Bug#302685: After removing gdm 'startx' wont start X

[Leszek Koltunski]

>Can you also confirm that XFree86 always works, independent of whether
>gdm is installed or not, and independent of what user runs it?

ok, I've got 3 users here: 'root' , 'leszek' and 'blah' ( which is just a 
dummy user created to test startx and XFree86 )

I purged gdm again, killed the X server, and tried 'startx-ing' with the 
three users. root and blah could do it, leszek - no.

I then tried to issue 'XFree86'. root could do it, both blah and leszek 
failed with

Fatal server error:
Cannot move old log file /var/log/XFree86.0.log.old

No wonder, since

leszek@utumno:~$ ls -l /var/log | grep XFree
-rw-r--r--  1 root        root       40196 Apr  3 00:44 XFree86.0.log
-rw-r--r--  1 root        root       40078 Apr  3 00:43 XFree86.0.log.old

However, as I said above, 'blah' still can issue 'startx' with no 
apparent problems at all!