urxvt(1) RXVT-UNICODE urxvt(1)

NAME

urxvtd - urxvt terminal daemon

SYNOPSIS

urxvtd [-q|--quiet] [-o|--opendisplay] [-f|--fork] [-m|--mlock]
[-e|--eval perlstring]

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.

-e, --eval perlstring
Evaluate the given perl code after basic initialisation (requires
perl support to be enabled when compiling urxvtd).

This can be used for example to configure the internal perl
interpreter, which is shared between all terminal instances, or
create additional listening sockets for additional protocols.

The code is currently executed before creating the normal
listening sockets: this might change in future versions.

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.

LISTEN_PID, LISTEN_FDS, LISTEN_FDNAMES
if these environment variables are set, urxvtd checks for a file
descriptor passed by the service manager via systemd native
interface. If one is provided, urxvtd uses it as its listening
socket instead of creating one as specified above.

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

SEE ALSO

urxvt(7), urxvtc(1)

9.31 2023-01-02 urxvt(1)