Right I've just installed mandrake 10 and am using GDM as my session manager, though when I try to log in under any other user but root, I get the following error

/etc/X11/gdm/PreSession/Default: Registering your session with wtmp and utmp
/etc/X11/gdm/PreSession/Default: running: /usr/bin/X11/sessreg -a -w /var/log/wtmp -u /var/run/utmp -x "/var/lib/gdm/:0.Xservers" -h "" -l ":0" "thocon"
/etc/X11/gdm/Xsession: Beginning session setup...
/etc/X11/gdm/Xsession: line 4: TMOUT: readonly variable

I'm thinking this is a permissions problem but which file(s) have wrong permissions

cheers

can you login without gdm?

(You can do that by pressing ctrl-alt-F1 and login in the terminal, run startx)

can login under terminal, but error produced

-bash: TMOUT readonly variable

I didn't mention I have my home directory on a seperate ext3 partition.

I also have my home directory on a separate partition, shouldn't give problems... Sorry, can't help you...