* kdenetwork-3.0.3 Building kdenetwork (as root) spills out of buildroot and sets /usr/bin/consolehelper to be suid root (which breaks it entirely). kppp/Makefile.in contains: install-exec-hook: @(chown root $(bindir)/kppp && chmod 4755 $(bindir)/kppp) || echo "Was not able to make kppp setuid root" Since in RH packages, /usr/bin/kppp is a symlink to consolehelper, it is consolehelper that gets the suid root. The GTK+ libs that consolehelper uses tend to have a fit and exit when running suid root, so this more or less wrecks consolehelper and the 50 or so tools that use it. I know that one should be careful building rpms as root, but that I also think that packages should build as cleanly as possible. Also, we don't exactly make it easy for customers to build rpms as nonroot. The default setup leans heavily towards building as root in /usr/src/redhat. see also bug#78646
It's fixed in 3.1-0.5 or newer.