urxvt (1)

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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)

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