x11/xterm question

[mcassar]

hi anyone,

can anyone tell me how to replicate/get this thing running cuz i'm still 
learning the basics of unix, and really hooked on freebsd - but this is 
driving me nuts and need to ask.

hope this explains it proper since i don't know the technical terms of what 
i'm looking for; which might make this easier-

basically i have xorg and kde3 running ok, and i'm using kdm now - by 
editing  /etc/ttys -> tty8.

but previously, when testing x11 and kde i was first starting x11 
with 'startx' without any .xinitrc file whatsoever - so i could go to the 
basic x that starts with a couple of xterms and a clock, if you know the 
one...
and then type 'startkde' in one of those.

kde starts, but what i'm interested in, is that the xterm i started kde from 
keeps displaying messages - which on a few occasions seemed very clean, on 
others i noticed warnings - like bad window, etc.

now i'm basically trying to get one of those running after starting from kdm - 
if possible. i don't know if 'tail' is what i'm looking for, and if so 
whether it goes through some log file somewhere in /var, or through running 
processes somehow.  unless the most i can do is run that one a single app.

thanks in advance