Re: Need help with KDM/X11 guts...

[Florian Kulzer <florian@molphys.leidenuniv.nl>]

Hello Michael,

What you describe might be caused by a problem with your 
/etc/kde3/kdm/kdmrc or by your user's .bash_profile. Try to create a new 
 "generic" user and see if KDM lets you log on then. If that works you 
can comment out things in your normal .bash_profile until you find the 
command which causes the problem.

See /usr/share/doc/kdm/NEWS.Debian.gz for more details.

The fact that your system locks up and blocks the ctrl-alt-F? console 
switching, on the other end, might point to a problem with your video 
driver. There are known cases where Xorg seems to start normally at 
first and it displays the KDM login dialog just fine, but then it will 
crash with 100% certainty when trying to display the KDE splash screen. 
(example: the newer nvidia drivers with the RenderAccel option enabled) 
I don't know how likely that is, considering that you can start KDE 
manually without problems, but maybe you can try a very basic Xorg 
driver with all fancy options disabled.

I hope this helps.

Regards,
         Florian