Emacs hangs GNOME

[Nathan Willis]

Binary package hint: emacs22

Emacs periodically grabs cursor focus and refuses to release it, causing the rest of the GNOME environment to be unreachable and thus unusable. Open applications continue to run (evidenced by, say, System Monitor), and the mouse cursor is free, but the Emacs window retains focus and no other windows or panel objects respond to the cursor or to keyboard events. It is possible to kill the Emacs process by switching to another vt with Ctrl-Alt-Fn or to kill the X session entirely with Ctrl-Alt-Bckspc.

This has been reported by several other users at http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=327611 although I cannot verify that I can reproduce the bug under the exact same set of circumstances that the others have. For me, it appears to be random.

[onur gungor (onurgu)]

It happens for me too for Feisty (with all updates) at office. I can reproduce the bug if I use interactive search and search for something. In that particular case, I was searching for a keyword that includes a Turkish character.

If you want any other info or another reproduction, please let me know.

At home, on another Feisty with all updates, emacs seems to freeze not only gnome but X. Ctrl-Alt-Backspace does not work, System monitor freezes too. This was the reason that I came here. :)

[Reinhard Tartler (siretart)]

The link talks about emacs-snapshot, this bug about emacs22. Are both affected?
Does it hang in text-mode (emacs -nw) as well?

I'm unable to reproduce it, so we'd need further input how to provoke it in order to fix the problem.

[onur gungor (onurgu)]

How can I help in providing this input?

[era (era)]

For a start, add repro steps which work for you, every time. And answer the question about if this happens with emacs -nw too.

Also, detailed information about your machine. Was this updated from an earlier version of Ubuntu? What version of emacs-snapshot (I assume you're not using emacs22 on Feisty ...?) Can you repro on Gutsy or Hardy?

[onur gungor (onurgu)]

First of all, sorry I was mistaken about the version, it was Gutsy, 7.10. Feisty was 7.04, huh?

$ emacs --version
GNU Emacs 22.1.1

and no emacs -nw does not err.

I didn't try the repro steps again yet (cause I am pretty sure that it will freeze again), but for now I can list the steps as:

1) open emacs
2) type Ctrl-X-F
3) go to a file (using tab completes)
4) first fonts start to corrupt, (once I stopped for a while and the screen came back, but after a while it froze again)
5) after a while the screen froze

I will try again now, and will report after a reboot, see you.

[onur gungor (onurgu)]

yes, it froze after two tabs in step 3.

how can i help further?

[Reinhard Tartler (siretart)]

This report sounds similar to bug #133730. Can you 'recover' from the hang using Ctrl-g?

Is your system unusual? Are you using an NFS home, where you don't have write permission or something? Please describe your setup a bit more.

(I'm using emacs on a regular basis, and still cannot reproduce the 'freeze')

[onur gungor (onurgu)]

No, Ctrl-g doesn't work.

And no, my system is not unusual. my home directory is on a local physical disk.

Only thing to mention is that my CPU is Athlon 64 3000+.

$ uname -a
Linux xxx 2.6.22-14-generic #1 SMP Tue Feb 12 07:42:25 UTC 2008 i686 GNU/Linux

my .emacs file:

(custom-set-variables
  ;; custom-set-variables was added by Custom -- don't edit or cut/paste it!
  ;; Your init file should contain only one such instance.
 '(TeX-output-view-style (quote (("^dvi$" ("^landscape$" "^pstricks$\\|^pst-\\|^psfrag$") "%(o?)dvips -t landscape %d -o && gv %f") ("^dvi$" "^pstricks$\\|^pst-\\|^psfrag$" "%(o?)dvips %d -o && gv %f") ("^dvi$" ("^a4\\(?:dutch\\|paper\\|wide\\)\\|sem-a4$" "^landscape$") "%(o?)xdvi %dS -paper a4r -s 0 %d") ("^dvi$" "^a4\\(?:dutch\\|paper\\|wide\\)\\|sem-a4$" "%(o?)xdvi %dS -paper a4 %d") ("^dvi$" ("^a5\\(?:comb\\|paper\\)$" "^landscape$") "%(o?)xdvi %dS -paper a5r -s 0 %d") ("^dvi$" "^a5\\(?:comb\\|paper\\)$" "%(o?)xdvi %dS -paper a5 %d") ("^dvi$" "^b5paper$" "%(o?)xdvi %dS -paper b5 %d") ("^dvi$" "^letterpaper$" "%(o?)xdvi %dS -paper us %d") ("^dvi$" "^legalpaper$" "%(o?)xdvi %dS -paper legal %d") ("^dvi$" "^executivepaper$" "%(o?)xdvi %dS -paper 7.25x10.5in %d") ("^dvi$" "." "%(o?)xdvi %dS %d") ("^pdf$" "." "evince %o") ("^html?$" "." "netscape %o"))))
 '(case-fold-search t)
 '(current-language-environment "UTF-8")
 '(default-input-method "rfc1345")
 '(global-font-lock-mode t nil (font-lock))
 '(transient-mark-mode t))
(custom-set-faces
  ;; custom-set-faces was added by Custom -- don't edit or cut/paste it!
  ;; Your init file should contain only one such instance.
 )

(add-to-list 'auto-mode-alist '("\\.\\([pP][Llm]\\|al\\)\\'" . cperl-mode))
(add-to-list 'interpreter-mode-alist '("perl" . cperl-mode))
(add-to-list 'interpreter-mode-alist '("perl5" . cperl-mode))
(add-to-list 'interpreter-mode-alist '("miniperl" . cperl-mode))
(setq cperl-electric-keywords t) ;; expands for keywords such as
                                     ;; foreach, while, etc...

[MartinCarlsen (martin-carlsen-deactivatedaccount)]

Bug confirmed. System hangs with the exact same symptoms as described above i.e.
"Ctrl-g doesn't work.
emacs -nw does not err
It is possible to kill the Emacs process by switching to another vt with Ctrl-Alt-Fn or to kill the X session entirely with Ctrl-Alt-Bckspc."

Ubuntu 8.10,
Linux martin-laptop 2.6.27-7-generic #1 SMP Wed Oct 22 00:29:18 UTC 2008 i686 GNU/Linux

[MartinCarlsen (martin-carlsen-deactivatedaccount)]

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/metacity/+bug/231034