(Trying again with xdm in the Subject. If this doesn't attract any ideas, I guess I'll have to trash major parts of the installation and try again or use something else.)
Hi gang! Can anybody help me with this conundrum? I have a hamm installation with a 2.0... kernel on a Toshiba 4080 XCDT, and I installed XFree86 version 3.3.5 to get the vid driver for it. Symptom is, xdm pulls up a graphcial login prompt which works fine if I log in as root. If I log in as a normal user, I get no window manager, no xterm, no nuthin--just a mouse pointer that moves. (BTW the last thing I was doing before I started spending all my time on this problem was trying to install Corel WP8, which was demanding certain old libraries or symlinks to such. Maybe that's what caused the trouble? Anyway:) With some help from the nice people on the debian-user-de list, I ran ps aux on another virtual console, and figured out this much: xrdb, called by a 'for' loop in the global Xsession script, runs once for each file in /etc/X11/Xresources. There are three of those: xbase-clients, xfree86-common und xterm. After a normal user logs in, xrdb hangs each time (pulls 99% CPU use, says xtop--what's it doing?). When I kill it, the Xsession script resumes control and runs xrdb again. After the third and last xrdb call is killed, an Xsession seems to start --I see my xterm and xclock nice root background color, same as a root login gets--but then after ~3/4 of a second the whole X server crashes. Whereupon xdm restarts it and the Login prompt is back. I read 'man xrdb', but found no clues. I've checked all the permissions I can think of, and as far as I can see the users should be able to read and run anything root can, as far as X11 is concerned. Grateful for any hints, T. -- Tony Crawford -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Phone: +49-3341-30 99 99 -- Fax: +49-3341-30 99 98 "La idea de un Dios sabio, todopoderoso y que, además, nos ama, es una de las creaciones más audaces de la literatura fantástica." -- Jorge Luis Borges