Bitbake recipes

Hi everyone, I was able to make "console-image" in OE using bitbake
using the example on elinux. Now I've been wanting to try bigger more
complex recipes I recently tried doing "beagleboard-demo-image"
unfortunately it craps out around the first half of building. Is
there something extra or other recipies I need to run to make the demo
image build?

Also, I'm kinda curious, is there a way to use a different window
manager than e17, like xfce or fluxbox in Koen's demo?

Thanks.