gdm/.Xclients on 2.2?

[Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com>]

I'm trying to figure out what's going on behind the gdm login process.
It doesn't appear to execute .xsession, .xinitrc, or .Xclients, but
I've heard tell that it should.

Looking in /etc/gdm/Sessions, I see several possibilities (Debian,
Default, Gnome, and Xsession). My first question is, how does gdm
choose which one to run? It seems to be running Default which is a
symlink to Gnome.

Ok, so it's running Gnome. Now, it explicitly checks
/etc/X11/Xsession.options, where I have

  # configuration options for /etc/X11/Xsession
  # See Xsession.options(5) for an explanation of the available options.
  allow-failsafe
  allow-user-modmap
  allow-user-resources
  allow-user-xsession
  use-ssh-agent

but in fact, it never runs my ~/.xsession file, even though the options
say it would be allowed. Is this a bug or a feature?

This file also contains no mention of .Xclients, although it does run
.gnomerc.

Finally, it ends by running gnome-session.

At the moment, I've short circuited this by putting

  exec /usr/local/bin/fvwm2

at the end of my .gnomerc file. But I've noticed that if I logout a
couple of times, gdm never comes back, so I'm not sure I've done the
right thing.

Comments?

                                        Be seeing you,
                                          norm

-- 
Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com> | Abandoning rhyme and fixed rules in
http://nwalsh.com/            | favor of other intuitive rules brings
                              | us back to fixed rules and to rhyme
                              | with renewed respect.--Jean Cocteau