Because of this, I can't write in my xconsole. I tried to setup gdm just like xdm and take advantage of: PreSessionScriptDir=/etc/X11/gdm/PreSession PostSessionScriptDir=/etc/X11/gdm/PostSession to chown /dev/console as appropriate, just like xdm does, but that doesn't work either and ls -lu, shows that gdm does not even open those files :-(
I was just checking on the status of this bug, and realized that I messed up the summary, but bugzilla doesn't give me any way to change it. Anyway, what I meant to write there was "gdm doesn't chown /dev/console"
I changed the summary for you. :-) You do appear to be correct that a gdm login ought to give you ownership of /dev/console; I'm looking to see if any other instances of this exist and whether to use pam_console as a general solution.
This will be fixed for gdm, and unified between gdm, xdm, and kdm, in the next release, as it will be done entirely through the pam_console module. Thanks!