KDE 3 Troubles

Recently, something went drastically wrong with my KDE 3.5 desktop (yes, I still use KDE 3.5). Long story short, KDE 3.5 now has problems creating content in .directory files. It will sometimes create the file, but leave it empty (0 bytes written). If such an empty .directory file is encountered by Konqueror, or any of the KDE directory selection tools (for example, a file open dialog), it immediately hangs the application.

It took a long time to figure out that this was the problem. Apps would hang without any diagnostic (not even a log entry), Konquer would hang, and would (when killed) kill the desktop. There was no obvious error or diagnostic. Since I'd added a new VPN component to my existing environment, I had to eliminate that. The same goes for the NFS support that has worked well for a decade. But neither of these components are the cause of the problem.

So, I've got a KDE desktop that sometimes creates empty .directory files, on local and NFS filesystems. And that hangs my KDE desktop.

I've got a workaround, of sorts. when things hang, I copy a valid .directory to the last directory I worked on, and the problem goes away.

All I have to do now is figure out why my bog-stable KDE 3.5 environment has suddenly stopped building proper .directory files.