minor question ....

[Gary Aitken]

> .... I usually have long login sessions (weeks, maybe months), 99% of
> which are spent in rxvt shells, either on this machine or logged into
> other boxen on my LAN. I login as regular user. On 1 desktop, I open
> an rxvt session, su to root, then (try to) duplicate that shell using
> the following CLI commands:
> 
> [root at kabini1, /etc, 3:45:35pm] 325 % ( rxvt -sl 5000 -fn
> -*-lucidatypewriter-bold-r-normal-sans-17-*-100-100-*-100-*-* & ) 
> rxvt: No match. [root at kabini1, /etc, 3:45:42pm] 326 % which rxvt 
> /usr/local/bin/rxvt [root at kabini1, /etc, 3:45:49pm] 327 % (
> /usr/local/bin/rxvt -sl 5000 -fn
> -*-lucidatypewriter-bold-r-normal-sans-17-*-100-100-*-100-*-* & ) 
> /usr/local/bin/rxvt: No match. [root at kabini1, /etc, 3:53:56pm] 328 %
> 
> also tried:
> 
> [root at kabini1, /etc, 3:54:49pm] 329 % ( rxvt  & ) [root at kabini1,
> /etc, 3:55:21pm] 330 % No protocol specified rxvt: can't open display
> :0
> 
> [root at kabini1, /etc, 3:55:23pm] 330 %
> 
> This worked AOK under FC14, apropos of little, but doesn't work under
> FBSD 9.3 .... Any clues as to why not ? It save me a bunch of
> clicking the rxvt icon, clicking the maximize button on the new
> window, & su-ing to root (3 steps instead of 1, grrrrr ....) ....
> obviously not show stopping, but irritating .... Same problem as
> regular user .... Any clues appreciated ....

Sorry about the red-herring earlier, didn't understand what you were saying.
The su doesn't preserve the environment of the xterm process, which includes
the DISPLAY variable, so it doesn't know where to display.  The fontpath may
have a similar problem.  After doing the su, do whatever is the right thing 
in your shell to export the DISPLAY environment variable.
doing the su.  I'm basing this on the behavior I see using xterm, which
should be the same if I understand what rxvt does correctly.  You might try
testing by leaving off the font param.