aboutsummaryrefslogtreecommitdiffstats
path: root/PROBLEMS
diff options
context:
space:
mode:
authorJim Blandy1993-02-14 14:13:56 +0000
committerJim Blandy1993-02-14 14:13:56 +0000
commit73eff16445bcbd050835501c6578af5a1163bc40 (patch)
treed2c98c1b637566cd4ba9d9d3e71c40fc87b7ea31 /PROBLEMS
parent5fbe2a44585fb3cb41b3819efba2ed09f78972bf (diff)
downloademacs-73eff16445bcbd050835501c6578af5a1163bc40.tar.gz
emacs-73eff16445bcbd050835501c6578af5a1163bc40.zip
Initial revision
Diffstat (limited to 'PROBLEMS')
-rw-r--r--PROBLEMS764
1 files changed, 764 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/PROBLEMS b/PROBLEMS
new file mode 100644
index 00000000000..a846cbcbc3d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/PROBLEMS
@@ -0,0 +1,764 @@
1This file describes various problems that have been encountered
2in compiling, installing and running GNU Emacs.
3
4* On some variants of SVR4, Emacs does not work at all with X.
5
6Try defining BROKEN_FIONREAD in your config.h file. If this solves
7the problem, please send a bug report to tell us this is needed; be
8sure to say exactly what type of machine and system you are using.
9
10* Linking says that the functions insque and remque are undefined.
11
12Change oldXMenu/Makefile by adding insque.o to the variable OBJS.
13
14* Emacs fails to understand most Internet host names, even though
15the names work properly with other programs on the same system.
16
17This typically happens on Suns and other systems that use shared
18libraries. The cause is that the site has installed a version of the
19shared library which uses a name server--but has not installed a
20similiar version of the unshared library which Emacs uses.
21
22The result is that most programs, using the shared library, work with
23the nameserver, but Emacs does not.
24
25The fix is to install an unshared library that corresponds to what you
26installed in the shared library, and then relink Emacs.
27
28* On a Sun running SunOS 4.1.1, you get this error message from GNU ld:
29
30 /lib/libc.a(_Q_sub.o): Undefined symbol __Q_get_rp_rd referenced from text segment
31
32The problem is in the Sun shared C library, not in GNU ld.
33
34The solution is to install Patch-ID# 100267-03 from Sun.
35
36* Self documentation messages are garbled.
37
38This means that the file `etc/DOC-...' doesn't properly correspond
39with the Emacs executable. Redumping Emacs and then installing the
40corresponding pair of files should fix the problem.
41
42* M-x shell immediately responds "Process shell exited abnormally with code 1".
43
44This is often due to inability to run the program `env'.
45This should be in the `etc' subdirectory of the directory
46where Emacs is installed, and it should be marked executable.
47
48* Trouble using ptys on AIX.
49
50People often instll the pty devices on AIX incorrectly.
51Use `smit pty' to reinstall them properly.
52
53* Shell mode on HP/UX gives the message, "`tty`: Ambiguous".
54
55christos@theory.tn.cornell.edu says:
56
57The problem is that in your .cshrc you have something that tries to
58execute `tty`. If you are not running the shell on a real tty then
59tty will print "not a tty". Csh expects one word in some places,
60but tty is giving it back 3.
61
62The solution is to add a pair of quotes around `tty` to make it a single
63word:
64
65if (`tty` == "/dev/console")
66
67should be changed to:
68
69if ("`tty`" == "/dev/console")
70
71Even better, move things that set up terminal sections out of .cshrc
72and into .login.
73
74* Using X Windows, control-shift-leftbutton makes Emacs hang.
75
76Use the shell command `xset bc' to make the old X Menu package work.
77
78* Emacs running under X Windows does not handle mouse clicks.
79* `emacs -geometry 80x20' finds a file named `80x20'.
80
81One cause of such problems is having (setq term-file-prefix nil) in
82your .emacs file. Another cause is a bad value of EMACSLOADPATH in
83the environment.
84
85* Emacs starts in a directory other than the one that is current in the shell.
86
87If the PWD environment variable exists, Emacs uses this variable as
88the initial working directory.
89
90Some shells automatically update this variable, while other shells fail
91to do so. If you use two such shells in combination, the variable can
92end up wrong. This confuses Emacs.
93
94The solution is to put something in the start-up file for the shell
95that does not update PWD, to get rid of that environment variable.
96For example, in csh, use `unsetenv PWD'.
97
98* Emacs gets error message from linker on Sun.
99
100If the error message says that a symbol such as `f68881_used' or
101`ffpa_used' or `start_float' is undefined, this probably indicates
102that you have compiled some libraries, such as the X libraries,
103with a floating point option other than the default.
104
105It's not terribly hard to make this work with small changes in
106crt0.c together with linking with Fcrt1.o, Wcrt1.o or Mcrt1.o.
107However, the easiest approach is to build Xlib with the default
108floating point option: to decide at run time what hardware is
109available.
110
111* Emacs fails to get default settings from X Windows server.
112
113The X library in X11R4 has a bug; it interchanges the 2nd and 3rd
114arguments to XGetDefaults. Define the macro XBACKWARDS in config.h to
115tell Emacs to compensate for this.
116
117I don't believe there is any way Emacs can determine for itself
118whether this problem is present on a given system.
119
120* Keyboard input gets confused after a beep when using a DECserver
121 as a concentrator.
122
123This problem seems to be a matter of configuring the DECserver to use
1247 bit characters rather than 8 bit characters.
125
126* M-x shell persistently reports "Process shell exited abnormally with code 1".
127
128This happened on Suns as a result of what is said to be a bug in Sunos
129version 4.0.x. The only fix was to reboot the machine.
130
131* Programs running under terminal emulator do not recognize `emacs'
132 terminal type.
133
134The cause of this is a shell startup file that sets the TERMCAP
135environment variable. The terminal emulator uses that variable to
136provide the information on the special terminal type that Emacs
137emulates.
138
139Rewrite your shell startup file so that it does not change TERMCAP
140in such a case. You could use the following conditional which sets
141it only if it is undefined.
142
143 if ( ! ${?TERMCAP} ) setenv TERMCAP ~/my-termcap-file
144
145Or you could set TERMCAP only when you set TERM--which should not
146happen in a non-login shell.
147
148* Error compiling sysdep.c, "sioctl.h: no such file or directory".
149
150Among USG systems with TIOCGWINSZ, some require sysdep.c to include
151the file sioctl.h; on others, sioctl.h does not exist. We don't know
152how to distinguish these two kind of systems, so currently we try to
153include sioctl.h on all of them. If this #include gets an error, just
154delete it.
155
156* X Windows doesn't work if DISPLAY uses a hostname.
157
158People have reported kernel bugs in certain systems that cause Emacs
159not to work with X Windows if DISPLAY is set using a host name. But
160the problem does not occur if DISPLAY is set to `unix:0.0'. I think
161the bug has to do with SIGIO or FIONREAD.
162
163You may be able to compensate for the bug by doing (set-input-mode nil nil).
164However, that has the disadvantage of turning off interrupts, so that
165you are unable to quit out of a Lisp program by typing C-g.
166
167The easy way to do this is to put
168
169 (setq x-sigio-bug t)
170
171in your site-init.el file.
172
173* Problem with remote X server on Suns.
174
175On a Sun, running Emacs on one machine with the X server on another
176may not work if you have used the unshared system libraries. This
177is because the unshared libraries fail to use YP for host name lookup.
178As a result, the host name you specify may not be recognized.
179
180* Watch out for .emacs files and EMACSLOADPATH environment vars
181
182These control the actions of Emacs.
183~/.emacs is your Emacs init file.
184EMACSLOADPATH overrides which directories the function
185"load" will search.
186
187If you observe strange problems, check for these and get rid
188of them, then try again.
189
190* Shell mode ignores interrupts on Apollo Domain
191
192You may find that M-x shell prints the following message:
193
194 Warning: no access to tty; thus no job control in this shell...
195
196This can happen if there are not enough ptys on your system.
197Here is how to make more of them.
198
199 % cd /dev
200 % ls pty*
201 # shows how many pty's you have. I had 8, named pty0 to pty7)
202 % /etc/crpty 8
203 # creates eight new pty's
204
205* Fatal signal in the command temacs -l loadup inc dump
206
207This command is the final stage of building Emacs. It is run by the
208Makefile in the src subdirectory, or by build.com on VMS.
209
210It has been known to get fatal errors due to insufficient swapping
211space available on the machine.
212
213On 68000's, it has also happened because of bugs in the
214subroutine `alloca'. Verify that `alloca' works right, even
215for large blocks (many pages).
216
217* test-distrib says that the distribution has been clobbered
218* or, temacs prints "Command key out of range 0-127"
219* or, temacs runs and dumps xemacs, but xemacs totally fails to work.
220* or, temacs gets errors dumping xemacs
221
222This can be because the .elc files have been garbled. Do not be
223fooled by the fact that most of a .elc file is text: these are
224binary files and can contain all 256 byte values.
225
226In particular `shar' cannot be used for transmitting GNU Emacs.
227It typically truncates "lines". What appear to be "lines" in
228a binary file can of course be of any length. Even once `shar'
229itself is made to work correctly, `sh' discards null characters
230when unpacking the shell archive.
231
232I have also seen character \177 changed into \377. I do not know
233what transfer means caused this problem. Various network
234file transfer programs are suspected of clobbering the high bit.
235
236The only verified ways to transfer GNU Emacs are `tar', kermit (in
237binary mode on Unix), and rcp or internet ftp between two Unix systems,
238or chaosnet cftp using raw mode.
239
240If you have a copy of Emacs that has been damaged in its
241nonprinting characters, you can fix them:
242
243 1) Record the names of all the .elc files.
244 2) Delete all the .elc files.
245 3) Recompile alloc.c with a value of PURESIZE twice as large.
246 You might as well save the old alloc.o.
247 4) Remake xemacs. It should work now.
248 5) Running xemacs, do Meta-x byte-compile-file repeatedly
249 to recreate all the .elc files that used to exist.
250 You may need to increase the value of the variable
251 max-lisp-eval-depth to succeed in running the compiler interpreted
252 on certain .el files. 400 was sufficient as of last report.
253 6) Reinstall the old alloc.o (undoing changes to alloc.c if any)
254 and remake temacs.
255 7) Remake xemacs. It should work now, with valid .elc files.
256
257* temacs prints "Pure Lisp storage exhausted"
258
259This means that the Lisp code loaded from the .elc and .el
260files during temacs -l loadup inc dump took up more
261space than was allocated.
262
263This could be caused by
264 1) adding code to the preloaded Lisp files
265 2) adding more preloaded files in loadup.el
266 3) having a site-init.el or site-load.el which loads files.
267 Note that ANY site-init.el or site-load.el is nonstandard;
268 if you have received Emacs from some other site
269 and it contains a site-init.el or site-load.el file, consider
270 deleting that file.
271 4) getting the wrong .el or .elc files
272 (not from the directory you expected).
273 5) deleting some .elc files that are supposed to exist.
274 This would cause the source files (.el files) to be
275 loaded instead. They take up more room, so you lose.
276 6) a bug in the Emacs distribution which underestimates
277 the space required.
278
279If the need for more space is legitimate, change the definition
280of PURESIZE in puresize.h.
281
282But in some of the cases listed above, this problem is a consequence
283of something else that is wrong. Be sure to check and fix the real
284problem.
285
286* Changes made to .el files do not take effect.
287
288You may have forgotten to recompile them into .elc files.
289Then the old .elc files will be loaded, and your changes
290will not be seen. To fix this, do M-x byte-recompile-directory
291and specify the directory that contains the Lisp files.
292
293* The dumped Emacs (xemacs) crashes when run, trying to write pure data.
294
295Two causes have been seen for such problems.
296
2971) On a system where getpagesize is not a system call, it is defined
298as a macro. If the definition (in both unexec.c and malloc.c) is wrong,
299it can cause problems like this. You might be able to find the correct
300value in the man page for a.out (5).
301
3022) Some systems allocate variables declared static among the
303initialized variables. Emacs makes all initialized variables in most
304of its files pure after dumping, but the variables declared static and
305not initialized are not supposed to be pure. On these systems you
306may need to add "#define static" to the m- or the s- file.
307
308* Compilation errors on VMS.
309
310You will get warnings when compiling on VMS because there are
311variable names longer than 32 (or whatever it is) characters.
312This is not an error. Ignore it.
313
314VAX C does not support #if defined(foo). Uses of this construct
315were removed, but some may have crept back in. They must be rewritten.
316
317There is a bug in the C compiler which fails to sign extend characters
318in conditional expressions. The bug is:
319 char c = -1, d = 1;
320 int i;
321
322 i = d ? c : d;
323The result is i == 255; the fix is to typecast the char in the
324conditional expression as an (int). Known occurrences of such
325constructs in Emacs have been fixed.
326
327* rmail gets error getting new mail
328
329rmail gets new mail from /usr/spool/mail/$USER using a program
330called `movemail'. This program interlocks with /bin/mail using
331the protocol defined by /bin/mail.
332
333There are two different protocols in general use. One of them uses
334the `flock' system call. The other involves creating a lock file;
335`movemail' must be able to write in /usr/spool/mail in order to do
336this. You control which one is used by defining, or not defining,
337the macro MAIL_USE_FLOCK in config.h or the m- or s- file it includes.
338IF YOU DON'T USE THE FORM OF INTERLOCKING THAT IS NORMAL ON YOUR
339SYSTEM, YOU CAN LOSE MAIL!
340
341If your system uses the lock file protocol, and fascist restrictions
342prevent ordinary users from writing the lock files in /usr/spool/mail,
343you may need to make `movemail' setgid to a suitable group such as
344`mail'. You can use these commands (as root):
345
346 chgrp mail movemail
347 chmod 2755 movemail
348
349* Emacs won't work with X-windows if the value of DISPLAY is HOSTNAME:0.
350* GNUs can't make contact with the specified host for nntp.
351
352Some people have found that Emacs was unable to connect to the local
353host by name, as in DISPLAY=prep:0 if you are running on prep, but
354could handle DISPLAY=unix:0. Here is what tale@rpi.edu said:
355
356 Seems as
357 though gethostbyname was bombing somewhere along the way. Well, we
358 had just upgrade from SunOS 3.5 (which X11 was built under) to SunOS
359 4.0.1. Any new X applications which tried to be built with the pre
360 OS-upgrade libraries had the same problems which Emacs was having.
361 Missing /etc/resolv.conf for a little while (when one of the libraries
362 was built?) also might have had a hand in it.
363
364 The result of all of this (with some speculation) was that we rebuilt
365 X and then rebuilt Emacs with the new libraries. Works as it should
366 now. Hoorah.
367
368If you have already installed the name resolver in the file libresolv.a,
369then you need to compile Emacs to use that library. The easiest way to
370do this is to add to config.h a definition of LIBS_SYSTEM, LIBS_MACHINE
371or LIB_STANDARD which uses -lresolv. Watch out! If you redefine a macro
372that is already in use in your configuration to supply some other libraries,
373be careful not to lose the others.
374
375Thus, you could start by adding this to config.h:
376
377#define LIBS_SYSTEM -lresolv
378
379Then if this gives you an error for redefining a macro, and you see that
380the s- file defines LIBS_SYSTEM as -lfoo -lbar, you could change config.h
381again to say this:
382
383#define LIBS_SYSTEM -lresolv -lfoo -lbar
384
385* Emacs spontaneously displays "I-search: " at the bottom of the screen.
386
387This means that Control-S/Control-Q "flow control" is being used.
388C-s/C-q flow control is bad for Emacs editors because it takes away
389C-s and C-q as user commands. Since editors do not output long streams
390of text without user commands, there is no need for a user-issuable
391"stop output" command in an editor; therefore, a properly designed
392flow control mechanism would transmit all possible input characters
393without interference. Designing such a mechanism is easy, for a person
394with at least half a brain.
395
396There are three possible reasons why flow control could be taking place:
397
398 1) Terminal has not been told to disable flow control
399 2) Insufficient padding for the terminal in use
400 3) Some sort of terminal concentrator or line switch is responsible
401
402First of all, many terminals have a set-up mode which controls
403whether they generate flow control characters. This must be
404set to "no flow control" in order for Emacs to work. Sometimes
405there is an escape sequence that the computer can send to turn
406flow control off and on. If so, perhaps the termcap `ti' string
407should turn flow control off, and the `te' string should turn it on.
408
409Once the terminal has been told "no flow control", you may find it
410needs more padding. The amount of padding Emacs sends is controlled
411by the termcap entry for the terminal in use, and by the output baud
412rate as known by the kernel. The shell command `stty' will print
413your output baud rate; `stty' with suitable arguments will set it if
414it is wrong. Setting to a higher speed causes increased padding. If
415the results are wrong for the correct speed, there is probably a
416problem in the termcap entry. You must speak to a local Unix wizard
417to fix this. Perhaps you are just using the wrong terminal type.
418
419For terminals that lack a "no flow control" mode, sometimes just
420giving lots of padding will prevent actual generation of flow control
421codes. You might as well try it.
422
423If you are really unlucky, your terminal is connected to the computer
424through a concentrator which sends flow control to the computer, or it
425insists on sending flow control itself no matter how much padding you
426give it. You are screwed! You should replace the terminal or
427concentrator with a properly designed one. In the mean time,
428some drastic measures can make Emacs semi-work.
429
430One drastic measure to ignore C-s and C-q, while sending enough
431padding that the terminal will not really lose any output.
432Ignoring C-s and C-q can be done by using keyboard-translate-table
433to map them into an undefined character such as C-^ or C-\. Sending
434lots of padding is done by changing the termcap entry. Here is how
435to make such a keyboard-translate-table:
436
437 (let ((the-table (make-string 128 0)))
438 ;; Default is to translate each character into itself.
439 (let ((i 0))
440 (while (< i 128)
441 (aset the-table i i)
442 (setq i (1+ i))))
443 ;; Swap C-s with C-\
444 (aset the-table ?\C-\\ ?\C-s)
445 (aset the-table ?\C-s ?\C-\\)
446 ;; Swap C-q with C-^
447 (aset the-table ?\C-^ ?\C-q)
448 (aset the-table ?\C-q ?\C-^)
449 (setq keyboard-translate-table the-table))
450
451An even more drastic measure is to make Emacs use flow control.
452To do this, evaluate the Lisp expression (set-input-mode nil t).
453Emacs will then interpret C-s and C-q as flow control commands. (More
454precisely, it will allow the kernel to do so as it usually does.) You
455will lose the ability to use them for Emacs commands. Also, as a
456consequence of using CBREAK mode, the terminal's Meta-key, if any,
457will not work, and C-g will be liable to cause a loss of output which
458will produce garbage on the screen. (These problems apply to 4.2BSD;
459they may not happen in 4.3 or VMS, and I don't know what would happen
460in sysV.) You can use keyboard-translate-table, as shown above,
461to map two other input characters (such as C-^ and C-\) into C-s and
462C-q, so that you can still search and quote.
463
464I have no intention of ever redisigning the Emacs command set for
465the assumption that terminals use C-s/C-q flow control. This
466flow control technique is a bad design, and terminals that need
467it are bad merchandise and should not be purchased. If you can
468get some use out of GNU Emacs on inferior terminals, I am glad,
469but I will not make Emacs worse for properly designed systems
470for the sake of inferior systems.
471
472* Control-S and Control-Q commands are ignored completely.
473
474For some reason, your system is using brain-damaged C-s/C-q flow
475control despite Emacs's attempts to turn it off. Perhaps your
476terminal is connected to the computer through a concentrator
477that wants to use flow control.
478
479You should first try to tell the concentrator not to use flow control.
480If you succeed in this, try making the terminal work without
481flow control, as described in the preceding section.
482
483If that line of approach is not successful, map some other characters
484into C-s and C-q using keyboard-translate-table. The example above
485shows how to do this with C-^ and C-\.
486
487* Control-S and Control-Q commands are ignored completely on a net connection.
488
489Some versions of rlogin (and possibly telnet) do not pass flow
490control characters to the remote system to which they connect.
491On such systems, emacs on the remote system cannot disable flow
492control on the local system.
493
494One way to cure this is to disable flow control on the local host
495(the one running rlogin, not the one running rlogind) using the
496stty command, before starting the rlogin process. On many systems,
497"stty start u stop u" will do this.
498
499Some versions of tcsh will prevent even this from working. One way
500around this is to start another shell before starting rlogin, and
501issue the stty command to disable flow control from that shell.
502
503* Screen is updated wrong, but only on one kind of terminal.
504
505This could mean that the termcap entry you are using for that
506terminal is wrong, or it could mean that Emacs has a bug handing
507the combination of features specified for that terminal.
508
509The first step in tracking this down is to record what characters
510Emacs is sending to the terminal. Execute the Lisp expression
511(open-termscript "./emacs-script") to make Emacs write all
512terminal output into the file ~/emacs-script as well; then do
513what makes the screen update wrong, and look at the file
514and decode the characters using the manual for the terminal.
515There are several possibilities:
516
5171) The characters sent are correct, according to the terminal manual.
518
519In this case, there is no obvious bug in Emacs, and most likely you
520need more padding, or possibly the terminal manual is wrong.
521
5222) The characters sent are incorrect, due to an obscure aspect
523 of the terminal behavior not described in an obvious way
524 by termcap.
525
526This case is hard. It will be necessary to think of a way for
527Emacs to distinguish between terminals with this kind of behavior
528and other terminals that behave subtly differently but are
529classified the same by termcap; or else find an algorithm for
530Emacs to use that avoids the difference. Such changes must be
531tested on many kinds of terminals.
532
5333) The termcap entry is wrong.
534
535See the file etc/TERMS for information on changes
536that are known to be needed in commonly used termcap entries
537for certain terminals.
538
5394) The characters sent are incorrect, and clearly cannot be
540 right for any terminal with the termcap entry you were using.
541
542This is unambiguously an Emacs bug, and can probably be fixed
543in termcap.c, tparam.c, term.c, scroll.c, cm.c or dispnew.c.
544
545* Output from Control-V is slow.
546
547On many bit-map terminals, scrolling operations are fairly slow.
548Often the termcap entry for the type of terminal in use fails
549to inform Emacs of this. The two lines at the bottom of the screen
550before a Control-V command are supposed to appear at the top after
551the Control-V command. If Emacs thinks scrolling the lines is fast,
552it will scroll them to the top of the screen.
553
554If scrolling is slow but Emacs thinks it is fast, the usual reason is
555that the termcap entry for the terminal you are using does not
556specify any padding time for the `al' and `dl' strings. Emacs
557concludes that these operations take only as much time as it takes to
558send the commands at whatever line speed you are using. You must
559fix the termcap entry to specify, for the `al' and `dl', as much
560time as the operations really take.
561
562Currently Emacs thinks in terms of serial lines which send characters
563at a fixed rate, so that any operation which takes time for the
564terminal to execute must also be padded. With bit-map terminals
565operated across networks, often the network provides some sort of
566flow control so that padding is never needed no matter how slow
567an operation is. You must still specify a padding time if you want
568Emacs to realize that the operation takes a long time. This will
569cause padding characters to be sent unnecessarily, but they do
570not really cost much. They will be transmitted while the scrolling
571is happening and then discarded quickly by the terminal.
572
573Most bit-map terminals provide commands for inserting or deleting
574multiple lines at once. Define the `AL' and `DL' strings in the
575termcap entry to say how to do these things, and you will have
576fast output without wasted padding characters. These strings should
577each contain a single %-spec saying how to send the number of lines
578to be scrolled. These %-specs are like those in the termcap
579`cm' string.
580
581You should also define the `IC' and `DC' strings if your terminal
582has a command to insert or delete multiple characters. These
583take the number of positions to insert or delete as an argument.
584
585A `cs' string to set the scrolling region will reduce the amount
586of motion you see on the screen when part of the screen is scrolled.
587
588* Your Delete key sends a Backspace to the terminal, using an AIXterm.
589
590The solution is to include in your .Xdefaults the lines:
591
592 *aixterm.Translations: #override <Key>BackSpace: string(0x7f)
593 aixterm*ttyModes: erase ^?
594
595This makes your Backspace key send DEL (ASCII 127).
596
597* You type Control-H (Backspace) expecting to delete characters.
598
599Put `stty dec' in your .login file and your problems will disappear
600after a day or two.
601
602The choice of Backspace for erasure was based on confusion, caused by
603the fact that backspacing causes erasure (later, when you type another
604character) on most display terminals. But it is a mistake. Deletion
605of text is not the same thing as backspacing followed by failure to
606overprint. I do not wish to propagate this confusion by conforming
607to it.
608
609For this reason, I believe `stty dec' is the right mode to use,
610and I have designed Emacs to go with that. If there were a thousand
611other control characters, I would define Control-h to delete as well;
612but there are not very many other control characters, and I think
613that providing the most mnemonic possible Help character is more
614important than adapting to people who don't use `stty dec'.
615
616If you are obstinate about confusing buggy overprinting with deletion,
617you can redefine Backspace in your .emacs file:
618 (global-set-key "\b" 'delete-backward-char)
619You may then wish to put the function help-command on some
620other key. I leave to you the task of deciding which key.
621
622* Editing files through RFS gives spurious "file has changed" warnings.
623It is possible that a change in Emacs 18.37 gets around this problem,
624but in case not, here is a description of how to fix the RFS bug that
625causes it.
626
627 There was a serious pair of bugs in the handling of the fsync() system
628 call in the RFS server.
629
630 The first is that the fsync() call is handled as another name for the
631 close() system call (!!). It appears that fsync() is not used by very
632 many programs; Emacs version 18 does an fsync() before closing files
633 to make sure that the bits are on the disk.
634
635 This is fixed by the enclosed patch to the RFS server.
636
637 The second, more serious problem, is that fsync() is treated as a
638 non-blocking system call (i.e., it's implemented as a message that
639 gets sent to the remote system without waiting for a reply). Fsync is
640 a useful tool for building atomic file transactions. Implementing it
641 as a non-blocking RPC call (when the local call blocks until the sync
642 is done) is a bad idea; unfortunately, changing it will break the RFS
643 protocol. No fix was supplied for this problem.
644
645 (as always, your line numbers may vary)
646
647 % rcsdiff -c -r1.2 serversyscall.c
648 RCS file: RCS/serversyscall.c,v
649 retrieving revision 1.2
650 diff -c -r1.2 serversyscall.c
651 *** /tmp/,RCSt1003677 Wed Jan 28 15:15:02 1987
652 --- serversyscall.c Wed Jan 28 15:14:48 1987
653 ***************
654 *** 163,169 ****
655 /*
656 * No return sent for close or fsync!
657 */
658 ! if (syscall == RSYS_close || syscall == RSYS_fsync)
659 proc->p_returnval = deallocate_fd(proc, msg->m_args[0]);
660 else
661 {
662 --- 166,172 ----
663 /*
664 * No return sent for close or fsync!
665 */
666 ! if (syscall == RSYS_close)
667 proc->p_returnval = deallocate_fd(proc, msg->m_args[0]);
668 else
669 {
670
671* ld complains because `alloca' is not defined on your system.
672
673Alloca is a library function in 4.2bsd, which is used very heavily by
674GNU Emacs. Use of malloc instead is very difficult, as you would have
675to arrange for the storage to be freed, and do so even in the case of
676a longjmp happening inside a subroutine. Many subroutines in Emacs
677can do longjmp.
678
679If your system does not support alloca, try defining the symbol
680C_ALLOCA in the m-...h file for that machine. This will enable the use
681in Emacs of a portable simulation for alloca. But you will find that
682Emacs's performance and memory use improve if you write a true
683alloca in assembler language.
684
685alloca (N) should return the address of an N-byte block of memory
686added dynamically to the current stack frame.
687
688* Vax C compiler bugs affecting Emacs.
689
690You may get one of these problems compiling Emacs:
691
692 foo.c line nnn: compiler error: no table entry for op STASG
693 foo.c: fatal error in /lib/ccom
694
695These are due to bugs in the C compiler; the code is valid C.
696Unfortunately, the bugs are unpredictable: the same construct
697may compile properly or trigger one of these bugs, depending
698on what else is in the source file being compiled. Even changes
699in header files that should not affect the file being compiled
700can affect whether the bug happens. In addition, sometimes files
701that compile correctly on one machine get this bug on another machine.
702
703As a result, it is hard for me to make sure this bug will not affect
704you. I have attempted to find and alter these constructs, but more
705can always appear. However, I can tell you how to deal with it if it
706should happen. The bug comes from having an indexed reference to an
707array of Lisp_Objects, as an argument in a function call:
708 Lisp_Object *args;
709 ...
710 ... foo (5, args[i], ...)...
711putting the argument into a temporary variable first, as in
712 Lisp_Object *args;
713 Lisp_Object tem;
714 ...
715 tem = args[i];
716 ... foo (r, tem, ...)...
717causes the problem to go away.
718The `contents' field of a Lisp vector is an array of Lisp_Objects,
719so you may see the problem happening with indexed references to that.
720
721* 68000 C compiler problems
722
723Various 68000 compilers have different problems.
724These are some that have been observed.
725
726** Using value of assignment expression on union type loses.
727This means that x = y = z; or foo (x = z); does not work
728if x is of type Lisp_Object.
729
730** "cannot reclaim" error.
731
732This means that an expression is too complicated. You get the correct
733line number in the error message. The code must be rewritten with
734simpler expressions.
735
736** XCONS, XSTRING, etc macros produce incorrect code.
737
738If temacs fails to run at all, this may be the cause.
739Compile this test program and look at the assembler code:
740
741struct foo { char x; unsigned int y : 24; };
742
743lose (arg)
744 struct foo arg;
745{
746 test ((int *) arg.y);
747}
748
749If the code is incorrect, your compiler has this problem.
750In the XCONS, etc., macros in lisp.h you must replace (a).u.val with
751((a).u.val + coercedummy) where coercedummy is declared as int.
752
753This problem will not happen if the m-...h file for your type
754of machine defines NO_UNION_TYPE. That is the recommended setting now.
755
756* C compilers lose on returning unions
757
758I hear that some C compilers cannot handle returning
759a union type. Most of the functions in GNU Emacs return
760type Lisp_Object, which is currently defined as a union.
761
762This problem will not happen if the m-...h file for your type
763of machine defines NO_UNION_TYPE. That is the recommended setting now.
764