Strange message at startup

[Jonathan Ryshpan]

On Thu, 2012-03-08 at 18:07 -0600, Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote:
> On 03/08/2012 05:04 PM, Aaron Konstam wrote:
> > You are right but changing the desktop environment is what OP seems
> to want to do.
> No - he wants to change the Display Manager, because he is getting a
> blank background and an error message from the display manager.
> Because he is using KDE as his desktop, he wants to use KDE for his
> display manager as well. That will probably take care of the error
> message. It is partially covered up by the login block, but we
> suspect that it is complaining about missing thyme files.

Thanks to all for your attention, though it is a little strange to read
speculations about what I want to do.  I have been away from computers
for a few days and have not been able to read email.  I want to find out
why the system is producing this unreadable message:
        A problem h[<login area>]dministrator.
on a black screen at system startup ONLY and not when logging in again
on a running system.  I definitely don't want to run Gnome, since I
don't like its user interface (personal preference).  I have tried the
kdm login system, and it doesn't seem to work properly:
      * It doesn't remember the last session run and always starts me
        (oddly) running Gnome unless I select KDE explicitly.
      * The Show List (of users) function which appears in
        System Settings->Login Screen->Users doesn't seem to do
        anything.  No list appears on the login screen when it's
        activated.
      * KDE keeps forgetting my font settings when I reboot the system.
        (There may be something else going on here, but it certainly
        looks that way.)
So I'm back to gdm.

The suggestion that the system is missing some "thyme" files is
interesting.  What is "thyme"?  There doesn't seem to be any rpm with
that name; the only rpm containing files of the form '*/thyme*' is
tuxpaint-stamps, which doesn't seem promising.