Hello I am a linux newbie and believe it or not I am running gentoo. I had a friend help me with the stage3 installation just in case you were wondering how I got the system off the ground.
Currently my problem is that when I load gentoo, the graphical interface of Xorg loads and asks me to login. I usually hit ctrl+alt+f1 and it gets me to a command prompt. From there I log on as root and try the command:
kdm
It encounters no errors but it doesn't do anything. It doesn't bring up the kde interface or anything. If I try startx it complains ans says that something is already open which I am assuming is the Xorg interface. Any suggestions on how to be able to boot kde would be great. Also, any advice on being able to load kde automatically on boot would be even better.
Thanks for all of the help in advance and sorry for the long post

Hello I am a linux newbie and believe it or not I am running gentoo. I had a friend help me with the stage3 installation just in case you were wondering how I got the system off the ground.
Currently my problem is that when I load gentoo, the graphical interface of Xorg loads and asks me to login. I usually hit ctrl+alt+f1 and it gets me to a command prompt. From there I log on as root and try the command:
kdm
It encounters no errors but it doesn't do anything. It doesn't bring up the kde interface or anything. If I try startx it complains ans says that something is already open which I am assuming is the Xorg interface. Any suggestions on how to be able to boot kde would be great. Also, any advice on being able to load kde automatically on boot would be even better.
Thanks for all of the help in advance and sorry for the long post

Ctrl-Alt-F1 just switches screens - it doesn't turn off the existing login manager. That stays running at the F7 screen.

Why not just log in from the original X screen? It'll put you into KDE if you set your Xsession that way.

Trying to run a new X session while another one runs won't work, because they'll both try to run at the F7 screen. You need to tell it to use the next screen along, the F8 screen, using "startx -- :1.0"

Ideally, tho, just switch the existing login manager, presumably xdm, to kdm right from the get-go via the config file.

What happens if you log on the first screen ?
See the gentoo doc, you'll find how to select KDM to manage X -> http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/kde-config.xml.
startx doesn't work because X is already launched and using your display.

Thanks for the help. It turned out that xdm was set as the default gui and not kdm. I just changed it and away I went. Thanks again.

You were absolutely right. My default gui was set to xdm and not kdm. I just switched this and everything works great. Thanks for the help.

Merged apparently accidental double post.

kdm or gdm or xdm are the graphical login programs. Only one of these is done at a time. "startkde" is what you were wanting to do but it is the same as simply logging at the gui login.