Emacs FTP not working for certain sites in Ubuntu - emacs

This is really confusing me, because however much I search I don't seem to be able to come across this problem on Google.
I'm trying to edit files on a web server using Emacs Ange-FTP on Ubuntu. I type in /user#ftp.host.com:/, Emacs then prompts for a password, which I give, and then it says:
Listing /user#ftp.host.com:/...
forever.
What I don't get is that a) the same thing works in Emacs on Windows, b) FTPing to other web servers with the same technique (and with the same web host) works fine, and c) FTPing to this server using gFTP in Ubuntu works fine.
I can't see why this isn't working and it's driving me up the wall! Does anyone have any suggestions?

Well, stsquad worked it out, it was passive mode not being used for certain servers. Using M-x customize-option RET ange-ftp-try-passive-mode and changing to t (found at EmacsWiki) made it work though.

You could set debug-on-quit and type C-g when Emacs gets stuck to see what's happening at elisp level, and then see if there are any settings you can toggle for your particular situation. But if you can access the host with ssh, you could just skip the debugging and start using Tramp.

Related

My plantuml-mode in emacs is not working correctly

I have tried to install and use plantuml-mode in emacs, with no success.
My emacs version: 25.2.2
Operating system: Ubuntu 18.04 x86_64
I have followed the official instructions on
https://github.com/skuro/plantuml-mode
When I load a file it says
"Contacting host: www.plantuml.com:443".
After a few seconds I get the error message
"plantuml-init: Wrong type argument: stringp, nil"
I've looked at
Can't turn on plantuml-mode in Emacs
It didn't help. In a previous attempt I found some other similar help pages, on github and stackoverflow, but I can't find them right now. One was to fix a broken url, and the other was to provide the correct path to the jar file. I fixed both, but none of them fixed my problem.
The above mentioned problem reports are related to the mode's attempts to contact a web server, or to run plantuml. I am not interested in any of them, I prefer to run plantuml myself from the command line. All I want from the mode is syntax highlighing and indentation. It is possible to turn off the other features, to get rid of the errors? Or is there another, simpler mode out there, that doesn't try to contact the web or run executables?
Best regards
The plantuml-mode sends your data to be evaluated at www.plantuml.com by default.
To run it locally, you need to set both the plantuml jar path and the execution mode as described in https://github.com/skuro/plantuml-mode#quick-guide:
(setq plantuml-jar-path "/path/to/your/copy/of/plantuml.jar")
(setq plantuml-default-exec-mode 'jar)

"Hot" Debug and Swap in Common LISP

One of the features that are unique to Common Lisp that is frequently mentioned is that of the "hot" debug. That is, it is the ability to debug, edit and recompile the production code without stopping or taking the latter off line.
While I see this mentioned all the time, I have yet to see a tutorial on how to do it.
How does one do it in, say, Emacs? Are there some simple examples? Is the feature truly as magical as it seems?
The typical way to do this is to enable SWANK in the application that you want to debug. That way you can use M-x slime-connect from Emacs to connect to the running server. From there, you can do anything you can do with a normal SLIME session. You can even set up the way file names re resolved so that when you use M-. to jump to the source of a function, it will be opened on the remote machine using Tramp.
I think the reason you haven't seen a tutorial on it is because it's a natural thing to do, and there really isn't much of a difference between doing local debugging and working on a remote system.
There is a video of a lecture I did once where I demonstrated some of this, so there definitely are videos out there. However, I think linking to external videos is frowned upon on Stackoverflow.
Some notes I took for myself. I largely agree we should have a tutorial out there. In the CL Cookbook ?
(edit: there's now a more complete example here)
Reading http://readevalprint.tumblr.com/post/101841449553/its-alive-the-path-from-library-to-web-app
Another option is hot swapping all the changes. For this purpose my hunchentoot server also starts a swank server like this:
(defun start-app (&optional (port 8080))
(handler-case (swank:create-server :dont-close t)
(error ()))
…
Swank is, of course, the server-side component of SLIME. It runs on a port that is not accessible remotely and can only be connected to locally or via SSH tunnel. I use the latter to connect SLIME on my PC to Swank running on my server, which allows me to apply various fixes without restarting, either from the REPL or by using C-c C-c to recompile some function.
Connect to a remote Slime server:
Install a Common Lisp implementation on the server. (E.g. sbcl, clisp, etc...)
Install quicklisp on the server.
Load SWANK with (ql:quickload :swank)
Start the server with (swank:create-server). The default port is 4005. [On your local machine] Create a SSH tunnel with ssh -L4005:127.0.0.1:4005 [remote machine]
Connect to the running remote swank server with M-x slime-connect.
The host should be 127.0.0.1 and the port 4005.
(reading an old SO doc page, impossible to link to now).

Accessing local emacs from PuTTY

My school (UCSB) has us use PuTTY to remotely access our CS account that's ran on the school's server. Whenever I attempt to use the school's emacs via PuTTY, it's extremely tedious because it's all in text user interface. I do have an option to use Xming to access the GUI Emacs, but that's incredibly slow since it still relies on the server's emacs. So now I'm fed up of relying on using WinSCP as a text-editor (I know it isn't suppose to be a text-editor) on my laptop, and want to use emacs without the terrible interface or speed. I finally went to the GNU website to download a local copy of emacs on my laptop. However I can't do anything with it unless I constantly transfer my files from the school's server to my laptop for editing, and vice-versa for compiling, which can be very tedious.
So, is there a way I can use PuTTY to access the files on my school's account and then have them opened using my local emacs? Or is there any other ideas or tools to help me with my situation?
TRAMP would be the way to go. In order for TRAMP to use PuTTY by default do this
(setq tramp-default-method "plinkx")
After that you can access the files or use dired on your remote host by using paths like
/name_of_Putty_session:/path/on/remote/host

Using emacs across many hosts

On a daily basis I:
use multiple workstations running either Linux, Windows, or MacOS X
edit files on additional Linux hosts that are not any of the workstations mentioned above
The only common element here is that the internet connects all of these hosts: workstations and servers. I can keep all of the config files in sync on my workstations too and can run an X server on all of them. What's the right way of running emacs? I don't want to sacrifice any features.
In my ideal world I can type 'emacs foo.txt' on a remote host and some magic happens via X forwarding to display the file in my workstation's existing emacs session.
Non-solutions
tramp: when I'm manipulating a remote host an editor is just part of my workflow. I need a terminal open so I can run other commands quickly. tramp is all wrong for this.
ncurses emacs: sucks, I want the graphical kind
If you don't have a positive answer to my question, please don't just guess. Thanks.
Have you tried tramp with eshell? You can "cd /remote.host:/some/path" and edit files from there, and if you type a non-built-in, it fires up a ssh pipe to run it. Quite slick.
I fail to see why tramp is not a solution. You can edit using tramp, and do whatever you need in a terminal using xterm+ssh.
Well, if you can setup X clients on your Windows and OSX boxes, you should be able to run an X version of emacs on any of those platforms and set the display back to your workstation. That would give you your nice WIMP interface.
However there are a couple of solutions to keeping a terminal open to the same box. One is to just telnet into it twice. Once for your emacs session, and once for a shell.
The other option of course is to use meta-x shell to bring up a shell buffer inside of emacs. A true emacs guru prefers to run their OS inside of emacs, rather than the other way around. :-)
The approach I use is based on source controlling the Emacs scripts and important common files (using Git). This gives me a consistent code base so I don't have to remember which host has which script or file (or version of what I'm looking for). Git is particularly well suited to supporting this mechanism and I've pretty much got in the habit of updating the master origin repo daily. Within the scripts (both Emacs and bash shell scripts) I use machine tailored code to handle local requirements. This system has been in place now for well over a year and I find it to be quite effective. This is a technique I've seen recommended for some number of years. I found it clunky with CVS and Subversion but git feels tailored for the job. That said, I like the solution you selected as a complimentary tool and look forward to adding that to the mix.

Running Emacs Remotely between several machines

I use Emacs remotely using X-Server in a Windows client and Linux server. I noticed that I can halt it using ctrl-z and then type fg 1 to get it working again. Is there some way that I could get it to halt on the machine that I am on, and then log into a different machine and start where I left off? When I start a new ssh session, the emacs job isn't associated to my terminal. There must be someway to "steal" it.
Also, maybe there's an Emacs feature that will do basically the same thing. However, I think closing and re-opening all my files and buffers would take quite a while.
Expanding on the idea of using emacsclient, you can look at what what someone did to solve the problem of editing a file from a different machine than where (s)he started running Emacs.
As of Emacs 23, you can run emacsclient in terminal windows using the -nw option.
Other solutions you might want to try are to use:
gnu screen
vnc
For years I used screen to "attach" and "detach" from a virtual terminal that sounds like your usage model. If you have the ability to use graphics... vnc is really great, just do your work in a vnc session and connect to it any machine.
And your last idea is already implemented by the package desktop (which is bundled with Emacs). Take a look at the wiki page for session management, which includes other alternatives to desktop, as well as add-ons for desktop to lazily load files.
You can run emacs as a server, and use emacsclient to connect to it. You can open multiple connections to the same emacs server, via ttys or X11.
When doing this, C-X C-C will close your connection, and leave the server running.
A simple way to do this by invoking emacs as follows. This will connect to the server if one is running, or create one.
emacsclient --alternate-editor="" -c
Sometimes I will be at work and have to run out the door leaving my Emacs session as it was. Later, I will open an Emacs instance to the same machine (usually using remote SSH) and find that I have files open in Emacs. Now the good news. Emacs allows you to "steal" those files using M-x recover-this-file. I recommend one of Trey's solutions if you can plan ahead. If not, you can use this recover file technique to keep progress moving.