Emacs crashes unless using -nw option

Emacs crashes unless using -nw option

[Brian Parent]

This bug report will be sent to the Free Software Foundation,
not to your local site managers!
Please write in English, because the Emacs maintainers do not have
translators to read other languages for them.

Your bug report will be posted to the bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org mailing list,
and to the gnu.emacs.bug news group.

In GNU Emacs 21.3.1 (sparc-sun-solaris2.8, X toolkit)
 of 2004-10-04 on ratbert.ucsd.edu
configured using `configure  -prefix=/software/common/gnu'
Important settings:
  value of $LC_ALL: nil
  value of $LC_COLLATE: nil
  value of $LC_CTYPE: nil
  value of $LC_MESSAGES: nil
  value of $LC_MONETARY: nil
  value of $LC_NUMERIC: nil
  value of $LC_TIME: nil
  value of $LANG: nil
  locale-coding-system: nil
  default-enable-multibyte-characters: t

Please describe exactly what actions triggered the bug
and the precise symptoms of the bug:

Emacs crashes with a segmentation fault when run in X windows mode.
Emacs runs fine with "-nw" flag.

[ratbert] [14:56]: emacs
Fatal error (11).Segmentation fault (core dumped)

Using gcc 3.3.3 and gnu ld with LDFLAGS="-z nocombreloc" fixes
the problem.  Using Sun's compilers and link editors fixes the problem.

I found a reference to the problem in the newsgroup gnu.emacs.bug:

> From: Eric S. Raymond (esr@thyrsus.com)
> Subject: Finding things in the PROBLEMS file is too hard (fix included).
> Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.bug
> Date: 2004-08-16 08:10:03 PST 
...
> ** Emacs crashes with SIGSEGV in XtInitializeWidgetClass
> 
> It crashes on X, but runs fine when called with option "-nw".
> 
> This has been observed when Emacs is linked with GNU ld but without passing
> the -z nocombreloc flag.  Emacs normally knows to pass the -z nocombreloc
> flag when needed, so if you come across a situation where the flag is
> necessary but missing, please report it via M-x report-emacs-bug.
> 
> On platforms such as Solaris, you can also work around this problem by
> configuring your compiler to use the native linker instead of GNU ld.

where it asked that such problems be reported, hence this note.

To configure, I used:
(using tcsh)
mkdir /software/nonrdist/build/emacs-21.3
cd /software/nonrdist/build/emacs-21.3
setenv LDFLAGS "-R /software/common/lib"
/src/gnu/emacs-21.3/configure -prefix=/software/common/gnu 

The "-R /software/common/lib" setting is needed so temacs knows where
to find libpng.
By using

setenv LDFLAGS "-R /software/common/lib -z nocombreloc"

instead of the previous LDFLAGS setting, the problem goes away, Emacs runs
with X.  The version of X is whatever Sun distributes with Solaris 8.

Recent input:
M-x b u g ? DEL DEL DEL r e p o ? r SPC TAB RET

Recent messages:
(emacs)
For information about the GNU Project and its goals, type C-h C-p.
Making completion list... [2 times]
Loading view...done
Loading emacsbug...done

Re: Emacs crashes unless using -nw option

[Richard Stallman]

The configure script is what figures out whether to use -z nocombreloc.
Can you debug why it made the wrong decision on your system?
If you figure that out, maybe we can fix it.

The code in configure that does this test starts with these lines:

late_LDFLAGS=$LDFLAGS
if test "$GCC" = yes; then
  LDFLAGS="$LDFLAGS -Wl,-znocombreloc"
else
  LDFLAGS="$LDFLAGS -znocombreloc"
fi

Re: Emacs crashes unless using -nw option

[Brian Parent]

Hmm, the copy of configure I have (emacs-21.3) has no 
reference to "nocombreloc".  Nor does that string appear
in any file in the top level (same level where configure lives)
directory.

The closest code segment I could find is:

  1954  echo "$ac_t""$ac_cv_prog_cc_g" 1>&6
  1955  if test "$ac_test_CFLAGS" = set; then
  1956    CFLAGS="$ac_save_CFLAGS"
  1957  elif test $ac_cv_prog_cc_g = yes; then
  1958    if test "$GCC" = yes; then
  1959      CFLAGS="-g -O2"
  1960    else
  1961      CFLAGS="-g"
  1962    fi
  1963  else
  1964    if test "$GCC" = yes; then
  1965      CFLAGS="-O2"
  1966    else
  1967      CFLAGS=
  1968    fi
  1969  fi

[ratbert] [9:11]# ls -l configure
-rwxr-xr-x   1 bparent  staff     273939 Mar 18  2003 configure*
[ratbert] [9:11]# md5sum configure
0195afcdc1bda43d3f6f311d6691f898  configure

I picked up my copy of the emacs-21.3.tar.gz file from http://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/emacs/
on October 1st.

[ratbert] [9:13]# md5sum emacs-21.3.tar.gz
a0bab457cbf5b4f8eb99d1d0a3ada420  emacs-21.3.tar.gz


Re:
> From: Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>
> To: Brian Parent <bparent@ratbert.ucsd.edu>
> Cc: bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
> Subject: Re: Emacs crashes unless using -nw option
> Date: Sat, 09 Oct 2004 11:44:29 -0400
> 
> The configure script is what figures out whether to use -z nocombreloc.
> Can you debug why it made the wrong decision on your system?
> If you figure that out, maybe we can fix it.
> 
> The code in configure that does this test starts with these lines:
> 
> late_LDFLAGS=$LDFLAGS
> if test "$GCC" = yes; then
>   LDFLAGS="$LDFLAGS -Wl,-znocombreloc"
> else
>   LDFLAGS="$LDFLAGS -znocombreloc"
> fi

Re: Emacs crashes unless using -nw option

[Richard Stallman]

Please try a newer version of Emacs, from CVS on savannah.gnu.org.