Xfree and glibc trouble after slink -> potato

[Lee Malatesta <brokeninside@freewwweb.com>]

I just upgraded from slink to potato.  Well, actually 
the upgrade was from rain (Storm Linux 2000) to potato.  
Aside from learning the hard way to never run apt-get 
dist upgrade from an xterm, things went pretty smoothly.

After several days of reconstructing my XF86Config 
(Storm's installer for dummies was one of the reasons 
why I chose to start with Storm instead of slink), I
came across my next 2 big problems (and I assume
that they are related).

1. kdm won't start on boot.  I get an error on the console:
Checking for valid XFree86 configuration....Unable to check.
Not starting X display manager.

after loggin in, startx works just fine.

2. I can't start a terminal window in X.  My WM of choice
gives no error messages.  xterm just doesn't start.
If I try gnome-terminal, I get a mesage about not being
able to log in with the admonishment: If you are using
Linux 2.2.x with glibc 2.1.x this is probably due to
incorrectly set up Unix 98 ttys.

I'm thinking these problems might be related, but who
knows.  I would greatly appreciate anyone's insight on
getting this straightened out.

Thanks,

-lee