I installed emacs on my brand new BBB, but although emacs starts up, no key ever makes it to into the program.
The installation was as simple as
- log in as root using SSH Secure Shell 3.2.9 (see comments below) to 192.168.1.xxx (via the ethernet cable, address assigned via DHCP)
- execute
opkg update
opkg install emacs
3) run emacs by typing
emacs
No key is recognized, not M-, not C- , not even just a letter (and worst of all, not C-x C-c, which would cause emacs to exit). Same result occurs if I create a text file test.txt and then execute
emacs test.txt
And just to cut off one possibility: note that I’ve been using SSH Secure Shell with emacs for years, and I tested it just now with another system; it works just fine. Obviously, too, it accesses the BBB, because that’s how I entered the commands that installed and executed emacs. And, of course, I’ve rebooted the BBB several times.
Any thoughts?
Thanks,
Richard
P.S. SSH Secure Shell 3.2.9 is a very nice TTY program, which I vastly prefer over PuTTY.
Search for
ssh secure shell 3.2.9 download free
and you’ll find various sources, including universities, that offer the software for free, e.g.William & Mary, Dartmouth, Northwestern, UCLA, etc. In other words, you won’t be downloading some cracked and potentially dangerous piece of software.
Hi,
Do you use the -X switch when you invoke ssh? I was searching for how to install emacs on beaglebone black and found your note. It worked for me, I use:
`
ssh -X root@
`
to attach to my BBB and now that I’ve installed gnuemacs, it works correctly, window pops up and all; no problems with key sequences.
I am ssh’ing over from a Ubuntu distribution.
I’m using SSH Secure Shell on a Windows XP machine, not ssh on a Linux box, and there’s no -X option that I’m aware of. As far as I can tell from the man page, whatever it is that the -X option does is automatically provided by the SSH program. Also, I’ve used this software for accessing emacs on many machines for years with no bad experiences that I can recall … until now.
I suspect that there’s some flag or option that has to be adjusted on the BBB side, either for the shell or more likely for emacs, but I have no idea what it might be.
A little more googling and I see that there may be some bug in emacs that causes this. So, another question: has anybody gotten emacs 23.4-r2 to work in the BBB running Angstrom?
The one I have is 23.4.1.
Are you running ssh through cygwin? I’d suggest that but also don’t know if that would then also support the -X option. Also look for an option called “ForwareX11” that’s what the -X option activates in ssh.
I am having the same problem with Emacs and the BBB… I’m running through Cygwin and I have used the -X option which connects just fine, but Emacs still does not recognize any keys…
Frank
I installed the Debian beta on my BBB and now Emacs is working fine…
http://elinux.org/BeagleBoardDebian
Cheers,
Frank
Thanks. I would have installed Debian on my machine by now, but the 16GB Toshiba uSD I bought a couple of weeks ago has failed already. After the first couple of days, I had to reformat it repeatedly, both on the BBB and on each of two Windows (XP & 7) machines. Win32DiskImager didn’t work at all on the Windows 7 machine: it repeatedly hung as soon as I got to the writing phase in a way that required rebooting the Windows machine. I loaded and ran a disk imaging program from an outfit named RoadKil.net – that’s a sign of real desperation!. It got into the writing phase, but its progress stopped at 0.06%. At least it was possible to end that program without rebooting the machine.
I’ll try to load Debian again as soon as I get another uSD, and not a Toshiba this time.
P.S. Meanwhile, I’m using nano. Not emacs, but not vi, either.
Hi Frank,
Went out and bought a couple of 16GB SanDisk Ultra micro SD cards [the local Radio Shack was running a sale!], downloaded and installed Debian 7.3. Figured out how to install emacs (apt-get instead of opkg), and whoo-hoo, it now works.
Thanks for the suggestion.