thanks to bill broadley for helping out.
i figured out my problem (and upgraded my x server in the meantime! ;) )
a number of symblinks in my /usr/bin/ directory had relative pathes.
specifically, "/usr/X11" pointed to "../X11R6/bin"
Change the reference to be absolute ("/usr/X11R6/bin") and X came back up.
I determined this cuz gdm WAS loading, it's just X wasn't starting up.
I could get into X with "startx", but I'm used to the environment gdm throws
me into.
Shame on me for not checking for that last night when I was playing
partition magician ;)
-bill!
