For those of you considering upgrading X (or perhaps rebooting after already upgrading) to version 4.3.0.dfsg.1-9 you should be aware that xdm wont start X due to a typo. http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=285151 Alex Romasan provides the fix in the bug report. It's tagged as pending. HTH, -- Jonathan