Re: recover-session doesn't

[Edward Welbourne]

> If you can tell us how to reproduce this problem, we will investigate.

So this afternoon emacs hung terminally and had to be shot down.  Once
I'd done failing to reproduce problems with customize, I duly had a go
at trying to reproduce problems with recover-session.

I turned my ~/.emacs into <quote src="~/.emacs">

;; -*- lisp -*-
(setq eddy-home-dir (or (getenv "HOME") "/home/eddy")
      eddy-elisp-dir (concat eddy-home-dir "/.sys/elisp"))
(add-to-list 'load-path eddy-elisp-dir)
;;(load "init") ; recursively inlined below
;; see /usr/share/doc/emacs21/etc/NEWS for lots of neato features
(server-start) ;; emacsclient [ +line[:column] ] filename
(setq server-kill-new-buffers t) ;; server-temp-file-regexp

(tool-bar-mode 0) ;; worthless *junk* buttons
(menu-bar-mode 0) ;; +ve value to get menus
(mouse-wheel-mode t) ;; configure: mouse-wheel-follow-mouse, 
mouse-wheel-scroll-amount

(auto-compression-mode 1)
(global-font-lock-mode 1)
(set-language-environment "Latin-9") ;; want UTF-8 as encoding

(setq next-line-add-newlines t
      require-final-newline "ask"
      default-indicate-empty-lines "red")
;; also NB region command: M-x delete-trailing-whitespace RET

(setq-default show-trailing-whitespace t)
(set-face-background 'trailing-whitespace "grey18")

(setenv "QTDIR") ;; i.e. unset it
(set 'rmail-file-name "/home/eddy/mail/pending/primary")
(set 'rmail-primary-inbox-list (list "/var/mail/eddy" "po:eddy"))
(set 'rmail-user-mail-address-regexp 
"eddy\(\|@opera.\(no\|com\)\|@chaos.org.uk\)")
(set 'rmail-confirm-expunge nil)

(set 'rmail-pop-password-required t)
(set 'rmail-delete-after-output t)

(autoload 'html-mode "sgml-mode" "Edit HTML docs" t)
(setq auto-mode-alist (cons (cons "\\.html?$" 'html-mode) auto-mode-alist))

;; testing ...
(open-dribble-file "~/e-session")

</quote> and fired up a new session, <quote src="~/e-session">

 0x8000078reco<tab>se<tab><return>
yyes<return>
<backspace><return>
o 0x800003c 0x800003e 0x8000077BufferList<return>
y

</quote> (all one line, no newline at end, newlines added to quote
after each <return>, plus blank lines at start and end, for legibility
and kindness to mailers).  I don't know what the dribble-file thinks
it's saying at the start: I clicked on the window furniture for
maximising both vertically and horizontally, then typed M-x reco TAB
and the rest went as reported, up to the subsequent 0x800... bits,
which again flummox me.

This achieved more than I've ever seen before from M-x
recover-session: I didn't get the message I reported previously, "No
files can be recovered from this session now".  However, all I did get
was <quote src="~/BufferList">

 MR Buffer           Size  Mode         File
 -- ------           ----  ----         ----
.*  *ecma glitches*#386g1R  258 Fundamental ~/*ecma glitches*#386g1R
 *% .saves-*          319  Dired by date ~/.emacs.d/auto-save-list/.saves-*
    *scratch*         191  Lisp Interaction 
 *  *Messages*        839  Fundamental  
  % *Directory*       152  Help         

</quote> where the session being recovered from had lots of files
open, along with several (renamed) compilation buffers, one of which
was still running (or, perhaps, something had gone so wrong with it as
to be the cause of emacs' hang).  The save file said: <quote
src="~/.emacs.d/auto-save-list/.saves-386-whorl.intern.opera.no~">
/home/eddy/work/c2-stb/Makefile.config
/home/eddy/work/c2-stb/#Makefile.config#
/home/eddy/work/notes.c2
/home/eddy/work/#notes.c2#
/home/eddy/work/qte-release6/Makefile.config
/home/eddy/work/qte-release6/#Makefile.config#
/home/eddy/work/qt-embed/Makefile.config
/home/eddy/work/qt-embed/#Makefile.config#
/home/eddy/work/i3-release/Makefile.config
/home/eddy/work/i3-release/#Makefile.config#
/home/eddy/work/qt-desktop/Makefile.config
/home/eddy/work/qt-desktop/#Makefile.config#
/home/eddy/work/notes
/home/eddy/work/#notes#
/home/eddy/work/qt-embed/linux/embed/example2/package.sh
/home/eddy/work/qt-embed/linux/embed/example2/#package.sh#

/home/eddy/#*ecma glitches*#386g1R#

/home/eddy/#*mail*#386jND#
</quote> so it clearly *did* know about the assorted files I had open,
albeit I had no #...# files open (I assume those are artefacts, aside
from the two open #*...*# mail buffers).  [Each Makefile.config's
buffer was re-named to Makefile.config/* for some project-specific *.]
Recovering from it didn't open them: then again, I believe I'd saved
all of them before starting the last compile, during which emacs hung.
So all I lost was the session state ... which is what I wanted to
recover.

Hope this is some help, even though it doesn't reproduce the problem I
originally reported.

        Eddy.