Gnome 3 child process inheritance problems

[mcforum]

Starting an alternate session with ctrl-alt f2 and starting up the gui.  
Using 
startx -- :1
for alternate session.
Top level stuff launched from the menus works but starting programs from a 
terminal session fails.
There are multiple lines
 No protocol specified
ending with
Display localhost:0.0 unavailable
The environment variable $DISPLAY still has localhost:0.0 not what would be 
appropriate for the alternate session.
If I remember correctly it should be localhost:1.0 but setting the variable to 
that doesn't work.
Ideas?

Robert McBroom