Broken KDE3; "fcntl: bad file descriptor"

[Adam Kessel <adam@bostoncoop.net>]

I've had a nearly completely broken KDE3/3.1 installation under sid for
several weeks now and have been unsuccesful at diagnosing or fixing the
problem(s). This may be related to the problem reported here
<http://lists.debian.org/debian-kde/2002/debian-kde-200210/msg00306.html>
about file associations.  

Most of the KDE applications crash when run. e.g., kate gives:

~>kate
fcntl: Bad file descriptor
fcntl: Bad file descriptor
fcntl: Bad file descriptor
fcntl: Bad file descriptor
fcntl: Bad file descriptor
fcntl: Bad file descriptor
kio (KSycoca): WARNING: Found version 49, expecting version 59 or higher.
kio (KSycoca): WARNING: Outdated database found
kio (KMimeType): WARNING: KServiceType::offers : servicetype Kate/Plugin
not found
KCrash: Application 'kate' crashing...
ERROR: KUniqueApplication: DCOP communication error!
fcntl: Bad file descriptor
fcntl: Bad file descriptor
fcntl: Bad file descriptor
fcntl: Bad file descriptor
fcntl: Bad file descriptor
fcntl: Bad file descriptor

kghostview will run, but then gives an error when opening PDFs; unknown
mime-type application/octet-stream and then no mime types installed.

And so forth. Can somehow suggest how I might return my KDE packages to a
useable state, absent returning to KDE2? My sources.list include:

deb http://download.us.kde.org/pub/kde/stable/3.0.3/Debian ./ # KDE 3.0.4 (sid)
deb http://people.debian.org/~schoepf/kde3/woody ./ # Unofficial KDE 3.0.3 for Woody (Koffice 1.2rc-1)
deb http://people.debian.org/~msp ./  # kmerlin & kpovmodeler
deb http://www.inetontario.com/~tcharron/keramik/ ./  # keramik
deb http://www.opensides.be/debian/woody/kde3/ ./  # Quanta, KCD, kcpuload, kdeb, knetload, kopete, kpovmodeler, kprof, kdevelop
deb http://people.debian.org/~pfrauenf/ ./  # Valgrind, KCacheGrind 
deb http://lesbos.esat.kuleuven.ac.be/~mleeman/debian/ unstable/     # 3.0.3 packages
deb http://kde.ping.uio.no/i386 ./
deb http://people.debian.org/~bab/kde3 ./
deb http://people.debian.org/~njordan kde3.0/

Thanks for any advice!
---
Adam Kessel (adam@bostoncoop.net)