I think it´s a problem with the permissions on your home directory. The dtlogin process (CDE) reads and writes configuration files in the homedirectory (~/.dtlogin/..). The owner of the process is root --> But
root
has not permissions on mounted directories!
Try out to export your homedirecties with the "anon=0"-flag in
/etc/exports
-or- you should open your homedirectories for everybody (chmod 777 homedir)
:-((
to avoid this problem.
Yikes! Both are very insecure choices for a solution!!!
The correct answer is to simply export the home directories with root access for those machines that are running CDE that they are logging in through.
Bruce