Selected X11 Apps Suddenly Stopped Working

[John Hein]

Tim Daneliuk wrote at 23:21 -0600 on Jan 29, 2009:
 > In the past week or so, I've ripped xfce4 out of a server and replaced
 > it with blackbox.  I also did some portupgrades ... and then the fun
 > began.  Certain X apps - GNU emacs and wireshark notably - no longer
 > work.  In both cases, I start the program from an xterm, and the
 > screen just sits there.  This is true whether I install from ports
 > or the most recent packages tree.  emacs will start with the -nw
 > option.
 > 
 > I went back and ripped all of X out of the system, and reinstalled
 > it from the metaport in the current packages tree.  This did not
 > help - same problem.
 > 
 > This is a FBSD6.4-STABLE system as of 1-19-2009 running on an Intel
 > mobo with a 3GHz Pentium-D.  
 > 
 > Ideas as to what's going on or how to debug this would be appreciated.
 > I'm guessing it's some library incompatibility/missing but I haven't
 > a clue where to being looking ...

ktrace should tell you where the app is getting stuck.