Please excuse my mailing an inquiry to this list that isn't really about
xemacs betas per se. I'm hoping that the emacs and X expertise of the people
who work on xemacs will help me track down a problem that's keeping me from
using Xemacs, though.
I've been using MkLinux on a PowerTowerPro for about six months now. Once I
got MkLinux up, and installed X11R6.3, I set it to boot at level 5, with xdm
taking over the display. That's worked fine until last week. I've been
following the xemacs betas since beta 34, and (with some help from others on
this list) I've built and run most of the betas since, through b46
("Toggenburg"). Apart from some compiling problems, these have built and run
smoothly, and I use Xemacs for most of my real work.
Last week, I rebooted my machine, and some things seem to have been corrupted
at that point. The principal symptom was that xdm refused to start: the boot
process gets to that point, puts up the initial screen (with the "X" in the
center) and immediately bails out, goes back (to the console screen) and tries
to start xdm again, etc. without ever getting anywhere. The same thing happens
if I try to change the boot level (with "telinit 5") when xdm isn't running.
By changing the boot level (to 3, without xdm) I can get the machine to boot,
and then start an X server manually (with "startx"). When I do that, nearly
everything works normally: AfterStep takes over, and almost all of my X
applications run fine (including exmh, which used to complain about an
insecure server when xdm wasn't running). The one big exception is Xemacs.
When I try to start Xemacs, it churns away briefly, and then when it tries to
put up a window, exits (1) as follows:
bash [48]: xemacs &
[2] 643
bloch: /home/sra
bash [49]: Error: Unresolved inheritance operation
On the other hand, "xemacs -nw" works fine in a terminal window. This isn't
unique to (any particular beta of) Xemacs - the same thing happens when I try
to start up earlier betas or even emacs-19.34.
The link to my xdm problem (apart from the fact that xdm and xemacs are the
two things that don't work) is the following: when I try (and fail) to start
xdm, I usually don't get any error messages logged to xdm's error file. But
yesterday I found the following:
bash [54]: cat /var/log/xdm-error.log
mapped frame buffer (physaddr 0x92000020 size 0x140010) at 0x2aca3020
Error: Unresolved inheritance operation
mapped frame buffer (physaddr 0x92000020 size 0x140010) at 0x2ade4020
Error: Unresolved inheritance operation
mapped frame buffer (physaddr 0x92000020 size 0x140010) at 0x2af25020
Error: Unresolved inheritance operation
mapped frame buffer (physaddr 0x92000020 size 0x140010) at 0x2b066020
Error: Unresolved inheritance operation
mapped frame buffer (physaddr 0x92000020 size 0x140010) at 0x2b1a7020
Error: Unresolved inheritance operation
mapped frame buffer (physaddr 0x92000020 size 0x140010) at 0x2b2e8020
Error: Unresolved inheritance operation
mapped frame buffer (physaddr 0x92000020 size 0x140010) at 0x2b429020
Error: Unresolved inheritance operation
000020 size 0x140010) at 0x2b7ec020
Error: Unresolved inheritance operation
mapped frame buffer (physaddr 0x92000020 size 0x140010) at 0x2b92d020
Error: Unresolved inheritance operation
mapped frame buffer (physaddr 0x92000020 size 0x140010) at 0x2ba6e020
Error: Unresolved inheritance operation
mapped frame buffer (physaddr 0x92000020 size 0x140010) at 0x2bbaf020
Error: Unresolved inheritance operation
mapped frame buffer (physaddr 0x92000020 size 0x140010) at 0x2bcf0020
Error: Unresolved inheritance operation
mapped frame buffer (physaddr 0x92000020 size 0x140010) at 0x2be31020
Error: Unresolved inheritance operation
mapped frame buffer (physaddr 0x92000020 size 0x140010) at 0x2bf72020
Error: Unresolved inheritance operation
mapped frame buffer (physaddr 0x92000020 size 0x140010) at 0x2c0b3020
I have no idea what caused it to log this at one point, but not otherwise.
Phase of the moon perhaps.
Anyway, here's my question: something seems to have been corrupted when I
re-booted last week. But what is it likely to be? I re-installed all of the
X11R6.3 files (from rpm files), as well as glibc library files, on the
assumption that some library must be at fault. So far, no luck. Does anyone
have any idea what might be going on, and how I can go about tracking it down?
As is always the case when something goes badly wrong, I have two grant
proposals due next week, and I desperately need Xemacs to get them written....
Thanks very much for your indulgence, and your expertise. And again, apologies
if this inquiry is an abuse of the purpose of this list.
--Stephen R. Anderson
Professor of Linguistics, Yale University
<stephen.anderson(a)yale.edu>
