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Usually this happens when gconf can't start. It sounds like this is
happening because ORBit isn't starting. My guess would be that there
are some temp files that are giving it trouble, or it is still running
somewhere else. Another thing that tends to upset GConf is having the
time set to something weird -- I've had that happen before.
You could also try logging in as your self on the command line and
starting an app that uses GConf (almost any GNOME program should) and
see if more reasonable error messages come out.
>>>>
Interesting. Okay, I did find some stuff related to orbit, also some gconfd stuff, all in /tmp. With no one logged in under X, I deleted all that stuff. Didn't change anything.
ghost can still login under GNOME, I can't.
As for your second suggestion ... I may not know exactly what you had in mind, but as I understand it, doesn't someone need to be logged in for that to work? For instance, if I log in under GNOME as ghost, open a terminal and set xhost +, ssh to the box as me, set DISPLAY=:0.0, run /opt/gnome/bin/gedit, and it pops up on the X terminal. NO messages.
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