bug#26241: 25.1; Re: emacsclient in 25 branch: error opening any file

bug#26241: 25.1; Re: emacsclient in 25 branch: error opening any file

[frederik]

Hi,

I'm writing to know about the status of this bug:

https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2016-06/msg00036.html

which is affecting me as well. I get the same "Waiting for Emacs...
*ERROR*: Wrong type argument: stringp, nil" after emacs has been running
for a while.

I don't have time to fix it, but it would be nice to be notified when
I can safely install the latest version of Emacs (and if there is some
workaround). And I hope that whatever information is provided in this
report may be of help...

Thanks!



In GNU Emacs 25.1.1 (x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 3.22.7)
 of 2017-02-07 built on arojas
Configured using:
 'configure --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc --libexecdir=/usr/lib
 --localstatedir=/var --with-x-toolkit=gtk3 --with-xft
 'CFLAGS=-march=x86-64 -mtune=generic -O2 -pipe
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 LDFLAGS=-Wl,-O1,--sort-common,--as-needed,-z,relro'

Configured features:
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NOTIFY ACL GNUTLS LIBXML2 FREETYPE M17N_FLT LIBOTF XFT ZLIB
TOOLKIT_SCROLL_BARS GTK3 X11

Important settings:
  value of $LANG: 
  locale-coding-system: utf-8-unix

Major mode: Text

Minor modes in effect:
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Recent messages:
Loading ess-site...done
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Loading /usr/share/emacs/25.1/lisp/progmodes/cc-mode.el.gz...done
Loading /home/frederik/.emacs.d/my-compile-next-makefile.el (source)...done
For information about GNU Emacs and the GNU system, type C-h C-a.
When done with a buffer, type C-x # [2 times]
Making completion list...
command-execute: Cannot open load file: No such file or directory, emacsbug
When done with a buffer, type C-x #

Load-path shadows:
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bug#26241: 25.1; Re: emacsclient in 25 branch: error opening any file

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2017 10:48:05 -0700
> From: frederik@ofb.net
> Cc: jrm@ftfl.ca
> 
> I'm writing to know about the status of this bug:
> 
> https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2016-06/msg00036.html
> 
> which is affecting me as well. I get the same "Waiting for Emacs...
> *ERROR*: Wrong type argument: stringp, nil" after emacs has been running
> for a while.

Since this doesn't happen right away, there's something that gets
broken in the Emacs session.  We need to know the details: which
function signals this error, and preferably also why.  Since this
doesn't happen to others, I don't see how we can make progress without
more details about the problem, sorry.

bug#26241: 25.1; Re: emacsclient in 25 branch: error opening any file

[frederik]

On Fri, Mar 24, 2017 at 09:56:58PM +0300, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> > Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2017 10:48:05 -0700
> > From: frederik@ofb.net
> > Cc: jrm@ftfl.ca
> > 
> > I'm writing to know about the status of this bug:
> > 
> > https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2016-06/msg00036.html
> > 
> > which is affecting me as well. I get the same "Waiting for Emacs...
> > *ERROR*: Wrong type argument: stringp, nil" after emacs has been running
> > for a while.
> 
> Since this doesn't happen right away, there's something that gets
> broken in the Emacs session.  We need to know the details: which
> function signals this error, and preferably also why.  Since this
> doesn't happen to others, I don't see how we can make progress without
> more details about the problem, sorry.

You could instrument 'emacsclient' to produce a stack trace, with an
option analogous to --debug-init. It would be useful for future bugs
as well. "Wrong type argument" is better than nothing, but we agree
that it's not very useful.

Both myself and the other reporter seem to have noticed the problem
appearing in Emacs 25. Actually for me, an Arch Linux user, looking at
the dates in /var/cache/pacman/pkg I think the problem may have
occurred after emacs-25.1-4-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz (installed Feb 7) since
the previous patch level 25.1-3 was installed Dec 24 2016 and I don't
remember any crashes so long ago. But Joseph's original report is 9
months old. I have of course made changes to ~/.emacs in this time but
I have very little idea what of that code is run by emacsclient. It
seems likely that the problem stems from a change that was made to
Emacs, and we have a record of such changes, so it may be useful to
check that record.

Thanks for your reply.

bug#26241: 25.1; Re: emacsclient in 25 branch: error opening any file

[npostavs]

frederik@ofb.net writes:

> You could instrument 'emacsclient' to produce a stack trace, with an
> option analogous to --debug-init. It would be useful for future bugs
> as well. "Wrong type argument" is better than nothing, but we agree
> that it's not very useful.

Could you try setting debug-on-signal to t after you get Emacs into this
state?  You should then get a backtrace in the running Emacs.

bug#26241: 25.1; Re: emacsclient in 25 branch: error opening any file

[frederik]

On Fri, Mar 24, 2017 at 08:04:33PM -0400, npostavs@users.sourceforge.net wrote:
> frederik@ofb.net writes:
> 
> > You could instrument 'emacsclient' to produce a stack trace, with an
> > option analogous to --debug-init. It would be useful for future bugs
> > as well. "Wrong type argument" is better than nothing, but we agree
> > that it's not very useful.
> 
> Could you try setting debug-on-signal to t after you get Emacs into this
> state?  You should then get a backtrace in the running Emacs.

I'm not familiar with that variable. Could I also set it in ~/.emacs?

bug#26241: 25.1; Re: emacsclient in 25 branch: error opening any file

[npostavs]

frederik@ofb.net writes:

> On Fri, Mar 24, 2017 at 08:04:33PM -0400, npostavs@users.sourceforge.net wrote:
>> frederik@ofb.net writes:
>> 
>> Could you try setting debug-on-signal to t after you get Emacs into this
>> state?  You should then get a backtrace in the running Emacs.
>
> I'm not familiar with that variable. Could I also set it in ~/.emacs?

No.  I mean, you could, but then you would be bombarded with spurious
backtraces.  It's better only to set it once you are about to trigger
the error.

bug#26241: 25.1; Re: emacsclient in 25 branch: error opening any file

[npostavs]

forcemerge 26310 26241
quit

frederik@ofb.net writes:

> Hi,
>
> I'm writing to know about the status of this bug:
>
> https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2016-06/msg00036.html
>
> which is affecting me as well. I get the same "Waiting for Emacs...
> *ERROR*: Wrong type argument: stringp, nil" after emacs has been running
> for a while.
>
> I don't have time to fix it, but it would be nice to be notified when
> I can safely install the latest version of Emacs (and if there is some
> workaround). And I hope that whatever information is provided in this
> report may be of help...

I think this is probably the same as #26310, and is fixed in 25.2 (rc2).
The patch is at https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=21091#30.

bug#26241: 25.1; Re: emacsclient in 25 branch: error opening any file

[frederik]

Hey it's great if you found the bug ... but if it's as random as a
problem with isearch, then I'd definitely want to reiterate my
suggestion that emacsclient should have a "--debug" option so that
these can be easily investigated in the future.

I'll update to 25.2 when it appears in Arch.

Thanks,

Frederick

On Sat, Apr 15, 2017 at 11:08:59PM -0400, npostavs@users.sourceforge.net wrote:
> forcemerge 26310 26241
> quit
> 
> frederik@ofb.net writes:
> 
> > Hi,
> >
> > I'm writing to know about the status of this bug:
> >
> > https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2016-06/msg00036.html
> >
> > which is affecting me as well. I get the same "Waiting for Emacs...
> > *ERROR*: Wrong type argument: stringp, nil" after emacs has been running
> > for a while.
> >
> > I don't have time to fix it, but it would be nice to be notified when
> > I can safely install the latest version of Emacs (and if there is some
> > workaround). And I hope that whatever information is provided in this
> > report may be of help...
> 
> I think this is probably the same as #26310, and is fixed in 25.2 (rc2).
> The patch is at https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=21091#30.
>