Re: tty problems cause only 4 characters to appear on screen at once! (PR#1638)

When using XEmacs-21.2.46 (although I have had this occur on other versions, including non-beta), and sometimes after sending a message in VM (for example; in fact, the problem may occur at other times), I get that the XEmacs session I am running under a tty becomes entirely unusable. It consists of several characters on the screen. Right now it is: R\ ** Where the *'s signify blank characters, but in reverse video. I can still enter keystrokes in this tty, but the display never gets better. Now, since I am running `gnuclient' on other tty's, the session in other windows stays perfectly usable. Note that the tty that begins showing the small number of characters is not a `gnuclient' window, but is the original XEmacs window. The problem occurs seemingly at random, and only some of the time, but I have noticed in particular that it is likely to occur when I send a message in VM. After it would have returned to the summary page, it gives this unreadable screen. The problem is that I have no idea on how to debug this problem. If I knew what to do, it might be easy to debug, but I do not know where to start or how to provide more information. The very XEmacs (via `gnuclient') session that I am running now has this strange tty behaviour. Any ideas on what to do next would be greatly helpful. $ cat Installation uname -a: Linux localhost 2.4.0 #6 Sat Jan 27 09:39:26 EST 2001 i686 unknown ./configure '--prefix=/usr/local/beta' '--exec-prefix=/usr/local/beta' '--with-scrollbars=athena' '--with-athena=3d' '--with-dialogs=athena' '--with-widgets=athena' '--external-widget' '--with-png' '--without-gpm' '--with-jpeg' '--with-xpm' '--with-tiff' '--with-xface' '--with-sound=native,esd' '--with-database=berkdb' '--mail-locking=flock' '--with-pop' '--with-modules' '--with-site-lisp=yes' '--with-site-modules=yes' '--pdump' '--with-mule' '--debug' '--error-checking=all' '--memory-usage-stats' '--with-purify' '--rel-alloc' '--with-debug-malloc' '--with-clash-detection' '--extra-verbose' '--with-netinstall' XEmacs 21.2-b46 "Urania" configured for `i686-pc-linux'. Compilation / Installation: Source code location: /usr/local/src/XEmacs/xemacs-21.2.46 Installation prefix: /usr/local/beta Operating system description file: `s/linux.h' Machine description file: `m/intel386.h' Compiler: gcc -O3 -g3 -mpentiumpro Relocating allocator for buffers: yes GNU version of malloc: no - User chose not to use GNU allocators. Window System: Compiling in support for the X window system: - X Windows headers location: /usr/X11R6/include - X Windows libraries location: /usr/X11R6/lib - Handling WM_COMMAND properly. Compiling in support for the Athena widget set: - Athena headers location: X11/Xaw3d - Athena library to link: Xaw3d Using Lucid menubars. Using Athena scrollbars. Using Athena dialog boxes. Using Athena native widgets. TTY: Compiling in support for ncurses. Images: Compiling in support for GIF images (builtin). Compiling in support for XPM images. Compiling in support for PNG images. Compiling in support for JPEG images. Compiling in support for TIFF images. Compiling in support for X-Face message headers. Sound: Compiling in support for sound (native). Compiling in support for NAS (network audio system). Compiling in support for ESD (Enlightened Sound Daemon). Databases: Compiling in support for Berkeley database. Compiling in support for LDAP. Compiling in support for PostgreSQL. - Using PostgreSQL header file: postgresql/libpq-fe.h Internationalization: Compiling in support for Mule (multi-lingual Emacs). Compiling in support for XIM (X11R5+ I18N input method). - Using raw Xlib to provide XIM support. Compiling in support for the WNN input method on Mule. - Using WNN version 6. Mail: Compiling in support for POP mail retrieval. Compiling in support for "flock" mail spool file locking method. Other Features: Compiling in support for dynamic shared object modules. Using the new portable dumper. Compiling in support for extra debugging code. WARNING: --------------------------------------------------------- WARNING: Compiling in support for runtime error checking. WARNING: XEmacs will run noticeably more slowly as a result. WARNING: Error checking is on by default for XEmacs beta releases. WARNING: ---------------------------------------------------------