Strange emacs-X interaction.

Strange emacs-X interaction.

[Omri Schwarz]

Hi, everyone.

I'm managing a machine running Redhat 9 + Fedora Legacy, 
one that is showing some strange behavior.
Starting emacs with "emacs -nw" works exactly as expected.
But regular emacs refuses to startup. it just
exits with this error message:

[omri@somehost main]$ emacs
Wrong type argument: stringp, nil
[omri@somehost main]$ 

This is the error message I get for any attempt
to launch emacs in its own window. This happens
when I do --debug-init, and when I've cleared the 
X resources database completely. 

[root@somehost main]# rpm -q emacs
emacs-21.2-33
[root@somehost main]# emacs --version
GNU Emacs 21.2.1
Copyright (C) 2001 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

Apart from xrdb, is there anywhere I should look
for more useful information?

Thanks in advance,

Omri

Re: Strange emacs-X interaction.

[Kai Grossjohann]

"Omri Schwarz" <ocschwar@MIT.EDU> writes:

> [omri@somehost main]$ emacs
> Wrong type argument: stringp, nil
> [omri@somehost main]$ 

Very strange problem.  Try "emacs -q -no-site-file" and also "emacs
-q".  If the first starts up then there must be an error in the init
files, and if the second also starts, then it must in in ~/.emacs.

Kai

Re: Strange emacs-X interaction.

[Omri Schwarz]

Kai Grossjohann wrote:
>"Omri Schwarz" <address@bogus.example.com> writes:

>> address@bogus.example.com main]$ emacs
>> Wrong type argument: stringp, nil
>> address@bogus.example.com main]$ 

>Very strange problem.  Try "emacs -q -no-site-file" and also "emacs
>-q".  If the first starts up then there must be an error in the init
>files, and if the second also starts, then it must in in ~/.emacs.

Thank you for your suggestion:


[omri@alpheratz omri]$ /usr/bin/emacs -q
Wrong type argument: stringp, nil
[omri@alpheratz omri]$ /usr/bin/emacs -q -no-site-file
Wrong type argument: stringp, nil
[omri@alpheratz omri]$ /usr/bin/emacs -q --no-site-file
Wrong type argument: stringp, nil

So neither of them start up. 

This BTW is the standard RedHat emacs install.
A manual install of gnu.org's emacs works fine.