> I have an i386 laptop that i have upgraded to excalibur. After the upgrade
> when I type in my password at the login prompt, the screen goes black and
> then the login prompt reappears.

Not sure if this is still the case, but in the good old days you
could press <alt> <enter> rather than just <enter> at the xdm login
widget and it would give you just an xterm, rather than the full desktop,
making it possible to start things manually or incrementally and see
where the failures happen...

regards

marc