I finally got a successful workaround for this problem.

I was facing this problem probably since emacs 24.3 and also on 24.4 and the master head builds from emacs git for version 25.0.50.0.

I was getting "*ERROR*: Invalid face: linum" when trying to start emacs with "emacsclient -a '' -c" with my init.el having "(require 'nlinum)".

Workaround:

(if (daemonp)

(add-hook 'window-setup-hook

(lambda ()

(message ">> Daemon mode")

;; It is mandatory to load linum AFTER the frames are set up

;; Else, I get "*ERROR*: Invalid face: linum"

(require 'nlinum)))

(progn

(message ">> Non daemon mode")

(require 'nlinum)))