On 17:39 2012-01-31 -0500, Dan Nicolaescu wrote:
> Could you say what terminal emulator you are using and what the value of
> $TERM is?

TERM is rxvt-unicode-256color

> In rxvt COLORFGBG can be used to determine the fg and bg color used by
> the terminal.  Emacs can use that to set the `background-mode', and
> all the faces are defined based on `background-mode'.

COLORFGBG is 15;0

> It might be interesting to evaluate this:
> 
> M-: (frame-parameter (selected-frame) 'background-mode)) RET

It prints 'dark' for both.

Another note: frames started for emacsclient aren't affected by this.