UNIX and Linux Applications

Hi people,

I am hoping someone in this forum might be able to help me with an emacs issue that has me quite frustrated.
OS: Gentoo 1.12.11.1
emacs 21.4.2
using bash
init file: ~/.emacs

My init file in my home directory on a dev webserver is being ignored. The file appears to be read when I start emacs--if I put non-interpretable garbage at the top of the file, emacs flashes an error with the offending line when I start it--but normally all the settings in the emacs file seem to be disregarded.

E.g., I have:
(setq default-tab-width 2)
Even with this setting, I still get monstrous 8-character tabs.

I know it is not a problem with my .emacs file itself, because I am using a copy of the exact same file on our live webserver with no problems.

I've tried everything I can think of, including explicitly specifying my username or the file when I open emacs:
emacs -u myusername
emacs --load /home/myusername/emacs
emacs --debug-init

Edit: I also checked the values of variables pertaining to the init file and they all seem to be correct:
user-login-name: "myusername"
user-real-login-name: "myusername"
user-init-file: "/home/myusername/.emacs"
init-file-user: "" (empty)

I do not have any sort of administrative access on this server, but my admin is a bit of a novice, so I want to have concrete instructions for him if I have to get him to change something.

Anyone have any advice or suggestions? Thanks in advance.

I don't know if this is similar or not but I was having a problem with emacs not keeping my customized options. I'm running on SunOS.

I too was stumped. I checked my .profile as a last resort and found that my exported USER and LOGNAME variables were the name of the person I copied the profile from... I had missed changing it. Once I did, emacs worked fine...

Don't know if it applies to your situation or not...

Did you every get a fix for this?