Woody's kcminit crashes at startup

[Garrick James <garrick@james.net>]

I have an IBM a31p laptop on which I am trying to install Debian 3.0 (aka
woody).  ALL packages are official, stock Debian 3.0 r0 packages.  I have X
configured and working (using the VESA xfree86 driver, as 4.1 does not have
a native driver for the video card).

My next step in setting up Debian on this machine is to get KDE installed
and working (woody's stock KDE only! -- testing/unstable packages need not
apply).  Everything falls apart at this point.  :-(

KDE crashes in the middle of it's startup cycle.  It doesn't matter how I
try to start it; it always crashes at the same point (just as ksplash moves
to "Initializing Peripherals").  I've tried starting KDE via KDM, startx,
even from a failsafe X session.  It always crashes.

I've tracked the problem down to kcminit from the following line in
/usr/bin/kde2:

LD_BIND_NOW=true kdeinit +kcminit +knotify

I can't find any logs anywhere as to why kcminit is dieing.  Does anyone
have any ideas?

Please CC me, as I am not subscribed to the list.

Thanks,
Garrick James