I want to run a script that changes the size of the window from which it's been started. Turns out that if I start up a putty windowo to a remove linux box, I can simply issue the command 'resize -s row col' and it will in fact do the resize. If I'm physically running on the local linux system's terminal, I can bring up an xterm and issue the resize command from it and it too will resize the window. However, if I simply bring up a gnome terminal from the system pull-down, the resize fails claiming it "can't get rows and columns" and I fear there may be a whole variety of situations in which resize won't work.

So the simple question is, is there a reliable way to do this or am I out of luck?

-mark

As per the caveats in the resize manual page, it seems you are pretty much out of luck.