I did some more testing.

I cannot set the 24-bit colors working on xterm directly.

But I sort of got it working in xterm via tmux configured for 24-bit
colors[1] after setting TERM to "xterm-24bits" (but it didn't work at all
when setting to "xterm-24bit" -- bit vs bits).

It's "sort of" because emacsclient -nw starts off with 24-bit colors, but
then after scrolling, I see color artifacts. This gifv shows that:

http://i.imgur.com/YW8MZat.gifv

[1]: https://sunaku.github.io/tmux-24bit-color.html

On Sun, Feb 19, 2017 at 1:22 AM Tino Calancha <tino.calancha@gmail.com>
wrote:

>
>
> On Sun, 19 Feb 2017, Kaushal Modi wrote:
>
> > OK, that was uxterm.
> > But then I opened up xterm, set the env vars correctly.
> >
> > Things were better (not black and white), but it was still only 256
> colors, not 24bit:
> Mine shows clear distinction on 'floralwhite' and 'oldlace' colors;  in
> your picture they looks pretty the same.
>
> I assume you already have done a full bootstrap just in case.
>

I did not do a full bootstrap. But it still seems to work in uxterm in tmux
configured for 24-bits.
But it doesn't work directly in an xterm terminal.

What debug information can I provide from the direct xterm session or
xterm+tmux session?

Thanks.
-- 

Kaushal Modi