Re: still can't get X going on 9.2

[Mouse <mouse%Rodents-Montreal.ORG@localhost>]

> If I just run:

> %X :0

> I get the X background and cursor, but no xterm.

That's exactly what you should get in that circumstance.  You haven't
started any clients, so there are no clients.

xinit, when operating normally, starts clients after the server is up.
If you are running things manually, you will have to start any clients
you want yourself.

Personally, I'd suggest coming over ssh twice from another machine.
First session, start the X server; second session, start a client, with
a suitable DISPLAY in the environment (probably DISPLAY=:0).  xterm is
a reasonable choice.  Errors, if any, may or may not show up anywhere
in particular, but the second session seems to me like the most likely
place to see them.

If you're concerned about your .xinitrc, then tell xinit to what start
instead.  You may need to change the paths, but aside from that this
would probably be something like

xinit /usr/X11R7/bin/xterm -- /usr/X11R7/bin/X

(I have a fuzzy memory that xinit wants full paths on its pathname
arguments, but that memory could be confused.  Personally, I'd put a
path on xinit itself, too, but that's because I usually don't have
/usr/X11R7/bin in my path.)

If you really can't see anything, then I'd suggest using ktrace on
either just the xterm run (when, eg, coming in over ssh) or, if the
issue arises only with xinit, on the shell (ktrace -i -d -p $SHELLPID,
loosely put) that runs xinit.  But do the ktrace as root - this is
port-amd64, and, while I have a fuzzy memory that this may have changed
recently, some parts of X on i386 and amd64 (and others?) have
historically needed privilege and thus can't usefully be ktraced except
by root.

The resulting trace is likely to be voluminous.  But if you kdump each
process into its own file and look at the one for xterm, you may be
able to see an unexpected error.

Just remember to use your root shell to ktrace -C after the test run,
or everything that shell does will get appended to the trace.

If you see failures with both X and xterm run manually, you may be able
to see something useful by running just xterm under ktrace.

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