Q: Whenever I invoke info.exe, it immediately crashes! How
can I use DJGPP without reading all those wonderful docs??
A: One possible reason for this is a bug in EMM386 shipped
with some versions of DOS 6.x. This bug is only triggered if your
system loads the DISPLAY.SYS driver, usually to display non-US
characters supported by your national codepage. In addition, this bug
causes Info to crash only if it is run in 35- or 40-line display mode;
any other display size avoids the problem. (The default display mode is
40 lines, as set in the [info] section of DJGPP.ENV.) So
either switching to another display size, or removing either
EMM386 or DISPLAY.SYS from CONFIG.SYS, should
prevent Info from crashing.
If you use DJGPP v2.0, yet another cause of crashes in Info might
be trailing whitespace in the DJGPP.ENV file. The tell-tale signs
of this failure are a stack dump that is bogus or doesn't start with
your `main' function, or a series of SIGSEGV that won't stop. Actually,
this is a bug in the DJGPP v2.0 startup code, so any v2.0 program could
crash in this way, but since the last section of stock v2.0
DJGPP.ENV belongs to Info, it is the one which suffers
most from this bug. Make sure your DJGPP.ENV doesn't have a
^Z character at the end (some DOS editors put it if you edit the
file), and doesn't end with a blank line. Alternatively, upgrade to
DJGPP v2.01 or later, where that bug is fixed.