emacs {hang, crashes} under X on 2k, was: Emacs crashing under XFree86-4.3

[Thomas L Roche <tlroche at us dot ibm dot com>]

Rajesh Balakrishnan Wed, 17 Mar 2004 04:21:28 +0000 (UTC)
>> emacs (under X11) is working fine since Mar 06 snapshot of
>> cygwin1.dll. http://cygwin.com/snapshots/

Thomas L Roche Wed, 17 Mar 2004 08:00:00 -0500
> That has not been my experience: I have been tracking the snapshots,
> but my emacs still segfaults, dumps core, etc. Hopefully I will get
> a chance to build sources and debug soon.

Just to amplify (though of course what I should be doing is building
cygwin1, xfree86, and emacs from source and debugging--props to Moira
Regelson), here's some more data. Note that I stay pretty current with
both cygwin1.dll and xfree86: presently

> $ cygcheck -srv | grep 'cygwin\|XFree86'
>  1100k 2004/03/16 d:\ProgramFiles\Cygwin\bin\cygwin1.dll - os=4.0 
img=1.0 sys=4.0
>                   "cygwin1.dll" v0.0 ts=2004/3/16 0:19
>         DLL identifier: cygwin1
>         Shared id: cygwin1S4
> Last downloaded files to: D:\download\cygwin
> Last downloaded files from: ftp://mirrors.rcn.net/pub/sourceware/cygwin
> cygwin                  1.5.8-1 
> cygwin-doc              1.3-7 
> XFree86-base            4.3.0-7 
> XFree86-bin             4.3.0-17 
> XFree86-etc             4.3.0-10 
> XFree86-fenc            4.3.0-1 
> XFree86-fnts            4.3.0-1 
> XFree86-lib             4.3.0-2 
> XFree86-lib-compat      4.3.0-2 
> XFree86-startup-scripts 4.3.0-1 
> XFree86-xserv           4.3.0-58 

The cygwinized GNU Emacs was very stable under X (with -multiwindow
and -clipboard) in 1.5.5-1. Since upgrading from that, I have had

* apparently-random crashes: segfaults, dumps core, etc. Rarely,
  but occasionally, the crashes leave cryptic X-related messages in
  the console.

* hangs on window modification or creation. Cygwin emacs has actually
  been pretty stable since late Feb/early Mar, in that it doesn't
  crash very often IFF I don't move, resize, minimize, or create new
  windows (e.g. with [C-x 5 f]). If I just startup an xterm, then
  startup one (and only one) emacs window and don't touch it, I can
  usually get several hours of productive use out of it. But if I do
  any of those 4 ops (which I usually did frequently pre-1.5.5-1), it
  will almost certainly, within a few minutes, hang without refreshing
  its windows: i.e. 

· if I drag a non-emacs window over an emacs one, then minimize the
  non-emacs one, the area of overlap will be visible as white space on
  the emacs window.

· no gesture causes any change in the hung window

· the hung window cannot be closed except by killing the emacs
  process

There are other less destructive glitches that have appeared since
1.5.5-1 (e.g. my emacs cursor is normally a blinking solid rectangle,
but if I minimize my emacs window, then restore it, the emacs cursor
becomes a non-blinking rectangular outline, aka the "keyhole of
death"), but the problems above are the ones that tend to ruin my day.