*sigh*. I know it is lame to followup one's own email. It must be even more lame to followup one's own email that one has already deleted, thus breaking the threading mechanism of many mailers. Apologies.
Well, startx +xinerama would never work, because I am stupid. I did an upgrade to phase2v29. The problem persisted. Once I remembered that I am stupid, and typed "startx -- +xinerama", Xinerama works again. Which still makes me wonder what happened to the loading of Xinerama automatically that I have become so used to? Here is the bits of my XF86Config-4 file that might affect the situation: Section "ServerLayout" Identifier "Dual" Screen "Screen0" RightOf "Screen1" Screen "Screen1" InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer" InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard" Option "Xinerama" EndSection Section "ServerLayout" Identifier "Single" Screen "Screen0" InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer" InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard" EndSection The XF86Config(5) manpage suggests that the first one found is the one used -- has that changed? Thanks all -- ``Oh Lord; Ooh you are so big; So absolutely huge; Gosh we're all really impressed down here, I can tell you.''