I have installed the 4.0.1 rpm's from rawhide. When I did startx or xinit the X initialization just hanged. It keeps saying "waiting for X server....." and never comes up. I recompiled from rpm source and had the same problem. I noticed that XFree86 itself was working and the problem was Xwrapper. I removed the ling X --> Xwrapper and replaced it with X --> XFree86 and startx and xinit now works. Please let me know how I can fix Xwrapper compilation to correct the problem.
Do you have the latest PAM installed?
I was using pam-0.72-20 BUT I just upgraded XFree86 to the versions on 6.9.5 beta (-0.37) and pam-0.72-23 and I have the same problem with the same solution. If I try to play with pam.d/xserver file I do get an error message if there is anything wrong (I intentionally put something wrong), so this is being read it seems like.
What do the permissions on: /usr/X11R6/bin/Xwrapper /tmp/.X11-unix look like?
-rws--x--x 1 root root 6024 Jul 25 01:19 /usr/X11R6/bin/Xwrapper* drwxrwxrwt 2 root root 1024 Aug 2 14:31 .X11-unix/ srwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Aug 2 14:31 X0=
By the way before I upgraded X to 4.0.1 I had the latest 4.0 version from rawhide working i.e. everything else upgraded 4.0 was working correctly!
One more.....I had posted this to the news group and at least one more person is reporting the same problem with same solution!
OK.....I think I understand what is going on: When invoked Xwrapper executes /etc/X11/X which is a link to /usr/X11R6/bin/X. BUT in /usr/X11R6/bin X is a link to Xwrapper!!! So, Xwrapper calls Xwrapper and on and on. If you called X it is the same story since X is linked to Xwrapper which then executes /etc/X11/X which is Xwrapper!!!! The proper way to handle this is to make X a link to XFree86 and replace all calls to X by calls to Xwrapper, for example /etc/X11/xdm/xservers file. This is working for me. I presume xinit (called by startx) calls Xwrapper. Or make Xwrapper call directly /usr/X11R6/bin/XFree86. Let me know if this is correct.
How did /etc/X11/X get to be a symlink to /usr/X11R6/bin/X? That is broken, as you've noticed. Both Xconfigurator and the installer should be making those links correctly. If you can reproduce this on the current rawhide *after* running Xconfigurator, please re-open.