How to fix Emacs client *ERROR*: Arithmetic error

GNU Emacs 23.1.1

I've noticed that if I run Emacs and M-x server-start, I can use the emacsclient program as usual, but if if I start Emacs using emacs --daemon and then try to use emacsclient the new frame locks up and the shell outputs *ERROR*: Arithmetic error.

This issue doesn't happen if I use the -t flag to force terminal mode when running emacsclient.

Has anyone run into this before? Anyone know what's going on and/or how to fix it?

2 Answers

Turns out this is (or, at least, seems to be) a variation of an issue I've had previously. For some reason the line

'(default ((t (:background "black" :foreground "white"))))

in my custom faces settings causes a lot of problems. Before it would just throw an error and complain about a color not existing whenever I ran emacsclient -c, but now it was completely freezing the frame.

I wasn't using any custom color theme when I originally added those settings, but now that I am it looks like I can remove it without any side-effects.

Amazingly, this exact custom option was the cause of the pb for me too, even though I use a lot of other faces customization, this is the only one to remove in order to run emacsclient -c