>A handy thing for .xsession debugging is to use xdm's failsafe mode,
>using f1 or control-return to log in. Then look in .xsession-errors.

The control-return on the console worked, however the end result
is still the same with the regular return, that is it comes back
with the login window ad infinitum. this is xdm log file:

X connection to :0.0 broken (explicit kill or server shutdown).
X connection to :0.0 broken (explicit kill or server shutdown).
xdm info (pid 169): Rescanning both config and servers files
xdm error (pid 169): Unknown session exit code 256 from process 217

>- you are not already running an X display (i.e. you should be
>  starting xdm from the text console)
>- you are running xdm as root

I changed ownership of the xdm executable to root and chmod to
4555 and still no avail.

Thanks in advance.

Dan