more fun: login screen

Man, if we thought my last problem was fun.

I'm on a roll today.

Got the dhcp working (thanks to the weaselking) but now nobody can log in.

The login screen comes up fine.
Login and password go in fine.
Then there's the blackness before the loading screen with the fun x.
the loading screen never happens.
they just get dumped back out to the login screen.

So i'm at a loss.

And before anyone asks, yes, I have remote logins enabled.
I know the login and password works because I'm logged in with it locally right now. but the remote login is dying.

Thoughts?

(I'm hoping this is my last problem of the day. At least I haven't had a bad one in a while).