Pam problem? or maybe something else

[oldman]

Hello list:

    My problem affects many programs.  So far as I can tell they're all
programs that use pam (i.e pup, the system-config-firewall thingie). 
Anyway, I can run the programs, but (in the case of the firewall thing)
it will not save nor actually use the settings I choose. 

    Pup on the other hand acts very strangely!  If I attempt to alter
the package selection list it seems to deselect whatever package I
select, until I select another package then that package is re-checked
and the second package is unchecked  (though I can't be sure that it is
actually deselected as I haven't tried running it).

    Not sure this is related, but pup and yum also also do not show any
new packages until I run a yum clean metadata (forcing a download of the
metadata).

I've (of course) looked at Bugzilla, but couldn't come up with a
suitable search to find anything (at all) :-)
using bog-simple i386 which I've rarely had any issues with Red-hat nor
Fedora nor any other distro I've tried.  Any help in rounding this up
would be appreciated.

Scott