[sllug-members]: KDEINIT cannot launch anything!

[Daren Beattie]

Dear SLLUGgers,

I've had a raspberry seed in my teeth since re-installing Debian Etch 
onto my desktop box. If I leave my computer sitting awhile (I'm guessing 
30 minutes, but haven't timed it) and then come back to it, KDE has 
problems launching programs from either the panel buttons or my 
keyboard's multimedia keys. In some cases, I'll get the bouncing cursor 
and the taskbar will show the name of the program that's trying to 
launch, but it will never actually launch. In other cases, I get a 
message box saying "KDEINIT could not launch <whatever program>."

Yesterday I tried re-installing everything related to KDE, to no avail. 
I did run across one more clue, which is that each time I try to launch 
a program, one of the following two errors gets added to my 
.xsession-errors file:

----------
Xlib: connection to ":0.0" refused by server
Xlib: Invalid MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 key
Xlib: connection to ":0.0" refused by server
Xlib: Invalid MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 key
(firefox-bin:14938): Gtk-WARNING **: cannot open display:
----------

The above is all generated by trying to launch Firefox from my 
keyboard's multi-media key.

----------
Xlib: connection to ":0.0" refused by server
Xlib: Invalid MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 key
Xlib: connection to ":0.0" refused by server
Xlib: Invalid MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 key
konsole: cannot connect to X server :0.0
X Error: BadWindow (invalid Window parameter) 3
   Major opcode: 19
   Minor opcode: 0
   Resource id: 0xc008e9
X Error: BadWindow (invalid Window parameter) 3
   Major opcode: 20
   Minor opcode: 0
   Resource id: 0xc008e9
----------

The above is what I get when trying to launch Konsole, again from a 
multi-media key.

I get the same error in .xsession-errors for Firefox when trying to 
launch it from my panel, and trying to launch Konsole from the K-menu 
entry gives the same errors except for the BadWindow bits (which I think 
are related to the dialog that pops up to tell me Kdeinit could not 
launch konsole).

Googling for these new clues again turns up nothing relevant; everything 
related to not being able to connect to the X server appears to be an 
xhosts and su thing, which is not my problem (I'm assuming) because I'm 
trying to run things as myself on my own X server--things which had 
worked fine earlier in the same session.

Any hints on what to check?