Emacs crashes suddenly

Emacs crashes suddenly

[Pablo S.M.]

Hi,

I'm using emacs since years without problems, but in the two last
releases 23.2 and 23.3 I'm experiencing very strange emacs crashes. I
have a lot of stuff on (orgmode, jabber, ibuffer, icicles, etc. etc.).
I have already tried to disable some of these packages, with no
success.

Emacs crashes suddenly (but at least once a day). Sometimes I'm not
even doing anything in emacs and it crashes. But then other times it
runs for days (and lots of opened buffers) without any problem.

My question is: how can I find a way Emacs tells me at least the crash
reason? If I start emacs with gdb I don't see anything special, maybe
because I have to compile it with some options? (i'm using archlinux).

thx in advance.

Re: Emacs crashes suddenly

[Tassilo Horn]

"Pablo S.M." <joseleopoldo1792@gmail.com> writes:

Hi Pablo,

> My question is: how can I find a way Emacs tells me at least the crash
> reason? If I start emacs with gdb I don't see anything special, maybe
> because I have to compile it with some options?

Yes, at least with -O0 and -ggdb.  And even though you have installed
emacs into /usr/ or /usr/local/, you should invoke gdb in the src/
directory where you've compiled emacs, because that contain some gdb
initialization files.  When emacs crashes, use `bt full' and
`xbacktrace' to get some meaningful information.

So something along the lines of:

  $ cd ~/sources/emacs/src
  $ gdb /usr/bin/emacs
  gdb> run
  [do your usual work in emacs, and when it crashes, do...]
  gdb> bt full
  [full C backtrace]
  gdb> xbacktrace
  [lisp backtrace]

See etc/DEBUG for details on how to debug emacs:

  http://bzr.savannah.gnu.org/lh/emacs/trunk/annotate/head:/etc/DEBUG

Bye,
Tassilo

Re: Emacs crashes suddenly

[Pablo S.M.]

2011/12/5 Tassilo Horn <tassilo@member.fsf.org>:
[...]
> See etc/DEBUG for details on how to debug emacs:
>
>  http://bzr.savannah.gnu.org/lh/emacs/trunk/annotate/head:/etc/DEBUG

many thanks, Tassilo. I will give it a try.