XDM, Gnome 2.2 normal user startup

[Zeno Davatz <zdavatz@ywesee.com>]

Dear List

I am a Newbie to XDM, Gnome 2.2, XFree86, etc on Debian.

I installed all the necessary packages and Gnome 2.2 runs very smooth when I
get it  running with 'startx'.

When I do the same as normal User Gnome starts but crashes immediately and I
land at the XDM Login again.

I did do dpkg-reconfigure of xservers-common and set the 'startup-security
to console users'.

My log of ~/.xsession-errors (normal user, not root) tells me that the fonts
are not installed correctly. I think that the fonts are installed correctly
otherwise I could not perfectly do 'startx' as root-user.

My questions now are:

1. What can I do to start Gnome as normal user via 'startx' or 'XDM'?
2. Witch logs can I search to get more information for my failure?
3. Why can I start as root but not as normal user?

Thanks for an help and hints.

Zeno