When I open the background setting dialog via System->Settings->Apperance and Themes->Background I get a dialog titled "Configure - KDE Control Module" with only five buttons at the lower edge: Help, Defaults, OK, Apply, Cancel. If I use System->Settings->Apperance and Themes->Theme Manager and there click "Background", the dialog works as expected. This has started with the recent -r1 update. I guess remerging all kde core packages would help, but that'd take ages, so I'd rather fix it in a more direct way.
Finally, I was annoyed enough to try something different: I removed all installed kde-base/ packages <=3.3 and remerged all others. To no avail.
Can't reproduce... If you run kcmshell background, does it work? Does it output anything interesting on stdout/err? When only the five buttons appear, does resizing the window have any effect? If you press Defaults and Apply, does that apply the default settings?
kcmshell background yields no messages first. the dialog comes up as described: empty besides the five buttons. Resizing changes nothing. Pressing "Defaults": nothing (Apply does /not/ become pressabled). Help starts the help system, which elicits the message: "khelpcenter: WARNING: Main template file name is empty." OK closes the dialog, changing nothing but producing the message "QObject::disconnect: Unexpected null parameter". Cancel works as expected, sans message. Starting it again, changing nothing and using okay/cancel produces *no* message at all. Hope this helps.
I have exactly the same situation. I tried all the "suggestions" below, with identical results. I will be installing KDE 3.4.2 today (or very soon) and see if it is fixed...
I've just now realized that this bug is still open. I'm not using KDE anymore but still have it installed. I did a quick test with "kcmshell background" and that works as expected. Thanks to whoever ;)
Ok, changing resolution for this unreproducible problem...
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