[CentOS] URGENT: libdvdcss install hosed /var

I am running CentOS 5/2 (latest updates) with the GNOME DE on a 32-bit
machine (at work).

I have k3b installed, and I was trying to copy a DVD earlier this
morning, but k3b said it couldn't read encrypted DVDs.

So, I installed libdvdcss from rpmforge and restarted k3b.  It hung
the system.  I rebooted, and / had been damaged.  After running e2fsck
from the repair prompt, I rebooted and a whole slew of errors
revolving around various /var directories that did not ecist occurred.

I have been trying to repair /var, and so far with a fair modicum of
success, but I've hit an interesting wall - two, actually.

1) The gdm refuses to come up.  It claims that "Server Authorization
directory (daemon/ServAuthDir) is set to /var/gdm, but this does not
exist...."

However:

# ll -d /var/gdm
drwxrwx--T 2 root gdm 4096 Dec 11 10:31 /var/gdm
# ll /var/gdm
total 8
-rw-r----- 1 root root 45 Nov 26 10:47 :0.Xauth
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 63 Dec 11 09:14 :0.Xservers

This is identical to my backup system (which is not surprising - I set
up the dir and copied the files from here - was that a bad idea?).

2) The following daemons fail to start: auditd, NFS statd, avahi and
HAL.  I've tried to pin down why the avahi daemon won't start because
it keeps logging permissions errors trying to create the pid file
/var/run/avahi-daemon//pid, but the setup of /var /var/run and
/var/run/avahi-daemon are all identical to this (backup) machine.  Any
suggestions?

Or is there a better, more comprehensive repair facility available?

BTW, OT: Does anyone know why this might have happened?  I have all
this installed at home, no problems whatsoever (libdvdcss works
seamlessly with all my DVD tools, including k3b).

Thanks!

mhr