Re: Emacs doesn't load .emacs

[Robert Thorpe]

Hendrik Bilges wrote:
> Am Thu, 02 Nov 2006 16:22:53 +0100 schrieb Martin Jost:
> Hi Martin,
>
> > So -no-site-file might be a try.
>
> You were right :)
>
> > If you want to hunt down a site-start.el, You can use the command
> > "describe-variable" to get the value of the variable "load-path" (this is
> > the mentioned standard search path for Lisp libraries) You will get
> > somehting like this:
> >
> > load-path's value is
> > (""/pd/emacs21.4/share/emacs/21.4/site-lisp"
> > "/pd/emacs21.4/share/emacs/site-lisp" "/pd/emacs21.4/share/emacs/21.4/leim"
> > "/pd/emacs21.4/share/emacs/21.4/lisp"
>
> $ locate site-start.el
> /etc/emacs/site-start.el
>
> $ less /etc/emacs/site-start.el
> load "auctex.el" nil t t
> load "preview-latex.el" nil t t
>
> There doesn't seem to be anything suspicious, hmm? May be in some of
> those other files?:
>
> $ locate *start*.el
> /etc/emacs/site-start.d/50dictionaries-common.el
> /etc/emacs/site-start.d/50autoconf.el
> /etc/emacs/site-start.d/00debian-vars.el
> /etc/emacs/site-start.d/50preview-latex.el
> /etc/emacs/site-start.d/51preview-latex.el
> /etc/emacs/site-start.el
> /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/debian-startup.el
> /usr/share/emacs/21.4/lisp/cus-start.el

These paths are normal emacs paths, but the executable you are using is
coming from some "alternatives" directory in Ubuntu.  That is quite
strange, Emacs behaves erratically if the lisp is not in sync with the
executable.  I don't understand the Ubuntu alternatives mechanism, so
it may be OK.

BTW I strongly expect that if you put (display-time) in .emacs you
should see it when emacs starts - it works on Emacs on my machine.
Since display-time affects the status line which is not really changed
after .emacs runs.  For your information the best test is to set a
variable with a name like "hendriks-test" in .emacs and check it's
value later.