up vote 3 down vote favorite

So, I'm trying to set up emacs as a server but I'm having trouble getting it to work from the terminal. If I run emacs --daemon on some terminal I can connect to it if I run the emacsclient from that same terminal, but if I open a new terminal the emacsclient will not find the server. Things seem to work well if I run emacsclient from the launcher.

I am running

emacsclient -a '' -t

The client says:

emacsclient: can't find socket; have you started the server?
To start the server in Emacs, type "M-x server-start".

Any ideas of what could be happening?

I am using ubuntu 17.04 with gnome/i3 if that matters.

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up vote 1 down vote accepted

I used to have the same issue until I did:

alias e="emacsclient -t --socket-name=/tmp/emacs1000/server"

And now I just use this "e" alias to start emacsclient.

I haven't seen the issue since.

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This worked, how do I tell the server to start the /tmp/emacs1000/server ? (the first client is starting it for me) – Matías Guzmán Naranjo Sep 27 at 18:04
    
Before running an emacsclient, I always first start the emacs server as emacs --daemon and it always starts listening on that /tmp/emacs1000/server socket automatically. I'm sure there's a less hacky way to do this that doesn't involve hardcoding the /tmp/emacs1000/server location in the e alias, and would always work no matter where the socket is created by the server (and that is probably how emacsclient is intended to work when invoked without the --socket-name option), but doing it this simple hackish way always worked for me. – izkon Sep 27 at 18:23
up vote 1 down vote

Not necessarily the answer you are looking for, but I have in exactly the same setup always used just emacsclient -c or emacsclient -t. Meaning I don't start the server manually, the first invoking of either will start the server and any subsequent invoking will connect to the server.

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This works for me, but again, within each specific terminal. So, if I start a new terminal, it will start a new server. – Matías Guzmán Naranjo Sep 17 at 14:20
    
Do you have any server specific stuff in your .emacs? If so, I'd comment it out and try again. Otherwise I am out of ideas. – gaussian Sep 17 at 14:24
    
Also: which version of Emacs you are running? My setup works with both Emacs25 (25.1) from the Ubuntu depo and self-compiled Emacs25.2. – gaussian Sep 17 at 14:40
    
I don't think I have anything in the init file. I am running 25.3, but the same happened with 25.2. Also, launching the server with emacs -q --daemon does the same thing. – Matías Guzmán Naranjo Sep 17 at 14:43
    
Out of ideas, sorry. Works in my setup, even with emacs -q --daemon. – gaussian Sep 17 at 14:49
up vote 0 down vote

Create a script say "myemacs" as below:

#!/bin/bash
emacsclient -a '' -c "$@"

Run it will create daemon if not exist, and will connect to daemon if daemon exist.

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This does not work. I get the same problem, If I launch it from two different terminals it creates a new daemon each time. – Matías Guzmán Naranjo Sep 19 at 15:38
    
@MatíasGuzmánNaranjo Oh, but I saw you are using "-t", I am using "-c". Did you try "-c" also? – lucky1928 Sep 19 at 18:56
    
that doesn't change anything, it's the same behavior with either -c or -t. The client just can't find the server. – Matías Guzmán Naranjo Sep 19 at 20:45
up vote 0 down vote

Make sure you are using the same version of emacs and emacsclient.

When my system emacsclient is used instead of my custom build emacs, I'm getting a similar error:

$ /usr/bin/emacsclient --version
emacsclient 22.1

$ /usr/bin/emacsclient .
/usr/bin/emacsclient: can't find socket; have you started the server?
To start the server in Emacs, type "M-x server-start".

With the correct version:

$ /usr/local/bin/emacsclient --version
emacsclient 26.0.50

$ /usr/local/bin/emacsclient .
Waiting for Emacs...
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