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Q: Why does emacs fail when I run it remotely from my PC or Mac?
When you run 'emacs' or 'xemacs' while logged into a unix machine
from your PC or Mac, it checks to see if you
have the DISPLAY environment variable set. If it is, it
runs as an X client and will try to display itself on the
display specified in the DISPLAY environment variable. If you
are on a system that is running X (ie. a unix machine or a
PC running X windows software) this all works fine. However,
if your machine isn't running X (ie. the typical PC or Mac)
then you will get an error like this:
emacs: Cannot connect to X server 129.79.107.54:0.
Check the DISPLAY environment variable or use `-d'.
Also use the `xhost' program to verify that it is set to permit
connections from your machine.
This means that emacs was unable to connect to an X server running
on the machine specified by the DISPLAY environment variable.
To correct this problem, you have several options:
- Ideally, you should set things up to prevent the DISPLAY
from being set in the first place. The default CS configuration
files you get with a new account shouldn't set the DISPLAY
incorrectly but if you have old configuration files look for anything
in your startup files (ie. .bashrc, .profile, .cshrc, etc) that is setting
the DISPLAY environment variable improperly. You may also try using
a default terminal type other than xterm.
To check this, go into the properties/settings
for the ssh client you are using and see if your terminal type
is set to xterm and, if it is, set it to something else (vt100
should work). If you are using
PuTTY,
go to the Connection category and change the Terminal-type string
from xterm to vt100. If you are using the
SSH Communications Security ssh client,
the default terminal type should already
be vt100. To change or check the setting, go to Settings...
under the Edit menu and check the Terminal Answerback: setting
under Profile Settings/Connection.
- You can run 'emacs -nw' instead of just 'emacs'. The -nw flag means
"no window" and should work fine in your ssh terminal window.
- You can unset the DISPLAY environment variable before you run emacs.
You can do this with:
If using the bash shell: unset DISPLAY
If using the csh/tcsh shell: unsetenv DISPLAY
Another option is to run X server software on your system. If you are running Windows, see the
corresponding FAQ entry for more information.
See an error in this FAQ entry? Please
report it.
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