emacs --daemon and X faces becoming "unspecified"

[Jonathan Rockway]

Hi all,

I've recently started using emacs --daemon + emacsclient -c as my
primary means of interacting with emacs.  Generally, it works great, but
I have noticed that I can no longer set the default face via custom.

In my custom-set-faces section, I have a line that looks like:

'(default ((default (:stipple nil :background "black" :foreground
"gray90" :inverse-video nil :box nil :strike-through nil :overline nil
:underline nil :slant normal :weight normal :height 72 :width normal
:foundry "bitstream" :family "Bitstream Vera Sans Mono")) (nil nil)))

The key is that "background" is black.  I do indeed get a black
background, but if I view the default face in custom, custom thinks the
background is "unspecified-bg".  If I change this to something else and
set or save the custom face, emacs goes into an infinite loop.  (I can
provide more details about this; C-g doesn't kill it, though.)

Everything else generally works OK, except occasionally I get
messages like ``Unable to load color "unspecified-bg" [6 times]'' in
*Messages*.  This doesn't seem to be causing any malfunction, though.

Finally, if I just run "emacs" normally (not emacsclient -c), everything
works fine.  The color is "black" in customize, I don't get warning
messages, and I can change the color and set/save.

Anyway, any pointers on where to look for the cause of this would be
appreciated.  It doesn't seem to be a very critical problem, but it
would be nice to understand what's causing it.

Regards,
Jonathan Rockway

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