FYI, this is fixed. I ran 'strace startx > startx.strace.out 2>&1' and this showed; /usr/bin/X: symbol lookup error: /usr/lib64/xorg/modules/drivers/fglrx_drv.so: undefined symbol: GlxInitVisuals2D
Which means that i forget to eselect opengl set 1, though it wasn't logged to Xorg.0.log (so it was logged to STDOUT, but i couldn't see that as the screen was blank). Then after fixing that; which: no keychain in (/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/opt/bin:/usr/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu/gcc-bin/4.5.3) /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc: line 63: exec: xterm: not found /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc: line 61: xterm: command not found xinit: connection to X server lost So i emerged keychain and xterm and it now works. Of course i didn't need xterm as i'm running gnome, so i could have just kicked that off instead.
