In message <Marcel-1.45-0410215005-0b0AK4j@knight-soft.demon.co.uk> you wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I'm still having problems getting my installation of X and kde to run on
> my RISC PC after upgrading to 1.3
>
> X does seem to start okay, but...
>
> Currently, if (as root) I run the kdm and login as one of the users, I get
> the error dialog:
>
>    	/usr/X11R6.3/lib/X11/xdm/GiveConsole exited with non-zero status.
>    	Please contact your system administrator.
>    	
> which as was pointed out in a reply to a previous post, tries to chown
> the /dev/console to be the current user.


Something is wrong in this part of the system, I've not had a look at it
yet as I don't use kdm, I think it's the session manager...

Is /usr/X11R6.3/lib/X11/xdm/GiveConsole set to be executable?  I think
that was one problem

> If I run xdm and try to login as the same user as under the kdm, the screen
> goes blank and I return to the xdm login screen :-(

Yep it does when an error is detected/somthing doesn't run.

> the user's $HOME/.xsession simply contains:
>
> startkde

I've not got a .xsession, I have got a .xinitrc (contents of which are
at the end of this email.

> I'm at a little loss for what to try next (I've re-installed the X11 sets
> and the kde packages).

Hmmm

> Any help would be much apprecitated... has anyone being
> able to use the kde with/without using the kdm to launch it.

yep, just type startx as the user you want to use X as, this assumes
you've got the relevant files, and your $PATH set, and $KDEDIR set...

Cheers,
Chris

Contents of .xinitrc
--------------------
#!/bin/sh
# $XConsortium: xinitrc.cpp,v 1.4 91/08/22 11:41:34 rws Exp $

userresources=$HOME/.Xresources
usermodmap=$HOME/.Xmodmap
sysresources=/usr/X11R6.3/lib/X11/xinit/.Xresources
sysmodmap=/usr/X11R6.3/lib/X11/xinit/.Xmodmap

# merge in defaults and keymaps

if [ -f $sysresources ]; then
    xrdb -merge $sysresources
fi

if [ -f $sysmodmap ]; then
    xmodmap $sysmodmap
fi

if [ -f $userresources ]; then
    xrdb -merge $userresources
fi

if [ -f $usermodmap ]; then
    xmodmap $usermodmap
fi

# start some nice programs

exec startkde