urxvtd - urxvt terminal daemon

urxvtd [-q|--quiet] [-o|--opendisplay] [-f|--fork]

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, CWxkill and server resets/restarts will kill the urxvtd instance including all windows it has opened.

urxvtd currently understands a few options only. Bundling of options is not yet supported.

-q, --quiet

Normally, urxvtd outputs the message CWrxvt-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 CW$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.

This is a useful invocation of urxvtd in a .xsession-style script:

   B<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.

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, $HOME/.rxvt-unicode-<nodename> is used. The variable must specify the absolute path of the socket to create.

DISPLAY

Only used when the CW--opendisplay option is specified. Must contain a valid X display name.

urxvt(7), urxvtc(1)