I actually don't have a CoreXY machine. I just sort of hijacked this thread, sorry.
I did try touching off and homing before and still no luck. I'm quite confused since there is currently no mention of [TRAJ]AXES in the 2.8 documentation, but linuxcnc will not start without it. I'll start an issue on the github.
EDIT: Looking at the other INIs I found if I set [EMC]VERSION to 1.0 it was not required.