In this case, the child rxvt is receiving a SIGHUP - the result of a WM_CLOSE on the parent.
Any SIGHUP received by rxvt results in an exit, explicitly defined in src/main.c. To change this would be relatively simple, specifying SIG_DFL for SIGHUP instead. This would also bring it in line with xterm/rxvt-unicode behavior for SIGHUPs This is a 7 year old bug, I'd love to close it either way, so I'll see if anyone cares about this enough to comment. If not, I'll assume working as designed is appropriate. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org