7. Frequently Asked Questions

• Where can I get the latest TRAMP?

  TRAMP is available under the URL below.

  ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/tramp/

  There is also a Savannah project page.

  http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/tramp/

• Which systems does it work on?

  The package has been used successfully on GNU Emacs 20, GNU Emacs 21 and GNU Emacs 22, as well as XEmacs 21. XEmacs 20 is more problematic, see the notes in `tramp.el'. I don't think anybody has really tried it on GNU Emacs 19.

  The package was intended to work on Unix, and it really expects a Unix-like system on the remote end (except the `smb' method), but some people seemed to have some success getting it to work on MS Windows NT/2000/XP XEmacs.

  There is some informations on TRAMP on NT at the following URL; many thanks to Joe Stoy for providing the information: ftp://ftp.comlab.ox.ac.uk/tmp/Joe.Stoy/

• TRAMP does not connect to the remote host

  When TRAMP does not connect to the remote host, there are two reasons heading the bug mailing list:

  • Unknown characters in the prompt

    TRAMP needs to recognize the prompt on the remote machine after execution any command. This is not possible, when the prompt contains unknown characters like escape sequences for coloring. This should be avoided on the remote side. See section 4.10 Remote shell setup hints. for setting the regular expression detecting the prompt.

    A special problem is the zsh, which uses left-hand side and right-hand side prompts in parallel. Therefore, it is necessary to disable the zsh line editor on the remote host. You shall add to `~/.zshrc' the following command:

    [ $TERM = "dumb" ] && unsetopt zle && PS1='$ '

  • TRAMP doesn't transfer strings with more than 500 characters correctly

    On some few systems, the implementation of process-send-string seems to be broken for longer strings. This case, you should customize the variable tramp-chunksize to 500. For a description how to determine whether this is necessary see the documentation of tramp-chunksize.

• File name completion does not work with TRAMP

  When you log in to the remote machine, do you see the output of ls in color? If so, this may be the cause of your problems.

  ls outputs ANSI escape sequences that your terminal emulator interprets to set the colors. These escape sequences will confuse TRAMP however.

  In your `.bashrc', `.profile' or equivalent on the remote machine you probably have an alias configured that adds the option `--color=yes' or `--color=auto'.

  You should remove that alias and ensure that a new login does not display the output of ls in color. If you still cannot use filename completion, report a bug to the TRAMP developers.

• File name completion does not work in large directories

  TRAMP uses globbing for some operations. (Globbing means to use the shell to expand wildcards such as `*.c'.) This might create long command lines, especially in directories with many files. Some shells choke on long command lines, or don't cope well with the globbing itself.

  If you have a large directory on the remote end, you may wish to execute a command like `ls -d * ..?* > /dev/null' and see if it hangs. Note that you must first start the right shell, which might be /bin/sh, ksh or bash, depending on which of those supports tilde expansion.

• How can I get notified when TRAMP file transfers are complete?

  The following snippet can be put in your `~/.emacs' file. It makes XEmacs beep after reading from or writing to the remote host.

  (defadvice tramp-handle-write-region (after tramp-write-beep-advice activate) " make tramp beep after writing a file." (interactive) (beep)) (defadvice tramp-handle-do-copy-or-rename-file (after tramp-copy-beep-advice activate) " make tramp beep after copying a file." (interactive) (beep)) (defadvice tramp-handle-insert-file-contents (after tramp-copy-beep-advice activate) " make tramp beep after copying a file." (interactive) (beep))

• There's this `~/.sh_history' file on the remote host which keeps growing and growing. What's that?

  Sometimes, TRAMP starts ksh on the remote host for tilde expansion. Maybe ksh saves the history by default. TRAMP tries to turn off saving the history, but maybe you have to help. For example, you could put this in your `.kshrc':

  if [ -f $HOME/.sh_history ] ; then /bin/rm $HOME/.sh_history fi if [ "${HISTFILE-unset}" != "unset" ] ; then unset HISTFILE fi if [ "${HISTSIZE-unset}" != "unset" ] ; then unset HISTSIZE fi

• How can I disable TRAMP?

  Shame on you, why did you read until now?

  Unloading TRAMP can be achieved by applying M-x tramp-unload-tramp.

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