[CentOS] X won't start

William L. Maltby wrote:
> On Sun, 2009-04-19 at 12:25 -0500, Robert wrote:
>   
<snip>

>> <snip sig stuff>
>>     
>
> Again, I'm not really knowledgeable about this stuff.
>
> HTH
>   
First, thanks to both you and John Stanley and anyone else whose reply I 
lost.

Finally, after beating up on myself, I found an <empty>  
~/.Xclients-default file.  Not missing, but empty!
Copying the file from the newly created user fixed the problem.

        This is after the repair:
        [rj at mavis ~]$ ls -l  ~/.X*
        -rw------- 1 rj rj 222 Mar 19 11:52 /home/rj/.Xauthority
        -rwxr-xr-x 1 rj rj 189 Jun 20  2007 /home/rj/.Xclients
        -rwxr-xr-x 1 rj rj 189 Apr 19 13:09 /home/rj/.Xclients-default


I don't understand why .Xclients and .Xclients-default are the same 
length (or even why both are needed).

        [rj at mavis ~]$ cat .Xclients
        #! /bin/bash

        # Created by Red Hat Desktop Switcher

        if [ -e "$HOME/.Xclients-$HOSTNAME$DISPLAY" ]; then
            exec $HOME/.Xclients-$HOSTNAME$DISPLAY
        else
            exec $HOME/.Xclients-default
        fi
        [rj at mavis ~]$                            

and

        [rj at mavis ~]$ cat .Xclients-default
        #! /bin/bash
        # Created by Red Hat Desktop Switcher

        WM="startkde"
        WMPATH="/usr/bin /opt/bin /usr/local/bin /usr/X11R6/bin"

        for p in $WMPATH ; do
                [ -x $p/$WM ] && exec $p/$WM
        done

        exit 1
        [rj at mavis ~]$    


But startx sure grows disappointed in a hurry if the latter is empty.