newbie question: Gnome 2.6 upgrade

[Ian Bowers]

I finally came to my senses and got a copy of FreeBSD about a week ago.  I'm very compitent in window$ and DOS, and wanted to start in on something new.  I've been toying with BSD for a while and I'm getting to know my way around.  

I'm having trouble upgrading to gnome 2.6.  I had gnome 2.4 installed and running just fine.  I cvsup'd with the ports-supfile, and ran the gnome_upgrade.sh file.  It pondered the meaning of life until well after I left for work.  When I came home, I saw it was at the login prompt.  There were some messages that I assume have to deal with renewing DHCP leases with my cable modem, but I logged in as normal.  there was nothing indicating a troubled install.  

Since running cvsup and the upgrade, I can't run startx like I used to.  It used to run regardless of what directory I was in, and now I have to be in /usr/X11R6/bin to run it.  when I run it, I get the same message as usual that says it can't contact some host server and I ned to add a line into my /etc/hosts file.  I've always gotten that one, even when 2.4 was running perfectly smoothly.  a terminal window comes up right away after that message when gnome starts as it begins loading it's components at the splash screen.  it hangs on "window manager" but eventually gets to the desktop with the terminal window still open.  I can't run any applications at all.  it says that the indicated file is nowhere to be found.  I can run the files, epiphany for example, from the terminal window and they run just fine as far as I can tell.  

I'm sure there's some painfully obvious thing I haven't done, but I can't tell what it is.  I've followed the upgrade instructions to the letter, but apaprently I'm not cool enough to pull it off.  sorry for the longwindedness.