ssh-agent won't work after upgrade :\

Hi ya all,
I made a little upgrade on my Slack 9.1 running on an hp omnibook
6100.

It all worked fine before the install. I was using ssh-agent
(ssh-agent startkde) to get kde running, but since the upgrade, it
fails to startup.

The following are the files I upgraded with slapt-get (version 0.9.8c)
and a copy of the attempts I made. ssh-agent was specified in both
~/.xinitrc and /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xinit/xinitrc. It will work if I
start in init 3 and then type "$ ssh-agent startx". Oh yeah, I'm
using gdm :\

Upgraded files:
gdm-2.4.4.2-i486-1 is to be upgraded to version 2.4.4.5-i486-1
gnupg-1.2.3-i486-1 is to be upgraded to version 1.2.3-i486-2
mod_ssl-2.8.15_1.3.28-i486-2 is to be upgraded to version
2.8.16_1.3.29-i486-1
openssl-0.9.7b-i486-2 is to be upgraded to version 0.9.7d-i486-1
openssl-solibs-0.9.7b-i486-2 is to be upgraded to version
0.9.7d-i486-1
xfree86-4.3.0-i486-5 is to be upgraded to version 4.3.0-i486-6

Attempts I made in the xinitrc file(s):
* ssh-agent startkde
* exec /usr/bin/ssh-agent /opt/kde/bin/startkde
* /usr/bin/ssh-agent /opt/kde/bin/startkde
* eval `ssh-agent -as`
startkde
eval `ssh-agent -k`

That's it folks... it worked, now it doesn't except if I start it from
the command line... any thoughts?

Thank you all for your help.
Ed.