Subject: bug#69870: 29.2; Simple fix for Motif "XtGrabPointer failed."

From: "Sparapani, Rodney" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 31 Mar 2024 15:31:38 +0000

We run emacs on a Linux server and display it on Macs and PCs
with X-windows.  We have about 30 users but not everyone is
using emacs all of the time.

The worst part of the problem shows this warning when emacs
freezes after emitting this on stderr when launched
from the command line...
$ emacs-29.2 &
$ Warning:
    Name: menubar
    Class: XmRowColumn
    XtGrabPointer failed.
If launched from the window manager, you can still get the freeze,
but you obviously won’t see the warning.  So as the warning says,
it is an attempt to activate the menubar (for me, its Files or Buffers).
But this doesn’t happen every time.  What does happen every time
is that clicking on the menubar leads to a 10 to 20s pause (but it
really seems longer).  Sometimes you don’t realize that nothing is
happening and you continue clicking or typing.  And occasionally,
this will lock-up emacs (emit the warning) and you have to kill it from

the window manager which seems to be the only option available.

When there are unsaved files, you still get a prompt for that

so it is not a crash, but this is very annoying since you have

to restart emacs (and of the course the menubar lag).

Perhaps, this has over-loaded some event handler?
But you can exit normally.  Hopefully that helps.

--
Rodney Sparapani, Associate Professor of Biostatistics, He/Him/His
Vice President, Wisconsin Chapter of the American Statistical Association
Institute for Health and Equity, Division of Biostatistics
Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee Campus

From: Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]>
Date: Sunday, March 31, 2024 at 3:16 AM
To: Sparapani, Rodney <[email-masked]>, Po Lu <[email-masked]>
Cc: [email-masked] <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: bug#69870: 29.2; Simple fix for Motif "XtGrabPointer failed."
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Ping! Rodney, could you please provide the details requested by Po Lu,
so we could make some progress here?