Slacko 5.7 32 - strange behaviour configuring urxvt (solved)

[milu]

I want to change default urxvt colors and thus I edit .Xresources files, specifying this parameters (among others):

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urxvt.foreground: #00FF00
urxvt.background: #000000

after reloading .Xresources and running urxvt

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# xrdb .Xresources && urxvt

I see foreground color has changed accordingly but backgroound does not. I assume some other config file is setting background color but I'm not able to find which config file or program configuration is changing my .Xresource config.

The strange behaviour is that, if I run urxvt through strace, every thing goes ok and background color changes to what I setted in .Xresources,

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# strace urxvt

but if I run xvrt by itself, without strace, background color doen't change.

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# urxvt

any idea to explore?

[bigpup]

See if it has this in Slacko 5.7

In a terminal enter:

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urxvtcontrol

.

Screenshot.jpg (41.5 KiB) Viewed 1022 times

.
After changes just run it the normal command

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urxvt

[bigpup]

Here is a topic about using urxvtcontrol and a few other tweaks.
viewtopic.php?t=1598

[milu]

See if it has this in Slacko 5.7

In a terminal enter:

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urxvtcontrol

After changes just run it the normal command

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urxvt

No, It haven't. But I found a package called urxvtset-0.5.1 in package manager and installed it, now I have a urxvtset command which is basically the same of urxvtcontrol, anyway what urxvtset seems to do is just read and write .Xdefaults so the problem is the same, it doesn't matter changing .Xresources by hand or with urxvtset.

So, same behaviour, change background color if urxvt executed with strace, no change if urxvt executed as is

[milu]

I finally solved the weird thing and now all works as expected, I can change all colors and properties.

Usually the most strange behaviour points to simple and evident things, so simple you don't pay attention to it, so silly. This is the case.

The problem was background color was hardwired as a parameter in the urxvt icon on desktop (-bg lightgray) and also there was an alias in bash saying

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alias urxvt=urxvt -bg lightgray

So whatever color I set in .Xresources or .Xdefaults it always fallback to lightgray.

The solution was simply to remove the alias and the parameter on urxvt desktop icon.

If you wonder why it works when executing with strace, its simple, strace calls the real command, uxrvt, not the alias, son the -bg lightgray command doesn't apply, but when executing uxvrt in the terminal you are really executing the alias with the -bg lightgray payload.

Thanks for your help.

[mikewalsh]

@milu :-

If you want to try it, here's the UrxvtControl package as mentioned earlier. It doesn't NEED Perl, but if you have it it just adds some extra functionality. .Pet attached below.

I, too, ran Slacko 5.7.0 for a couple of years. I don't think this came installed, OOTB. I'm pretty sure I had to add it myself.

Mike.

[milu]

If you want to try it, here's the UrxvtControl package as mentioned earlier. It doesn't NEED Perl, but if you have it it just adds some extra functionality. .Pet attached below.

I, too, ran Slacko 5.7.0 for a couple of years. I don't think this came installed, OOTB. I'm pretty sure I had to add it myself.

thanks mikewalsh, I've downloaded it and save it for future but for now I think I will stand with bare .Xresorces, I feel comfortable editing it.

Slacko is probbably my favourite puppy linux, I find it fairly perfect, 5.7 is a good option for old 32bits hardware but problably will move to slacko 7 64bis, it's a pity there's no slacko 8 based on slackware 15

[bigpup]

That is what we like.

Someone that solves their own problem.

Thanks for telling us what you did.

I learned something and I know this may help others.

[milu]

I learned something and I know this may help others.

that's the idea, share what you know to help others