On a whim I tried this really big hammer. I created a patch to strip from the kdebase code all references of consolekit.c and CONSOLE_KIT. Seemed like a reasonable idea.
No luck. Still can't login with KDM.
Would somebody please provide me a knee-bone-connected-to-the-thigh-bone explanation or simple flow chart how KDM runs through everything? I'm still leaning toward this being an authentication problem. Perhaps with some kind of flow chart I can try something.
Some progress.
I tried some different -debug options with kdm. I saw an error message "password verify failed." The only place the message is found is in kdm/backend/client.c.
Any ideas where to attack next?
Darrell