I'm having a little problem

When I try to start a program like package management (or any other only by root startable program) as a normal user , I used to get a window asking for the root password . That window doesn't appear anymore.
I don't know what happened. I see that the application tries to launch but it just dies without any messages .

I don't want to login as root because I know that's dangerous , and I can mess up things easily , but once in a while I would like to do some root stuff ..
I use Red Hat 9 and KDE 3.1 what can I do to get the question for the root password back ?

I have no idea dude, did you do some googling yet ?

Yep i did but couldn't fing anything ..

that is pretty weird...i don't even know how you would go about typing in a string in google to get accurate results for that...hrmm just try little things cause i have absolutely no idea what the problem is or could be...
try this....
-) type the name of something that requires root privledges in the terminal, and see if any error messages are shown.....
an example of something to type that needs password input is:
redhat-config-packages
since i see you use rh9, give that command a try and tell us what happens.

I tried it , and nothing happens , absolutely nothing . Exactly the same as when I click the package management icon in kde .
This also happens when running gnome .
All the redhat-config-???? commands don't work

Are there any logfiles that can tell me (us) more perhaps ?
The var/log/messages file doesn't say anything , or any other file in the /var/log directory

i know the last thing you want to hear is to re-install, but i will look around later, and see if i can find anything...i never heard of such a thing, so i am speachless...
but i guess you can see if there is anything in your .xsession-errors file in your home directory.

also if your logged in as a normal user and you open a terminal and su to root and type password and then try to run something that needs to be ran as root, does it open?

I FOUND IT !!!!

I was thinking : since when do I have this problem? and I remembered I've been trying to start kppp (to get on the internet ) and not wanting to keep typing the root password . So I gave /usr/sbin/kppp a setuid bit
but I also gave /usr/bin/kppp the setuid bit, but that was a link to /usr/bin/consolehelper and accidently that also got a setuid bit .
I removed the setuid bit from /usr/bin/consolehelper and that solved the problem .

Point proven , be carefull what you do when trying to do some root stuff .
Thanx very much for the help