I suggest moving aside all of your shell init scripts (~/.bash_profile et al)
and seeing if that helps.
Note the privileged startx job is necessary for setting up correct permissions
on the paths in /tmp and caching fonts.
Sent from my iPhone...
> On Feb 16, 2024, at 13:50, René J.V. Bertin <r...@vivaldi.net> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> It seems I've gotten myself into some real trouble, and the problem is I have
> no idea how/why. Hence the cross-posting...
>
> I can no longer launch the X11 environment in which I did almost all my work
> and that's crucial for displaying remote applications.
>
> The original XQuartz environment has been crashing for me for years now so
> I've been running the MacPorts xorg-server-devel port (1.20.10) in a build of
> my own that enables some additional features such as xephyr.
>
> Yesterday my session started to become instable (nothing to do with X11)
> after about 65 days of uptime so I quit everything, logged off and rebooted.
> That's when the problems started, but I think I did something I shouldn't
> have done before that.
>
> The X11 application shell launches, but the actual X server doesn't, at least
> not in my own account.
>
> After a good while waiting I'm getting this message in the system.log:
>
> Feb 16 21:43:36 Portia.local org.macosforge.xquartz.X11.stub[2110]:
> launch_msg("CheckIn") IPC failure: Operation not permitted
>
>
>
> Googling served up someone who got this after setting the PATH in the
> launchctl environment (~/.MacOSX/environment.plist) and that removing that
> and rebooting help him.
> It doesn't for me (I tried both removing the PATH specification and restoring
> the plist from before, rebooting both times).
>
> Starting from the commandline gives
> ```
> # /opt/local/bin/startx -- /opt/local/bin/Xquartz
> font_cache: Scanning user font directories to generate X11 font caches
>
> privileged_startx: bootstrap_look_up(org.macports.privileged_startx): Unknown
> service name
> font_cache: Updating FC cache
>
> font_cache: Done
>
> expr: syntax error
>
> expr: syntax error
>
> expr: syntax error
>
> xauth: file /Users/bertin/.serverauth.1969 does not exist
>
>
> xauth: timeout in locking authority file /Users/bertin/.Xauthority
>
>
> No protocol specified
>
>
> waiting for X server to begin accepting connections .
> No protocol specified
>
> ..
> ```
>
> The "No protocol specified" and ".." lines start about when the X11
> application opens and are repeated indefinitely until I quit that
> application. The message about org.macports.privileged_startx is normal: I
> moved that plist to LaunchDaemons-disabled long ago for reasons I cannot
> remember but it was clearly not crucial.
> I also moved the org.*.startx.plist files to LaunchAgents-disabled because I
> don't need on-demand starting of the X11 server and prefer to have a "normal"
> DISPLAY variable of the ":0" style .
>
> My .xinitrc generates output, and that isn't being generated anymore. Moving
> the entire file aside or removing the plist in ~/Library/Preferences don't
> solve anything either.
>
> Curiously, when I log in to my fallback admin account the X11 server still
> starts as it should: without long delays or any other issue. It's of course
> not set up properly but things seem to work normally otherwise.
>
> Any idea how to triage this problem, or any suggestions what I could try to
> unblock this?
>
> FWIW, I'm still running 10.9.5 .
>
> Thanks a LOT in advance!
>
> René
