Matt Grant writes:

>Every time I su in a xterm the console message pops through my screen and
>causes havoc with all open xterms.

running xconsole is one way to keep /dev/console disciplined...
usually xdm runs this at startup, dunno about startx.
i've seen another problem rather often, in that getty spams /dev/console
(and hence xconsole) with login prompts (often once every couple seconds
or so).. this shouldn't happen, and after a couple X login-logout when
I'm lucky it shuts up... never seen this on i386, though.

--mkb