emacs won't run, but emacs22 will

[Mumia W.]

Paul Johnson wrote:
> In a terminal, if I type
> 
> $ emacs
> 
> the hard drive churns.  The terminal looses focus, but no emacs frame appears.
> [...]
> 
> It is only frustrating because I am accustomed to typing "emacs" and
> not "emacs22".  That, plus none of the configurations and scripts I
> have will work without being changed to "emacs22".
> 
> 

Until you get it sorted out, you can use a script to invoke emacs22:

-----file:~/bin/emacs----------
#!/bin/sh
exec emacs22 "$@"
-----end-----------------------

Evidently, emacs doesn't like its own name ;-) Do an strace on it: 
"strace emacs". It's probably having some problem finding a 
configuration file that uses the binary's name. Either that or emacs has 
a bug in finding its X resources; by default, a program looks for 
resources that start with the program's name.

HTH