From: furnish@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Geoffrey Furnish) Subject: Re: emacs says: Error in init file Date: 1 Jun 1992 21:08:27 GMT
In article <73202@ut-emx.uucp> I wrote:
>For some reason when I start emacs, it says "Error in init file". I only
>noticed this yesterday, and I can't recall whether this is new behavior
>or whether it has been doing this for a long time. Anyway, there is no
>.emacs file in my ~ directory, or anywhere else, so I don't understand
>what is causing this.
>If I run emacs from root this problem is gone.
>I have checked to make sure that all the .el and .elc files in
>/usr/local/emacs/lisp are all world readable. Same for all the
>executables, and such. I can't find anything which explains this.
>The fact that the problem goes away from the root account seems to
>speak of a permissions problem, but I've got almost every file on my
>whole system set for world read. Note that aside from this inital
>diagnostic, it seems to work okay.
>Has anyone seen this problem before, and if so, how did you fix it?
I have solved this problem now, and thought I would post a quick
note for whoever was interested.
The problem was that I had set the environment variable LOGNAME to
my last name (furnish) rather than the name of the account I was
using (user--from the mcc interim distribution). Why did I do this?
Two reasons. First, I am using the RCS port to Linux (thanks to whoever
did it) and also CVS (compiles trivially easy if anyone cares). These
require the environment variable LOGNAME to be set. Secondly, I was
using the user account instead of anything else because the last time
I went and customized my system giving accounts to every member of my
family etc, the disk got totalled a few days later. it was my fault, but
I just never got up enough interest in heavily customizing the system
ever since. So I was using the "user" account, but assigned LOGNAME
to my own last name.
For some strange reason, this caused emacs to report "Error in init file".
This was particularly vexing since I did not _have_ an init file.
In any event, the problem is resolved, and if any one cares to use RCS and
CVS, you should be advised of this silliness.
Geoff Furnish