Spacemacs can't start processes in some cases

rpls commented 5 years ago

Description :octocat:

Emacs can't start processes in some cases. For example, when using restart-emacs, emacs will not restart but simply close. Other examples include opening attachments using notmuch (using notmuch-show-interactively-view-part, which in turn will call mm-display-external to start a process which will view the attachment, for example, a PDF viewer). No errors will show up in *Messages*. From what I can tell, the execution will (in the case of restart-emacs, and also other instances) arrive at call-process or start-process or similar, which in turn instead of starting a process, will have no effect whatsoever.

The problem is not present in a blank emacs config (i.e. emacs -q).

Layers which, for example, use language servers are completely fine by the way. So starting processes doesn't fail in general.

Reproduction guide :beetle:

Start Emacs and either
Call restart-emacs
Or evaluate (call-process "SOMEPROGRAM")

Observed behaviour: :eyes: :broken_heart:

Emacs will close and not restart, no error message
call-process doesn't do anything

Expected behaviour: :heart: :smile:

Emacs should restart
call-process should start a process.

System Info :computer:

OS: gnu/linux
Emacs: 26.2
Spacemacs: 0.300.0
Spacemacs branch: develop (rev. 95940a64e)
Graphic display: t
Distribution: spacemacs
Editing style: vim
Completion: helm

Layers:

(lua systemd csv asciidoc markdown docker neotree git version-control
 (org :variables org-enable-bootstrap-support nil org-enable-reveal-js-support nil org-enable-hugo-support nil org-enable-trello-support nil org-enable-github-support t org-want-todo-bindings t)
 (dash :variables helm-dash-docset-newpath "~/.local/share/Zeal/Zeal/docsets")
 (debug :variables debug-additional-debuggers
        '("pdb" "trepan2" "trepan3k"))
 dap
 (auto-completion :variables auto-completion-enable-help-tooltip t auto-completion-enable-sort-by-usage t)
 (lsp :variables lsp-navigation 'peek)
 (spell-checking :variables spell-checking-enable-auto-dictionary t)
 (syntax-checking :variables syntax-checking-enable-tooltips t syntax-checking-enable-by-default t)
 shell-scripts
 (c-c++ :variables c-c++-adopt-subprojects t c-c++-backend 'lsp-ccls c-c++-lsp-cache-dir "/tmp/lsp-cache" c-c++-lsp-executable "/home/petri/.local/bin/ccls" c-c++-lsp-sem-highlight-rainbow nil c-c++-lsp-sem-highlight-method 'font-lock)
 (python :variables python-test-runner 'pytest python-backend 'lsp python-save-before-test t)
 (latex :variables latex-build-command "LatexMk" latex-enable-auto-fill t latex-enable-magic nil)
 bibtex
 (ruby :variables ruby-test-runner 'minitest)
 (scala :variables scala-enable-eldoc nil scala-auto-insert-asterisk-in-comments t)
 (java :variables java-backend 'ensime)
 major-modes emacs-lisp gpu asm
 (cmake :variables cmake-enable-cmake-ide-support nil)
 shell pdf
 (notmuch :variables notmuch-spacemacs-layout-binding "n" notmuch-spacemacs-layout-name "@Notmuch"))

System configuration features: XPM JPEG TIFF GIF PNG RSVG IMAGEMAGICK SOUND GPM DBUS GSETTINGS GLIB NOTIFY LIBSELINUX GNUTLS LIBXML2 FREETYPE M17N_FLT LIBOTF XFT ZLIB TOOLKIT_SCROLL_BARS GTK3 X11 XDBE XIM MODULES THREADS XWIDGETS LIBSYSTEMD LCMS2

Backtrace :paw_prints:

Not relevant

rpls commented 5 years ago

This seems to be a problem with the cached environment in .spacemacs.env. Apparently starting processes which needs a connection to X11 simply failed and restart-emacs or external file viewers started but crashed (sadly, they crashed silently) as the connection to X11 failed due to old environment variables (e.g. DISPLAY). Deleting .spacemacs.env fixed the issue for now. This didn't affect language servers and alike, as they didn't really depend on the invalid environment variables.

duianto commented 5 years ago

Both restart-emacs (SPC q r or SPC q R) and call-process works for me.

(call-process "gedit") in Ubuntu 18.04.02 (virtualbox guest with win 10 as host)
(call-process "notepad") in Windows 10 version 1803

I don't know anything about X11, so I don't know if gedit connects to it. If it doesn't is there some other application I can test with?

System Info :computer:

OS: gnu/linux
Emacs: 27.0.50
Spacemacs: 0.300.0
Spacemacs branch: develop (rev. b4907d054)
Graphic display: t
Distribution: spacemacs
Editing style: vim
Completion: helm

Layers:

(emacs-lisp git helm multiple-cursors org spell-checking treemacs version-control)

System configuration features: XPM JPEG TIFF GIF PNG RSVG SOUND GPM DBUS GSETTINGS GLIB NOTIFY INOTIFY ACL LIBSELINUX GNUTLS LIBXML2 FREETYPE M17N_FLT LIBOTF XFT ZLIB TOOLKIT_SCROLL_BARS GTK3 X11 XDBE XIM MODULES THREADS XWIDGETS LIBSYSTEMD PDUMPER LCMS2 GMP

System Info :computer:

OS: windows-nt
Emacs: 26.2
Spacemacs: 0.300.0
Spacemacs branch: develop (rev. 0f9315e63)
Graphic display: t
Distribution: spacemacs
Editing style: vim
Completion: helm

Layers:

(autohotkey emacs-lisp git helm markdown
        (multiple-cursors :variables multiple-cursors-backend 'evil-mc)
        (org :variables org-enable-org-journal-support t)
        spell-checking treemacs version-control)

System configuration features: XPM JPEG TIFF GIF PNG RSVG SOUND NOTIFY ACL GNUTLS LIBXML2 ZLIB TOOLKIT_SCROLL_BARS THREADS LCMS2

rpls commented 5 years ago

New reproduction guide:

Open .spacemacs.env and change the DISPLAY variable (in my case, this happened over time as I changed display managers, usually the DISPLAY variable stays pretty much the same on all systems).
Use (call-process "XXX") to start a process which requires X11.

Mitigation for now would be to simply force the regeneration of .spacemacs.env by deleting it. Full fix would be to continually update the environment stored in .spacemacs.env.

duianto commented 5 years ago

After changing DISPLAY=:0 to: DISPLAY=:1 and restarting or pressing: SPC f e E to call dotspacemacs/call-user-env

Now (call-process "gedit") doesn't start gedit and the minibuffer shows: 1 (#o1, #x1, ?\C-a)

With DISPLAY=:0, gedit starts and when it's closed then Emacs shows: 0 (#o0, #x0, ?\C-@).

I informed the maintainers.

laynor commented 4 years ago

For me, removing the XDG_SESSION related variables, DISPLAY and xauthority from the .spacemacs.env fixed the issue.

khajavi commented 3 years ago

For me, removing the XDG_SESSION related variables, DISPLAY and xauthority from the .spacemacs.env fixed the issue.

I remove the .spacemacs.env and spacemacs created it again. now it works for me.

github-actions[bot] commented 2 years ago

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Please let us know if this issue is still valid!

github-actions[bot] commented 5 months ago

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Please let us know if this issue is still valid!

syl20bnr / spacemacs