|
||
them into the Emacs executable `temacs'; then they will replace the
|
||
incorrect library functions.
|
||
|
||
*** MS-DOS: Emacs compiled for MSDOS cannot find some Lisp files, or other
|
||
run-time support files, when long filename support is enabled.
|
||
|
||
Usually, this problem will manifest itself when Emacs exits
|
||
immediately after flashing the startup screen, because it cannot find
|
||
the Lisp files it needs to load at startup. Redirect Emacs stdout
|
||
and stderr to a file to see the error message printed by Emacs.
|
||
|
||
Another manifestation of this problem is that Emacs is unable to load
|
||
the support for editing program sources in languages such as C and Lisp.
|
||
|
||
This can happen if the Emacs distribution was unzipped without LFN
|
||
support, thus causing long filenames to be truncated to the first 6
|
||
characters and a numeric tail that Windows 95 normally attaches to it.
|
||
You should unzip the files again with a utility that supports long
|
||
filenames (such as djtar from DJGPP or InfoZip's UnZip program
|
||
compiled with DJGPP v2). The file msdos/INSTALL explains this issue
|
||
in more detail.
|
||
|
||
Another possible reason for such failures is that Emacs compiled for
|
||
MSDOS is used on Windows NT, where long file names are not supported
|
||
by this version of Emacs, but the distribution was unpacked by an
|
||
unzip program that preserved the long file names instead of truncating
|
||
them to DOS 8+3 limits. To be useful on NT, the MSDOS port of Emacs
|
||
must be unzipped by a DOS utility, so that long file names are
|
||
properly truncated.
|
||
|
||
** Archaic window managers and toolkits
|
||
|
||
*** Open Look: Under Open Look, the Emacs window disappears when you type M-q.
|
||
|
||
Some versions of the Open Look window manager interpret M-q as a quit
|
||
command for whatever window you are typing at. If you want to use
|
||
Emacs with that window manager, you should try to configure the window
|
||
manager to use some other command. You can disable the
|
||
shortcut keys entirely by adding this line to ~/.OWdefaults:
|
||
|
||
OpenWindows.WindowMenuAccelerators: False
|
||
|
||
*** twm: A position you specified in .Xdefaults is ignored, using twm.
|
||
|
||
twm normally ignores "program-specified" positions.
|
||
You can tell it to obey them with this command in your `.twmrc' file:
|
||
|
||
UsePPosition "on" #allow clients to request a position
|
||
|
||
** Bugs related to old DEC hardware
|
||
|
||
*** The Compose key on a DEC keyboard does not work as Meta key.
|
||
|
||
This shell command should fix it:
|
||
|
||
xmodmap -e 'keycode 0xb1 = Meta_L'
|
||
|
||
*** Keyboard input gets confused after a beep when using a DECserver
|
||
as a concentrator.
|
||
|
||
This problem seems to be a matter of configuring the DECserver to use
|
||
7 bit characters rather than 8 bit characters.
|
||
|
||
This file is part of GNU Emacs.
|
||
|
||
GNU Emacs is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
|
||
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
|
||
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
|
||
(at your option) any later version.
|
||
|
||
GNU Emacs is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
|
||
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
|
||
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
|
||
GNU General Public License for more details.
|
||
|
||
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
|
||
along with GNU Emacs. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
|
||
|
||
|
||
Local variables:
|
||
mode: outline
|
||
paragraph-separate: "[ ]*$"
|
||
end:
|