[shep]

I recall that the NetBSD /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc file references ~/.Xresources instead of ~/.Xdefaults.

My understanding is that ~/.Xdefaults can be ignored under certain circumstances.

https://superuser.com/questions/2439...-and-xdefaults

In my occasional forays into NetBSD, when using xdm, I have copied /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc to ~/.Xresouces, edited it to start my window manager. You can also force the implementation of your ~/.Xresources or ~/.Xdefaults by running xrdb on the configuration file:

 $ xrdb ~/.Xresouces

.