Emacs vs McGill Email

From McGill University Physics Department Technical Services Wiki

The Problem

emacs-locking-same-process.png

Every time you save, or make a change after saving Emacs tells you the file is locked and you have to type [s] to continue!

The Solution

One cause of this message is that you logged into the system using your full McGill Email Address at the graphics console, that is to say firstname.lastname@mail.mcgill.ca. Please try using just firstname.lastname, or even your DAS/SAM name

More Detail

This problem seems limited to X login session, ssh sessions seem unaffected.

The intention of this message is to alert you that another emacs session currently contains unsaved changes to the file you are about to modify. This would be useful, because only the last session to save will be saved. You can us the ps command to get more information on the process.

mark.orchard-webb@artemis:~$ ps 3602
 PID TTY      STAT   TIME COMMAND
3602 pts/0    S      0:02 emacs hello.c