On successful startup (where [I is not inserted), I am greeted by the
"focus in" message.

On unsuccessful startup (where [I is inserted), the message never
appears, but term/xterm and xterm are present in features.

Could this race somehow be caused by the pdumper?

Thanks,

-- 
Basil

SHELL=/bin/bash
COLORTERM=truecolor
XDG_SESSION_PATH=/org/freedesktop/DisplayManager/Session0
LANGUAGE=en_IE:en
XDG_CONFIG_HOME=/home/blc/.config
DESKTOP_SESSION=lightdm-xsession
XDG_SEAT=seat0
PWD=/home/blc/.local/src/emacs
XDG_SESSION_DESKTOP=lightdm-xsession
LOGNAME=blc
XDG_SESSION_TYPE=x11
XAUTHORITY=/home/blc/.Xauthority
XDG_GREETER_DATA_DIR=/var/lib/lightdm/data/blc
HOME=/home/blc
LANG=en_IE.UTF-8
VTE_VERSION=5402
XDG_SEAT_PATH=/org/freedesktop/DisplayManager/Seat0
GNOME_TERMINAL_SCREEN=/org/gnome/Terminal/screen/a0c755f7_f6cf_4729_b8a6_05f4947bd3eb
XDG_SESSION_CLASS=user
TERM=xterm-256color
USER=blc
GNOME_TERMINAL_SERVICE=:1.66
DISPLAY=:0
SHLVL=1
XDG_VTNR=7
XDG_SESSION_ID=2
XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=/run/user/1000
DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS=unix:path=/run/user/1000/bus
_=/usr/bin/printenv

In GNU Emacs 27.0.50 (build 6, x86_64-pc-linux-gnu, X toolkit, Xaw3d scroll bars)
 of 2019-04-27 built on thunk
Repository revision: 8dc00b2f1e6523c634df3e24379afbe712a32b27
Repository branch: master
Windowing system distributor 'The X.Org Foundation', version 11.0.12003000
System Description: Debian GNU/Linux buster/sid

Configured using:
 'configure 'CC=ccache gcc' 'CFLAGS=-O2 -march=native' --config-cache
 --prefix=/home/blc/.local --with-mailutils --with-x-toolkit=lucid
 --with-modules --with-file-notification=yes --with-x'

Configured features:
XAW3D XPM JPEG TIFF GIF PNG RSVG IMAGEMAGICK SOUND GPM DBUS GSETTINGS
GLIB NOTIFY INOTIFY ACL LIBSELINUX GNUTLS LIBXML2 FREETYPE M17N_FLT
LIBOTF XFT ZLIB TOOLKIT_SCROLL_BARS LUCID X11 XDBE XIM MODULES THREADS
LIBSYSTEMD JSON PDUMPER LCMS2 GMP

Important settings:
  value of $LANG: en_IE.UTF-8
  locale-coding-system: utf-8-unix