Trying to log into the console of my two SL5.0 machines this afternoon, I
had the unwelcome surprise of having both of them tell me that my KDE
session "lasted less than 10 seconds" with no obvious errors in the
~/.xsession-errors file:

/usr/bin/startkde: Success

Checking my root email, I find that there seems to have been an error
updating KDE, although yum thinks it updated just fine.  I'll paste the
email below.

When I go to check /usr/bin/startkde, I find:

[root@zim]# ls -l /usr/bin/startkde
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 0 Jun 14 04:55 /usr/bin/startkde

So no wonder KDE won't start.  Has anyone else found this error?  And, of
course, how do I re-install this package without losing users' desktops
(i.e. without uninstalling first)?  There doesn't seem to be a way to try a
"yum -force install"

Much thanks,

-Dave


From [log in to unmask]  Thu Jun 14 04:55:21 2007
Date: Thu, 14 Jun 2007 04:55:20 -0500
From: root <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: YUM:zim.bio.aps.anl.gov:2007-06-14

 --------------------
 YUM - security
 --------------------

=============================================================================
 Package                 Arch       Version          Repository        Size
=============================================================================
Updating:
 kdebase                 i386       6:3.5.4-13.6.el5  sl-security        28 M
 kdebase-devel           i386       6:3.5.4-13.6.el5  sl-security       118 k

Transaction Summary
=============================================================================
Install      0 Package(s)
Update       2 Package(s)
Remove       0 Package(s)

Total download size: 28 M
warning: kdebase-3.5.4-13.6.el5: Header V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID a7048f8d
sed: -e expression #1, char 33: unknown option to `s'

Updated: kdebase.i386 6:3.5.4-13.6.el5 kdebase-devel.i386 6:3.5.4-13.6.el5