kdm refuses to allow non-root login to kde

[Tim Kellers]

[If this gets posted twice, I apologize for the noise]


I've been battling this on and off (mostly off) since April.

If I put exec startkde in .xesession in a non-root folder and I enable xdm 
in /etc/ttys, I can log into xorg's xdm and kde starts just fine -- even as a 
non-root user.

If I enable kdm in /etc/ttys, I get the kdm login screen, and if I login with 
a non-root account, the display just stays at it's default background until I 
kill it with CNTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE.  

At the kdm login screen, if I login as root, the kde desktop loads and starts 
just fine.

I've read and implemented the commands in /usr/src/UPDATING regarding kde/kdm 
and I'm running the latest kde-everything as of a few hours ago.

I do like Xorg's xdm, but I do like kdm/KDE better, but, apparently, kdm/kde 
doesn't like me at all.  The box I'm currently testing this on is i386 
FreeBSD-Current as of 8/7/2004, but I've also had this difficulty on 4.9/4.10 
-STABLE installs at work.

Any advice on wht I'm doing wrong (or a pointer to docs so I can RTFM) would 
be greatly appreciated.

Tim Kellers
CPE/NJIT