NAME¶
urxvtd - urxvt terminal daemon
SYNOPSIS¶
urxvtd [-q|--quiet] [-o|--opendisplay] [-f|--fork] [-m|--mlock]
urxvtd -q -o -f # for .xsession use
DESCRIPTION¶
This manpage describes the urxvtd daemon, which is the same vt102 terminal
emulator as urxvt, but runs as a daemon that can open multiple terminal
windows within the same process.
You can run it from your X startup scripts, for example, although it is not
dependent on a working DISPLAY and, in fact, can open windows on multiple X
displays on the same time.
Advantages of running a urxvt daemon include faster creation time for terminal
windows and a lot of saved memory.
The disadvantage is a possible impact on stability - if the main program
crashes, all processes in the terminal windows are terminated. For example, as
there is no way to cleanly react to abnormal connection closes,
"xkill" and server resets/restarts will kill the
urxvtd
instance including all windows it has opened.
OPTIONS¶
urxvtd currently understands a few options only. Bundling of options is
not yet supported.
- -q, --quiet
- Normally, urxvtd outputs the message
"rxvt-unicode daemon listening on <path>" after binding to
its control socket. This option will suppress this message (errors and
warnings will still be logged).
- -o, --opendisplay
- This forces urxvtd to open a connection to the
current $DISPLAY and keep it open.
This is useful if you want to bind an instance of urxvtd to the
lifetime of a specific display/server. If the server does a reset,
urxvtd will be killed automatically.
- -f, --fork
- This makes urxvtd fork after it has bound itself to
its control socket.
- -m, --mlock
- This makes urxvtd call mlockall(2) on itself.
This locks urxvtd in RAM and prevents it from being swapped out to
disk, at the cost of consuming a lot more memory on most operating
systems.
Note: In order to use this feature, your system administrator must have set
your user's RLIMIT_MEMLOCK to a size greater than or equal to the size of
the urxvtd binary (or to unlimited). See
/etc/security/limits.conf.
Note 2: There is a known bug in glibc (possibly fixed in 2.8 and later
versions) where calloc returns non-zeroed memory when mlockall is in
effect. If you experience crashes or other odd behaviour while using
--mlock, try it without it.
EXAMPLES¶
This is a useful invocation of
urxvtd in a
.xsession-style script:
urxvtd -q -f -o
This waits till the control socket is available, opens the current display and
forks into the background. When you log-out, the server is reset and
urxvtd is killed.
ENVIRONMENT¶
- RXVT_SOCKET
- Both urxvtc and urxvtd use the environment
variable RXVT_SOCKET to create a listening socket and to contact
the urxvtd, respectively. If the variable is missing then
$HOME /.urxvt/urxvtd-<nodename>
is used.
- DISPLAY
- Only used when the "--opendisplay" option is
specified. Must contain a valid X display name.
SEE ALSO¶
urxvt(7),
urxvtc(1)