Xterm stalls on command line, XQuartz crashes and reboots repeatedly

Up until a couple days ago, I was using Gimp on OSX 10.7 normally with no issues. Then I installed Inkscape, but was unable to start it because of a language settings issue (the system is currently set to Japanese). I installed XQuartz to see if that made a difference, but it didn't, so I left it at that. Come time to do a bit of work with Gimp today, and it appears the same problems I faced with Inkscape made their way to Gimp as well (except this time it wasn't language-related). Here are the details:

Both X11 and XQuartz, when run normally, crash after briefly peeking up on the dock. A look at the Activity Monitor suggests XQuartz is trying its best behind the scenes to get started, as it is running but not visible, and starts up again as soon as I force-quit it.
When I run X11 and XQuartz from the terminal, X11 works, but gives me this:

X11.app: DISPLAY ("/tmp/launch-qlRWSF/org.macosforge.xquartz:0") does not match our id ("org.x"), unsetting. X11.app: main(): argc=1 argv[0] = ./X11.bin

Waiting for startup parameters via Mach IPC. X11.app: Could not connect to server (DISPLAY is not set). Starting X server. X11.app: Launching /usr/X11/bin/startx: argv[0] = /bin/sh argv[1] = -c
argv[2] = /usr/X11/bin/startx

font_cache: Scanning user font directories to generate X11 font caches font_cache: Updating FC cache xauth: file /Users/christopher/.serverauth.22530 does not exist launch_msg("CheckIn") IPC failure: Operation not permitted X11.app: No launchd socket handed off, unsetting DISPLAY X11.app: do_start_x11_server(): argc=6 argv[0] = /usr/X11/bin/X argv[1] = :0 argv[2] = -nolisten argv[3] = tcp argv[4] = -auth argv[5] = /Users/christopher/.serverauth.22530

Xquartz starting: X.Org X Server 1.10.6 Build Date: 20120513 X11.app: DarwinProcessFDAdditionQueue_thread: Sleeping to allow xinitrc to catchup. (EE) Error loading keymap /tmp/server-0.xkm (EE) XKB: Failed to load keymap. Loading default keymap instead. /usr/X11/bin/xinit: XFree86_VT property unexpectedly has 0 items instead of 1 font_cache: Done

However, XQuartz starts without a problem from the terminal.

Finally, I found that when I call xterm from terminal, it just sits there without outputting anything or receiving any input. I think that's unusual behavior.

I checked out a couple key words from the X11 output, namely the display part and the keymap part, but found nothing out of the ordinary. The $DISPLAY value is as it should be, and the keymap seemed more connected to remote server issues than would apply in my case (these are local issues).

I appreciate any suggestions.

Solution

Ok, I was just being creatively stupid. I have been experimenting more with terminal lately, and as a result, put

exec $SHELL

in my .bash_profile. Removing that line solved my problem.

It didn't affect anything for the longest time, so I never caught it. Apparently that also affects the X11 processes.