XWin or Security problem?

[Roderick A Gammon]

Aloha-

Today I logged into my server with a maintenance account and tried to start
X-Windows.  It failed with the message:

"Authentication failed- cannot start X server.
Perhaps you do not have console ownership?"

I tried several, but not all, accounts and got the same message.  All
accounts except for root, which started up fine.

Can anyone diagnose the problem for me?  I have not rebooted the machine
since last using X.  I started and stopped Jakarta Tomcat (J2EE server) a
few times, but that hasn't caused this before. The paranoid side of me
wonders if this is evidence of a security problem.  Everything seems to be
working fine, but I'm no expert.

Could some start by telling me how to learn if I own the console?

Thanks-
rod g