Lisp noob: error installing SBCL on Ubuntu
Ryan Stewart
spare time for a couple of months now. I've been running CLISP with
Emacs and SLIME on Ubuntu 10.10 for my learning environment, and I've
never had any problems with it, but I'm interested in playing around
with Lisp in a web environment, and the comments I've seen on
Stackoverflow and elsewhere seem to point to Hunchentoot with SBCL as
a great way to do web Lisp. Here's where I'm running into trouble.
When I try to install SBCL using Apt (apt-get install sbcl), I get the
following error message:
fatal error encountered in SBCL pid 3443(tid 140737354028800):
set_pseudo_atomic_atomic: pseudo atomic bits is 1.
It happens at different times. Mostly, it happens very early in the
install, right after the line that says "/usr/lib/common-lisp/bin/
sbcl.sh loading and dumping clc." However, it can also happen later,
when the install is spitting a bunch of Lisp-ish looking stuff to
stdout. After the error, it dumps me to a debugger:
Welcome to LDB, a low-level debugger for the Lisp runtime environment.
ldb>
After I "quit" out of LDB, I get:
ldb> quit
Really quit? [y]
mv: cannot stat `sbcl-new.core': No such file or directory
FAILED
After that, I can run "sbcl" and get a repl, but I don't know what
that error means or if everything was installed correctly. I can "dpkg-
reconfigure sbcl" after this failure, and then it starts spewing a
bunch of the Lisp-ish stuff to stdout. Sometimes it gets that same
error, and sometimes it finishes without errors. After I get a
successful reconfigure, if I go start Slime in Emacs, it seems to be
compiling a bunch of stuff, but then hits that same error again.
That's where I gave up on the package install.
As an alternative, I removed the sbcl package and tried downloading
the latest binary release of SBCL from sbcl.org and installing it. It
installed fine, but when I try to start SLIME in Emacs, I get an error
about not being able to find package ASDF, which I understand is
supposed to be included with SBCL. I poked around a bit, but while I
found an "asdf" directory in the SBCL installation dir, I don't know
enough to figure out how or why that would or wouldn't be available to
SBCL.
So... can anybody help me get a good SBCL install? Or maybe just
suggest a different route to getting a good Lisp web server running?
Also, unrelated, I noticed that when I installed SBCL and started
SLIME, it had automatically switched from CLISP to SBCL. I thought
this was supposed to be controlled by the lines I've got in ~/.emacs,
but changes there don't seem to affect anything. Could anyone give me
some hints there, too?
Pascal J. Bourguignon
> [sbcl questions]
Since your questions are sbcl specific, you may want to ask them on
mailto:sbcl...@lists.sourceforge.net
too.
For asdf, perhaps adding (require 'asdf) to your ~/.sbclrc file will do.
For slime questions, mailto:slime...@common-lisp.net might be
indicated. AFAIK, it uses the normal inferior-lisp-program to select
the CL implementation to load. (Along with slime-inferior-lisp-args for
additionnal arguments).
--
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/
A bad day in () is better than a good day in {}.
Zach Beane
> As an alternative, I removed the sbcl package and tried downloading
> the latest binary release of SBCL from sbcl.org and installing it. It
> installed fine, but when I try to start SLIME in Emacs, I get an error
> about not being able to find package ASDF, which I understand is
> supposed to be included with SBCL. I poked around a bit, but while I
> found an "asdf" directory in the SBCL installation dir, I don't know
> enough to figure out how or why that would or wouldn't be available to
> SBCL.
I always get the binary release from www.sbcl.org. I avoid installing
anything Lisp-related through the distro package system, and that
includes ASDF and libraries. If you installed them already, you might be
able to remove them to get the binary from www.sbcl.org working ok.
> So... can anybody help me get a good SBCL install? Or maybe just
> suggest a different route to getting a good Lisp web server running?
I suggest getting SBCL from www.sbcl.org, Quicklisp from
www.quicklisp.org, and then after loading Quicklisp in SBCL it's as
simple as this:
(ql:quickload "hunchentoot")
Zach
Ryan Stewart
> I always get the binary release fromwww.sbcl.org. I avoid installing
> anything Lisp-related through the distro package system, and that
> includes ASDF and libraries. If you installed them already, you might be
> able to remove them to get the binary fromwww.sbcl.orgworking ok.
>
package-installed version of ASDF. Maybe that's what was causing
problems before. I removed that, CLISP, and all the SBCL packages, and
got the latest binary from www.sbcl.org. It's installed and running
from the command line without errors, and I'm halfway there with
SLIME. When I load SLIME, I get the SBCL welcome message, but then it
fails with:
Couldn't load "/usr/share/common-lisp/source/slime/swank-loader.lisp":
file
does not exist.
And sure enough, that file is now gone, presumably because I removed
all the packaged Lisps. I'm confused. If that's a SLIME file, why did
it go away when I removed the Lisps. The slime package is still
installed. I don't see anything that looks like it would be a suitable
substitute in the SBCL installation, assuming I could even tell Emacs/
SLIME to load it from a different place. What is "swank-loader", and
whose responsibility is it to provide it?
Zach Beane
> On Apr 2, 4:58 pm, Zach Beane <x...@xach.com> wrote:
>> I always get the binary release fromwww.sbcl.org. I avoid installing
>> anything Lisp-related through the distro package system, and that
>> includes ASDF and libraries. If you installed them already, you might be
>> able to remove them to get the binary fromwww.sbcl.orgworking ok.
>>
> With the slight mental nudge you gave, I looked for and found a
> package-installed version of ASDF. Maybe that's what was causing
> problems before. I removed that, CLISP, and all the SBCL packages, and
> got the latest binary from www.sbcl.org. It's installed and running
> from the command line without errors, and I'm halfway there with
> SLIME. When I load SLIME, I get the SBCL welcome message, but then it
> fails with:
> Couldn't load "/usr/share/common-lisp/source/slime/swank-loader.lisp":
> file
> does not exist.
>
> And sure enough, that file is now gone, presumably because I removed
> all the packaged Lisps. I'm confused. If that's a SLIME file, why did
> it go away when I removed the Lisps. The slime package is still
> installed.
Try removing and purging slime, too. You can get SLIME via Quicklisp.
Zach
Tim X
You may be better off initially just installing a simple sbcl binary
package fromt he sbcl site.
Ubuntu has quite a nice lisp developent setup because it will allow you
to run multiple versions of lisp at the same time. As different
implementations have different image formats etc and because the
debian/ubuntu folks want to support asdf as well, they use another
layer, called the common-lisp-controller. When this layer works, its
quite nice, especially if you are writing lisp code you want to run
under multple implementations. However, it does add yet another layer of
complexity i.e. another layer for additional bugs/problems and an
additional level of complexity for dealing with asdf (something that is
*really* not desirable!).
Given your really at a learning stage and just want things to be as
reliable and simple as possible to start with, I would recommend just
bypassing the ubuntu/debian lisp layer and install your own sbcl and
then look at one of the other packages, such a quicklisp for
managing/obtaining additional libraries. If you find cl is for you, you
can look at the common-lisp-controller and the debian/ubuntu cl
environment.
If you would prefer to persist with things, start by removing all
additional cl-* packages and just install sbcl. From your error message,
it is possible that what is happening is that the clc is trying to build
sbcl with one of the additional cl-* pacakges and there is a bug or some
incompatibility, causing things to bomb out. Strip the envrionment to
its minimum and then only add additonal cl-* pacakges when you know you
want them.
Tim
--
tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au
Ryan Stewart
> Try removing and purging slime, too. You can get SLIME via Quicklisp.
>
--load quicklisp.lisp" or start SBCL and (load "quicklisp.lisp"), I'm
getting the same error that started this whole thing:
fatal error encountered in SBCL pid 2366(tid 140737354028800):
set_pseudo_atomic_atomic: pseudo atomic bits is 1.
Trying repeatedly, it will successfully load maybe 1 in 20 times. I
suppose I'd better take this over to an SBCL list. Oh, I should've
mentioned I'm running this in a VirtualBox VM. Has anyone had bad luck
running in a VM?
Pascal J. Bourguignon
I had problem with Xen VMs, not only with sbcl.
It looks like VM, even with hardware support, are still not entirely
identical to real hardware, even in user mode... This is shameful,
but Dijkstra complained about it already.
vanekl
The problem with installing a binary is it may not play well with the
dynamic link libraries on your system, that's why I always try to
build from source.
That being said, I've used both VBox and VMware and -- for me --
VMware is much more stable than VB, so I've moved all my development
work over and never regretted it. I've never lost a a single line of
code with VMware.
John Rohde Jensen
After apt-get of sbcl, emacs and slime, plus a minor dot-emacs
adjustment, the whole thing works straight out of the box.
Changing distro is of course heresy to some ;-)
Cheers,
John
Zach Beane
> I've found Debian to be the easiest distro to work with wrt Lisp.
>
> After apt-get of sbcl, emacs and slime, plus a minor dot-emacs
> adjustment, the whole thing works straight out of the box.
Except things are generally pretty old, sometimes critically so. The
Lisp world is moving a lot faster than Debian is keeping up at the
moment.
Zach
Teemu Likonen
> Except things are generally pretty old, sometimes critically so. The
> Lisp world is moving a lot faster than Debian is keeping up at the
> moment.
Maybe, but at the moment the latest Debian (6.0) has SBCL 1.0.40 which I
think is perfectly fine for working with Common Lisp. "Lisp noobs", as
the thread suggests, probably won't miss any of the
$ git diff sbcl_1_0_40..
For Common Lisp libraries Quicklisp is obviously better than distros'
package systems. Thank you for that.
Zach Beane
> * 2011-04-03 08:59:14 -0400, Zach Beane wrote:
>
>> Except things are generally pretty old, sometimes critically so. The
>> Lisp world is moving a lot faster than Debian is keeping up at the
>> moment.
>
> Maybe, but at the moment the latest Debian (6.0) has SBCL 1.0.40 which I
> think is perfectly fine for working with Common Lisp. "Lisp noobs", as
> the thread suggests, probably won't miss any of the
>
> $ git diff sbcl_1_0_40..
It's worth updating for ~ in pathnames alone, and there are a lot of
other improvements that come along, too.
Zach
Petter Gustad
> So... can anybody help me get a good SBCL install? Or maybe just
> suggest a different route to getting a good Lisp web server running?
Reading through this thread it appears that you're getting a mix of
system installed and local installations of SBCL, slime, and other
libraries (Common Lisp Controller)
Typically it's easiest to stick with your system installed SBCL and
libraries. However, you might find that the maintainers haven't
included the libraries and versions you require.
Personally in that case I find it easier to create my own installation
and either remove the system wide installation or make sure you're
only using your local installation.
Here's a set of command to bootstrap SBCL into a given directory. You
can then use QuickLisp to handle your libraries locally.
unset SBCL_HOME
unset SBCL_SOURCE_ROOT
unset CDPATH
LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8
export LC_CTYPE
#unixarch=x86
unixarch=x86-64
sbclvers=1.0.47
# update this to point to your install directory
TARGET_DIR=/tmp/sbcl-test-dir
mkdir -p ${TARGET_DIR}
cd ${TARGET_DIR}
wget http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/sbcl/sbcl-${sbclvers}-${unixarch}-linux-binary.tar.bz2
tar xvfj sbcl-${sbclvers}-${unixarch}-linux-binary.tar.bz2
wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/sbcl/sbcl/${sbclvers}/sbcl-${sbclvers}-source.tar.bz2
tar xvfj sbcl-${sbclvers}-source.tar.bz2
mkdir root
cd sbcl-${sbclvers}
OLD_PATH="$PATH"
PATH=${TARGET_DIR}/sbcl-${sbclvers}-${unixarch}-linux/src/runtime:$PATH
export PATH
SBCL_HOME=${TARGET_DIR}/sbcl-${sbclvers}-${unixarch}-linux/output
export SBCL_HOME
sh make.sh --prefix=${TARGET_DIR}/root
unset SBCL_HOME
INSTALL_ROOT=${TARGET_DIR}/root sh install.sh
# get QuickLisp
cd ${TARGET_DIR}
wget http://quickstart.quicklisp.org/quicklisp.lisp
# install quicklisp, only do this if you have not installed quicklisp
unset SBCL_HOME
${TARGET_DIR}/root/bin/sbcl --no-userinit --no-sysinit --load ${TARGET_DIR}/quicklisp.lisp \
--eval '(quicklisp-quickstart:install")' \
--eval '(sb-ext:quit)'
# to invoke SBCL and load e.g. weblocks do (assuming TARGET_DIR as above)
unset SBCL_HOME
/tmp/sbcl-test-dir/root/bin/sbcl --no-userinit --no-sysinit --load $HOME/quicklisp/setup.lisp
;; to prevent asdf from picking up your system wide libraries do:
(asdf:initialize-source-registry '(:source-registry :ignore-inherited-configuration))
;; load e.g. weblocks
(ql:quickload "weblocks")
# to install slime do
unset SBCL_HOME
/tmp/sbcl-test-dir/root/bin/sbcl --no-userinit --no-sysinit --load $HOME/quicklisp/setup.lisp
(asdf:initialize-source-registry '(:source-registry :ignore-inherited-configuration))
(ql:quickload "quicklisp-slime-helper")
In your .emacs file you have to do something like
(when (file-exists-p "~/quicklisp/slime-helper.el")
(load (expand-file-name "~/quicklisp/slime-helper.el"))
(require 'slime)
(slime-setup '(slime-fancy slime-asdf))
(set-language-environment "UTF-8")
(setq slime-net-coding-system 'utf-8-unix)
(setq inferior-lisp-program "/tmp/sbcl-test-dir/root/bin/sbcl"))
//Petter
--
.sig removed by request.
Petter Gustad
> # get QuickLisp
> cd ${TARGET_DIR}
> wget http://quickstart.quicklisp.org/quicklisp.lisp
That's an obsolete URL, use http://beta.quicklisp.org/quicklisp.lisp
instead.
Teemu Likonen
> Teemu Likonen <tlik...@iki.fi> writes:
>> Maybe, but at the moment the latest Debian (6.0) has SBCL 1.0.40
>> which I think is perfectly fine for working with Common Lisp. "Lisp
>> noobs", as the thread suggests, probably won't miss any of the
>>
>> $ git diff sbcl_1_0_40..
>
> It's worth updating for ~ in pathnames alone, and there are a lot of
> other improvements that come along, too.
Of course there is always something that is better in later versions.
I'm just saying that you and I can easily use the latest development
version but I'd rather instruct a "Lisp noob" to do this:
$ sudo aptitude install sbcl
$ wget http://beta.quicklisp.org/quicklisp.lisp
$ sbcl --load quicklisp.lisp
Anyway, I hope the person who started this thread got a working Lisp
system.
Zach Beane
In my experience, this is a bigger support headache than installing from
www.sbcl.org due to the involvement of common-lisp-controller, modified
and/or old versions of slime, and related issues.
Zach
gavino
skip ur-bung-2 linux its awesful
www.archlinux.org or www.openbsd.org
openbsd has clisp as does arch in pacakges
bam done
Duane Rettig
Is there any reason you're set on sbcl? There are quite a few other
feature-ful free versions available, including (shameless plug)
Allegro CL - go to http://www.franz.com/downloads/ and take your pick.
Duane
Ryan Stewart
wrote:
> Ryan Stewart <zzant...@gmail.com> writes:
> > Trying repeatedly, it will successfully load maybe 1 in 20 times. I
> > suppose I'd better take this over to an SBCL list. Oh, I should've
> > mentioned I'm running this in a VirtualBox VM. Has anyone had bad luck
> > running in a VM?
>
> I had problem with Xen VMs, not only with sbcl.
>
> It looks like VM, even with hardware support, are still not entirely
> identical to real hardware, even in user mode... This is shameful,
> but Dijkstra complained about it already.
>
decide that it must be because of the VM. I was able to get SBCL,
Quicklisp, and Hunchentoot up and running on a native Ubuntu box with
no trouble at all. I even tried compiling SBCL from source on the VM,
and it failed in the same way. I started building it with CLISP, and
if I read it right, once it got to a certain point, it started up SBCL
to finish building. Shortly after that, it died. It seems that there's
some problem with compiling things using SBCL in a VM. Or at least in
my VM. Thanks for all the help, guys. I've learned a lot from this
thread.
Ryan Stewart
> That being said, I've used both VBox and VMware and -- for me --
> VMware is much more stable than VB, so I've moved all my development
> work over and never regretted it. I've never lost a a single line of
> code with VMware.
I used VMware 1 on Windows a long time ago, and then they released
version 2, and it was this monstrosity of a thing that installed
several windows services and was managed via a web dashboard. Do they
have something more like the simple VBox management console now?
Ryan Stewart
wrote:
> I've found Debian to be the easiest distro to work with wrt Lisp.
>
> After apt-get of sbcl, emacs and slime, plus a minor dot-emacs
> adjustment, the whole thing works straight out of the box.
>
> Changing distro is of course heresy to some ;-)
>
with a rich community around it. Of course, it's been a year or so
since I last checked out a Debian release... Once I tried out SBCL
outside of my VM, it worked perfectly in Ubuntu.
Ryan Stewart
> Ryan Stewart <zzant...@gmail.com> writes:
> > So... can anybody help me get a good SBCL install? Or maybe just
> > suggest a different route to getting a good Lisp web server running?
>
> Reading through this thread it appears that you're getting a mix of
> system installed and local installations of SBCL, slime, and other
> libraries (Common Lisp Controller)
>
> Here's a set of command to bootstrap SBCL into a given directory. You
> can then use QuickLisp to handle your libraries locally.
Wow, thanks for all the effort in that script! I'm going to poke
through that line by line next time I sit down to work with Lisp some
more.
Ryan Stewart
> Anyway, I hope the person who started this thread got a working Lisp
> system.
Did, just not in a VM. Thanks :)
Ryan Stewart
> skip ur-bung-2 linux its awesfulwww.archlinux.orgorwww.openbsd.org
> openbsd has clisp as does arch in pacakges
> bam done
CLISP worked fine both in the VM and in native Ubuntu. Maybe I'll try
out SBCL in an Arch VM I have to see if it works any better. I've
never dabbled in BSD, though. Of course, this isn't the place to
debate the merits of various distros.
Ryan Stewart
> Is there any reason you're set on sbcl? There are quite a few other
> feature-ful free versions available, including (shameless plug)
> Allegro CL - go tohttp://www.franz.com/downloads/and take your pick.
>
around with. I saw Hunchentoot in SBCL mentioned somewhere as a good
option. I looked at Allegro, and it seemed the only free version of
Allegro Lisp was a limited one, though I'm not sure *how* limited, and
AllegroServe hasn't had a release in almost three years.
Antony
> On Apr 2, 9:14 pm, "Pascal J. Bourguignon"<p...@informatimago.com>
> wrote:
>> Ryan Stewart<zzant...@gmail.com> writes:
>>> Trying repeatedly, it will successfully load maybe 1 in 20 times. I
>>> suppose I'd better take this over to an SBCL list. Oh, I should've
>>> mentioned I'm running this in a VirtualBox VM. Has anyone had bad luck
>>> running in a VM?
>>
>> I had problem with Xen VMs, not only with sbcl.
>>
>> It looks like VM, even with hardware support, are still not entirely
>> identical to real hardware, even in user mode... This is shameful,
>> but Dijkstra complained about it already.
>>
> I've been off on other things over the weekend, but I've managed to
> decide that it must be because of the VM. I was able to get SBCL,
> Quicklisp, and Hunchentoot up and running on a native Ubuntu box with
under VirtualBox/Fedora and had given up on it for now. It would suck if
these issues were solely because it's a VM
-Antony
Zach Beane
>> I've been off on other things over the weekend, but I've managed to
>> decide that it must be because of the VM. I was able to get SBCL,
>> Quicklisp, and Hunchentoot up and running on a native Ubuntu box with
> Wow. This is not good to hear. I have had issues getting sbcl running
> under VirtualBox/Fedora and had given up on it for now. It would suck
> if these issues were solely because it's a VM
For what it's worth, I got SBCL on Ubuntu working pretty well on
VirtualBox hosted on Mac OS X. Not sure which version of VirtualBox,
though, sorry.
Zach
Pascal J. Bourguignon
That's my opinion, since I had similar problems compiling other programs
than sbcl. Basically, it broke in configure, thanks to the intensive
conftests configure runs...
Ryan Stewart
> For what it's worth, I got SBCL on Ubuntu working pretty well on
> VirtualBox hosted on Mac OS X. Not sure which version of VirtualBox,
> though, sorry.
>
> Zach
My failed SBCL was in an Ubuntu 10.10 guest on a Windows 7 host with
VirtualBox 4.0.4.
Gary Schiltz
I'm not sure if you said in a later response, but what OS are you
using to run VirtualBox? I'm asking
primarily because I've been a happy VMWare Fusion (Mac) user for
several years now. My experience when
I was on Windows XP with VMWare Workstation was always pretty
positive, and I believe they have a free
player application for Windows. You can even download virtual machines
for the player that already have
various Linux distros preinstalled. See for example http://virtual-machine.org
for free offerings. IMHO
the commercial offering is worth its price (not too expensive on Mac,
or free on Windows).
;; HTH, Gary
Antony
> On Apr 6, 2:46 pm, Zach Beane<x...@xach.com> wrote:
>> For what it's worth, I got SBCL on Ubuntu working pretty well on
>> VirtualBox hosted on Mac OS X. Not sure which version of VirtualBox,
>> though, sorry.
> VirtualBox 4.0.4.
Gave a try again. After a while (while doing compilation) I got
* fatal error encountered in SBCL pid 2893(tid 140737185179392):
set_pseudo_atomic_atomic: pseudo atomic bits is 1.
Welcome to LDB, a low-level debugger for the Lisp runtime environment.
ldb>
I have Windows 7 (64 ultimate)host, latest virtual box, fedora with
uname -a
Linux xed01 2.6.35.11-83.fc14.x86_64 #1 SMP Mon Feb 7 07:06:44 UTC 2011
x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
and
SBCL 1.0.40-1.fc14
I know I can get a more recent sbcl by avoiding the yum route. I am just
not up to it since I don't have enough confidence that will solve this.
Right now the only thing working for me is CCL and I'd really like to
have an environment where I can run both CCl and SBCL. My day job needs
windows, so that's another issue. oh well...
-Antony