xdm questions

[Mike Kupfer]

Hi, I'm a FreeBSD newbie but a reasonably experienced Solaris/Linux
user.  I recently installed FreeBSD-10.0-RELEASE into a VirtualBox
guest, upgraded to 10.1-RELEASE, and then installed xorg, xfce, and xdm
using "pkg install".  I've got a couple questions about my experiences.

1. I tried running xdm without setting ~/.xsession to run Xfce.  Upon
logging in, I expected to get a simple session with twm and/or an xterm.
Instead, I got bounced back to the xdm login screen.  The problem was
that the Xsession script wanted to run xsm, but that package wasn't
installed.  Shouldn't the xdm package have a dependency on the xsm
package?

2. I had to reboot single-user in order to troubleshoot and fix the xsm
issue.  I had expected to be able to use Alt+Fn to switch to a
non-xdm-controlled virtual terminal, but Alt+F1 etc. have no effect when
X is running.  I have since reviewed the FAQ, and I now understand that
with X running, I should have used Ctrl+Alt+F1, not Alt+F1.
Unfortunately, Ctrl+Alt+F1 causes the VirtualBox *host* to switch to a
different virtual terminal.  Is it possible to configure FreeBSD to use
a key combination other than Ctrl+Alt+Fn?

freebsd-version: 10.1-RELEASE

uname -a:
FreeBSD ernie.localdomain 10.1-RELEASE FreeBSD 10.1-RELEASE #0 r274401: Tue Nov 11 21:02:49 UTC 2014     root at releng1.nyi.freebsd.org:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC  amd64

FWIW, the host is running Debian7.

thanks,
mike