X still doesn't
start because of the "unable to get status of mouse fd" error. Some research
on the archives led me to suspect that was related to gpm, something I'm not
that familiar with. Based on what I read I don't need gpm since I use X and
so I killed gpm. But still the errors continued.
At this point the only clue I have as to how to proceed is in regard to the
mouse. I've fiddled with its settings in /dev, trying various links since
I no longer remember what it was when it worked. At one point after I'd
linked /dev/mouse to /tty0 I think, X no longer gave me the errors. But at
the same time it immediately shut down, i.e. it ran through all the startup
messages then said it was shutting down.