You wrote (in your message from Tue 3)
 > However, this brings up an interesting point .... _why_ does this happen?
 > I did a system call trace of the X server, and it opens up /dev/ttyE0,
 > but then it later opens up /dev/ttyE6 (the wscons screen I wasn't running
 > a getty on).  Anyone know why that happens?
 > 

That's the expected behaviour. Pcvt also behaves this way. XFree86
explicilty asks the console driver for a free VT to use.  If no
free VT is found, it  opens the current one.
(code in xc/programs/Xserver/hw/xfree86/os-support/bsd/bsd-init.c, 
around line 630).

-- 
					Matthieu