unable to capture login screen

[jim]

hi all

I'm attempting to capture the login screen so that I can have a image with my login theme

I log off to gog tty1 login as root
I run the command

chvt 7 ; sleep 5 ; XAUTHORITY=/var/gdm/:0.Xauth DISPLAY=:0.0 import -window root /tmp/gdm-shot.png

the screen switches to tty7 but goes black.
I am then stuck in limbo not able to go to any login screen tty1-7
I know there was a problem with xorg-x11 back in august. I have a later version of xorg from that point so I am able to login on any tty but unable to capture the screen

any ideas?