Okay. It was something to do with my ~/.xboardrc file. I move it to a different name, and then xboard ran fine and created a new .xboardrc file.

Thank you all for your time. It was probably something I did myself late at night and forgot I did it.

When I try to use the xboard program, which is included with the gnuchess package, I get a blank window which just hangs. It will not close normally and has to be forced to close.
Now, this is strange especially because this is a slackware package. It was included in the initial install of my ...