using the gdm you can login and start x with root, but if you try to with a user you get this error:

Your session has lasted less than 10 seconds, if you haven't logged out
> yourself, then there might a problem with this installation or you are
> running out of disk space. Try one of the failsafe sessions to fix the
> problem."
>

any ideas?

I've had that problem before too.

Check your x startup log and .xsession-errors in your home directory to see exactly what the problem is. I believe my problem was that somehow a file x depends on to start had gotten its permissions changed to where the user couldn't read it.

As noted above, it might be a temporary file owned by root, instead of a user. Check your homedir with "ls -la|less" and see if any root-owned system files are found. If so, move them away or delete them.

If that fails, try creating a new user to the system, and login.

If it fails, check that /tmp is readable AND writable by ordinary users. Check that all dirs in /tmp have appropriate permissions and owners. For example I have entries like this:

drwx------ 3 basil basil 4096 2005-04-20 12:12 gconfd-basil
drwx------ 2 birgit users 4096 2005-04-20 11:43 gconfd-birgit
drwx------ 2 basil basil 4096 2005-04-20 12:42 orbit-basil
drwx------ 2 birgit users 4096 2005-04-20 11:43 orbit-birgit

These directories can be deleted (at least when not logged in graphically) safely, so you could try that.