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emacs broken in leopard?

when I run emacs from the command line I get the following error:

Fatal malloc_jumpstart() error

I just installed leopard. Emacs worked fine before the upgrade. Emacs is installed in /usr/bin. I can't run it from root either.

-help

MBP Boyeee, Mac OS X (10.4.6), My 'puter is better then yours!

Posted on Nov 1, 2007 12:35 PM

Reply
51 replies

Nov 2, 2007 10:19 AM in response to TouchOfClass

This is not guaranteed to work, since this is using the Leopard installer in ways it wasn't designed or tested for but you can try the following. In Terminal, type:

open "/Volumes/Mac OS X Install DVD/System/Installation/Packages/BSD.pkg"

In order to run an installer for just the BSD packages.

As I said, this is not supported in any way, but it's something you could try.

Nov 3, 2007 12:06 PM in response to TouchOfClass

OK, how about trying to run emacs-i386 (I'm assuming from your info that you're running on a MacBook Pro). The emacs binary on Leopard seems to just detect what your system is and run either emacs-i386 or emacs-ppc. If you try to run emacs-ppc on an intel mac, you get the error you are describing. I'm not sure why emacs wouldn't be booting the correct one, but try running emacs-i386 and see if that works. Are you using Apple's Terminal or some other terminal?

If that doesn't work, try running the following commands and posting the output, to see if we can get any more information:
which emacs; ls -al /usr/bin/emacs*; file /usr/bin/emacs*

Nov 3, 2007 1:36 PM in response to Brian P. Campbell

output:

Mac-the-puter:~ babu$ ls -al /usr/bin/emacs*; file /usr/bin/emacs*
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root wheel 38544 Oct 11 03:39 /usr/bin/emacs
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 21227988 Oct 24 19:43 /usr/bin/emacs-i386
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 30805724 Feb 3 2006 /usr/bin/emacs-ppc
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 5301856 Oct 11 03:39 /usr/bin/emacs-undumped
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 64016 Oct 11 03:39 /usr/bin/emacsclient
/usr/bin/emacs: Mach-O universal binary with 2 architectures
/usr/bin/emacs (for architecture i386): Mach-O executable i386
/usr/bin/emacs (for architecture ppc7400): Mach-O executable ppc
/usr/bin/emacs-i386: Mach-O executable i386
/usr/bin/emacs-ppc: Mach-O executable ppc
/usr/bin/emacs-undumped: Mach-O universal binary with 2 architectures
/usr/bin/emacs-undumped (for architecture i386): Mach-O executable i386
/usr/bin/emacs-undumped (for architecture ppc7400): Mach-O executable ppc
/usr/bin/emacsclient: Mach-O universal binary with 2 architectures
/usr/bin/emacsclient (for architecture i386): Mach-O executable i386
/usr/bin/emacsclient (for architecture ppc7400): Mach-O executable ppc

---------
running emacs-i386 and emacs-ppc both give the same error:

Fatal malloc_jumpstart() error

Additionally I installed Leopard from the Family Pack on two other computers one ppc and one Intel. Emacs on both of those computers work with version 22.

I am using the Apple terminal app.

Nov 3, 2007 1:59 PM in response to Brian P. Campbell

"Leopard ships with Emacs 22.1.1"

I'm having the same problem as the initial poster. My emacs 21.2.1 is dated Oct. 11, and emacs-i386 is dated Oct. 13, which seems like dates I'd expect a Leopard build from, rather than a Tiger build. For what it's worth, I installed Leopard from the release DVD. Where did you get your Leopard install from -- were you a beta tester?

Below, ls -l, version, and attempt at running:

silverton:~ jhbrown$ /usr/bin/emacs --version
GNU Emacs 21.2.1
Copyright (C) 2001 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
GNU Emacs comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
You may redistribute copies of Emacs
under the terms of the GNU General Public License.
For more information about these matters, see the file named COPYING.
silverton:~ jhbrown$ ls -l /usr/bin/emacs
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root wheel 38544 Oct 11 03:39 /usr/bin/emacs
silverton:~ jhbrown$ /usr/bin/emacs
Fatal malloc_jumpstart() error
silverton:~ jhbrown$ ls -l /usr/bin/emacs-i386
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 21227988 Oct 13 23:05 /usr/bin/emacs-i386
silverton:~ jhbrown$ /usr/bin/emacs-i386
Fatal malloc_jumpstart() error
silverton:~ jhbrown$ file /usr/bin/emacs
/usr/bin/emacs: Mach-O universal binary with 2 architectures
/usr/bin/emacs (for architecture i386): Mach-O executable i386
/usr/bin/emacs (for architecture ppc7400): Mach-O executable ppc
silverton:~ jhbrown$ file /usr/bin/emacs-i386
/usr/bin/emacs-i386: Mach-O executable i386

Nov 3, 2007 3:56 PM in response to Jeremy H. Brown

I also have the same problem. Reinstalling BSD package didn't solve
the problem. I removed /usr/bin/emacs to make sure BSD pkg is updating
the emacs and reinstalled BSD package. It is still old tiger version.

goli-mac:bin goli$ /usr/bin/emacs --version
GNU Emacs 21.2.1
Copyright (C) 2001 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
GNU Emacs comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
You may redistribute copies of Emacs
under the terms of the GNU General Public License.
For more information about these matters, see the file named COPYING.

goli-mac:bin goli$ /usr/libexec/dumpemacs -nd
Checking if emacs is up-to-date
Emacs is up-to-date. No dumping required
goli-mac:bin goli$

goli-mac:bin goli$ /usr/libexec/dumpemacs -V
22.1

What is emacs-undumped?
goli-mac:bin goli$ file emacs-undumped
emacs-undumped: Mach-O universal binary with 2 architectures
emacs-undumped (for architecture i386): Mach-O executable i386
emacs-undumped (for architecture ppc7400): Mach-O executable ppc

This one works and it is 22.1 (not 22.1.1) but I have to start with
'-bg white' otherwise background is all black and can't see anything.
Also it looks like it is not reading .emacs.

GNU Emacs 22.1 (mac-apple-darwin, Carbon Version 1.6.0)

Nov 4, 2007 12:50 AM in response to TouchOfClass

OK, I finally think I have an idea of what's going on here. Had you just installed Tiger or updated Tiger right before Leopard was released (like, on October 24th)?

Try removing (or moving out of the way) /usr/bin/emacs-i386, and then run the commands from my last post. I think what happened is that somehow emacs-i386 was last modified on October 24th, possibly if you installed Tiger or did an update that updated Emacs on that day. Since that is after October 11th, when the GM version of Leopard was built, dumpemacs (which builds the emacs executable from the core executable plus some compiled elisp modules) thought that emacs was up to date, and so didn't try to rebuild it when you installed Leopard (it happens as a post install action). If you just move the file out of the way, it should be able to rebuild it.

So, the commands you should run are:

sudo mv /usr/bin/emacs-i386 /usr/bin/emacs-i386.backup
sudo /usr/libexec/dumpemacs -d
emacs --version
emacs

Again, if this doesn't work, post the output, and I'll see if I can think of anything else.

Message was edited by: Brian P. Campbell

emacs broken in leopard?

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