emacs won't close because of buffer "ido.last"

Question

When I try to close emacs I get the message

"buffer ido.last modified; kill anyway?"

and whatever I answer, emacs stays open. But I can't open this buffer and the ido.last file doesn't exist. How can I get my emacs closed?

Answer 1

If you've used emacs as another user, as root for instance, it's possible that the .ido.last file is owned by root and hence you aren't allowed to remove or save it.

When you get the "buffer .ido.last modified"-question just remove the .ido.last file before you answer yes (if you're using emacs within a shell, just C-z, remove file and then resume with %). Then the .ido.last file will be written to disk with you as the owner.

Answer 2

IDO tries to save a file called ido.last into ~/.emacs.d directory. But, in your case IDO seems to be unable to do so. Maybe your ~/.emacs.d directory is read-only for a particular reason, or your disk is full, etc. So IDO raise an error that prevent your emacs to close.

If you don't use IDO, try to remove this kind of lines from your .emacs :

(require 'ido)
(ido-mode t)