Re: update cygwin and now X wont start!

["Gustavo Seabra" <gustavo dot seabra at gmail dot com>]

On 11/2/06, Rafael Tapia <hiowatha@hotmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Everyone,
>     Today I decided to update my cygwin (probably had not done it in about 3
> months) but now it just crashes on me when I try to start X.  I did check
> out mailing list archives and google but no dice.  I can't seem to get it to
> work again.
>
> I am trying to run this on WinXP SP2,on an IBM ThinkPad.  Again I want to
> make it clear that it was working this morning.  I did not change any
> network/firewall settings.  I do have a firewall up but it was working fine
> before the update.
>
> Here is the message I am getting:
> [[ snip ]]

Hi Rafael

I had exactly the same error.

In my case, it had exactly *nothing* to do with firewall, or Windows problems.

It happened because I **used** X in the administrator account. (I work
on a limited-rights user account, and use the adm account only for
install/updates) When launch X as adm, the administrator takes
ownership of the /tmp/.X11-unix/ directory, which I believe X needs to
access to run.

The solution was just to login as adm and change the ownership:

adm$ cd /tmp
adm$ chown __your_user_name__ .X11-unix

After that, X works well *for that user*, as long as you don't try to
use X as adm again.

(BTW, this is an old issue with Cygwin/X. As a rule of thumb, one
should avoid running it as administrator, unless that's how you want
to keep using it... Unfortunately, Cygwin/X does not have a mainteiner
now, so we don't know how long this "unducumented feature" will still
be around.)

HTH,

Gustavo.

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