You wrote (in your message from Sat 18)
 > 
 > 	My machine just completely freezes up.  One time, I was actually able
 > to switch consoles and type something before it froze up, but I think I was
 > just lucky that time, every other time I've sent it to sleep, it completely
 > froze (no network, no console).
 > 
 > > >      I've had a few problems with X (now that I've got it going), but
 > > > I'm not sure if it has anything at all to do with NetBSD.  My machine
 > > > does this thing occasionally where the keyboard will freeze up, and then
 > > > a few minutes later, the display all messes up.  Both happen immediately
 > > > if I set xdm=YES in rc.conf.  If I start xdm out of rc.local, it works
 > > > fine. 
 > > 
 > > xdm=YES works on my machine.  Are you using pcvt console?  Maybe you need
 > > to disable getty when using xdm?  (A wild guess)
 > 
 > 	Yes, I'm using pcvt.  The strange thing is that I *can* use xdm if I
 > start it later.  I didn't investigate this enough (didn't want to freak out my
 > machine too much).


Try to explicitly specify a free VT (ie a VT with status set to off in
/etc/ttys) in /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xdm/Xservers. Something like:

:0 local /usr/X11R6/bin/X vt05

...assuming getty on /dev/ttyv4 is 'off' in /etc/ttys (X numbers
virtual consoles starting at vt01, while the devices are numbered
starting at /dev/ttyv0)

This fixes a race problem between getty spawned by init and the
execution of the rc script. On fast enough machines the X server
starts before getty and it will use any vt (regarding of its status).

					Matthieu