emacs C-x m doesn't work

[Jon Thackray]

C-x m is supposed to open a *mail* window in which I can type an email and send it. Instead, all I get is a message "Symbol's value as variable is void: image-load-path This is a brand new install of 14.04 and new emacs. Previous installs on earlier releases, eg 10.04, have worked "out of the box"

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 14.04
Package: emacs 45.0ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.13.0-32.57-generic 3.13.11.4
Uname: Linux 3.13.0-32-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.14.1-0ubuntu3.2
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: Unity
Date: Sun Jul 27 12:21:25 2014
InstallationDate: Installed on 2014-07-23 (4 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 14.04 LTS "Trusty Tahr" - Release amd64 (20140417)
PackageArchitecture: all
SourcePackage: emacs-defaults
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Paul White (paulw2u)]

Sorry, I can't confirm this bug.

C-x m works for me on a fully updated Kubuntu 14.04.1 using Emacs 24.3.1.

[Jon Thackray (jgt)]

Well, I'm not using Kubuntu, I'm using gonme-session-fallback. For me, all I
get is a blank buffer labelled *mail*. This happens in both emacs 23 and
emacs 24. The installation is pristine, the only thing I've added to emacs
is vm, which incidentally doesn't work either (it says no match, which seems
to be similar to https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=465748).
Have you any suggestions as to how I can debug this? I'm not an emacs lisp
person, but if necessary I can find someone who is.

Jon Thackray
[phone] (new)
[phone]
[phone]
-----Original Message-----
From: Paul White
Sent: Sunday, July 27, 2014 12:59 PM
To: <email address hidden>
Subject: [Bug 1349087] Re: emacs C-x m doesn't work

Sorry, I can't confirm this bug.

C-x m works for me on a fully updated Kubuntu 14.04.1 using Emacs
24.3.1.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1349087

Title:
  emacs C-x m doesn't work

Status in “emacs-defaults” package in Ubuntu:
  New

Bug description:
  C-x m is supposed to open a *mail* window in which I can type an email
  and send it. Instead, all I get is a message "Symbol's value as
  variable is void: image-load-path This is a brand new install of 14.04
  and new emacs. Previous installs on earlier releases, eg 10.04, have
  worked "out of the box"

  ProblemType: Bug
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 14.04
  Package: emacs 45.0ubuntu1
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.13.0-32.57-generic 3.13.11.4
  Uname: Linux 3.13.0-32-generic x86_64
  ApportVersion: 2.14.1-0ubuntu3.2
  Architecture: amd64
  CurrentDesktop: Unity
  Date: Sun Jul 27 12:21:25 2014
  InstallationDate: Installed on 2014-07-23 (4 days ago)
  InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 14.04 LTS "Trusty Tahr" - Release amd64
(20140417)
  PackageArchitecture: all
  SourcePackage: emacs-defaults
  UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

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[Jon Thackray (jgt)]

So, looking on 10.04, I find C-h v image-load-path says

image-load-path's value is
("/usr/share/emacs/23.1/etc/images/" data-directory load-path)

So, I now try on my pristine 14.04 and I find the value to be void. Looking in /usr/share/emacs/23.1/etc/images/ I find it's a load of .xpm files, and that's there's a similar set in /usr/share/emacs/23.4/etc/images/ on my 14.04 installation. So, I put the line (setq image-load-path "/usr/share/emacs/23.4/etc/images/") in a buffer, make it a region and use M-x eval-region on it. After that C-x m produces what I expect, ie a mail buffer looking like

To:
Subject:
From: <me>
---text follows this line---

ie, what I expect. Putting in some sensible fields, eg an email address and subject, I appear to be able to send mail. So, all that remains to fix this bug is to find out why the default install of emacs didn't set image-load-path, and fix that.

[Jon Thackray (jgt)]

This has now happened to me a second time. This time I was setting up a toshiba laptop. In the mean time I managed to set up a desktop where the problem did not occur. So that's a 67% failure rate, down from 100%, but now in a sample of 3.

[Jon Thackray (jgt)]

Having told it to completely remove and reinstall I can now work around this. But I am no closer to identifying why it happens.

[Jon Thackray (jgt)]

OK, I think I may understand why this happens. When a new user is created, the first time emacs is run it creates .emacs.d in the user's home directory. But, if the first time the user runs emacs is via sudo, which is more than likely if he is configuring a system, then the ownership on .emacs.d ends up ans root, root. Then when he tries to run it without sudo, the initialisation fails very early on unable to read .emacs.d, his .emacs isn't read, and apparently various search paths aren't set up. So, work around is for the user to reset the ownership and group to himself, which presumably he can do since he ran sudo in the first place. The clairvoyant user will of course run emacs without sudo first time. I clearly wasn't clairvoyant enough.

[Paul White (paulw2u)]

Four years on I'm marking this as being invalid as the creation of any directory within ~/ by using sudo will create the directory with root permissions. I've seen this many times when installing a new version of Ubuntu and using mc or vim with sudo.

'sudo -H <appname> works around this issue.