No longer prompted for pbuttword

Here's my latest dilemma...

I was going about my usual business on my MandrivaLinux SE 2005 box today. I clicked the KDE menu and selected the menu choice for kdesu kwrite so that I could edit my smb.conf file with root privileges. I was expecting to be prompted for the root pbuttword before KWrite would start, like I usually am, but I wasn't. I thought that was odd. Sure enough, I was still able to open smb.conf, edit it, and save it. Later on I decided to restart the machine. When the machine rebooted, instead of bringing up the GUI login, it booted to a shell prompt. I entered my username, and it logged me in without even asking for my pbuttword. I had to enter "startx" to start a KDE session, whereas usually it starts automatically after the GUI login. Once in my KDE session, I opened Konsole to try the su command, and now, after entering su, I'm no longer prompted for a pbuttword; as soon as I enter su, I get the pound symbol for a prompt indicating I have root privileges--all without a pbuttword.

I've restarted the machine a few times, but all the above mentioned behavior continues. Basically, I never have to supply a pbuttword for anything--login, su, kdesu, etc--and the machine no longer boots to a GUI login; I have to login at the command line and then run "startx".

What gives? Does anyone have any idea what might be wrong and how I can fix it? As always, all help is greatly appreciated.

- Sasquatch