Background: This a redhat 7.3 about 8 years old and has run forever.
The problem started a month ago when I was downloading an old time radio broad cast and it failed. I got 990 + error messages and I had to reboot the system.
When I rebooted everything worked as root. startx would not work as a user. Gave a permissions error message. Changed the permisions on X and now startx runs and I get a desk top and everthing works except when I start a terminal window - xterm it tries to load and quits - no error message. I think its still a permission problem but no error messge!
Anyone got any sugestions.

Thanks

Not a typical problem. Did you try any other terminal application, just to make sure that it is not caused directly by xterm. The problem really is that you need a terminal to have any error messages displayed - quite a problem if the terminal itself crashes. KDE's konsole was already around in the days of RH 7.3, if I remember correctly.

I suppose you still have the RH 7.3 disks somewhere - reinstalling X completely could be the best solution, otherwise you will have to keep fixing the system constantly.

Arch Linux