Steve, this problem hit lots of Fedora users after a "bad" update came through on Sunday (yeah - it was very disconcerting).
I'm not a new Linux user, but I just started using (and installed for the first time) Fedora on Saturday, so I'm working this one out myself.
The answer(s) can be found on the Fedor forums (try
http://forums.fedoraforum.org, go to the General Support forum and look for "Packagekit "failed to get a TID:" - rendered unusable", or search for TID). I found this on page 4 of that thread, from a user named Cyberjet. He's talking about the file /etc/dbus-1/system.d/org.freedesktop.PackageKit.conf, which you can edit as root using vi or gedit AFTER BACKING IT UP.
Thanks to all.
I editied my org.freedesktop.Packagekit.conf (see below)and all my packages are restore under System Administration add/remove Software. This worked for me.
<!DOCTYPE busconfig PUBLIC
"-//freedesktop//DTD D-BUS Bus Configuration 1.0//EN"
"http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/dbus/1.0/busconfig.dtd">
<busconfig>
<!-- This configuration file specifies the required security policies
for the PackageKit to work. -->
<!-- Only user root can own the PackageKit service -->
<policy user="root">
<allow own="org.freedesktop.PackageKit"/>
</policy>
<!-- Allow anyone to call into the service - we'll reject callers using PolicyKit -->
<policy context="default">
<allow send_interface="org.freedesktop.PackageKit"/>
<allow send_interface="org.freedesktop.PackageKit.Transac tion"/> [ added this line as opposed to editing the above line and adding .Transaction]
</policy>
</busconfig>
See where he said [added this line...]? Do that, then you reboot. That worked for me, too. After that I could add/remove software again.
But all that requires some (but not a lot) of knowledge about using the command-line interface and a non-gui editor like vi. Not a lot of newbies have that. Can you deal? I can help walk you through it a bit (as time permits), but in the long run, it's more fruitful if you make an honest effort to get the knowledge yourself by searching the forums as you come upon difficulties.
There is an alternate solution - re-install Fedora and don't do updates until they fix the repositories. Some people are a little surprised, I gather, that they haven't done that already. Maybe waiting one or two more days will do it.
