Q. I'm having some problems configuring XTerm under gnome. How can I make the font bigger?

A. There are several things that you can try

Method 1

Try creating an alias in ~/.bashrc

alias xtrem='xterm -fg white -bg black -fa "mono-10" '

Method 2

I find this one to be the easiest. Create a ~/bin/xterm script that will launch XTerm with the required settings:

mkdir ~/bin
vim ~/bin/xterm

Copy and paste this into ~/bin/xterm:

#!/bin/sh
/usr/bin/xterm -fg white -bg black -fa "mono-10" "$@" &

Make it executable:

chmod +x ~/bin/xterm

Note: Don't forget about the executable you created if you use a combination of methods, otherwise you won't see the changes.

Method 3

Use an .Xresources file:

XTerm*faceName: Mono
XTerm*faceSize: 10
XTerm*background: black
XTerm*foreground: white

if [ -f $HOME/.Xresources ]; then
xrdb -merge $HOME/.Xresources
fi

Note: keep in mind that you need to log off and log back on in order for this to work. If you don't want to do that, you can run xrdb -merge $HOME/.Xresources from the console.