Subject: bug#8065: Nexstep/Cocoa Emacs 23.2 hangs randomly on OSX

From: Jonathan Rogers <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 02 Mar 2011 13:21:22 -0500

All Emacs frames frequently becomes unresponsive and no commands can be
executed. Cursors appear as hollow boxes as if the window is
unfocused. Any click on a frame generates an OSX beep noise. C-g and all
other keypresses are totally ignored.

Strangely, the menus continue to open and commands can be selected,
though they mostly have no effect. The only menu commands that seem to
have any effect are the Emacs -> Hide Emacs and Emacs -> Hide Others
commands. This would seem to indicate that though some part of the
Nextstep GUI is still working, the main Emacs loop is not or it has
become disconnected from the GUI.

In this state, Emacs takes very little CPU time. The only way I can
cause Emacs to end when it's in this state is to use OSX's "Force quit"
or Unix command like kill or pkill.

Though I find Emacs in this state frequently, it's triggered very
intermittently and I haven't determined a clear pattern. Sometimes, I
can use it with no hangs for several hours, but it generally happens at
least once a day.

It may be related to switching between Emacs and other applications or
running subprocesses. I have encountered it several times when running a
command in Magit, which runs git as a subprocess, but the same commands
usually succeed. Other sub-processes, such as Bash and ack seem to have
no trouble.

In GNU Emacs 23.2.1 (x86_64-apple-darwin10.6.0, NS apple-appkit-1038.35)
  of 2011-02-14 on jrogers.socialserve.com
Windowing system distributor `Apple', version 10.3.1038
configured using `configure  '--prefix=/opt/local' '--with-ns' 
'--without-x' '--without-dbus' 'CC=/usr/bin/gcc-4.2' 'CFLAGS=-pipe -O2 
-arch x86_64' 'LDFLAGS=-L/opt/local/lib -arch x86_64' 
'CPPFLAGS=-I/opt/local/include''

Important settings:
   value of $LC_ALL: nil
   value of $LC_COLLATE: nil
   value of $LC_CTYPE: nil
   value of $LC_MESSAGES: nil
   value of $LC_MONETARY: nil
   value of $LC_NUMERIC: nil
   value of $LC_TIME: nil
   value of $LANG: nil
   value of $XMODIFIERS: nil
   locale-coding-system: nil
   default enable-multibyte-characters: t

Major mode: Fundamental

Minor modes in effect:
   show-paren-mode: t
   diff-auto-refine-mode: t
   shell-dirtrack-mode: t
   tooltip-mode: t
   mouse-wheel-mode: t
   menu-bar-mode: t
   file-name-shadow-mode: t
   global-font-lock-mode: t
   auto-encryption-mode: t
   auto-compression-mode: t
   column-number-mode: t
   line-number-mode: t
   transient-mark-mode: t

Recent input:
<help-echo> M-x n s f u l l <backspace> <backspace>
<backspace> <backspace> <backspace> <backspace> f u
l l s c <return> <help-echo> M-x b u g <backspace>
<backspace> <backspace> e m a c s b u g <return> <help-echo>
C-y <return> <help-echo> <help-echo> C-p C-p C-p C-p
C-p M-x c u s t <return> e m a i l <return> M-x <return>
d <backspace> a d d r e s s <return> <wheel-down> <double-wheel-down>
<wheel-down> <double-wheel-down> <wheel-down> <down-mouse-1>
<mouse-1> M-b M-b M-b M-d C-d <help-echo> C-x C-s <help-echo>
y e s <return> C-x b <return> C-x k <return> y e s
<return> C-x b <return> M-x r e p o r <return>

Recent messages:
Creating customization items...
Creating customization items ...81%
Loading rmail...done
Creating customization items ...done
Resetting customization items...done
Creating customization setup...done
Auto-saving...done
Loading vc-git...done
Saving file /Users/jrogers/.emacs.d/init.el...
Wrote /Users/jrogers/.emacs.d/init.el

Load-path shadows:
~/share/emacs/site-lisp/trampver hides 
/Applications/MacPorts/Emacs.app/Contents/Resources/lisp/net/trampver
~/share/emacs/site-lisp/tramp hides 
/Applications/MacPorts/Emacs.app/Contents/Resources/lisp/net/tramp
~/share/emacs/site-lisp/tramp-uu hides 
/Applications/MacPorts/Emacs.app/Contents/Resources/lisp/net/tramp-uu
~/share/emacs/site-lisp/tramp-smb hides 
/Applications/MacPorts/Emacs.app/Contents/Resources/lisp/net/tramp-smb
~/share/emacs/site-lisp/tramp-gw hides 
/Applications/MacPorts/Emacs.app/Contents/Resources/lisp/net/tramp-gw
~/share/emacs/site-lisp/tramp-ftp hides 
/Applications/MacPorts/Emacs.app/Contents/Resources/lisp/net/tramp-ftp
~/share/emacs/site-lisp/tramp-fish hides 
/Applications/MacPorts/Emacs.app/Contents/Resources/lisp/net/tramp-fish
~/share/emacs/site-lisp/tramp-compat hides 
/Applications/MacPorts/Emacs.app/Contents/Resources/lisp/net/tramp-compat
~/share/emacs/site-lisp/tramp-cmds hides 
/Applications/MacPorts/Emacs.app/Contents/Resources/lisp/net/tramp-cmds
~/share/emacs/site-lisp/tramp-cache hides 
/Applications/MacPorts/Emacs.app/Contents/Resources/lisp/net/tramp-cache
~/share/emacs/site-lisp/socks hides 
/Applications/MacPorts/Emacs.app/Contents/Resources/lisp/net/socks

Features:
(vc-git rmail pp cus-edit help-mode view shadow sort mail-extr message
idna ecomplete rfc822 mml mml-sec mm-decode mm-bodies mm-encode mailcap
mail-parse rfc2231 rfc2047 rfc2045 qp ietf-drums mailabbrev nnheader
mm-util mail-prsvr gmm-utils mailheader canlock sha1 hex-util hashcash
mail-utils emacsbug LRU-yank org-clock org byte-opt bytecomp
byte-compile org-footnote org-src org-list org-faces org-compat org-macs
noutline outline org-install color-theme wid-edit sendmail flymake
compile smooth-scrolling multi-term term disp-table ehelp electric
unicode-helper edmacro kmacro smex cl cl-19 diff-git package reporter
sql-indent sql smarttabs windmove ido ropemacs pymacs paren autorevert
cus-start cus-load magit diff-mode log-edit easy-mmode pcvs-util add-log
server osx-plist xml tramp-imap assoc tramp-gw tramp-fish tramp-smb
tramp-cache tramp-ftp tramp-cmds tramp regexp-opt auth-source gnus-util
netrc time-date advice help-fns advice-preload shell comint ring
password-cache format-spec tramp-compat trampver tooltip ediff-hook
vc-hooks lisp-float-type mwheel ns-win easymenu tool-bar dnd fontset
image fringe lisp-mode register page menu-bar rfn-eshadow timer select
scroll-bar mldrag mouse jit-lock font-lock syntax facemenu font-core
frame cham georgian utf-8-lang misc-lang vietnamese tibetan thai
tai-viet lao korean japanese hebrew greek romanian slovak czech european
ethiopic indian cyrillic chinese case-table epa-hook jka-cmpr-hook help
simple abbrev loaddefs button minibuffer faces cus-face files
text-properties overlay md5 base64 format env code-pages mule custom
widget hashtable-print-readable backquote make-network-process ns
multi-tty emacs)

-- 
Jonathan Ross Rogers