Xorg upgrade: xdm fails, xterm can't change fonts?

[Carl Fink <carl@fink.to>]

I finally bit the bullet and upgraded my desktop (etch) machine this
morning.

After much fiddling and reading of old messages to this list, I'm typing
this from within Xorg, but I had to uninstall --purge xlibs,
x-window-system, xbase-clients, and xserver-xorg and then reinstall, and the
current system still lacks an Xsession file (because as per messages to this
list I removed /etc/X11 before reinstalling, and no new one was made).

And the current setup won't work with xdm.  The manager itself runs, but
when I enter a valid login and password, there's a bit of flickering and
then xdm restarts.  Nothing useful in the logs.

I can start up with gdm, but since I don't have GNOME installed (don't like
it) I get two failure message and then the emergency xterm mode.  Luckily I
can just start icewm from the xterm and use X.

And xterm itself is missing features. Under Xfree86, a ctrl-rightclick on an
xterm let me set fonts by size, to (for instance) "large" or "medium". 
Under Xorg, ctrl-rightclick gives me a menu with meaningless labels of
"font1" through "font6", none of which work, along with "fontescape" and
"fontsel" (which also do nothing).

I did look at this list's messages and didn't see these particular problems
mentioned.  Sorry if this is redundant.  I sure hope that the upgrade
process is made less painful before etch goes stable.
-- 
Carl Fink                                         carl@fink.to
   "Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your
   government when it deserves it."
                      - Mark Twain