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content/u/blog/emacs-server-the-smart-way/contents.lr

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+title: Emacs, be my server
+---
+pub_date: 2020-04-23
+---
+author: Nico Schottelius
+---
+twitter_handle: NicoSchottelius
+---
+_hidden: no
+---
+_discoverable: yes
+---
+abstract:
+Let's dive into a very nice emacs feature
+---
+body:
+
+Today I want to talk about how amazing emacs is. Not because it is the
+most feature complete operating system out there or because
+[it fully emulates vi/vim](https://github.com/emacs-evil/evil).
+No, because emacs has a very nice feature called **emacs server**.
+
+## What's an emacs server?
+
+If emacs is not an operating system, at least emacs stands for
+"**e**ight **m**egabytes **a**nd **c**onstantly **s**wapping", doesn't
+it? (This is actually from times where 8 megabytes were quite a lot of
+memory)
+
+So why do people make fun of emacs and how is it related to the emacs server?
+An emacs server creates a special emacs process that listens on a
+socket for connecting to it. This way the initialisation is already
+done before you connect to it and all
+configurations are already loaded. This is the actual "slow" part of
+emacs. And is a bit similar to starting python, which also needs to
+load its libraries at start.
+
+With the emacs server running, you can connect to it using the
+**emacsclient** program.
+
+As a matter of fact,
+[rxvt-unicode](http://software.schmorp.de/pkg/rxvt-unicode.html) also
+knows about a server mode (checkout the manpage, look for
+**urxvtd -q -f -o**). For rxvt-unicode, you'd use **urxvtc** to
+connect to it. So quite simlar.
+
+## What is so cool about the emacs server?
+
+Saving a lot of response time and making working with emacs **feel**
+much faster is the obvious advantage. However, there is a much bigger
+one:
+
+With the emacs server, you can connect to it from the terminal **and** X
+Windows. Because the emacs server also manages the buffers ("open
+files" for non-emacs users), you can view the same open file from the
+terminal or an x window.
+
+## Turning the notebook into a server
+
+As you might now, we at ungleich are pretty much into IPv6. So all of
+our devices are generally speaking world-wide reachable. Our work
+notebooks are no exception from that. In fact, most notebooks even
+have their own [/48 IPv6 network assigned via
+VPN](/u/products/ipv6-vpn/).
+
+So if I am away from my notebook, but need to check my open (and
+potentially unsaved) notes or view my emails, I can use any other
+computer, ssh to my notebook and type **emacslient -nw** in the
+terminal.
+
+While my regular emacs is running as an X11 window, I can select,
+display and work in all buffers that I have previously opened in the
+emacs server. In the terminal, on a remote computer.
+
+## How to configure your system to use the emacs server
+
+In my case I start the emacs server when I start X11 in my .xinitrc:
+
+```
+eval $(ssh-agent)
+...
+urxvtd -q -f -o
+emacs --daemon
+...
+```
+
+And because I always want to have my mail client open, after I started
+i3, I launch the following command:
+
+```
+ssh-add </dev/null && emacsclient -c -e '(mu4e)'
+```
+
+The connection to my mailserver is tunneled via SSH to prevent
+security issues from using SSL/TLS. Thus I need to add all my ssh keys
+to the ssh-agent, before starting my mail client.
+
+To actually open a new emacs windown (aka "frame" in emacs speech), I
+use the following configuration in my **~/.i3/config**:
+
+```
+bindsym $mod+Tab    exec emacsclient -c
+```
+
+## How does this look like?
+
+Below you find a screenshot of my writing this article. The upper
+window is the X11 window, the lower window is a terminal window (they
+happen to be configured to have the same nice background colour).
+
+![](emacs.png)