[comp.emacs] Fatal Errors startung GnuEmacs

ellis@ultra.dec.com (David Ellis) (08/05/87)

USGCORB@LEHIIBM1.BITNET writes:
   After much frustration in simply getting the software, I am now faced with
   'Fatal Error (10).bus error'.  Does anyone have any experience with
   GnuEmacs and/or the 3B15 (running System V.2.1) to offer me some helpful
   household hints?
 
GnuEmacs is not very robust in handling the unexpected when starting up.

Working with Ultrix V1.2 (DEC's BSD 4.2 equivalent), I ran into a local side
effect of _removeuser_(8) that does the equivalent of "chmod o-r /etc/passwd".
Denied read access to that file, GnuEmacs self-destructed during startup, 
saying only "Fatal Error (11).Segmentation fault, core dumped".

Something in your Unix environment is not what GnuEmacs expects, and you won't
get much information from GnuEmacs on what is surprising it.  Whatever it is,
it's happening before executing startup.el.  Good luck tracking this one down!

----
David Ellis
Digital Equipment Corporation -- LTN2-2/C08 
305 Foster Street, Littleton MA 01460 -- (617)486-6784 
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