[gentoo-user] Purged gnome, lost X. :-(

[Alan Mackenzie]

Hi, Gentoo.

I finally got round to emerging my post-gnome system, triggered by the
stabilisation of gnome-3, and the consequent shift to systemd, and what
not.  I last synched my /usr/portage 34 days ago.  I had been putting
this change off, it turns out, with good reason.

Now when I attempt to start xfce (which I'd been using fine for a long
time) with "startx", it appears at first to be OK: the desktop is
displayed on the screen and the mouse works.  However, after a few
seconds of waiting, X crashes out, returning to the tty.  On a second
attempt to start X (without rebooting), it doesn't get as far as
displaying the desktop - it just crashes.

To eradicate gnome, I changed my profile from
default/linux/amd64/13.0/desktop/gnome to
default/linux/amd64/13.0/desktop, and removed the gnome USE flag from my
/etc/make.conf (and maybe one or two other things I can't remember).  My
box then spend 6 hours rebuilding software.

On the screen of the tty, after X crashes, appear the following error
messages which might be relevant:

    xfce4-session: GNOME compatibility is enabled and gnome-keyring-daemon is found on the system. Skipping gpg/ssh-agent startup.
    env: kdeinit4: No such file or directory
    Cannot find '.setLaunchEnv' in object /KLauncher at org.kde.klauncher

    (xfce4-session:3112): GLib-WARNING **: GChildWatchSource: Exit status of a
    child process was requested but ECHILD was received by waitpid(). Most likely
    the process is ignoring SIGCHLD, or some other thread is invoking waitpid()
    with a     nonpositive first argument; either behavior can break applications
    that use g_child_watch_add()/g_spawn_sync() either directly or indirectly.
    xfce4-panel: Restarting...

    (xfwm4:3125): libxfce4ui-WARNING **: ICE I/O Error

    (xfwm4:3125): libxfce4ui-WARNING **: Disconnected from session manager.

    (xfsettingsd:3136): libxfce4ui-WARNING **: ICE I/O Error

    (xfsettingsd:3136): libxfce4ui-WARNING **: Disconnected from session manager.
    /etc/xdg/xfce4/xinitrc: line 107:  3112 Segmentation fault      xfce4-session
    xinit: connection to X server lost

I've also got /var/log/Xorg.0.log.  The most high information lines in it
appear to be these:

    [  4364.118] (**) evdev: AT Translated Set 2 keyboard: Device: "/dev/input/event3"
    [  4364.118] (WW) evdev: AT Translated Set 2 keyboard: device file is duplicate. Ignoring.
    [  4364.124] (EE) PreInit returned 8 for "AT Translated Set 2 keyboard"
    [  4364.124] (II) UnloadModule: "evdev" 

I've attached /var/log/Xorg.0.log.

Would somebody please help me get this problem sorted out.  Thanks in advance!

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).