I was reading up on the article about mice with 5 buttons. It suggests that the buttons get remaped using xmodmap. I do this and it works great. Now I'd like to do it every time I start X, so I created a file .xsession and did chmod +x on it. I added the line about xmodmap into and then run startx.

My x initially does the normal screen flicker and then dies with no error message. I checked the .xsession-errors log but there are no entries. I tried putting something else in the .xsession file "echo Hi!". Still the same behavior. Then I tried renaming .xsession to .xinitrc. Same behavior. Then I remove the .xinitrc file and startx works just fine again.

I am using KDE and KDM... don't know if that plays into this at all. I am also running Debian. I've tried the above steps with both woody and sarge. I am running X 4.3.0 with dri-trunk drivers.

After looking at some other example .xsession files it looks like you are normally supposed to start the X window manager in your .xsession (because you're appearantly overriding some other file). Anyway, I tried putting KDM here but still no luck. It says KDM wants to be run by root. Also I think KDM is run as a daemon. Anyone know what I should be putting here?

OK got it working now. Figured I would post the solution in case anyone else runs into this problem. In your .xsession file you have to start your desktop environment, so at the end of the file I appended "exec startkde" and it works fine now.