1 This file describes various problems that have been encountered
2 in compiling, installing and running GNU Emacs.
4 * Building Emacs with GCC 2.9x fails in the `src' directory.
6 This may happen if you use a development version of GNU `cpp' from one
7 of the GCC snapshots around Oct 2000 and later, or from a released
8 version of GCC newer than 2.95.2. The preprocessor in those versions
9 expands ".." into ". .", which breaks relative file names that
10 reference the parent directory.
12 The solution is to make sure the preprocessor is run with the
13 `-traditional' option. (The `configure' script should do that
14 automatically with Emacs 21 and later.)
16 Note that this problem does not pertain to the MS-Windows port of
17 Emacs, since it doesn't use the preprocessor to generate Makefile's.
19 * Building the MS-Windows port with Cygwin GCC can fail.
21 Emacs may not build using recent Cygwin builds of GCC, such as Cygwin
22 version 1.1.8, using the default configure settings. It appears to be
23 necessary to specify the -mwin32 flag when compiling, and define
26 configure --with-gcc --cflags -mwin32 --cflags -D__MSVCRT__
28 * Building the MS-Windows port with Leim fails in the `leim' directory.
30 The error message might be something like this:
32 Converting d:/emacs-21.1/leim/CXTERM-DIC/4Corner.tit to quail-package...
33 Invalid ENCODE: value in TIT dictionary
34 NMAKE : fatal error U1077: '"../src/obj-spd/i386/emacs.exe"' : return code
38 This can happen if the Leim distribution is unpacked with a program
39 which converts the `*.tit' files to DOS-style CR-LF text format. The
40 `*.tit' files in the leim/CXTERM-DIC directory require Unix-style line
41 endings to compile properly, because Emacs reads them without any code
44 The solution is to make sure the program used to unpack Leim does not
45 change the files' line endings behind your back. The GNU FTP site has
46 in the `/gnu/emacs/windows' directory a program called `djtarnt.exe'
47 which can be used to unpack `.tar.gz' and `.zip' archives without
50 * Building `ctags' for MS-Windows with the MinGW port of GCC fails.
52 This might happen due to a bug in the MinGW header assert.h, which
53 defines the `assert' macro with a trailing semi-colon. The following
54 patch to assert.h should solve this:
56 *** include/assert.h.orig Sun Nov 7 02:41:36 1999
57 --- include/assert.h Mon Jan 29 11:49:10 2001
61 * If not debugging, assert does nothing.
63 ! #define assert(x) ((void)0);
65 #else /* debugging enabled */
69 * If not debugging, assert does nothing.
71 ! #define assert(x) ((void)0)
73 #else /* debugging enabled */
76 * `put-image' and `insert-image' don't work with JPEG images
78 This can happen if Emacs is built with jpeg-6a library. Upgrading to
79 jpeg-6b reportedly solves the problem.
81 * When using Xaw3d scroll bars without arrows, the very first mouse
82 click in a scroll bar might be ignored by the scroll bar widget. This
83 is probably a bug in Xaw3d; when Xaw3d is compiled with arrows, the
86 * Clicking C-mouse-2 in the scroll bar doesn't split the window.
88 This currently doesn't work with scroll-bar widgets (and we don't know
89 a good way of implementing it with widgets). If Emacs is configured
90 --without-toolkit-scroll-bars, C-mouse-2 on the scroll bar does work.
92 * Problems in Emacs built with LessTif.
94 The problems seem to depend on the version of LessTif and the Motif
95 emulation for which it is set up.
97 To the best of our knowledge, only the Motif 1.2 emulation seemed to
98 be stable enough in LessTif. Lesstif 0.92-17's Motif 1.2 emulation
99 seems to work okay on FreeBSD. On GNU/Linux systems, lesstif-0.92.6
100 configured with "./configure --enable-build-12 --enable-default-12" is
101 reported to be the most successful. By contrast,
102 lesstif-0.92.0-1.i386.rpm was reported to have problems with menu
103 placement, and should probably be avoided.
105 On some systems, even with Motif 1.2 emulation, Emacs occasionally
106 locks up, grabbing all mouse and keyboard events. The mouse still
107 moves, but will not go outside of the Emacs window (so you can't get
108 it over the frame title barm, for instance). None of the menus are
109 responsive. In addition, the keyboard will not respond. Keypresses
110 are totally ignored, including Ctrl-Alt-F1 to Ctrl-Alt-F6. This means
111 you can not even get to the virtual console.
113 We still don't know what causes these problems; they are not
114 reproducible on some systems, notably those used by Emacs developers.
116 * Known problems with the MS-Windows port of Emacs 21.1.
118 Emacs 21.1 built for MS-Windows doesn't support images, the tool bar,
119 and tooltips. Support for these will be added in future versions.
121 There are problems with display if the variable `redisplay-dont-pause'
122 is set to nil (w32-win.el sets it to t by default, to avoid these
123 problems). The problems include:
125 . No redisplay as long as help echo is displayed in the echo area,
126 e.g. if the mouse is on a mouse-sensitive part of the mode line.
128 . When mode line is dragged with the mouse, multiple copies of the
129 mode line are left behind, until the mouse button is released and
130 the next input event occurs.
132 . Window contents is not updated when text is selected by dragging
133 the mouse and the mouse is dragged below the bottom line of the
134 window. When the mouse button is released, the window display is
137 Again, these problems only occur if `redisplay-dont-pause' is nil.
139 Emacs can sometimes abort when non-ASCII text, possibly with null
140 characters, is copied and pasted into a buffer.
142 An inactive cursor remains in an active window after the Windows
143 Manager driven switch of the focus, until a key is pressed.
145 * The `configure' script doesn't find the jpeg library.
147 This can happen because the linker by default only looks for shared
148 libraries, but jpeg distribution by default doesn't build and doesn't
149 install a shared version of the library, `libjpeg.so'. One system
150 where this is known to happen is Compaq/DEC Alpha OSF/1 v4.0, but it
151 probably isn't limited to that system alone.
153 It is possible to build Emacs linked statically, but that makes the
156 If you want to avoid building a statically linked Emacs, configure the
157 jpeg library with the `--enable-shared' option and then rebuild
158 libjpeg. This produces a shared version of libjpeg, which you need to
159 install. Finally, rerun the Emacs configure script, which should now
160 find the jpeg library.
162 (If you need the static version of the jpeg library as well, you can
163 configure libjpeg with both `--enable-static' and `--enable-shared'
166 * Some accented ISO-8859-1 characters or umlauts are displayed as | or _.
168 Try other font set sizes (S-mouse-1). If the problem persists with
169 other sizes as well, your text is corrupted, probably through software
170 that is not 8-bit clean. If the problem goes away with another font
171 size, it's probably because some fonts pretend to be ISO-8859-1 fonts
172 when they are really ASCII fonts. In particular the schumacher-clean
173 fonts have this bug in some versions of X.
175 To see what glyphs are included in a font, use `xfd', like this:
177 xfd -fn -schumacher-clean-medium-r-normal--12-120-75-75-c-60-iso8859-1
179 If this shows only ASCII glyphs, the font is indeed the source of the
182 The solution is to remove the corresponding lines from the appropriate
183 `fonts.alias' file, then run `mkfontdir' in that directory, and then run
186 * Large file support is disabled on HP-UX. See the comments in
189 * Crashes when displaying uncompressed GIFs with version
190 libungif-4.1.0 are resolved by using version libungif-4.1.0b1.
192 * Interrupting Cygwin port of Bash from Emacs doesn't work.
194 Cygwin 1.x builds of the ported Bash cannot be interrupted from the
195 MS-Windows version of Emacs. This is due to some change in the Bash
196 port or in the Cygwin library which apparently make Bash ignore the
197 keyboard interrupt event sent by Emacs to Bash. (Older Cygwin ports
198 of Bash, up to b20.1, did receive SIGINT from Emacs.)
200 * The W3 package (either from from the CVS sources or the last
201 release) currently (2000-12-14) doesn't run properly with Emacs 21 and
202 needs work. This patch is reported to make w3-4.0pre.46 work:
204 diff -aur --new-file w3-4.0pre.46-orig/lisp/w3-display.el w3-4.0pre.46-new/lisp/w3-display.el
205 --- w3-4.0pre.46-orig/lisp/w3-display.el Sun Nov 14 22:00:12 1999
206 +++ w3-4.0pre.46-new/lisp/w3-display.el Thu Dec 14 14:59:15 2000
208 (dispatch-event (next-command-event)))
211 - (if (and (not (sit-for 0)) (input-pending-p))
212 + ;; modified for GNU Emacs 21 by bob@rattlesnake.com on 2000 Dec 14
213 + (if (and (not (sit-for 0)) nil)
216 (setq w3-pause-keystroke
217 diff -aur --new-file w3-4.0pre.46-orig/lisp/w3-e21.el w3-4.0pre.46-new/lisp/w3-e21.el
218 --- w3-4.0pre.46-orig/lisp/w3-e21.el Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970
219 +++ w3-4.0pre.46-new/lisp/w3-e21.el Thu Dec 14 14:54:58 2000
221 +;;; w3-e21.el --- ** required for GNU Emacs 21 **
222 +;; Added by bob@rattlesnake.com on 2000 Dec 14
228 * On AIX, if linking fails because libXbsd isn't found, check if you
229 are compiling with the system's `cc' and CFLAGS containing `-O5'. If
230 so, you have hit a compiler bug. Please make sure to re-configure
231 Emacs so that it isn't compiled with `-O5'.
233 * The PSGML package uses the obsolete variables
234 `before-change-function' and `after-change-function', which are no
235 longer used by Emacs. These changes to PSGML 1.2.1 fix that.
237 --- psgml-edit.el 1999/12/17 10:55:07 1.1
238 +++ psgml-edit.el 1999/12/17 11:36:37
241 - (before-change-function nil)
242 - (after-change-function nil))
243 + (before-change-functions nil)
244 + (after-change-functions nil))
245 (setq selective-display t)
246 @@ -1474,3 +1474,3 @@
247 (buffer-read-only nil)
248 - (before-change-function nil)
249 + (before-change-functions nil)
250 (markup-index ; match-data index in tag regexp
251 @@ -1526,3 +1526,3 @@
252 (defun sgml-expand-shortref-to-text (name)
253 - (let (before-change-function
254 + (let (before-change-functions
255 (entity (sgml-lookup-entity name (sgml-dtd-entities sgml-dtd-info))))
256 @@ -1543,3 +1543,3 @@
258 - before-change-function)
259 + before-change-functions)
260 (goto-char sgml-markup-start)
261 @@ -1576,3 +1576,3 @@
262 (goto-char (sgml-element-end element))
263 - (let ((before-change-function nil))
264 + (let ((before-change-functions nil))
265 (sgml-normalize-content element only-one)))
266 --- psgml-other.el 1999/12/17 10:40:02 1.1
267 +++ psgml-other.el 1999/12/17 11:30:43
270 +(eval-when-compile (require 'cl))
274 - (subseq entries 0 (min (length entries)
275 - sgml-max-menu-size))))
276 +;;; (subseq entries 0 (min (length entries)
277 +;;; sgml-max-menu-size))
278 + (let ((new (copy-sequence entries)))
279 + (setcdr (nthcdr (1- (min (length entries)
280 + sgml-max-menu-size))
283 (setq entries (nthcdr sgml-max-menu-size entries))
285 (let ((inhibit-read-only t)
286 - (after-change-function nil) ; obsolete variable
287 - (before-change-function nil) ; obsolete variable
288 (after-change-functions nil)
289 - (before-change-functions nil))
290 - (put-text-property start end 'face face)))
291 + (before-change-functions nil)
292 + (modified (buffer-modified-p))
293 + (buffer-undo-list t)
295 + (put-text-property start end 'face face)
296 + (when (and (not modified) (buffer-modified-p))
297 + (set-buffer-modified-p nil))))
299 --- psgml-parse.el 1999/12/17 10:32:45 1.1
300 +++ psgml-parse.el 2000/12/05 17:12:34
303 +(eval-when-compile (require 'cl))
306 @@ -2474,8 +2476,8 @@
307 (setq sgml-scratch-buffer nil))
308 - (when after-change-function ;***
309 - (message "OOPS: after-change-function not NIL in scratch buffer %s: %s"
310 + (when after-change-functions ;***
311 + (message "OOPS: after-change-functions not NIL in scratch buffer %s: %S"
313 - after-change-function)
314 - (setq before-change-function nil
315 - after-change-function nil))
316 + after-change-functions)
317 + (setq before-change-functions nil
318 + after-change-functions nil))
319 (setq sgml-last-entity-buffer (current-buffer))
320 @@ -2846,6 +2848,5 @@
321 "Set initial state of parsing"
322 - (make-local-variable 'before-change-function)
323 - (setq before-change-function 'sgml-note-change-at)
324 - (make-local-variable 'after-change-function)
325 - (setq after-change-function 'sgml-set-face-after-change)
326 + (set (make-local-variable 'before-change-functions) '(sgml-note-change-at))
327 + (set (make-local-variable 'after-change-functions)
328 + '(sgml-set-face-after-change))
329 (sgml-set-active-dtd-indicator (sgml-dtd-doctype dtd))
330 @@ -3887,7 +3888,7 @@
332 - (unless before-change-function
333 - (message "WARN: before-change-function has been lost, restoring (%s)"
334 + (unless before-change-functions
335 + (message "WARN: before-change-functions has been lost, restoring (%s)"
337 - (setq before-change-function 'sgml-note-change-at)
338 - (setq after-change-function 'sgml-set-face-after-change)
339 + (setq before-change-functions '(sgml-note-change-at))
340 + (setq after-change-functions '(sgml-set-face-after-change))
343 * The Calc package fails to build and signals errors with Emacs 21.
345 Apply the following patches which reportedly fix several problems:
347 --- calc-ext.el.~1~ Sun Apr 3 02:26:34 1994
348 +++ calc-ext.el Wed Sep 18 17:35:01 1996
349 @@ -1354,6 +1354,25 @@
350 (calc-fancy-prefix 'calc-inverse-flag "Inverse..." n)
353 +(defconst calc-fancy-prefix-map
354 + (let ((map (make-sparse-keymap)))
355 + (define-key map [t] 'calc-fancy-prefix-other-key)
356 + (define-key map (vector meta-prefix-char t) 'calc-fancy-prefix-other-key)
357 + (define-key map [switch-frame] nil)
358 + (define-key map [?\C-u] 'universal-argument)
359 + (define-key map [?0] 'digit-argument)
360 + (define-key map [?1] 'digit-argument)
361 + (define-key map [?2] 'digit-argument)
362 + (define-key map [?3] 'digit-argument)
363 + (define-key map [?4] 'digit-argument)
364 + (define-key map [?5] 'digit-argument)
365 + (define-key map [?6] 'digit-argument)
366 + (define-key map [?7] 'digit-argument)
367 + (define-key map [?8] 'digit-argument)
368 + (define-key map [?9] 'digit-argument)
370 + "Keymap used while processing calc-fancy-prefix.")
372 (defun calc-fancy-prefix (flag msg n)
375 @@ -1364,6 +1383,8 @@
376 (message (if prefix msg "")))
378 (not calc-is-keypad-press)
379 + (if (boundp 'overriding-terminal-local-map)
380 + (setq overriding-terminal-local-map calc-fancy-prefix-map)
381 (let ((event (calc-read-key t)))
382 (if (eq (setq last-command-char (car event)) ?\C-u)
384 @@ -1376,9 +1397,18 @@
385 (if (or (not (integerp last-command-char))
386 (eq last-command-char ?-))
387 (calc-unread-command)
388 - (digit-argument n))))))
389 + (digit-argument n)))))))
391 (setq calc-is-keypad-press nil)
393 +(defun calc-fancy-prefix-other-key (arg)
395 + (if (or (not (integerp last-command-char))
396 + (and (>= last-command-char 0) (< last-command-char ? )
397 + (not (eq last-command-char meta-prefix-char))))
398 + (calc-wrapper)) ; clear flags if not a Calc command.
399 + (calc-unread-command)
400 + (setq overriding-terminal-local-map nil))
402 (defun calc-invert-func ()
405 --- Makefile.~1~ Sun Dec 15 23:50:45 1996
406 +++ Makefile Thu Nov 30 15:09:45 2000
411 -MAINT = -l calc-maint.elc
412 +MAINT = -l calc-maint.el
414 # Control whether intermediate files are kept.
419 # All this because "-l calc-maint" doesn't work.
420 -maint: calc-maint.elc
421 -calc-maint.elc: calc-maint.el
422 - cp calc-maint.el calc-maint.elc
424 +maint: calc-maint.el
426 # Create an Emacs TAGS file
429 --- calc-aent.el.~1~ Sun Dec 15 23:50:36 1996
430 +++ calc-aent.el Tue Nov 21 18:34:33 2000
432 (calc-minibuffer-contains
433 "\\`\\([^\"]*\"[^\"]*\"\\)*[^\"]*\"[^\"]*\\'"))
435 - (setq alg-exp (buffer-string))
436 + (setq alg-exp (field-string))
437 (and (> (length alg-exp) 0) (setq calc-previous-alg-entry alg-exp))
440 @@ -393,14 +393,14 @@
442 (defun calcAlg-enter ()
444 - (let* ((str (buffer-string))
445 + (let* ((str (field-string))
446 (exp (and (> (length str) 0)
448 (set-buffer calc-buffer)
449 (math-read-exprs str)))))
450 (if (eq (car-safe exp) 'error)
452 - (goto-char (point-min))
453 + (goto-char (field-beginning))
454 (forward-char (nth 1 exp))
456 (calc-temp-minibuffer-message
457 @@ -455,14 +455,14 @@
459 (if (calc-minibuffer-contains ".*[@oh] *[^'m ]+[^'m]*\\'")
461 - (setq calc-digit-value (buffer-string))
462 + (setq calc-digit-value (field-string))
466 (defun calcDigit-edit ()
468 (calc-unread-command)
469 - (setq calc-digit-value (buffer-string))
470 + (setq calc-digit-value (field-string))
474 --- calc.el.~1~ Sun Dec 15 23:50:47 1996
475 +++ calc.el Wed Nov 22 13:08:49 2000
476 @@ -2051,11 +2051,11 @@
477 ;; Exercise for the reader: Figure out why this is a good precaution!
478 (or (boundp 'calc-buffer)
479 (use-local-map minibuffer-local-map))
480 - (let ((str (buffer-string)))
481 + (let ((str (field-string)))
482 (setq calc-digit-value (save-excursion
483 (set-buffer calc-buffer)
484 (math-read-number str))))
485 - (if (and (null calc-digit-value) (> (buffer-size) 0))
486 + (if (and (null calc-digit-value) (> (field-end) (field-beginning)))
489 (calc-temp-minibuffer-message " [Bad format]"))
490 @@ -2071,7 +2071,7 @@
492 (defun calc-minibuffer-contains (rex)
494 - (goto-char (point-min))
495 + (goto-char (field-end (point-min)))
499 @@ -2158,10 +2158,8 @@
500 (upcase last-command-char))))
504 - (goto-char (point-min))
506 - "[-+]?\\(.*\\+/- *\\|.*mod *\\)?\\([0-9]+\\.?0*[@oh] *\\)?\\([0-9]+\\.?0*['m] *\\)?[0-9]*\\(\\.?[0-9]*\\(e[-+]?[0-3]?[0-9]?[0-9]?[0-9]?[0-9]?[0-9]?[0-9]?\\)?\\|[0-9]:\\([0-9]+:\\)?[0-9]*\\)?[\"s]?\\'")))
507 + (calc-minibuffer-contains
508 + "[-+]?\\(.*\\+/- *\\|.*mod *\\)?\\([0-9]+\\.?0*[@oh] *\\)?\\([0-9]+\\.?0*['m] *\\)?[0-9]*\\(\\.?[0-9]*\\(e[-+]?[0-3]?[0-9]?[0-9]?[0-9]?[0-9]?[0-9]?[0-9]?\\)?\\|[0-9]:\\([0-9]+:\\)?[0-9]*\\)?[\"s]?\\'"))
509 (if (and (memq last-command-char '(?@ ?o ?h ?\' ?m))
510 (string-match " " calc-hms-format))
512 @@ -2190,7 +2188,7 @@
513 ((eq last-command 'calcDigit-start)
515 (t (backward-delete-char 1)))
516 - (if (= (buffer-size) 0)
517 + (if (= (field-beginning) (field-end))
519 (setq last-command-char 13)
520 (calcDigit-nondigit)))
522 * TeX'ing the Calc manual fails.
524 The following patches allow to build the Calc manual using texinfo.tex
525 from Emacs 19.34 distribution:
527 *** calc-maint.e~0 Mon Dec 16 07:11:26 1996
528 --- calc-maint.el Sun Dec 10 14:32:38 2000
532 "\\global\\advance\\appendixno2\n"
533 "\\gdef\\xref#1.{See ``#1.''}\n")
534 ! (setq midpos (point))
535 (insert "@end tex\n")
536 (insert-buffer-substring srcbuf sumpos endpos)
540 "\\global\\advance\\appendixno2\n"
541 "\\gdef\\xref#1.{See ``#1.''}\n")
542 ! (setq midpos (point-marker))
543 (insert "@end tex\n")
544 (insert-buffer-substring srcbuf sumpos endpos)
546 *** Makefile.~0 Mon Dec 16 07:11:24 1996
547 --- Makefile Sun Dec 10 14:44:00 2000
550 # Format the Calc manual as one printable volume using TeX.
553 ! $(TEX) calc.texinfo
554 $(TEXINDEX) calc.[cfkptv]?
555 ! $(TEX) calc.texinfo
556 $(PURGE) calc.cp calc.fn calc.pg calc.tp calc.vr
557 $(PURGE) calc.cps calc.fns calc.kys calc.pgs calc.tps calc.vrs
560 # Format the Calc manual as one printable volume using TeX.
563 ! -$(TEX) calc.texinfo
564 $(TEXINDEX) calc.[cfkptv]?
565 ! -$(TEX) calc.texinfo
566 $(PURGE) calc.cp calc.fn calc.pg calc.tp calc.vr
567 $(PURGE) calc.cps calc.fns calc.kys calc.pgs calc.tps calc.vrs
569 *** calc.texinfo.~1~ Thu Oct 10 18:18:56 1996
570 --- calc.texinfo Mon Dec 11 08:25:00 2000
574 % Because makeinfo.c exists, we can't just define new commands.
575 % So instead, we take over little-used existing commands.
577 + % Suggested by Karl Berry <karl@@freefriends.org>
578 + \gdef\!{\mskip-\thinmuskip}
579 % Redefine @cite{text} to act like $text$ in regular TeX.
580 % Info will typeset this same as @samp{text}.
581 \gdef\goodtex{\tex \let\rm\goodrm \let\t\ttfont \turnoffactive}
584 a vector of the actual parameter values, written as equations:
585 @cite{[a = 3, b = 2]}, in case you'd rather read them in a list
586 than pick them out of the formula. (You can type @kbd{t y}
587 ! to move this vector to the stack; @pxref{Trail Commands})
589 Specifying a different independent variable name will affect the
590 resulting formula: @kbd{a F 1 k RET} produces @kbd{3 + 2 k}.
592 a vector of the actual parameter values, written as equations:
593 @cite{[a = 3, b = 2]}, in case you'd rather read them in a list
594 than pick them out of the formula. (You can type @kbd{t y}
595 ! to move this vector to the stack; see @ref{Trail Commands}.)
597 Specifying a different independent variable name will affect the
598 resulting formula: @kbd{a F 1 k RET} produces @kbd{3 + 2 k}.
601 * On systems with shared libraries you might encounter run-time errors
602 from the dynamic linker telling you that it is unable to find some
603 shared libraries, for instance those for Xaw3d or image support.
604 These errors mean Emacs has been linked with a library whose shared
605 library is not in the default search path of the dynamic linker.
607 On many systems, it is possible to set LD_LIBRARY_PATH in your
608 environment to specify additional directories where shared libraries
611 Other systems allow to set LD_RUN_PATH in a similar way, but before
612 Emacs is linked. With LD_RUN_PATH set, the linker will include a
613 specified run-time search path in the executable.
615 Please refer to the documentation of your dynamic linker for details.
617 * On Solaris 2.7, building Emacs with WorkShop Compilers 5.0 98/12/15
618 C 5.0 failed, apparently with non-default CFLAGS, most probably due to
619 compiler bugs. Using Sun Solaris 2.7 Sun WorkShop 6 update 1 C
620 release was reported to work without problems. It worked OK on
621 another system with Solaris 8 using apparently the same 5.0 compiler
622 and the default CFLAGS.
624 * On Windows 95/98/ME, subprocesses do not terminate properly.
626 This is a limitation of the Operating System, and can cause problems
627 when shutting down Windows. Ensure that all subprocesses are exited
628 cleanly before exiting Emacs. For more details, see the FAQ at
629 ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/windows/emacs/doc/index.html
631 * Mail sent through Microsoft Exchange in some encodings appears to be
632 mangled and is not seen correctly in Rmail or Gnus. We don't know
633 exactly what happens, but it isn't an Emacs problem in cases we've
636 * On OSF/Dec Unix/Tru64/<whatever it is this year> under X locally or
637 remotely, M-SPC acts as a `compose' key with strange results. See
640 Changing Alt_L to Meta_L fixes it:
641 % xmodmap -e 'keysym Alt_L = Meta_L Alt_L'
642 % xmodmap -e 'keysym Alt_R = Meta_R Alt_R'
644 * Error "conflicting types for `initstate'" compiling with GCC on Irix 6.
646 Install GCC 2.95 or a newer version, and this problem should go away.
647 It is possible that this problem results from upgrading the operating
648 system without reinstalling GCC; so you could also try reinstalling
649 the same version of GCC, and telling us whether that fixes the problem.
651 * On Solaris 7, Emacs gets a segmentation fault when starting up using X.
653 This results from Sun patch 107058-01 (SunOS 5.7: Patch for
654 assembler) if you use GCC version 2.7 or later.
655 To work around it, either install patch 106950-03 or later,
656 or uninstall patch 107058-01, or install the GNU Binutils.
657 Then recompile Emacs, and it should work.
659 * With X11R6.4, public-patch-3, Emacs crashes at startup.
661 Reportedly this patch in X fixes the problem.
663 --- xc/lib/X11/imInt.c~ Wed Jun 30 13:31:56 1999
664 +++ xc/lib/X11/imInt.c Thu Jul 1 15:10:27 1999
666 -/* $TOG: imInt.c /main/5 1998/05/30 21:11:16 kaleb $ */
667 +/* $TOG: imInt.c /main/5 1998/05/30 21:11:16 kaleb $ */
668 /******************************************************************
670 Copyright 1992, 1993, 1994 by FUJITSU LIMITED
677 + char* begin = NULL;
681 char* ximmodifier = XIMMODIFIER;
684 ret = Xmalloc(end - begin + 2);
686 - (void)strncpy(ret, begin, end - begin + 1);
687 + if (begin != NULL) {
688 + (void)strncpy(ret, begin, end - begin + 1);
692 ret[end - begin + 1] = '\0';
697 * Emacs crashes on Irix 6.5 on the SGI R10K, when compiled with GCC.
699 This seems to be fixed in GCC 2.95.
701 * Emacs crashes in utmpname on Irix 5.3.
703 This problem is fixed in Patch 3175 for Irix 5.3.
704 It is also fixed in Irix versions 6.2 and up.
706 * The S-C-t key combination doesn't get passed to Emacs on X.
708 This happens because some X configurations assign the Ctrl-Shift-t
709 combination the same meaning as the Multi_key. The offending
710 definition is in the file `...lib/X11/locale/iso8859-1/Compose'; there
711 might be other similar combinations which are grabbed by X for similar
714 We think that this can be countermanded with the `xmodmap' utility, if
715 you want to be able to bind one of these key sequences within Emacs.
717 * On Solaris, CTRL-t is ignored by Emacs when you use
718 the fr.ISO-8859-15 locale (and maybe other related locales).
720 You can fix this by editing the file:
722 /usr/openwin/lib/locale/iso8859-15/Compose
724 Near the bottom there is a line that reads:
726 Ctrl<t> <quotedbl> <Y> : "\276" threequarters
730 Ctrl<T> <quotedbl> <Y> : "\276" threequarters
732 Note the lower case <t>. Changing this line should make C-t work.
734 * Emacs on Digital Unix 4.0 fails to build, giving error message
735 Invalid dimension for the charset-ID 160
737 This is due to a bug or an installation problem in GCC 2.8.0.
738 Installing a more recent version of GCC fixes the problem.
740 * Buffers from `with-output-to-temp-buffer' get set up in Help mode.
742 Changes in Emacs 20.4 to the hooks used by that function cause
743 problems for some packages, specifically BBDB. See the function's
744 documentation for the hooks involved. BBDB 2.00.06 fixes the problem.
746 * Under X, C-v and/or other keys don't work.
748 These may have been intercepted by your window manager. In
749 particular, AfterStep 1.6 is reported to steal C-v in its default
750 configuration. Various Meta keys are also likely to be taken by the
751 configuration of the `feel'. See the WM's documentation for how to
754 * When using Exceed, fonts sometimes appear too tall.
756 When the display is set to an Exceed X-server and fonts are specified
757 (either explicitly with the -fn option or implicitly with X resources)
758 then the fonts may appear "too tall". The actual character sizes are
759 correct but there is too much vertical spacing between rows, which
760 gives the appearance of "double spacing".
762 To prevent this, turn off the Exceed's "automatic font substitution"
763 feature (in the font part of the configuration window).
765 * Failure in unexec while dumping emacs on Digital Unix 4.0
767 This problem manifests itself as an error message
769 unexec: Bad address, writing data section to ...
771 The user suspects that this happened because his X libraries
772 were built for an older system version,
774 ./configure --x-includes=/usr/include --x-libraries=/usr/shlib
776 made the problem go away.
778 * No visible display on mips-sgi-irix6.2 when compiling with GCC 2.8.1.
780 This problem went away after installing the latest IRIX patches
783 The same problem has been reported on Irix 6.3.
785 * As of version 20.4, Emacs doesn't work properly if configured for
786 the Motif toolkit and linked against the free LessTif library. The
787 next Emacs release is expected to work with LessTif.
789 * Emacs gives the error, Couldn't find per display information.
791 This can result if the X server runs out of memory because Emacs uses
792 a large number of fonts. On systems where this happens, C-h h is
795 We do not know of a way to prevent the problem.
797 * Emacs makes HPUX 11.0 crash.
799 This is a bug in HPUX; HPUX patch PHKL_16260 is said to fix it.
801 * Emacs crashes during dumping on the HPPA machine (HPUX 10.20).
803 This seems to be due to a GCC bug; it is fixed in GCC 2.8.1.
805 * The Hyperbole package causes *Help* buffers not to be displayed in
806 Help mode due to setting `temp-buffer-show-hook' rather than using
807 `add-hook'. Using `(add-hook 'temp-buffer-show-hook
808 'help-mode-maybe)' after loading Hyperbole should fix this.
810 * Versions of the PSGML package earlier than 1.0.3 (stable) or 1.1.2
811 (alpha) fail to parse DTD files correctly in Emacs 20.3 and later.
812 Here is a patch for psgml-parse.el from PSGML 1.0.1 and, probably,
815 --- psgml-parse.el 1998/08/21 19:18:18 1.1
816 +++ psgml-parse.el 1998/08/21 19:20:00
817 @@ -2383,7 +2383,7 @@ (defun sgml-push-to-entity (entity &opti
818 (setq sgml-buffer-parse-state nil))
820 ((stringp entity) ; a file name
821 - (save-excursion (insert-file-contents entity))
822 + (insert-file-contents entity)
823 (setq default-directory (file-name-directory entity)))
824 ((consp (sgml-entity-text entity)) ; external id?
825 (let* ((extid (sgml-entity-text entity))
827 * Emacs 21 freezes when visiting a TeX file with AUC TeX installed.
829 Emacs 21 needs version 10 or later of AUC TeX; upgrading should solve
832 * Running TeX from AUC TeX package with Emacs 20.3 gives a Lisp error
833 about a read-only tex output buffer.
835 This problem appeared for AUC TeX version 9.9j and some earlier
836 versions. Here is a patch for the file tex-buf.el in the AUC TeX
839 diff -c auctex/tex-buf.el~ auctex/tex-buf.el
840 *** auctex/tex-buf.el~ Wed Jul 29 18:35:32 1998
841 --- auctex/tex-buf.el Sat Sep 5 15:20:38 1998
844 (dir (TeX-master-directory)))
845 (TeX-process-check file) ; Check that no process is running
846 (setq TeX-command-buffer (current-buffer))
847 ! (with-output-to-temp-buffer buffer)
850 (insert "Running `" name "' on `" file "' with ``" command "''\n")
852 (dir (TeX-master-directory)))
853 (TeX-process-check file) ; Check that no process is running
854 (setq TeX-command-buffer (current-buffer))
855 ! (let (temp-buffer-show-function temp-buffer-show-hook)
856 ! (with-output-to-temp-buffer buffer))
859 (insert "Running `" name "' on `" file "' with ``" command "''\n")
861 * On Irix 6.3, substituting environment variables in file names
862 in the minibuffer gives peculiar error messages such as
864 Substituting nonexistent environment variable ""
866 This is not an Emacs bug; it is caused by something in SGI patch
867 003082 August 11, 1998.
869 * After a while, Emacs slips into unibyte mode.
871 The VM mail package, which is not part of Emacs, sometimes does
872 (standard-display-european t)
873 That should be changed to
874 (standard-display-european 1 t)
876 * Installing Emacs gets an error running `install-info'.
878 You need to install a recent version of Texinfo; that package
879 supplies the `install-info' command.
881 * Emacs does not recognize the AltGr key, on HPUX.
883 To fix this, set up a file ~/.dt/sessions/sessionetc with executable
884 rights, containing this text:
886 --------------------------------
887 xmodmap 2> /dev/null - << EOF
888 keysym Alt_L = Meta_L
889 keysym Alt_R = Meta_R
894 keysym Mode_switch = NoSymbol
896 keysym Meta_R = Mode_switch
897 add mod2 = Mode_switch
899 --------------------------------
901 * Emacs compiled with DJGPP for MS-DOS/MS-Windows cannot access files
902 in the directory with the special name `dev' under the root of any
903 drive, e.g. `c:/dev'.
905 This is an unfortunate side-effect of the support for Unix-style
906 device names such as /dev/null in the DJGPP runtime library. A
907 work-around is to rename the problem directory to another name.
909 * M-SPC seems to be ignored as input.
911 See if your X server is set up to use this as a command
912 for character composition.
914 * Emacs startup on GNU/Linux systems (and possibly other systems) is slow.
916 This can happen if the system is misconfigured and Emacs can't get the
917 full qualified domain name, FQDN. You should have your FQDN in the
918 /etc/hosts file, something like this:
921 129.187.137.82 nuc04.t30.physik.tu-muenchen.de nuc04
923 The way to set this up may vary on non-GNU systems.
925 * Garbled display on non-X terminals when Emacs runs on Digital Unix 4.0.
927 So far it appears that running `tset' triggers this problem (when TERM
928 is vt100, at least). If you do not run `tset', then Emacs displays
929 properly. If someone can tell us precisely which effect of running
930 `tset' actually causes the problem, we may be able to implement a fix
933 * When you run Ispell from Emacs, it reports a "misalignment" error.
935 This can happen if you compiled Ispell to use ASCII characters only
936 and then try to use it from Emacs with non-ASCII characters,
937 specifically Latin-1. The solution is to recompile Ispell with
940 This can also happen if the version of Ispell installed on your
943 * On Linux-based GNU systems using libc versions 5.4.19 through
944 5.4.22, Emacs crashes at startup with a segmentation fault.
946 This problem happens if libc defines the symbol __malloc_initialized.
947 One known solution is to upgrade to a newer libc version. 5.4.33 is
950 * On Windows, you cannot use the right-hand ALT key and the left-hand
951 CTRL key together to type a Control-Meta character.
953 This is a consequence of a misfeature beyond Emacs's control.
955 Under Windows, the AltGr key on international keyboards generates key
956 events with the modifiers Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl. Since Emacs cannot
957 distinguish AltGr from an explicit Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl
958 combination, whenever it sees Right-Alt and Left-Ctrl it assumes that
959 AltGr has been pressed.
961 * Under some Windows X-servers, Emacs' display is incorrect
963 The symptoms are that Emacs does not completely erase blank areas of the
964 screen during scrolling or some other screen operations (e.g., selective
965 display or when killing a region). M-x recenter will cause the screen
966 to be completely redisplayed and the "extra" characters will disappear.
968 This is known to occur under Exceed 6, and possibly earlier versions as
969 well. The problem lies in the X-server settings.
971 There are reports that you can solve the problem with Exceed by
972 running `Xconfig' from within NT, choosing "X selection", then
973 un-checking the boxes "auto-copy X selection" and "auto-paste to X
976 Of this does not work, please inform bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org. Then
977 please call support for your X-server and see if you can get a fix.
978 If you do, please send it to bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org so we can list it
981 * On Solaris 2, Emacs dumps core when built with Motif.
983 The Solaris Motif libraries are buggy, at least up through Solaris 2.5.1.
984 Install the current Motif runtime library patch appropriate for your host.
985 (Make sure the patch is current; some older patch versions still have the bug.)
986 You should install the other patches recommended by Sun for your host, too.
987 You can obtain Sun patches from ftp://sunsolve.sun.com/pub/patches/;
988 look for files with names ending in `.PatchReport' to see which patches
989 are currently recommended for your host.
991 On Solaris 2.6, Emacs is said to work with Motif when Solaris patch
992 105284-12 is installed, but fail when 105284-15 is installed.
993 105284-18 might fix it again.
995 * On Solaris 2.6 and 7, the Compose key does not work.
997 This is a bug in Motif in Solaris. Supposedly it has been fixed for
998 the next major release of Solaris. However, if someone with Sun
999 support complains to Sun about the bug, they may release a patch.
1000 If you do this, mention Sun bug #4188711.
1002 One workaround is to use a locale that allows non-ASCII characters.
1003 For example, before invoking emacs, set the LC_ALL environment
1004 variable to "en_US" (American English). The directory /usr/lib/locale
1005 lists the supported locales; any locale other than "C" or "POSIX"
1008 pen@lysator.liu.se says (Feb 1998) that the Compose key does work
1009 if you link with the MIT X11 libraries instead of the Solaris X11
1012 * Emacs does not know your host's fully-qualified domain name.
1014 You need to configure your machine with a fully qualified domain name,
1015 either in /etc/hosts, /etc/hostname, the NIS, or wherever your system
1016 calls for specifying this.
1018 If you cannot fix the configuration, you can set the Lisp variable
1019 mail-host-address to the value you want.
1021 * Error 12 (virtual memory exceeded) when dumping Emacs, on UnixWare 2.1
1023 Paul Abrahams (abrahams@acm.org) reports that with the installed
1024 virtual memory settings for UnixWare 2.1.2, an Error 12 occurs during
1025 the "make" that builds Emacs, when running temacs to dump emacs. That
1026 error indicates that the per-process virtual memory limit has been
1027 exceeded. The default limit is probably 32MB. Raising the virtual
1028 memory limit to 40MB should make it possible to finish building Emacs.
1030 You can do this with the command `ulimit' (sh) or `limit' (csh).
1031 But you have to be root to do it.
1033 According to Martin Sohnius, you can also retune this in the kernel:
1035 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune SDATLIM 33554432 ## soft data size limit
1036 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune HDATLIM 33554432 ## hard "
1037 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune SVMMSIZE unlimited ## soft process size limit
1038 # /etc/conf/bin/idtune HVMMSIZE unlimited ## hard "
1039 # /etc/conf/bin/idbuild -B
1041 (He recommends you not change the stack limit, though.)
1042 These changes take effect when you reboot.
1044 * Redisplay using X11 is much slower than previous Emacs versions.
1046 We've noticed that certain X servers draw the text much slower when
1047 scroll bars are on the left. We don't know why this happens. If this
1048 happens to you, you can work around it by putting the scroll bars
1049 on the right (as they were in Emacs 19).
1051 Here's how to do this:
1053 (set-scroll-bar-mode 'right)
1055 If you're not sure whether (or how much) this problem affects you,
1056 try that and see how much difference it makes. To set things back
1059 (set-scroll-bar-mode 'left)
1061 * Under X11, some characters appear as hollow boxes.
1063 Each X11 font covers just a fraction of the characters that Emacs
1064 supports. To display the whole range of Emacs characters requires
1065 many different fonts, collected into a fontset.
1067 If some of the fonts called for in your fontset do not exist on your X
1068 server, then the characters that have no font appear as hollow boxes.
1069 You can remedy the problem by installing additional fonts.
1071 The intlfonts distribution includes a full spectrum of fonts that can
1072 display all the characters Emacs supports.
1074 Another cause of this for specific characters is fonts which have a
1075 missing glyph and no default character. This is known ot occur for
1076 character number 160 (no-break space) in some fonts, such as Lucida
1077 but Emacs sets the display table for the unibyte and Latin-1 version
1078 of this character to display a space.
1080 * Under X11, some characters appear improperly aligned in their lines.
1082 You may have bad X11 fonts; try installing the intlfonts distribution.
1084 * Certain fonts make each line take one pixel more than it "should".
1086 This is because these fonts contain characters a little taller
1087 than the font's nominal height. Emacs needs to make sure that
1088 lines do not overlap.
1090 * You request inverse video, and the first Emacs frame is in inverse
1091 video, but later frames are not in inverse video.
1093 This can happen if you have an old version of the custom library in
1094 your search path for Lisp packages. Use M-x list-load-path-shadows to
1095 check whether this is true. If it is, delete the old custom library.
1097 * In FreeBSD 2.1.5, useless symbolic links remain in /tmp or other
1098 directories that have the +t bit.
1100 This is because of a kernel bug in FreeBSD 2.1.5 (fixed in 2.2).
1101 Emacs uses symbolic links to implement file locks. In a directory
1102 with +t bit, the directory owner becomes the owner of the symbolic
1103 link, so that it cannot be removed by anyone else.
1105 If you don't like those useless links, you can let Emacs not to using
1106 file lock by adding #undef CLASH_DETECTION to config.h.
1108 * When using M-x dbx with the SparcWorks debugger, the `up' and `down'
1109 commands do not move the arrow in Emacs.
1111 You can fix this by adding the following line to `~/.dbxinit':
1113 dbxenv output_short_file_name off
1115 * Emacs says it has saved a file, but the file does not actually
1118 This can happen on certain systems when you are using NFS, if the
1119 remote disk is full. It is due to a bug in NFS (or certain NFS
1120 implementations), and there is apparently nothing Emacs can do to
1121 detect the problem. Emacs checks the failure codes of all the system
1122 calls involved in writing a file, including `close'; but in the case
1123 where the problem occurs, none of those system calls fails.
1125 * "Compose Character" key does strange things when used as a Meta key.
1127 If you define one key to serve as both Meta and Compose Character, you
1128 will get strange results. In previous Emacs versions, this "worked"
1129 in that the key acted as Meta--that's because the older Emacs versions
1130 did not try to support Compose Character. Now Emacs tries to do
1131 character composition in the standard X way. This means that you
1132 must pick one meaning or the other for any given key.
1134 You can use both functions (Meta, and Compose Character) if you assign
1135 them to two different keys.
1137 * Emacs gets a segmentation fault at startup, on AIX4.2.
1139 If you are using IBM's xlc compiler, compile emacs.c
1140 without optimization; that should avoid the problem.
1142 * movemail compiled with POP support can't connect to the POP server.
1144 Make sure that the `pop' entry in /etc/services, or in the services
1145 NIS map if your machine uses NIS, has the same port number as the
1146 entry on the POP server. A common error is for the POP server to be
1147 listening on port 110, the assigned port for the POP3 protocol, while
1148 the client is trying to connect on port 109, the assigned port for the
1151 * Emacs crashes in x-popup-dialog.
1153 This can happen if the dialog widget cannot find the font it wants to
1154 use. You can work around the problem by specifying another font with
1155 an X resource--for example, `Emacs.dialog*.font: 9x15' (or any font that
1156 happens to exist on your X server).
1158 * Emacs crashes when you use Bibtex mode.
1160 This happens if your system puts a small limit on stack size. You can
1161 prevent the problem by using a suitable shell command (often `ulimit')
1162 to raise the stack size limit before you run Emacs.
1164 Patches to raise the stack size limit automatically in `main'
1165 (src/emacs.c) on various systems would be greatly appreciated.
1167 * Emacs crashes with SIGBUS or SIGSEGV on HPUX 9 after you delete a frame.
1169 We think this is due to a bug in the X libraries provided by HP. With
1170 the alternative X libraries in /usr/contrib/mitX11R5/lib, the problem
1173 * Emacs crashes with SIGBUS or SIGSEGV on Solaris after you delete a frame.
1175 We suspect that this is a similar bug in the X libraries provided by
1176 Sun. There is a report that one of these patches fixes the bug and
1177 makes the problem stop:
1179 105216-01 105393-01 105518-01 105621-01 105665-01 105615-02 105216-02
1180 105667-01 105401-08 105615-03 105621-02 105686-02 105736-01 105755-03
1181 106033-01 105379-01 105786-01 105181-04 105379-03 105786-04 105845-01
1182 105284-05 105669-02 105837-01 105837-02 105558-01 106125-02 105407-01
1184 Another person using a newer system (kernel patch level Generic_105181-06)
1185 suspects that the bug was fixed by one of these more recent patches:
1187 106040-07 SunOS 5.6: X Input & Output Method patch
1188 106222-01 OpenWindows 3.6: filemgr (ff.core) fixes
1189 105284-12 Motif 1.2.7: sparc Runtime library patch
1191 * Problems running Perl under Emacs on Windows NT/95.
1193 `perl -de 0' just hangs when executed in an Emacs subshell.
1194 The fault lies with Perl (indirectly with Windows NT/95).
1196 The problem is that the Perl debugger explicitly opens a connection to
1197 "CON", which is the DOS/NT equivalent of "/dev/tty", for interacting
1200 On Unix, this is okay, because Emacs (or the shell?) creates a
1201 pseudo-tty so that /dev/tty is really the pipe Emacs is using to
1202 communicate with the subprocess.
1204 On NT, this fails because CON always refers to the handle for the
1205 relevant console (approximately equivalent to a tty), and cannot be
1206 redirected to refer to the pipe Emacs assigned to the subprocess as
1209 A workaround is to modify perldb.pl to use STDIN/STDOUT instead of CON.
1213 *** PERL/LIB/PERLDB.PL.orig Wed May 26 08:24:18 1993
1214 --- PERL/LIB/PERLDB.PL Mon Jul 01 15:28:16 1996
1221 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
1229 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
1234 *** perl/5.001/lib/perl5db.pl.orig Sun Jun 04 21:13:40 1995
1235 --- perl/5.001/lib/perl5db.pl Mon Jul 01 17:00:08 1996
1242 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
1250 $rcfile="perldb.ini";
1254 * Problems running DOS programs on Windows NT versions earlier than 3.51.
1256 Some DOS programs, such as pkzip/pkunzip will not work at all, while
1257 others will only work if their stdin is redirected from a file or NUL.
1259 When a DOS program does not work, a new process is actually created, but
1260 hangs. It cannot be interrupted from Emacs, and might need to be killed
1261 by an external program if Emacs is hung waiting for the process to
1262 finish. If Emacs is not waiting for it, you should be able to kill the
1263 instance of ntvdm that is running the hung process from Emacs, if you
1264 can find out the process id.
1266 It is safe to run most DOS programs using call-process (eg. M-! and
1267 M-|) since stdin is then redirected from a file, but not with
1268 start-process since that redirects stdin to a pipe. Also, running DOS
1269 programs in a shell buffer prompt without redirecting stdin does not
1272 * Problems on MS-DOG if DJGPP v2.0 is used to compile Emacs:
1274 There are two DJGPP library bugs which cause problems:
1276 * Running `shell-command' (or `compile', or `grep') you get
1277 `Searching for program: permission denied (EACCES), c:/command.com';
1278 * After you shell to DOS, Ctrl-Break kills Emacs.
1280 To work around these bugs, you can use two files in the msdos
1281 subdirectory: `is_exec.c' and `sigaction.c'. Compile them and link
1282 them into the Emacs executable `temacs'; then they will replace the
1283 incorrect library functions.
1285 * When compiling with DJGPP on Windows 95, Make fails for some targets
1288 This can happen if long file name support (the setting of environment
1289 variable LFN) when Emacs distribution was unpacked and during
1290 compilation are not the same. See the MSDOG section of INSTALL for
1291 the explanation of how to avoid this problem.
1293 * Emacs compiled for MSDOS cannot find some Lisp files, or other
1294 run-time support files, when long filename support is enabled.
1295 (Usually, this problem will manifest itself when Emacs exits
1296 immediately after flashing the startup screen, because it cannot find
1297 the Lisp files it needs to load at startup. Redirect Emacs stdout
1298 and stderr to a file to see the error message printed by Emacs.)
1300 This can happen if the Emacs distribution was unzipped without LFN
1301 support, thus causing long filenames to be truncated to the first 6
1302 characters and a numeric tail that Windows 95 normally attaches to it.
1303 You should unzip the files again with a utility that supports long
1304 filenames (such as djtar from DJGPP or InfoZip's UnZip program
1305 compiled with DJGPP v2). The MSDOG section of the file INSTALL
1306 explains this issue in more detail.
1308 * Emacs compiled with DJGPP complains at startup:
1310 "Wrong type of argument: internal-facep, msdos-menu-active-face"
1312 This can happen if you define an environment variable `TERM'. Emacs
1313 on MSDOS uses an internal terminal emulator which is disabled if the
1314 value of `TERM' is anything but the string "internal". Emacs then
1315 works as if its terminal were a dumb glass teletype that doesn't
1316 support faces. To work around this, arrange for `TERM' to be
1317 undefined when Emacs runs. The best way to do that is to add an
1318 [emacs] section to the DJGPP.ENV file which defines an empty value for
1319 `TERM'; this way, only Emacs gets the empty value, while the rest of
1320 your system works as before.
1322 * On Windows 95, Alt-f6 does not get through to Emacs.
1324 This character seems to be trapped by the kernel in Windows 95.
1325 You can enter M-f6 by typing ESC f6.
1327 * Typing Alt-Shift has strange effects on Windows 95.
1329 This combination of keys is a command to change keyboard layout. If
1330 you proceed to type another non-modifier key before you let go of Alt
1331 and Shift, the Alt and Shift act as modifiers in the usual way.
1333 * `tparam' reported as a multiply-defined symbol when linking with ncurses.
1335 This problem results from an incompatible change in ncurses, in
1336 version 1.9.9e approximately. This version is unable to provide a
1337 definition of tparm without also defining tparam. This is also
1338 incompatible with Terminfo; as a result, the Emacs Terminfo support
1339 does not work with this version of ncurses.
1341 The fix is to install a newer version of ncurses, such as version 4.2.
1343 * Strange results from format %d in a few cases, on a Sun.
1345 Sun compiler version SC3.0 has been found to miscompile part of
1346 editfns.c. The workaround is to compile with some other compiler such
1349 * Output from subprocess (such as man or diff) is randomly truncated
1350 on GNU/Linux systems.
1352 This is due to a kernel bug which seems to be fixed in Linux version
1355 * Error messages `internal facep []' happen on GNU/Linux systems.
1357 There is a report that replacing libc.so.5.0.9 with libc.so.5.2.16
1358 caused this to start happening. People are not sure why, but the
1359 problem seems unlikely to be in Emacs itself. Some suspect that it
1360 is actually Xlib which won't work with libc.so.5.2.16.
1362 Using the old library version is a workaround.
1364 * On Solaris, Emacs crashes if you use (display-time).
1366 This can happen if you configure Emacs without specifying the precise
1367 version of Solaris that you are using.
1369 * Emacs dumps core on startup, on Solaris.
1371 Bill Sebok says that the cause of this is Solaris 2.4 vendor patch
1372 102303-05, which extends the Solaris linker to deal with the Solaris
1373 Common Desktop Environment's linking needs. You can fix the problem
1374 by removing this patch and installing patch 102049-02 instead.
1375 However, that linker version won't work with CDE.
1377 Solaris 2.5 comes with a linker that has this bug. It is reported that if
1378 you install all the latest patches (as of June 1996), the bug is fixed.
1379 We suspect the crucial patch is one of these, but we don't know
1382 103093-03: [README] SunOS 5.5: kernel patch (2140557 bytes)
1383 102832-01: [README] OpenWindows 3.5: Xview Jumbo Patch (4181613 bytes)
1384 103242-04: [README] SunOS 5.5: linker patch (595363 bytes)
1386 (One user reports that the bug was fixed by those patches together
1387 with patches 102980-04, 103279-01, 103300-02, and 103468-01.)
1389 If you can determine which patch does fix the bug, please tell
1390 bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
1392 Meanwhile, the GNU linker links Emacs properly on both Solaris 2.4 and
1395 * Emacs dumps core if lisp-complete-symbol is called, on Solaris.
1397 If you compile Emacs with the -fast or -xO4 option with version 3.0.2
1398 of the Sun C compiler, Emacs dumps core when lisp-complete-symbol is
1399 called. The problem does not happen if you compile with GCC.
1401 * "Cannot find callback list" messages from dialog boxes on HPUX, in
1402 Emacs built with Motif.
1404 This problem resulted from a bug in GCC 2.4.5. Newer GCC versions
1405 such as 2.7.0 fix the problem.
1407 * On Irix 6.0, make tries (and fails) to build a program named unexelfsgi
1409 A compiler bug inserts spaces into the string "unexelfsgi . o"
1410 in src/Makefile. Edit src/Makefile, after configure is run,
1411 find that string, and take out the spaces.
1413 Compiler fixes in Irix 6.0.1 should eliminate this problem.
1415 * "out of virtual swap space" on Irix 5.3
1417 This message occurs when the system runs out of swap space due to too
1418 many large programs running. The solution is either to provide more
1419 swap space or to reduce the number of large programs being run. You
1420 can check the current status of the swap space by executing the
1423 You can increase swap space by changing the file /etc/fstab. Adding a
1426 /usr/swap/swap.more swap swap pri=3 0 0
1428 where /usr/swap/swap.more is a file previously created (for instance
1429 by using /etc/mkfile), will increase the swap space by the size of
1430 that file. Execute `swap -m' or reboot the machine to activate the
1431 new swap area. See the manpages for `swap' and `fstab' for further
1434 The objectserver daemon can use up lots of memory because it can be
1435 swamped with NIS information. It collects information about all users
1436 on the network that can log on to the host.
1438 If you want to disable the objectserver completely, you can execute
1439 the command `chkconfig objectserver off' and reboot. That may disable
1440 some of the window system functionality, such as responding CDROM
1443 You can also remove NIS support from the objectserver. The SGI `admin'
1444 FAQ has a detailed description on how to do that; see question 35
1445 ("Why isn't the objectserver working?"). The admin FAQ can be found at
1446 ftp://viz.tamu.edu/pub/sgi/faq/.
1448 * With certain fonts, when the cursor appears on a character, the
1449 character doesn't appear--you get a solid box instead.
1451 One user on a Linux-based GNU system reported that this problem went
1452 away with installation of a new X server. The failing server was
1453 XFree86 3.1.1. XFree86 3.1.2 works.
1455 * On SunOS 4.1.3, Emacs unpredictably crashes in _yp_dobind_soft.
1457 This happens if you configure Emacs specifying just `sparc-sun-sunos4'
1458 on a system that is version 4.1.3. You must specify the precise
1459 version number (or let configure figure out the configuration, which
1460 it can do perfectly well for SunOS).
1462 * On SunOS 4, Emacs processes keep going after you kill the X server
1463 (or log out, if you logged in using X).
1465 Someone reported that recompiling with GCC 2.7.0 fixed this problem.
1467 * On AIX 4, some programs fail when run in a Shell buffer
1468 with an error message like No terminfo entry for "unknown".
1470 On AIX, many terminal type definitions are not installed by default.
1471 `unknown' is one of them. Install the "Special Generic Terminal
1472 Definitions" to make them defined.
1474 * On SunOS, you get linker errors
1475 ld: Undefined symbol
1476 _get_wmShellWidgetClass
1477 _get_applicationShellWidgetClass
1479 The fix to this is to install patch 100573 for OpenWindows 3.0
1480 or link libXmu statically.
1482 * On AIX 4.1.2, linker error messages such as
1483 ld: 0711-212 SEVERE ERROR: Symbol .__quous, found in the global symbol table
1484 of archive /usr/lib/libIM.a, was not defined in archive member shr.o.
1486 This is a problem in libIM.a. You can work around it by executing
1487 these shell commands in the src subdirectory of the directory where
1490 cp /usr/lib/libIM.a .
1494 Then change -lIM to ./libIM.a in the command to link temacs (in
1497 * Unpredictable segmentation faults on Solaris 2.3 and 2.4.
1499 A user reported that this happened in 19.29 when it was compiled with
1500 the Sun compiler, but not when he recompiled with GCC 2.7.0.
1502 We do not know whether something in Emacs is partly to blame for this.
1504 * Emacs exits with "X protocol error" when run with an X server for
1507 A certain X server for Windows had a bug which caused this.
1508 Supposedly the newer 32-bit version of this server doesn't have the
1511 * Emacs crashes at startup on MSDOS.
1513 Some users report that Emacs 19.29 requires dpmi memory management,
1514 and crashes on startup if the system does not have it. We don't yet
1515 know why this happens--perhaps these machines don't have enough real
1516 memory, or perhaps something is wrong in Emacs or the compiler.
1517 However, arranging to use dpmi support is a workaround.
1519 You can find out if you have a dpmi host by running go32 without
1520 arguments; it will tell you if it uses dpmi memory. For more
1521 information about dpmi memory, consult the djgpp FAQ. (djgpp
1522 is the GNU C compiler as packaged for MSDOS.)
1524 Compiling Emacs under MSDOS is extremely sensitive for proper memory
1525 configuration. If you experience problems during compilation, consider
1526 removing some or all memory resident programs (notably disk caches)
1527 and make sure that your memory managers are properly configured. See
1528 the djgpp faq for configuration hints.
1530 * A position you specified in .Xdefaults is ignored, using twm.
1532 twm normally ignores "program-specified" positions.
1533 You can tell it to obey them with this command in your `.twmrc' file:
1535 UsePPosition "on" #allow clients to request a position
1537 * Compiling lib-src says there is no rule to make test-distrib.c.
1539 This results from a bug in a VERY old version of GNU Sed. To solve
1540 the problem, install the current version of GNU Sed, then rerun
1541 Emacs's configure script.
1543 * Compiling wakeup, in lib-src, says it can't make wakeup.c.
1545 This results from a bug in GNU Sed version 2.03. To solve the
1546 problem, install the current version of GNU Sed, then rerun Emacs's
1549 * On Sunos 4.1.1, there are errors compiling sysdep.c.
1551 If you get errors such as
1553 "sysdep.c", line 2017: undefined structure or union
1554 "sysdep.c", line 2017: undefined structure or union
1555 "sysdep.c", line 2019: nodename undefined
1557 This can result from defining LD_LIBRARY_PATH. It is very tricky
1558 to use that environment variable with Emacs. The Emacs configure
1559 script links many test programs with the system libraries; you must
1560 make sure that the libraries available to configure are the same
1561 ones available when you build Emacs.
1563 * The right Alt key works wrong on German HP keyboards (and perhaps
1564 other non-English HP keyboards too).
1566 This is because HPUX defines the modifiers wrong in X. Here is a
1567 shell script to fix the problem; be sure that it is run after VUE
1568 configures the X server.
1570 xmodmap 2> /dev/null - << EOF
1571 keysym Alt_L = Meta_L
1572 keysym Alt_R = Meta_R
1577 keysym Mode_switch = NoSymbol
1579 keysym Meta_R = Mode_switch
1580 add mod2 = Mode_switch
1583 * The Emacs window disappears when you type M-q.
1585 Some versions of the Open Look window manager interpret M-q as a quit
1586 command for whatever window you are typing at. If you want to use
1587 Emacs with that window manager, you should try to configure the window
1588 manager to use some other command. You can disable the
1589 shortcut keys entirely by adding this line to ~/.OWdefaults:
1591 OpenWindows.WindowMenuAccelerators: False
1593 * Emacs does not notice when you release the mouse.
1595 There are reports that this happened with (some) Microsoft mice and
1596 that replacing the mouse made it stop.
1598 * Trouble using ptys on IRIX, or running out of ptys.
1600 The program mkpts (which may be in `/usr/adm' or `/usr/sbin') needs to
1601 be set-UID to root, or non-root programs like Emacs will not be able
1602 to allocate ptys reliably.
1604 * On Irix 5.2, unexelfsgi.c can't find cmplrs/stsupport.h.
1606 The file cmplrs/stsupport.h was included in the wrong file set in the
1607 Irix 5.2 distribution. You can find it in the optional fileset
1608 compiler_dev, or copy it from some other Irix 5.2 system. A kludgy
1609 workaround is to change unexelfsgi.c to include sym.h instead of
1612 * Slow startup on Linux-based GNU systems.
1614 People using systems based on the Linux kernel sometimes report that
1615 startup takes 10 to 15 seconds longer than `usual'.
1617 This is because Emacs looks up the host name when it starts.
1618 Normally, this takes negligible time; the extra delay is due to
1619 improper system configuration. This problem can occur for both
1620 networked and non-networked machines.
1622 Here is how to fix the configuration. It requires being root.
1626 First, make sure the files `/etc/hosts' and `/etc/host.conf' both
1627 exist. The first line in the `/etc/hosts' file should look like this
1628 (replace HOSTNAME with your host name):
1632 Also make sure that the `/etc/host.conf' files contains the following
1638 Any changes, permanent and temporary, to the host name should be
1639 indicated in the `/etc/hosts' file, since it acts a limited local
1640 database of addresses and names (e.g., some SLIP connections
1641 dynamically allocate ip addresses).
1643 ** Non-Networked Case
1645 The solution described in the networked case applies here as well.
1646 However, if you never intend to network your machine, you can use a
1647 simpler solution: create an empty `/etc/host.conf' file. The command
1648 `touch /etc/host.conf' suffices to create the file. The `/etc/hosts'
1649 file is not necessary with this approach.
1651 * On Solaris 2.4, Dired hangs and C-g does not work. Or Emacs hangs
1652 forever waiting for termination of a subprocess that is a zombie.
1654 casper@fwi.uva.nl says the problem is in X11R6. Rebuild libX11.so
1655 after changing the file xc/config/cf/sunLib.tmpl. Change the lines
1658 #define SharedX11Reqs -lthread
1663 #if OSMinorVersion < 4
1665 #define SharedX11Reqs -lthread
1669 Be sure also to edit x/config/cf/sun.cf so that OSMinorVersion is 4
1670 (as it should be for Solaris 2.4). The file has three definitions for
1671 OSMinorVersion: the first is for x86, the second for SPARC under
1672 Solaris, and the third for SunOS 4. Make sure to update the
1673 definition for your type of machine and system.
1675 Then do `make Everything' in the top directory of X11R6, to rebuild
1676 the makefiles and rebuild X. The X built this way work only on
1677 Solaris 2.4, not on 2.3.
1679 For multithreaded X to work it is necessary to install patch
1680 101925-02 to fix problems in header files [2.4]. You need
1681 to reinstall gcc or re-run just-fixinc after installing that
1684 However, Frank Rust <frust@iti.cs.tu-bs.de> used a simpler solution:
1686 #define ThreadedX YES
1688 #define ThreadedX NO
1689 in sun.cf and did `make World' to rebuild X11R6. Removing all
1690 `-DXTHREAD*' flags and `-lthread' entries from lib/X11/Makefile and
1691 typing 'make install' in that directory also seemed to work.
1693 * With M-x enable-flow-control, you need to type C-\ twice
1694 to do incremental search--a single C-\ gets no response.
1696 This has been traced to communicating with your machine via kermit,
1697 with C-\ as the kermit escape character. One solution is to use
1698 another escape character in kermit. One user did
1700 set escape-character 17
1702 in his .kermrc file, to make C-q the kermit escape character.
1704 * The Motif version of Emacs paints the screen a solid color.
1706 This has been observed to result from the following X resource:
1708 Emacs*default.attributeFont: -*-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-140-*-*-*-*-iso8859-*
1710 That the resource has this effect indicates a bug in something, but we
1711 do not yet know what. If it is an Emacs bug, we hope someone can
1712 explain what the bug is so we can fix it. In the mean time, removing
1713 the resource prevents the problem.
1715 * Emacs gets hung shortly after startup, on Sunos 4.1.3.
1717 We think this is due to a bug in Sunos. The word is that
1718 one of these Sunos patches fixes the bug:
1720 100075-11 100224-06 100347-03 100482-05 100557-02 100623-03 100804-03 101080-01
1721 100103-12 100249-09 100496-02 100564-07 100630-02 100891-10 101134-01
1722 100170-09 100296-04 100377-09 100507-04 100567-04 100650-02 101070-01 101145-01
1723 100173-10 100305-15 100383-06 100513-04 100570-05 100689-01 101071-03 101200-02
1724 100178-09 100338-05 100421-03 100536-02 100584-05 100784-01 101072-01 101207-01
1726 We don't know which of these patches really matter. If you find out
1727 which ones, please inform bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
1729 * Emacs aborts while starting up, only when run without X.
1731 This problem often results from compiling Emacs with GCC when GCC was
1732 installed incorrectly. The usual error in installing GCC is to
1733 specify --includedir=/usr/include. Installation of GCC makes
1734 corrected copies of the system header files. GCC is supposed to use
1735 the corrected copies in preference to the original system headers.
1736 Specifying --includedir=/usr/include causes the original system header
1737 files to be used. On some systems, the definition of ioctl in the
1738 original system header files is invalid for ANSI C and causes Emacs
1741 The fix is to reinstall GCC, and this time do not specify --includedir
1742 when you configure it. Then recompile Emacs. Specifying --includedir
1743 is appropriate only in very special cases and it should *never* be the
1744 same directory where system header files are kept.
1746 * On Solaris 2.x, GCC complains "64 bit integer types not supported"
1748 This suggests that GCC is not installed correctly. Most likely you
1749 are using GCC 2.7.2.3 (or earlier) on Solaris 2.6 (or later); this
1750 does not work without patching. To run GCC 2.7.2.3 on Solaris 2.6 or
1751 later, you must patch fixinc.svr4 and reinstall GCC from scratch as
1752 described in the Solaris FAQ
1753 <http://www.wins.uva.nl/pub/solaris/solaris2.html>. A better fix is
1754 to upgrade to GCC 2.8.1 or later.
1756 * The Compose key on a DEC keyboard does not work as Meta key.
1758 This shell command should fix it:
1760 xmodmap -e 'keycode 0xb1 = Meta_L'
1762 * Regular expressions matching bugs on SCO systems.
1764 On SCO, there are problems in regexp matching when Emacs is compiled
1765 with the system compiler. The compiler version is "Microsoft C
1766 version 6", SCO 4.2.0h Dev Sys Maintenance Supplement 01/06/93; Quick
1767 C Compiler Version 1.00.46 (Beta). The solution is to compile with
1770 * On Sunos 4, you get the error ld: Undefined symbol __lib_version.
1772 This is the result of using cc or gcc with the shared library meant
1773 for acc (the Sunpro compiler). Check your LD_LIBRARY_PATH and delete
1774 /usr/lang/SC2.0.1 or some similar directory.
1776 * You can't select from submenus (in the X toolkit version).
1778 On certain systems, mouse-tracking and selection in top-level menus
1779 works properly with the X toolkit, but neither of them works when you
1780 bring up a submenu (such as Bookmarks or Compare or Apply Patch, in
1783 This works on most systems. There is speculation that the failure is
1784 due to bugs in old versions of X toolkit libraries, but no one really
1785 knows. If someone debugs this and finds the precise cause, perhaps a
1786 workaround can be found.
1788 * Unusable default font on SCO 3.2v4.
1790 The Open Desktop environment comes with default X resource settings
1791 that tell Emacs to use a variable-width font. Emacs cannot use such
1792 fonts, so it does not work.
1794 This is caused by the file /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/ScoTerm, which is
1795 the application-specific resource file for the `scoterm' terminal
1796 emulator program. It contains several extremely general X resources
1797 that affect other programs besides `scoterm'. In particular, these
1798 resources affect Emacs also:
1800 *Font: -*-helvetica-medium-r-*--12-*-p-*
1801 *Background: scoBackground
1802 *Foreground: scoForeground
1804 The best solution is to create an application-specific resource file for
1805 Emacs, /usr/lib/X11/sco/startup/Emacs, with the following contents:
1807 Emacs*Font: -*-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-120-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1
1808 Emacs*Background: white
1809 Emacs*Foreground: black
1811 (These settings mimic the Emacs defaults, but you can change them to
1812 suit your needs.) This resource file is only read when the X server
1813 starts up, so you should restart it by logging out of the Open Desktop
1814 environment or by running `scologin stop; scologin start` from the shell
1815 as root. Alternatively, you can put these settings in the
1816 /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/Emacs resource file and simply restart Emacs,
1817 but then they will not affect remote invocations of Emacs that use the
1818 Open Desktop display.
1820 These resource files are not normally shared across a network of SCO
1821 machines; you must create the file on each machine individually.
1823 * rcs2log gives you the awk error message "too many fields".
1825 This is due to an arbitrary limit in certain versions of awk.
1826 The solution is to use gawk (GNU awk).
1828 * Emacs is slow using X11R5 on HP/UX.
1830 This happens if you use the MIT versions of the X libraries--it
1831 doesn't run as fast as HP's version. People sometimes use the version
1832 because they see the HP version doesn't have the libraries libXaw.a,
1833 libXmu.a, libXext.a and others. HP/UX normally doesn't come with
1834 those libraries installed. To get good performance, you need to
1835 install them and rebuild Emacs.
1837 * Loading fonts is very slow.
1839 You might be getting scalable fonts instead of precomputed bitmaps.
1840 Known scalable font directories are "Type1" and "Speedo". A font
1841 directory contains scalable fonts if it contains the file
1844 If this is so, re-order your X windows font path to put the scalable
1845 font directories last. See the documentation of `xset' for details.
1847 With some X servers, it may be necessary to take the scalable font
1848 directories out of your path entirely, at least for Emacs 19.26.
1849 Changes in the future may make this unnecessary.
1851 * On AIX 3.2.4, releasing Ctrl/Act key has no effect, if Shift is down.
1853 Due to a feature of AIX, pressing or releasing the Ctrl/Act key is
1854 ignored when the Shift, Alt or AltGr keys are held down. This can
1855 lead to the keyboard being "control-locked"--ordinary letters are
1856 treated as control characters.
1858 You can get out of this "control-locked" state by pressing and
1859 releasing Ctrl/Act while not pressing or holding any other keys.
1861 * display-time causes kernel problems on ISC systems.
1863 Under Interactive Unix versions 3.0.1 and 4.0 (and probably other
1864 versions), display-time causes the loss of large numbers of STREVENT
1865 cells. Eventually the kernel's supply of these cells is exhausted.
1866 This makes emacs and the whole system run slow, and can make other
1867 processes die, in particular pcnfsd.
1869 Other emacs functions that communicate with remote processes may have
1870 the same problem. Display-time seems to be far the worst.
1872 The only known fix: Don't run display-time.
1874 * On Solaris, C-x doesn't get through to Emacs when you use the console.
1876 This is a Solaris feature (at least on Intel x86 cpus). Type C-r
1877 C-r C-t, to toggle whether C-x gets through to Emacs.
1879 * Error message `Symbol's value as variable is void: x', followed by
1880 segmentation fault and core dump.
1882 This has been tracked to a bug in tar! People report that tar erroneously
1883 added a line like this at the beginning of files of Lisp code:
1885 x FILENAME, N bytes, B tape blocks
1887 If your tar has this problem, install GNU tar--if you can manage to
1890 * Link failure when using acc on a Sun.
1892 To use acc, you need additional options just before the libraries, such as
1894 /usr/lang/SC2.0.1/values-Xt.o -L/usr/lang/SC2.0.1/cg87 -L/usr/lang/SC2.0.1
1896 and you need to add -lansi just before -lc.
1898 The precise file names depend on the compiler version, so we
1899 cannot easily arrange to supply them.
1901 * Link failure on IBM AIX 1.3 ptf 0013.
1903 There is a real duplicate definition of the function `_slibc_free' in
1904 the library /lib/libc_s.a (just do nm on it to verify). The
1908 ar xv libc_s.a NLtmtime.o
1909 ar dv libc_s.a NLtmtime.o
1911 * Undefined symbols _dlopen, _dlsym and/or _dlclose on a Sun.
1913 If you see undefined symbols _dlopen, _dlsym, or _dlclose when linking
1914 with -lX11, compile and link against the file mit/util/misc/dlsym.c in
1915 the MIT X11R5 distribution. Alternatively, link temacs using shared
1916 libraries with s/sunos4shr.h. (This doesn't work if you use the X
1919 If you get the additional error that the linker could not find
1920 lib_version.o, try extracting it from X11/usr/lib/X11/libvim.a in
1921 X11R4, then use it in the link.
1923 * Error messages `Wrong number of arguments: #<subr where-is-internal>, 5'
1925 This typically results from having the powerkey library loaded.
1926 Powerkey was designed for Emacs 19.22. It is obsolete now because
1927 Emacs 19 now has this feature built in; and powerkey also calls
1928 where-is-internal in an obsolete way.
1930 So the fix is to arrange not to load powerkey.
1932 * In Shell mode, you get a ^M at the end of every line.
1934 This happens to people who use tcsh, because it is trying to be too
1935 smart. It sees that the Shell uses terminal type `unknown' and turns
1936 on the flag to output ^M at the end of each line. You can fix the
1937 problem by adding this to your .cshrc file:
1940 if ($EMACS == "t") then
1942 stty -icrnl -onlcr -echo susp ^Z
1946 * An error message such as `X protocol error: BadMatch (invalid
1947 parameter attributes) on protocol request 93'.
1949 This comes from having an invalid X resource, such as
1951 (which is invalid because it specifies a color name for something
1952 that isn't a color.)
1954 The fix is to correct your X resources.
1956 * Undefined symbols when linking on Sunos 4.1 using --with-x-toolkit.
1958 If you get the undefined symbols _atowc _wcslen, _iswprint, _iswspace,
1959 _iswcntrl, _wcscpy, and _wcsncpy, then you need to add -lXwchar after
1960 -lXaw in the command that links temacs.
1962 This problem seems to arise only when the international language
1963 extensions to X11R5 are installed.
1965 * Typing C-c C-c in Shell mode kills your X server.
1967 This happens with Linux kernel 1.0 thru 1.04, approximately. The workaround is
1968 to define SIGNALS_VIA_CHARACTERS in config.h and recompile Emacs.
1969 Newer Linux kernel versions don't have this problem.
1971 * src/Makefile and lib-src/Makefile are truncated--most of the file missing.
1973 This can happen if configure uses GNU sed version 2.03. That version
1974 had a bug. GNU sed version 2.05 works properly.
1976 * Slow startup on X11R6 with X windows.
1978 If Emacs takes two minutes to start up on X11R6, see if your X
1979 resources specify any Adobe fonts. That causes the type-1 font
1980 renderer to start up, even if the font you asked for is not a type-1
1983 One way to avoid this problem is to eliminate the type-1 fonts from
1984 your font path, like this:
1986 xset -fp /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/
1988 * Pull-down menus appear in the wrong place, in the toolkit version of Emacs.
1990 An X resource of this form can cause the problem:
1992 Emacs*geometry: 80x55+0+0
1994 This resource is supposed to apply, and does apply, to the menus
1995 individually as well as to Emacs frames. If that is not what you
1996 want, rewrite the resource.
1998 To check thoroughly for such resource specifications, use `xrdb
1999 -query' to see what resources the X server records, and also look at
2000 the user's ~/.Xdefaults and ~/.Xdefaults-* files.
2002 * --with-x-toolkit version crashes when used with shared libraries.
2004 On some systems, including Sunos 4 and DGUX 5.4.2 and perhaps others,
2005 unexec doesn't work properly with the shared library for the X
2006 toolkit. You might be able to work around this by using a nonshared
2007 libXt.a library. The real fix is to upgrade the various versions of
2008 unexec and/or ralloc. We think this has been fixed on Sunos 4
2009 and Solaris in version 19.29.
2011 * `make install' fails on install-doc with `Error 141'.
2013 This happens on Ultrix 4.2 due to failure of a pipeline of tar
2014 commands. We don't know why they fail, but the bug seems not to be in
2015 Emacs. The workaround is to run the shell command in install-doc by
2018 * --with-x-toolkit option configures wrong on BSD/386.
2020 This problem is due to bugs in the shell in version 1.0 of BSD/386.
2021 The workaround is to edit the configure file to use some other shell,
2024 * Subprocesses remain, hanging but not zombies, on Sunos 5.3.
2026 A bug in Sunos 5.3 causes Emacs subprocesses to remain after Emacs
2027 exits. Sun patch # 101415-02 is part of the fix for this, but it only
2028 applies to ptys, and doesn't fix the problem with subprocesses
2029 communicating through pipes.
2031 * Mail is lost when sent to local aliases.
2033 Many emacs mail user agents (VM and rmail, for instance) use the
2034 sendmail.el library. This library can arrange for mail to be
2035 delivered by passing messages to the /usr/lib/sendmail (usually)
2036 program . In doing so, it passes the '-t' flag to sendmail, which
2037 means that the name of the recipient of the message is not on the
2038 command line and, therefore, that sendmail must parse the message to
2039 obtain the destination address.
2041 There is a bug in the SunOS4.1.1 and SunOS4.1.3 versions of sendmail.
2042 In short, when given the -t flag, the SunOS sendmail won't recognize
2043 non-local (i.e. NIS) aliases. It has been reported that the Solaris
2044 2.x versions of sendmail do not have this bug. For those using SunOS
2045 4.1, the best fix is to install sendmail V8 or IDA sendmail (which
2046 have other advantages over the regular sendmail as well). At the time
2047 of this writing, these official versions are available:
2049 Sendmail V8 on ftp.cs.berkeley.edu in /ucb/sendmail:
2050 sendmail.8.6.9.base.tar.Z (the base system source & documentation)
2051 sendmail.8.6.9.cf.tar.Z (configuration files)
2052 sendmail.8.6.9.misc.tar.Z (miscellaneous support programs)
2053 sendmail.8.6.9.xdoc.tar.Z (extended documentation, with postscript)
2055 IDA sendmail on vixen.cso.uiuc.edu in /pub:
2056 sendmail-5.67b+IDA-1.5.tar.gz
2058 * On AIX, you get this message when running Emacs:
2060 Could not load program emacs
2061 Symbol smtcheckinit in csh is undefined
2062 Error was: Exec format error
2066 Could not load program .emacs
2067 Symbol _system_con in csh is undefined
2068 Symbol _fp_trapsta in csh is undefined
2069 Error was: Exec format error
2071 These can happen when you try to run on AIX 3.2.5 a program that was
2072 compiled with 3.2.4. The fix is to recompile.
2074 * On AIX, you get this compiler error message:
2076 Processing include file ./XMenuInt.h
2077 1501-106: (S) Include file X11/Xlib.h not found.
2079 This means your system was installed with only the X11 runtime i.d
2080 libraries. You have to find your sipo (bootable tape) and install
2081 X11Dev... with smit.
2083 * You "lose characters" after typing Compose Character key.
2085 This is because the Compose Character key is defined as the keysym
2086 Multi_key, and Emacs (seeing that) does the proper X11
2087 character-composition processing. If you don't want your Compose key
2088 to do that, you can redefine it with xmodmap.
2090 For example, here's one way to turn it into a Meta key:
2092 xmodmap -e "keysym Multi_key = Meta_L"
2094 If all users at your site of a particular keyboard prefer Meta to
2095 Compose, you can make the remapping happen automatically by adding the
2096 xmodmap command to the xdm setup script for that display.
2098 * C-z just refreshes the screen instead of suspending Emacs.
2100 You are probably using a shell that doesn't support job control, even
2101 though the system itself is capable of it. Either use a different shell,
2102 or set the variable `cannot-suspend' to a non-nil value.
2104 * Watch out for .emacs files and EMACSLOADPATH environment vars
2106 These control the actions of Emacs.
2107 ~/.emacs is your Emacs init file.
2108 EMACSLOADPATH overrides which directories the function
2111 If you observe strange problems, check for these and get rid
2112 of them, then try again.
2114 * After running emacs once, subsequent invocations crash.
2116 Some versions of SVR4 have a serious bug in the implementation of the
2117 mmap () system call in the kernel; this causes emacs to run correctly
2118 the first time, and then crash when run a second time.
2120 Contact your vendor and ask for the mmap bug fix; in the mean time,
2121 you may be able to work around the problem by adding a line to your
2122 operating system description file (whose name is reported by the
2123 configure script) that reads:
2124 #define SYSTEM_MALLOC
2125 This makes Emacs use memory less efficiently, but seems to work around
2128 * Inability to send an Alt-modified key, when Emacs is communicating
2129 directly with an X server.
2131 If you have tried to bind an Alt-modified key as a command, and it
2132 does not work to type the command, the first thing you should check is
2133 whether the key is getting through to Emacs. To do this, type C-h c
2134 followed by the Alt-modified key. C-h c should say what kind of event
2135 it read. If it says it read an Alt-modified key, then make sure you
2136 have made the key binding correctly.
2138 If C-h c reports an event that doesn't have the Alt modifier, it may
2139 be because your X server has no key for the Alt modifier. The X
2140 server that comes from MIT does not set up the Alt modifier by
2143 If your keyboard has keys named Alt, you can enable them as follows:
2145 xmodmap -e 'add mod2 = Alt_L'
2146 xmodmap -e 'add mod2 = Alt_R'
2148 If the keyboard has just one key named Alt, then only one of those
2149 commands is needed. The modifier `mod2' is a reasonable choice if you
2150 are using an unmodified MIT version of X. Otherwise, choose any
2151 modifier bit not otherwise used.
2153 If your keyboard does not have keys named Alt, you can use some other
2154 keys. Use the keysym command in xmodmap to turn a function key (or
2155 some other 'spare' key) into Alt_L or into Alt_R, and then use the
2156 commands show above to make them modifier keys.
2158 Note that if you have Alt keys but no Meta keys, Emacs translates Alt
2159 into Meta. This is because of the great importance of Meta in Emacs.
2161 * `Pid xxx killed due to text modification or page I/O error'
2163 On HP/UX, you can get that error when the Emacs executable is on an NFS
2164 file system. HP/UX responds this way if it tries to swap in a page and
2165 does not get a response from the server within a timeout whose default
2166 value is just ten seconds.
2168 If this happens to you, extend the timeout period.
2170 * `expand-file-name' fails to work on any but the machine you dumped Emacs on.
2172 On Ultrix, if you use any of the functions which look up information
2173 in the passwd database before dumping Emacs (say, by using
2174 expand-file-name in site-init.el), then those functions will not work
2175 in the dumped Emacs on any host but the one Emacs was dumped on.
2177 The solution? Don't use expand-file-name in site-init.el, or in
2178 anything it loads. Yuck - some solution.
2180 I'm not sure why this happens; if you can find out exactly what is
2181 going on, and perhaps find a fix or a workaround, please let us know.
2182 Perhaps the YP functions cache some information, the cache is included
2183 in the dumped Emacs, and is then inaccurate on any other host.
2185 * On some variants of SVR4, Emacs does not work at all with X.
2187 Try defining BROKEN_FIONREAD in your config.h file. If this solves
2188 the problem, please send a bug report to tell us this is needed; be
2189 sure to say exactly what type of machine and system you are using.
2191 * Linking says that the functions insque and remque are undefined.
2193 Change oldXMenu/Makefile by adding insque.o to the variable OBJS.
2195 * Emacs fails to understand most Internet host names, even though
2196 the names work properly with other programs on the same system.
2197 * Emacs won't work with X-windows if the value of DISPLAY is HOSTNAME:0.
2198 * GNUs can't make contact with the specified host for nntp.
2200 This typically happens on Suns and other systems that use shared
2201 libraries. The cause is that the site has installed a version of the
2202 shared library which uses a name server--but has not installed a
2203 similar version of the unshared library which Emacs uses.
2205 The result is that most programs, using the shared library, work with
2206 the nameserver, but Emacs does not.
2208 The fix is to install an unshared library that corresponds to what you
2209 installed in the shared library, and then relink Emacs.
2211 On SunOS 4.1, simply define HAVE_RES_INIT.
2213 If you have already installed the name resolver in the file libresolv.a,
2214 then you need to compile Emacs to use that library. The easiest way to
2215 do this is to add to config.h a definition of LIBS_SYSTEM, LIBS_MACHINE
2216 or LIB_STANDARD which uses -lresolv. Watch out! If you redefine a macro
2217 that is already in use in your configuration to supply some other libraries,
2218 be careful not to lose the others.
2220 Thus, you could start by adding this to config.h:
2222 #define LIBS_SYSTEM -lresolv
2224 Then if this gives you an error for redefining a macro, and you see that
2225 the s- file defines LIBS_SYSTEM as -lfoo -lbar, you could change config.h
2228 #define LIBS_SYSTEM -lresolv -lfoo -lbar
2230 * On a Sun running SunOS 4.1.1, you get this error message from GNU ld:
2232 /lib/libc.a(_Q_sub.o): Undefined symbol __Q_get_rp_rd referenced from text segment
2234 The problem is in the Sun shared C library, not in GNU ld.
2236 The solution is to install Patch-ID# 100267-03 from Sun.
2238 * Self documentation messages are garbled.
2240 This means that the file `etc/DOC-...' doesn't properly correspond
2241 with the Emacs executable. Redumping Emacs and then installing the
2242 corresponding pair of files should fix the problem.
2244 * Trouble using ptys on AIX.
2246 People often install the pty devices on AIX incorrectly.
2247 Use `smit pty' to reinstall them properly.
2249 * Shell mode on HP/UX gives the message, "`tty`: Ambiguous".
2251 christos@theory.tn.cornell.edu says:
2253 The problem is that in your .cshrc you have something that tries to
2254 execute `tty`. If you are not running the shell on a real tty then
2255 tty will print "not a tty". Csh expects one word in some places,
2256 but tty is giving it back 3.
2258 The solution is to add a pair of quotes around `tty` to make it a single
2261 if (`tty` == "/dev/console")
2263 should be changed to:
2265 if ("`tty`" == "/dev/console")
2267 Even better, move things that set up terminal sections out of .cshrc
2270 * Using X Windows, control-shift-leftbutton makes Emacs hang.
2272 Use the shell command `xset bc' to make the old X Menu package work.
2274 * Emacs running under X Windows does not handle mouse clicks.
2275 * `emacs -geometry 80x20' finds a file named `80x20'.
2277 One cause of such problems is having (setq term-file-prefix nil) in
2278 your .emacs file. Another cause is a bad value of EMACSLOADPATH in
2281 * Emacs gets error message from linker on Sun.
2283 If the error message says that a symbol such as `f68881_used' or
2284 `ffpa_used' or `start_float' is undefined, this probably indicates
2285 that you have compiled some libraries, such as the X libraries,
2286 with a floating point option other than the default.
2288 It's not terribly hard to make this work with small changes in
2289 crt0.c together with linking with Fcrt1.o, Wcrt1.o or Mcrt1.o.
2290 However, the easiest approach is to build Xlib with the default
2291 floating point option: -fsoft.
2293 * Emacs fails to get default settings from X Windows server.
2295 The X library in X11R4 has a bug; it interchanges the 2nd and 3rd
2296 arguments to XGetDefaults. Define the macro XBACKWARDS in config.h to
2297 tell Emacs to compensate for this.
2299 I don't believe there is any way Emacs can determine for itself
2300 whether this problem is present on a given system.
2302 * Keyboard input gets confused after a beep when using a DECserver
2305 This problem seems to be a matter of configuring the DECserver to use
2306 7 bit characters rather than 8 bit characters.
2308 * M-x shell persistently reports "Process shell exited abnormally with code 1".
2310 This happened on Suns as a result of what is said to be a bug in Sunos
2311 version 4.0.x. The only fix was to reboot the machine.
2313 * Programs running under terminal emulator do not recognize `emacs'
2316 The cause of this is a shell startup file that sets the TERMCAP
2317 environment variable. The terminal emulator uses that variable to
2318 provide the information on the special terminal type that Emacs
2321 Rewrite your shell startup file so that it does not change TERMCAP
2322 in such a case. You could use the following conditional which sets
2323 it only if it is undefined.
2325 if ( ! ${?TERMCAP} ) setenv TERMCAP ~/my-termcap-file
2327 Or you could set TERMCAP only when you set TERM--which should not
2328 happen in a non-login shell.
2330 * X Windows doesn't work if DISPLAY uses a hostname.
2332 People have reported kernel bugs in certain systems that cause Emacs
2333 not to work with X Windows if DISPLAY is set using a host name. But
2334 the problem does not occur if DISPLAY is set to `unix:0.0'. I think
2335 the bug has to do with SIGIO or FIONREAD.
2337 You may be able to compensate for the bug by doing (set-input-mode nil nil).
2338 However, that has the disadvantage of turning off interrupts, so that
2339 you are unable to quit out of a Lisp program by typing C-g.
2341 The easy way to do this is to put
2343 (setq x-sigio-bug t)
2345 in your site-init.el file.
2347 * Problem with remote X server on Suns.
2349 On a Sun, running Emacs on one machine with the X server on another
2350 may not work if you have used the unshared system libraries. This
2351 is because the unshared libraries fail to use YP for host name lookup.
2352 As a result, the host name you specify may not be recognized.
2354 * Shell mode ignores interrupts on Apollo Domain
2356 You may find that M-x shell prints the following message:
2358 Warning: no access to tty; thus no job control in this shell...
2360 This can happen if there are not enough ptys on your system.
2361 Here is how to make more of them.
2365 # shows how many pty's you have. I had 8, named pty0 to pty7)
2367 # creates eight new pty's
2369 * Fatal signal in the command temacs -l loadup inc dump
2371 This command is the final stage of building Emacs. It is run by the
2372 Makefile in the src subdirectory, or by build.com on VMS.
2374 It has been known to get fatal errors due to insufficient swapping
2375 space available on the machine.
2377 On 68000's, it has also happened because of bugs in the
2378 subroutine `alloca'. Verify that `alloca' works right, even
2379 for large blocks (many pages).
2381 * test-distrib says that the distribution has been clobbered
2382 * or, temacs prints "Command key out of range 0-127"
2383 * or, temacs runs and dumps emacs, but emacs totally fails to work.
2384 * or, temacs gets errors dumping emacs
2386 This can be because the .elc files have been garbled. Do not be
2387 fooled by the fact that most of a .elc file is text: these are
2388 binary files and can contain all 256 byte values.
2390 In particular `shar' cannot be used for transmitting GNU Emacs.
2391 It typically truncates "lines". What appear to be "lines" in
2392 a binary file can of course be of any length. Even once `shar'
2393 itself is made to work correctly, `sh' discards null characters
2394 when unpacking the shell archive.
2396 I have also seen character \177 changed into \377. I do not know
2397 what transfer means caused this problem. Various network
2398 file transfer programs are suspected of clobbering the high bit.
2400 If you have a copy of Emacs that has been damaged in its
2401 nonprinting characters, you can fix them:
2403 1) Record the names of all the .elc files.
2404 2) Delete all the .elc files.
2405 3) Recompile alloc.c with a value of PURESIZE twice as large.
2406 (See puresize.h.) You might as well save the old alloc.o.
2407 4) Remake emacs. It should work now.
2408 5) Running emacs, do Meta-x byte-compile-file repeatedly
2409 to recreate all the .elc files that used to exist.
2410 You may need to increase the value of the variable
2411 max-lisp-eval-depth to succeed in running the compiler interpreted
2412 on certain .el files. 400 was sufficient as of last report.
2413 6) Reinstall the old alloc.o (undoing changes to alloc.c if any)
2415 7) Remake emacs. It should work now, with valid .elc files.
2417 * temacs prints "Pure Lisp storage exhausted"
2419 This means that the Lisp code loaded from the .elc and .el
2420 files during temacs -l loadup inc dump took up more
2421 space than was allocated.
2423 This could be caused by
2424 1) adding code to the preloaded Lisp files
2425 2) adding more preloaded files in loadup.el
2426 3) having a site-init.el or site-load.el which loads files.
2427 Note that ANY site-init.el or site-load.el is nonstandard;
2428 if you have received Emacs from some other site
2429 and it contains a site-init.el or site-load.el file, consider
2431 4) getting the wrong .el or .elc files
2432 (not from the directory you expected).
2433 5) deleting some .elc files that are supposed to exist.
2434 This would cause the source files (.el files) to be
2435 loaded instead. They take up more room, so you lose.
2436 6) a bug in the Emacs distribution which underestimates
2439 If the need for more space is legitimate, change the definition
2440 of PURESIZE in puresize.h.
2442 But in some of the cases listed above, this problem is a consequence
2443 of something else that is wrong. Be sure to check and fix the real
2446 * Changes made to .el files do not take effect.
2448 You may have forgotten to recompile them into .elc files.
2449 Then the old .elc files will be loaded, and your changes
2450 will not be seen. To fix this, do M-x byte-recompile-directory
2451 and specify the directory that contains the Lisp files.
2453 Emacs should print a warning when loading a .elc file which is older
2454 than the corresponding .el file.
2456 * The dumped Emacs crashes when run, trying to write pure data.
2458 Two causes have been seen for such problems.
2460 1) On a system where getpagesize is not a system call, it is defined
2461 as a macro. If the definition (in both unexec.c and malloc.c) is wrong,
2462 it can cause problems like this. You might be able to find the correct
2463 value in the man page for a.out (5).
2465 2) Some systems allocate variables declared static among the
2466 initialized variables. Emacs makes all initialized variables in most
2467 of its files pure after dumping, but the variables declared static and
2468 not initialized are not supposed to be pure. On these systems you
2469 may need to add "#define static" to the m- or the s- file.
2471 * Compilation errors on VMS.
2473 You will get warnings when compiling on VMS because there are
2474 variable names longer than 32 (or whatever it is) characters.
2475 This is not an error. Ignore it.
2477 VAX C does not support #if defined(foo). Uses of this construct
2478 were removed, but some may have crept back in. They must be rewritten.
2480 There is a bug in the C compiler which fails to sign extend characters
2481 in conditional expressions. The bug is:
2486 The result is i == 255; the fix is to typecast the char in the
2487 conditional expression as an (int). Known occurrences of such
2488 constructs in Emacs have been fixed.
2490 * rmail gets error getting new mail
2492 rmail gets new mail from /usr/spool/mail/$USER using a program
2493 called `movemail'. This program interlocks with /bin/mail using
2494 the protocol defined by /bin/mail.
2496 There are two different protocols in general use. One of them uses
2497 the `flock' system call. The other involves creating a lock file;
2498 `movemail' must be able to write in /usr/spool/mail in order to do
2499 this. You control which one is used by defining, or not defining,
2500 the macro MAIL_USE_FLOCK in config.h or the m- or s- file it includes.
2501 IF YOU DON'T USE THE FORM OF INTERLOCKING THAT IS NORMAL ON YOUR
2502 SYSTEM, YOU CAN LOSE MAIL!
2504 If your system uses the lock file protocol, and fascist restrictions
2505 prevent ordinary users from writing the lock files in /usr/spool/mail,
2506 you may need to make `movemail' setgid to a suitable group such as
2507 `mail'. You can use these commands (as root):
2512 If your system uses the lock file protocol, and fascist restrictions
2513 prevent ordinary users from writing the lock files in /usr/spool/mail,
2514 you may need to make `movemail' setgid to a suitable group such as
2515 `mail'. To do this, use the following commands (as root) after doing the
2521 Installation normally copies movemail from the build directory to an
2522 installation directory which is usually under /usr/local/lib. The
2523 installed copy of movemail is usually in the directory
2524 /usr/local/lib/emacs/VERSION/TARGET. You must change the group and
2525 mode of the installed copy; changing the group and mode of the build
2526 directory copy is ineffective.
2528 * Emacs spontaneously displays "I-search: " at the bottom of the screen.
2530 This means that Control-S/Control-Q (XON/XOFF) "flow control" is being
2531 used. C-s/C-q flow control is bad for Emacs editors because it takes
2532 away C-s and C-q as user commands. Since editors do not output long
2533 streams of text without user commands, there is no need for a
2534 user-issuable "stop output" command in an editor; therefore, a
2535 properly designed flow control mechanism would transmit all possible
2536 input characters without interference. Designing such a mechanism is
2537 easy, for a person with at least half a brain.
2539 There are three possible reasons why flow control could be taking place:
2541 1) Terminal has not been told to disable flow control
2542 2) Insufficient padding for the terminal in use
2543 3) Some sort of terminal concentrator or line switch is responsible
2545 First of all, many terminals have a set-up mode which controls whether
2546 they generate XON/XOFF flow control characters. This must be set to
2547 "no XON/XOFF" in order for Emacs to work. Sometimes there is an
2548 escape sequence that the computer can send to turn flow control off
2549 and on. If so, perhaps the termcap `ti' string should turn flow
2550 control off, and the `te' string should turn it on.
2552 Once the terminal has been told "no flow control", you may find it
2553 needs more padding. The amount of padding Emacs sends is controlled
2554 by the termcap entry for the terminal in use, and by the output baud
2555 rate as known by the kernel. The shell command `stty' will print
2556 your output baud rate; `stty' with suitable arguments will set it if
2557 it is wrong. Setting to a higher speed causes increased padding. If
2558 the results are wrong for the correct speed, there is probably a
2559 problem in the termcap entry. You must speak to a local Unix wizard
2560 to fix this. Perhaps you are just using the wrong terminal type.
2562 For terminals that lack a "no flow control" mode, sometimes just
2563 giving lots of padding will prevent actual generation of flow control
2564 codes. You might as well try it.
2566 If you are really unlucky, your terminal is connected to the computer
2567 through a concentrator which sends XON/XOFF flow control to the
2568 computer, or it insists on sending flow control itself no matter how
2569 much padding you give it. Unless you can figure out how to turn flow
2570 control off on this concentrator (again, refer to your local wizard),
2571 you are screwed! You should have the terminal or concentrator
2572 replaced with a properly designed one. In the mean time, some drastic
2573 measures can make Emacs semi-work.
2575 You can make Emacs ignore C-s and C-q and let the operating system
2576 handle them. To do this on a per-session basis, just type M-x
2577 enable-flow-control RET. You will see a message that C-\ and C-^ are
2578 now translated to C-s and C-q. (Use the same command M-x
2579 enable-flow-control to turn *off* this special mode. It toggles flow
2582 If C-\ and C-^ are inconvenient for you (for example, if one of them
2583 is the escape character of your terminal concentrator), you can choose
2584 other characters by setting the variables flow-control-c-s-replacement
2585 and flow-control-c-q-replacement. But choose carefully, since all
2586 other control characters are already used by emacs.
2588 IMPORTANT: if you type C-s by accident while flow control is enabled,
2589 Emacs output will freeze, and you will have to remember to type C-q in
2592 If you work in an environment where a majority of terminals of a
2593 certain type are flow control hobbled, you can use the function
2594 `enable-flow-control-on' to turn on this flow control avoidance scheme
2595 automatically. Here is an example:
2597 (enable-flow-control-on "vt200" "vt300" "vt101" "vt131")
2599 If this isn't quite correct (e.g. you have a mixture of flow-control hobbled
2600 and good vt200 terminals), you can still run enable-flow-control
2603 I have no intention of ever redesigning the Emacs command set for the
2604 assumption that terminals use C-s/C-q flow control. XON/XOFF flow
2605 control technique is a bad design, and terminals that need it are bad
2606 merchandise and should not be purchased. Now that X is becoming
2607 widespread, XON/XOFF seems to be on the way out. If you can get some
2608 use out of GNU Emacs on inferior terminals, more power to you, but I
2609 will not make Emacs worse for properly designed systems for the sake
2610 of inferior systems.
2612 * Control-S and Control-Q commands are ignored completely.
2614 For some reason, your system is using brain-damaged C-s/C-q flow
2615 control despite Emacs's attempts to turn it off. Perhaps your
2616 terminal is connected to the computer through a concentrator
2617 that wants to use flow control.
2619 You should first try to tell the concentrator not to use flow control.
2620 If you succeed in this, try making the terminal work without
2621 flow control, as described in the preceding section.
2623 If that line of approach is not successful, map some other characters
2624 into C-s and C-q using keyboard-translate-table. The example above
2625 shows how to do this with C-^ and C-\.
2627 * Control-S and Control-Q commands are ignored completely on a net connection.
2629 Some versions of rlogin (and possibly telnet) do not pass flow
2630 control characters to the remote system to which they connect.
2631 On such systems, emacs on the remote system cannot disable flow
2632 control on the local system.
2634 One way to cure this is to disable flow control on the local host
2635 (the one running rlogin, not the one running rlogind) using the
2636 stty command, before starting the rlogin process. On many systems,
2637 "stty start u stop u" will do this.
2639 Some versions of tcsh will prevent even this from working. One way
2640 around this is to start another shell before starting rlogin, and
2641 issue the stty command to disable flow control from that shell.
2643 If none of these methods work, the best solution is to type
2644 M-x enable-flow-control at the beginning of your emacs session, or
2645 if you expect the problem to continue, add a line such as the
2646 following to your .emacs (on the host running rlogind):
2648 (enable-flow-control-on "vt200" "vt300" "vt101" "vt131")
2650 See the entry about spontaneous display of I-search (above) for more
2653 * Screen is updated wrong, but only on one kind of terminal.
2655 This could mean that the termcap entry you are using for that
2656 terminal is wrong, or it could mean that Emacs has a bug handing
2657 the combination of features specified for that terminal.
2659 The first step in tracking this down is to record what characters
2660 Emacs is sending to the terminal. Execute the Lisp expression
2661 (open-termscript "./emacs-script") to make Emacs write all
2662 terminal output into the file ~/emacs-script as well; then do
2663 what makes the screen update wrong, and look at the file
2664 and decode the characters using the manual for the terminal.
2665 There are several possibilities:
2667 1) The characters sent are correct, according to the terminal manual.
2669 In this case, there is no obvious bug in Emacs, and most likely you
2670 need more padding, or possibly the terminal manual is wrong.
2672 2) The characters sent are incorrect, due to an obscure aspect
2673 of the terminal behavior not described in an obvious way
2676 This case is hard. It will be necessary to think of a way for
2677 Emacs to distinguish between terminals with this kind of behavior
2678 and other terminals that behave subtly differently but are
2679 classified the same by termcap; or else find an algorithm for
2680 Emacs to use that avoids the difference. Such changes must be
2681 tested on many kinds of terminals.
2683 3) The termcap entry is wrong.
2685 See the file etc/TERMS for information on changes
2686 that are known to be needed in commonly used termcap entries
2687 for certain terminals.
2689 4) The characters sent are incorrect, and clearly cannot be
2690 right for any terminal with the termcap entry you were using.
2692 This is unambiguously an Emacs bug, and can probably be fixed
2693 in termcap.c, tparam.c, term.c, scroll.c, cm.c or dispnew.c.
2695 * Output from Control-V is slow.
2697 On many bit-map terminals, scrolling operations are fairly slow.
2698 Often the termcap entry for the type of terminal in use fails
2699 to inform Emacs of this. The two lines at the bottom of the screen
2700 before a Control-V command are supposed to appear at the top after
2701 the Control-V command. If Emacs thinks scrolling the lines is fast,
2702 it will scroll them to the top of the screen.
2704 If scrolling is slow but Emacs thinks it is fast, the usual reason is
2705 that the termcap entry for the terminal you are using does not
2706 specify any padding time for the `al' and `dl' strings. Emacs
2707 concludes that these operations take only as much time as it takes to
2708 send the commands at whatever line speed you are using. You must
2709 fix the termcap entry to specify, for the `al' and `dl', as much
2710 time as the operations really take.
2712 Currently Emacs thinks in terms of serial lines which send characters
2713 at a fixed rate, so that any operation which takes time for the
2714 terminal to execute must also be padded. With bit-map terminals
2715 operated across networks, often the network provides some sort of
2716 flow control so that padding is never needed no matter how slow
2717 an operation is. You must still specify a padding time if you want
2718 Emacs to realize that the operation takes a long time. This will
2719 cause padding characters to be sent unnecessarily, but they do
2720 not really cost much. They will be transmitted while the scrolling
2721 is happening and then discarded quickly by the terminal.
2723 Most bit-map terminals provide commands for inserting or deleting
2724 multiple lines at once. Define the `AL' and `DL' strings in the
2725 termcap entry to say how to do these things, and you will have
2726 fast output without wasted padding characters. These strings should
2727 each contain a single %-spec saying how to send the number of lines
2728 to be scrolled. These %-specs are like those in the termcap
2731 You should also define the `IC' and `DC' strings if your terminal
2732 has a command to insert or delete multiple characters. These
2733 take the number of positions to insert or delete as an argument.
2735 A `cs' string to set the scrolling region will reduce the amount
2736 of motion you see on the screen when part of the screen is scrolled.
2738 * Your Delete key sends a Backspace to the terminal, using an AIXterm.
2740 The solution is to include in your .Xdefaults the lines:
2742 *aixterm.Translations: #override <Key>BackSpace: string(0x7f)
2743 aixterm*ttyModes: erase ^?
2745 This makes your Backspace key send DEL (ASCII 127).
2747 * You type Control-H (Backspace) expecting to delete characters.
2749 Put `stty dec' in your .login file and your problems will disappear
2752 The choice of Backspace for erasure was based on confusion, caused by
2753 the fact that backspacing causes erasure (later, when you type another
2754 character) on most display terminals. But it is a mistake. Deletion
2755 of text is not the same thing as backspacing followed by failure to
2756 overprint. I do not wish to propagate this confusion by conforming
2759 For this reason, I believe `stty dec' is the right mode to use,
2760 and I have designed Emacs to go with that. If there were a thousand
2761 other control characters, I would define Control-h to delete as well;
2762 but there are not very many other control characters, and I think
2763 that providing the most mnemonic possible Help character is more
2764 important than adapting to people who don't use `stty dec'.
2766 If you are obstinate about confusing buggy overprinting with deletion,
2767 you can redefine Backspace in your .emacs file:
2768 (global-set-key "\b" 'delete-backward-char)
2769 You can probably access help-command via f1.
2771 * Editing files through RFS gives spurious "file has changed" warnings.
2772 It is possible that a change in Emacs 18.37 gets around this problem,
2773 but in case not, here is a description of how to fix the RFS bug that
2776 There was a serious pair of bugs in the handling of the fsync() system
2777 call in the RFS server.
2779 The first is that the fsync() call is handled as another name for the
2780 close() system call (!!). It appears that fsync() is not used by very
2781 many programs; Emacs version 18 does an fsync() before closing files
2782 to make sure that the bits are on the disk.
2784 This is fixed by the enclosed patch to the RFS server.
2786 The second, more serious problem, is that fsync() is treated as a
2787 non-blocking system call (i.e., it's implemented as a message that
2788 gets sent to the remote system without waiting for a reply). Fsync is
2789 a useful tool for building atomic file transactions. Implementing it
2790 as a non-blocking RPC call (when the local call blocks until the sync
2791 is done) is a bad idea; unfortunately, changing it will break the RFS
2792 protocol. No fix was supplied for this problem.
2794 (as always, your line numbers may vary)
2796 % rcsdiff -c -r1.2 serversyscall.c
2797 RCS file: RCS/serversyscall.c,v
2798 retrieving revision 1.2
2799 diff -c -r1.2 serversyscall.c
2800 *** /tmp/,RCSt1003677 Wed Jan 28 15:15:02 1987
2801 --- serversyscall.c Wed Jan 28 15:14:48 1987
2805 * No return sent for close or fsync!
2807 ! if (syscall == RSYS_close || syscall == RSYS_fsync)
2808 proc->p_returnval = deallocate_fd(proc, msg->m_args[0]);
2813 * No return sent for close or fsync!
2815 ! if (syscall == RSYS_close)
2816 proc->p_returnval = deallocate_fd(proc, msg->m_args[0]);
2820 * Vax C compiler bugs affecting Emacs.
2822 You may get one of these problems compiling Emacs:
2824 foo.c line nnn: compiler error: no table entry for op STASG
2825 foo.c: fatal error in /lib/ccom
2827 These are due to bugs in the C compiler; the code is valid C.
2828 Unfortunately, the bugs are unpredictable: the same construct
2829 may compile properly or trigger one of these bugs, depending
2830 on what else is in the source file being compiled. Even changes
2831 in header files that should not affect the file being compiled
2832 can affect whether the bug happens. In addition, sometimes files
2833 that compile correctly on one machine get this bug on another machine.
2835 As a result, it is hard for me to make sure this bug will not affect
2836 you. I have attempted to find and alter these constructs, but more
2837 can always appear. However, I can tell you how to deal with it if it
2838 should happen. The bug comes from having an indexed reference to an
2839 array of Lisp_Objects, as an argument in a function call:
2842 ... foo (5, args[i], ...)...
2843 putting the argument into a temporary variable first, as in
2848 ... foo (r, tem, ...)...
2849 causes the problem to go away.
2850 The `contents' field of a Lisp vector is an array of Lisp_Objects,
2851 so you may see the problem happening with indexed references to that.
2853 * 68000 C compiler problems
2855 Various 68000 compilers have different problems.
2856 These are some that have been observed.
2858 ** Using value of assignment expression on union type loses.
2859 This means that x = y = z; or foo (x = z); does not work
2860 if x is of type Lisp_Object.
2862 ** "cannot reclaim" error.
2864 This means that an expression is too complicated. You get the correct
2865 line number in the error message. The code must be rewritten with
2866 simpler expressions.
2868 ** XCONS, XSTRING, etc macros produce incorrect code.
2870 If temacs fails to run at all, this may be the cause.
2871 Compile this test program and look at the assembler code:
2873 struct foo { char x; unsigned int y : 24; };
2878 test ((int *) arg.y);
2881 If the code is incorrect, your compiler has this problem.
2882 In the XCONS, etc., macros in lisp.h you must replace (a).u.val with
2883 ((a).u.val + coercedummy) where coercedummy is declared as int.
2885 This problem will not happen if the m-...h file for your type
2886 of machine defines NO_UNION_TYPE. That is the recommended setting now.
2888 * C compilers lose on returning unions
2890 I hear that some C compilers cannot handle returning a union type.
2891 Most of the functions in GNU Emacs return type Lisp_Object, which is
2892 defined as a union on some rare architectures.
2894 This problem will not happen if the m-...h file for your type
2895 of machine defines NO_UNION_TYPE.