Xpra: Ticket #1082: Unable to launch xterm while specifying color arguments

This seems fairly trivial, but I'm filing a ticket anyways since it could be indicative of a larger problem.

Attempting to launch an Xterm with color arguments xterm -bg black -cr white -fg white via --start-child="xterm -bg black -fg black -cr white", via the control interface, via dbus, or via the "run command" dialogue fails.

The control channel returns:

server returned error code 127
  failed to start new child command ('xterm -bg black -cr white -fg white',)

the dbus channel (via d-feet) returns:

'g-io-error-quark: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Python.xpra.server.control_command.ControlError: Traceback (most recent call last):\n  File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/site-packages/dbus/service.py", line 707, in _message_cb\n    retval = candidate_method(self, *args, **keywords)\n  File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/site-packages/xpra/server/dbus/dbus_server.py", line 122, in StartChild\n    self.server.do_control_command_start(False, ns(command))\n  File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/site-packages/xpra/server/server_base.py", line 1265, in do_control_command_start\n    raise ControlError("failed to start new child command %s" % str(args))\nControlError: failed to start new child command (\'xterm -bg black -cr white -fg white\',)\n (36)'

Attempting to add it as a start child prints the following error during startup:

2016-01-08 09:46:40,869 Error spawning child 'xterm -bg black -cr white -fg white': [Errno 2] No such file or directory

Using the "run command" dialogue prints the following error serverside:

2016-01-08 09:48:41,181 Error spawning child 'xterm -bg black -cr white -fg white': [Errno 2] No such file or directory

However, attempting to run just xterm via all the options works fine. Somehow adding color arguments to xterm fails, but only through Xpra. Launching an xterm with xterm works fine.


Both the server and the client are Fedora 23 trunk r11617.

The server is started with dbus-launch xpra start :13 --bind-tcp=0.0.0.0:2200 --start-new-commands=yes --start-child=xterm

And, the client is attached with xpra attach tcp:$IP:2200



Sat, 09 Jan 2016 06:40:25 GMT - Antoine Martin: owner changed

This should be fixed in r11618, will backport.

@maxmylyn: please close if this works for you.


Mon, 11 Jan 2016 17:29:36 GMT - J. Max Mena: status changed; resolution set

Confirmed fixed. Closing.


Sat, 23 Jan 2021 05:14:28 GMT - migration script:

this ticket has been moved to: https://github.com/Xpra-org/xpra/issues/1082