bug#4573: Regular emacs freeze-ups

[Lennart Borgman]

On Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 11:24 AM, David Pleydell <d_pleydell@yahoo.com> wrote:
> I have a problem with emacs sporadically freezing up on me when I access the 
> electric-buffer-list. Every now and then (but certainly not always) when I 
> execute C-x C-b the screen freezes, the message <<<Press Return to bury the 
> buffer list>> displays at the bottom but no buffer-list is displayed and my 
> only way out is to xkill emacs. Obviously this disrupts the work flow 
> somewhat.
>
> There is another, possibly related, bug. Occasionally the cursor starts 
> behaving strangely. When I type or scroll left or right the cursor leaves a 
> trail of identical character such as bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb. This is purely 
> visual, if I switch to another buffer and back again the artefact is no 
> longer there (except right next to the cursor). Again this is far from 
> desirable. I believe this is a related bug because it seems once it starts 
> doing this and I call the electric buffer list then the freeze bug is 
> guaranteed.
>
> I have no idea what triggers these bugs, sometimes I can use emacs for 
> several hours without the bugs occuring, sometimes they occur many times an 
> hour. I always launch emacs in full-screen mode and wonder if that might be 
> related (I'll test this possibility and post the result).
>
> I am running Ubuntu (Jaunty) installed on an external USB drive connected to 
> on a Dell laptop with 2Gb RAM. My emacs version is 22 obtained from the 
> Ubuntu repositories and a recent reinstall did not solve the problem.
>
> any ideas?

Did you try Emacs 23?