Somehow I managed to wreck my Debian setup. I think it is an accumulation of mistakes over a period of time.

Right now, I can only boot into cmd line. No X login at all. kdm is running. startx or startkde gets many errors.
Lots of references to problems connecting to display ':0.0'

xhost + gets the same ':0.0' error.
startkde displays "communication problem problem with kded
kded --check shows "Fatal: DCOP Communication problem"
Cannot ctl-alt-f7 to get to gui login

And there are other issues, all caused by my own doing. I think I may have done some apt updates pointing to wrong repos at some point in time.

Is there any way to force a dist-upgrade to get a new setup without losing everything?

A cat of debian-version shows 'testing/unstable', kernel is 2.6.8-1-386.

That is a pretty old kernel for a testing/unstable setup especially if you have udev and it dependant packages running. You might want to try getting a 2.6.17 or .18 kernel installed/booted into then with only testing or unstable in your sources.list dist-upgrade.

HT,
That did it. Put a 2.6.18 kernel in place, did the dist-upgrade. It's back in business.

Sure wish I knew what I did to cause the proble, .

Looking through the Debian forum here, I saw several folks having problems after a dist-upgrade to Etch. Wonder if their problems are similar to mine ...

Well I would put my money on udev upgrade with older kernel if I was betting on it, the way it seems to work from what I read is newer udev=newer kernel needed for the devices to be created properly. Good to hear it worked out BTW.