xterm disappears after 'xterm -e login <username>'

["Kingsley G. Morse Jr." <change@nas.com>]

Does anyone know why 

   $ xterm -e login <username>

briefly flashes an xterm window which immediately disappears if <username>
differs from the currently logged in user and if the currently logged in
user isn't root? Normally the new xterm would remain with a password
prompt.  This started happening today for no apparent reason.   It reports
no errors and I found no related errors logged in /var/adm/messages,
.xsession-errors or /var/log/auth.log. I'm still able to login as
<username> at another virtual terminal outside of Xwindows. 

My software versions are:

xbase        3.3.2.1-1
login        980403-0.2
bash         2.01-5
kernel       2.0.33

For what it's worth, I've noticed two other, possibly related bugs:

1.) $ su <username>

    After entering <username>'s password, it says:

    shell-init: could not get current directory: getcwd: cannot access parent directories
    job-working-directory: could not get current directory: getcwd: cannot access parent directories
    job-working-directory: could not get current directory: getcwd: cannot access parent directories
    job-working-directory: could not get current directory: getcwd: cannot access parent directories
    job-working-directory: could not get current directory: getcwd: cannot access parent directories
    job-working-directory: could not get current directory: getcwd: cannot access parent directories

2.) The keyboard sometimes freezes or fails to clear an input line while
    typing in an xterm. For example, the mail reading program named "Mutt"
    will prompt the user for the filename to save a mail message to. It's 
    stopped allowing me to clear all of the default filename. 

Thanks,
 Kingsley


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