> 
 > A regular startx doesn't show them, but a 'startx >& /tmp/x_log' will
 > produce a much more verbose output.
 > X seems to do some magic to detect wether stderr is a tty or a
   regular file ... 

It's the pccons console driver that doesn't handle text mode output
while in X mode. When it switches back to text mode it restores the
text screen exactly as it was saved upon swith to graphic mode. 

PCVT (and wscons too, but I'm not sure and I can't test it right now)
does a better job for this, but without a scroll back feature, it's
also almost useless. Redirecting stdout & stderr to a file is always
better. 

-- 
					Matthieu