Emacs tramp hangs with "Tramp: found remote shell prompt"

Question

I'm trying, for the first time, to access remote files via tramp from Emacs on Windows. I'm trying to open a remote directory via C-x C-f /plink:user@host:/. However, when Emacs gets to "Tramp: found remote shell prompt" in the minibuffer, it hangs. And not only does the minibuffer hang, but all of Emacs hangs, so that I have to kill it via task manager. This unfortunately means that I can't see any debug information for tramp, because it outputs to an Emacs buffer. How can I go about debugging this?

I'm running Windows 8.1, Emacs 24.3, and plink 0.63.

Answer 1

I ran into a very similar situation with tramp ssh, and I can't guess at what your particular problem is, but only that you can get a complete trace by doing:

(setq tramp-verbose 10)

Then try the connection again, and after it hangs, C-g and check for a buffer:

*debug tramp/plink USER@IP*

The level 10 verbosity might be too overwhelming - you can experiment with lesser levels (smaller numbers) to see if it reveals what the problem might be. Check the docstring for tramp-verbose.

Good Luck!