Emacs Tramp couldn't write region to file

Question

I edit files over ssh using tramp, and though I've had no problems in the past today I'm having some issues. When I attempt to save a file, I get the following (slightly redacted) error:

byte-code: Couldn't write region to `[filelocation]', 
decode using `(base64 -d -i | gzip -d >%s)' failed

I'm using emacs 24.3.1. base64 and gzip seem to work just fine on the server. Any ideas?

Tarantella

Amazing, I'm banging my head against the same issue just now. It's worked flawlessly for years. I'm connecting from my Mac OSX 10.7.5 laptop to a RHEL6 machine. There was a software update on my Mac recently…? There is nothing obvious in the tramp debugging log. – Tradesfolk

I too have this problem, though I have never managed to get it to work, even if no quotas are in place. – Conglutinate

Answer 1

My problem was that I had exceeded my quota on the remote filesystem. The temporal coincidence between our problem therefore appears to be a coincidence. I suggest you check your quota and disk space on your server, and that you can actually write files there without using tramp.

Tradesfolk

I also seem to be getting transient errors. There was no quota or disk problem, just ... something. Maybe the Tramp session had died, or become wedged somehow? It happened several mornings now when I returned to my computer, but later in the day, things had calmed down and would work fine again. – Exsiccate

Thanks for saving my day. In my case, the permission was the problem. It didn't have access to write. I solved it simply by changing the file owner and permission with a super user account. – Cynarra

Answer 2

I was getting this problem seemingly at random, and the solution was that I had write-rights to the FILE I was editing, but not to the FOLDER, so tramp could not create the tempfiles.

So if I was not saving quick enough it ended up in an infinite loop and just hang :(. It was not obvious to find it, because the tramp connect string is usually rather long.

Catalectic