I've just run into this too, after trying to hook the Solarized colour scheme Xresources <https://github.com/altercation/solarized/blob/master /xresources-colors-solarized/Xresources> into my ~/.Xresources file. Because the file isn't being processed by the C preprocessor any more the preprocessor symbols don't get expanded and, in my case, urxvt (rxvt-unicode) substitutes bright pink for the colours it can't make sense of.
It's a bit misleading, because a first look around would suggest that the resources are loaded by /etc/X11/Xsession.d/30x11-common_xresources and there the -nocpp option isn't used. It's only when you dig a bit deeper that you spot the the resources are actually loaded in /etc/gdm/Xsession with the -nocpp option. Further, where /etc/gdm/Xsession does run through the scripts in /etc/X11/Xsession.d, it doesn't set up the environment completely. The fix to bug #398300 added some of the required environment variables (around lines 290 to 294) but didn't finish the job by setting up everything that /etc/X11/Xsession would do. The workaround that I posted in bug #398300 still works for this bug: Create a ~/.xprofile that contains the following: SYSRESOURCES=/etc/X11/Xresources USRRESOURCES=$HOME/.Xresources and the 30x11-common_xresources script should work as intended. It seems a bit redundant as it duplicates behaviour from the /etc/gdm/Xsession script - xrdb is being run more times than really is necessary. But it works for me. Of course, I don't expect this to get fixed. The next release will replace gdm with LightDM so we'll have a new session setup script to debug. ** Changed in: gdm (Ubuntu) Status: New => Confirmed -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/785521 Title: In 11.04 ~/.Xresources fails to load correctly after login from gdm -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs