== Another building block of my environment: _rxterm_

Like many sysadmins using Unix workstations, I spend a lot of time
running _xterm_s. Given that most of the time the remote X program I
start with [[my _rxexec_ script ToolsRxexec]] is an _xterm_, it's
no surprise that I wrote another script to automate all of the magic
involved, called _rxterm_.

Rxterm's basic job is to start an _xterm_ on a remote system with all of
the right options set for it; for instance, so that the _xterm_ title
and icon title have the name of the system that _xterm_ is logging on.
Like _rxexec_, _rxterm_ has a number of options that are now vestigial
and unused (but still complicate the code).

(Some people set the terminal window title in their prompt. I don't
like that approach for various reasons.)

If this was all that _rxterm_ did, it would be a very short script.
However it has an additional option that complicates its life a lot:
'_rxterm -r <host>_' starts an _xterm_ that is _su_'ing to root with
my entire environment set up in advance (because you cannot combine
xterm's _-ls_ and _-e_ arguments). Such _xterm_s also get a special
title and are red instead of my usual _xterm_ colours.

Setting up my environment is fairly complex, because the things I need
to do in the process of _su_'ing to root vary quite a lot from system to
system. On some of them I can just go straight to _su_, but on others I
need to run a cascade of scripts to get everything right. Rxterm has all
of the knowledge of which system needs what approach, so I don't have to
care. (Every now and then I need to tell it another exception.)

(In hindsight _rxterm_'s approach to this problem is the wrong one,
but that's something for another entry.)

Every so often I consider giving _rxterm_ an option so that it will
start a remote _gnome-terminal_ instead of _xterm_. So far I keep not
doing this because _gnome-terminal_'s command line options are so
different and the code isn't designed to cope with that, but by this
point _rxterm_ has so many historical remnants that I should probably
rewrite it from scratch anyways.

(My short shameful confession here is that I had forgotten most of
_rxterm_'s arguments until I actually looked at the shell script in the
process of writing this entry. Many probably don't work any more, and
one actually has the comment 'Doesn't work any more? I lack the time to
debug'.)