*** Bug 204447 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Fedora Core 5 and Fedora Core 6 are, as we're sure you've noticed, no longer
test releases. We're cleaning up the bug database and making sure important bug
reports filed against these test releases don't get lost. It would be helpful if
you could test this issue with a released version of Fedora or with the latest
development / test release. Thanks for your help and for your patience.

[This is a bulk message for all open FC5/FC6 test release bugs. I'm adding
myself to the CC list for each bug, so I'll see any comments you make after this
and do my best to make sure every issue gets proper attention.]

Yes this is still the case on FC6

Thank you.

Based on the date this bug was created, it appears to have been reported
against rawhide during the development of a Fedora release that is no
longer maintained. In order to refocus our efforts as a project we are
flagging all of the open bugs for releases which are no longer
maintained. If this bug remains in NEEDINFO thirty (30) days from now,
we will automatically close it.

If you can reproduce this bug in a maintained Fedora version (7, 8, or
rawhide), please change this bug to the respective version and change
the status to ASSIGNED. (If you're unable to change the bug's version
or status, add a comment to the bug and someone will change it for you.)

Thanks for your help, and we apologize again that we haven't handled
these issues to this point.

The process we're following is outlined here:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/F9CleanUp

We will be following the process here:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/HouseKeeping to ensure this
doesn't happen again.

This is still the case in F8

Was this fixed in rawhide? I see the bug was recently moved from rawhide to f8?

This is the code which should do the job:

XCLIENTS_D=/etc/X11/xinit/Xclients.d
if [ -d "$XCLIENTS_D" -a "$#" -eq 1 -a -x "$XCLIENTS_D/Xclients.$1.sh" ]; then
    exec -l $SHELL -c "$SSH_AGENT $XCLIENTS_D/Xclients.$1.sh"
else

I don't see anything bad here. I am not sure however, how this script is
supposed to be run.

Indeed, the above code is present in /etc/X11/xinit/Xsession but is missing from
/etc/X11/xinit/Xclients thus preventing /usr/bin/startx of working properly.

This message is a reminder that Fedora 8 is nearing its end of life.
Approximately 30 (thirty) days from now Fedora will stop maintaining
and issuing updates for Fedora 8.  It is Fedora's policy to close all
bug reports from releases that are no longer maintained.  At that time
this bug will be closed as WONTFIX if it remains open with a Fedora 
'version' of '8'.

Package Maintainer: If you wish for this bug to remain open because you
plan to fix it in a currently maintained version, simply change the 'version' 
to a later Fedora version prior to Fedora 8's end of life.

Bug Reporter: Thank you for reporting this issue and we are sorry that 
we may not be able to fix it before Fedora 8 is end of life.  If you 
would still like to see this bug fixed and are able to reproduce it 
against a later version of Fedora please change the 'version' of this 
bug to the applicable version.  If you are unable to change the version, 
please add a comment here and someone will do it for you.

Although we aim to fix as many bugs as possible during every release's 
lifetime, sometimes those efforts are overtaken by events.  Often a 
more recent Fedora release includes newer upstream software that fixes 
bugs or makes them obsolete.

The process we are following is described here: 
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/HouseKeeping

This bug is still present in F9

Actually, this true even about current Rawhide. There is

# otherwise, take default action
if [ -x "$HOME/.xsession" ]; then
    exec -l $SHELL -c "$CK_XINIT_SESSION $SSH_AGENT $HOME/.xsession"
elif [ -x "$HOME/.Xclients" ]; then
    exec -l $SHELL -c "$CK_XINIT_SESSION $SSH_AGENT $HOME/.Xclients"
elif [ -x /etc/X11/xinit/Xclients ]; then
    exec -l $SHELL -c "$CK_XINIT_SESSION $SSH_AGENT /etc/X11/xinit/Xclients"
else
    # should never get here; failsafe fallback
    exec -l $SHELL -c "xsm"
fi

in /etc/X11/xinit/Xsession, but nothing comparable in Xclients

*** Bug 500221 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*** Bug 474861 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

xorg-x11-xinit-1.0.9-9.fc11 has been submitted as an update for Fedora 11.
http://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/xorg-x11-xinit-1.0.9-9.fc11

This bug appears to have been reported against 'rawhide' during the Fedora 11 development cycle.
Changing version to '11'.

More information and reason for this action is here:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/HouseKeeping

xorg-x11-xinit-1.0.9-9.fc11 has been pushed to the Fedora 11 testing repository.  If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.
 If you want to test the update, you can install it with 
 su -c 'yum --enablerepo=updates-testing update xorg-x11-xinit'.  You can provide feedback for this update here: http://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/F11/FEDORA-2009-6320

xorg-x11-xinit-1.0.9-9.fc11 has been pushed to the Fedora 11 stable repository.  If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.

This is still broken. Xclients runs Xclients.$1.sh from its .d drop dir but nothing provides that $1 argument. /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc has a line that runs Xclients but doesn't provide any argument to it and thus nothing gets executed from that dir.

I have struggled to get this going too. I finally found a clean and working solution, which I though to post to this ancient bug. I wanted to start mate-session. The solution was to edit, to contain this one line

/etc/sysconfig/desktop
PREFERRED=/bin/mate-session

The above was tested on RHEL7