kde 3.0.5 password question

I have installed kde 3.0.5 on Openbsd 3.2.
 Everything works. But Just now when I started typing my
 password to unlock the kde desktop, My keystrokes 
are echoed as '*' characters.
Previously there was never any echo.
I have found a reference to EchoMode for kdmrc,
but I'm not (as far as I know) running kdm;
I run startkde from my .xinitrc file. I tried explicitly
setting EchoMode to NoEcho in the xdmrc file,
but it had no effect. Where is the EchoMode option set
in kde initializatin when kdm is not used?

Thanks,
Dave Feustel