[Evolution] Cannot access the Ximian Evolution shell

[Patrick O'Callaghan <poc usb ve>]

My configuration: RH 9, KDE 3.1.3, XFree86-4.3, Evo 1.4.4 (installed via 
RedCarpet),
ORBit2-2.8.0.

Also Mozilla-1.4, Firebird-0.61, Thunderbird-0.2 (which I'm using to 
send this).

$ evolution

** (evolution:3724): WARNING **: Permission denied locking 
'/bonobo-activation-register.lock'
(Killing old version of Wombat...)

** (evolution:3724): WARNING **: Extremely strange, strange object 
directories (0)registered with the activation context

** (evolution:3724): WARNING **: FIXME: wait for completion unimplemented

... and the famous pop-up box with "Cannot access the Ximian Evolution 
shell".

I've read the FAQs, searched the archives of this list, googled away madly
and nothing helps.

I should mention that I've been using Evo for about 18 months, and this
problem arose when I tried upgrading from 1.4.3 to 1.4.4 using the RH
Rawhide version. When I got this error I went back to 1.4.3 (which had been
working fine) and suddenly it didn't work either. I then went for the
RedCarpet edition, but no luck (had to force rpm to install libgal2 but
RC seemed happy with it).

Going up the walls -- any ideas welcome.

poc