Try using Console app when this happens, and attempt to open another xterm and 
see if there's anything that appears in the Console app right then. Also try 
starting an xterm from another xterm or from a Terminal window, so that its 
standard output and standard error are directly visible. If your OS version has 
dtruss, try running an xterm as root under dtruss, redirecting to capture the 
trace messages; and inspect them for errors near the end.

Aside from just doing X11 things (that other X11 apps that are still working 
also do), xterm does two things that may have problems that occur to me off the 
top of my head:

* it needs to allocate a pseudo-terminal (pty) device controller/client pair 
(it uses the controller side and makes the client side visible to the shell or 
whatever, so that programs running in it think they're talking to a terminal 
device)

* it may need some privileged access to add itself to the utmp file or 
equivalent, so that "who" shows it as a logged-in terminal.

My instinct is that the first of those is the likeliest problem, but that's 
just a guess. In particular, on an old Snow Leopard VM, I don't see "who" 
showing xterm sessions, so it's apparently not doing that there (nor for that 
matter, on much newer Catalina)...but I think it does, or can be built to, on 
some platforms; there are enough variations on xterm floating around, and my 
memory isn't that incredible, to remember which does or can do what.

> On Nov 16, 2020, at 15:00, [email protected] wrote:
> 
> xterms do not open after a while

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