I can get startx to work by one of two methods (neither probably ideal) (on cygwin-64 in case that matters):
1) install everything in X11 at which point this (with only xinit, xorg-server and xterm selected): $ startx xauth: file /home/Owner/.Xauthority does not exist xauth: file /home/Owner/.Xauthority does not exist Welcome to the XWin X Server Vendor: The Cygwin/X Project Release: 1.17.4.0 OS: CYGWIN_NT-6.1 Owner-PC 2.3.1(0.291/5/3) 2015-11-14 12:44 x86_64 OS: Windows 7 Service Pack 1 [Windows NT 6.1 build 7601] (Win64) Package: version 1.17.4-1 built 2015-10-29 XWin was started with the following command line: /usr/bin/X :0 -auth /home/Owner/.serverauth.2004 (II) xorg.conf is not supported (II) See http://x.cygwin.com/docs/faq/cygwin-x-faq.html for more information LoadPreferences: /home/Owner/.XWinrc not found LoadPreferences: Loading /etc/X11/system.XWinrc LoadPreferences: Done parsing the configuration file... winDetectSupportedEngines - DirectDraw4 installed, allowing ShadowDDNL winDetectSupportedEngines - Returning, supported engines 00000005 winSetEngine - Using Shadow DirectDraw NonLocking winScreenInit - Using Windows display depth of 32 bits per pixel winWindowProc - WM_SIZE - new client area w: 1904 h: 1002 winFinishScreenInitFB - Masks: 00ff0000 0000ff00 000000ff MIT-SHM extension disabled due to lack of kernel support XFree86-Bigfont extension local-client optimization disabled due to lack of shared memory support in the kernel (EE) AIGLX: No native OpenGL in modes with a root window (II) AIGLX: enabled GLX_MESA_copy_sub_buffer (II) AIGLX: enabled GLX_EXT_texture_from_pixmap (II) AIGLX: Loaded and initialized swrast (II) GLX: Initialized DRISWRAST GL provider for screen 0 winPointerWarpCursor - Discarding first warp: 952 501 (--) 5 mouse buttons found (--) Setting autorepeat to delay=500, rate=31 (--) Windows keyboard layout: "00000409" (00000409) "US", type 7 (--) Found matching XKB configuration "English (USA)" (--) Model = "pc105" Layout = "us" Variant = "none" Options = "none" Rules = "base" Model = "pc105" Layout = "us" Variant = "none" Options = "none" winProcEstablishConnection - winInitClipboard returned. winClipboardThreadProc - DISPLAY=:0.0 OS maintains clipboard viewer chain: yes winClipboardProc - XOpenDisplay () returned and successfully opened the display. xinit: connection to X server lost waiting for X server to shut down winClipboardProc - winClipboardFlushWindowsMessageQueue trapped WM_QUIT message, exiting main loop. winClipboardProc - XDestroyWindow succeeded. winDeinitMultiWindowWM - Noting shutdown in progress (II) Server terminated successfully (0). Closing log file. Owner@Owner-PC ~ $ /usr/bin/xterm: Xt error: Can't open display: :0 which opens a full screen window for a few seconds and then returns to the command prompt closing X. After loading everything it turns in to this: XWin was started with the following command line: /usr/bin/X :0 -auth /home/Owner/.serverauth.5296 (II) xorg.conf is not supported (II) See http://x.cygwin.com/docs/faq/cygwin-x-faq.html for more information LoadPreferences: /home/Owner/.XWinrc not found LoadPreferences: Loading /etc/X11/system.XWinrc LoadPreferences: Done parsing the configuration file... winDetectSupportedEngines - DirectDraw4 installed, allowing ShadowDDNL winDetectSupportedEngines - Returning, supported engines 00000005 winSetEngine - Using Shadow DirectDraw NonLocking winScreenInit - Using Windows display depth of 32 bits per pixel winWindowProc - WM_SIZE - new client area w: 1904 h: 1002 winFinishScreenInitFB - Masks: 00ff0000 0000ff00 000000ff MIT-SHM extension disabled due to lack of kernel support XFree86-Bigfont extension local-client optimization disabled due to lack of shared memory support in the kernel (EE) AIGLX: No native OpenGL in modes with a root window (II) AIGLX: enabled GLX_MESA_copy_sub_buffer (II) AIGLX: enabled GLX_EXT_texture_from_pixmap (II) AIGLX: Loaded and initialized swrast (II) GLX: Initialized DRISWRAST GL provider for screen 0 winPointerWarpCursor - Discarding first warp: 952 501 (--) 5 mouse buttons found (--) Setting autorepeat to delay=500, rate=31 (--) Windows keyboard layout: "00000409" (00000409) "US", type 7 (--) Found matching XKB configuration "English (USA)" (--) Model = "pc105" Layout = "us" Variant = "none" Options = "none" Rules = "base" Model = "pc105" Layout = "us" Variant = "none" Options = "none" winProcEstablishConnection - winInitClipboard returned. winClipboardThreadProc - DISPLAY=:0.0 OS maintains clipboard viewer chain: yes winClipboardProc - XOpenDisplay () returned and successfully opened the display. xinit: connection to X server lost waiting for X server to shut down winClipboardProc - winClipboardFlushWindowsMessageQueue trapped WM_QUIT message, exiting main loop. winClipboardProc - XDestroyWindow succeeded. winDeinitMultiWindowWM - Noting shutdown in progress (II) Server terminated successfully (0). Closing log file. Which results in the expected X windows system til I exited. or 2) install everything in Xfce in which case startx starts the xfce4 desktop. Since I'm happy with xfce4, thats my solution. However it appears to me that there is a dependency missing in xorg-server as it doesn't appear to load enough to make X actually work. From the error messages it looks to to be in winClipboardProc since that seems to be where the error occurs, but I have no idea where winClipboardProc is in the mass of packages in X11. Peter Van Epp -- Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/ Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple
