[ESS] ess-remote trouble

[Dan Davison]

I really like the idea of ess-remote, and I want to start using it
routinely.  Unfortunately with my current set-up the remote session
buffer invariably eventually ends up with an inactive prompt[1]. I haven't
noticed any particular pattern in when this happens (but so far I have
always got several minutes of correct functioning before it fails).

The steps I'm using are:

1. M-x shell (on machine running ubuntu 9.10)
2. ssh remote machine (fedora 10)
3. R
4. ess-remote
5. r
6. ...

I'm afraid I haven't yet managed to collect any helpful debugging
info. I tried using ssh -v and monitoring stderr but nothing relevant
appeared. Also nothing relevant in *Messages*. I don't have any problems
maintaining gnome-terminal bash ssh sessions open on the remote machine,
and as far as I know not with M-x shell ssh, although that's not
something I do often.

So at the moment I'd like to ask: Does anyone have any idea what's going
wrong? Is anyone else having similar problems? How should I debug this?

A couple of additional quibbles regarding ess-remote:

1. The behaviour of C-z isn't quite the same: when an ESS buffer is
   associated with a 'normal' iESS buffer, the frame is split on issuing
   C-z. But when associated with a remote buffer, C-z switches buffer
   with no frame splitting.
2. Entirely trivial but perhaps we could have 'R' as a synonym of 'r' at
   step 5 above?

Thanks,

Dan

emacs-version "23.1.1"
ess svn revision 4268
ubuntu 9.10 (local) / fedora 10 (remote)

Footnotes:

[1] To be more precise: if I enter any expression the prompt hangs
indefinitely with the mouse cursor turned into the "hang on I'm doing
something" icon. C-g followed by C-c C-c retrieves the prompt, but in
the same condition.