Since I updated my 100+ desktops to F17, I've been having problems with user volumes filling up with huge .xsession-errors files containing little other than "Back to top level." repeated endlessly. I tracked this down to emacs processes, and further came upon debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=10669/ which appears to cover the same issue. It doesn't seem like many people see this, but for some reason my users are hitting it several times per day. I myself have been unable to reproduce it, but then I've spent most of my time cleaning up after this problem rather than trying to understand what's causing it. I just wanted to get it on the record here to see if anyone else has hints on figuring out what's happening and why my users are all seeing it when few others are.
Just happened again to one of my users. Here's the contents of .xsession-errors from startup until the process was killed (excluding millions of repetitions of "Back to top level." Warning: due to a long standing Gtk+ bug http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=85715 Emacs might crash when run in daemon mode and the X11 connection is unexpectedly lost. Using an Emacs configured with --with-x-toolkit=lucid does not have this problem. ("/usr/bin/emacs" "--no-splash" "--smid=101d421af6133000134850254500000199660029") krunner(4716) KDevelopSessions::KDevelopSessions: INIT KDEV krunner(4716) KDevelopSessions::loadSessions: LOADSESSION!.>>> Loading /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/site-start.d/auctex.el (source)... Loading /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/site-start.d/auctex.el (source)...done Loading /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/site-start.d/desktop-entry-mode-init.el (source)... Loading /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/site-start.d/desktop-entry-mode-init.el (source)...done Loading /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/site-start.d/focus-init.el (source)... Loading /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/site-start.d/focus-init.el (source)...done Loading /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/site-start.d/php-mode-init.el (source)... Loading /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/site-start.d/php-mode-init.el (source)...done Loading /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/site-start.d/preview-latex.el (source)... Loading /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/site-start.d/preview-latex.el (source)...done Loading /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/site-start.d/rpm-spec-mode-init.el (source)... Loading /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/site-start.d/rpm-spec-mode-init.el (source)...done Starting Emacs daemon. Back to top level. Back to top level. [continued millions of times] Back to top level. Error: server did not start correctly [emacs process was killed here]
This seems to be related to emacs being started at login by the session manager. Everyone uses KDE here so I can't speak for what other environments do. Here's the relevant bit: restartCommand42=/bin/emacs,--smid=101d421af4136000134928522500000092680049,--no-splash,--chdir=/home/bellona8/Documents,--daemon At login that will chew CPU and spew to .xsession-errors mercilessly until killed. What's worse is that it doesn't actually run, so the user starts another one, and on the next login you get two of them doing the same thing.
Just happened to me again -- note that I never use emacs deliberately, so it's somehow starting automatically without me requesting it. Possibly a MIME type/file association thing.
Aha -- figured out a bit more: in the KDE File Associations module, the top file association for files of "text/x-tex" is "Emacs Client". And I did download a .tex file from the web recently, which must have put emacs into my session. So for me at least, the short-term fix will be to change the file associations for text/x-tex. But the underlying problem with emacs-client starting automatically seems to remain. :(
Just had this happen for a few of my users as well - we are using XFCE desktop and it seems a few applications are set to open with XEmacs Text Editor by default so I'm guessing that is the cause of the problem. Ideally the emacs package would be updated tho....
Just discovered I have 567 *gigabytes* of "Back to top level." messages in .xsession-errors, constantly being generated at a rate of 150kB/sec... whaa?? I'm running xfce on a fresh install of F18, and emacs is run in daemon mode in the session by default for some reason. The emacs daemon shouldn't be run by default, unless it is requested. And it shouldn't be dumping this message in the log, obviously, but just removing the code that dumps this line in the log won't solve the problem, one CPU core is pegged at 100%, so whatever is causing emacs to spin needs to be fixed.
N.B. for anybody running into this, the heavy-handed "killall -9 emacs ; rm ~/.xsession-errors" doesn't free the disk space until you log out and log back in, because tons of other running processes also have the .xsession-errors open. You need to do something like "echo > ~/.xsession-errors" to empty the logfile instead.
See also https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/gnu.emacs.bug/uiEqe710M4U
There's a comment on the bottom of the following page about this bug: http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/EmacsAsDaemon The suggested fix is: "Workaround: Start emacs with “emacs --daemon -q”. The first time you connect via emacsclient, open your .emacs file and run ‘eval-buffer’." After trying that fix, I get the following emacs crash on session login: Bug 875440 Fortunately, now that the emacs daemon crashes on session login, it no longer dumps error messages into .xsession-errors! I haven't found what is actually starting the emacs daemon yet, so I can stop the daemon from starting -- the xfce session manager doesn't show it as being started on session start, and the process parent is systemd, but systemd doesn't seem to have a service file for emacs in the location /etc/systemd/system/emacs@.service , recommended on this page: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Emacs#As_a_daemon
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