,Xresources and ,Xdefaults ignored.
 

Below are my two files (.Xdefaults and .Xresources); when I open an xterm window, I get the desired results on two of my linux servers, but I get no effect on my third linux servers. It is as if these two files are not being read. Any ideas?

.Xdefaults:
!after editing .Xdefaults it may be reloaded with:
!xrdb -load ~/.Xdefaults

xterm*VT100*geometry: 94x28
xterm*font: -misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--20-200-75-75-c-100-iso8859-1
xterm*background: black
xterm*foreground: lightblue
xterm*loginShell: true
xterm*scrollBar: true
xterm*rightScrollBar: true
xterm*title: XTerm
xterm*iconName: XTerm
xterm*saveLines: 50000
xterm*jumpScroll: true
xterm*scrollTtyOutput: false
xterm*scrollKey: true
xterm*alwaysUseMods: true
xterm*metaSendsEscape: true
xterm*utf8Title: true


.Xresources:
Xft*antialias: true
Xft*autohint: true
XTerm*background: black
XTerm*foreground: white
XTerm*cursorColor: white
XTerm.vt100.geometry: 79x25
XTerm*scrollBar: true
XTerm*rightScrollBar: true
XTerm*saveLines: 10000
XTerm*faceName: BitStream Vera Sans Mono
XTerm*faceSize: 12
XTerm*toolBar: off

What are the environments on the three systems? Is the third system different in some way from the other two? How are you starting the xterms?

Q: Are you issuing:
after making changes? Or just the ~/.Xdefaults?

(I cannot say I've ever made adjustments using ".Xdefaults". Only via ".Xresources" in my login profile. For example, I just changed the Xterm cursor color in .Xresources , merged the changes, and a new xterm showed that the change had been recognized.

Normally, one could use "editres" to examine/modify the resources used by an X application but I notice that, sadly, at least on KDE, it doesn't seem to do anything any more unless you're running older X applications like xterm, xman, etc.. (Bummer) "editres" used to give you the information you'd need to tweak the resources---how else would you know about setting things like "xman.manualBrowser.vertPane.manualPage.manualFontBold: XMANFONTBOLD"? I do note, though, that only some settings I've tried to alter when running an xterm under KDE actually get changed. Perhaps if I were running twm instead of KDE...

(Yikes! I just noticed that my .Xresources file still has settings for Netscape in it.)

"-load" can have unwanted side effects; unless you are 100% sure what you're doing you should use "-merge".
See "man xrdb".

~/.Xdefaults should be read from disk by the application directly.

~/.Xresources should be merged into the Xserver RESOURCE properties by xrdb (usually invoked in the Xsession script)

Not all distros or applications get this right. Add in the fact that desktop environment startup-scripts might also run an "xrdb -load" (wiping out any existing contents of the Xserver's RESOURCE properties) and it all gets rather messy.

The answer is likely to depend on your distro, desktop-environment, and what if anything you have in your ~/.xsession file.

Some desktop or window-manager setups need you to manually add "xrdb -merge ~/.Xresources" to a script.